Essay by Eric Worrall
First published JoNova; “… The failure of net zero shows that the best governments can do is to encourage the search for viable new sources of energy. …”
Climate policy requires a more realistic approach
By Edward Chancellor
February 28, 20259:59 PM GMT+10LONDON, Feb 27 (Reuters Breakingviews) – The pursuit of net zero carbon emissions has been a resounding failure. Despite trillions of dollars spent on renewable energy, hydrocarbons still account for over 80% of the world’s primary energy and a similar share of recent increases in energy consumption, according to The Energy Institute. Coal, oil and natural gas production are at record highs. Emissions of greenhouse gases continue to rise inexorably. The financial markets were already losing confidence in the energy transition before Donald Trump returned to the White House. A more realistic approach to climate policy is urgently needed
Solar and wind power have grown to a mere 3.5% of primary energy production. The levelised cost of renewable energy – which measures of the net present value of electricity produced over a plant’s lifetime – has declined sharply over the years. But this has not resulted into lower electricity prices. In fact, as the share of the energy mix provided by renewables has risen, electricity prices have tended to increase. That’s because wind and solar power are intermittent. Since storing energy in batteries is uneconomic, traditional sources of power are still needed as backup, which is expensive.
Germany and the United Kingdom, which get a relatively large share of their electricity from renewables, also suffer from the world’s highest electricity costs. …
…
… The world still urgently needs an alternative to fossil fuels. The failure of net zero shows that the best governments can do is to encourage the search for viable new sources of energy. Human ingenuity was responsible for developing fossil fuels which delivered improvements in material prosperity while endangering the planet. It’s up to human ingenuity to solve the problem.
Read more: https://www.reuters.com/breakingviews/climate-policy-requires-more-realistic-approach-2025-02-28/
…
Legacy media should have told the truth about Net Zero a long time ago. Sadly the author still clings to the climate crisis fantasy.
The total failure of Net Zero is inevitable, renewables were never going to be a viable replacement for dispatchable energy. From nine years ago;
The mainstream advent of energy guzzling artificial intelligence helped accelerate the fall of renewables.
The only remaining question is, how much tax money will green politicians squander trying to save their personal reputations, by concealing the magnitude of their failure from the public?
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Yet many countries continue to embrace the Net Zero delusion because it gives their governments an excuse to continue imposing carbon taxation on their citizens, businesses and industries without providing explanations of why they’re doing except to supposedly save the environment. Except it’s doing nothing of the sort because, as the article shows, fossil fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions keep rising, along with subsidies for green initiatives and mandates that only increase consumer living costs.
It’s high time people realized that the only real purpose of government is to provide just enough ritual and justice to keep the peasants from revolting, and no more.
According to many of our ‘elites’ (e.g., Hillary Clinton), we are revolting.
Saw this in the Daily Mail. Only hope it is true.
Ed Miliband could face axe in the Spring Reshuffle
“Ed Miliband could be the most high-profile victim of a spring reshuffle as Sir Keir Starmer sidelines the Net Zero environmental agenda as part of the Government’s ‘dash for growth’, senior Whitehall sources have said.”
“viable new sources of energy”
The big word there is “viable”.
That means reliable, dispatchable, grid-stable, and price-worthy.
Wind and solar are none of these.
Wind and Solar have simply evolved into the only power source they could have…
…Nothing that can reliably power a modern society 24/7/365
You forgot to mention the high cost of maintenance of the systems stuck out in the ocean and also you didn’t mention the culling of rare birds and bats which many land based wind turbines excel at
Other than that a fair overview of the renewables issues, perhaps increasing structural decay rates and shortening of production life might also be worth mentioning..
Bryan and Rod,
W/S systems have failed, because they deserve to fail.
HIGH COST/kWh OF W/S SYSTEMS FOISTED ONTO A BRAINWASHED PUBLIC
What is generally not known, the more weather-dependent W/S systems, the less efficient the other, traditional generators, as they inefficiently counteract the increasingly larger ups and downs of W/S output. See URL
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/fuel-and-co2-reductions-due-to-wind-energy-less-than-claimed
.
W/S systems add great cost to the overall delivery of electricity to users; the more W/S systems, the higher the cost/kWh, as proven by the UK and Germany, with the highest electricity rates in Europe, and near-zero, real-growth GDPs
At about 30% W/S, the entire system hits an increasingly thicker concrete wall, operationally and cost wise.
UK and Germany have hit the wall, more and more hours each day.
The cost of electricity delivered to users increased with each additional W/S/B system
.
Base-load nuclear, gas and coal, hydro plants are the only rational way forward, plus the additional CO2 is very beneficial for additional flora and fauna growth and increased crop yields to feed hungry people.
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/we-are-in-a-co2-famine
.
Subsidies shift costs from project Owners to ratepayers, taxpayers, government debt:
1) Federal and state tax credits, up to 50% (Community tax credit of 10 percent – Federal tax credit of 30 percent – State tax credit and other incentives of up to 10%);
2) 5-y Accelerated Depreciation write off of the entire project;
3) Loan interest deduction
.
The subsidies reduce the owning and operating cost of a project by 50%, which means electricity can be sold at 50% less than it costs to produce.
Utilities pay 15 c/kWh, wholesale, after 50% subsidies, for electricity from fixed offshore wind systems
Utilities pay 18 c/kWh, wholesale, after 50% subsidies, for electricity from floating offshore wind
Utilities pay 12 c/kWh, wholesale, after 50% subsidies, for electricity from larger solar systems
.
Excluded costs, at a future 30% W/S annual penetration on the grid, based on UK and German experience:
– Onshore grid expansion/reinforcement to connect distributed W/S systems, about 2 c/kWh
– A fleet of traditional power plants to quickly counteract W/S variable output, on a less than minute-by-minute basis, 24/7/365, which leads to more Btu/kWh, more CO2/kWh, more cost of about 2 c/kWh
– A fleet of traditional power plants to provide electricity during 1) low-wind periods, 2) high-wind periods, when rotors are locked in place, and 3) low solar periods during mornings, evenings, at night, snow/ice on panels, which leads to more Btu/kWh, more CO2/kWh, more cost of about 2 c/kWh
– Pay W/S system Owners for electricity they could have produced, if not curtailed, about 1 c/kWh
– Importing electricity at high prices, when W/S output is low, 1 c/kWh
– Exporting electricity at low prices, when W/S output is high, 1 c/kWh
– Disassembly on land and at sea, reprocessing and storing at hazardous waste sites, about 2 c/kWh
Some of these values exponentially increase as more W/S systems are added to the grid
.
The economic/financial insanity and environmental damage of it all is off the charts.
No wonder Europe’s near-zero, real-growth economy is in such big do-do
That economy has been tied into knots by inane people.
YOUR tax dollars are building these projects so YOU will have much higher electric bills.
Remove YOUR tax dollars using your vote, and none of these projects would be built, and YOUR electric bills would be lower
I also didn’t mention longevity and the fact that Wind and Solar last, at best, 1/3 as long as Gas Generation or 1/4 as long as Nuclear so the cost of replacement 3 or 4 times must also be factored…
But I did want to leave room for your response 😉
I don’t actually think the Legacy media is capable of telling the truth about the failed renewable energy transition.
Go read ANY scientific article in the Legacy media for which you have some basic expertise. You can tell from the writing where they were dutifully reporting a talking point, but as soon as they try to expand on that point, they run straight off the rails on the basic science.
It’s failing because emissions decrease doesn’t happen, it’s just emissions transfer between countries with some countries (China, India, Russia, etc.) receiving the transferred emissions while also increasing emissions as they ask for their IPCC Wealth Transfer Funding Checks. Climate Reparations.
Doesn’t even have to be science. Their basic knowledge is limited and they don’t want to learn, they want to tell.
My wife teaches middle school.
She says it is impossible to teach people that already “know everything”!
OTOH, she loves her inquisitive students.
Apparently this phenomenon is known as “Knoll’s Law” :
I first came across it as “The Gell-Mann amnesia effect” (link to Wikipedia article), apparently popularised by Michael Chrichton :
It was the early 1960’s. Brisbane. I’d just bought my first transistor radio. Sanyo, Ten Transistor, medium wave and short wave bands. Got home, unboxed it, installed AA cells. Out to the front verandah, antenna extended. Local stations, loud and clear. Started tuning across the short wave band. A strong signal, a female voice, no particular accent, reading the news. “Today Indian forces fired two hundred rounds of artillery fire at Chinese positions.” I waited till a station ID was given “This is Radio Peking”. Had supper. Back outside, still on short wave. An Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) news, “Today Chinese forces fired two hundred rounds of artillery fire at Indian positions.”
For some reason it was about that time that I started to have some slight doubts about ‘accuracy of the news’. That doubt has only been reinforced over the years. Today when I come across a ‘news source’ I’m not familiar with, I look at how they report on subjects that I have personal knowledge of. If my experience tells me “That’s wrong”, then I assume that stories about other subjects are just as wrong.
A foregone conclusion that skeptics got lied to about endlessly for a decade or more. No apology coming.
The levelised cost of renewable energy – which measures of the net present value of electricity produced over a plant’s lifetime – has declined sharply over the years. But this has not resulted into lower electricity prices.
This is because the levelized cost is not an indicator of how much it is costing to generate. The reason is alluded to elliptically in the quote. Yes, its to do with intermittency. But the real problem is that levelized cost as usually calculated takes the total of the power generated over the life of the installation, no matter when its generated, and no matter whether there is demand for it at the time of generation or not. You then divide this amount into the NPV of the cash flows, and you end up with a cost per MWh.
There are two problems with this. One is that it leaves out half the costs required to use the renewable – storage or gas powered supplementation, additional transmission. But it also overstates the amount of energy being produced, because lots of it is produced when it cannot be used. In some notorious cases in the UK an installation has been paid more not to produce than to produce. But the usual way levelized cost is calculated is to take the raw amount of energy produced as the divider, regardless of when its produced and whether it can be used.
Levelized cost as usually done is not a valid indicator of generation cost, despite being used all the time in public policy decisions. If as a finance officer of a publicly traded company you were to use such a methodology in reporting profitability, you’d fail your audit, and if you managed to conceal what you were doing well enough to pass audit you would be jailed when the whole thing blew up, as it inevitably would.
Levelized cost can fall as far as you like. No company is going to set its prices based on it. So no matter how low it falls, prices are not going to fall equivalently. Its not a proper exact analogy, but its comparable to stuffing the channel in manufacturing, reporting earnings as if you were counting real sales, and then getting your shares suspended when you had to take the inevitable writeoffs.
Setting prices based on levelized costs would be simply breaching GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles). It would be, put it more bluntly, fraudulent accounting.
Lazard makes it very clear that because of the difference in “performance characteristics” (weather dependent and intermittent) wind and solar cannot on a cost basis be “directly compared to dispatchable sources”.
:
Lazard Definitions:
I provided a scenario to Copilot based on the Henry Hub price of natural gas on February 8,2025. Here’s what Copilot came up with: Onshore wind investment value is about 1/3rd of CCGT, largely because of CCGT 3x longer life cycle.]
Fuel Cost $0.01777/kWh for CCGT
Summary
Onshore wind 1/3 value of CCGT
Offshore wind 1/4 value of CCGT
I was always a sceptic,
Now I have changed that claim to-
I was always a scientist.
Geoff S
“The total failure of Net Zero is inevitable.”
True. But given true believers like Miliband in the UK, it is also going to take a while. A few things might speed up the inevitable:
The UK is about to lose their leading role in banking due to their failure to support AI with affordable energy. They are beyond stuffed
Interesting and very valid point. Turns out that DeepSeek in China is actually the creation of a Chinese quant trading fund that first developed AI for its securities trading. So all the knowledge and some of the computing horsepower was already inside.
I think we live in a very fascinating period of history. I used to look at past historical disasters, such as the Caliph Bayezid II banning the printing press in 1485, China abandoning overseas exploration and trade in the 15th century, or the catastrophic failures of the Roman Empire, and wonder how anyone could have been so stupid.
Living in such a time gives us insight people in saner periods of history might not share.
Eric, “it seemed like a good idea at the time.”
People still employ lawyers in lawsuits, knowing that only one side wins – might as well toss a coin – a lot cheaper.
Countries arming themselves always believe that can defeat an invader, or win a conflict. One participant usually prevails – the other was wrong.
That’s the nature of people in the majority of countries.
Stupidity is what somebody categorises as failure to foresee the future, in many cases. Or in other cases, not agreeing with someone’s opinion. “You don’t agree with the consensus of climate scientists? You are obviously stupid!”
Oh well, it doesn’t matter how stupid you are, if you have luck.
Sadly, Eric, I think you are correct
That’s because they don’t have the minds to do it
Decades ago they gave up on real research, seeing it as too expensive to fund
Universities disdain it, seeing it as a distraction from their core mission of making money from fees, which they call a surplus rather than profit, since they’re charities after all
They will pay lip service, and the government throws a few peanuts towards research to give the impression something is happening
No PhD student (or postdoc) with talent would come to the UK. They would head for the US, where they receive proper graduate level training in an environment that is still conducive (just about, in some areas) to real research – US universities are so wealthy they can afford to still value it
The UK has been replaced even by Hong Kong and Singapore. These days, a UK PhD is a major impediment worldwide. It’s seen as a mark of poor training and low achievement
Neither can uk universities attract global talent easily, the salaries are pitiful compared to these countries and the US. Even mainland China pays more at the top levels
They were doing well out of the pool of well trained EU citizens before Brexit, but that’s been severely dented (not that I disagree with Brexit, I supported it)
These days we have people who think they are educated, who have pieces of paper hanging on their wall affirming that they are educated, and who occupy high policy making positions in government but who are actually ignorant of science and engineering and basic economics and who are lacking in common sense. They live in a me-too fantasy world and see the world as they wish it were and not as it actually is. There was never any chance that you could run a steel blast furnace with a windmill as your power source.
I have dealt with otherwise intelligent people who cannot see common sense all my professional life. It’s hard to fathom how such people can fail to grasp the simplest concepts which disagree with their prejudices, often to their own detriment.
I asked Lord Monckton about this once, he believes the problem is people are no longer being taught how to think, which is why he supports a return to classical education.
That is indeed the problem.
The education systems in the West, especially the Anglo Saxon countries, positively discourage independent thinking
Students in universities are allowed to think whatever they want – provided it doesn’t contradict any sacred cows, which have grown in number over the years, from climate change to anti racism, to a belief in endemic power structures that disadvantage women, the power of covid vaccines and all sorts of other nonsense
It’s not just universities. Certain messages are pushed down their throats at an early age and reinforced continually via the media and government, including social media like Facebook and Twitter, which censor or positively discourage certain viewpoints
What you end up with is conformity from the very people who are supposed to be the thinkers of the future
In addition, they are unable to listen to contradictory views without becoming total hysterical. Emotion is substituted for thought. Unable to synthesise conflicting views and evidence to form their own opinion
This is a hallmark of a failed education system
‘There was never any chance that you could run a steel blast furnace with a windmill as your power source.’
Some ideas are so stupid that only ‘intellectuals’ can come up with them.
My favourite “intellectual” idea is the solar-powered tank. Some German politicians advanced this idea entirely seriously.
The Bidenistas made battery-powered armored fighting vehicles a priority for the US military.
Nick Stokes believes this is possible.
Engineers and scientists need to shoulder much of the blame. Politicians might like to virtue signal but engineers are expected to be straight forward honest.
Thou shalt not lie.
I certainly agree – especially when it comes to engineers. Many engineers have voiced their opposition to the whole climate hysteria and energy transition scam and provided sound technical analysis and detailed calculations to support their opposition. They have been ignored, dismissed and labeled deniers. Look at the membership of any of the government boards, commissions and committees pushing decarbonization. You’ll find a near total absence of qualified engineers. There are, of course, a few who’ve jumped on board the gravy train but they’re outliers and none have made a sound argument in support of the climate scam.
Used to be true. But then ‘scientists’ like Mann and ‘engineers’ like those behind Solyndra and Ivanpah got their hands into the green money trough. Other people’s money corrupts very quickly.
“Absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
It turns out that “renewable power” corrupts even more than that!
I once lived next door to a senior wind farm engineer, a project manager level guy who would orchestrate the construction of entire wind farms.
I asked him, how can you devote your life to something you know is based on a fantasy?
He answered, “If you want to be an engineer and live in Britain, there really isn’t any other option”.
An engineer’s job is ultimately to build what the customer wants, even if that isn’t what the customer needs.
You can try to convince the customer as to the futility of their desire, but in the end, if you can’t change the customer’s mind, you can either quit or go ahead and build what the customer wants. Just make sure to document that you tried to warn the customer.
It’s frustrating, however the family needs to be fed.
Professional engineers have a code of ethics.
If a client wants something built that would ultimately disadvantage a client VS the competition, then an engineer has to talk the client out of it with reasoned arguments.
If not successful, just let the job go
You are offered a subsidy from the government of the day, funded by disguised theft from people who cannot afford to take advantage of the subsidy, so you can help save the planet and reduce your cost of living thereby improving the lot of your children. What do you do?
Most engineers take the pragmatic route and consider their family first. And if they can get paid heaps of money to design and build wind turbines, they will do that as well.
The Climate Hoax™ has been strongly supported by the UN and I doubt any engineer was involved in producing climate models that the whole fantasy is based on. You cannot blame climate scientists for their narrow education and lack of real world experience. Manabe was a meteorologist so hardly qualified to understand power and energy. The primary failure in climate models is that they are blind to solar power.
Unlike so many professions, engineers are obligated to make it work. If it fails, it is their failure and they are obligated to figure out what went wrong and fix it.
When you are responsible for the consequences of your decisions, you make better decisions.
“… The failure of net zero shows that the best governments can do is to encourage the search for viable new sources of energy. …”
We don’t need ‘new sources’ of energy. The world has ample supplies of coal, oil, gas, and uranium, and will have for centuries.
Internal combustion engines today are a modern miracle; cleaner, quieter, and much more efficient than ever, and this will only improve in future, extending their current advantage over purely electric vehicles. And let’s face it, any of the perceived environmental advantages of EVs today are largely just a mirage. Yes, EV’s will improve, too, but what will be the point?
We already have the answer to clean, cheap, reliable energy: the use of existing fuels in 21st century power facilities and practical energy efficiency standards.
I don’t have a problem with governments providing tax breaks to costs incurred researching new technology, or allowing basic research organisations to be treated as tax free charities. You never know when it might come in handy.
Just imagine where the world would be now with reliable, zero emissions, economic electricity production if all those $trillions had been applied to building nuclear plants everywhere.
Two points.
I would guess that a significant chunk of the overruns are due to lack of current experience in building nuclear plants. With the drought of new construction since TMI, a lot of the institutional knowledge has gone out the door.
Not in China.
Yes, and they should have gotten started on that decades ago. But of course the environmentalists of the day were against nuclear power, and so nothing was done.
The inherent problem with “Net Zero” is that it only exists in books, not fairy tales though that may be more accurate but books, on paper. Nothing is “Zero” emissions or emissions free. Even People emit both CO2 and CH4 through respiration and digestion. So long as Books can be cooked, emissions and offsets can be numerically in balance but emissions still happen. The only way to achieve “Net Zero” is to maneuver the “Offsets” column figures to match emissions. On Paper!
“Germany and the United Kingdom, which get a relatively large share of their electricity from renewables, also suffer from the world’s highest electricity costs. …”
Odd that he should say that, because he accompanies it with a graph showing that the industrial price in Germany is less than that in (nuclear) France:
As I am sure you are aware Nick, this graph shows the prices of renewable energy excluding hydro, not the price of electricity. The author chose a terrible graph to illustrate his point.
Germany has the highest electricity prices in the EU and is driving power intensive industries out of the country as a result. Its prices are high because the cost of mitigating intermittency is greater than the value of the electricity. This too you know.
“this graph shows the prices of renewable energy excluding hydro,”
No, it shows the amount excluding hydro. The price is just the price. How would you even work out a “price excluding hydro”?
A snip from the graph YOU posted Nick.
Nick was hoping you wouldn’t pick up on that.
Yes. Transcribing:
Renewable energy excluding hydro, energy prices in KWh.
Note the comma. The first part describes the x-axis (labelled ‘Electricity generated by renewables’), the second y (labelled ‘Industrial Energy Prices’) .
You didn’t answer what “energy prices excluding hydro” could even mean, or be calculated.
You didn’t answer what “energy prices excluding hydro” could even mean, or be calculated.
Nick that is totally disingenuous even for you.
Just answer. What does it mean?
The sentence under the graph, with two parts separated by a comma, is perfectly clear.
If its perfectly clear, then why do you need an explanation?
You know why David, he is a classic ankle biter.
Hi Nick, do you know if there are any subsidies for industrial electricity consumers in Germany included in the industrial price in Germany?
More than likely, as in California, residential customers pay more per KWh for electricity than Industrial/Commercial businesses do effectively causing Residential Customers to involuntarily subsidize Commercial Customers
‘Industrial price in Germany’. NS, you know or should have known the ‘industrial price’ in your chart is heavily subsidized to avoid losing German industry. The retail consumers take it on the chin. BTW, ‘Knew or should have known’ is the US legal standard for gross negligence.
It is not so much the cost of wind and solar, it is the cost of implementation into a stable grid…
… as shown by this study by IEE Japan on the cost of implementing VRE into the VietNam grid.
There are schemes to help companies pay the price. But these don’t change the price.
It isn’t my graph – it is the one he presents.
This answers my question too about subsidised prices for industrial electricity consumers in Germany.
Was it that hard?
Stokes asserts:
There are schemes to help companies pay the price. But these don’t change the price.
Your “schemes” are merely subsidies paid for by the German taxpayer, of course. There is no magic money tree.
True. You would never get away with such blatant subsidies in the state I live in. State statute specifically says that electric rates shall be non-discriminatory. A utility would get their ass sued off in a heartbeat.
Nick, I am disappointed that you would try to dispute this undeniable reality.
Renewables are only cheaper if you include a high CO2 emission externality in your calculation, ignore the impact of intermittency in terms of requiring a parallel fossil fuel or nuclear energy system, or expensive battery backup, and assume renewable energy can be used to manufacture renewable energy plant and equipment.
Eric, I am just showing the graph presented by your chosen source. He says the price is lower than France.
Fun fact – the author is the brother of the actress Anna Chancellor, and of course descended from Asquith (who isn’t?).
I don’t think we should get too excited by a few outliers, unless you think Germany is still on track for 80% renewables by 2030.
Germany derived 77.6% of its energy from fossil fuel in 2023. I suspect subsidies are shielding renewable and likely fossil fuel energy providers from full economic costs.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany
As for France, they’ve been spending a lot on infrastructure lately, repairing old plants and building new plants. Coupled with European energy shortages this probably created a sellers market for electricity
Nick, I guess to are trying to divert attention away from the fact that adding CO2 to air doesn’t make the air hotter. Am I right?
In relation to the price of electricity, as you say “The price is just the price.”, which is hardly a shattering philosophical achievement.
If you prefer your electricity from a particular source, good for you! I don’t care, as long as the light comes on when I operate the switch, and I can afford it. If you can provide me with cheaper on-demand electricity, I’d be a fool not to buy it, wouldn’t I?
But of course you can’t – you believe that adding CO2 to air makes it hotter. In my opinion that makes you a fool, a fraud, or just simply naive and gullible.
Which are you?
According to Statista
https://www.statista.com/statistics/263492/electricity-prices-in-selected-countries/#:~:text=Germany%2C%20Belgium%2C%20and%20Ireland%20had,more%20than%2010%20times%20less.
Germany pays 39¢/KWh
Belgium and Ireland pay 37¢/KWh
The UK pays 35¢/KWh
Far more than your graph
“Far more than your graph”
It isn’t my graph. It is Eric’s source, and talks about prices for industry, which are closer to wholesale. Statista are talking about residential prices, which includes retailers costs etc.
You quoted it so as far as your post goes it is your graph
Cherry picking much?
No. It’s from Eric’s cited source, and it is the only graph he shows.
Institutionalized bullshit, Nick. I spent part of my electric power production and distribution career in setting rates for the different rate classes. We consistently (not exclusively) used retail rates to subsidize industrial rates. Endless games can be paid with taxpayer money to subsidize any particular ratepayer class.
The fact of the matter is that every attempt to mitigate human CO2 emissions in the last 40 years has had ZERO effect on the atmospheric concentration of CO2.
At some point, people will realize that the human population will have to be reduced in order to reduce CO2 emissions, in order to “Save the Earth”.
Any volunteers?
Why oh why people is the perpetually out of reach shiny object always more attractive than a rock solid solution to a problem? I’ll mention fusion energy and renewables as the former whilst nuclear fission is the latter.
just here in Oak Ridge we have two different small modular reactor projects planned or approved as well as supporting industries for several others.
SMR varieties are just one of several 4G fission solutions. Others include molten salt reactors (both Uranium and Thorium cycles), and ceramic pebble beds. My own 4G bet is on uranium molten salt first, because can consume most 2-3G ‘spent‘ fuel, thereby solving two problems at once.
I’m a little dubious on molten salt, the salt is horrifyingly corrosive, molten Thorium or Uranium fluoride salt will exchange ions with pretty much anything.
More a fan of pebble bed.
“More a fan of pebble bed.”
I suspect that the small pebble bed modular design that is now in commercial operation in China will become a regular build in both China and abroad.
They are now working on one with 3 times the capacity.
Technology that works well and is totally safe (by all accounts)
Time will tell.
I’m also a bit dubious of the MSR concept on the issue of corrosion, but also on the issue of dealing with the fission products. With both current LWRs and pebble bed, the fission products are effectively sealed in the fuel. The one advantage of MSRs is that neutron poisons come out automatically in the case of Xenon, or could be processed out.
I agree with Rud in that the Uranium cycle using spent LWR fuel makes more sense than the thorium cycle.
My preference for 4G technology is the Integral Fast Reactor – there’s a copy of The EBR-II Fuel Cycle Story sitting in my bookshelf.
Net zero is a non issue, added CO2 will not cause catastrophe. We have wasted our time, money and resources on a lie. Fire up all fossil fuel and nuclear generators. Build new fossil fuel and nuclear generators. Remove all wind and solar from the grid. Withdraw all net zero style mandates. The time for this wasteful meaningless exercise is past. Time to move on.
JoNova via Reuters piece says, “The failure of net zero shows that the best governments can do is to encourage the search for viable new sources of energy. …” Wrong. The real answer is to stop blocking oil and gas and do it soonest. These Net Zero idiots need to understand the science, material balance and economics of climate change and understand that eliminating oil and gas is basically cutting off you fingers to spite your face. If you need help with the math and science I am happy to help.
If politics seriously worked properly the Net Zero delusion could not and should not have happened.
That’s the trouble with the virtue signalling green agenda liars who have made much money deluding their customers about climate change in concert with media outlets unable or unwilling to tell the truth. Their lies should now cost them dear.
Which politicians are going to fall on their swords and when?
Where is the compensation coming from for all the extra costs the public have had to pay to satisfy the delusions of these political con artists?
Are we going to get very cheap energy for the foreseeable future by way of compensation?
That sort of punishment might deter any political animal from trying the same delusion on us again (for awhile.at least).
Well, it is a moot point for England, they just decided to throw all their money into the toilet of Ukraine, so no energy production for the peons.
Gotta keep those kickbacks flowing into the correct pockets…
Any child with a calculator and a basic understanding of wind and solar could knew this.