This week’s Current Climate, which every Saturday brings you a balanced view of sustainability news.
Plastic bag rests on the ocean floor, tens of thousands of feet below the surface.It took four hours to complete the almost seven-mile descent from sunny warm ocean surface to dark frigid bottom. Once there, unique translucent life forms were visible amid the talc-like soft sand of the Trench bottom. But even Earth’s deepest point features reminders of the human world.
I've been working in this field for 40 years, and the perception of the sector compared to its reality has never, ever, been larger. If you just look at the numbers, it's pretty simple. In 2021, there were ten [nuclear reactors] closures and six startups. The net capacity differential was minus 3.5 GW. When you look at the previous 20 years, you get 98 closures and 95 startups. But if you exclude China, the net [difference] is minus 50. That's a very significant decline.
We need to distinguish very carefully between new nuclear and the existing nuclear because new nuclear makes the climate crisis worse. This is very clear because of two reasons. One, building nuclear power plants is a very slow process, and not the kind where you can throw money at to make it faster. And obviously it's too expensive. If we're talking about a [climate] emergency, we have to invest in a way that reduces the most emissions in the fastest time.
Four reactors were started in the U.S. in 2013, two were abandoned in 2017 and two are still under construction and getting further delayed, while costs increase. While at 1000 megawatt these weren’t small, builder Westinghouse had claimed the modular building mode would allow for a three-year construction time. That did not pan out.
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