Denmark is reconsidering its 40-year ban on nuclear power in a major policy shift for the renewables-heavy country.
The Danish government will analyse the potential benefits of a new generation of nuclear power technologies after banning traditional nuclear reactors in 1985, its energy minister said.
The Scandinavian country is one of Europe’s most renewables-rich energy markets and home to Ørsted, the world’s biggest offshore wind company. More than 80% of its electricity is generated from renewables, including wind, biofuels and solar, according to the International Energy Agency.
Can someone fill me in on why this website is so insanely pro nuclear energy?
Like, I’m not even fundamentally against it but I don’t understand why we should invest billions in a tech that has essentially been leapfrogged already, would take a decade to become relevant again and is more expensive per KW/h than both renewables and fossil fuels.
Yet every comment criticizing nuclear on Lemmy always (literally every time) gets buried in downvotes. It’s super weird.
I’m pretty sure it’s a campaign or people who are influenced by it. It started years ago on reddit. All of the sudden a perceived majority was pro-nuclear. It really happened in the span of a few weeks or maybe 1-2 months.
I’m not the only person who was dismayed by winding down nuclear power worldwide after the overblown situation at Three Mile Island. Then Fukushima caused another scare that could have been prevented, and turns out was not even that severe. If we had continued working nuclear at pace, while winding down fossil fuels we would be in a better situation environmentally now.
Some pop-sci YouTube channels also heavily started promoting nuclear energy during the same time period
Nuclear is less expensive and more scalable than solar, wind, hydro.
It does not boil the planet like fossil fuels.
Yes it takes time and money to set up, but that’s a short term cost.
This is assumed to be widely known, so critical questions that don’t take that into account are assumed to be either in bad faith or laziness.
It’s neither.
More scalable is hilarious. They take like 10 years to build and cost 18 billion dollars to get 1GW steady state.
Meanwhile, we can whip out 1GW of solar in 2yrs for 2 billion, and do it in modular sections. You don’t have steady state, but you could build solar out to compete with enough battery and high voltage transmission lines, with basically zero nuclear hurdles. It would cost, but it is viable now and much faster, and that’s with current tech. Batteries and panels are just getting cheaper and better.
The LCOE for nuclear is substantially higher than wind and solar. It’s not just upfront costs.
How is it less expensive than solar??? Are you using solar panels from 1970?
It has always been highly subsidized. And there is also cost to keep it working. Fuel rods and people… And if you include “persistent waste storage costs” and force them to pay money into a fund that will be used in case of a rare catastrophy, combined with the prediction of solar getting cheaper and cheaper, no one with the intention to gain money would invest in that.
Nuclear power is slow and rigid. And it is absolutely uneconomical in the long run.
It’s the go-to strategy for fossil fuel companies to stay in the market as long as possible
They know it’s not possible, they don’t want to build new ones but the discussion alone is slowing down renewables and makes it less likely that the current fossil power plants can be shut down soon.
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