"President Joe Biden’s administration on Wednesday finalized approval of $1.1 billion to help keep California’s last operating nuclear power plant running. "
Because renewable energy sources are too expensive?
Numbers wise, it probably makes sense.
California is so huge and growing all the time, that while they’re updating the energy grid and installing new truly sustainable energy, the electricity for two and a half million houses that one power plant provides is probably a huge help in the intermediary time.
“…probably a huge help…”
No, not much actually.
According to California Energy Commission 2021 data (https://www.energy.ca.gov/data-reports/energy-almanac/california-electricity-data/2021-total-system-electric-generation), nuclear accounted for only 9.3% of total generated for the state. Solar and wind each beat that. All we have to do is reduce usage by 10% and we can finally decommission a facility that’s producing deadly radiation waste - that sits near a fault line.
Given that the average Californian household uses around 7200kWh a year a single facility providing 9% of the state’s energy needs or 2.89 million homes isn’t that bad…
For a 1.2 billion dollars investment, that is about 415 dollars per household to keep it running for 5 years more.
Not saying that new nuclear generators are the best way since we have better alternatives, but you can’t knock the benefits that nuclear energy has given us. If we were to reduce energy use by 10% today wouldn’t we want to burn that much less natural gas and that little share of coal first if we cared about health impact? This buys us more time to have renewables displace the most harmful of generation methods.
If it’s such a good investment, why aren’t the power companies making it? Why does the US government have to pour money into their profit-making venture?
Last operating nuclear power plant.
Which means this one plant provies 9.3% of the state’s power generation. It’s entirely reasonable to think that cutting that power generation without having other sources to replace it with would be a “bad idea,” especially considering how Enron royally fucked California by playing games with power.
The grid really needs to be decentralized. Neighborhood backup batteries and solar panels would go a long way towards this.
Haven’t seen a nuclear power plant that isn’t basically paid for by the taxpayers and the people that need to buy that energy even more.
Remember, only actually renewable energy is good.
Nuclear is an important stop gap in the process of replacing fossil fuels.
Trouble is, we’re now so short of time that there’s probably little benefit from making loads of new nuclear plants as they take too long to build.
A top gap cant take 10 years to build, its faster, more efficient and more economically to just go straight to renewables 100% shure, already standing ones don’t need to be shut down, but we shouldn’t focus on making new ones and decommission those that get too old (seriously looking at France here)
How many solar panels and backup batteries would that buy? At $20k per home, that’s 50000 homes that could have their own power system.
According to a couple of articles, a nuclear plant like this can power 500000 homes. So not too shabby of an investment?
And those 50,000 systems would be operational for 20+ years. That kind of investment would bolster the solar industry and further raise public awareness of the beauty of having their own system.
In contrast that money now is going to support poor, short-term profit, decisions by large corporations. After ~2030 we’ll still be in the same mess we currently are: power companies begging for handouts to decommission the plant and then leaving the US government to watch over the waste in perpetuity.
That is the definition of a shabby investment.
Not only that, the nuclear plant will be producing power at its stated capacity 80% of the time or more, only coming offline for maintenance and refueling. Those solar panels will only produce its stated capacity 30% of the time of so.
9.3% might not seem like a lot to some people, but it becomes paramount when other sources of energy like fossil fuels become scarce, during events like natural disaster, boycott, embargo, and war. keeping 9.3% up and running, and available is enormous.
I remember reading the change of heart by the environmental activist / journalist George Monbiot[0] some years ago when he described in public why the fukushima disaster changed his opinion on nuclear power[1]
It’s old but worth a read and is the reason why I still think that although the industry might be run by cunts (name one that isn’t) nuclear power isn’t a bad option in/of itself
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Monbiot#Nuclear_energy
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/mar/21/pro-nuclear-japan-fukushima