All of the cost projections about solar and wind do not include the cost of storage. That is because they are running on a grid which has a baseline of power production from fossil fuels and nuclear.<p>Take the baseline power away and the cost equation dramatically changes.<p>Nuclear provides more emissionless power than solar and wind combined.<p>Anyone who claims to be an environmentalist who is against nuclear power doesn't really believe warming is a threat.
From Wikipedia:<p>Mycle Schneider (pronounce Michael, /ˈmaɪkəl/) (born 1959 in Cologne)[1] is a Paris-based nuclear energy consultant and anti-nuclear activist.[2][3]
> Many environmentalists are opposed, pointing to the risk of nuclear meltdowns and the difficulty of properly disposing of nuclear waste.<p>These must be different from the environmentalists that think the world is on the verge of a grisly doom where war and famine tear us apart that we have to pay any price to avert.<p>If the climate crisis is remotely comparable to a nuclear meltdown then we can go back to sleep. The fallout from all the nuclear disasters has been much more bark than bite.
I'm really appalled by what German lobbying for gas and renewables at the cost of nuclear is doing to climate. I get that it's profitable for them to be a hub for Russian gas in Europe but at the same time they should be aware that natural disasters (see recent floods there) are quite expensive as well.
> <i>every euro invested in new nuclear power plants makes the climate crisis worse</i> ...<p>> ... <i>because now this money cannot be used to invest in efficient climate protection options.</i>
Nuclears costs are mostly spent on planning/design/r&d/permitting/consultants.<p>The actual amount of concrete and steel needed is very low.<p>If we could get a consortium of countries together to design and build 500 identical nuclear plants to power 50% of the world for the next 50 years, it would surely work out cheaper.<p>But the minute every reactor is custom the cost advantage will vanish.
I find the efficiency angle of his argument to hold some merit but as I scan the article I cannot find anything about how to solve grid fluctuations. In my home country of Sweden, solarpanels are not a viable suloution in the northern part of the country as moste of the energy i used for heating in the winter when the sun don’t shine.
Sometimes it's fun to pretend that the real purpose of all the anti-nuclear talk is to gradually create a situation where humanity cannot continue using electricity the way it has been, to literally disempower humanity and cause people to become accustomed to tiny trickles of unreliable electricity.<p>That's surely just a crazy flight of fancy, though -- since we're in a "climate crisis" where the earth will be overheating, politicians will surely arrange for us to have great bags of cheap, plentiful, reliable power for our air conditioning so that we don't go back to the days of, say, 1911, when tens of thousands of people died in heatwaves.
> "And if we're talking about the construction of new power plants, then nuclear power is simply excluded. Not just because it is the most expensive form of electricity generation today, but, above all, because it takes a long time to build reactors. In other words, every euro invested in new nuclear power plants makes the climate crisis worse because now this money cannot be used to invest in efficient climate protection options."<p>The economic arguments in the article might be right, that nuclear just isn't price competitive anymore. But I think the argument that "anything spent on option A is taking away from option B" isn't really all that convincing. I mean, we could take money away from other things, like subsidies to fossil fuel companies and build some new nuclear power plants. Or we could build fewer aircraft carriers, or raise the tax rate on capital gains.<p>The main problem here isn't that we're spending too much on nuclear power plants, it's that we need to drastically expand our use of solar and wind. (And while we're at it start building out more utility-scale large battery banks, and/or build high-capacity transcontinental HVDC lines so most of the world can buy power at all times from wherever the sun is shining right then.)<p>It's sort of like saying that paying a thousand dollars to provide rent for someone whose house burned down is killing a bunch of people in Africa because you could have spent that money more efficiently on mosquito nets. I understand the argument, but people everywhere have needs and it's better I think in the long run to help with all the ones we can than to sort all the needs in priority order based on cost/benefit ratio.
Be aware that this is state-sponsored german media. The only country in the EU absolutely not going to even extend nuclear but instead run lignite plants instead.<p>Also, most establish environmental protection organizations and activists are deeply anti-capitalist and massively left-leaning, so they automatically are against any technology that can be controlled by large companies. Did you notice how fast Greta Thunberg was away from the front stage of all established EPOs like Greenpeace after daring the sacrilege to endorse nuclear?
No word on power density, where nuclear is probably best. As an example, fuel from biomass looks like a perfect solution, except it would require another planet to provide for our current consumption.