Skip to main content

Fallacies About Nuclear, Wind, and Solar

Andrew Kenny
South Africa
2023
Nuclear Power Plant Leibstadt in Switzerland in a beautiful setting on the Rhine River. Germany on the left.

Experience of solar and wind around the world shows that baseload electricity is essential. Solar and wind have many flaws, such as the vast amounts of raw materials they need and the toxic wastes they leave, but by far their biggest flaw is that they are unreliable and intermittent. Unlike coal, gas and nuclear, they are not dispatchable: they cannot always meet demand. In fact, most of the time they cannot meet demand at all.

Nuclear gave France safe, cheap, reliable, plentiful electricity, allowing her to export it to her neighbours. France built the successful Koeberg power station for South Africa. Then France began to stumble. There was green pressure to reduce nuclear, despite its success. The socialist President Mitterrand ordered that nuclear be reduced to 50% of the French total. This had the effect of demoralising the nuclear workforce. New build stopped and the nuclear program fizzled out.

The expert, experienced construction crews ebbed away. The nuclear people themselves became complacent and began to neglect maintenance. The new French reactor, the EPR, was over-complicated, and too big and cumbersome. The building of the first one, in Finland, has been way over-schedule and over-budget. France is in a mess now with her nuclear power. She has shown us what to do and what not to do in nuclear./p