Renewable energy won’t be able to make up for the loss of carbon-free electricity resulting from a wave of nuclear-power plant closures in the coming decades, according to a new report released by the environmental group Center for Climate and Energy Solutions.
Per Bloomberg, “Of the 66 nuclear power plants operating in the U.S., 24 are either scheduled to close or probably won’t make money through 2021, according Nicholas Steckler, an analyst with Bloomberg New Energy Finance.”
Some climate advocates are growing increasingly worried that progress in decarbonizing the power sector will hit the brakes if large amounts of existing nuclear plants go offline.
The Center for Climate and Energy Solutions’ report, which also includes policy proposals, represents a growing urgency among some environmentalists that carbon-free nuclear power should be part of the equation addressing climate change despite other big concerns, such as upfront costs and what to do with radioactive waste.
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Agency is gearing up to review requests from companies to run some nuclear reactors for an unprecedented 80 years, 20 years longer than current operating licenses. Assumptions about future emissions levels also assume the agency approves these requests, in a process that could take a couple of years.
These so-called “environmentalists” always side-step the issues of heat emissions from nuclear plants, as well as their need for prodigious amounts of water for cooling, which makes siting them where there is no water for cooling to be quite impracticable.
How about the idea of cutting back on energy usage like we had to do back in the 1970s (yes, I know, that was a different century and millennium and modern people today should not have to live I such primitive conditions as existed back then).
People have their houses and properties lit up like concentration camps or maximum security prisons.
Why?
What is out there that they are so afraid of?
Or are they displaying their status in the community by how much energy they can waste, which is a sign of their affluence?
If you don’t want global warming, then stop causing it by creating extra heat.
Whether it is necessary to go so far as the man whose name I cannot mention suggested, putting an insulated cover over your morning coffee to keep it from heating the environment between sips is a value judgment I won’t make, but it is something to consider.
In the meantime, these pro-nuke arguments get more and more ridiculous as time goes by and the promotors ignore more and more evidence of heat generation problems from nuke plants.