Somewhat agree except that none of the renewables can yet provide consistent baseload power. They are all intermittent. Even if you had the renewable capacity built-out, you just could not shut-down the coal or natural gas plants in some areas. Nuclear would be better than keeping these plants online.
There is also the problem of how quickly we are building capacity. We are adding renewables faster than projected. Yet, we are using more fossil fuel than ever. This is because growth in demand still outstrips growth in capacity.
Nuclear could still help with both of these. A nuclear plant adds significant capacity.
If you live somewhere that has hydro, it is potentially realistic to add enough renewable capacity to meet the demand while allowing hydro to provide consistent base power. That does not exist everywhere unfortunately. Nuclear can be added anywhere.
Ontario Canada has been coal free since 2014. That was made possible by their 18 nuclear plants. Renewables alone could not have made that happen.
Adding nuclear capacity is a slow and expensive process primarily because of red tape. If it was truly a priority, it could be done fairly quickly. I am not an advocate for China but they certainly have the ability to act quickly when they want to. Unsurprisingly, they are building more nuclear plants than the rest of the world combined.
Adding renewable capacity makes sense and is increasingly the best economic option as you point out. However, I do not think that means that continuing to add nuclear capacity does not also make sense. Nuclear power is cheaper than coal, especially if you consider maintenance and downtime. Renewables vs nuclear is not either / or. Do both.
Realistically, we’re already past the point where renewables are cheaper than nuclear, so it doesn’t make much sense to go into it now.
20 years ago would be a different story.
Somewhat agree except that none of the renewables can yet provide consistent baseload power. They are all intermittent. Even if you had the renewable capacity built-out, you just could not shut-down the coal or natural gas plants in some areas. Nuclear would be better than keeping these plants online.
There is also the problem of how quickly we are building capacity. We are adding renewables faster than projected. Yet, we are using more fossil fuel than ever. This is because growth in demand still outstrips growth in capacity.
Nuclear could still help with both of these. A nuclear plant adds significant capacity.
If you live somewhere that has hydro, it is potentially realistic to add enough renewable capacity to meet the demand while allowing hydro to provide consistent base power. That does not exist everywhere unfortunately. Nuclear can be added anywhere.
Ontario Canada has been coal free since 2014. That was made possible by their 18 nuclear plants. Renewables alone could not have made that happen.
Adding nuclear capacity is a slow and expensive process primarily because of red tape. If it was truly a priority, it could be done fairly quickly. I am not an advocate for China but they certainly have the ability to act quickly when they want to. Unsurprisingly, they are building more nuclear plants than the rest of the world combined.
Adding renewable capacity makes sense and is increasingly the best economic option as you point out. However, I do not think that means that continuing to add nuclear capacity does not also make sense. Nuclear power is cheaper than coal, especially if you consider maintenance and downtime. Renewables vs nuclear is not either / or. Do both.