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this post was submitted on 21 Sep 2023
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Fossil fuel based solutions are significantly worse for climate change than nuclear. Saying that the other renewables are better is matter of discussion, but renewables without nuclear are not going to make the cut. Using both renewables and nuclear is best to cut emissions.
nuclear is not viable. It is not stabilizing but endangering the grid as nuclear plants are vulnerable to heat waves and dry spells. The kind of westher events to increase drastically with climate change. In Europe many nuclear reactors had to be powered down in the last summers because they couldnt get cooled anymore. Also they put further stress on limited water ressources by literally evaporating the water away.
You can life without electricity but you cant life without water.
I should have a copy pasta ready because every time nuclear is coming in a conversation we get the same argument about nuclear being vulnerable to climate change because some french reactors have been powered down in summer and trying to imply that renewables energies are immune to weather events
Yes some reactors have been powered down in summer because of heat wave but only some of the older design that send heated water back in the river. It's not a problem for the majority of the reactors.
It's not an issue because most of the reactors are still online, because summer is the moment with the lowest electrical consumption anyway and because in summer solar production is at the highest point so the power grid is fine even with few reactors off.
On the other hand winter is the moment where the power grid is under stress, December, January and February the country is peaking its electrical consumption, solar production is at the lowest point so reactors need to be fully operational at this period. It's fitting perfectly with the climate since this is also the months when the water is at the highest level and heat is not an issue.
But since we are talking about extreme weather events what is happening to solar panels during hail storms and to wind turbines during heavy storms ? They can take damage too, renewable energies are not immune to climate either.
Edit: Nuclear isn't the perfect solution, renewables are not perfect either but we need to work with what we have and using both nuclear where possible and renewables is probably the best option we have.