From the article: The provisional political agreement, which was reached after nightlong negotiations between the EU parliament and states, seeks to raise the share of renewable energy to 42.5 percent, from 22 percent today.

The EU has set an ambitious target to become a "climate neutral" economy by 2050, with net-zero greenhouse gas emissions.

The move also comes as the EU has sought to slash its dependence on Russian fossil fuels after Moscow cut gas supplies last year and the bloc placed bans on seaborne crude and other petroleum products from the country.

The figure is a compromise between the 45 percent share for renewables that was sought by EU lawmakers and the European Commission, the EU's executive branch, and the 40 percent preferred by the states.

The previous target for 2030 had been set at 32 percent.

The proposed directive seeks cutting red tape for renewable energy projects.

The goal is to "fast-track the deployment of renewable energies" as part of the EU's plan "to become independent from Russian fossil fuels, after Russia's invasion of Ukraine", said a statement from the Council of the EU which represents the bloc's governments.

Companies have complained that red tape has slowed the development of such infrastructure.

Good intentions and all, but implementation won't be easy. Everything right now has really long lead times, we are 12-18 month lead times now, vs. 6 months two years ago. BTW, nuclear is not included in this as it's not considered a renewable energy source.

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> The move also comes as the EU has sought to slash its dependence on Russian fossil fuels after Moscow cut gas supplies last year and the bloc placed bans on seaborne crude and other petroleum products from the country.

Does this mean switching to American fracked gas?

It's currently 22% and they set a goal to reach 42.5% by 2030.

"The figure is a compromise between the 45 percent share for renewables that was sought by EU lawmakers and the European Commission, the EU's executive branch, and the 40 percent preferred by the states. "

The following submission statement was provided by /u/chrisdh79:

From the article: The provisional political agreement, which was reached after nightlong negotiations between the EU parliament and states, seeks to raise the share of renewable energy to 42.5 percent, from 22 percent today.

The EU has set an ambitious target to become a "climate neutral" economy by 2050, with net-zero greenhouse gas emissions.

The move also comes as the EU has sought to slash its dependence on Russian fossil fuels after Moscow cut gas supplies last year and the bloc placed bans on seaborne crude and other petroleum products from the country.

The figure is a compromise between the 45 percent share for renewables that was sought by EU lawmakers and the European Commission, the EU's executive branch, and the 40 percent preferred by the states.

The previous target for 2030 had been set at 32 percent.

The proposed directive seeks cutting red tape for renewable energy projects.

The goal is to "fast-track the deployment of renewable energies" as part of the EU's plan "to become independent from Russian fossil fuels, after Russia's invasion of Ukraine", said a statement from the Council of the EU which represents the bloc's governments.

Companies have complained that red tape has slowed the development of such infrastructure.

Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/126lxnm/the_european_union_to_nearly_double_the_share_of/je9mp3j/

UK is nearly there already. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2023/01/2022-renewable-energy-uk-electricity/#:~:text=The%20energy%20industry%20experienced%20a,%2C%20wind%2C%20biomass%20and%20hydropower.

Poland will be the greatest challenge. They have a lot of coal and strong local support for it.

The biggest changes in gas supply have come from the US and Norway, but the EU is also striking agreements with a diverse list of partners. Additionally, increased pace of renewables installation and reducing demand for power are playing a substantial role. Gas usage in the EU dropped significantly in the EU last year and that drop is likely to continue into this year.

There is so much to say about improving processess, eliminating tasks and paperwork

the case with nuclears isn't that straight forward since they belong to a different risk level category, if you messed up a wind farm its not bigger than common indstrial sites, usually lower than many standard cases, from land adquisition to materials to risk assessment so standard cases could be used as template to save time and then find ways to improving work flow and simplifying /standarizing to apply it to all member states regulations

for ovbious reasons with nuclear you need to be more careful about location needs, materials quality and building methods, security, safety, handling and disposal.....no cutting corners

Germany has already hit the target as well as far as I know.

But it's supposed to be an average over the whole eu, so some countries will end up way above target and others well below. Some with better reasons (france comes to mind) others with worse reasons.

>it's not considered a renewable energy source

it is not renewable by definition

Renewables have been a boon to the Russian gas industry. It's a scheme that doesn't work, because if you don't have mountains, what the fuck do you do with on windless winter days? Answer: you import gas.

The safe, carbon-free solution is nuclear.

We hit ~60% solar and windpower in Denmark in 2022 because Kriegers Flak came online. I think we are above 75% with biomass and garbage CHP.

It's always a rude awakening when you look at gross energy consumption though. Renewable share drops a lot when we include transportation, heating etc.

lol, of course somebody has to push the usual "renewables are a conspiracy pushed by the soviets rusians" BS narrative, curtesy of the nuclear industry.

Yeah no, nuclear isn't a solution to anything. Nuclear is an obstacle that isn't needed and a massive waste of money and resources.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-energy-nuclearpower-idUSKBN1W909J

https://phys.org/news/2011-05-nuclear-power-world-energy.html

https://spectator.clingendael.org/en/publication/nuclear-energy-too-costly-and-too-late

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levelized_cost_of_electricity

https://www.lazard.com/media/sptlfats/lazards-levelized-cost-of-energy-version-150-vf.pdf

Nuclear wouldn't even be able to provide global baseload capacity, while renewables can easily be scaled to provide for total global capacity. They are basically the only other source that could.

And it's so "safe" that the sector basically wouldn't exist without special legal constructs [see Price-Anderson in the US for exmaple) that absolve the industry from any responsibility regarding these "non-existent" risks:

>The Price-Anderson Act, which limits utility liability in the event of nuclear accidents, is totally out of sync with US energy goals because it places a heavy thumb on the scale of resource acquisition, favoring the wrong type of assets (high risk, high cost) in the current economic environment. In an uncertain environment, financial risk analysis teaches that the investor should preserve options and value flexibility by keeping decisions small and preferring investments with low, more predictable risks and short lead times. With their high risks, large sunk costs, long lead times, and extremely long asset lives, nuclear reactors are the worst type of assets to acquire at present.

https://thebulletin.org/2020/02/the-us-government-insurance-scheme-for-nuclear-power-plant-accidents-no-longer-makes-sense/

https://thebulletin.org/2011/10/nuclear-liability-the-market-based-post-fukushima-case-for-ending-price-anderson/

Oh yeah, "of course" renewables don't work. I guess that's way all the experts point out why going 100% renewable is totally possible?

>Recent studies show that a global transition to 100% renewable energy across all sectors – power, heat, transport and desalination well before 2050 is feasible. According to a review of the 181 peer-reviewed papers on 100% renewable energy that were published until 2018, "[t]he great majority of all publications highlights the technical feasibility and economic viability of 100% RE systems." A review of 97 papers published since 2004 and focusing on islands concluded that across the studies 100% renewable energy was found to be "technically feasible and economically viable." A 2022 review found that the main conclusion of most of the literature in the field is that 100% renewables is feasible worldwide at low cost.

>Existing technologies, including storage, are capable of generating a secure energy supply at every hour throughout the year. The sustainable energy system is more efficient and cost effective than the existing system. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) stated in their 2011 report that there is little that limits integrating renewable technologies for satisfying the total global energy demand.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100%25_renewable_energy

😂

What's the good reason for France?

Nuclear power. So. Much. Nuclear.

And, FWIW, I applaud them for it.

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Denmark is still well above the average, even for Europe.

• Share of primary energy from low-carbon sources

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https://app.electricitymaps.com/map

Currently:

France: 40g gCO₂/kWh thanks to nuclear

Germany's Energiewende: 250 g — and it's a good day, they've been at around 400g most of the winter when there was no wind across Europe.

It's scary when we look at the primary energy issue, compared with the renewable portion.

The good news is that it isn't as bad as it looks as that primary energy also includes the energy that goes to waste in creating it. All that waste heat leaving engines and smokestacks is a high portion of that primary energy.

Yes, basically that. If you cover most of your energy needs with nuclear, switching to renewables isn't really a win in terms of co2.

If it's the best strategy going forward remains to be seen, replacing the aging fleet of reactors at an economical reasonable prices will be a monumental task, and the situation with the lack of cooling water in summer won't get easier either.

Not just Russian fossil fuels. Hopefully American and Middle Eastern too.

Nuclear isn’t the one solves all solution either. You’re still looking at heat release as surplus thermal energy because a nuclear reactor isn’t better than a coal plant when it comes to degree of efficiency (around ~30%). Only with renewables that won’t happen because the energy in nature would end up as heat anyway because it’s already in the climate system, wether you use it or not.
This should be taken into account when scaling up.
https://publishup.uni-potsdam.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/49886

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Gotta wonder why so many CDU politicians sit in various supervisory boards of fossil fuel companies? Coal plants were doubled down on and modified. The truth is that Merkel and her party slowed the energy transition drastically because they hate how wind farms make the landscape worse

Nuclear power will also stop working as the planet warms, because the temp difference in the water source you are using to cool the plant will not be enough to keep the plant running. This already happens in some southern nuclear power plants in the US.

Can't cool your reactor if your "coolant" water comes in too hot.

Also rivers increasingly drying up and water shortages are problematic for cooling.

uhm when the outside is hot enough to not cool your reactor anymore we'd all be dead.

The effect is absolutely miniscule and is a non-issue even if we would get all of our energy from nuclear. As the article you linked says it will be only be problem when we get to scifi-power source such as fusion.

what target has germany hit?

In 2019 around 15 % and now probably more, but still a long way of the 42.5 percent target. I am assuming that the article doesn't mix up elecrticity and energy, but it might have done that looking at those numbers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany

You do realize that this doesn't actually adress any of the inherent issues with nuclear - industry as well as technology - that I pointed to, right? Using your logic I can simply point to Iceland to invalidate everything you have asserted so far.

On a global scale, so far:
So far, the AHF has no relevant climate impact on a global scale. However, given continued growth in a decarbonised world, the AHF can become a relevant factor of post-greenhouse gas warming in the relatively near future within the next century. Also, on a local scale, even today the AHF is a non- negligible process. This holds not only for the direct AHF impact in urbanised areas, but also for remote, large-scale areas like the sea ice near Greenland due to the ice-albedo feedback and impacts on the ocean circulation. The analysis of CLIMBER-3α has shown that a forcing as small as the AHF in the current years (roughly 2% of the CO2 forcing) can influence ocean circulation in such a way that a temperature change of more than ±0.3 K can result in the Arctic region with significant changes in the sea ice cover.

I read it as electric energy, but you might be right, they might mean total energy. If that's the goal, Germany missed, obviously, but it would make a way better goal for 2030.

the water doesn't have to be that warm before it fails to cool your nuclear reactor down effectively. This is already happening in france https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/aug/03/edf-to-reduce-nuclear-power-output-as-french-river-temperatures-rise

44% renewable electric energy in 2022

That is not what the article actually claims though:

>Historical observations show a constant exponential growth of worldwide energy production. A continuation of this trend might be fueled or even amplified by the exploration of new carbon-free energy sources like fusion power.

The problem isn't "fusion", the problem is the exponential growth in energy production which leads to AHF. This is an inherent issue if you use heat engines to generate electricity - which both fission and fusion do. Nuclear power plants have a thermal efficiency ~33%:

https://www.nuclear-power.com/nuclear-engineering/thermodynamics/laws-of-thermodynamics/thermal-efficiency/thermal-efficiency-of-nuclear-power-plants/

while combined cycle gas powerplants can reach about twice of that.

This would be an issue with fission as well as with fusion. Seeing how you can scale neither fission nor fusion to even meet global base load demands that issue is mainly theoretical though. Basically all forms of nuclear power run into massive issues when you try to scale them beyond 1 TW globally.

https://phys.org/news/2011-05-nuclear-power-world-energy.html

Perhaps with thorium it could but somehow that development seems to be stuck sadly.

Wind farms don't work when there's no wind. That was the case in early december across the whole of Europe, when incidentally solar farms weren't producing much.

Well it’s Chinese companies owning them

So this has absolutely nothing to do with the collapse of the petro dollar?

I'm pointing you to real time data from right now, where nuclear produces dozens of actual gigawatt of carbon-free power and wind+solar sucks and fails to meet demand that has to be covered by gas and coal, but hey, don't let facts get in the way of your pie in the sky schemes where solar makes sense in Northern Europe and anticyclonic events don't affect the whole continent.

Also re levelized cost of electricity, do you know what the lowest sell PRICE of that wonderful Danish wind power is on the market? It's almost 0€. Not because it's cheap, but because it's next to worthless when there's plenty of wind as there's too much supply and nothing to do with it. And you know what the Danes have to do when there's no wind? They have to buy hydro from Norway at outrageous prices, because there's huge demand.

My point? The levelized cost of intermittent renewables WITHOUT pricing in storage or alternatives is just a fucking lie. Nuclear does the job, it's doing the job right now.

Renewable-based systems will be much larger than just wind and solar farms. They also plan to store weeks worth of clean fuels.

> They also plan to store weeks worth of clean fuels.

They plan, some time, maybe, somehow.

Nuclear works now. There's also a way to have cheap, nearly free nuclear: not fucking closing perfectly working plants.

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Europe has already enacted policies to support green hydrogen. It's not just a plan. The Inflation Reduction Act in the US does the same.

It's also important to remember that we can reach a ~90% renewable energy system without these fuels. We don't need them immediately. We'll need them mostly in the 2030s and 2040s.

> Nuclear works now.

Does it, though? The three recent European nuclear projects (Flammanville, Hinkley Point C, Olkiluoto 3) are all financial disasters plagued with massive delays.

Strong agreement about keeping existing nuclear plants online.

Edit: grammar

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No. As per the paper cited in the article:

>In the following section, we will now articulate an important limit to scalability that applies to all forms of nuclear power, whether fusion or fission, uranium or thorium.

The scalability issue is inherent to nuclear technology. Nuclear is many things, but not a solution to terrestial power generation let alone is it gonnasave us from global warming. Renewables are the only source of electricity that is actually scalable.

>I'm pointing you to real time data from right now

And I have just done the same with reneweables, so your argument is invalid.

Maybe ask yourself why you have opted for a strawman instead of actually adressing any of the points brought up.

> Europe has already enacted policies to support green hydrogen. It's not just a plan

Green hydrogen does not exist at this time. Therefore, it's just a plan.

> Does it, though? The three recent European nuclear projects (Flammanville, Hinkley Point C, Olkiluoto 3) are all financial disasters plagued with massive delay

There's about 100 GW of already installed capacity. That's 100 GW more capacity on windless winter days than non-hydro renewables.

> Green hydrogen does not exist at this time. Therefore, it's just a plan.

Google is your friend. Took me 1 minute.

• U.S. Hydrogen Electrolyzer Locations and Capacity
• Total installed electrolysis capacity by technology

> There's about 100 GW of already installed capacity. That's 100 GW more capacity on windless winter days than non-hydro renewables.

So? That doesn't make nuclear energy competitive for new projects.

We don't need a solution but solutions. A benign nuclear solution would be a part. But of course nuclear is tiny compared to hydro etc ...

what's in renewable? Does it include gas? nvm, found:

Overall generation from conventional energy sources totalled 272.9 TWh in 2022 (-5.7% compared to 2021). However, generation from natural gas was 1.7% higher than in 2021, generation from lignite increased by 5.4% and generation from hard coal increased by 21.4%. This is due to the fact that Germany allowed coal-fired power plants to return to the electricity market to be less dependent on natural gas amid strained relations with Russia. Nuclear generation declined by 49.8% in 2022.

Did you even read your own source...

> to ensure the water used to cool the plants will not harm wildlife when it is released back into the rivers.

This is a legal requirement, not a technical one.

The water won't ever be too hot to cool down the reactors. How hot do you think the nuclear reactors are, 40°?

> Can't cool your reactor if your "coolant" water comes in too hot.

How are people even upvoting you? Even at 80° the water would be cool enough for my freaking GPU...

you can't just boil a river...what are you talking about? You can't just destroy every river that a nuclear plant is on, the fact that the water is too hot to return to the river...means its too hot.

Really jumping around on points here

Good for the environment, prospects for future human survival, and for democratic governance.

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europe going to be basked in warm heater glory during the harsh winters and chilled as a cucumber with air-conditioning in the summer while all the under-developed countries enjoy the consequences of climate change, WIN

More electric cable connections between EU countries would be a good starter.

Market economy will automatically switch to the cheap, solar , when cables would exist to all places at once.

Some of the second order effects of Putin's war are incredible

I could not find it in the article but in the news yesterday it sounded like germany is far from it so I assumed it is regarding total energy consumption, so including heating and transportation, not only power. Does anyone know what the 42% are referring to?

Dude, I won't let you move goalposts. You literally said that:

> the temp difference in the water source you are using to cool the plant will not be enough to keep the plant running.

> Can't cool your reactor if your "coolant" water comes in too hot.

Stop making excuses and be grateful you learnt basic thermodynamics today.

And stop parroting this shit anymore.

That... Doesn't say anything about renewables?

So no, neither gas nor coal nor nuclear is renewable.

I quoted the next paragraph sorry. The previous one showed that the 45 percent figure is solar and wind at 35, biogas at 8 and hydro etc for the rest. So biogas is considered renewable.

From the euractiv article on the same subject:

>Member states have committed to collectively reach a share of at least 42.5% of renewable energy sources (RES) in the EU’s gross final energy consumption by 2030.

So it's all energy, including heating and transport. Germany was at 19% in 2021 according to eurostat.

The effect of direct heat released from powerplants would be miniscule in the lifetime of any powerplants we are going to build in the near future, so making any decissions based on that doesn't make any sense.

The change of albedo caused by air pollution is more significant, but it isn't an issue with nuclear.

Also with those scales the change of earths average albedo with solar panels starts to have an effect, so I am not sure if renewables even are better in this context.

https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2020EGUGA..2218924S/abstract

​

>This would be an issue with fission as well as with fusion. Seeing how you can scale neither fission nor fusion to even meet global base load demands that issue is mainly theoretical though. Basically all forms of nuclear power run into massive issues when you try to scale them beyond 1 TW globally.

https://phys.org/news/2011-05-nuclear-power-world-energy.html

If many of these points were true it would also make renewable energy transition impossible. New sources of uranium and minerals(such as rare earths needed by renewables) are made avalaible if the price increases.

Also this point just wrong.

>for 300,000 years. However, Abbott argues that these reactors’ complexity and cost makes them uncompetitive.) Moreover, as uranium is extracted, the uranium concentration of seawater decreases, so that greater and greater quantities of water are needed to be processed in order to extract the same amount of uranium. Abbott calculates that the volume of seawater that would need to be processed would become economically impractical in much less than 30 years

Extractring it from seawater isn't economically feasible, expect it is because it is because it can become economically unfeasible, after we exctract just 0.01% of the uranium from the seas, which in turn doesn't make any sense. How would such tiny a reduction in consetration would make process unfeasible? Not to mention that new uranium is dissolved in the seawater if concetration decreases.

I agree with you that going 100 % nuclear doesn't make sence, but quality of that study highly questionable.

The effect of direct heat released from powerplants would be miniscule in the lifetime of any powerplants we are going to build in the near future(in the next 30 years), so making any decissions based on that doesn't make any sense.

The change of albedo caused by air pollution is more significant, but it isn't an issue with nuclear.

Also with those scales the change of earths average albedo with solar panels starts to have an effect, so I am not sure if renewables even are better in this context.

https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2020EGUGA..2218924S/abstract

"Legal" requirement sounds like you don't really care if you'd kill thousands if not millions of fish by giving them a heat stroke.

Power plants need to cool down their hot cooling water to harmless levels before releasing it back into the lakes or rivers. That is what those giant cooling towers are for. But on hot summer days, their efficiency is greatly reduced and that limits the plant's thermal waste output and thus production capacity. And that is why they should be paired with solar energy to fill the gap on such hot days.

> It's always a rude awakening when you look at gross energy consumption though. Renewable share drops a lot when we include transportation, heating etc.

Sure, but you really need to get the electricity generation to a certain level of Low CO2 production before the electrification of other industries. It's a multiplier. Just like electricity generation, the economics of switching these other industries has recently (or currently is) at the tipping point, where it makes financial (or Security) sense to switch.

People will be surprised how fast these other industries transform. Jut like they are today with electricity generation

What was your point again?

> under-developed countries enjoy the consequences of climate change

Where does the top emitter China come into to equation?

> "Legal" requirement sounds like you don't really care if you'd kill thousands if not millions of fish by giving them a heat stroke.

Given that this law has been repealed this summer during the worst drought of recent history without any consequences, it's fair to say this piece of legislation was unnecessarily cautious.

In any cases that's not related to what OP said about water being too hot to cool down the reactors, with a lot of confidence.

edit: nevermind, I figured now it is talking about total energy consumption, not just electricity. It's just a coincidence that the 22% matches up with wind+solar for electricity.

It's a little bit confusing, as renewables generally includes hydro and biomass. While the cited numbers are rather only wind+solar. If you include the others, renewables had a share of 38.6% in 2022 in the EU. 22% are just wind+solar, so I think that this article solely refers to those and their doubling.

The EU increased its solar share from 3.33% in 2014 to 7.27% in 2022 in the course of eight years. And it's wind share from 7.86% to 15.01%. So, a doubling over the next eight years is essentially just a continued exponential projection of the trend so far.

Which shows how unambitious the previous goal was. Now with the expectation of rising electricity demand, due to electrification of other sectors, this increase in share amounts to more absolute increases, but still, it appears like a fairly realistic target.

I'd agree that the produced heat doesn't really play much of a role with respect to climate change.

> Also with those scales the change of earths average albedo with solar panels starts to have an effect, so I am not sure if renewables even are better in this context.

As your cited study points out. This heavily depends on where you place the solar panels. You can easily imagine that things like black-tiled rooftops or asphalted parking lots are actually improved in terms of absorbed heat by covering them with solar panels.

Germany, has progressed farther on the COP target and CO2 reduction and agreement as opposed to France though.

Electricity is just a quarter of total energy consumption.

My alcoholic neighbour has done a lot of progress, he's decreased his drinking a lot more than I have (I don't drink).

china is as guilty as the rest of developed nation, same shit list as usa and australia

>If many of these points were true it would also make renewable energy transition impossible. New sources of uranium and minerals(such as rare earths needed by renewables) are made avalaible if the price increases.

No it wouldn't, given the abundance of the elements involved and the impossibility of recycling irradiated materials on a viable timescale. Renewables ismply don't suffer from the inherent shortcomings nuclear has here. Extracting Uranium from other sources would make nuclear power even more unviable from an economic standpoint.

>How would such tiny a reduction in consetration would make process unfeasible?

Might I suggest reading the actual paper?

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=6021978

The issue is that the concentration in seawater is measured in ppb to begin with and the amount of water you need to filter to extract meaningful quantities of Uranium rises to infinity as the Uranium is extracted.

>This tells us that, for example, in as little as T = 30 years, a volume of seawater of 7x10^15 m3 would need to be processed - this is clearly impractical as it is over six times larger than the volume of total river outflow in the same time.

Nuclear is already the most expensive option out there. It simply isn't viable as a replacement for fossil fuels on a global scale, and given the growth in energy consumption it is bascially impossible to scale it to meet global base load demands.

>A benign nuclear solution would be a part.

There is no "benign nuclear solution". Nuclear is hands down the most expensive and impractical way to phase out fossil fuels. It is neither econimically viable nor can it compete with renewables in scalability or the timeframe needed to replace fossil fuels.

This is satire, right?

Russia is the perfect example for your policy recommendation: no renewables, but doubled the nuclear power output since 1998.

Here is how the share of low-carbon electricity developed respectively over the past 20 years. In the EU it increased from 48.2% to 60.5%, while in Russia it increased from 34.4% to 40%. In relative terms that's a growth of 16.3% in low-carbon share in Russia, and a 25.6% growth in the EU.

Consumption of gas for primary energy peaked in the EU in 2010 before Fukushima at 4,228 TWh. It's use declined over the past decade to 3,966 TWh in 2021.

The EU decreased its nuclear power output since 2010, Russia increased it (in terms of primary energy from 454 TWh in 2010 to 558 TWh in 2021). But Russia also increased its gas consumption from 4,239 TWh in 2010 to 4746 TWh in 2021.

So you have: Russia implementing your policy advice, expanding nuclear power and shunning solar+wind, and the EU decreasing nuclear power output and expanding solar+wind. But these examples do not seem to support your conclusion. Rather the other way around, the example with increased nuclear power output also increased gas consumption, while the one with increased solar+wind decreased it.

Renewables are a shock to the fossil fuel providers, as they are eating into their market shares. Not only in the EU, but on a global scale: in 2011 fossil fuels constituted 86.16% of primary energy consumption globally, ten years later this share wass decreased to 82.28% in 2021.

This article discusses this aspect more specifically for Russia:

>Russia is the world’s top exporter of both oil and gas, and the third largest oil producer making it a major extraction powerhouse. According to data from the International Energy Agency (IEA) revenues from oil and gas-related taxes and export tariffs accounted for 45% of Russia’s federal budget in January 2022. > >This makes its economy uniquely vulnerable to the impact of disruptions, and suggested that in order to assert itself in a context of looming economic decline, it may resort to increasing aggression (both internal and external). Once Russia’s oligarchy saw peak oil demand in the rear view mirror, it would get increasingly aggressive and aim to maximize short-term extraction and cash flow. Given Russia’s preeminent position in the fossil fuel system, its recent expansionist history, and the likelihood of oil prices crashing down to the $20/barrel level by the end of the 2020s (which Seba predicted in Clean Disruption), Seba assessed that it was one of the top candidates for increasing geopolitical instability.

So you have declining fossil fuel consumption in the EU since 2006 (decreased from 15,103 TWh to 11,759 TWh in 2021), and increasing renewable power output. And you conclusion from that is that the renewable power is a boon to the fossil fuel providers?

​

>No it wouldn't, given the abundance of the elements involved and the impossibility of recycling irradiated materials on a viable timescale. Renewables ismply don't suffer from the inherent shortcomings nuclear has here. Extracting Uranium from other sources would make nuclear power even more unviable from an economic standpoint.

I didn't say anthing about nuclear waste. Renewable energy needs non-renewable minerals just like nuclear.

​

​

>The issue is that the concentration in seawater is measured in ppb to begin with and the amount of water you need to filter to extract meaningful quantities of Uranium rises to infinity as the Uranium is extracted.

According to that paper 7.6 x 10^6 m3/s of sea water would need to processed to begin with. If you would reduce consentration by 0.01 % (30 years/ 300000 years) you would need to process 7,60076 x 10^6 m3/s of seawater after 30 years. Not 7x10^15 as the study claims. The calculations just doesn't make any sense. The equation doesn't take properly to account the total amount of seawater in the oceans.

​

>Nuclear is already the most expensive option out there. It simply isn't viable as a replacement for fossil fuels on a global scale, and given the growth in energy consumption it is bascially impossible to scale it to meet global base load demands.

I didn't say anything about the feasibility of using nuclear to replace all fossil fuels, so please do not argue against this strawman.

Your example is irrelevant since France already has lower targets. And yet, Germany has progressed more as opposed to France in % reduction.

COP target Germany: cut 65% emissions from 1990 emission level. Current emissions from 1050 to 675 million tonnes. Reduction = 36%

COP target France: cut 40% emissions from 1990 emission level. Current emissions from 400 to 300 million tonnes. Reduction = 25%.

Not only is France behind in the progress to meet targets, the emissions in absolute numbers are way less too.

Natural gas is highly dispatchable which is probably why Germany went high renewable and high natural gas. Sun stops shining turn on natural gas.

But it's just a symbiotic relationship that will end eventually. Batteries are becoming cheaper intra-day options.

We are going to be testing higher and higher limits of how much of the super cheap solar and wind can be on the grid and then fill in with dispatchable gaps which can be filled in by hydro, natural gas, biomass, batteries or firm which is nuclear, geothermal, coal. Reducing the higher CO2 options.

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Primary energy is mostly waste heat. Using it massively overstates its importance. Electrification usually cuts energy use by 1/2 to 2/3. Once you allow for that, you find we're much closer to net zero than you would expect.

>I didn't say anthing about nuclear waste. Renewable energy needs non-renewable minerals just like nuclear.

​But the article I brought up did. The claim being made isn't that nuclear needs non-renewable "minerals" while renewables don't. The issue is that "minerals" used in renewables are actually recoverable because they aren't irradiated.

>If you would reduce consentration by 0.01 % (30 years/ 300000 years) you would need to process 7,60076 x 10^6 m3/s of seawater after 30 years. Not 7x10^15 as the study claims.

Please actually read and at least try to comprehend the paper:

>This tells us that, for example, in as little as T ¼ 30 years, a volume of seawater of 7x10^15 m3 would need to be processed - this is clearly impractical as it is over six times larger than the volume of total river outflow in the same time.

This is the total volume of water that needs to be processed at that point, not volume per second. As stated, this would be six times the volume river global river input would be able to provide in the same timeframe, meaning this would be inherently unsustainable.

"Seawater" contains ~3 ppb Uranium, i.e. 3/1000000000, i.e. 0.0000003% of which 0.7% are actually fissile. Your initial concentration isn't 100%, it's 0.0000000021 %.

If we assume that 1 l of seawater has an approx mass of 1 kg (seawater is actually denser but let's ignore that) and assuming that the process was 100% efficient in recovering all the fissile Uranium (it wouldn't be, but let's also ignore that), filtering 7.6*10^6 m³/s of seawater would yield

7.6*10^9 kg/s * 0.0000000021% = 0.1596 kg

The energy contained in 1 kg of U235 (if the conversion was 100% efficient which is isn't but let's ignore that) is 83.15 TJ - ergo the energy you could extract from 0.1596 kg is 13.27074 TJ or ~1.33*10^13 J. Let's just ignore that the thermal efficiency of nuclear plants is ~33% to begin with.

Extraction probably requires pumping all that seawater through a filtration plant, chemical treatment, whatever. Let's assume that all we have is water and U235 - no additional impurities, no uranium compounds that need to be purified and extracted etc. Let's assume we could simply separate water and uranium via reverse osmosis and ignore all the additional steps and energy that would actually be required to use it in a nuclear reactor.

Filtration via reverse osmosis of 1 m³ of water requires 3 - 5.5 kWh. Let's be optimistic and go with 3 kWh/m³ - that's 10800000 J/m³.

Ergo we would need 8.21*10^13 J to filter all of that U235 from the 7600000 m³ we need to process.

Or in other words, extracting uranium from sea water has a negative energy yield, even if we assume that we could somehow seperate it via simple reverse osmosis and the energy conversion was 100% efficient. Which it is not.

>I didn't say anything about the feasibility of using nuclear to replace all fossil fuels, so please do not argue against this strawman.

Even providing global base load would not be feasible let alone economically viable or possible on any meaningful timescale. Given that nuclear isn't a solution for anything, not actually needed and provides no meaningful benefit, what exactely is the point of wasting money and resources on this?

There is a reason why nuclear has been stagnating for the last decades and will play an ever diminishing role in the coming decades:

https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/installed-power-generation-capacity-by-source-in-the-stated-policies-scenario-2000-2040

Nuclear is a dead-end for terrestial utility scale power generation. Renewables are the only feasible way to decarbonize our energy sector.

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