Should the world build more nuclear power plants? – Today’s CLIDEMY poll
Nuclear energy is pollution free. It is carbon free.
It already supplies about 10% of total global electricity demand.
Factoring in the currently available reserves of uranium, and possible new sources from which uranium can be extracted in future, nuclear could provide zero carbon electricity for a few hundred years at least.
It can provide 24×7, uninterrupted power (solar and wind cannot, unless you use massive batteries).
Our specialty focus areas include
It requires far lower land area to generate the same amount of electricity compared to most renewable sources.
It can scale – many of the world’s nuclear power plants are in 1000s of MW capacity.
It might be economically competitive with most other sources (this point is tricky, and levelized cost estimates vary from 4 – 8 US c/kWh, a 100% range!, so let me stick with “might”)
𝐎𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐟𝐥𝐢𝐩 𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞,
Any major accident (or an intentional terrorist assault on a nuclear power station) can result far more environmental damage compared to other energy sources.
Operations & maintenance are tedious – mainly owing to safety considerations.
Dealing safely with the spent nuclear waste has still not been perfected.
So, there are pros and cons. And there are pros and cons with every other source of energy, including renewables.
The most critical advantage with nuclear is that it is a a zero carbon source of energy, and in fact, this is the only zero carbon source of electricity that can even today power the entire world with currently available technologies and the current grid, without having to invest in massive batteries and software and a whole lot of other innovations that are needed for solar or wind power to scale.
As the world is desperately trying to dramatically reduce CO2 emissions, and with power generation contributing to almost 35% of all CO2 emissions, 𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞’𝐬 𝐭𝐨𝐝𝐚𝐲’𝐬 𝐂𝐋𝐈𝐃𝐄𝐌𝐘 𝐩𝐨𝐥𝐥 – 𝐒𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐥𝐝 𝐠𝐨 𝐛𝐢𝐠 𝐨𝐧 𝐧𝐮𝐜𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐫 𝐩𝐨𝐰𝐞𝐫?
Poll by: CliDemy – the Climate Academy – 𝘸𝘦 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘩𝘶𝘮𝘣𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘵 & 𝘮𝘰𝘥𝘦𝘴𝘵-𝘦𝘴𝘵 𝘨𝘰𝘢𝘭 𝘰𝘧 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘷𝘪𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘦𝘧𝘧𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘤𝘭𝘪𝘮𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘦𝘥𝘶𝘤𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘵𝘰 𝘢 𝘣𝘪𝘭𝘭𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘱𝘦𝘰𝘱𝘭𝘦 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘭𝘥𝘸𝘪𝘥𝘦 𝘣𝘺 2030. Help us do that!
See my LinkedIn post on this topic
