Source - The colors of the grids represent CO2 emissions
The title is a reference to the 2021 Texas power crisis
Just to stir up some shit: France is green because they have a lot of nuclear power. Which means a lot of energy for basically zero CO2. Germany could have been green, but opted to shutdown their nuclear facilities in what can only be described as a “hurt themselves in confusion” move.
Which means a lot of energy for basically zero CO2.
The problem with nuclear power is there’s just too fucking much of it. You’ve practically got to give that shit away for free. You’re never in a position to squeeze retail electricity consumers for $3000/MwH.
The real meal ticket is down here in Texas, where a handful of gas-powered electric generator companies can form a cartel that fixes prices every time AC demand peaks during the summer. Then you can cash the fuck out by burning $.15 worth of butane for $50.
Germany could have been green, but opted to shutdown their nuclear facilities in what can only be described as a “hurt themselves in confusion” move.
Germany decided to rely on the cheap and abundant natural gas from checks notes, ah shit.
I like that name for Russia.
Germany decided to rely on the cheap and abundant natural gas from checks notes, ah shit.
and shutdown a brand new reactor as well, which would still be running, more than likely.
That’s wrong, nuclear doesn’t equal zero CO2, not even close. There are no emissions from producing electric power, but tons of emissions building the plants and reactors, mining the fissile materials (which in large come from Russia, btw), transporting the materials, etc.
Granted, if you’re calculating that into renewables, there are emissions, too, but far less per kWh.
Also, nuclear’s fucking expensive.
And the “hurt themselves in confusion”-move wasn’t to shut down the NPPs (it was originally planned to phase out of coal and nuclear while building up renewables and using gas during the transition), it was to stall the phaseout of coal, expand on gas relying on Russia while halting the expansion of renewables and utterly destroying the PV industry. That’s what a conservative government does to you. Thanks, Merkel.Edit: fck autocorrect
You are right, but in this specific chart, they don’t include things like building the facilities, mining the materials etc. They just use the CO2 released whilst producing power, which with nuclear is very low. You can click on the chart and zoom in on the data, it’s pretty cool.(This is wrong, see edit)The whole Germany situation is very complex and I was just jabbing, I live very close to Germany and work in Germany part of the time so I know something about it (but probably not everything). To me phasing out the nuclear wasn’t that much of an issue, but it could have been done way slower to make sure renewables filled the gap. Buying gas from Russia with the war in Ukraine is going on permanently hurt my soul.
Quickly phasing out nuclear is also a big middle finger to the countries in Europe that are looking to expand their nuclear power, but run up against long lead times. They would have gladly bought nuclear energy from Germany, which would mean way shorter lead times and prevent a lot of extra CO2 during construction of new facilities. Whilst building new big nuclear probably isn’t useful in combatting climate change, getting the most out of existing nuclear would have been.
The fuel coming from Russia isn’t as big of a deal to me, as there are plenty of sources around the world to buy from. With the amount of gas we’ve bought from the US recently, we could have easily bought some nuclear fuel as well. Now all these sources have their issues, I don’t like being beholden to the US and places like Niger or Namibia can have human rights issues.
Obviously nuclear isn’t the future and needs to be phased out, but in my mind this meant decades yet and not the rushed phasing out Germany did.
Edit: Just checked the source, they actually do include things like mining of the fuel, construction of the facilities, transport of the fuel etc. into the CO2 calculation. Nuclear just blows everything out of the water in terms of CO2. Only renewables come close, but in terms of CO2 nuclear is the best.
That’s wrong, nuclear doesn’t equal zero CO2, not even close.
https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-per-energy-source
When accounting for construction, lifetime production, decommission and disposal per mwh produced for all energy sources, nuclear still takes the lead. And it further pulls ahead when you compared land useage per mwh produced per square meter. The only place where Nuclear doesn’t have a cutting edge advantage is cost per kwh, and frankly if you’re putting profits over sustainability then welcome to being part of the problem that lead to us burning coal cause it was cheap.
The best possible solution for a sustainable future is baseline nuclear power to cover average usage of loads, rooftop solar on existing buildings to make use of surface area not otherwise being used for something useful, and wind turbines added to areas where wind production is viable without displacing other production needs, such as adding it to agriculture fields or low impact areas. This ideal circumstance would also have people abandoning low density housing (specifically suburban single family homes) to move to more high density housing (apartments or multiplex homes that host multiple families) to allow additional land to be set aside for ecological restoration to better balance and preserve what climate we still have and enhance carbon capture. This is obviously a goldilocks solution that will never happen because humans will be humans, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be encouraging it and taking steps to emulate it as realistically as possible.
The only place where Nuclear doesn’t have a cutting edge advantage is cost per kwh, and frankly if you’re putting profits over sustainability then welcome to being part of the problem that lead to us burning coal cause it was cheap.
This is incredibly naive. We have a limited amount of money for the energy transition (because otherwise the problem would already be solved), and the more efficiently you spend that money, the faster we stop pumping greenhouse gases into the air.
Nuclear is by far the most expensive form of energy. If it takes you 30 years instead of 10 to replace all other forms of energy production, you haven’t won anything.
If Nuclear was 50%-100% more expensive you might have a point.
But it’s not. It’s barely more than 10-20% on the most pessimistic charts over lifetime. Civilization can afford nuclear and can’t afford to ignore it. And Nuclear price tag only goes down as it benefits from economy of scale, the only thing really hindering it. It doesn’t take 30 years to build a reactor, it takes 5-10 depending on bureaucracy people using protest or legal measure to delay it. The time it takes to build a 1,000mW reactor is roughly the same amount of time it’s going to build 1,000mW of Wind or Solar production anyways. So to get back to the point: What exactly is yours?
Nuclear is literally 3-4 times as expensive: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levelized_cost_of_electricity
The levelized cost of electricity is exactly the metric you were talking about, over the whole lifetime of the power plant. Nuclear costs are also increasing, not decreasing as you claimed. Building reactors also takes way longer - you can deploy solar and wind in a couple of months to years, whereas all existing nuclear reactors took at least 10-20 years to build. While you’re continuously building up renewable capacity , it already starts producing energy, whereas a nuclear reactor will only start producing once it’s fully built, meaning that it simply doesn’t help us reduce carbon emissions until then, whereas renewables can. How can you be so wrong on a topic you talk so confidently about?
The propaganda of the nuclear industry is truly incredible.
not decreasing as you claimed.
they absolutely should be decreasing, the problem is that gen 4 plants don’t exist yet, if they did it would be substantially lower.
Also this isn’t propaganda, you’re pulling this out of your ass, the nuclear industry is fucking DEAD homie.
Well, if reality disagrees with you, it’s usually not reality that’s wrong. You can say that prices should have been decreasing, but I can show you that prices did not decrease, they increased, whereas prices for renewables have been decreasing.
Also, nuclear energy is the dream of the current fossil fuel industry - it’s centralized (no individuals can produce their own energy), it’s heavily subsidized (otherwise it would be way too expensive), and negative effects are socialized (cleanup is oftentimes not fully covered by the operator, and they also won’t be held accountable in the case of accidents). They are terrified of renewables, as they’d lose control and gain more competition.
These are not synchronous grids, but some other kind of boundaries. With synchronous grids the US should be split to only 3 zones, and most of Europe would be colored the same. So I think the kind of map you used is not the best for this joke.
World map of all synchronous grids:
.png)
From the website it sounds like that is a map of electric companies or something like that. So this map is not directly related to the Texas crisis. Most of these companies share electricity between each other.
Tom Scott video about synchronous grids: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bij-JjzCa7o
More info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide_area_synchronous_grid
I like how there is this giant Russian-Belorussian-Georgian-Azerbajanian-Kaxah-Uzbeki-Tajikistans-Kirgizian grid.
Who said something about USSA being “too big”?
France is so low thanks to all those nuclear power plants they have.
Which are shitting themselves now. Unable to be properly repaired or financed. Requiring goverment bailouts
because they’re stupid and didn’t regulate them like they should’ve.
And im pretty sure france’s nuclear isn’t privately owned?
Not anymore, the government had to buy them fully so it wouldn’t crash.
Privatization of profits and nationalization of liabilities. It’s like France didn’t have many revolutions.
isn’t the entirety of the US split into two separate grids? East and west? And also texas, because they’re silly.
Like i’m pretty sure this is just, factually incorrect.
Sure but there are also regional divisions like on this map. There’s even connections between Texas and East and West grids, they’re not even totally separate
yeah regional divisions make sense, but i’m not sure why they would matter all that much, in the grand scheme of things it’s not exactly “my problem”
I wouldnt be surprised if they weren’t fully separate, from what i understand though, texas has a pretty much isolated grid since that allows them to get around federal regulations for power production. And the east and west would more than likely be a systems scale thing, it’s just better to have it split down the middle. Considering how few people generally live there.
iirc they’re connected via DC not AC so they have “local” control over maintaining the 60hz frequency.
You can see live stats here.
that would actually make a lot more sense, it would also explain why they’re “separate” grids as well.
