It's a bit strange that Jacobsen talks about things you can do with excess energy, like store it, use it for industry, etc. but frames it as if only energy generated from renewables can do that. Of course, nuclear power plants can also do all those things with energy at times when electricity demand on the grid is lower (e.g. high-noon in high-solar areas). And with nuclear, things like industrial heat, district heating/cooling, etc are more direct b/c the energy comes out in the form of heat to begin with. These arguments of his would work for a 100% nuclear + batteries scenario just as well.
Mark Jacobson clearly won this debate: Renewables are cheaper, safer and faster than Nuclear Power. Since the underlying premise for this debate is the effort to avoid global irreversible climate change, this will clearly not be possible by relying on the nuclear power sector, as the nuclear power plants take too long to build (approx. 20 years), as the climate tipping point is in just 6 years (year 2030). Better get started on that renewable energy transition real fast and not waste money and time on expensive nuclear power plants that will be ready way too late! Analogy: It's like crossing a field with a raging bull. Why choose to walk across the field in 20 seconds, when the bull will catch up with you and kill you in 6 seconds? Clearly, the wise choice is to run across the field in less than 6 seconds.
Assuming you can ramp up and maintain production & installation of PV and wind at the high rate that is needed.. putting all your eggs in only a few of the available baskets is not a good strategy for an energy system.
Incredible how Jacobson gets away with misinformation about critical minerals at 50:00 minutes. His argument for rapid and global decarbonization led by wind and solar would require an immediate and unprecedented expansion of mining copper, graphite, nickel, rare earths, and other materials. Just for the extra copper alone, the volume of dirt you’d need to dig up and dump is in the billions of tons. Good luck gaining community support for that, as we see already in Panama and elsewhere…
None of that's true. We're not running short of any minerals and renewables will involve VASTLY less mining than the current FF method. Rare earths aren't rare (or earths) and we don't need them for RE. The new LFP batteries have no nickel, or cobalt, and the sodium batts don't either. -- A Fossil Fuel Economy Requires 535x More Mining Than a Clean Energy Economy Transitioning to clean energy would reduce the volume and harm of mining dramatically “Every year, about 15 billion tons of fossil fuels are mined and extracted. That’s about 535 times more mining than a clean energy economy would require in 2040. Partly because “fossil fuel infrastructure is much less energy efficient than clean energy technology. Gas-powered cars are 3X less efficient than EVs. Gas furnaces are 3-4X less efficient than heat pumps. Coal, oil, and gas all need to be transported long distances from mine or well to the source of combustion. www.distilled.earth/p/a-fossil-fuel-economy-requires-535x
@@pianodarr But vastly more mining than nuclear power, vastly more land, vastly more grid connectivity (in U.S., as much as 180,000 miles of new HVDC lines crisscrossing the continent many times over, growing transmission by 70%, with all the additional GHGs that building and maintaining that will require; multiply that by 192 nations of varying sizes). Nuclear works with the grid we have in the U.S.; 100% wind, solar and batteries scenarios do not and, to date, are only known to work in computer models and spreadsheets. But it's an interesting experiment! To bad we have to gamble earth to see if it can be done. Even if we simply allow nuclear in the mix of clean energy technologies, we reduce the risk of failing substantially. (See IPCC pathways.)
@@stephenwilliams7799 Mining? Doesn't matter. As already shown, RE requires VASTLY less mining than a FF economy. Wind turbines use less land than nuclear. Remember, a windfarm leaves 98% of the land available for farming. Offshore wind uses no land. Solar dual uses no land. Current actual build solar/wind vs actual build nuclear show comparable material use. Not to mention solar material use is much less problematic than toxic nuke waste: mostly steel, aluminum, glass. 100% recyclable, as with wind turbines (other than foundation). Nuke works? Just the old stuff. You may have noticed, zero new conventional nuke planned in the US. The last, and final US attempt (Vogtle) took 18 yrs planning to start. As of 2016 there were over 50 nations with more than 50% renewables in their grid. It was not too many years ago we were told that more than 20% RE wasn't possible. List here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_renewable_electricity_production Now we have 63 countries above 50% renewable. US has 11 states above 50%. California, 5th largest economy in the world, is one of them. Germany was 59% RE last year. 3rd largest economy in the world.
@@pianodarr I think the energy picture is more complex. In what way does mining not matter? Mining for renewables is much different than mining for FF. Just consider copper. 100% RE requires at least doubling copper production by 2040. It takes as much as 12 years to get a new copper mine going. Mining for other minerals has to grow at far larger amounts than copper for 100% RE to succeed. For example, because both EVs and batteries backing renewables both need lithium, lithium production needs to grow by 4000% by 2040. (These are IEA numbers for just 2 of the minerals that need major growth in mining very quickly directly due to RE. It has nothing to do with FF.) It's no surprise that Vogtle took a long time. U.S. nuclear power is broken. When a country doesn't build big nuclear projects for decades, we lose generational knowledge and builds take a really long time, especially with a first of kind reactor build. But several countries can build them relatively quickly (under 5 years). The U.S. could revive that ability while making good use of some 19,000 technicians trained for Vogtle. Nuclear can help solar and wind work with the grid we have instead of having to crisscross the U.S. many times over with HVDC lines. The IPCC 's most likely to succeed mitigation pathways include nuclear in the mix for this reason. Perhaps some wind farms could leave room for farming. That would be good. (I particularly hate to see mountain tops removed for optimum placement of wind farms.) But, just a quick check shows me that, of the more than 230 wind farms in the U.S., only 38 are hybrids with some other function such as farming. Yes, offshore wind obviously doesn’t use land, but most places in the U.S. don’t want it. I know I don’t want it in the Monterey Bay (marine sanctuary) where I live. This is a major factor resulting in the fact that the U.S. has only 2 offshore wind farms. You wrote: “Current actual build solar/wind vs actual build nuclear show comparable material use.” How could that possibly be? Can you tell me where you got such information? I can give you plenty of references that contradict that statement if you’d like me to. Nuclear waste is only a political problem. Nuclear waste (spent fuel) is very small compared to wind and solar waste. Nuclear waste is valuable. It is recyclable. Current inventories of spent fuel alone could power the U.S. for100s of years using advanced reactors. Note that spent nuclear fuel has never hurt anyone in the going on 70 year history of nuclear across the 32 countries that use nuclear power. You wrote: ” [there are] 50 nations with more than 50% renewables”. Sure, and that’s because those countries rely heavily on hydropower because they have great hydropower resources. If only every nation should be so lucky. But the success of hydropower in nations with great hydro resources does not show that wind and solar and batteries, for example, can get deep grid penetration without hydro. By the way, California’s largest single source of clean energy is nuclear power. After that, it’s hydro. (That’s in 2022. Hydro can be a no show during droughts, which can last quite a few years.) Nuclear power is far, far more reliable. Solar and wind accounted for almost 28% of California’s power in 2022. And that’s great, but California has way more solar than California can use when it's produced, yet California has so far failed to build batteries or increase transmission capabilities so we can do something with that overproduction. Meanwhile California still gets close to 40% of its electricity from fossil fuels-even more when hydro is a no show. Germany. It’s a mess. Industry is leaving because of the poor quality of electricity. It’s burning lignite like crazy. It was just discovered this month that Germany has been underreporting its methane emissions from lignite mining for many, many years. The methane emissions have been 184 times greater than Germany has been reporting. And the continued burning of lignite has been deadly for several thousand of its citizens. All this mess because Germany shut down its nuclear plants for no good reason. But Germany did get 39% of is electricity from solar and wind in 2023, which is good. We’ll have to wait and see where Germany goes from here. But, of course, Germany could have retired from lignite burning if it had simply kept its nuclear power fleet running. Nuclear power can do many things that solar and wind and batteries can’t do well: such as high provide heat for industrial processes, district heating, water desalination, power container ships and bulk carriers (3% of global GHG emissions), and provide clean power to remote areas (via microreactors). I hope we don't gamble our planet on an energy mix that doesn't include nuclear power.
@@stephenwilliams7799 I'm not going to read that or respond to chapter length stuff. Make three points, put it in a paragraph or I won't waste my time on a forum that doesn't allow graphs more than one link. As Mark notes, if you watched the debate, nuke is dead. You're whistling past the grave yard. RE added +507GW last year, nuke added... -1.7GW. Nuke's time has passed.
Prof Jacobsen's factual analysis is spot on. He's a key academic who leads a research unit at one of US's most prestigious universities with a very strong record of peer reviewed publication. He really is the real thing.
@@pianodarr this already played out in the court of law through many appeals and the legal system has come to conclusion on this topic. I don't think you can justifiably claim it was all nuke shills preventing the courts from siding with him in this case.
It's a bit strange that Jacobsen talks about things you can do with excess energy, like store it, use it for industry, etc. but frames it as if only energy generated from renewables can do that. Of course, nuclear power plants can also do all those things with energy at times when electricity demand on the grid is lower (e.g. high-noon in high-solar areas). And with nuclear, things like industrial heat, district heating/cooling, etc are more direct b/c the energy comes out in the form of heat to begin with. These arguments of his would work for a 100% nuclear + batteries scenario just as well.
A low key polite debate. The most memorable point made was Jacobson's argument that solar plus batteries work great during an eclipse.
Mark Jacobson clearly won this debate: Renewables are cheaper, safer and faster than Nuclear Power. Since the underlying premise for this debate is the effort to avoid global irreversible climate change, this will clearly not be possible by relying on the nuclear power sector, as the nuclear power plants take too long to build (approx. 20 years), as the climate tipping point is in just 6 years (year 2030). Better get started on that renewable energy transition real fast and not waste money and time on expensive nuclear power plants that will be ready way too late!
Analogy: It's like crossing a field with a raging bull. Why choose to walk across the field in 20 seconds, when the bull will catch up with you and kill you in 6 seconds? Clearly, the wise choice is to run across the field in less than 6 seconds.
Assuming you can ramp up and maintain production & installation of PV and wind at the high rate that is needed.. putting all your eggs in only a few of the available baskets is not a good strategy for an energy system.
Incredible how Jacobson gets away with misinformation about critical minerals at 50:00 minutes. His argument for rapid and global decarbonization led by wind and solar would require an immediate and unprecedented expansion of mining copper, graphite, nickel, rare earths, and other materials. Just for the extra copper alone, the volume of dirt you’d need to dig up and dump is in the billions of tons. Good luck gaining community support for that, as we see already in Panama and elsewhere…
None of that's true. We're not running short of any minerals and renewables will involve VASTLY less mining than the current FF method. Rare earths aren't rare (or earths) and we don't need them for RE. The new LFP batteries have no nickel, or cobalt, and the sodium batts don't either.
--
A Fossil Fuel Economy Requires 535x More Mining Than a Clean Energy Economy
Transitioning to clean energy would reduce the volume and harm of mining dramatically
“Every year, about 15 billion tons of fossil fuels are mined and extracted. That’s about 535 times more mining than a clean energy economy would require in 2040.
Partly because “fossil fuel infrastructure is much less energy efficient than clean energy technology. Gas-powered cars are 3X less efficient than EVs. Gas furnaces are 3-4X less efficient than heat pumps. Coal, oil, and gas all need to be transported long distances from mine or well to the source of combustion.
www.distilled.earth/p/a-fossil-fuel-economy-requires-535x
@@pianodarr But vastly more mining than nuclear power, vastly more land, vastly more grid connectivity (in U.S., as much as 180,000 miles of new HVDC lines crisscrossing the continent many times over, growing transmission by 70%, with all the additional GHGs that building and maintaining that will require; multiply that by 192 nations of varying sizes). Nuclear works with the grid we have in the U.S.; 100% wind, solar and batteries scenarios do not and, to date, are only known to work in computer models and spreadsheets. But it's an interesting experiment! To bad we have to gamble earth to see if it can be done. Even if we simply allow nuclear in the mix of clean energy technologies, we reduce the risk of failing substantially. (See IPCC pathways.)
@@stephenwilliams7799 Mining? Doesn't matter. As already shown, RE requires VASTLY less mining than a FF economy.
Wind turbines use less land than nuclear. Remember, a windfarm leaves 98% of the land available for farming.
Offshore wind uses no land.
Solar dual uses no land.
Current actual build solar/wind vs actual build nuclear show comparable material use. Not to mention solar material use is much less problematic than toxic nuke waste: mostly steel, aluminum, glass. 100% recyclable, as with wind turbines (other than foundation).
Nuke works? Just the old stuff. You may have noticed, zero new conventional nuke planned in the US. The last, and final US attempt (Vogtle) took 18 yrs planning to start.
As of 2016 there were over 50 nations with more than 50% renewables in their grid. It was not too many years ago we were told that more than 20% RE wasn't possible. List here:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_renewable_electricity_production
Now we have 63 countries above 50% renewable. US has 11 states above 50%. California, 5th largest economy in the world, is one of them.
Germany was 59% RE last year. 3rd largest economy in the world.
@@pianodarr I think the energy picture is more complex.
In what way does mining not matter? Mining for renewables is much different than mining for FF. Just consider copper. 100% RE requires at least doubling copper production by 2040. It takes as much as 12 years to get a new copper mine going. Mining for other minerals has to grow at far larger amounts than copper for 100% RE to succeed. For example, because both EVs and batteries backing renewables both need lithium, lithium production needs to grow by 4000% by 2040. (These are IEA numbers for just 2 of the minerals that need major growth in mining very quickly directly due to RE. It has nothing to do with FF.)
It's no surprise that Vogtle took a long time. U.S. nuclear power is broken. When a country doesn't build big nuclear projects for decades, we lose generational knowledge and builds take a really long time, especially with a first of kind reactor build. But several countries can build them relatively quickly (under 5 years). The U.S. could revive that ability while making good use of some 19,000 technicians trained for Vogtle. Nuclear can help solar and wind work with the grid we have instead of having to crisscross the U.S. many times over with HVDC lines. The IPCC 's most likely to succeed mitigation pathways include nuclear in the mix for this reason.
Perhaps some wind farms could leave room for farming. That would be good. (I particularly hate to see mountain tops removed for optimum placement of wind farms.) But, just a quick check shows me that, of the more than 230 wind farms in the U.S., only 38 are hybrids with some other function such as farming.
Yes, offshore wind obviously doesn’t use land, but most places in the U.S. don’t want it. I know I don’t want it in the Monterey Bay (marine sanctuary) where I live. This is a major factor resulting in the fact that the U.S. has only 2 offshore wind farms.
You wrote: “Current actual build solar/wind vs actual build nuclear show comparable material use.” How could that possibly be? Can you tell me where you got such information? I can give you plenty of references that contradict that statement if you’d like me to.
Nuclear waste is only a political problem. Nuclear waste (spent fuel) is very small compared to wind and solar waste. Nuclear waste is valuable. It is recyclable. Current inventories of spent fuel alone could power the U.S. for100s of years using advanced reactors. Note that spent nuclear fuel has never hurt anyone in the going on 70 year history of nuclear across the 32 countries that use nuclear power.
You wrote: ” [there are] 50 nations with more than 50% renewables”. Sure, and that’s because those countries rely heavily on hydropower because they have great hydropower resources. If only every nation should be so lucky. But the success of hydropower in nations with great hydro resources does not show that wind and solar and batteries, for example, can get deep grid penetration without hydro.
By the way, California’s largest single source of clean energy is nuclear power. After that, it’s hydro. (That’s in 2022. Hydro can be a no show during droughts, which can last quite a few years.) Nuclear power is far, far more reliable.
Solar and wind accounted for almost 28% of California’s power in 2022. And that’s great, but California has way more solar than California can use when it's produced, yet California has so far failed to build batteries or increase transmission capabilities so we can do something with that overproduction. Meanwhile California still gets close to 40% of its electricity from fossil fuels-even more when hydro is a no show.
Germany. It’s a mess. Industry is leaving because of the poor quality of electricity. It’s burning lignite like crazy. It was just discovered this month that Germany has been underreporting its methane emissions from lignite mining for many, many years. The methane emissions have been 184 times greater than Germany has been reporting. And the continued burning of lignite has been deadly for several thousand of its citizens. All this mess because Germany shut down its nuclear plants for no good reason. But Germany did get 39% of is electricity from solar and wind in 2023, which is good. We’ll have to wait and see where Germany goes from here. But, of course, Germany could have retired from lignite burning if it had simply kept its nuclear power fleet running.
Nuclear power can do many things that solar and wind and batteries can’t do well: such as high provide heat for industrial processes, district heating, water desalination, power container ships and bulk carriers (3% of global GHG emissions), and provide clean power to remote areas (via microreactors). I hope we don't gamble our planet on an energy mix that doesn't include nuclear power.
@@stephenwilliams7799 I'm not going to read that or respond to chapter length stuff. Make three points, put it in a paragraph or I won't waste my time on a forum that doesn't allow graphs more than one link.
As Mark notes, if you watched the debate, nuke is dead. You're whistling past the grave yard. RE added +507GW last year, nuke added... -1.7GW.
Nuke's time has passed.
Prof Jacobsen's factual analysis is spot on. He's a key academic who leads a research unit at one of US's most prestigious universities with a very strong record of peer reviewed publication. He really is the real thing.
His peer reviewed record has some black spots, however.
On that topic, it may also be worth noting that he achieved some infamy when he sued his scientific critics and was forced to pay their legal fees.
@@whatisnuclear He sued them for lying. But they may have just been incompetent. Deniers and nuke shills tend to be pretty good at both.
@@pianodarr this already played out in the court of law through many appeals and the legal system has come to conclusion on this topic. I don't think you can justifiably claim it was all nuke shills preventing the courts from siding with him in this case.
He has spent his whole life in academia. I work in the energy industry, he’s full of shit.