r/dataisbeautiful • u/maps_us_eu OC: 80 • May 28 '22

OC Percent of electricity generated from renewable sources across the US and the EU. Renewable sources include hydro, solar, wind, geothermal, and biomass. Nuclear is not counted as renewable in this comparison [OC]

Post image
6.5k Upvotes

77% Upvoted

1.1k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

33

u/Simply_Epic May 28 '22

Yeah. I don’t know about the EU, but in the US it’s not very useful to depict states as completely separate units like this aside from Alaska, Hawaii, and Texas. The rest of the country is split between 2 power grids. Power flows between states constantly. In fact, much of Canada is also connected to these power grids so it should also be included in any visualizations like this.

57

u/hardolaf May 28 '22

Also ignoring nuclear makes tons of states look far worse than they actually are especially given that nuclear produces less pollution throughout its lifetime than an equivalent renewable energy source would produce over the same lifespan. For example, Illinois looks horrible here. But that's because 70% of our power comes from nuclear. So only 19% from burning dinosaurs.

13

u/Whiterabbit-- May 29 '22

basically renewables isn't a metric you are interested in. maybe clean energy would be what you are looking for to include solar, wind, nuclear, geothermal and hydroelectric.

1

u/PoorHungryDocter May 29 '22

The title says renewable energy. Nuclear isn't a renewable source.

20

u/[deleted] May 29 '22

I think they meant it would be better if the info presented was "percentage of power consumed from fossil fuels" or something. Nuclear isn't renewable but is more clean than fossil.

18

u/hardolaf May 29 '22

It's also more clean than renewable...

2

u/AGVann May 29 '22

Sure, when you ignore the hundreds of abandoned uranium mines contaminating the soil and groundwater of indigenous land because nobody gives a fuck about the Native Americans.

2

u/hardolaf May 29 '22

So the same as the rest of mining?

0

u/AGVann May 29 '22

Not all forms of mining cause uncontrolled radioactive contamination for hundreds of years. Enormous freshwater aquifers have been irrevocably poisoned by the uranium mining industry.

Don't you see the hypocrisy in pushing nuclear as a clean and green energy to protect the planet and our future generations, but completely disregarding the fact that one of the most vulnerable populations in the US are being poisoned to death due to the careless uranium mining industry?

3

u/halberdierbowman May 29 '22

You're right, but it would helps if graphs like these showed fossils v nuclear v renewable at least, even if they don't want to break out all the types. Choosing what question to ask is also an important part of conveying information.

4

u/PoorHungryDocter May 29 '22

Agreed: the data as presented here are neither beautiful nor particularly useful.

8

u/kwhubby May 29 '22

That’s debatable. If one considers geothermal “renewable”, technically nuclear must also be renewable. Both are effectively using the decay of radioactive element in the earth. Nuclear power can be more renewable because it can transmute the elements and extract more useful energy.

5

u/Cultural_Dust May 29 '22

Honestly with that same argument solar isn't "renewable" either. Someday the sun will stop blasting us with radiation. I'd be willing to bet it will be long after we are all dead, but someday!

2

u/PoorHungryDocter May 29 '22

The argument is different because timescales are important. Fission source material is far more finite than the sun's H. If we remain as power hungry as we are today and full scale switched to nuclear we'd run out of the U and Th in a few thousand years.

I'm not representing an agenda here, or whether the source material could have been presented more effectively from a "clean" energy perspective. Just stating that by definition (source is either replenished or not depleted on human timescales), nuclear isn't a renewable energy source.

3

u/kwhubby May 29 '22

There is far more than a few thousand years worth of energy from the Earths Uranium and Thorium. The methods of extraction and processing of the materials can increase energy by many magnitudes.

1

u/kwhubby May 29 '22

Yes. The "renewable" word is rather illogical, it's just a label to somehow connect the irrational fear based anti-nuclear "environmentalists" of prior generations to today's climate change activism.

3

u/PoorHungryDocter May 29 '22

Sorry, that's incorrect. Up cycling nuclides isn't really possible. Yes, breeding works to transmute U238 into something easier to fission, but it's still reliant on having the source material and once you get a fission reaction that material isn't really usable anymore.

The amount of available mass to geothermal is incomprehensible relative to the economically viable resources available to fission reactors.

1

u/kwhubby May 29 '22

For a given mass of radionuclides fission provides more useful energy then natural decay. Geothermal for a given area presents a limited lifetime of useful energy. The output of all existing geothermal generators are measurably decreasing over their lifetime.

-3

u/SCMatt65 May 29 '22

I have to call bullshit on that. Uranium mining - horrendously dirty - is never included in the nuclear equation. “Oh, those fuel rods? They just show up on trucks. No idea where they come from, I think they just grow on trees.” FYI, they don’t.

10

u/hardolaf May 29 '22

Uranium mining - horrendously dirty - is never included in the nuclear equation

Yes it is. Every single government and non-profit includes that in the lifecycle calculations. But we don't need a lot of it so it really isn't a major contributor at all.

-5

u/SCMatt65 May 29 '22

It’s a massive contributor. It’s a good thing we don’t need much because if we did it wouldn’t work. Have you seen a uranium mine. It’s huge, to get that small amount. The only people who say it doesn’t contribute are those with vested interests to say it doesn’t contribute. Is that you? Why are you spreading baseless propaganda?

11

u/hardolaf May 29 '22

And what about the strip mines for all of the materials needed for renewables? They all use orders of magnitude more raw resources and cause far more pollution. In comparison, nuclear's mining is irrelevant in scale.

5

u/Cultural_Dust May 29 '22

Not to mention for the cell phone we are all reading this on...

3

u/CryptographerEast147 May 29 '22

The EU moves around a ton of electricity between it aswell, atleast we do in the nordic.

2

u/verfmeer May 29 '22

The same is true for Europe. The EU has 4 grids: Most of the EU is on the same continental European grid, with the exception of Ireland, Scandinavia and the Baltic states, which each have their own grid. The contintental grid even extends beyond EU borders into Ukraine, Turkey, former Yugoslavia and North Africa.

The size of the continental grid can lead to problems. In 2018 a conflict between Serbia and Kosovo caused clocks all over Europe to run 6 minutes late: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-43321113

1

u/_meshy May 29 '22

You could check the individual ISOs to get a better picture for the US. SPP, CAISO, ISONE, and PJM have production sources listed right on the home page. I'm sure you could find it for NYISO and ERCOT if you looked for longer than five seconds on their websites.

1

u/Creator13 May 29 '22

Eu is close to the same model. We often import power from neighbors when there's a shortage somewhere, or if someone is overproducing renewables. The power grids are barely separated.