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They really don't.

They really do. Especially if you scale solar up to what you need to reduce CO2 emissions by any real degree.

The problem with nuclear "waste" and "safety", is that they aren't real problems. Current storage practices are perfectly adequate until fuel can be reprocessed, and objectively speaking, nuclear is already the safest energy source.

The NRC has been a real problem, but now that Jaczko, the cancerous anti-nuclear head of the NRC has been removed, and Trump recently signed NEICA and NEIMA into law, the future is a bit brighter for nuclear energy.

Unfortunately, the "environmental" idiocy to which you refer is well entrenched and funded by fossil money.

Greens do love natural gas, and are well-funded by gas interests. Germany really takes the cake though, trying to replace French nuclear with Russian gas.

A minor correction: combined-cycle gas plants are more expensive and less responsive. Cheaper open-cycle turbines which are half as efficient are the preferred partner to wind and solar, even though this unholy combination emits more than combined-cycle turbines alone. (owing to the low capacity factors of intermittent sources) In reality, wind and solar are expensive ornaments for green-washing gas.

Ignorance by the people may enable the opposition, but anti-nuclear groups know better, and are deliberately engaged in a war on nuclear, funded by and benefiting fossil interests. Nuclear threatens to replace fossil energy entirely, while renewables will continue to depend on it as an increasingly expensive crutch for a family of technologies that can't stand on their own.

For the TL;DR version of that link focusing on a concise presentation of data, see the complete case for nuclear.

Exactly. Also the Sierra Club took funding from Natural Gas CEOs

Ignorance by the people may enable the opposition, but anti-nuclear groups know better, and are deliberately engaged in a war on nuclear, funded by and benefiting fossil interests. Nuclear threatens to replace fossil energy entirely, while renewables will continue to depend on it as an increasingly expensive crutch for a family of technologies that can't stand on their own.

For the TL;DR version of that link focusing on a concise presentation of data, see the complete case for nuclear.

Exactly. Also the Sierra Club took funding from Natural Gas CEOs

Ignorance by the people may enable the opposition, but anti-nuclear groups know better, and are deliberately engaged in a war on nuclear, funded by and benefiting fossil interests. Nuclear threatens to replace fossil energy entirely, while renewables will continue to depend on it as an increasingly expensive crutch for a family of technologies that can't stand on their own.

For the TL;DR version of that link focusing on a concise presentation of data, see the complete case for nuclear.

Ignorance by the people may enable the opposition, but anti-nuclear groups know better, and are deliberately engaged in a war on nuclear, funded by and benefiting fossil interests. Nuclear threatens to replace fossil energy entirely, while renewables will continue to depend on it as an increasingly expensive crutch for a family of technologies that can't stand on their own.

For the TL;DR version of that link focusing on a concise presentation of data, see the complete case for nuclear.

Hydro almost doubles the concrete needed for wind, which itself uses ten times that of nuclear, so your statement is horribly wrong. (See Materials throughput by type of energy source, which is based on DOE findings.) Nuclear is the most material efficient energy source, greatly reducing the amount of mining and land needed. Sadly, there is a pervasive delusion that resource consumption doesn't matter, and no sacrifice is too great in the pursuit of "green" energy.

Efficiency? Thinking efficiency will stop climate change has always been a silly idea. The problem with efficiency measures is that you are still using fossil fuels. Efficiency without nuclear/hydro is making better use of fossil fuels. Increasing the efficiency of an office building by 1-2% is great, but when the power is generated from fossil fuels you are still releasing greenhouse gasses. Efficiency will not save us from climate change.

As for cost did you know if Germany or California had invested in new Nuclear instead of renewables they would already have a 100% clean electrical grid? The other problem is transportation. A large nuclear baseload will make it easier to charge EV cars and/or produce hydrogen/ammonia fuel.

Jerry Brown's Secret War on Clean Energy

Oh, dear. An organisation called "Environmental Progress" that just advocates for nuclear power plants and nothing else? Where were they when nuclear waste was dumped in the middle of a formerly pristine national park in the middle of Australia?

Maybe that's the progress part....

CA doesn't have 100% clean renewables either, if you want to play that game. All energy sources produce waste, and the alternatives are much worse, even with wind and solar. Waste that isn't contained is called pollution, and only nuclear energy creates such a small waste volume that it is manageable to contain, and required by law.

Stop Letting Your Ridiculous Fears Of Nuclear Waste Kill The Planet

Jerry Brown's Secret War on Clean Energy
Had They Bet On Nuclear, Not Renewables, Germany & California Would Already Have 100% Clean Power

Nuclear is just another unsustainable tech.

Here's someone that disagrees with you.
http://cmo-ripu.blogspot.com/2...

And another.
http://environmentalprogress.o...

Here's a couple more.
http://www.roadmaptonowhere.co...

And another.
https://www.brightnewworld.org...

I assume you can cite someone to make your claim? Perhaps you have a doctorate in some relevant field that makes you an expert on this?

We're running out of options, if we haven't already. We will need nuclear power. We need it now.

The future where wind and solar power "100%" of demand on record days, and lignite is burned the rest of the time. I live on Earth, where most of us want reliable and clean energy around the clock to support civilization, even if many ignorant folk don't realize that greenwashed coal isn't really clean energy.

You appear to be missing the point about coal, or are being intentionally obtuse. Both solar and coal are "free", yet both need collecting. At least the energy from coal is already concentrated and stored, and can be released where and when demanded. Solar needs a vast area of materials intensive collectors, a large and underutilized/uneconomical grid to concentrate and transmit the power, and some means to store it, all of which are hopelessly uneconomical at the scale needed, except pumped hydro, which is limited by geography.

Nuclear provides all the benefits of coal, with a much smaller environmental footprint than any of the so-called "renewables".

Citation? "Hit piece" probably being unwelcome facts, as typically demoted by abusive moderators. Renewables, and PV solar in particular, use an enormous amount of materials in addition to vast areas of land, for a relatively small amount of power. That isn't debatable, just look it up. Listening to the advocates, you would think they are made of rainbows, and exclusively placed over worthless empty land. In reality, people are mowing down forests to place PV, and even deserts aren't as empty as they look from orbit.

Incentives for clean energy, disincentives for dirty energy.

If only California would do that. Instead, they provide incentives for fossil+greenwashing, and discourage clean nuclear energy. Not unexpected when you elect a corrupt governer invested in fossil.

See Targeted alpha therapy. It would be well-developed today if not for a contingent of ignorant and foolish people resistant to progress in this area, many who hold thinly veiled anti-human beliefs often masquerading as environmentalism.

However, why cure disease, when big pharma can sell an expensive life-long drug treatment? Perhaps societies should be rethinking how they fund medicine, and direct it to improving human health instead of maximizing profit.

California in Danger: Why the Dream is Dying and How We Can Save It

Actually it doesn't. It merely oscillates a bit between hard coal and lignite. The percentage of coal in power generation stays pretty much constant, with natural gas replacing nuclear. See here: http://energypost.eu/wp-conten...

Or another article with more details: http://environmentalprogress.o...

I disagree with you. It turns out a lot of scientists disagree with you as well. The Dutch also disagree with you.

The leading 100% renewable plan has been debunked by the national academy of science. It is not feasible with current technology. Energy storage is expensive. Yes nuclear is expensive as well, but 4th generation reactors can be factory built. The Dutch are innovating in that technology.

We need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. There is a reason the world's leading climate scientists have repeatedly said nuclear power is the only viable path forward on climate change

Also Germany tried what you did and they have failed. Only 34% of German electricity is clean. Germany has spent a quarter of a trillion dollars, and their electricity is 10x dirty then their neighbor France. Scroll to the third graph comparing Germany and France. You will notice that Germany emits 560 grams of CO2 per kWh and France emits 58 grams of CO2 per kWh. That is almost 10x.

You are a liar. Tell us more about the 1000's of dead people you personally witnessed.

France does not import 10% of its power from Germany. Yes it does: https://www.energy-charts.de/e...

But is easy to just check CO2 output and see that France is much lower. Not difficult with 25% less population :D

My god you are ignorant. That chart just shows total German imports and exports, it doesn't even have the total power used in France at all, that is a German export chart.

As for CO2 output, there is the thing called 'per capita'. Have you ever heard of it? Germany is almost twice as high as France in per capita CO2 emissions. https://www.google.com/search?...

And if you want to just look at electrical generation, you can do it 'per TWH';

"In 2016, Germany generated 545 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity at an average rate of approximately 560 grams of carbon dioxide emitted per kWh. By contrast, France generated 530 TWh of electricity at an average rate of approximately 58 grams of carbon dioxide emitted per kWh. In terms of carbon emissions from electricity, this means that Germany emitted almost exactly ten times as much as France -- over 300 million metric tonnes."

http://environmentalprogress.o...

Your problem is you just say stuff you want to be true without even checking to see if it is true. Why did you know now this about Germany and France?. It is common knowledge. Are you still going to ignore this well established fact and make your false claims?

As long as my previous post was I failed to complete my thought. If we do not burn natural gas efficiently, in combined cycle plants, then it produces as much CO2 output as coal. Mix unreliable energy like wind and solar with natural gas turbine backup and you end up with as much energy per CO2 as if you burned coal.

Wind and solar do not reduce CO2 output per energy produced because we have no other technology to back that up than natural gas and coal. What else is there? Nuclear. Any other technology, such as some sort of storage, is not mature enough for utility scale use.

Even if we can replace current coal with a mix of natural gas and "unreliables" the net CO2 output is no different than if we burned coal. You can say it's not coal powered, and that might be true technically, but the outcome in CO2 output is no different.

Germany tried to reduce CO2 output without nuclear power and failed.
http://www.environmentalprogre...

You simply can replace all coal plants by wind and solar, as Germany is doing.

How that working out?
http://www.environmentalprogre...

Not so well it seems. Turns out that building that much solar and wind is hard. Turns out that it also means relying on wind that might not blow and sun that might not shine.

Nuclear power has serious problems: WASTE.

First, problem solved, drop it in a hole. Burying nuclear waste is a perfectly acceptable solution. We can get more complicated with recovering some valuable industrial and medical isotopes first, reducing considerably the mass that needs to be buried, but it's a solved problem.

Second, what's the greater risk? Is nuclear waste all that big of a problem if the alternative is choosing between global warming or energy prices tripling? Nuclear power keeps energy prices low, reduces greenhouse gases, for the small price of having to bury some of the waste it produces.

If you fear nuclear waste more than global warming then global warming is nothing to fear.

My country exited nuclear power long ago, if you have not noticed.

Oh, we noticed. You shut down your nuclear power to only see your carbon output increase and the cost of energy go up. We are all rolling on the floor laughing.

So arguing with me about nuclear power is completely pointless.

I'm not arguing with you, I'm replying for the benefit of others. If you want to keep this going then that's fine by me, I'll just laugh at Germany some more.

You are obviously an idiot ...

Germany is burning coal. That is what happens when you do not have.a clean source of baseload energy. Fact.

Or do you realy think the nation of minds and thinkers and engineers consists only out of idiots?

Well if they are anything like you yes I do. I think the antinuclear movement is made up of feckless weak-minded idiots who believe lies told to them by the fossil fuel industry.

Which pollution does a nuckear power plant prevent?

Air pollution you stupid fucking twit. And learn to spell.

You can google about both power sources btw ... what is preventing you from getting a clue instead of insulting fellow /. readers!

I provided sources for everything, you provided 0 sources. You insulted me several times. You insulted me first. If you can't take the heat stay out of the kitchen you stupid feckless shitwad.

Inside the Energiewende
German Emissions Increase in 2016
Electricity Production in Germany

Replacing coal with natural gas improves carbon emissions some, but then what? Natural gas is not being replaced by wind and solar; at best it reduces the amount burned, and not by a lot. "Environmental" organizations know this, and it was recently disclosed that NRDC is directly invested in natural gas. Transmission lines are also too expensive to leave idle most of the time with wind and solar, so they typically colocate a natural gas plant near the site.

The problem is that there is no path to low emissions, only a perpetual lock in of fossil fuels. Energy storage could solve the problem if available, but the technology isn't there yet, and may be further out than fusion. Those who suggest that solutions are just around the corner are either ignorant or lying.