4 ms·

Notably, check out Ontario (96% low carbon, 36% renewable) and France (91% low carbon, 13% renewable!?) But how!? The answer is nuclear power plants. Don't fo

Notably, check out Ontario (96% low carbon, 36% renewable) and France (91% low carbon, 13% renewable!?) But how!? The answer is nuclear power plants. Don't forget also that electricity is roughly 40% of energy usage for most people, the rest being heating and transportation. Those are very fossil dominated so even though you see green here, there's a huge huge way to go.

toomuchtodo 8y ago
> But how!? The answer is nuclear power plants. Legacy nuclear bridging the gap is an acceptable solution. As I've mentioned elsewhere in this thread, nuclear simply takes too long to build and is too costly (when compared to renewables as low as 2 cents/kwh and deployment times measured in months, not years or up to a decade). China is installing 40-50GW of solar per year; the world in aggregate installs about 100GW annually. The largest nuclear power plant in the US (Palo Verde in Arizona) has a nameplate capacity just shy of 4GW; assuming you need 16GW of solar to replace such a generator due to 25% capacity factor, that is an install time of just around a year). > Don't forget also that electricity is roughly 40% of energy usage for most people, the rest being heating and transportation. Those are very fossil dominated so even though you see green here, there's a huge huge way to go. The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory did a study about a decade ago [1] that ~73% of light vehicles could move over to the electrical grid with existing generation capacity. EVs are a perfect match for intermittent renewables generation, as they can charge when the sun is shining during the day, or charge at night when the wind is blowing. I concede heating has a long way to go with air source heat pumps, insulation, and other energy saving measures. "This initial paper estimates the regional percentages of the energy requirements for the U.S. LDV stock that could be supported by the existing infrastructure, based on the 12 modified North American Electric Reliability Council (NERC) regions, as of 2002, and taking into account congestion in regional transmission and distribution systems. For the United States as a whole, 84% of U.S. cars, pickup trucks and sport utility vehicles (SUVs) could be supported by the existing infrastructure, although the local percentages vary by region. Using the light duty vehicle fleet (LDV) classification, that includes cars, pickup trucks, SUVs, and vans, the technical potential is 73%. This has a gasoline displacement potential of 6.5 million barrels of oil equivalent per day, or 52% of the nation’s oil imports. Existing nuclear plants should be kept operational as long as feasible (from a safety perspective), but the writing is on the wall. [1] https://www.ferc.gov/about/com-mem/5-24-07-technical-analy-wellinghoff.pdf https://www.ferc.gov/about/com-mem/5-24-07-technical-analy-w...
- sjwright 8y ago
  The way to have legacy nuclear power plants in 2050 is to build them in 2020.
  - toomuchtodo 8y ago
    Right. Find someone willing to give you the $1-4 billion dollars to do it (per generation facility). No one will because you can't prove it'll be financially viable for the next 20-50 years. Duke Energy collected almost $368 million from ratepayers in South Carolina [1] to pay for a nuclear power plant, and then gave up on it, with no recourse for ratepayers. It spent another $1 billion on the failed construction of a nuclear plant in Florida (north of Tampa). If I'm a ratepayer, I'm going to burn you at the stake (metaphorically) if you try to force me to pay for another boondoggle. If you want to save the planet, buy every solar panel you can get your hands on and install it as soon as you can, especially if you live near a coal plant; it'll drive the plant into insolvency, no nuclear power required. [1] https://www.tampabay.com/news/business/energy/trigaux-abandoning-another-nuclear-project-duke-energy-mimics-its-failed/2335162 https://www.tampabay.com/news/business/energy/trigaux-abando...
    - sjwright 8y ago
      I have no opinion about any of that. That's a discussion you should probably have with Nathan Myhrvold, not me.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
    - nukemandan 8y ago
      That is why financing of reactors is outrageous - more than 50% of the TOTAL cost of some reactors! But there is a solution: SMRs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_modular_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_modular_reactor
      - 8y ago

toomuchtodo 8y ago

> But how!? The answer is nuclear power plants. Legacy nuclear bridging the gap is an acceptable solution. As I've mentioned elsewhere in this thread, nuclear simply takes too long to build and is too costly (when compared to renewables as low as 2 cents/kwh and deployment times measured in months, not years or up to a decade). China is installing 40-50GW of solar per year; the world in aggregate installs about 100GW annually. The largest nuclear power plant in the US (Palo Verde in Arizona) has a nameplate capacity just shy of 4GW; assuming you need 16GW of solar to replace such a generator due to 25% capacity factor, that is an install time of just around a year). > Don't forget also that electricity is roughly 40% of energy usage for most people, the rest being heating and transportation. Those are very fossil dominated so even though you see green here, there's a huge huge way to go. The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory did a study about a decade ago [1] that ~73% of light vehicles could move over to the electrical grid with existing generation capacity. EVs are a perfect match for intermittent renewables generation, as they can charge when the sun is shining during the day, or charge at night when the wind is blowing. I concede heating has a long way to go with air source heat pumps, insulation, and other energy saving measures. "This initial paper estimates the regional percentages of the energy requirements for the U.S. LDV stock that could be supported by the existing infrastructure, based on the 12 modified North American Electric Reliability Council (NERC) regions, as of 2002, and taking into account congestion in regional transmission and distribution systems. For the United States as a whole, 84% of U.S. cars, pickup trucks and sport utility vehicles (SUVs) could be supported by the existing infrastructure, although the local percentages vary by region. Using the light duty vehicle fleet (LDV) classification, that includes cars, pickup trucks, SUVs, and vans, the technical potential is 73%. This has a gasoline displacement potential of 6.5 million barrels of oil equivalent per day, or 52% of the nation’s oil imports. Existing nuclear plants should be kept operational as long as feasible (from a safety perspective), but the writing is on the wall. [1] https://www.ferc.gov/about/com-mem/5-24-07-technical-analy-wellinghoff.pdf https://www.ferc.gov/about/com-mem/5-24-07-technical-analy-w...

sjwright 8y ago
The way to have legacy nuclear power plants in 2050 is to build them in 2020.
- toomuchtodo 8y ago
  Right. Find someone willing to give you the $1-4 billion dollars to do it (per generation facility). No one will because you can't prove it'll be financially viable for the next 20-50 years. Duke Energy collected almost $368 million from ratepayers in South Carolina [1] to pay for a nuclear power plant, and then gave up on it, with no recourse for ratepayers. It spent another $1 billion on the failed construction of a nuclear plant in Florida (north of Tampa). If I'm a ratepayer, I'm going to burn you at the stake (metaphorically) if you try to force me to pay for another boondoggle. If you want to save the planet, buy every solar panel you can get your hands on and install it as soon as you can, especially if you live near a coal plant; it'll drive the plant into insolvency, no nuclear power required. [1] https://www.tampabay.com/news/business/energy/trigaux-abandoning-another-nuclear-project-duke-energy-mimics-its-failed/2335162 https://www.tampabay.com/news/business/energy/trigaux-abando...
  - sjwright 8y ago
    I have no opinion about any of that. That's a discussion you should probably have with Nathan Myhrvold, not me.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  - nukemandan 8y ago
    That is why financing of reactors is outrageous - more than 50% of the TOTAL cost of some reactors! But there is a solution: SMRs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_modular_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_modular_reactor
    - 8y ago