alt Hacker NewsAs a supporter of nuclear, I think most nuclear supporters will be happy if we achieve carbon neutrality by any means.
But as other commenters pointed out, renewables are not achieving that in most places. According to Google, a staunchly anti-nuclear Germany has 6.95 tons per capita at 2023. France achieved that at 1986 (!!) and is now at 4.14.
It's really a question that should be directed at renewables: "If renewables are so cheap and fast to deploy, how come 39 years after Chernobyl, Germany still cannot get below France in CO2 emission?"
Replies
Because fast to deploy in theory fights quickly with permitting systems and NIMBYism. You need more permits, because a typical solar or wind farm doesn't come close to a nuclear plan's output, so the per-project bureaucracy multiplies. By needing more places, you also have more groups opposing projects for typical NIMBY reasons. You need battery facilities too, and more updates to the grid to deal with having less inertia, and the updates cost money, and the battery facilities themselves face more NIMBYism: Minimum distances to places where people live and such. So when you put it all together, slow bureaucracies just move at glacial paces, and the equipment you would have bought when you sent out the permit is already different than what you want to use when the permitting is approved.
Then we have the tariffs, as Europe puts tariffs on Chinese equipment that change the price quite a bit.
A country that took this very seriously and decided to put renewables as a top priority could go quite fast. But if there's anything one should learn about the last few decades is that modern democracies care too much about vested interest and NIMBY complaints to actually get projects like this done. Just look at charts showing power waiting to go online in most countries: You'll find very long lines, even after dealing with the rest of the the bureaucratic gauntlet.
> It's really a question that should be directed at renewables: "If renewables are so cheap and fast to deploy, how come 39 years after Chernobyl, Germany still cannot get below France in CO2 emission?"
Because renewables and storage have only been produced at the scale and price required to achieve this for the last 5 years. [1]
The following article "Solar electricity every hour of every day is here and it changes everything"[2] is an interesting demonstration of how solar + batteries is pushing other generation sources to the periphery in most of the world.
Edit: Here is some more data for Brazil and the UK showing a large increase in solar over the last 5 years [3][4]
1. https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/solar-power-continu...
2. https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/solar-electricity-e...
3. https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/wind-and-solar-gene...
4.https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/a-record-year-for-b...