Germany and California could made a faster move to 100% clean power by adding instead of removing nuclear power

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California and Germany could have mostly or completely decarbonized their electricity if they have invested in nuclear power instead of solar and wind renewables.

If Germany did not begin a nuclear power phase-out in 2011, then they would still have 131 Terawatt hours from nuclear power.

Germany could have built forty-six 1.6 GW EPR reactors at the $12.5 billion per reactor cost of the U.K.’s Hinkley Point C. This would be for the same spending that Germany has on solar and wind up to now and through 2025. Germany will have invested $580 billion in renewable energy and storage by 2025. This will not get Germany near 100% renewable. This will get Germany to 20% electricity from renewables.

Those forty-six EPRs operating at 90 percent capacity factor could be used to eliminate all coal, gas, and biomass electricity and the 150 terawatt-hours per year of wind and solar from its renewables investment. Germany could export 100 terawatt-hours of electricity to its neighbors (double 2017’s actual exports). The last 133 terawatt-hours could power 45 million electric cars.

California could have kept San Onofre and Diablo Canyon nuclear reactors in service and kept large hydro dam and geothermal electricity production.

California could have built twenty South Korean OPR1000 reactors. These could have cost $5 billion per reactor which is more than double the cost of construction in South Korea.

California could be producing 200 terawatt-hours of clean electricity — more than total in-state generation in 2016 and 97 percent of in-state generation in 2017.

Ontario has nearly carbon-free electricity

There are 14.2 million people in Ontario.

Nuclear power is key part of Ontario, Canada’s nearly carbon-free electricity.

Nuclear reactors contributed 73.3 % of Ontario’s total electrical power generated in-province.
98.1 % of Ontario-generated electricity was carbon-free.
Nuclear reactors contributed 74.8 % of Ontario’s carbon-free electricity.

Quebec has 8.5 million people and also has almost carbon-free electricity. Quebec mostly generated power from hydro dams.

Quebec might build more dams so they can sell electricity to New York and other US states that are shutting down nuclear reactors.

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