Nuclear and Renewables Complement One Another

Here’s a pro-nuke video I thought I’d pass along.  Lots of truth and a small amount of misinformation–all punctuated with humor that I hope you’ll enjoy.  A few points:

• As suggested, we need to differentiate between the monetary and the “blood” cost of our energy sources.  Coal kills, but it’s cheap.  Contrast that with other sources that, in some situations may be more expensive, but are far less deadly.  Now yes, this is the case today, but there’s no excuse for not legislating that the price of energy from fossil fuels reflect the costs of cleaning up the mess that is made: the deaths from air pollution, the illnesses, the long-term environmental damage.  Once that change is made, the price of energy from coal, for instance, will be so high that no one would even think of operating a plant.

• As presented, nuclear really does have a very low “blood” cost.  There have been only three nuclear accidents in history, all with reactors that were built in the 1970s.  Nuclear’s entire death count from its inception is less than the number who die from fossil fuel emissions on any given day.

• Nuclear delivers baseload power, meaning that it’s consistent, 24 hours per day, for months or even years at a time. That sounds like a greater benefit than it is, however, and in some cases it’s a drawback.  That’s because:

a) The load on the grid varies on an hour-to-hour basis, and, in the absence of large amounts of energy storage, something needs to come online that has the capacity to be turned on and off quickly.

b) Solar and wind are intermittent, but that doesn’t mean they’re not predictable; in fact, we can predict the amount of wind power that will be available at a certain time more precisely than we can predict the actual load that it will need to serve.

c) As more solar and wind are deployed over larger geographic areas, these fluctuations tend to balance themselves out.  The fact that the wind is not blowing at position X actually increases the probability that it’s blowing at position Y.

d) As more long-distance power transmission and energy storage come online, the challenge associated with integrating variable resources becomes more manageable.

The core mistake that nuclear makes is pitting itself against renewables as the definitive low-carbon energy source.  We see the pro-nuclear people demonizing wind, for instance, even though 6.6% of the entire grid mix is wind at this point.  That’s a huge amount of coal being displaced, and an enormous reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and chemical poisons.

It’s rather like something we see on social media to the effect that we need to cut out algebra in high schools and start teaching financial planning, managing a checking account, and understanding real estate mortgages.  How about….no.  We need both.  We don’t want uneducated kids, but nor do we want morons who don’t know how to manage what little money they’ll have if they grow up without an education.

Same deal here.  Nuclear is low-carbon, and it can scale.  Renewables are also low-carbon, and they’re getting so cheap it’s ridiculous.  Plenty of room for both.