News & Articles on Nuclear Power
Nuclear is not renewable, but it’s listed here for organizational reasons. I wasn’t really interested in nuclear, didn’t think it had any future, and that it was effectively dead. I wasn’t writing about it. However, like a vampire, nuclear kept rising from the grave and stalking the land. Talk continued of reviving it one more time. This talk had a real effect on public policy in North America, especially in Ontario, Canada. Thus, I felt it necessary to include nuclear topics and this was the place on my web site where it was easiest to insert
Beyond Baseload Power: A New Paradigm of Power System Operation
By
Toby Couture
With the rise of low-cost wind and solar power, this baseload paradigm has come under strain. Utilities and regulators interested in keeping electricity prices low are starting to introduce variable renewables like wind and solar at scale instead: since the latter have zero marginal costs, they typically get dispatched first, making them by default the new foundation of the power system. In the process, other generating units are having to ramp and flex around them.
Poland at a Crossroads: Nuclear Delays vs Renewable Success
By
Michael Barnard
Poland’s nuclear program is already failing on its own terms. It lacks the conditions that historically enabled nuclear to succeed. It is not aligned with a national weapons program, it is already delayed, and it will force the creation of nuclear-specific flexibility services on a grid where wind and solar are scaling faster than expected. It is a megaproject at high risk of spiraling costs and time overruns, and it follows in the footsteps of a past program that collapsed under similar pressures. The better path for Poland is to lean into what is working. Wind, solar, interconnection, and storage are delivering emissions cuts and reducing dependence on coal today. Doubling down on those successes offers the fastest, cheapest, and least risky route to a secure, decarbonized Polish energy system.
Beyond Baseload Power: Toward a New Paradigm of Power System Operation
By
Toby Couture
But today, in a world with abundant and inexpensive solar and wind power, the economics have shifted – variable renewables are becoming the new foundation of the system, and other resources are starting to flex and ramp around them. This shift represents one of the most fundamental changes to the way power systems are designed and operated since Tesla and Edison waged battles over AC vs. DC.
Two stories: 1) How SMRs may curb nuclear development and… 2) Why Reform can’t cancel UK’s renewable energy projects
By
David Toke
All in all the anti-renewable forces of Trumpism on both sides of the Atlantic, are, in effect, puffing up the prospects of SMRs to obscure their vandalism of renewable energy programmes. However, whilst large renewable deployments will continue, there will be meagre results from the SMR programmes. These will constitute a much lower amount of total capacity compared to the programmes for building conventional reactors.
Sizewell’s Exploding Budget Exposes Europe’s Nuclear Blindspot
By
Michael Barnard
The recent announcement that the UK’s Sizewell C nuclear generation construction’s projected cost has doubled from £20 billion in 2020 to nearly £38 billion today is shocking but predictable. For anyone following Europe’s nuclear power saga, such an escalation is not an anomaly but rather a continuation of a deeply entrenched pattern. This project, part of Europe’s broader push for nuclear power to meet climate goals, is again raising fundamental questions about whether European governments and utilities have truly laid the groundwork for successful nuclear power scaling, or if they continue to underestimate the scale of the task.
Two stories: Denmark’s soaring renewable success and global nuclear construction disaster
By
David Toke
Renewables will make up more than of Danish 100% electricity in a couple of years time and just wind and solar not long after that. On the other hand a new study concludes that, around the world, nuclear power projects have cost overruns that are over 100%. Solar and wind have very low, if any cost overruns.
The Siren’s Song: Nuclear Accident Calendar by David Weisman
By
Paul Gipe
I’ll never forget the sound of the siren–or the screams–coming through the long distance phone line from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania on …
The Fossil Fuel Industry: Trapped & Dangerous
By
Steve Smiley
Brandi Carlile, at a Gorge Amphitheater concert a couple years ago, remarked that her father, a hunter, told her the most dangerous animal was one that was wounded and cornered. This is a good characterization of the present fossil fuel industry. They are cornered and dangerous because the simple truth is that the fossil fuel industry is no longer economically competitive.
It’s money that has stopped nuclear power, not planning problems
By
David Toke
Of all the nonsense about nuclear power that one hears, the idea that somehow it is planning problems rather than financial issues that stop its development surely takes the biscuit. The Government bats away any formal planning objection made to its nuclear plant when companies want to build them. Yet the UK government is flogging nuclear planning problems as a scapegoat for the technology’s failure for all it is worth. And it is talking about the non-existent concept of small modular reactors (see HERE). Is this a smokescreen to hide its problems with financing Sizewell C?
Some early lessons of 2024 in the energy sector
By
Jérôme Guillet
Meanwhile, incumbents (utilities), long used to dominating the debate and government policies have been caught on the receiving end of the anti-renewables propaganda they spewed in the past, and which have been weaponized wittingly or unwittingly by the political opponents of the greens, usually the rightwing populists, who are ascendant right now. So the current debate on energy is highly polarized, mostly tribal, and renewables are on the losing side in the public debate. It does not matter much because the march of solar and batteries is relentless and irreversible, but it makes policy making harder, and investment decisions scarier.
