This is a (slightly older) article about Nuclear Energy and climate change. It’s a hottly debated topic in climate communities, so I thought some of you would enjoy to read it.
Another article that brings up some more points against nuclear power can be found here.
I’d be interested what you ppl think of the matter.
People are going to have to get used to the idea that nuclear is part of the solution to getting rid of fossil fuels.
Why? Specifically, with numbers.
Because we cannot store power from intermittent sources efficiently. You need a strong baseline, which, right now is only achievable with fossil energies or nuclear power. There is literally no other option right now to get rid of fossil fuels than nuclear, not until we find an efficient way of storing energy, and even then it will still probably be needed.
But the demand is far from constant and nuclear likes constant , it has a very hard time regulating up and down quickly to follow the changes in demand. Solar and wind can by switched on and off near instant or even act as short term buffer in the case of wind to stabilise the grid
Well, nuclear works better on a planning indeed. And you can definitely plan for demand according to previous years. The issue with solar and wind is that sometimes it just doesn’t work at all, like at night or when there is no wind. It works well but it’s intermittent. The ideal mix would be, for the time being, 50/50 at least to phase out fossil fuels, then lowering the part of nuclear should be within reach. Personally I don’t believe in 100% wind and solar year long, but a 60/40 or 70/30 mix (plus hydro, geothermal and such depending on the region of the world) should be achievable.