EVA HAMRUD, METAFACT
10 JULY 2021
In order to mitigate the global impacts of climate change, we need to dramatically reduce our carbon emissions, or even better – stop emitting completely. Many countries have recognized the need to switch from fossil fuels to renewable or green energy in order to do this.
Whilst most of us are in homes that are powered from a mixture of sources from coal to wind, is it feasible that one day everything will be solely from renewable energy sources?
We asked 22 experts in renewable energy, engineering, and energy systems Is having 100 percent renewable energy for a country feasible? . 15 answered likely, here is what we found out.
By Christopher Winter (not verified) on 06 Dec 2015 #permalink
Colour me skeptical. This is a simulation from the same team that added carbon releases from fires started from a global nuclear holocaust to nuclear power s carbon footprint.
By Eamon (not verified) on 07 Dec 2015 #permalink
Greg,
You make some points about the problems of nuclear power plants in your introductory paragraph, point which are widely disseminated, but not as solid as they seem.
On the output-variation problem, the wiki page on Load Following Power Plants has information that this is not a problem with modern nuclear power.
The refueling problem is not really a problem at all, as refueling is a scheduled activity, and so can be mitigated by forward planning.
mped thousands of tons of radioactive waste into ocean
Tampa Bay Times, Times Staff Writer Dec. 24, 2013
They asked the dying Pasco County man about his Navy service a half-century before. He kept talking about the steel barrels. They haunted him, sea monsters plaguing an old sailor.”We turned off all the lights,” George Albernaz testified at a 2005 Department of Veterans Affairs hearing, “and … pretend that we were broken down and … we would take these barrels and having only steel-toed shoes … no protection gear, and proceed to roll these barrels into the ocean, 300 barrels at a trip.”
Not all of them sank. A few pushed back against the frothing ocean, bobbing in the waves like a drowning man. Then shots would ring out from a sailor with a rifle at the fantail. And the sea would claim the bullet-riddled drum.
Biden flirts with the fantasy of small nuclear reactors as the cure for climate change if the nuclear revolution doesn’t happen in the next four years, it’s probably not going to happen
The Green Fantasy and Messy Reality of Nuclear Power. TNR, 23 Dec 20, Biden is flirting with the idea of rejuvenating the industry to help decarbonize the economy and there are skeptics in spades. Joe Biden will have to do more about climate change than any president before him. He has no choice. Already, close U.S. allies are openly expressing their relief about the end of the ecologically disastrous Trump era while a coalition of left-wing politicians and organizations are demanding sweeping emissions reductions.
The Green Fantasy and Messy Reality of Nuclear Power
Biden is flirting with the idea of rejuvenating the industry to help decarbonize the economy and there are skeptics in spades.
ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP/Getty Images
A woman walks past the nuclear plant on Three Mile Island.
Joe Biden will have to do more about climate change than any president before him. He has no choice. Already, close U.S. allies are openly expressing their relief about the end of the ecologically disastrous Trump era while a coalition of left-wing politicians and organizations are demanding sweeping emissions reductions.
Biden’s campaign climate promises were extensive. But one of the more interesting promises in the plan and one of the ones key to determining how he approaches emissions reduction was his promise to “identify the future of nuclear energy.” That means reopening discussion of a technology many environmentalists once thought would be rotting in the dustbin of history by now.