The sooner we get this over with the better. Install as much solar and wind as we can and get to the point where we have a glut and then back the up with decentralized storage.
What does this mean?
The only problem is that we have to convince the centralized power industries to give up their complete control of our local and global economies.
I have been thinking about this for decades, as the path forward has been obvious for that long. Those in control just keep doubling down.
It appears that they would rather destroy our ecosystems, and risk economic collapse, instead of just adjusting their investment portfolios.
This is a good goal. But it needs to be more rigorously defined. Autarky can be done. But then you need to accept North Korean living standards.
> Much better if you can have many (millions) of points of generation, storage and consumption and a far more opportunistic level of interconnect
Again, to a degree. You can't decentrally power a modern city. So that means either no more cities, which is expensive, or ruinously-expensive power in cities, which again, in practice, means de-industrialisation.
With that said, there is no such thing as an energy shock right now. Instead, Europe has allies who blatantly attacked a sovereign nation. The answer to that is to condemn and sanction the instigators. What are laws for if they can selectively applied? This is a political problem.
Approximately 100% of the energy in our solar system radiates from the Sun. Long term, solar is the answer. Nuclear is a really good carrier. In the medium term, we need more energy. Preferably cheap. Ideally clean. Going all in on one mode doesn't make sense because it virtually demand the creation of bottlenecks and single points of failure.
Nuclear takes to long to plan and build. If that is fixed, then great.
There are two economically-viable renewable sources: solar and wind. Everything else is, to put it succinctly, bullshit.
We're not producing and deploying as much solar and wind as we can. But global production has limits. Going all in on just those two (together with batteries) requires massively overpaying. That, in turn, makes the economy uncompetitive.
> Nuclear takes to long to plan and build. If that is fixed, then great
Permitting takes forever, too. Nuclear can be done quicker and cheaper, we've seen China do that. It's a good part of the mix because we just need to add power, and ideally, with economies of scale.
Europe's energy strategy–together with Russian and American military adventurism and Chinese economic nationalism–probably puts it into a recession this year. I have a lot of respect for the aims of the European project. But as currently structured, I see no mechanism by which hard decisions can be made.
[1] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A...
jmyeet•24m ago
> Nuclear development is a long-term project, not a short-term fix to current energy insecurity.
Long answer? Still no. Flamanville [1] took 15 years (1o over estimate) and the cost was five times what was projected. Hinkley Point-C [2] is first projected to come online in 2030 (18 years after commencement) and the costs will at least double. Both are mentioned in the article.
The amortized cost of nuclear power makes it among the most expensive forms of electricity generation. And they take forever to build. Not a single nuclear power plants (of the ~700 built in the world) has been built without significant government contributions. And they won't get cheaper. SMR (also mentioned in the article) doesn't make sense. Nuclear plants are better when they're bigger. SMR is just another way of extracting money from the government for dead end research.
Europe as a whole has a history of colonialism. This is the basic for European social democracies: offshorting their problems and costs onto the Global South. They've taken the same approach with energy. In the 2010s, Europe outsourced its energy security to Russia and that has had obvious conseequences for Ukraine.
This was actually an incredibly rare W for the first Trump administration: in 2018 the administration warned Europe of the dangers of Russian gas and badgered Germany into building an LNG port with the Trump-Juncker agreement [3]. This was both correct and fortuitous after Europe suddenly needed to import a lot of LNG from 2022.
Europe also outsources its security to the United States and that's partly why they're in this mess now. Europe is suffering for providing material aid to a war of choice in Iran that they didn't consent to or otherwise want. The article mentions the issue of finding money for defence spending to meet US demands. That's money primarily for US defense contractors. You think that might be an issue?
Renewables, particularly wind and solar, are the path forward. As is divorcing itself from being a US vassal state.
A lot of Europe's policies come down to the failed austerity policies after 2008. Taxing wealth and barring profit shifting to low-tax jurisdictions is the path forward here, not strangling ever-decreasing social safety nets. Austerity is corporate welfare for banks.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamanville_Nuclear_Power_Plan...
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_C_nuclear_power_...
[3]: https://www.csis.org/analysis/us-lng-europe-after-trump-junc...
unethical_ban•18m ago
But there's a weird juxtaposition here: You criticize the fact that nuclear power must be subsidized to be accomplished, but support strong social safety nets. To me, relative energy independence is a core societal goal and nuclear is a hell of a lot better than coal or oil or NG. It still requires fissile material, though.
dotcoma•10m ago
serial_dev•2m ago
jemmyw•15m ago
jacquesm•12m ago
jimbob45•14m ago
I don’t know how fair that is. Modern leaders looked at Appeasement in pre-WW2 and thought they could pull it off by tying their economies to that of their enemy so that war would be ruinous for both. It didn’t work but only because we now know China is bankrolling Russia’s sham economy.
someotherperson•11m ago
You missed the asterisk where endless dependence on coal, gas or oil is a non-optional requirement.
Who the hell cares if nuclear is expensive to get going? Plenty of things cost a lot - healthcare, social spending, roads, all of it. Those war machines that exist to prop up the fossil fuel industry cost a pretty penny as well. It's only when we get to nuclear that the talking point becomes cost. If governments don't even want to provide energy independence then perhaps they should end the slavery they call income tax.
OneDonOne•5m ago
croes•2m ago