Note! I missed the Patreon Update. Special thanks to Steve and Frank Torres for becoming new members! Your names will be added to the list in the next video which is due soon!
I had a similar question asked in a forum though the question back then was would building a fleet of 2000 nuclear power plants create significant heat. My back of the envelope answer showed that on a global scale the heat is insignificant compared to what we get from the sunshine and would easily be dissipated into space if we don't have a greenhouse gases issue. Thus if building a fleet of 2000 nuclear power plant (or 3000 or even 10000) can get us faster to net-zero it's worth doing.
@@Richard-t2r You probably meant 1500 MWe because we don't have the capability of making a power plant that can output 1500 GWe. 17000 x 1500 MWe x 3 (fudge factor to estimate thermal output) = 76.5 TW-thermal. Still insignificant compared to the amount of heat we get from sunlight. Now, if you actually mean 17000 of 1500 GWe nuclear power plants, we'd have an issue, but at that point we'd be super-advanced because 1500 GWe is a thousand times what our current power plants can do and 17000 of them implies a society that can do Star Trek stuff. And a society that can do Star Trek stuff can probably figure out how to handle the waste heat.
@tonychen76 Yes, 1500 MWe a piece. ~20 TWe globally. Transmission will have to be done too. HVDC. Ten per station comes out to 15 GWe. Displace all of the fossil fuel currently in use. Whether vehicles become electric or run on electricity derived synfuel. Heat and electricity for desalination plants to displace fossil water, extract fuel from seawater. Looks daunting. Almost wonder where we'd be if it was started 40 years ago.
They're grasping at straw's, Thies. "Oh, but water vapour is a greenhouse gas!!!" Yeah, and it's dwarfed by the water evaporation from the oceans. Besides, it's solved by the natural phenomenon of...rain. Lol
Climate change isn't driven by the heat incident (from the sun, or created by waste heat); it is the 'greenhouse' effect that CO2 in the atmosphere does not allow heat to be radiated away into space. Thus, nuclear, producing no CO2 (or very little over entire lifecycle) is indeed good for the climate; vs coal plants, natural gas plants.
Natural gas englobes both fossil gas and biogas. If natural methane or biogas methane, in both cases it's way better to burn it than let it into the atmosphere. Simply because CH4 (methane) is a greenhouse gas that is 25 times worse than C02. A well planned biogas plant emits no CO2 and went burnt it releases 2 time less CO2 than coal. Far from perfect but overall impact not only keeps CH4 from going into the atmosphere but is more CO2 efficient than civilian nukes ! It's in fact the only combustion fuel that makes some sort of sense ... at least until green hydrogen is mastered for combustion, if ever.
Good discussion. Related question- what would be better for climate change: paint all the rooftops, parkings very reflective white paint but place no heat absorbing solar panels and make power with nuclear, vs solar panels in that space and less nuclear? I don't know the answer, but wouldn't be surprised if actually solar panels are worse than white paint and nuclear.
It barely does, the only noticeable effect comes from decrease in Albedo if you put them on lighter surfaces, and some of the chemicals used for production have a strong greenhouse-effect. That, and the upstream power-related emissions. But that's why I put wind, solar, and nuclear at 10 grCO2eq/KWh.
The economy, and energy production, grows by about an order of magnitude every century. So, if we continue, global warming from waste heat could be a serious issue in a few centuries.
@@Atomicjedi I read a lot of articles and journals on climate change, and sub to a lot of climate change channels and even moderated on a sub-reddit until very recently. So I am finding this paper very interesting.
The biggest unaccounted for climate effects of a Nuclear powerplant (or any power source) is LABOR. Nothing gets made without labor inputs, and labor costs are someones wages, wages which will be used to support a lifestyle which will inevitably emit greenhouse gasses. Ofcourse not all lifestyles have equal impact, but we can aggregate total labor costs and apply a ratio of dollars to kg of CO2 eqivilent release.
Well if you want an honest answer to civilian nukes CO2 imprint you've gotta factor in the mining, transportation, the construction, the maintaining, the waste recycling, more transportation, the burying of that waste, maintaining the burial site for the next 200K years, retrofitting or decommissioning plants and, yes and ... the wars we fight for radioactive materials. Like what's currently going on in western Africa. Last, but not least, nuke plants are slow to start up and power down. Just what energy do you think is used during those periods ? Coal and/or gas. Yep can't have nuke plants without those ;-)
Some, enough to make it into the newspapers in the Netherlands. So that's why I made the video. I guessed elsewhere people will face similar stupid claims, and now they don't have to do all those calculations, but watch my video instead ;)
