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The environmental battle has always been a game of political ping pong. Republicans take office and open up the energy sector. Democrats take office and restrict it. Back and forth, election after election. The battle has always been painted as “socialist hippies” versus “greedy capitalist pigs” and even though the subject is much more nuanced, our media knows nothing of nuance these days. //
The truth is that the best compromise for meeting our energy and environmental needs is nuclear energy. It is clean, efficient, and extraordinarily safe in its most modern iterations. France has learned the value of nuclear energy and leads the way in clean energy production. It seems unthinkable that America is still arguing about solar panels when we have access to an energy source that could meet the demands of both those dirty hippies and capitalist pigs.
Many homeowners might have given up and bought a different home when faced with the utility hassle that landowner Derrick Zearley experienced. Instead, he looked to solar + storage to avoid interconnection altogether.
Zearley purchased land located on a boundary of two utility territories in Anderson County, South Carolina — Duke Energy and its energy cooperative Blue Ridge Electric. That led to a back-and-forth between Duke and Blue Ridge to determine whose territory it actually was. When Duke Energy laid claim to the plot, the next step in the process was getting signed petitions from Zearley’s neighbors to give right of way on their properties to run electricity to the site.
But after distributing the petitions, no neighbors signed. With half a year lost to the utilities and unwilling neighbors, Zearley reached out to Palmetto State Solar (now Firefly Solar), an installer based in Greenville, and pitched the idea of an off-grid solar system to be built for, and alongside, a 5,500-sq.-ft building in an unelectrified remote location in South Carolina.
Entergy Corporation's Indian Point unit 3 will be shut down tomorrow after nearly 60 years of nuclear power generation at the site in New York state. The closure will bring to an end a world record-breaking run for the pressurised water reactor (PWR). //
Entergy announced in 2017 that it would shut down both operating PWRs at the Indian Point Energy Center, citing factors that include sustained low current and projected wholesale energy prices that have reduced revenues. Unit 2 was shut down as scheduled on 30 April 2020.
"Indian Point has been operated and maintained at the highest levels of reliability, safety and security for many years, and unit 3 has been online continuously since April 9, 2019 - setting a new world record for continuous days of operation," Entergy Chief Nuclear Officer Chris Bakken said. "Indian Point's enduring legacy will be the thousands of men and women who operated the plant safely, reliably, and securely, while helping to power New York City and the lower Hudson Valley for nearly 60 years. We owe those who serve now, along with those who came before them, a debt of gratitude."
Unit 3's final uninterrupted operating run of 751 days since its last refuelling, in April 2019, is a new world record for commercial light water reactors. The 1041 MWe unit earlier this month passed the previous record of 739 continuous days set in 2006 by Exelon's LaSalle unit 1. //
In the 20 years under Entergy's ownership, combined gross generation from units 2 and 3 averaged around 17 million MWh per year - up from 10 million MWh per year previously. Entergy described the plant as a "workhorse" for the southeastern New York electrical grid, generating some 25% of the power consumed annually in New York City and the lower Hudson Valley.
New York State in 2016 adopted legislation explicitly recognising the zero-carbon contribution of nuclear power plants and protecting the continued operation of the Nine Mile Point, RE Ginna and James A Fitzpatrick plants, which are located in the "upstate" region. The state had, however, opposed Entergy's application to renew Indian Point's operating licences and the plant, which is located 24 miles (39 kilometres) from New York City, was not included in the legislation.
On Friday, August 30th, the Indian Point nuclear power plant in New York state shut down.
In a state that has pledged to obtain 70% of it’s power from renewables, you’d imagine that the loss of over ten percent of the state’s power, and 81% of the clean energy in the downstate, would be mourned. You’d imagine that the imminent opening of more natural gas plants, and more fossil fuel emissions pouring into the atmosphere—just as what happened the last time New York closed a nuclear plant—would be seen as a great shame, exacerbating the impact of climate change. You’d imagine that the loss of thousands of good jobs would be seen as a mistake. //
The Natural Resources Defense Council—who pride themselves as “Earth’s Best Defense”—published a piece celebrating the closure of the plant. Riverkeeper, another environmentalist group, did the same, making it the centerpiece of one of their campaigns. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, someone who clearly, regardless of what you think about her policies, cares for the environment, was in favor of the shutdown as well.
Let’s be clear. Shutting down Indian Point wipes out more zero-emissions energy then is produced each year by every solar panel and wind turbine. Combined. And this was celebrated by those who purportedly want more clean energy. //
We’re already approaching the end of this atomic era. The average age of the American nuclear reactor is almost forty years old, and only a single reactor–Watts Bar 2, part of the Tennessee Valley Authority–has been built since 1996. This isn’t from a lack of desire. People clearly want clean, zero-emissions energy. Rather, the regulatory burden placed upon new nuclear reactor construction, both at the state and federal levels, make new nuclear reactor construction nigh-impossible.
Nuclear energy, just like every other form of science, is always advancing. The United States, however, due to regulatory restrictions, refuses to adopt new scientific advancements—or, for that matter, older ones. Nations like France recycle and reuse their nuclear waste. The United States takes its nuclear waste and sticks it in a hole. It took American regulatory authorities almost five years to approve a small modular reactors project, a program that nearly collapsed last year, after the regulatory process drove up the cost.
Without significant reforms to the regulatory process, nuclear power in the United States will vanish, for good–and the liberal environmental activists cheering its death will only be helping the climate catastrophe they so fear.
hoser68
Elizabeth Blackstock
5/09/21 5:43pm
Hydrogen can work great and be extremely green. You just have to be a bit blue about how to make it.
Nuclear power plants will break apart water molecules and generate hydrogen without using any extra fuel. It isn’t using electricity to break the molecule, but the radiation from the fission reaction. It is actually a problem in power plants that if they run too hot, they make too much hydrogen and that can cause an issue (that’s what happened at Fukashima when it lost cooling). If a nuclear plant is reconfigured to intentionally produce hydrogen, it can produce as much hydrogen as if 50% of the plants electricity was focused on making it the traditional way and only loose something like 3% of the actual electrical output (all of that just to pump the hydrogen to a higher pressure).
If you design a plant from the start to make hydrogen, you can actually make around 5% more electrical power and those massive amounts of hydrogen, all without using any more fuel.
So, in other words.. it will never happen in North America or Europe.
Hydrogen-based fuels are already expensive, and while there’s also research to suggest that a growing demand could enable cheaper prices, even a large-scale swap isn’t going to create the infrastructure needed to distribute hydrogen on a large scale. Demand also isn’t going to immediately solve hydrogen’s other main issues: that you get less energy per unit volume than other fuels, that liquefaction (as in, the simple ability to easily refill a fuel tank at a pump) is challenging and costly, and hydrogen’s volatility. You’re going to face the same exact problems you currently have with the meager electric charging infrastructure, but things are amplified.
But perhaps the biggest issue is the fact that hydrogen could enable us to stick with the same fossil fuels that we’re trying to eradicate. In other words, if hydrogen turns out to be scarce and we still have a combustion engine in our car, we’re likely to just turn back to gasoline. //
Basically, the research found that it took six to 14 times more electricity to power in-home gas boilers with hydrogen-based fuels than with other fuels. I’ll let the experts explain:
The research, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, calculated that producing and burning hydrogen-based fuels in home gas boilers required six to 14 times more electricity than heat pumps providing the same warmth. This is because energy is wasted in creating the hydrogen, then the e-fuel, then in burning it. For cars, using e-fuels requires five times more electricity than is needed than for battery-powered cars.
The concept of storing renewable energy in stones has come one step closer to realization with the construction of the GridScale demonstration plant. The plant will be the largest electricity storage facility in Denmark, with a capacity of 10 MWh. The project is being funded by the Energy Technology Development and Demonstration Program (EUDP) under the Danish Energy Agency.
Pea sized stones heated to 600°C in large, insulated steel tanks are at the heart of a new innovation project aiming to make a breakthrough in the storage of intermittent wind and solar electricity.
The technology, which stores electrical energy as heat in stones, is called GridScale, and could become a cheap and efficient alternative to storing power from solar and wind in lithium-based batteries. While lithium batteries are only cost-effective for the supply of energy for short periods of up to four hours, a GridScale electricity storage system will cost effectively support electricity supply for longer periods – up to about a week.
Jason
February 16, 2020 at 10:48 pm
I don't know what nuclear plants you are talking about, but I know for a fact the nuclear plant I work at Operates at $21-22 per megawatt. That is significantly less than the $100 per megawatt this article claims. Also, it appears the figures provided for solar and wind include federal subsidies into the prices being so low. Subtract those subsidies and solar and wind become far less attractive.
As far as safety, the US commercial nuclear industry, historically, is one of the heaviest regulated and safest, especially post Three Mile Island. Compare commercial nuclear with oil, gas, coal, etc... And how frequent minners get stuck in mines, refineries and oil rigs catch fire, gas lines explode etc etc. You never see that in the US commercial nuclear industry. I work in the industry and nuclear reactors are extremly safe. There are numerous safety systems and backup systems and back ups to the back ups to the back ups in commercial nuclear plants. Chernobyl was a flawed Soviet design mixed with unnecessary and harmful government interfierience which lead to the worst commercial nuclear disaster in world history. Chernobyl doesn't belong in the same conversation as Three Mile Island and Fukushima. TMI is what it is and as bad as it was there are no deaths nor adverse health conditions attributed to TMI. The commercial nuclear industry learned immensly from TMI and the US commercial nuclear industry is much much safer today because of it. As for Fukushima, this is a complex issue that primarily resulted from a poor choice of lacation and the selection of a BWR reactor design vs the inherently safer PWR design that you see in the overwhelming majority of the reactors in the US. Had Fukushima been a PWR like the reactors at the plant I work at it wouldn't have been an issue. A PWR has gravity dropped control rods that immediatly stop the reaction and eliminates 90% of the heat inside the reactor. The remaining 10% is decay heat which would have been controlled with numerous systems including passive accumulators, but in a worse case scenario like Fukushima in which all off site and onsite power was lost (ie they lost the grid and their onsite emergency diesel generators), a PWR design would have utilized natural circulation (thermodynamic principle in which warm water rises from the reactor to the higher elevated steam generators and cooler water flows from the steam generators to the lower elevated reactor) the secondary loop of the steam generators would then bleed off steam to drive a steam driven Terry Turbine Aux Feedwater pump which would pump large tanks of demineralized water into the inlet of the steam generator which cools the primary loop via convective heat transfer (ie shell and tube heat exchanger... The steam generators ) the shell side is the feedwater side which is clean thus excess steam not needed to run the terry turbine is vented through steam dumps and relief valves. The primary side is reactor grade water and the investory is never lost it remains in the primary loop inside containment and is continually cooled via the secondary feedwater loop. This design would have allowed a PWR to survive a Fukushima level disaster where a BWR could not. As bas as Fukushima was it was nowhere near as bad as Chernobyl nor say a Deep Water Horizon or other frequent oil and gas disasters, nevertheless; the industry learned from Fukushima and made changes which in turns made the industry safer. One thing common in commercial nuclear power is they learn from any mistakes that have occured and make changes to prevent the saem issues from arising again. This is done via the NRC regulations as well as Industry Leader revomendations throughout the industry (ie INPO and WANO). Often people have the impression that Homer Simpson is running your local nuclear reactor, but this couldn't be further from the truth. In addition to the federal government, INPO and WANO the workers operating reactors are some of the smartest and best people on the planet. The large majority of nuclear operators in the US are former Navy nuke workers from submarines or carrriers, or are well educated, college degreed individuals with backgrounds in physics or engineering. So there are many many factors that keep nuclear plants safe. Thats why you don't hear about accidents occuring anywhere near the rate you do in oil and gas and there are smart individuals in those indistries as well.
The last thing ill mention is this. If you took the average american and you took all the electricity they would consume in their entire lifetime, and say it was all from nuclear power, the waste that would have accumulated could fot inside a 12oz pop can. That's it! This tid bit of info even suprised me, but nuclear is not wasteful it is not chemical burning of coal or gas, nor does it require large quantities of rare earth metal batteries or PV cells. According to Lawrence Berkley Lab, the fission of 1 g of uranium or plutonium per day liberates about 1 MW. This is the energy equivalent of 3 tons of coal or about 600 gallons of fuel oil per day, which when burned produces approximately 1/4 tonne of carbon dioxide. Now the US doesn't use Plutonium in our reactors largely because i dont think we are allowed to per Nuclear Nonproliferation Act of 1979 , but if we could nuclear reactors make plutonium as a result of U238 neutron absoption. This fact makes nuclear fuel recyclable, but we can not reprocess it so it sits in fuel pools and decays away until we can put it in dry cask storage that we keep onsite. I can walk right up to a dry cask full of old fuel, take my dosimeter right up to it and register 0.0 mR/hr. These dry casks are concrete and/or lead lined and were supposed to eventually be stored inside Yucca Mountain (a projected site paid entirely by the commercial nuclear industry and not the tax payers) , but the last administration killed that, so until we find a permanent location waste will be an issue in 50-100 years or so, but Yucca or a Yucca mountain like location would solve this problem. The good news is the funds are already secured for the long term storage all that really needs done is the beaurocratic process to take place. Remember a pop can size amount of waste per person in their entire lifetime on nuclear alone. Think about how many tons and tons of solar pannels that would take that laste what maybe 10 years at best.
I'm not knocking solar or wind they are an important part, but if you want to get serious about climate change you can't do it without nuclear power it is pound for pound the most effective energy source we have. And, if we only funded it 1/10th of what solar and wind get in subsidies i'd imagine we could fix the few flaws the commercial nuclear industry has. My appologies for all the typos im sure this is riddled with them.
Jason
February 18, 2020 at 3:09 pm
The 10% decay heat I presented above is a little high. That 10% would be a very very conservative amount factoring begining of core life and rounding up for a conservatism. The real numbers are closer to 6-7% and even as low as 1-2% toward the end of core life. By enlarge the commercial nuclear industry in the US has gotten more predictable, more reliable, safer and more cost effective in the last 10-15 years or so. With funding towards advancing nuclear power the industry could explore Thorium reactors which you theoretically can press a button and walk away without any decay heat kr radiological concerns, or could look towards producing Hydrogen in conjuction with electricity which can be used to fuel H2 automobile cells. Really there are a vast array of things nuclear power can do, but we are not even scratching the surface.
David Campbell
March 6, 2021 at 9:09 am
The article claims the nuclear industry needs to solve these things and aren't. This is patently false.
Molten salts as opposed to pressurized water solves the melt down problem. High thermal load following tanks rather than piles solves this issue entirely. Safety is inherent in all the new designs being developped.
The waste problem will be solved by reactor designs that will use existing waste as fuel. The fuel waste thing will be eliminated for good.
Costs will plummet with these new designs. Given theres no huge risks of meltdowns or explosions there will not be a need for huge concrete containment domes and other expenses. The reactors will be small modular designs meant to be built in a factory and shipped to location, not permanent constructions with cost overruns. Most of these new startups are targetting being cheaper than coal.
Commentators from Greenpeace to the World Bank agree that climate change is an emergency, threatening civilization and life on our planet. Any solution must involve the control of greenhouse gas emissions by phasing out fossil fuels and switching to alternative technologies that do not impair the human habitat while providing the energy we require to function as a species.
This sobering reality has led some prominent observers to re-embrace nuclear energy. Advocates declare it clean, efficient, economical, and safe. In actuality it is none of these. It is expensive and poses grave dangers to our physical and psychological well-being. According to the US Energy Information Agency, the average nuclear power generating cost is about $100 per megawatt-hour. Compare this with $50 per megawatt-hour for solar and $30 to $40 per megawatt-hour for onshore wind. The financial group Lazard recently said that renewable energy costs are now “at or below the marginal cost of conventional generation”—that is, fossil fuels—and much lower than nuclear.
“Low-cost storage is the key to enabling renewable electricity to compete with fossil fuel generated electricity on a cost basis,” says Yet-Ming Chiang, a materials science and engineering professor at MIT.
But exactly how low? Chiang, professor of energy studies Jessika Trancik, and others have determined that energy storage would have to cost roughly US $20 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) for the grid to be 100 percent powered by a wind-solar mix. Their analysis is published in Joule.
That’s an intimidating stretch for lithium-ion batteries, which dipped to $175/kWh in 2018. But things look up if you loosen the constraints on renewable energy, the researchers say. Then, storage technologies that meet the cost target are within reach.
The team picked four locations—Arizona, Iowa, Massachusetts, and Texas—and gathered 20 years of data on those solar and wind resources there. Such resources can change considerably with the seasons and over the years, and their longer-term analysis—while previous studies had used data from just a year or two—captures the variations that may occur over the lifetime of a power plant, the researchers say. They modeled the costs of wind-solar-plus-storage systems that would reliably meet various grid demands, such as providing baseload energy 24/7 and meeting peak-hour spikes in demand for a few hours.
Energy storage would have to cost $10 to $20/kWh for a wind-solar mix with storage to be competitive with a nuclear power plant providing baseload electricity. And competing with a natural gas peaker plant would require energy storage costs to fall to $5/kWh.
But those figures are only for scenarios in which solar and wind meet power demand 100 percent of the time. If other sources meet demand just 5 percent of the time, storage could work at a price tag of $150/kWh. Which technologies could hit that target?
A-CAES uses surplus electricity from the grid or renewable sources to run an air compressor. The compressed air is then stored in a big underground tank until energy is needed, at which point it’s released through a turbine to generate electricity that’s fed back into the grid.
Rather than vent the heat generated as the air is compressed, Hydrostor’s system captures that heat and stores it in a separate thermal storage tank, then uses it to reheat the air as it's fed in to the turbine stage, which increases the efficiency of the system. This could prove to be key; compressed air storage systems have typically offered round-trip efficiencies between 40-52 percent, and Quartz is reporting more like 60 percent for this system. //
Hydrostor’s A-CAES also makes use of a closed-loop reservoir to maintain the system at a constant pressure during operation. The storage cavern is partially filled with water and as the compressed air is piped in, the water is forced into a separate compensation reservoir. Later, when the air is needed, the water is pumped back into the air storage cavern, pushing the air out towards the turbine.
New Jersey extends $300 million in nuclear subsidies for Salem County reactors
by Andrew Maykuth, Posted: April 27, 2021 - 5:05 PM
New Jersey extends $300 million in nuclear subsidies for Salem County reactors
JOHN COSTELLO / FILE PHOTO
PSEG operates the Salem Nuclear Power Plant in South Jersey.
New Jersey on Tuesday renewed subsidies of about $300 million a year for the state’s three nuclear power reactors at Salem and Hope Creek, the source of 90% of the state’s carbon-free electricity.
The New Jersey Board of Public Utilities approved the subsidies, called Zero Emission Certificates, for three years for the Hope Creek Generating Station and the twin-unit Salem Nuclear Power Plant, located in Lower Alloways Township on Delaware Bay. The giant reactors supply New Jersey with about 37.5% of its power, including about 90% of its electricity produced without greenhouse gas emissions. //
The subsidies add about 0.4 cents to the price of a kilowatt hour of electricity, or about $2.60 a month for a typical residential customer that uses 650 kWh. That’s about 2% of a typical residential customer’s $123.44 monthly bill from Public Service Electric & Gas, the state’s largest utility and an affiliate of the majority owner of the nuclear plants. //
Several states, including Illinois, New York and Connecticut, have provided subsidies to keep nuclear plants operating, though Pennsylvania in 2019 declined to award support for atomic power, leading Exelon to permanently shut down Three Mile Island Unit 1.
A prison in Malawi realised it was flushing valuable fuel down the drains – now it is using the power of poo to fuel its busy kitchens, aiding both inmates and forests. //
The prison was installed with a biogas digester, a system that converts organic matter – including human waste – into energy. Made from plastic sheets, the system has an inlet that feeds the poop and other waste into a digester, where they are submerged in water. The water creates an anaerobic environment that allows bacteria to break down the biomass into methane, which is pushed through a piping system to the gas stoves in the prison's kitchen. //
The prison's officials say that since the installation of the biogas digester the reformatory has cut its firewood consumption by around half, from 60 cubic metres a month to around 29 cubic metres. The digester has also helped to reduce the electricity bills at the prison, saving an average of MWK 310,400 (£290/$400) each month on firewood and electricity.
It’ll take a lot to transition the U.S. off fossil-based energy: money, political will, labor. But a new report shows it won’t take new technological innovation. The study, published in the journal Joule last week, shows U.S. electricity demand can be met with currently available carbon-free tech, like solar panels and wind turbines. And we can do it in just seven years.
GE Renewable Energy has made an agreement with Chicago-based Invenergy, a global clean energy developer and operator, to provide wind turbines for the 1.48 gigawatt North Central Wind Energy Facilities in Oklahoma.
Goodnight Irene
The Dutch have been using wind power for so long that it’s time to decommission the Irene Vorrink wind farm this year. The first-generation Irene Vorrink wind farm, named after a Dutch Labour Party politician who died in 1996, has been operational since 1997.
The 16.8 MW project (pictured above) features 28 Nordtank NTK600/43 wind turbines that stand in a long row, close to the shore of Lake IJsselmeer, in an average water depth of 16 feet (5 meters). The site is owned and operated by Swedish power company Vattenfall.
The site will be be repowered as part of the Windplanblauw project, which is being jointly developed by Vattenfall and wind cooperative SwifterwinT. Windplanblauw is expected to be online from 2023 and capable of powering around 400,000 households.
4COffshore reports on Windplanblauw’s details:
In total, 74 older turbines (28 of which are from Irene Vorrink) will be replaced with 61 new and more powerful ones. SwifterwinT will develop the onshore turbines and Vattenfall and SwifterwinT will develop the nearshore turbines together. The project is expected to yield 250 MW.
The life span of a wind turbine is currently around 25 years, depending on maintenance quality and environmental factors. (The oldest operating wind turbine is currently Tvindkraft in Denmark, which is now 43.)
Where do wind turbines go when they die? Technically, wind turbines are 85-90% recyclable, but their blades are currently challenging to break down. Further, blade recycling efforts have been hampered by a failure to match recovered materials to supply chain needs and end products
Fast neutron reactors to burn up used fuel and breed additional fuel -- sodium or lead cooled
Our little nuclear European play apparently comes slowly but steadily to a happy ending, at least for those supporting the most controversial energy source in the history of the sector.
And that is, because according to a new JRC (Joint Research Center) report, after years of debates and disagreements between EU experts, nuclear power seems to pocket the green investment label. //
EU experts decided that more analysis was needed on the environmental impact of radioactive disposal. So, the commission asked its scientific expert “arm”, JRC to do what it does best. Research and report. And thus it did, coming to the conclusion that: “The analyses did not reveal any science-based evidence that nuclear energy does more harm to human health or to the environment than other electricity production technologies already included in the Taxonomy as activities supporting climate change mitigation”. Moreover, in another passage, JRC compares nuclear power to hydropower and renewable energy resources.
The Duane Arnold Energy Center in eastern Iowa, the current site of a now-idle nuclear power plant, will soon host a 690-megawatt solar farm. The new solar farm plus storage will replace the single-unit, 615-megawatt nuclear plant, which powered more than 600,000 homes.
Owner NextEra Energy of Florida will build the solar farm across 3,500 acres at and near Duane Arnold in Palo, Linn County. NextEra also intends to include up to 60 megawatts of AC-coupled batteries for power storage.
The project is expected to bring in a $700 million project investment, $41.6 million in tax revenue, and around 300 construction jobs.
NextEra will negotiate leases with landowners in summer 2021 and begin construction in winter 2022. The company intends to have the solar farm online by the end of 2023. ///
3500 acres solar 8/24h vs. 600 acres nuclear 24/7
Earlier this week an all-star group of energy and climate scholars published a scientific article in a prestigious journal pointing out that a Stanford professor’s proposal for powering the United States entirely on renewable energy sources rests upon a gigantic lie.
Over the last several years, Al Gore, Leonardo DiCaprio and Mark Ruffalo and many politicians have pointed to Stanford scientist Mark Jacobson’s modeling as proof that we can quickly and cheaply transition to 100 percent renewables.
What is the lie? That we can increase the amount of power from U.S. hydroelectric dams ten-fold. According to the U.S. Department of Energy and all major studies, the real potential increase is just one percent of that.
Without all that additional hydroelectricity, Jacobson’s entire house of cards falls apart. That’s because there’s no other way to store all of that unreliable solar and wind energy, given the shortcomings of current battery technologies.
The authors diplomatically call Jacobson’s lie an “error,” but it is in fact a lie and everyone — Jacobson included — knows it.
In his response, Jacobson writes, “Increasing hydropower's peak instantaneous discharge rate was not a ‘modeling mistake’ but an assumption.”
What is an assumption? It is “a thing that is accepted as true or as certain to happen, without proof” [emphasis added].
But what have Jacobson, Gore, DiCaprio and politicians around the world been insisting for years? That Jacobson’s study proves not only that we can power the world with renewables-alone, but also that doing so would be cheaper and more environmentally friendly.
Upon the big lie rest others.
For example, around the world, politicians and renewables advocates seeking to close nuclear plants justify their actions by claiming Jacobson’s work proves that nuclear plants are not needed as an alternative to fossil fuels.
Jacobson himself told the audience during our debate at UCLA last year that California would replace our last nuclear plant, Diablo Canyon, entirely with renewables — and at a lower cost than keeping the plant running.
Jacobson says these things even though he knows perfectly well that everywhere in the world nuclear plants are closed, fossil fuels are burned instead.