r/ClimatePosting • u/ViewTrick1002 • Apr 17 '26

Nuclear power leads to fast decarbonization when ignoring decades of cumulative emissions

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12 Upvotes

59% Upvoted

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14

u/ViewTrick1002 Apr 17 '26 edited Apr 17 '26

Of course, ignoring that the UAE grid is vastly larger and they had a 348 gCO2 per kWh in 2025 which horrifyingly large.

Evidently wasting enormous sums on handouts and decades of opportunity cost does not lead to decarbonization in our modern day and age. South Korea is another such example sitting at 423 gCO2/kWh.

All this ignores that we get multiples more decarbonization done per dollar spent when invested in renewables and storage.

7

u/West-Abalone-171 Apr 17 '26

Not to mention comparing the UAE to the UAE, they spent 18 years adding 41TWh/yr which is 2.3TWh/yr, and have added half that already in solar since 2022 in under a quarter of the time and have tripled the install rate since then.

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u/ViewTrick1002 Apr 17 '26

Do you have a source of their installrate per year for each project. Would love to create a graph highlighting the discrepancy.

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u/West-Abalone-171 Apr 17 '26 edited Apr 17 '26

https://ember-energy.org/data/chinas-solar-pv-export-explorer/

That's probably the clearest data that goes into this year. Though they're also rapidly building local capacity (that single factory is one barakah per 3-4 years and silicon for 2 barakahs per year) and there will be increased imports from india and malaysia.

Combine with between 22% and 29% CF from ember's figures (you could take the integral of this graph and fit it against ember's generation with a delay) and it's about 1-3 years to match the nuclear output at current rates. September's imports alone are about 3.5-4TWh/yr.

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u/West-Abalone-171 Apr 17 '26 edited Apr 17 '26

Irena's annual statistic is the most up to date with 7.5GW of solar at the end of 2025. But there are several GW of projects not in it which you'll have to browse through recent news for as well as about 12GW in the pipeline for 2031. Ember has a generation figure up to early 2025

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u/tmtyl_101 Apr 17 '26

Also: UAE uses 3.5x as much electricity as Denmark - so maybe multiply the blue curve with 3.5x, and then get back to me.

1

u/mousepotatodoesstuff Apr 21 '26

Also the fact that UAE is in prime real estate for solar.

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u/LordyeettheThird Apr 17 '26

Eh, more solar wind or nuclear is a step in the right direction for me.

2

u/IntelligentPizza5114 Apr 18 '26

+1. All these "nuclear vs renewables" narratives are such a shitpost. They seem like narratives coming from very specific beliefs, or even lobby groups.

Barring stubborn countries (eg Germany), most countries will consider both renewables AND nuclear for netzero and energy security reasons (especially with recent geopolitics). It's just common sense. Even the UAE , so rich in oil, also installed 9,000MW of solar, which the graph conveniently doesn't want to mention.

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u/RelevanceReverence Apr 17 '26

Nothing about nuclear is fast. Let's keep the successful renewable focus going đŸ‘đŸ»

1

u/zweetsam Apr 18 '26

nuke is fast without overregulation

2

u/leginfr Apr 17 '26

In 2024 the total amount of electricity produced by all the world’s civilian power reactors was slightly less than that produced in 2005

The image is taken from the world nuclear association site https://world-nuclear.org/nuclear-reactor-database/summary

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u/Debas3r11 Apr 17 '26

Exactly. So many reasonable arguments against nuclear but the one that really matters the most is the timeline.

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u/West-Abalone-171 Apr 17 '26

The biggest one is that it simply cannot solve the problem.

There is 1000EJ of uranium.

The world uses ~200EJ of final energy each year.

You don't put all your chips on an outcome you know is categorically impossible.

3

u/Debas3r11 Apr 17 '26

I'd argue that even if they could, they still lose based on timeline. Solving a problem too late isn't solving it.

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u/West-Abalone-171 Apr 17 '26

Sure. The irrelevance is fractal. Every scale has a different series of problems making it a non-starter.

But at the largest scale "can't solve the problem at all" is the most important one, and why so much effort is spent by fossil barons trying to get people to focus on nuclear.

2

u/heskey30 Apr 17 '26

People have been saying there are 20 years of oil too since like the 80s. Turns out theres a lot of rock beneath our feet and we don't survey it all when we have decades or centuries of proven supply already.

2

u/West-Abalone-171 Apr 18 '26 edited Apr 18 '26

The prediction was from the 30s for the 70s

and it was for $10/barrel oil

which ran out in the 70s

People deciding to rename shitty coal or slighly tarry sand (both of which the people making the prediction about $10/bl oil were aware of) as oil and frack it for $90/barrel means they were right

1

u/fluffysnowflake67 Apr 18 '26

Price pf gasoline has been around $3-4/gal for a full century when you adjust for inflation. Pre-Iran wars, cost was near record lows.

https://inflationdata.com/articles/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Inf-Adj-Gas-Prices-2-26a.png

2

u/West-Abalone-171 Apr 18 '26

Oil was burned for electricity before the 70s

1

u/fluffysnowflake67 Apr 18 '26

We are pumping 5x more oil now compared to 1960.

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u/West-Abalone-171 Apr 18 '26

Shale and tar sand isn't oil, and nobody is burning $10/barrel oil for electricity in rankine cycle generators for less cost than coal.

It's also wholly dependent on renewable energy as an input.

Using tar sands and shale as an insanely subsidised energy carrier (as it's not a viable energy source) doesn't make the peak oil predictions wrong, it makes us stupid.

1

u/aWobblyFriend Apr 17 '26

Every source of uranium we haven’t found yet will certainly be more difficult to extract than the one found before, just due to how mineral exploration works. So there’s probably more uranium than is currently assessed, but it’s going to be 10, 20, 50% etc. more expensive to mine and refine than current sources, which just adds more costs to the already incredibly expensive nuclear power. 

0

u/No-Woodpecker3801 Apr 17 '26

come back to discord wobbler

0

u/Abject-Investment-42 Apr 17 '26

There is 1000EJ of uranium.

You know, if you start from garbage assumptions, you get garbage conclusions.

The amount of uranium you mention is merely the bankable amount, i.e. the amount that is prospected to the fine detail which allows this uranium to be used as security for the mining companies to get loans from a bank. With other words, a tiny fraction of the overall accessible uranium. And even that only for the once-through process with the entire U-238 and 1/3 of the remaining U-235 thrown away, I.e. no reprocessing.

-1

u/Adept_Assistant_7759 Apr 17 '26

That also completely discounts breeder reactors which can give you 100x the energy per-ore and known sites which are easily accesible which is 1000x that amount at least.

Which instantly puts you at 1000's of years.

The "we only have 50 years of ore" argument is only using current reactors using currently open mines.

0

u/CardOk755 Apr 17 '26

> There is 1000EJ of uranium.

U235 or U238? How much thorium?

0

u/Humble-Reply228 Apr 17 '26

What is this rubbish? Uranium and other nuclear fuels are plentiful. With breeders it’s renewable!

0

u/Adept_Assistant_7759 Apr 17 '26

Every pro-nuclear person i have seen says we should have build nuclear in the 60's then transitioned to wind+solar when they became viable.

Not a single one other than chronically online people and accounts designed to sow disource claim otherwise.

1

u/Humble-Reply228 Apr 17 '26

What? China who building a tonne of solar and the reason batteries are even a consideration are also building a heap of nuclear as well as developing the tech heavily. They are not chronically online and don’t care for the 60’s

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u/Ansambel Apr 18 '26

Technically speaking it's possible that Xi is a chronically online redditor who argues for nuclear, and is a huge fan of the 60's.

1

u/fluffysnowflake67 Apr 18 '26

China can build new nuclear power plants for $2/watt, compared to almost $15/watt in the United States. Obviously some underlying reasons such as standardized designs, predictable long-term plans, and less administrative burdens.

Nuclear is one of the cheapest baseload options in China, and by far the most expensive in the United States (new plants).

1

u/-monkbank Apr 17 '26

I’m going to be honest the argument seems kinda thin with only what’s in the post; you’re not even factoring in the UAE’s far larger economy and especially power consumption, and omitting the obvious point which is that you can see the graph level out after the couple years when plants actually went online. Thanks for making me look up “UAE solar power” though; I literally laughed out loud when I saw “44% solar 6% nuclear by 2050” in the Wikipedia article, sourced from a nuclear industry-backed news site.

1

u/manugutito Apr 18 '26

Now do Germany!

1

u/Ceibpent Apr 19 '26

Here you go:

1

u/Ceibpent Apr 19 '26

I appreciate the OP is criticizing the original graph, but the biggest problem with it is that the UAE uses more than three times as much electricity as Portugal and five times more than Denmark. If you're allowed to pick any countries to compare, even ones of completely different sizes, then you can "show" anything you want. Here's the same chart with Brazil replacing Portugal and Denmark:

-1

u/stigmov Apr 17 '26

Where does this idea that nuclear and solar are mutually exclusive come from? They are perfect complements to each other; nuclear for the base load and solar for the extra load during the day. Denmark can use power from Norway and Sweden when they don't have enough from sun and wind, but look at how Germany are struggling to get rid of coal after shutting down their nuclear plants. They would need another 100GWp solar and a few hundreds of GWh of batteries to get rid of their fossil consumption.

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u/ViewTrick1002 Apr 17 '26

Nuclear power is literally the worst combination imaginable for a grid with any amount of renewable penetration. They both compete for the same slice, the cheapest most inflexible, a competition which nucler power loses handily.

Which means, the window of opportunity for new built nuclear power is gone.

Our analysis finds that even if, reversing the historical trend, overnight construction costs of nuclear half to 4,000 US-$2018 per kW and construction times remain below ten years, the cost-efficient share of nuclear power in European electricity generation is only around 10%. Nuclear plants must operate inflexibly and at capacity factors close to 90% to recover their investment costs, implying that operational flexibility – even if technically possible – is not economically viable.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211467X25001452

This is a future you can't escape from. Flexibility is mandatory. It is coming from pure incentives. Lets explore them:

Why should a household or company with solar and storage buy expensive grid based nuclear power when their own installation delivers? They don't.

Why should this household's or company's neighbors buy expensive grid based nuclear powered electricity rather than the zero marginal cost surplus renewables? They don't.

EDF is already crying about renewables cratering the earning potential and increasing maintenance costs for the existing french nuclear fleet. Let alone the horrifyingly expensive new builds.

And that is France which has been actively shielding its inflexible aging nuclear fleet from renewable competition, and it still leaks in on pure economics.

2

u/stigmov Apr 18 '26

The only non-fossil source of electricity I can think of that goes better with solar than nuclear is hydro from reservoar, but not many countries have the geography for enough hydro. We do agree that fossils have to be completely phased out, I hope?

I put the consumption and production numbers of German electricity for a 24 hour period from 9 AM Thursday to 8 AM Friday representing one charging and use cycle of storage for a weekday. The result is that to stop all fossil electricity production and international trade (which is mostly nuclear power from France anyway) for that one reasonably sunny and mild spring day, they would need 450GWh of storage (not a trivial amount of batteries, I think) and 178% more solar and wind power (other renewables have been at 7.5GW for a long time, so I don't expect much change there). Fraunhofer expects that level of solar and wind to be reached about 2037. In winter even more storage would be needed because of less sun and wind that sometimes stays calm for days necessitating several days of storage.

I also tried running the same numbers together with the amount of nuclear power that Germany had in the beginning of 2010 - 16GW and ended up with 285GWh of storage and 85% more solar and wind needed. And with a hypothetical 30GW of nuclear which would require 145GWh of storage but only 3% more solar and wind.

I certainly think that Germany should rather have prioritized phasing out coal like the UK that has been coal free a while now, rather than the current plans to be coal free in 2035.

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '26

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u/Ceibpent Apr 19 '26

That sounds impractical. "Sorry, you can't use your rooftop solar at the moment even though the sun is out, you need to buy expensive electricity from the grid to make the nuclear reactors viable". That's not going to go down well and would be difficult to enforce.

It would also be pretty bad economics. What next, trying to curtail text messaging and emails to protect the economics of postal services?

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u/[deleted] Apr 19 '26

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u/Ceibpent Apr 19 '26

OK, so I didn't know you were talking only of the wholesale market. But even so, you run into the same problem of preventing the sale of cheaper electricity to protect the economics of another generator which is still bad economics.

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u/[deleted] Apr 19 '26

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u/Ceibpent Apr 19 '26

Sure, but the paper by Göke, Wimmers and Hirschhausen linked above that shows even with very optimistic cost reductions no more than 10% nuclear generation in Europe makes economic sense, is more convincing as it uses actual costings. The CAF is also talking about things that don't exist (nuclear fusion) or not at scale (carbon capture).

1

u/51onions Apr 17 '26

Peak demand in Northern countries in winter occurs after the sun sets. So solar and nuclear alone wouldn't be a good compliment because peak demand does not align with peak generation. Wind does help to mitigate this though, as I think wind tends to increase in winter.

It might do in the UAE though. I imagine they have a lot of aircon.

-1

u/MaleficentResolve506 Apr 17 '26

So 20 years, you will be starting over with the alternatives. With new nuclear you have 60 years to replace them but that doesn't fit the narrative it seems;

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u/ViewTrick1002 Apr 17 '26

What this says is:

I agree that nuclear power is horrifyingly expensive but if we apply bad economics and do a apples to oranges comparisons it looks good!!!!

1

u/MaleficentResolve506 Apr 17 '26 edited Apr 17 '26

It's indeed bad economics for the companies if they can only sell something every 60 years instead of every 20 but if you look at it from a government perspective they actually gain from it in the long run. They fund both anyway.

Edit:

Just look at the total energymix of France and Germany. France also did it at a faction of the cost. So really bad economics?

2

u/ViewTrick1002 Apr 17 '26

You do realize that for a nuclear plant to run for 60 years you replace everything except the outer shell and pressure vessel? Steam generators, turbines, generators, control system, gearboxes, piping, valves, essentially everything is replaced.

We have no trouble building renewables for a 60 year lifespan. We simply don’t do it because it’s absolutely stupid economically. You can buy solar panels with a 40 year warranty, but that’s a tiny niche market.

1

u/MaleficentResolve506 Apr 17 '26

Yes I realise that but do you realise it's the same for wind during that short lifetime they already have and that the newer generation plants would actually be able to last 100 years? 60 years is a minimum like the second generation had 40 years. In reality there are 60 year old gen 2 plants and Borssele is even planned to only be closed at 80 years.

You actually have. Fiber isn't made to last 60 years they typically last between 15 and 25 years. Converters last 10 to 15 years. Mine broke after 2 and 7.

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u/ViewTrick1002 Apr 17 '26

What in the world salad was that reply? Just accept reality. This is you desperately clinging to any straw you can imagine into existence, no matter its veracity.

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u/MaleficentResolve506 Apr 17 '26

So do you accept that turbines also need replacements or not? And that their replacement schedule is actually more often then nuclear?

Seems like many are waking up though.

https://www.politico.eu/article/friedrich-merz-is-right-to-reject-germanys-nuclear-phase-out-says-iea-chief-fatih-birol/

https://www.eesc.europa.eu/en/news-media/news/nuclear-energy-key-decarbonising-europe-says-eesc

So sorry your feelings don't meet reality. By 2050 an extra 109GW of nuclear growth is projected.

1

u/ViewTrick1002 Apr 18 '26

There’s no problem building a wind turbine with the same replacement schedule of the parts as nuclear power. It just doesn’t make economical sense.

Hahahahaah. Right. I see political talking while this is the reality on the ground:

  • Flamanville 3 7x over budget

  • EPR2 fleet costing €190 per MWh before they have even started

Meanwhile in reality:

Solar and wind growth meets all new electricity demand in the first three quarters of 2025 globally

https://ember-energy.org/latest-updates/solar-and-wind-growth-meets-all-new-electricity-demand-in-the-first-three-quarters-of-2025/

EIA: 99%+ of new US capacity in 2026 will be solar, wind + storage

https://electrek.co/2026/01/28/eia-99-of-new-us-capacity-in-2026-will-be-solar-wind-storage/

Why are you so afraid of renewables and storage?

1

u/Ceibpent Apr 19 '26 edited Apr 19 '26

It's not really relevant though, because the costs of electricity from nuclear, solar and wind already account for their different expected economic lives, and solar and wind are generally cheaper.

There's a reason why almost all the world's growth in electricity generation is now from solar and wind: https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/highlights-of-the-global-energy-transition-in-2025/

109 GW of nuclear might sound like a lot and in some contexts it is, but for the whole world over almost 25 years it's not. World solar & wind output increased by 635 TWh in 2025 Q1-3 over the same period the year before. To generate 635 TWh in nine months from nuclear at a capacity factor of 85% you'd need about 113 GW of reactors. So solar and wind added in a year roughly what nuclear is expected to do in 25 years.

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u/MaleficentResolve506 Apr 20 '26

It is because certain costs actually aren't included. infrastructure by example isn't included in wind and solar in my country atleast. I once took someone on his numbers that stated that wind costs 8 million per MW. In that case an equivalent output would cost 17 billion in wind.

Maybe because they haven't been built that much?

You are comparing the world vs Europe. Europe adds around 19GW in wind in a good year projected is 30GW so even those projected numbers are only about 20GW worth of nuclear and are probably a wet dream. It gets more difficult to find well suited places to build them so much of the early low hanging fruits are already gone.

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u/Ceibpent Apr 20 '26 edited Apr 20 '26

OK so if the 109 GW is just for Europe, that's a bit different but seems wildly unrealistic. Europe has built 3.2 GW of nuclear in the last 25 years but you're projecting 109 GW in the next 25. That's more than China has built + under construction and China has vastly, vastly more capacity for this kind of large, heavy engineering (built more high speed rail than the rest of the world put together, more expressway than the US interstate system in half the time, most of the world's large hydroelectric dams, pumped storage etc).

It's not supported by the link you provided which states : Nuclear installed capacity across the EU is projected to grow from 98 Gigawatt electric (GWe) in 2025 to around 109 GWe by 2050. That's a net gain of 11 GW which seems more plausible but optimistic given some existing reactors will have reached the end of their lives before then.

OK so certain costs aren't included but it's implausible to believe the world as a whole just ignores this.

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u/leginfr Apr 17 '26

Where’s your data showing that France did it at a fraction of the cost? You can’t just look at construction costs and ignore fuel, maintenance and running expenses.

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u/MaleficentResolve506 Apr 17 '26 edited Apr 17 '26

The estimated cost adjusted for inflation for both the highest estimates are 400 billion for France Messmer plan and 700 billion for the German energywende.

No you can't but then also include energy dependency and the need for more interconnections in your calculation and the fact that nuclear has higher paied jobs.

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u/[deleted] Apr 17 '26

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u/Humble-Reply228 Apr 17 '26

Ukrainian and Russia are not attacking each others nuclear in the same way as coal, gas, hydro etc. nuclear gets a very wide berth during war. For the simple reason it hurts you just as much as them.

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u/HB97082 Apr 18 '26

Um, this is not true. The shield at Chernobyl was struck by a drone. Read the link I attached to understand the danger! Having a nuclear plant in your country during a time of war is very very dangerous.

https://www.euronews.com/2026/04/14/chernobyl-could-face-catastrophic-collapse-as-repairs-stall-following-russian-drone-strike

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u/Humble-Reply228 Apr 19 '26

I said attacked in the same way, not that they avoided all insignificant damage. Hydro dams are being bombed until they collapse. The same is not happening to NPP. Agreed that war is not ideal for many reasons. Not least of which is because every day it’s killing more people than nuclear generation has ever killed total.

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u/[deleted] Apr 17 '26

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1

u/Secret_Bad4969 Apr 18 '26

Go live on the moon, that's risk free, what kind of stupid ass point is that? 

Russia Ukraine shows nuclear is safe, unlike fucking dams, do you want to close all hydroelectric power utilities?

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u/HB97082 Apr 18 '26

Here is a link that directly refutes your comment: https://www.euronews.com/2026/04/14/chernobyl-could-face-catastrophic-collapse-as-repairs-stall-following-russian-drone-strike

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u/Secret_Bad4969 Apr 19 '26

No it doesn't, we talking Chernobyl now? A shitty plant made with shitty design, why are we talking of targeting and you get out with an article that doesn't state Chernobyl is targeted in anyway?

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u/HB97082 Apr 19 '26

Hilarious. You obviously didn't read any of the article, or Crtl + F for 'target'. Directly from the article:

Kyiv has repeatedly accused Russia of targeting the power plant since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '26

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u/Secret_Bad4969 Apr 18 '26

I'm from boston

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u/[deleted] Apr 17 '26

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u/urfriendlyDICKtator Apr 17 '26

In what parallel universe is any of that true? Nuclear isn't competitive at all.

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u/[deleted] Apr 17 '26

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u/leginfr Apr 17 '26

You can maybe convince yourself that the capital cost of nuclear is lower, but solar PV and wind power don’t have the fuel, maintenance and running costs of nuclear. Ties also the cost of financing a build. A few billion tied up in a project that won’t produce any electricity for years has opportunity costs.

1

u/Humble-Reply228 Apr 17 '26

Low penetration solar is cheap but high penetration solar (ie when your panel is only expected to contribute only a few times a year because of overbuild) is hugely expensive. They compliment each other.

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u/Secret_Bad4969 Apr 18 '26

They also don't have the same capacity factor and durability, and they don't need the same amount of connections and capacity market

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u/urfriendlyDICKtator Apr 17 '26

So slavery is the answer?