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nuclear is the least renewable rarest most expensive to build out energy source we have found on planet 10yrs worth of uranium available for power generation if we went nuclear then 200,000 yrs of storage issues and replace all those plants after they ran for 1/3 of there life span
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Except in China where it's 1 million solar pannels at a time. Didn't they add like 207gw renewables last year? Probably at least that this year. And they are adding batteries. I don't think their economy is growing as fast as before. It doesn't make sense to import coal when you have all that.
China installs 200 GigaWatt Solar Every Year. China has now 800 GigaWatt Solar. In 2025 China has 1000 GigaWatt Solar. In 2030 China has 2000 GigaWatt Solar. Windpower the same. 2000 GigaWatt Windpower in 2030. One panel at the Time.❤👍🌹
That's a very geo-centric view. There are many areas where that won't work. In summer yes, in winter no. I live on the south coast of the UK. I have a 10.5kW East/West array. So far in December, I've generated 110kWh and used 387kWh. That's going to require enormous battery capacity to carry forward enough power from summer and autumn to carry the house through to spring. The long "wires" are needed to connect to wind generation at the very least, and also in Europe to other countries to supplement the UK's generation. By far the best solution is a smart grid to share excess generation across national boundaries.
@@rugbygirlsdadg A more practical solution is to install more solar, up to 3-5 times. Solar panels are getting so cheap that this is still affordable. And then you can generate enough power most of the year, even in winter, so you need far less storage. On a larger scale you can add wind, which can fill a lot of the gaps in solar, so you need even less storage. RethinkX did the math, and they found that with the right mix you need maybe a few days worth of storage even in the UK or Germany.
@@andrasbiro3007 Domestic roofs in the UK are mostly not large enough to do this. And a "few days worth" of storage would be incredibly expensive (most battery installations store between 2 and 4 hours worth of power). So long power lines absolutely ARE necessary. However, load on those power lines can be greatly reduced by installing a lot more local solar on houses, supermarkets, officeblocks, warehouses and car parks, and this is the important goal - as well as a lot more offshore wind on the south and southwest coasts of the UK.
I drove from Dallas to El Paso a few years ago and I was stunned by the thousands and thousands of wind turbines everywhere in west Texas. I subsequently learned that Texas produces more power from wind than it does from oil.
The province of Ontario got rid of coal power generation in 2017 The number of children with respiratory issues dropped dramatically over the next 18 - 24 months
I'm hearing that people are trying to lean towards nuclear because of the delay time in setup. So what will happen due to this is we'll just continue to use coal as the nuclear plants are built! It seems to be an epic delay tactic and it's tricking a lot of people.
I’m a union electrician and worked at a coal powerhouse for 5 years and was there when they mothballed the boiler because it cost so much more to generate electricity with coal than any other means. The company I was working for was converting all the coal burners to natural gas. Better but not great
It's all about the cost. Those AI's and bitcoin miners will need to run 24/7. The current goals for battery backup per goals set by DOE is $50 /MWH by 2023. So that means that at night, solar/wind intermittency will cost > $70 or $80 / MWH (not factoring in subsidies...) Copenhagen Atomics believe that they should be able to deliver 1 MWH any time of day at around $20m (in the future - this is the lowest cost of nuclear energy I've seen). The financials determine what's used - solar / wind / nuclear / or fossil fuels.
@@hopliterati61 Sure. They will deliver power for $20/MWh. And the car the salesguy is trying to offload on you was driven only by a little old lady, never over 50 MPH. The nuclear industry has a fifty-plus year record of promised cheap electricity that they have never delivered.
Folks always say, "but the wind doesn't always blow..". Look at the ERCOT real settlement data and see how far back you have to go before there was a 15min settlement interval w zero wind generation. Guess how long it's been.
It's not that the wind doesn't blow, it's that it doesn't blow nearly as much. I live in the UK, and electricity from wind peaked on 5th December at 22GW, but at some points it's barely 1GW. In winter, solar comes nowhere near filling that gap (right now it's 0.25GW). So there is a genuine issue that needs more solar, more tidal, more geothermal, more batteries, more wind turbines and yes, more nuclear (at least to replace the nuclear that is currently aging out).
It´s more a question of when does it blow, where does it blow and does it blow enough - when needed. In Germany You have short periods of missing wind 1-2 weeks that seasonal storage capacity could deal with and punctual long periods of 30 to 56 days. That´s when they import electricity at more than 900,- USD per Megawatthour. Reality is different from theory. In Germany the wind blows in the North - most heavy industry is in the South.
So many websites are full of FUD that maintains that fossil fuels are best. That "Landman" tv serial is a bragging swaggering message for the oil and gas companies. Thank-you for getting the solar and battery message out here.
True, but renewables are coming for gas. The UK saw a huge rise in gas for electricity generation as coal was phased out last decade, but the use of gas has declined by 40% since its peak in 2016. 2024 is the year that wind has replaced gas as the main source of electricity generation in the UK.
All Australian schools should have solar and batteries. Schools are located near housing, and there is often a lot of roof space. This can be rolled out now and will reduce the running costs of schools.
81% of new electric generation will be solar and battery in the US in 2024. Just the cost of coal, never mind the cost of the coal power plant, is more than the cost of renewables. Gas has been replacing coal for electricity generation but it's only a matter of time before it is more substantially expensive than renewables.
I advocate for hydro, geothermal energy, wind, and solar power. However, I don't think California can handle one of the nuclear power plants closing next year.
@NoiserToo most people only have a modest charger at home. It's like running their dryer. Not a huge deal unless they're actually running their dryer, tankless water heater and oven while charging.
@@veganpotterthevegan - with all due respect, I find this with a simple search: “California has experienced rolling blackouts and brownouts due to a number of factors, including the state's growing EV fleet, insufficient power supply, and heat waves: Insufficient power supply California imports more than a third of its energy from neighboring states, but those states can't always send excess power when it's hot in the Southwest. Growing EV fleet California has a large number of EVs, but only 3.9 charging stations per 100 EVs. Heat waves California has experienced rolling blackouts during heat waves, when electricity providers shut down the grid to protect power lines from wildfires. EV charging When everyone relies on the electric grid to power their vehicles, it can increase demand and lead to more blackouts. Some
I'm a huge fan of nuclear! It's not a zero sum game here. We can have solar on every roof, wind and hydro when we can, and thousands of small modular nuclear reactors for 24/7 clean power. Bring it all.
@@josemayaudon3552 you bury it in a mountain in containers and cover it in cement. They are doing this in Europe. I’d rather have that buried safely forever than have an overheating planet that is no longer sustainable for human life. Bottom line is that it’s not a big problem. Totally overblown by fear mongers, not grounded in reality .
I’ll dissent with your opinion here. Nuclear is the best option for dedicated continuous usage like data centers and AI training superclusters. This is doubly true when we get to thorium fast reactors. Renewables are just fine when we have enough battery storage, but they do take up huge amounts of land, and they require the right weather conditions. Nuclear power requires very little space, and is agnostic to location or weather conditions. With molten salt fast reactors we can use plentiful thorium, depleted uranium, or even existing waste stockpiles as fuel, with essentially no weaponizable material produced, and no long half-life waste.
Nuclear is too expensive and requires vast amounts of fresh water, something Australia doesn't have. Nuclear power plants can't operate in very hot weather, exactly when we need energy the most.
@@andrewfyfe3236 ...and the rest: vast build cost, never ending clean up costs, private profits, socialized build, run and cleanup costs. For every patch of land used for nuclear, that is one patch of land that will never be used again for any human activity. Utter short-sighted thinking.
@@mb-3faze That's all nonsense. 1. Build cost is cheap if you are doing it right. Ask China. 2. Cleanup cost is included in the price of electricity, and it's a small fraction. 3. They were built privately until excessive red tape killed the industry. Now private investors don't touch it due to high risk of forced cancellation. 4. Operating cost of a nuke is dirt cheap, because very little fuel is needed. The energy density of uranium is about a million times higher than coal's. 5. It's a tiny patch of land, far less then you need for solar and wind. And if for some reason electricity goes out of fashion, and you desperately need that small patch of land, it's 100% recoverable.
@@andrasbiro3007 Yeah - nah... Hinkley C in the UK is costing £47 billion (about $55 billion) to produce a paltry 3.2GW. For that money you could install solar PV on every single house in the UK and on most of the commercial buildings. 2) the clean up cost is absolutely NOT included in the price of electricity. The Sellafield plant also in the UK is costing $1.3 billion per year out of public money - estimated clean up time? 120 years. 3) Red tape - maybe if there had been more oversight we wouldn't have had the completely avoidable TMI, Windscale and Fukushima engineering failures. 4) Operation - yay - nuclear fuel from out enemy Russia. Or Cameco in Canada where a flooded mine killed some workers. 5) That patch of land, once the nuke power plant is started, will *never* return to normal use. Solar? the land never has to be removed from agricultural use and most of the time solar PV is on buildings. Wind - the sea mounts are actually beneficial to sea life. I realize you're probably being paid to spread nuclear industry propaganda on channels like Sam's. I used to be pro-nuclear - the Fukushima completely avoidable disaster built by the attention-to-detail Japanese, no less - completely flipped my faith in all things nuclear.
@@AORD72 Not rubbish, but poorly phrased. Prices went up to 12 time average for some hours, since teh was practical ZERO input from wind and solar, called Dunkelflaute, which is german for no wind an low light. Wind + solar need a) BIG storage or b) big fossil backup power station.
@@AORD72 I cant post links in TH-cam, but based on the text below you can look at Google. Quote, "In an article published in Aftonbladet, expert Andreas Cervenka said that on Wednesday (11 December), electricity prices in southern Sweden were 18,000% higher than in central Sweden. A 10-minute shower in Southern Malmö cost over SEK 31 (€2.65), compared to SEK 0.17 (€0.01) in central Sweden Sundsvall. "
How are the materials used to manufacture solar panels, batteries, windmills, etc., obtained? Are they obtained in a polluting manner requiring heavy use of fossil fuels? Can ‘green energy’ infrastructure be manufactured using green energy? Are solar farms and windmill farms environmentally friendly? Are these farms usurping land that could be used to do actual farming to feed people? Can green energy save German industry? If so, why are manufacturing companies leaving Germany in droves? Things always look brighter, shinier, and cleaner to the naive, simplistic, and ill-informed who never peek behind the curtain and look carefully at the back room.
It's done increasingly using electricity as opposed to poin. As for land use, well over time wind turbines will replace a lot of land used for methanol production for gasoline cars. As for " Can green energy save German industry? If so, why are manufacturing companies leaving Germany in droves?", it's remit isn't to save German industry, it's to provide cleaner air, reduce carbon emissions and increase energy security. One thing we do know is that there is a lot less environmental damage from Turbines and Solar panels than from mining, refining and transporting gas, coal and oil.
Solar is good if there is sunshine available. If you live far enough from the equator, you will be wanting something extra to keep you warm for 1/3 of a year.
Yes, solar, wind, hydro, some geothermal, possibly some tidal but cleaning tidal turbines, and other key parts of the tidal systems will probably make them very niche.
Agreed, Nuclear "as it is now" is more expensive after years of neglect and over-regulation, but with innovation I believe we can see the costs come down dramatically. At the end of the day, a mix of sources is more robust and we can get the costs down and see cheap abundant nuclear just like we did with solar.
Solar is probably better than nuclear, nuclear is probably better than coal, and coal is probably better than wind. So let them compete, just to make sure.
@@paulrybarczyk5013 Sure - let's do it on a level playing field. First remove all the $7 Trillion in direct and indirect subsidies the fossil industry gets from the working tax payers every year. For the nukes, all the build costs, all the running costs and all the decommissioning costs must be paid up front by the private entities - from green field back to pristine green field after 50 years. Coal - all the costs of mercury decontamination in soil and water from down-wind emissions must be paid up front by the private companies. And all the carbon penalties need to be applied. *Then* it will be fair.
@@paulrybarczyk5013 There is no way coal is better than wind. Since replacing coal with gas and wind, the UK carbon emissions are now a quarter of what they were.
I have no problem with nuclear. But, of course, it takes years to build a nuclear facility, and many, many dollars. So in the meantime, let's embrace the tech that's cheaper and easier to deploy. Hey, maybe, one day we'll have fusion. I'm not holding my breath but I say great. And may the odds be ever in your favor ;-)
Personally, I think the answer is to diversify. Yes, solar, wind, and batteries (and maybe waves if some of the seemingly promising on shore wave power generators take off), but nuclear has potential to fill in stuff as well. There are industrial processes that need a lot of heat, and certain kinds of radioactive isotopes are extremely useful in medicine, meaning nuclear has extremely helpful properties that should allow them to be included. Prioritize the quicker and easier to set up renewables, but don't overlook nuclear, especially if it can let the damn tech companies from overloading the grid with their demands.
I don't believe nuclear has any place at all in the future of electricity generation. The monetary and environmental costs are just too high. Quick example, the UK spending $55 billion over more than a decade to build one fission power station that will peak at 3.2GW. With that money you could put a residential solar PV system on every single house and commercial building in the UK. And that is just the start of the costs - in 40 years the power station will be obsolete and decommissioning will be another massive drain on the public purse (because you can be absolutely sure that the private money will have long since gone). One nuke plant in the UK has an ongoing clean up cost of $1.3billion -per year- and the estimated clean up time is 120 years. Why destroy the environment and impose massive costs on future generations?
@@mb-3faze 1. What environmental costs? Nuclear is the cleanest source of power, beats even renewables. 2. China builds nukes for a fraction of the cost, and it could be done even cheaper with western tech. The main problems are overregulation and lost knowledge. Extremely tight regulations drive up the cost and construction times by orders of magnitude. And since so few plants were built since the 70's, most of the special skills and knowledge are lost. Suppliers and contractors have to relearn those, which takes a lot of time and money. 3. Nukes are very expensive to build, but dirt cheap to operate. 4. Cleanup cost is included in the price of electricity, and it's a tiny fraction of it. Also most of the cost is made up. Once the radioactive stuff is removed, the rest of the plant is no danger to anyone, and doesn't take up any valuable space. You could just leave it there, or reuse it. 5. Again, almost no effect on the environment.
If a consortium wishes to build a power station of any fuel type so long as the money isn't coming from government (taxpayers) that's fine. They must also factor in the cost of decommissioning and returning the site to either brown-field or green-field again from their own funds not ours, they get the profits they get the costs. Any toxic emissions need to be catered for by funding hospital cancer wards again there's no reason for taxpayers to bear the burden of their actions.
Sadly in the UK often the sun does not shine and the wind does not blow. So a back up system is required and that is why electricity prices are some of the most expensive in the world. On the other hand I do think that human ingenuity will solve these problems in the future with cheaper and reliable batteries.
This year, China is on track to burn less coal for electricity than last year. It's not the number of plants that matter, it's the amount of coal that is burned.
@ - yes, getting a little better. I found this: “China's coal consumption is expected to continue to be high, as the country was responsible for 95% of the world's new coal power construction in 2023. However, China's National Development and Reform Commission aims to keep the country's coal consumption below 3.8 billion tonnes per year”
@@NoiserToo Certainly high by the standards of most western countries - it takes a long time to change direction for a country as big as China. And of course, regardless of what you and I say, the future hasn't happened yet. But I expect a continued and significant decline in China's use of coal. We shall see.
What Sam neglects to mention in his excellent review is that the targets for coal elimination still allow for billions of tonnes of Co2 to be ADDED to the already too high amounts. CO2 is taken from the atmosphere naturally, but the carbon cycle is measured in thousands of years so effectively we will live with each extra tonne for generations.
Africa could leapfrog with Solar and cheap chinese EV's. Just imagine Africa being able to use solar power to process and refine its abundance of natural resources, while building a manufacturing base? This would shake up its relation with Europe and the world
Sadly, there's too much corruption. I don't know how they stop it. In the past there would have been Wars and the less corrupt Nation would have probably won. But now there's have stagnant borders and a whole bunch of corrupt small countries. Perhaps they need something like the EU combined with strong anti-corruption measures.
I like your videos very much. However, as of recently it seems that you cut so may clips if solar panels, power stations etc...into your videos. That takes attention away from the content!
Well, you can work out the potential solar PV energy generation for any property. If that's not sufficient then invariably there will be solar PV capacity relatively close by (even in the cities). You can also work out your yearly energy use - your utility bill will tell you. Solar PV prices have already fallen and battery storage prices are plummeting. I can see a time when you can have a couple of months of home energy storage in your own home, charged when the sun shines or when grid prices are low.
@@simhedgesrex7097 Maybe tesla powerwalls is not the best model. A quick scan on Aliexpress will reveal that even today you can get 1kWhr of LiFePO4 battery for $40 so 180kWhrs is $7200. Sodium batteries promise to be much cheaper - perhaps even < $10 per kWhr so I don't think it's beyond possibility to have multiple weeks of storage - given, presumably, that you'd have a decent solar PV system on your house already.
I don't really understand the big nuclear fantasies. Im pretty sure the oil companies are pushing because they know its not going to do anything any time soon. Basically anything but solar and wind. #savethewhales😂
Hey, Sam, could you please do investigative pieces on a windmill factory, a solar panel factory, and a battery factory. Be sure to highlight where all the raw materials come from and how they are obtained. Are the factories themselves environmentally friendly? Do they produce toxic effluents? Are windmill factories powered by windmills, solar panel factories powered by solar panels, and battery factories powered by batteries?
What’s your point? You can’t be saying that coal, gas and nuclear electricity generation is produced by plant which has zero impact in the way you - correctly - say renewables don’t?
It takes a load of coal & diesel to mine materials, manufacture & maintain the Solar, Wind & Batteries stack, unfortunately. Mark Mills describes this reality in some detail. o/
Coal has been replaced by natural gas not solar. It takes a lot of energy to produce solar cells. They pay that back depending on where they are placed, between 1 to 4 years or longer. A nuclear power plant takes years to build but it pays back it's construction energy very quickly.
>-They pay that back depending on where they are placed, between 1 to 4 years or longer. -< It is not the fault of the solar technology when someone installs them where it makes no sense.
@@NoiserToo We sure need more Biden infrastructure. However one thing about battery storage is that it is very 'distributable' - rather the opposite of centralized generation requiring peak load wiring. Exciting times to be in the infrastructure industry.
@ - they spent $2.3 Trillion and all they did was cut trees and fix guard rails in CT. I like your idea, however in my neck of the wealthy woods, they will never be able to upgrade the infrastructure because the “not in my backyard crowd” is very powerful. If everyone plugged in a Tesla, all the lights would go out. 😄
I still think Nuclear has uses in its place.. but at this time it is not cost efferent in most places. To be compeltly honest there are 2 places I can see nuclear being used for years... submarines and Aircraft carriers are the two places. I can see some places on the artic and Antarctic circles I can see them being used. Space probes I can see nuclear. I can also see Medical nuclear reactors being used (many cancer treatments) I do not currently see many other places it is cost efferent at this time. I could possibly see more ships using nuclear. I am sure if small modular reactors become cheap enough there will be locations that it will make sense. All that being said I think nuclear research should continue. Again I am in the US.. so we shall see what happens over the next 4 years.
Meanwhile , global coal consumption hit a record high last year , with China using 56% of global coal. While the USA Energy Secretary said that the amount of nuclear power needs to triple by 2050 if net zero is to be reached , and Microsoft is contracting to re-start the Three Mile Island nuclear plant to provide much needed electricity. Finally , despite all this claimed closing of coal , CO2 emissions continue to increase year on year and the climate continues to change.
" with China using 56% of global coal." - which is good news, because China is reducing reliance on coal and replacing it with renewables as fast as it possibly can, so as China's usage falls, so will global consumption. And then we need to start focusing on India.
>- . . . and Microsoft is contracting to re-start the Three Mile Island nuclear plant to provide much needed electricity.-< This is Bill Gates' vanity project. Three Mile Island was shut down after losing money for five years and two years of begging for subsidies produced nothing. Bill Gates has the money to fund anything he wants to support. The TMI plant is expected to re-open some time in 2028 and got a 1B$ subsidy from the US Gov't-- to make 800MW of electricity. The subsidy is the same as the cost to build a brand new CC-NG plant which takes less than three years to build. Pennsylvania is awash in natural gas. CC-NG power plants are cheap to build and cheap to operate. I wonder who bought who on reviving TMI?
I have solar (I built myself) ( Florida duhhh ). But what you’re saying is… The US government (wind/solar) is now controlling more of our grid that coal (companies).
@@bryanleverett2830 do you mean to tell me that you have this idea that the US government is not actually in charge of the United States, that it is some sort of alien invader?
Solar is all well and good but my panels have had only 3 good days of sun in the last 2 months. On top of that it’s winter. Needless to say I needed to supplement from the grid. We need a mix of electricity production. I’m not a big fan of nuclear but it’s come along way. Soon they will figure out what to do with the waste. Nuclear batteries to store excess power perhaps?
Of course renewables are cleaner and produce a considerable amount of electricity. They have some drawbacks though and Germany is feeling it right now. When the wind doesn't blow and when the Sun isn't shining wind and solar will not meet the electrical needs of large populations in the same reliable way that coal does. Coal burning electrical plants can be cleaned up to produce less emissions, of course they can. Having a combination of renewables and fossil fuel electrical production is smarter and cleaner.
@@simhedgesrex7097 If as much government money was invested into cleaning up coal energy as has been invested into battery technology, I'm sure an effective system could be developed.
@@sandyacombs Well, a lot is being invested, and has been invested, and no system looks really promising as yet. And throwing government money at a problem doesn't necessarily mean it gets solved (we've been throwing money at Nuclear Fusions for over half a century). Living in the UK, of course, pretty much all coal is imported so unlike wind and solar, it doesn't help with energy security, but even so, the coal industry lobby has got the government to fund carbon capture experiments yet again in the latest round of potential funding.
We need Geothermal electricity! The Lithium Valley in the USA can produce as much Lithium as a byproduct of geothermal electricity generation as the entire world produced today. Geothermal can supply massive volumes of cheap clean lithium.
Coal in the US has mostly been replaced by fossile gas. Less bad but still bad. They are going in the right direction with solar and wind but it's not really as positive as this video makes you think.
It's the 1GW data centers that are going to break the backs of the utilities. Not even solar and batteries can meet the demand of the hundreds of GW data centers being built.
@JasonLowderTheRanga Data center? Not hardly. There are many 1GW data centers being built in Virginia right now. Utilities in the south are turning them down because they can't supply the load. I worked with utilities serving GW data centers now.
The world would do well to eliminate all this insane crypto currency nonsense. The electricity cost on 'mining' (aka doing stupid calculations) is off the charts.
@AORD72 Google it. I work with utilities whose 24/7 base load is now greater than their yearly 30-minute peak load used to be. What changed? Cryptomining moved in.
Because countries like China and India are developing economically and so need more electricity to fuel heating, lighting, computers, air conditioners, washing machines, fridges, etc. Some of this is provided by burning more coal. It looks like China is reaching the end of this road (they are still using increasing amounts of electricity, but they are massively investing in wind, solar and batteries to more than offset this), but India, China, Malaysia, Africa, not so much.
wind and solar only work at a very low ratio, 25% roughly for solar (clouds, darkness) and 25% roughly for windmill (no wind, or too much). So how do you do the rest of the 75% ? They cost a lot of money to be deployed , are complex to plug on the grid, so these new energy are far from being the best and will not replace yet coal/gas/nuclear power plant.
@@simhedgesrex7097 Ask yourself why :) And each of your wind mill needs 800M3 of concrete in the sea, fantastic isn t it ? Do you know denmark who is one of the leader in wind turbine with vestas suspended further investment ? Because these assets offshore are degrading much faster than expected, shorting their lifespan to 5-20 years at max capacity.
@@claudep.255 Yes, it's great. 800M3, is 9 metres x 9 metres x 9 metres. Vestas as still investing - they've lost share price this year, but that's due to the increasing number of other companies investing in offshore wind. And as for degradation, well it's not stopped that latest round of offshore wind opportunities around UK shores being oversubscribed.
I agree with many of the points made here - but, even just looking at the pictures - in this very article - look at the massive environmental damage being done by these massive solar and wind farms - literally hundreds of square kilometers either covered or affected by these renewables - killing millions of animals, wiping out ecologies (yes, even deserts have ecologies and endangered species), creating destructive microclimates and producing massive run-offs of water and pollutants e.g., lead and selenium. There are downsides, even to renewables... The solution is a mix of technologies. By the way - lets not disregard the massive energy poverty and price increases that ill-time power plant closures have created... Finally we CANNOT meet the climate goals (as I have said many times before) due to the developing countries carrying on their own way - lets not ruin our economies after unattainable goals...
@ Best case is his policies work and he is able to negotiate with foreign countries. They buy more from the US and everybody is allowed to prosper. Worst case is global trade grinds to a halt for anybody not in favorable terms with the US. Commodity prices collapse and there will be massive deflation and/or depression in the developing world (aka BRICS). The US and EU enter a long period of recession unless the war stops in Ukraine.
We need all the carbon free electrical generation possible. The world will hit 1.5°C in six years. We are already starting to see tipping points Fossil fuel usage is expected to continue rising fast as developing nations get on the grid.
In this case the advantage of nuclear power is not price, but availability. Large datacenters need enormous amounts of power in a small area. You can have all the solar and wind power, if it can't get to where it's needed. Upgrading the grid is expensive, very unpopular, and made almost impossible by bureaucracy. So it's just cheaper, faster, and easier to build a nuke where you need the power.
>-So it's just cheaper, faster, and easier to build a nuke where you need the power.-< Except that: >-Upgrading the grid is expensive, very unpopular, and made almost impossible by bureaucracy.-< Is it your plan to install the nukes out in the factory parking lot? Short of that, extending the grid is a legal nightmare, for any power source. That is why solar farms and new sub stations are being built under existing power lines. It saves 1 million USD per mile in not extending the power lines.
@@peteinwisconsin2496 That's pretty much the plan. Connecting the datacenters directly to the nukes. It's not a new idea, it's been done a few times in the past. Like Camp Century. And all nuclear powered ships and subs are essentially this.
Lazard & Assoc. (investment advisors who get sued if presenting other than factual information) claim that combined cycle natural gas generation is cheaper to build, quicker to build and cheaper to operate than either coal or nuclear. As a bonus CCNG does Not have to be shut down every 18 to 24 months for roughly a month for maintenance, inspections and refueling. Pennsylvania is awash in natural gas. Why spend an estimated 1.6 B$ and three years to bring the 880 MW TMI plant on line when CCNG takes 30 months from permit to first kWh for a brand new facility which costs less than half as much per kWh of rated output? Reviving TMI is nothing more than someone's vanity project. The shareholders should have a fit at spending $$$ for electricity that does not need to cost that much.
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nuclear is the least renewable rarest most expensive to build out energy source we have found on planet
10yrs worth of uranium available for power generation if we went nuclear then 200,000 yrs of storage issues and replace all those plants after they ran for 1/3 of there life span
Hit 240k today. Appreciate you for all the knowledge and nuggets you had thrown my way over the last months. Started with 24k in September 2024.,
I will be forever grateful to you, you changed my whole life and I will continue to preach on your behalf for the whole world to hear that you saved me from huge financial debt with just a small Investment, thank you Jihan Wu you're such a life saver
As a beginner in this, it’s essential for you to have a mentor to keep you accountable.
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"One solar panel at a time, one battery at a time." Progress cannot be stopped.
Except in China where it's 1 million solar pannels at a time. Didn't they add like 207gw renewables last year? Probably at least that this year. And they are adding batteries. I don't think their economy is growing as fast as before. It doesn't make sense to import coal when you have all that.
China installs 200 GigaWatt Solar Every Year. China has now 800 GigaWatt Solar. In 2025 China has 1000 GigaWatt Solar. In 2030 China has 2000 GigaWatt Solar. Windpower the same. 2000 GigaWatt Windpower in 2030. One panel at the Time.❤👍🌹
With solar and battery, We don’t need long transmission lines and sub stations. Local community can support itself…
Ur tryin ya say “ point of use micro grids” 👍
Long lines are definitely needed to get to very remote regions very far from the equator.
That's a very geo-centric view. There are many areas where that won't work. In summer yes, in winter no. I live on the south coast of the UK. I have a 10.5kW East/West array. So far in December, I've generated 110kWh and used 387kWh.
That's going to require enormous battery capacity to carry forward enough power from summer and autumn to carry the house through to spring.
The long "wires" are needed to connect to wind generation at the very least, and also in Europe to other countries to supplement the UK's generation.
By far the best solution is a smart grid to share excess generation across national boundaries.
@@rugbygirlsdadg
A more practical solution is to install more solar, up to 3-5 times. Solar panels are getting so cheap that this is still affordable. And then you can generate enough power most of the year, even in winter, so you need far less storage.
On a larger scale you can add wind, which can fill a lot of the gaps in solar, so you need even less storage. RethinkX did the math, and they found that with the right mix you need maybe a few days worth of storage even in the UK or Germany.
@@andrasbiro3007 Domestic roofs in the UK are mostly not large enough to do this. And a "few days worth" of storage would be incredibly expensive (most battery installations store between 2 and 4 hours worth of power). So long power lines absolutely ARE necessary. However, load on those power lines can be greatly reduced by installing a lot more local solar on houses, supermarkets, officeblocks, warehouses and car parks, and this is the important goal - as well as a lot more offshore wind on the south and southwest coasts of the UK.
I drove from Dallas to El Paso a few years ago and I was stunned by the thousands and thousands of wind turbines everywhere in west Texas.
I subsequently learned that Texas produces more power from wind than it does from oil.
Texas produces almost no electricity from oil, but the single biggest fuel source for Texas' electricity is still LNG (by a lot).
The province of Ontario got rid of coal power generation in 2017 The number of children with respiratory issues dropped dramatically over the next 18 - 24 months
I'm hearing that people are trying to lean towards nuclear because of the delay time in setup. So what will happen due to this is we'll just continue to use coal as the nuclear plants are built! It seems to be an epic delay tactic and it's tricking a lot of people.
Thanks!
Welcome!
I’m a union electrician and worked at a coal powerhouse for 5 years and was there when they mothballed the boiler because it cost so much more to generate electricity with coal than any other means. The company I was working for was converting all the coal burners to natural gas. Better but not great
Actually, natural gas is a lot more efficient than coal. And in the United States a lot cheaper.
Methane leaks prevail
@@neilkurzman4907 better not great.
Why so expensive? More maintenance.
nowadays, coal is transformed to oil first, not for burning.
Absolutely agree!
Nuclear construction is so slow that solar and wind with grid-scale batteries will replace any approved projects before they can even erect walls.
Worked amazing for Germany
It's all about the cost. Those AI's and bitcoin miners will need to run 24/7. The current goals for battery backup per goals set by DOE is $50 /MWH by 2023. So that means that at night, solar/wind intermittency will cost > $70 or $80 / MWH (not factoring in subsidies...) Copenhagen Atomics believe that they should be able to deliver 1 MWH any time of day at around $20m (in the future - this is the lowest cost of nuclear energy I've seen). The financials determine what's used - solar / wind / nuclear / or fossil fuels.
@@hopliterati61
Sure. They will deliver power for $20/MWh. And the car the salesguy is trying to offload on you was driven only by a little old lady, never over 50 MPH.
The nuclear industry has a fifty-plus year record of promised cheap electricity that they have never delivered.
@@bobwallace9753 sure they do in Usa France Germany Sweden etc. Nuclear is high investement and slower but really long lasting and reliable!
Nuclear electricity is 4x more expensive per kWh.
Hopwlessely ibsolete because of economics.
Coal is nearly dead in Florida; less than 5% of energy generation. Solar, wind, and battery storage are fantastic.
Hurrah! Glad to hear the news! 🎉😊
Imagine, no more air pollution from COAL! 🤔 The outcome of this decline will bring about an environmentally change that will be remembered forever! 🤔
Yes, and bring back those eco-friendly Rickshaws!
@@NoiserToo well...electric tuktuks are already a thing. And foot powered rickshaws never went away
Change isn't always good some people are always hurt
@@veganpotterthevegan- I agree, a perfect fit for a crowded city. But not so much where I live.
@@djt8518- yeah, some people are even against moving to Mars 😆
Thanks Sam, u r so knowable about electric
Or you are rather gullible?
Happy New Year Sam. Love your programs.
All the best to your family
Happy new year!
Sam, you are the best!
Great video Sam, thanks for all you great work this year. Wishing a happy and prosperous 2025 to you and your family.
Folks always say, "but the wind doesn't always blow..". Look at the ERCOT real settlement data and see how far back you have to go before there was a 15min settlement interval w zero wind generation. Guess how long it's been.
In a terra tunnel power plant beneath a renewable retirement pedestrian friendly charatible community it does too 24/7
yeah its like saying the planet dosent always spin lol its just like theres solar panels that charge from moon light these days they are so strong
Can you tell us?
It's not that the wind doesn't blow, it's that it doesn't blow nearly as much. I live in the UK, and electricity from wind peaked on 5th December at 22GW, but at some points it's barely 1GW. In winter, solar comes nowhere near filling that gap (right now it's 0.25GW). So there is a genuine issue that needs more solar, more tidal, more geothermal, more batteries, more wind turbines and yes, more nuclear (at least to replace the nuclear that is currently aging out).
It´s more a question of when does it blow, where does it blow and does it blow enough - when needed. In Germany You have short periods of missing wind 1-2 weeks that seasonal storage capacity could deal with and punctual long periods of 30 to 56 days. That´s when they import electricity at more than 900,- USD per Megawatthour. Reality is different from theory. In Germany the wind blows in the North - most heavy industry is in the South.
Keep on truckin Sam👍
Always!
Fantastic news. Great reporting Sam.
Glad you enjoyed it
So many websites are full of FUD that maintains that fossil fuels are best. That "Landman" tv serial is a bragging swaggering message for the oil and gas companies. Thank-you for getting the solar and battery message out here.
I would say fracking destroyed coal in america. Gas displaced coal.
Sadly, true.
Both.
True, but renewables are coming for gas. The UK saw a huge rise in gas for electricity generation as coal was phased out last decade, but the use of gas has declined by 40% since its peak in 2016. 2024 is the year that wind has replaced gas as the main source of electricity generation in the UK.
100% agree with you
Thank you ❤
Welcome!
All Australian schools should have solar and batteries. Schools are located near housing, and there is often a lot of roof space. This can be rolled out now and will reduce the running costs of schools.
Wonderful NEWS!!!!
Great message 👍👏!
Well said mate
81% of new electric generation will be solar and battery in the US in 2024. Just the cost of coal, never mind the cost of the coal power plant, is more than the cost of renewables. Gas has been replacing coal for electricity generation but it's only a matter of time before it is more substantially expensive than renewables.
With PV: Zero cost of energy, zero cost of waste disposal. People ought to be able to figure that this will be cheaper.
Have solar and battery and Tesla Model Y. Doing what I can..
elizzarda was a nice discovery)) Kinda cool watching my investment work on its own.
I advocate for hydro, geothermal energy, wind, and solar power. However, I don't think California can handle one of the nuclear power plants closing next year.
Agreed, Cali needs all the help they can get…. Just imagine if all the EVs were plugged in at the same time!
@NoiserToo most people only have a modest charger at home. It's like running their dryer. Not a huge deal unless they're actually running their dryer, tankless water heater and oven while charging.
It is hot and dry for most of the year in California, Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, Znew Mexico, West Texas, Utah. Clothes lines work great!
You want Nuclear, wait for Fusion.
@@veganpotterthevegan - with all due respect, I find this with a simple search: “California has experienced rolling blackouts and brownouts due to a number of factors, including the state's growing EV fleet, insufficient power supply, and heat waves:
Insufficient power supply
California imports more than a third of its energy from neighboring states, but those states can't always send excess power when it's hot in the Southwest.
Growing EV fleet
California has a large number of EVs, but only 3.9 charging stations per 100 EVs.
Heat waves
California has experienced rolling blackouts during heat waves, when electricity providers shut down the grid to protect power lines from wildfires.
EV charging
When everyone relies on the electric grid to power their vehicles, it can increase demand and lead to more blackouts.
Some
More coal mined today than anytime in past!
I'm a huge fan of nuclear! It's not a zero sum game here. We can have solar on every roof, wind and hydro when we can, and thousands of small modular nuclear reactors for 24/7 clean power. Bring it all.
Where do you purpose to place all of the nuclear waste that would be generated from such?
@@josemayaudon3552 you bury it in a mountain in containers and cover it in cement. They are doing this in Europe. I’d rather have that buried safely forever than have an overheating planet that is no longer sustainable for human life. Bottom line is that it’s not a big problem. Totally overblown by fear mongers, not grounded in reality .
Modular nukes are a fantasy that will never come to reality. WAY too many problems.
I’ll dissent with your opinion here. Nuclear is the best option for dedicated continuous usage like data centers and AI training superclusters. This is doubly true when we get to thorium fast reactors. Renewables are just fine when we have enough battery storage, but they do take up huge amounts of land, and they require the right weather conditions. Nuclear power requires very little space, and is agnostic to location or weather conditions. With molten salt fast reactors we can use plentiful thorium, depleted uranium, or even existing waste stockpiles as fuel, with essentially no weaponizable material produced, and no long half-life waste.
Nuclear is too expensive and requires vast amounts of fresh water, something Australia doesn't have. Nuclear power plants can't operate in very hot weather, exactly when we need energy the most.
@@andrewfyfe3236 ...and the rest: vast build cost, never ending clean up costs, private profits, socialized build, run and cleanup costs. For every patch of land used for nuclear, that is one patch of land that will never be used again for any human activity. Utter short-sighted thinking.
@@andrewfyfe3236
No need for water, it's just more convenient, if available.
And it's only expensive because of excessive red tape.
@@mb-3faze
That's all nonsense.
1. Build cost is cheap if you are doing it right. Ask China.
2. Cleanup cost is included in the price of electricity, and it's a small fraction.
3. They were built privately until excessive red tape killed the industry. Now private investors don't touch it due to high risk of forced cancellation.
4. Operating cost of a nuke is dirt cheap, because very little fuel is needed. The energy density of uranium is about a million times higher than coal's.
5. It's a tiny patch of land, far less then you need for solar and wind. And if for some reason electricity goes out of fashion, and you desperately need that small patch of land, it's 100% recoverable.
@@andrasbiro3007 Yeah - nah... Hinkley C in the UK is costing £47 billion (about $55 billion) to produce a paltry 3.2GW. For that money you could install solar PV on every single house in the UK and on most of the commercial buildings.
2) the clean up cost is absolutely NOT included in the price of electricity. The Sellafield plant also in the UK is costing $1.3 billion per year out of public money - estimated clean up time? 120 years.
3) Red tape - maybe if there had been more oversight we wouldn't have had the completely avoidable TMI, Windscale and Fukushima engineering failures.
4) Operation - yay - nuclear fuel from out enemy Russia. Or Cameco in Canada where a flooded mine killed some workers.
5) That patch of land, once the nuke power plant is started, will *never* return to normal use. Solar? the land never has to be removed from agricultural use and most of the time solar PV is on buildings. Wind - the sea mounts are actually beneficial to sea life.
I realize you're probably being paid to spread nuclear industry propaganda on channels like Sam's. I used to be pro-nuclear - the Fukushima completely avoidable disaster built by the attention-to-detail Japanese, no less - completely flipped my faith in all things nuclear.
Yes Cheers bro
Last week Germany & Sweden had a 18000% increase in electricity because they relied on wind and solar
Coz EU is crazy....don't you know that
What rubbish.
@@AORD72 Not rubbish, but poorly phrased. Prices went up to 12 time average for some hours, since teh was practical ZERO input from wind and solar, called Dunkelflaute, which is german for no wind an low light. Wind + solar need a) BIG storage or b) big fossil backup power station.
@@AORD72 I cant post links in TH-cam, but based on the text below you can look at Google.
Quote, "In an article published in Aftonbladet, expert Andreas Cervenka said that on Wednesday (11 December), electricity prices in southern Sweden were 18,000% higher than in central Sweden. A 10-minute shower in Southern Malmö cost over SEK 31 (€2.65), compared to SEK 0.17 (€0.01) in central Sweden Sundsvall. "
@@AORD72 th-cam.com/video/kwKDfNlXdaE/w-d-xo.html
Awesome
USA still has 215 coal power plants in operation in the USA 16% is still allot of coal since they are so power hungry .
Geothermal power is progressing to in Texas. Has a good future.
How are the materials used to manufacture solar panels, batteries, windmills, etc., obtained? Are they obtained in a polluting manner requiring heavy use of fossil fuels? Can ‘green energy’ infrastructure be manufactured using green energy? Are solar farms and windmill farms environmentally friendly? Are these farms usurping land that could be used to do actual farming to feed people? Can green energy save German industry? If so, why are manufacturing companies leaving Germany in droves? Things always look brighter, shinier, and cleaner to the naive, simplistic, and ill-informed who never peek behind the curtain and look carefully at the back room.
No different than mining and refining uranium ore.
It's done increasingly using electricity as opposed to poin. As for land use, well over time wind turbines will replace a lot of land used for methanol production for gasoline cars. As for " Can green energy save German industry? If so, why are manufacturing companies leaving Germany in droves?", it's remit isn't to save German industry, it's to provide cleaner air, reduce carbon emissions and increase energy security.
One thing we do know is that there is a lot less environmental damage from Turbines and Solar panels than from mining, refining and transporting gas, coal and oil.
Solar is good if there is sunshine available. If you live far enough from the equator, you will be wanting something extra to keep you warm for 1/3 of a year.
Good trend.
Yes, solar, wind, hydro, some geothermal, possibly some tidal but cleaning tidal turbines, and other key parts of the tidal systems will probably make them very niche.
Morning bro it's always been about the money
Yea right.
Wind, solar, batteries and upgrades in distribution grids.
While the growth in renewables is remarkable, coal has been displaced by methane, not renewables.
Except for the fact that government regulations killed coal power plants.
Save the Earth from coal
Exactly, now ban coal plants in China!
Agreed, Nuclear "as it is now" is more expensive after years of neglect and over-regulation, but with innovation I believe we can see the costs come down dramatically. At the end of the day, a mix of sources is more robust and we can get the costs down and see cheap abundant nuclear just like we did with solar.
We need to bring back coal with clean coal.
Wind and solar pollute way more when they need maintenance repair and replacement.
There are medications available for such delusional thinking.
Oh dear thats what dropping out of school does for you
Solar is probably better than nuclear, nuclear is probably better than coal, and coal is probably better than wind. So let them compete, just to make sure.
@@paulrybarczyk5013 Sure - let's do it on a level playing field. First remove all the $7 Trillion in direct and indirect subsidies the fossil industry gets from the working tax payers every year. For the nukes, all the build costs, all the running costs and all the decommissioning costs must be paid up front by the private entities - from green field back to pristine green field after 50 years. Coal - all the costs of mercury decontamination in soil and water from down-wind emissions must be paid up front by the private companies. And all the carbon penalties need to be applied. *Then* it will be fair.
@@paulrybarczyk5013 There is no way coal is better than wind. Since replacing coal with gas and wind, the UK carbon emissions are now a quarter of what they were.
I have no problem with nuclear. But, of course, it takes years to build a nuclear facility, and many, many dollars. So in the meantime, let's embrace the tech that's cheaper and easier to deploy. Hey, maybe, one day we'll have fusion. I'm not holding my breath but I say great. And may the odds be ever in your favor ;-)
Personally, I think the answer is to diversify. Yes, solar, wind, and batteries (and maybe waves if some of the seemingly promising on shore wave power generators take off), but nuclear has potential to fill in stuff as well. There are industrial processes that need a lot of heat, and certain kinds of radioactive isotopes are extremely useful in medicine, meaning nuclear has extremely helpful properties that should allow them to be included. Prioritize the quicker and easier to set up renewables, but don't overlook nuclear, especially if it can let the damn tech companies from overloading the grid with their demands.
I don't believe nuclear has any place at all in the future of electricity generation. The monetary and environmental costs are just too high. Quick example, the UK spending $55 billion over more than a decade to build one fission power station that will peak at 3.2GW. With that money you could put a residential solar PV system on every single house and commercial building in the UK. And that is just the start of the costs - in 40 years the power station will be obsolete and decommissioning will be another massive drain on the public purse (because you can be absolutely sure that the private money will have long since gone). One nuke plant in the UK has an ongoing clean up cost of $1.3billion -per year- and the estimated clean up time is 120 years. Why destroy the environment and impose massive costs on future generations?
@@mb-3faze
1. What environmental costs? Nuclear is the cleanest source of power, beats even renewables.
2. China builds nukes for a fraction of the cost, and it could be done even cheaper with western tech. The main problems are overregulation and lost knowledge. Extremely tight regulations drive up the cost and construction times by orders of magnitude. And since so few plants were built since the 70's, most of the special skills and knowledge are lost. Suppliers and contractors have to relearn those, which takes a lot of time and money.
3. Nukes are very expensive to build, but dirt cheap to operate.
4. Cleanup cost is included in the price of electricity, and it's a tiny fraction of it. Also most of the cost is made up. Once the radioactive stuff is removed, the rest of the plant is no danger to anyone, and doesn't take up any valuable space. You could just leave it there, or reuse it.
5. Again, almost no effect on the environment.
Remember when Trump promised coal miners he’d bring back their jobs?
Cleaner Air for Everyone!!
Micro Nuclear Power needed for AI / Quantum Data/Computers--
What about wave power as well?
If a consortium wishes to build a power station of any fuel type so long as the money isn't coming from government (taxpayers) that's fine. They must also factor in the cost of decommissioning and returning the site to either brown-field or green-field again from their own funds not ours, they get the profits they get the costs. Any toxic emissions need to be catered for by funding hospital cancer wards again there's no reason for taxpayers to bear the burden of their actions.
Sadly in the UK often the sun does not shine and the wind does not blow. So a back up system is required and that is why electricity prices are some of the most expensive in the world. On the other hand I do think that human ingenuity will solve these problems in the future with cheaper and reliable batteries.
The UK is one of the windiest countries on earth, especially at sea, where most of the turbines are placed.
Great, that should offset the two coal plants that China just put on the grid 👍🏻😀
This year, China is on track to burn less coal for electricity than last year. It's not the number of plants that matter, it's the amount of coal that is burned.
@ - yes, getting a little better. I found this: “China's coal consumption is expected to continue to be high, as the country was responsible for 95% of the world's new coal power construction in 2023. However, China's National Development and Reform Commission aims to keep the country's coal consumption below 3.8 billion tonnes per year”
@@NoiserToo Certainly high by the standards of most western countries - it takes a long time to change direction for a country as big as China. And of course, regardless of what you and I say, the future hasn't happened yet. But I expect a continued and significant decline in China's use of coal. We shall see.
What Sam neglects to mention in his excellent review is that the targets for coal elimination still allow for billions of tonnes of Co2 to be ADDED to the already too high amounts. CO2 is taken from the atmosphere naturally, but the carbon cycle is measured in thousands of years so effectively we will live with each extra tonne for generations.
All the Multi Billion dollar corporations just need to hear Vikings Sermon today to see the LIGHT😅 BATTERIES , SOLAR , WIND.
Just do it. Do the math what it will cost to buffer wind + solar for 24h and shut down all coal, gas and oil power plants.
Africa could leapfrog with Solar and cheap chinese EV's. Just imagine Africa being able to use solar power to process and refine
its abundance of natural resources, while building a manufacturing base? This would shake up its relation with Europe and the world
Sadly, there's too much corruption. I don't know how they stop it.
In the past there would have been Wars and the less corrupt Nation would have probably won.
But now there's have stagnant borders and a whole bunch of corrupt small countries.
Perhaps they need something like the EU combined with strong anti-corruption measures.
17% is a relatively huge number
I like your videos very much. However, as of recently it seems that you cut so may clips if solar panels, power stations etc...into your videos. That takes attention away from the content!
I wonder the cost of having wind- + solar power & batteries for one household per year. Ultimately it is the economy that decides what people choose.
Well, you can work out the potential solar PV energy generation for any property. If that's not sufficient then invariably there will be solar PV capacity relatively close by (even in the cities). You can also work out your yearly energy use - your utility bill will tell you. Solar PV prices have already fallen and battery storage prices are plummeting. I can see a time when you can have a couple of months of home energy storage in your own home, charged when the sun shines or when grid prices are low.
@@mb-3faze If you have a very large home. Average US consumption is 30kWh per day. So that's 150 Tesla Powerwalls!
@@simhedgesrex7097 Maybe tesla powerwalls is not the best model. A quick scan on Aliexpress will reveal that even today you can get 1kWhr of LiFePO4 battery for $40 so 180kWhrs is $7200. Sodium batteries promise to be much cheaper - perhaps even < $10 per kWhr so I don't think it's beyond possibility to have multiple weeks of storage - given, presumably, that you'd have a decent solar PV system on your house already.
I don't really understand the big nuclear fantasies. Im pretty sure the oil companies are pushing because they know its not going to do anything any time soon. Basically anything but solar and wind. #savethewhales😂
Hey, Sam, could you please do investigative pieces on a windmill factory, a solar panel factory, and a battery factory. Be sure to highlight where all the raw materials come from and how they are obtained. Are the factories themselves environmentally friendly? Do they produce toxic effluents? Are windmill factories powered by windmills, solar panel factories powered by solar panels, and battery factories powered by batteries?
The pollution compared to oil production is insignificant, especially coal.
What’s your point? You can’t be saying that coal, gas and nuclear electricity generation is produced by plant which has zero impact in the way you - correctly - say renewables don’t?
Greetings from 🇨🇳 Solar will be added here as well. 🪫🔁🔋🏁
It takes a load of coal & diesel to mine materials, manufacture & maintain the Solar, Wind & Batteries stack, unfortunately. Mark Mills describes this reality in some detail. o/
Coal has been replaced by natural gas not solar. It takes a lot of energy to produce solar cells. They pay that back depending on where they are placed, between 1 to 4 years or longer. A nuclear power plant takes years to build but it pays back it's construction energy very quickly.
>-They pay that back depending on where they are placed, between 1 to 4 years or longer. -<
It is not the fault of the solar technology when someone installs them where it makes no sense.
Wind and solar with battery storage will provide 40% of the electricity for the US in 6 or 7 years. Maybe sooner.
Sure, and we need a far greater infrastructure to move and store that electricity.
100% @ SERENITY CITY
@@NoiserToo We sure need more Biden infrastructure. However one thing about battery storage is that it is very 'distributable' - rather the opposite of centralized generation requiring peak load wiring. Exciting times to be in the infrastructure industry.
@ - they spent $2.3 Trillion and all they did was cut trees and fix guard rails in CT. I like your idea, however in my neck of the wealthy woods, they will never be able to upgrade the infrastructure because the “not in my backyard crowd” is very powerful. If everyone plugged in a Tesla, all the lights would go out. 😄
Dream on. Have you EVER done the math on that? I doubt it!
They are cheaper until you put tariff on them.
I still think Nuclear has uses in its place.. but at this time it is not cost efferent in most places. To be compeltly honest there are 2 places I can see nuclear being used for years... submarines and Aircraft carriers are the two places. I can see some places on the artic and Antarctic circles I can see them being used. Space probes I can see nuclear. I can also see Medical nuclear reactors being used (many cancer treatments)
I do not currently see many other places it is cost efferent at this time. I could possibly see more ships using nuclear. I am sure if small modular reactors become cheap enough there will be locations that it will make sense. All that being said I think nuclear research should continue.
Again I am in the US.. so we shall see what happens over the next 4 years.
Meanwhile , global coal consumption hit a record high last year , with China using 56% of global coal.
While the USA Energy Secretary said that the amount of nuclear power needs to triple by 2050 if net zero is to be reached , and Microsoft is contracting to re-start the Three Mile Island nuclear plant to provide much needed electricity.
Finally , despite all this claimed closing of coal , CO2 emissions continue to increase year on year and the climate continues to change.
" with China using 56% of global coal." - which is good news, because China is reducing reliance on coal and replacing it with renewables as fast as it possibly can, so as China's usage falls, so will global consumption. And then we need to start focusing on India.
>- . . . and Microsoft is contracting to re-start the Three Mile Island nuclear plant to provide much needed electricity.-<
This is Bill Gates' vanity project. Three Mile Island was shut down after losing money for five years and two years of begging for subsidies produced nothing. Bill Gates has the money to fund anything he wants to support. The TMI plant is expected to re-open some time in 2028 and got a 1B$ subsidy from the US Gov't-- to make 800MW of electricity. The subsidy is the same as the cost to build a brand new CC-NG plant which takes less than three years to build. Pennsylvania is awash in natural gas. CC-NG power plants are cheap to build and cheap to operate. I wonder who bought who on reviving TMI?
We need batteries, solar, and fusion. We even need some fission for ships.
We need it all baby!
But natural gas generation increased even replaced coal plants
I have solar (I built myself) ( Florida duhhh ). But what you’re saying is… The US government (wind/solar) is now controlling more of our grid that coal (companies).
@@bryanleverett2830 do you mean to tell me that you have this idea that the US government is not actually in charge of the United States, that it is some sort of alien invader?
rare that I downvote a video from electric viking, but when a 'full video link in the description below' is advertised but not obviously present…
Solar is all well and good but my panels have had only 3 good days of sun in the last 2 months. On top of that it’s winter. Needless to say I needed to supplement from the grid. We need a mix of electricity production. I’m not a big fan of nuclear but it’s come along way. Soon they will figure out what to do with the waste. Nuclear batteries to store excess power perhaps?
Your name explains the FUD.
@@tedg1609 I'm also deplorable.
In that first chart there's no reference as to what any of the lines mean.
Of course renewables are cleaner and produce a considerable amount of electricity. They have some drawbacks though and Germany is feeling it right now. When the wind doesn't blow and when the Sun isn't shining wind and solar will not meet the electrical needs of large populations in the same reliable way that coal does. Coal burning electrical plants can be cleaned up to produce less emissions, of course they can. Having a combination of renewables and fossil fuel electrical production is smarter and cleaner.
Completely correct.
As yet there are no successful and cost effective carbon capture systems to offset emissions from coal burning.
@@simhedgesrex7097 If as much government money was invested into cleaning up coal energy as has been invested into battery technology, I'm sure an effective system could be developed.
@@sandyacombs Well, a lot is being invested, and has been invested, and no system looks really promising as yet. And throwing government money at a problem doesn't necessarily mean it gets solved (we've been throwing money at Nuclear Fusions for over half a century). Living in the UK, of course, pretty much all coal is imported so unlike wind and solar, it doesn't help with energy security, but even so, the coal industry lobby has got the government to fund carbon capture experiments yet again in the latest round of potential funding.
We need Geothermal electricity!
The Lithium Valley in the USA can produce as much Lithium as a byproduct of geothermal electricity generation as the entire world produced today. Geothermal can supply massive volumes of cheap clean lithium.
If solar and wind are the answer ,why are energy prices rising and destroying industry.
Coal in the US has mostly been replaced by fossile gas. Less bad but still bad. They are going in the right direction with solar and wind but it's not really as positive as this video makes you think.
It's the 1GW data centers that are going to break the backs of the utilities. Not even solar and batteries can meet the demand of the hundreds of GW data centers being built.
You're out by a factor of 10. The largest are 100MW.
@JasonLowderTheRanga Data center? Not hardly. There are many 1GW data centers being built in Virginia right now. Utilities in the south are turning them down because they can't supply the load. I worked with utilities serving GW data centers now.
The world would do well to eliminate all this insane crypto currency nonsense. The electricity cost on 'mining' (aka doing stupid calculations) is off the charts.
Sounds like a load of BS to me.
@AORD72 Google it. I work with utilities whose 24/7 base load is now greater than their yearly 30-minute peak load used to be. What changed? Cryptomining moved in.
So how come that coal consumption is still on the rise globally? Up to 8,9 Billion tonnes this year?
Because countries like China and India are developing economically and so need more electricity to fuel heating, lighting, computers, air conditioners, washing machines, fridges, etc. Some of this is provided by burning more coal. It looks like China is reaching the end of this road (they are still using increasing amounts of electricity, but they are massively investing in wind, solar and batteries to more than offset this), but India, China, Malaysia, Africa, not so much.
Unless you install massive amounts of batteries you need nuclear.
Doing the former will be faster, cheaper and less polluting.
Fracking , natural gas displaced coal, solar and wind are only competitive with subsidizes
You have that ENTIRELY backwards! The fossil industry would not survive at all without the $7 Trillion in direct and indirect subsidies *very year*.
No subsidies for rooftop solar in the UK, and yet people are installing plenty of it.
That's because they are smart enough to use nuclear. 😊
Too bad this video wasn't made before the US election.
wind and solar only work at a very low ratio, 25% roughly for solar (clouds, darkness) and 25% roughly for windmill (no wind, or too much). So how do you do the rest of the 75% ?
They cost a lot of money to be deployed , are complex to plug on the grid, so these new energy are far from being the best and will not replace yet coal/gas/nuclear power plant.
And yet, in the UK at least, they are cheaper than coal or gas.
@@simhedgesrex7097 Ask yourself why :) And each of your wind mill needs 800M3 of concrete in the sea, fantastic isn t it ? Do you know denmark who is one of the leader in wind turbine with vestas suspended further investment ? Because these assets offshore are degrading much faster than expected, shorting their lifespan to 5-20 years at max capacity.
@@claudep.255 Yes, it's great. 800M3, is 9 metres x 9 metres x 9 metres. Vestas as still investing - they've lost share price this year, but that's due to the increasing number of other companies investing in offshore wind. And as for degradation, well it's not stopped that latest round of offshore wind opportunities around UK shores being oversubscribed.
I agree with many of the points made here - but, even just looking at the pictures - in this very article - look at the massive environmental damage being done by these massive solar and wind farms - literally hundreds of square kilometers either covered or affected by these renewables - killing millions of animals, wiping out ecologies (yes, even deserts have ecologies and endangered species), creating destructive microclimates and producing massive run-offs of water and pollutants e.g., lead and selenium. There are downsides, even to renewables... The solution is a mix of technologies. By the way - lets not disregard the massive energy poverty and price increases that ill-time power plant closures have created... Finally we CANNOT meet the climate goals (as I have said many times before) due to the developing countries carrying on their own way - lets not ruin our economies after unattainable goals...
Farmers are planting under solar panels because the growing conditions in hot climates are better.
one caveat - price has doubled - and it looks like the rich here planned it that way
Great. Let’s dig more holes in the earth for minerals.
its not 2025 yet damnit i still have a few days left till im 40
There are millions of tons in rare earth minerals in coal waste and in coal mines. It will be interesting to see what happens under Trump.
"grisly", I'd say
@ Best case is his policies work and he is able to negotiate with foreign countries. They buy more from the US and everybody is allowed to prosper. Worst case is global trade grinds to a halt for anybody not in favorable terms with the US. Commodity prices collapse and there will be massive deflation and/or depression in the developing world (aka BRICS). The US and EU enter a long period of recession unless the war stops in Ukraine.
We need all the carbon free electrical generation possible. The world will hit 1.5°C in six years. We are already starting to see tipping points Fossil fuel usage is expected to continue rising fast as developing nations get on the grid.
In this case the advantage of nuclear power is not price, but availability. Large datacenters need enormous amounts of power in a small area. You can have all the solar and wind power, if it can't get to where it's needed. Upgrading the grid is expensive, very unpopular, and made almost impossible by bureaucracy. So it's just cheaper, faster, and easier to build a nuke where you need the power.
>-So it's just cheaper, faster, and easier to build a nuke where you need the power.-<
Except that:
>-Upgrading the grid is expensive, very unpopular, and made almost impossible by bureaucracy.-<
Is it your plan to install the nukes out in the factory parking lot? Short of that, extending the grid is a legal nightmare, for any power source. That is why solar farms and new sub stations are being built under existing power lines. It saves 1 million USD per mile in not extending the power lines.
@@peteinwisconsin2496
That's pretty much the plan. Connecting the datacenters directly to the nukes.
It's not a new idea, it's been done a few times in the past. Like Camp Century. And all nuclear powered ships and subs are essentially this.
Lazard & Assoc. (investment advisors who get sued if presenting other than factual information) claim that combined cycle natural gas generation is cheaper to build, quicker to build and cheaper to operate than either coal or nuclear. As a bonus CCNG does Not have to be shut down every 18 to 24 months for roughly a month for maintenance, inspections and refueling.
Pennsylvania is awash in natural gas. Why spend an estimated 1.6 B$ and three years to bring the 880 MW TMI plant on line when CCNG takes 30 months from permit to first kWh for a brand new facility which costs less than half as much per kWh of rated output?
Reviving TMI is nothing more than someone's vanity project. The shareholders should have a fit at spending $$$ for electricity that does not need to cost that much.