Current Climate: A New Nuclear Reactor Goes Online In Georgia

When do we get the next one.

Well, going off the article:

and a fourth is expected to begin operations in 2024

holy shit people stop fucking talking when you dont grasp a concept, nuclear energy is genuinely the most green energy there is by a longshot when all factors are considered.

This guy gets it

b-but Chernobyl scary!

Good.

I wonder how many emissions could we have avoided if that money was spent on renewables + batteries while we were waiting for this powerplant to come online

Renewables + batteries? You wouldn't have saved any emissions. Construction of a nuclear plant doesn't require as much carbon emissions as you think. And regardless, nuclear isn't competing with renewables, anyway, it's for replacing carbon-emitting power plants. Nuclear and renewables need to work hand-in-hand if we want to actually reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions.
- Money is finite, and every decision creates an opportunity cost. In that sense, every energy generation technology competes with one another.
Renewables and batteries are great tools, we need to be building these out. Nuclear can best complement renewables with a stable, emission free, base load capacity. Nuclear has its own challenges, but renewables can not replace enormous load that's currently carried by coal and gas in the near or extended term.
Not as much as what the NPP will save in the long run.
- Nuclear power plants typically retire after 40 years. I wouldn't be surprised if replacing all the renewables and batteries after 20 or 30 years would still be cheaper than this nuclear plant
Wait until you learn about the horrific environmental impact of battery production. And the amount of slavery involved in their creation.
- What's uranium mining like for the environment?

It's much more reliable and consistent at generating power. It's not dependent on the sun shining or wind blowing, so you can get the full capacity of generation at all times, making it a better investment for a government trying to support large populations. It also takes up way less land to set up and run.
Though of course, it doesn't have to be one or the other. Solar and wind can supplement nuclear really well.
You can read more about it here: https://changeoracle.com/2022/07/20/nuclear-power-versus-renewable-energy/amp/
- Your last point is the most important one in my opinion. OP implied we have to chose between nuclear and solar/wind but it's plain false.
You need a baseline for a stable power grid, which renewables alone can't provide.
- It ran billions over budget and took 15 years to come online though
- @Claidheamh @ndsvw
  It depends on the renewables. Wind and photovoltaics have stability issues. Hydro and geothermal are more stable. Nuclear is compact and high power but has huge waste disposal issues.
- I think way too few people realize this.
Renewables should complement nuclear. "And" not "or"
The thing is we've gotten so good at burning coal that the base load cannot realistically be carried by renewables and transmitted to where the load is. Nuclear, with it's challenges, is the only technology that can fill the power vacuum left by base load coal and gas generation stations.
Complaining about down votes is some small dick reddit energy, don't do that in the future. We are on Lemmy now.
Now to answer your question. "Renewables*" are supplementary. Wind/Solar cannot provide baseline power, and will never be able to provide baseline power for the grid. Any kind of magical energy storage you can come up with that would allow renewables to replace a power plant also requires exotic/expensive tech that would be more expensive then Nuclear power and still doesn't address baseline power consumption. This kind of question is also used as a distraction by the fossil fuel industry so that you have countries like Germany replacing nuclear power with coal and strip mining.
Why are they building coal in the first place? Because "renewables" do not produce enough base-line power. If Germany could use magically renewable energy to meet all of their energy demands, they would probably do it, but that isn't the reality. In the future try to avoid framing solar/wind as competitors to nuclear power. Both are needed, and unlike nuclear power which hasn't been built on any scale since the 70's, solar/wind are absolutely used everywhere they can be and if they aren't sufficient in cases like Georgia, Nuclear should 100% be the answer because if it's not used you will have coal or gas instead. "Just asking questions" like that shows you don't understand power-generation and you have fallen for the fossil fuel industries propaganda.
- Excellent rundown. The baseline power supplier for when there's no wind or sun can either be natural gas or nuclear, and nuclear produces far less harmful byproducts.

Renewables aren't consistent enough alone, so they need a big consistent buddy to help them out. It could be coal or gas, but we'd much rather have nuclear.
They're not mutually exclusive. A society serious about eliminating fossil fuel use needs both.
The nuclear we built in the 50s is. The technology has come a long way since then, we just haven't built any.
Nuclear is the past, present, and future (whenever we figure out fusion)