
Pennsylvania decides whether to subsidize nuclear energy as “clean” - pseudolus
https://thebulletin.org/2019/04/pennsylvania-decides-whether-to-subsidize-nuclear-energy-as-clean/
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cmoscoe
This debate is happening in a lot of jurisdictions. Here in Ontario we're
refurbishing our older reactors, at a massive expense, in order to get off of
coal, and reduce dependance on gas.

It's resulted in very high energy costs (especially compared to our hydro-
power rich neighbour, Quebec), drove the provincial government out of office,
and is one of the things driving energy-intensive industry out of the
province.

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s21n
Let's look at the bigger picture.

Ontario is one of only a few regions in the world that decarbonized their
electricity generation. All of these regions did this with a combination of
nuclear and hydro (and a small contribution of other renewables).
Unfortunately you can't build hydro everywhere and you have to take into
account that it's not environmentally neutral too.

On the other hand, Germany closed some of their nuclear power plants and
invested billions in renewables, which resulted in very high energy prices
too, but they are nowhere near meeting their emissions reduction targets, and
are facing billion-euro fines for missing their targets. They are increasing
their dependence on gas (this is inevitable because intermittent renewables
like wind and solar require a power source that can be fired on demand, or a
very expensive storage). Germany committed to end their reliance on coal by
2038, but they are still building coal power plants.

Another example is California. Just like Germany and Ontario, they had a fleet
of nuclear reactors and planned to build more. But they decided to close about
half of their nuclear power plants and invest in renewables instead. What
happened is very high energy prices and emissions even a little higher than in
Germany.

Should Pennsylvania subsidize nuclear energy as clean? Yes, because it's the
only big source of clean energy in Pennsylvania. Renewables won't be able to
fill the gap if nuclear gets closed. And we should be replacing fossil fuels,
not one clean source with another. Nuclear is the biggest clean energy source
in United States. It's bigger than all renewables put together, but it gets
the least amount of subsidies and tax cuts. Even less than fossil fuels.

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imtringued
The biggest problem regarding electricity costs in Germany is the fact it has
too many underutilized power plants. 28GW of mostly unused gas plants that
could have reduced CO2 emissions years ago. Meanwhile coal workers have to be
protected just like in the US and therefore 46GW of coal capacity gets used
instead to make sure coal towns don't disappear.

When you look at this turning off 10GW of nuclear starts to make sense, it's
expensive, there are no suitable storage sites in Germany, people don't like
it and finally: Germany doesn't need it because it has too much anyway. The
dark side is that coal gets to live another day because nobody wants to be
personally responsible for the loss of thousands of jobs.

