And I’ll throw in a picture of nuclear’s market share decay for free….

Nuclear Power Is Being Abandoned Worldwide. As a proportion of all electricity generated, nuclear peaked in 1993 at 17% and has now fallen to 10%. The number of reactors peaked in 2002 at 444, compared with 427 today. The share of electricity they produce is down 12% from its 2006 peak. http://www.globalresearch.ca/nuclear-power-is-being-abandoned-worldwide/5344082

Europe forecast to decommission 150 nuclear plants by 2030 http://www.edie.net/news/6/Europe-forecast-to-decommission-150-nuclear-plants-by-2030/22599/

Oh, I have those numbers…

Japan has just closed 54. Some may come back on line but public resistance is growing.

Germany has just closed/is closing 17.

The US has closed/announced 5 closures.

Exelon is likely closing 3 this year and possibly 6.

Belgium will close 3 reactors by 2015 and 4 more by 2025.

The Philippines is converted 1 reactor to natural gas.

Switzerland will close 1 reactor in 2019 and their other 4 by 2035.

That’s 97 reactors closing. Even if Japan brings a few back on line and you discount closures past 2025 the number of reactors worldwide looks to be sagging.

(Actually there are more like 60 reactors being built, not 20. But 60 – 97 does not equal a renaissance. More of a gradual death.)

Oh, I forgot. The US has between one and two dozen other reactors in deep financial trouble and they might go away before 2020.

Wind and solar would be fine. Both are already competitive with existing electricity generation sources.

No new nuclear reactors would be built. Private money simply won’t finance them unless taxpayers accept the risk.

No new coal plants would be built. Too expensive.

Natural gas would be OK.

Emerging technologies would be hurt, but that should go without saying.

Nuclear has a 60 year installation history, renewables have been installed at a serious level well less than half that long. One would expect a technology which has had over twice as long to grow to have greater output.

Nuclear received 10x as much in subsidies in its first 15 years as did renewables and most of the renewable subsidies went to large corn farms as an ethanol subsidy.

Then, we never do a full accounting of the subsidies nuclear receives and has received. Taxpayers are on the hook for the cost of a serious nuclear accident. You’ll notice that the costs of the Fukushima disaster are expected to be at least $250 billion and Japanese taxpayers are picking up the tab, not the people who owned the reactors. Same would be the case in the US. And US taxpayers are on the hook for dealing with all the radioactive waste.

Additionally, we built over 20 GW of pump-up storage in order to incorporate nuclear on our grids. Those are subsidy expenses that are never attributed to nuclear.

And a very significant number of reactors were begun and never finished or brought on line but shut down after only a short time of operation. Taxpayers/ratepayers paid out billions and billions of dollars for those boondoggles. More unrecognized subsidies.

The bottom line is that nuclear energy has received massive amounts of subsidy and the price of electricity from a reactor keeps getting more expensive.

Renewable have received only a tiny amount in comparison and the price of their electricity keeps going down and down and down.

Some investments pay dividends. Some don’t.

—

Now, your link – you do understand what the Breakthrough Institute is, don’t you? You familiar with Dick Cheney and Karl Rove? They’re right there behind the curtain. Do some checking.

The point is that wind, solar, and nuclear need to be subsidized to defeat cheaper fossil fuels. Using the cost argument against Nuclear is shooting holes in your renewable feet. Neither nuclear or wind and solar can defeat fossil fuels alone.

http://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/voices/michael-shellenberger-and-ted-nordhaus/no-solar-way-around-it

http://bravenewclimate.com/2013/03/22/counting-hidden-costs-of-energy/

California can now fairly easily and economically replace both coal and nuclear with wind and solar power. And it’ll actually be far less expensive in the long run.

Laurence

Air conditioning is being installed in great amounts in Australia. Australia is the “AU” in the paragraph.

The extra load created by AC in AU has a created a need for grid improvement and that infrastructure has caused electricity prices to rise.

Apparently there is a group of people, perhaps very few, perhaps fossil fuel employees, who spam the web claiming that solar is causing electricity prices to rise when, in fact, solar actually lowers the price of electricity as it is in Germany.

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Now, you dispute the import/export numbers I posted for Germany. Please show us a link to reliable numbers.

I’ll give you some more numbers which I believe correct and the link to those numbers is at the bottom.

Beginning in 2008 Germany began exporting significantly more electricity than they imported. In 2009 through 2011 Germany exported about 32% more electricity than they imported. In 2012 they exported 77% more than they imported.

Years 2008 – 2009 – 2010 – 2011 – 2012

Exported 62510 62310 61700 61700 54130

Imported 46130 42870 41670 41670 12280

Net Export 16380 19440 20030 20030 41850

% Net Exp 26.20% 31.20% 32.46% 32.46% 77.31%

http://www.indexmundi.com/g/g.aspx?v=83&c=gm&l=en

Germany has been a net exporter of electricity at least as far back as 2008. And since beginning to close its nuclear plants has exported even more.

Now. Can you prove your assertion?

Solar power is more expensive than Nuclear power, solar power subsidies are the major cause.

That wrong that Germany exports power, they import power because solar didn’t work as a reliable source of energy, Germany now paying the price for closing down its reactors, Germany never imported power before.

New nuclear is more expensive than new solar.

New nuclear is at least $0.12/kWh and probably much higher. That does not include government subsidies which nuclear receives.

New solar is being installed at less than $0.10/kWh. That price includes no subsidies.

Old (paid off) nuclear is cheaper than solar, but it is the price of wind and natural gas that are killing old nuclear. They are causing off-peak losses. And solar is also hurting old nuclear because it is helping to drop the price of peak supply.

The wholesale price of electricity has dropped by 10% in Germany due to solar on their grid. The problem is that the utility companies are not passing those savings on to retail customers.

Germany has been a net exporter of electricity for several years.

In 2012 Germany exported 66.6 TWh of electricity, earning 3.7 billion euros or 5.6 cents/kWh.

In 2012 Germany imported 43.8 TWh of electricity, paying 2.3 billion euros or 5.25 cents/kWh.

http://www.renewablesinternational.net/german-power-exports-more-valuable-than-imports/150/537/61663/

Germany exported 52% more electricity than it imported. For the 43.8 TWh of electricity they sold/bought back they earned a 7% profit per kWh.

The high price of electricity is due to necessary grid upgrades because more people are installing AC. If people weren’t installing solar in AU and reducing demand then the cost of electricity would be much higher than it is.

Take a good look at where you’re getting your information. Someone has sold you a big load of bunk.

Between 1994 and 2009 renewables received average annual subsidies of $0.37 billion.

Nuclear received 10x as much in subsidies in its first 15 years than renewable energy received in its first 15 years.

http://www.dblinvestors.com/documents/What-Would-Jefferson-Do-Final-Version.pdf

$182 billion in subsidies for nuclear.

$5.6 billion for renewables. Most of the renewable energy subsidies went to corporate corn farms to subsidize the cost of ethanol.

We’ve subsidized nuclear hundreds of times greater than wind and solar. The price of nuclear keeps going up, the cost of wind and solar keeps dropping.

How about we pay some attention to what is working and what isn’t?

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1a79x07iXukMuwPb-DfOzcWYUIEHc5H6X-psWq4PD05A/edit#

First, a salute to all of San Onofre’s loyal workers that have or will lose their jobs because of SCE Managements poor engineering decisions, everyone feels sorry for both you and your families, there is no good time to be laid off. We also feel sorry for all the local businesses and families that live in the neighborhoods located near San Onofre that will feel the effects of these job loses. Hopefully as many as possible of you can remain here by getting retrained by SCE, so that you can be retained or re-hired (along with many others) to decommission San Onofre a big job that we now know will last for many years and cost billions of dollars which will hopefully help jumpstart the entire southern California economy!

To all those that are now upset, angry and/or worried about the future because San Onofre is being decommissioned, I urge all you to not focus your frustration upon those who protested by publicizing the many actual safety concerns at San Onofre but join with them and together demand to learn much more about why San Onofre had to be decommissioned. We all deserve to know exactly who at SCE was responsible for their decisions to use unproven radical designed RSG’s at San Onofre that not only failed so quickly after being put into service but leaked radioactivity into the air we breathe, putting everyone in southern California at risk!

From a soon to be released article…