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A lot of countries are doing just fine using only renewables to replace energy generation from fossil fuels. Nuclear is really expensive while renewables are the cheapest. There's just no reason to use nuclear.
there are three.
Albania, Iceland, and Paraguay obtain essentially all of their electricity from renewable sources (Albania and Paraguay 100% from hydroelectricity, Iceland 72% hydro and 28% geothermal). You may notice Solar is not mentioned.
I didn't say countries that already successfully did it, I meant countries that are in the process of doing so. Germany, for example, has no nuclear energy and is getting 60-70% of its energy from renewables. There are countries that are already further along but building renewables takes time. Building a nuclear power plant also takes years but you get nothing from it until it's finished.
Germany, for example, has no nuclear energy and is getting 60-70% of its energy from renewables.
Gas and Coal are 40% of the Power generation inside German borders but that is not the sum of German consumption. When nuclear was cut more gas was used. This also completely ignores the electricity generated elsewhere in the EU that Germany is Importing.
https://www.ceicdata.com/en/germany/electricity-imports-and-exports/electricity-imports-france
This replay and its sources fit as a reply to your comment as well
When nuclear was cut more gas was used
Thats just wrong. Fossil fuels actually went down while renewables went up.
Im sick and tired of the right wing imports "argument" from people that clearly have no idea how the European electricity market works. Germany has the capacity to easily produce all of its electricity but its way wiser to not do that and import from other countries since that can be cheaper than ramping up power plants. In the past Germany used to keep running coal plants even for export but CO2 emission certificates keep getting more expensive while other European countries have been expanding their renewable power plants resulting in cheaper electricity which results in Germany exporting less and importing some of that cheap electricity now because 1. exporting electricity produced via coal is less profitable now and 2. importing a certain amount is getting cheaper than powering up a reactor yourself. 2023 most of those imports (~50%) were from renewables btw. 24% of imports were from nuclear which is 3.6% of the whole electricity production and even that keeps decreasing.
https://www.tagesschau.de/faktenfinder/ein-jahr-atomausstieg-deutschland-100.html https://www.agora-energiewende.de/fileadmin/Projekte/2023/2023-35_DE_JAW23/A-EW_317_JAW23_WEB.pdf#page=44
Germany can do that because they opened new coal plants, plus they can buy cheap (mostly nuclear) electricity from France when their renewables are performing suboptimally and they need to meet high demand
No, that's just false. Germany has been steadily reducing the amount of coal they use in favor of renewables and could easily sustain itself with the energy it produces but sometimes it's cheaper to buy from other countries. Most of the time that's wind energy from the nordic countries but sometimes it's nuclear from France. France is paying billions of Euros to subsidize nuclear tho. Germany also only imported 2% of its energy in 2023 and 25% of that (so 0,5% from the total), was from French nuclear energy.
Sources:
- https://www.energy-charts.info/downloads/Ein_Jahr_ohne_Kernkraftwerke.pdf
- https://energy-charts.info/charts/renewable_share/chart.htm?l=de&c=DE
- https://energy-charts.info/charts/import_export/chart.htm?l=de&c=DE&year=2023
- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levelized_cost_of_electricity
- https://www.pveurope.eu/markets/energy-policy-fairy-tale-cheap-french-nuclear-power
- https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/french-utility-edf-lifts-cost-estimate-new-reactors-67-bln-euros-les-echos-2024-03-04/