That is exactly the kind of fallacy I’m talking about. That somehow renewable and nuclear would be exclusive to each other. Or that renewable can replace all the fossile faster than a nuclear power plant can be built.
We need both. We need to start building nuclear power plants now, and we need to build renewables. This is the best allocation of resources. And this is the only solution out of fossiles.
I think you’re assuming an infinite capacity of funds and people to build the things. If that were true, then yes we should be going for both renewables and nuclear. However it isn’t, and renewables provide far better value and can be built far more quickly.
We need to build both, but we can’t build it all at once. It makes sense to build all or most of the cheap and quick renewables first, in an excess (which before long will become capacity again), to get the fossil fuels switched off as quickly as possible, and then fill out the portfolio with nuclear.
Wrong. The question is how expensive a determine MWh power is, not a single unit price ; prices for 2MWh of renewable or nuclear are comparable.
Secondly, renewable and nuclear don’t mobilise the same resources, both human and material, thus it will always be faster to build both at the same time.
Thirdly, renewable take a lot of space, which means it’s easy to build the first farms, but the more you have, the harder it is to find space for it to build ; not all countries are islands or massive continents with large deserts.
- You’re not really making sense there. Prices in MWh is what the market charges at, and renewables are FAR cheaper per MWh than nuclear. However there is a disconnect between the generation market and consumer markets - as a consumer, you don’t see any difference. Regardless, I haven’t been saying that 1MW of renewables is the same as 1MW of nuclear. I’ve been saying we need to build an excess of renewables everywhere to account for the times it isn’t available in some locations.
- Yes, they do. There are only so many people in the industry. I say this as an electrical engineer who has worked throughout (renewables, nuclear, factories, basically anything with HV). There is also production capacity, but we haven’t reached this yet with renewables and it can be expanded - however when we do get closer to it then it will make more sense to put money into nuclear. Money is also a limiting factor, particularly when it comes to government finance, and is perhaps the biggest limiting factor of all.
- Wind farms take up a lot of space, solar can go on roofs, hydro requires bodies of water. Hydro is very location specific, wind somewhat, solar not very much. However the biggest obstuction of all is the NIMBY attitude.
