Energy Production and Use Graphics: Sankey Diagrams of the World, Germany, and France.

[NNadir]

A useful type of flowchart is called a "Sankey diagram," which in energy shows the primary sources of energy and how it is used in industry, transportation and residential settings.

The IEA had an extensive body of these going up to 2023 along with a description (on the linked page) of how to view them, along with a slider that can show the evolution of the diagrams from 1990 to 2023.

The graphics are partially interactive on line, but won't be in this post. The energy units are the SI unit Terrajoule, which is a millionth of an Exajoule.

Here, for convenience, is the Sankey Diagram of the whole world for 2023 which shows up when you click on the link:




Here is the Sankey Diagram for the whole world in 1990:




You may have heard in lots of lots of places at DU and in the world beyond about an "Energy Transition" that's supposed to be underway.

Really? Am I missing something? I can't see any "Energy Transition" prominent in comparing the 1990 and 2023 Diagrams.

Now two European Countries in 1990 and 2023. First Germany, in 1990 before the dubious antinuke "victory" over nuclear energy:




Germany in 2023, the year it shut its last nuclear plants, thereby deciding to kill people by burning coal and gas:




Germany, as the United States did in the last 30 years, reduced, but did not eliminate dependence on coal, but to the extent coal was replaced, it was largely by dangerous natural gas. So called "renewable energy" is trivial in Germany as it is in the rest of the world, despite its 5.6+ trillion dollar price tag.

Let's turn to France:

France in 1990:




France in 2023:





In 1990, France's real energy transition from coal to nuclear was already underway. As of 2023, the tiny amounts of coal imported into France are not used for power generation, but for materials use.

From 1990 to 2025, as far as electric power was concerned, France didn't need an "energy transition." They were (and are) way ahead of the rest of the world, still the only nation on Earth without much hydroelectric capacity to rely almost exclusively on clean nuclear power. One may ask to compare the number of people in France who were killed by exposure to radiation from power plants to the number of people killed by coal waste dumped into the planetary atmosphere by the antinuke Germans.

To me, these Sankey diagrams graphically demonstrate something called "reality," despite all the popular sloganeering about "energy transitions."

Have a nice evening.

[DemocracyForever]

1. Nuclear power is not green!

No one has figured out how to dispose of the highly toxic nuclear waste. Nuclear power is more expensive than wind and solar. I fear that the well funded nuclear power industry is becoming the fossil fuel industry of the 21st century.

[NNadir]

2. Nuclear power is the ONLY sustainable form of energy left to us. This year, 7 million people will die from...

...fossil fuel waste, aka "air pollution." I am not talking about the destruction of the planetary atmosphere, about which antinukes couldn't care less. (They are perfectly satisfied with the Sankey diagrams reproduced in the OP.)

Reference: : Global burden of 87 risk factors in 204 countries and territories, 1990–2019: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019 (Lancet Volume 396, Issue 10258, 17–23 October 2020, Pages 1223-1249).

Here's what I post as an excerpt of that paper - many other similar papers are available to show how many people are killed by antinuke's selective attention - that I produce when I hear the caterwauling about so called "nuclear waste,"

Here is what it says about air pollution deaths in the 2019 Global Burden of Disease Survey, if one is too busy to open it oneself because one is too busy carrying on about Fukushima:

The top five risks for attributable deaths for females were high SBP (5·25 million [95% UI 4·49–6·00] deaths, or 20·3% [17·5–22·9] of all female deaths in 2019), dietary risks (3·48 million [2·78–4·37] deaths, or 13·5% [10·8–16·7] of all female deaths in 2019), high FPG (3·09 million [2·40–3·98] deaths, or 11·9% [9·4–15·3] of all female deaths in 2019), air pollution (2·92 million [2·53–3·33] deaths or 11·3% [10·0–12·6] of all female deaths in 2019), and high BMI (2·54 million [1·68–3·56] deaths or 9·8% [6·5–13·7] of all female deaths in 2019). For males, the top five risks differed slightly. In 2019, the leading Level 2 risk factor for attributable deaths globally in males was tobacco (smoked, second-hand, and chewing), which accounted for 6·56 million (95% UI 6·02–7·10) deaths (21·4% [20·5–22·3] of all male deaths in 2019), followed by high SBP, which accounted for 5·60 million (4·90–6·29) deaths (18·2% [16·2–20·1] of all male deaths in 2019). The third largest Level 2 risk factor for attributable deaths among males in 2019 was dietary risks (4·47 million [3·65–5·45] deaths, or 14·6% [12·0–17·6] of all male deaths in 2019) followed by air pollution (ambient particulate matter and ambient ozone pollution, accounting for 3·75 million [3·31–4·24] deaths (12·2% [11·0–13·4] of all male deaths in 2019), and then high FPG (3·14 million [2·70–4·34] deaths, or 11·1% [8·9–14·1] of all male deaths in 2019).

That works out to about 19,000 people every day, about 800 people per hour.

Atter I always challenge people who know nothing at all about used nuclear fuel to show in the 70 year history of commercial nuclear energy to show that the storage of used nuclear fuel has killed as many people as will die as will die in the next 8 hours from fossil fuels, that would be a little over 6000 people.

Only reports from the primary scientific literature can be used to support the claim that the storage of used nuclear fuel on this planet has killed, over its 70 year history, 6400 people in answer to this challenge.

I am an expert on the composition, the chemistry, and the physics of all the components of used nuclear fuel, which I regard as a critical resource for saving the world.

Let me say that again: I consider used nuclear fuel to be a critical resource for saving what is left to save and possible even restoring that which can be restored. It can be shown that the uranium and thorium already mined could support all of the planet's energy needs for centuries, meaning no oil, no coal, no gas, and no vast areas of wilderness destroyed for so called "renewable energy" and no climate degradation such as is now observed.

Nuclear energy need not be risk free to be vastly superior to all other forms of energy. It only needs to be superior to everything else, which it is.

In 2013, the climate scientist James Hansen and a colleague published a highly cited paper showing how many lives had been saved by nuclear power. I post a link to it often: Prevented Mortality and Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Historical and Projected Nuclear Power (Pushker A. Kharecha* and James E. Hansen Environ. Sci. Technol., 2013, 47 (9), pp 4889–4895)

If it is true, and I do not doubt it is, it follows that opposing nuclear energy kills people. Opposing nuclear energy kills more than people. It's killing the planet.

The selective attention of antinukes, their complete lack of knowledge of the subject, is neither ethically nor practically an excuse to kill the planet.

Have a nice day.

[thought crime]

5. Wind and Solar are certainly sustainable forms of energy - and economical.

Nuclear energy cannot compete without massive direct and indirect government subsidy. In this sense, nuclear energy is not sustainable in most economies. This is what has prevented nuclear energy's long term growth, and not "anti-nuke" sentiment. The market is not sentimental; it is merely efficient. Sadly, that efficiency, along with the market's ability to hide external costs, has favored fossil fuels to this point, but renewable energy is finally overcoming the inertia and it is clear we are at a turning point toward a sustainable future.

[DemocracyForever]

7. Still ignoring toxic nuclear waste

Once again your post ignores the threat of toxic nuclear waste. I'm well aware of the threat of the continued burning of fossil fuels to the survival of humanity since it was part of my childhood. Non nuclear sources of renewable energy not only don't have any toxic waste they also are much less expensive than nuclear power. It's time for you to face the real facts about the dangers and cost of nuclear power. BTW, you're not an engineer like my father was so you don't have his expertise on this issue.

[NNadir]

8. Um, I contend that so called "nuclear waste" doesn't exist but is rather...

...an artifact of ignorance.

I would suggest that ignoring fossil fuel waste, the generation of which is essential to the operations of so called "renewable energy" is simply an expression of poor insight coupled with ignorance of how things work.

The challenge issued and ignored was to show that the storage of used nuclear fuel collected over the 70 years has killed as many people in that 70 year history as fossil fuel waste will kill in the next 8 hours, about 6000 people.

No one to whom I've issued this challenge has ever responded im a satisfactory way. That's because any effort to assert as much would be a lie.

I have never met a single defender of the reactionary scheme to make energy supplies on the weather, the use of mass and land intensive so called "renewable energy" who gives a rat's ass about fossil fuels, their waste, their use in war and terrorism, their effects on land, water and air, their extreme health consequences.

I never will. Everything they open their mouths to attack nuclear energy on grounds they do not apply to fossil fuels they prove as much.

Recently in this space I discussed the separation of ¹⁰⁷Pd from palladium isotopes having even mass numbers using autoionizing Rydberg states. This is the level at which I understand the value and properties of used nuclear fuels. It cannot therefore be said that I am ignoring used nuclear fuels, said intelligently at least.

I note however that there are zero antinukes, and for that matter, zero people who know how to stop fossil fuel waste from killing people in vast numbers. The difference between the critics of clean and sustainable nuclear energy and the general bulk of humanity is that people who oppose nuclear energy don't care how many people die from fossil fuels or extreme climate conditions so long as they can imagine that somewhere someday someone might die from radiation exposure. This is not only absurd, it is immoral.

Have a nice day.

[DemocracyForever]

9. Spoken by a non engineer

My engineer father was one of the earliest people to start warning that the continued burning of fossil fuels threatens the survival of humanity in the 1980s. My engineer father also well understood how toxic nuclear waste is. This is why he always taught me that nuclear power is not green because no one has figured out how to dispose of the toxic nuclear waste. You have no understanding of how toxic nuclear waste is and you're not an engineer like my father was. It shows in your posts.

[Finishline42]

4. Here's someone that agrees with you

Link to tweet

?s=20

[NNadir]

6. In general, the use of the logical fallacy "Poisoning the Well" demonstrates weak rhetorical abilities.

Last edited Fri Jun 26, 2026, 09:00 AM - Edit history (2)

President Barack Obama hired Nobel Laureate Steven Chu as his Secretary of Energy. Steven Chu and I agree on the value of nuclear energy, but the value of nuclear energy is not determined by Steven Chu's or my opinion.

We have here advocates for the thermodynamic idiocy of declaring energy storage "green," because they think the more than 5.6 trillion dollars squandered on so called "renewable energy" has had any effect other than raising the demand for the mining of critical unsustainable metals and the destruction of vast tracts of wilderness has had an effect on slowing the destruction of the planetary atmosphere. It hasn't. We are more dependent on fossil fuels than ever. The atmosphere is degrading faster than ever. One of these types declared that the thermodynamic nonsense of a "hydrogen economy" was "green" because former Energy Secretary in the Biden administration, Jennifer Granholm, supported it. She also actively supported nuclear energy.

The support of Jennifer Granholm for a hydrogen economy has not changed, is not changing and will not change the horrible physical properties of hydrogen, nor the fact that it is overwhelmingly made by the steam reformation of fossil fuels, destroying exergy, making it a filthy enterprise. Her support for nuclear energy has no bearing on the fact that nuclear energy has the lowest output of carbon dioxide of any form of reliable, and for that matter, unreliable energy. Nuclear energy is cleaner and safer than everything else irrespective of what Barack Obama, Steven Chu, Jennifer Granholm or any other scientific or political figure thinks about it. It is a fact.

That I oppose the wind energy on the basis that the average wind turbine doesn't last 20 years before becoming landfill, that it destroys wilderness at sea and on land, that it depends on the use of fossil fuels, and that it is extremely unreliable. That the Orange Pedophile in the White House also opposes wind energy for whatever stupid reason passes through his deteriorating mind does not mean that wind turbines will last as long as nuclear plants nor the fact that they are driving the depletion of elements like neodymium, dysprosium and others that rightly belong not just to our generation but to all generations.

The fact that Adolf Hitler, to go full Godwin, called for, and ordered the development of the Volkswagen bug does not mean that the Volkswagen Bug did not have some of the best gas mileage and affordable costs in the 1960s and was very popular with the Baby Boomers then because it was affordable and reliable and easy to maintain.

I would have hoped that by the seventh grade, most people understood the basics of rhetoric. Here we are though, with adults who lazily offer up logical fallacies to support the unsupportable.

The laws of thermodynamics were present in the Universe throughout its history. Their discovery by the likes of James Maxwell, James Joule, Ludwig Boltzmann, Albert Einstein and many others did not change these laws, and the laws did not depend on their opinions and insights into them. They have always applied to the universe and always will. They are not important because Albert Einstein said they were. They are important because they are laws of physics.

The contempt for physics and humanity demonstrated by advocates of energy storage schemes on a planet where fossil fuels dominate energy is not reversed if they also hold the orange pedophile, as all decent people do, in contempt. However the fact that there are people who agree with my own contempt for the orange pedophile does not mean that I have any respect for poor reasoning on their part.

Have a nice day.