10 ms·

It's interesting how incredibly low France's CO2 output is, mainly thanks to their investment in nuclear power. And while uranium isn't renewable, I think we've

by mikece 7y ago

It's interesting how incredibly low France's CO2 output is, mainly thanks to their investment in nuclear power. And while uranium isn't renewable, I think we've got 300,000 years worth of it available. Think we can crack fusion or ultra-high-efficiency solar by then?

dv_dt 7y ago
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/07/giant-batteries-and-cheap-solar-power-are-shoving-fossil-fuels-grid https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/07/giant-batteries-and-... > This month, officials in Los Angeles, California, are expected to approve a deal that would make solar power cheaper than ever while also addressing its chief flaw: It works only when the sun shines. The deal calls for a huge solar farm backed up by one of the world's largest batteries. It would provide 7% of the city's electricity beginning in 2023 at a cost of 1.997 cents per kilowatt hour (kWh) for the solar power and 1.3 cents per kWh for the battery. That's cheaper than any power generated with fossil fuel.
- WalterBright 7y ago
  The need for batteries would be greatly reduced if the electricity rates were higher for when the grid was running on batteries.
  - dragontamer 7y ago
    On the contrary. California's current energy usage goes from ~16GW to 32GWs each and every day. http://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/default.aspx http://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/default.aspx Currently, electricity is generated by "peaker plants", which spin up when the price of electricity goes up, and then spin down when the price of electricity is low. Consumers are often passed the buck: peaker-plant electricity (usually natural gas) costs more than baseload electricity (usually nuclear or coal) Utility-scale batteries are competing against the Natural Gas peaker plants. The question is if utility scale batteries can make as much money (ie: provide the power at low enough costs) to be worthwhile.
    - dv_dt 7y ago
      The bidding costs for peaker plants have been beaten by renewable+storage combos for IIRC 2-3 years now for new builds of capacity. IF you think about it, the gas turbines are a fairly expensive capital cost with high maintenance vs renewables. Add to that intermittent operation and that capital costs performs even worse while adding maintenance wear and tear for startup/shutdown.
    - WalterBright 7y ago
      Wholesale prices for electricity certainly vary, but consumer prices are a flat rate, 24/7. Nowhere I've lived has this not been the case, and there is no incentive whatsoever for consumers to time-shift their electricity consumption. A huge part of what caused the Enron California electricity crisis is the utilities were unable, by law, to adjust consumer prices as wholesale prices changed. The utilities were required, by law, to provide whatever consumers demanded whenever they demanded it, at a fixed price, regardless of what it cost the utilities to provide it. If this has changed in California, that's for the better. In Seattle, the price of electricity is the same, 24/7. Consider gas prices at the pump. They vary every day, based on demand and supply of gas. Gas prices go up over Memorial Day. They go up when a refinery burns down. They go down in winter when people drive less. It works very well at matching up supply with demand. It broke down completely in the late 1970's when the government imposed price controls and allocation controls at the pump. When Reagan repealed all that, things worked fine again.
      - NickNameNick 7y ago
        Not in the US, but I have two meters on my house. One meter is attached to most of the circuits, and charges the 24/7 rate. The other meter is attached to the heater system, only works off-peak, and charges a discounted rate. The heater is basically a slab of steel, wrapped in heating elements, surrounded by insulation. It heats up when the power is on, and temperature controlled vents let air circulate when it's cold in the house. Works ok, but I'll probably change it out for a heat-pump soon.
        rahimnathwani 7y ago
  - ApolloFortyNine 7y ago
    Then start investing in reducing the energy consumption of air conditioners, as that's by far the biggest consumer of energy in a home, and it's rather useless if it doesn't run during the day.
    - icebraining 7y ago
      But during the day is exactly when you less need batteries, since the sun is shining on the solar panels...
      - nicoburns 7y ago
        Yeah, solar seems like a pretty perfect match for aircon. It's also hottest when the sun is shining...
      - merpnderp 7y ago
        I don't know about LA, but in the midwest temps usually peak around 4pm, so AC really starts to crank right when solar is letting up.
        ido 7y ago
        Depends on latitude I guess? In Berlin at the peak of summer sunset is around 10pm.
- rb808 7y ago
  Solar & Batteries work great in California when peak demand is when its hot. In the frozen North though its different, esp if you want to replace gas/oil heating with heat pumps, peak demand would be cold nights in January.
  - godelski 7y ago
    This is the key that people forget. Not all power source work equally as well in all areas. There is a need for a diversified energy portfolio. I do want to follow this up saying that I fully support building as much solar and wind as we can. Not doing so is kinda dumb. Just saying it isn't a cure all.
  - joncrane 7y ago
    Peak demand for energy. But peak demand for electricity is during peak AC season just like California. I don't think anyone is saying we're replacing natural gas to cook and heat with. (At least I hope not, cooking with gas is an indulgence I partake of regularly.)
    - mattlondon 7y ago
      Certainly in the UK there is talk of trying to wean people off of using gas to heat homes.(1). Options to replace it are electric heat pumps and/or hydrogen-based systems. Most people I know have abandoned gas hobs and replaced them with induction hobs - they feel a lot like cooking with gas (unlike halogen or ceramic ones), but are a lot more practical (e.g. cleaning, extra space etc) and better for air quality. 1 - https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/mar/13/hammond-says-gas-heating-will-be-replaced-by-low-carbon-systems https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/mar/13/hammond-...
      - viraptor 7y ago
        > induction hobs - they feel a lot like cooking with gas This really depends on the hobs. Bad ones are nowhere near gas quality and trend to regulate the heat by going a few seconds full power then few seconds off. Good ones regulate in a much smoother / more consistent way. We can't compare generic "induction hob" - it doesn't exist.
- rakoo 7y ago
  It is cheaper than fossil fuel but reliable intermittent electricity is still polluting way too much to efficiently curb green house gases.
dudul 7y ago
And surprisingly, there is a constant "let's end nuclear!" campaign going on in France. A lot of people complain about the risks of accident and the nuclear waste.
- pgeorgi 7y ago
  Nuclear reactors are delicate machines, and owners all over the world treat them badly to maximize profits, those in France being no exception. In theory there's lots of controls and oversight and everything, in practice the nuclear industry has waste products that are suitable for military purposes, and so they can get away with rather a lot as their watchdog ultimately also owns a military. These campaigns to "end nuclear" might have less traction if the owners managed their systems properly.
rabidrat 7y ago
We've got 300k years of fissile material, at current usage rates, which is only a small fraction of our current energy usage. If we magically went to 100% nuclear fission for energy (which is not reasonable for personal transportation, at least), and continued to increase energy consumption per business as usual (developed economies not reducing, and developing economies rapidly catching up to developed usage per capita), then it would not last nearly as long, by 2 orders of magnitude. Also I think that estimate imagines efficient breeder reactors and "complete burning" of the material, and does not take into account our current incredibly wasteful techniques of using 5% of the available energy and burying the rest in an unrecoverable mountain sludge. I know that a few thousand years still feels like a long time, but with nuclear fission, it is truly the most non-renewable resource, being formed only in stellar explosions. Let's put aside the science fiction of asteroid mining nuclear fuel for now; I think a reasonable argument could be made to not spend nuclear fuel for our primary energy needs. If we have dreams of ever being able to do mass interstellar travel, nuclear material is the only fuel we have so far with reasonable energy density for the speeds and distances involved. (Of course some will say "nuclear fusion" or "light sails", to which I say, we should defer mass consumption of fissile material until we have a reasonable expectation that those methods are viable).
- Rylinks 7y ago
  it's the most non-renewable resource, but it also goes away whether we use it or not.
  - Retric 7y ago
    It’s going away on the scale of billions of years. Personally, I think it’s much better to use it for space exploration than unusually expensive electrical power. Now if was even vaguely cost competitive with battery backed up wind and solar then that’s a reasonable argument, but until then I just don’t see the point.
  - nanomonkey 7y ago
    For all intents and purposes it is a renewable resource. Breeder reactors allow us to utilize our fissible materials for an absurd amount of time.
r00fus 7y ago
Just imagine if we were fully nuclear here, and reprocessing the fuel like France. Perhaps the climate would be in a non-crisis mode.
TomK32 7y ago
Nuclear energy always has and will be a purely political thing. Without state funding no private or public company would have taken on the potential future risks of harnessing the same power that laid waste to two cities and forced the Japanese Empire into decades of submission. Sadly we live in a world were future risks are ignored and lessons from the past, be it nuclear bombs or warfare in general, are forgotten and ignored.
geophertz 7y ago
By 300,000 years I hope you mean 200? https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-long-will-global-uranium-deposits-last/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-long-will-glo... Not the only source but I couldn't bother to search more. EDIT: this article says 90 years normally and 5 years if everything was run on nuclear power https://phys.org/news/2011-05-nuclear-power-world-energy.html https://phys.org/news/2011-05-nuclear-power-world-energy.htm...
- roenxi 7y ago
  Good news! That figure probably grossly underestimates how much uranium can be extracted. Indeed, I'd interpret that 200 figure as 1,000-2,000 years worth of supply. If nothing else, people havn't seriously looked. For example, in Australia, the state of NSW "proclaimed on 14 September 2012 ... [the removal of] the ban on uranium exploration" [0]. Australia has worlds most extensive uranium resources in the world, although not in the state of NSW for obvious reasons. Possibly we can extend our lead. But practically, the 'resources' definition that that article is relying on (going purely off the Australian legal framework) likely involves investment on the part of companies to be able to advertise. We've a lead-silver mine in Australia that have '20 years of resources' on the books over 80 year periods, because every time they need a mine extension they go out and 'discover' a bit more of the resource that everyone knows is there but havn't officially measured yet. The current 20 years of resource is a polite lie as well, they've got lots more. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_mining_in_Australia#Recent_legislative_changes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_mining_in_Australia#Re...
notinversed 7y ago
We have already cracked solar and battery tech. Coal is dying. Nuclear appears to be near dying as well. This has happened in the past three years or so.
charlesju 7y ago
If we believe climate change is a catastrophic disaster for humans now and near future, we should do everything to protect ourselves. There is a false dichotomy of renewables vs nuclear. Pursuing these options are not mutually exclusive. Only in so far that we want to devote limited resources to the problem. The real solution is that we should pursue both. Nuclear so we have a back stop to the problem. Renewables so that we have hope for the best case clean and safe energy future. It is foolish to believe the projections on renewables will absolutely happen. There are a lot of problems that can happen with technology at scale. Nuclear is a surefire bet, with risks being nuclear meltdowns and improper waste management.
rswskg 7y ago
We would have done the same in the UK, except it was foiled by an anti nuclear movement which is still informing the environmental movement today. It's a heart breaking own goal.

by mikece 7y ago

dv_dt 7y ago

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/07/giant-batteries-and-cheap-solar-power-are-shoving-fossil-fuels-grid https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/07/giant-batteries-and-... > This month, officials in Los Angeles, California, are expected to approve a deal that would make solar power cheaper than ever while also addressing its chief flaw: It works only when the sun shines. The deal calls for a huge solar farm backed up by one of the world's largest batteries. It would provide 7% of the city's electricity beginning in 2023 at a cost of 1.997 cents per kilowatt hour (kWh) for the solar power and 1.3 cents per kWh for the battery. That's cheaper than any power generated with fossil fuel.

WalterBright 7y ago
The need for batteries would be greatly reduced if the electricity rates were higher for when the grid was running on batteries.
- dragontamer 7y ago
  On the contrary. California's current energy usage goes from ~16GW to 32GWs each and every day. http://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/default.aspx http://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/default.aspx Currently, electricity is generated by "peaker plants", which spin up when the price of electricity goes up, and then spin down when the price of electricity is low. Consumers are often passed the buck: peaker-plant electricity (usually natural gas) costs more than baseload electricity (usually nuclear or coal) Utility-scale batteries are competing against the Natural Gas peaker plants. The question is if utility scale batteries can make as much money (ie: provide the power at low enough costs) to be worthwhile.
  - dv_dt 7y ago
    The bidding costs for peaker plants have been beaten by renewable+storage combos for IIRC 2-3 years now for new builds of capacity. IF you think about it, the gas turbines are a fairly expensive capital cost with high maintenance vs renewables. Add to that intermittent operation and that capital costs performs even worse while adding maintenance wear and tear for startup/shutdown.
  - WalterBright 7y ago
    Wholesale prices for electricity certainly vary, but consumer prices are a flat rate, 24/7. Nowhere I've lived has this not been the case, and there is no incentive whatsoever for consumers to time-shift their electricity consumption. A huge part of what caused the Enron California electricity crisis is the utilities were unable, by law, to adjust consumer prices as wholesale prices changed. The utilities were required, by law, to provide whatever consumers demanded whenever they demanded it, at a fixed price, regardless of what it cost the utilities to provide it. If this has changed in California, that's for the better. In Seattle, the price of electricity is the same, 24/7. Consider gas prices at the pump. They vary every day, based on demand and supply of gas. Gas prices go up over Memorial Day. They go up when a refinery burns down. They go down in winter when people drive less. It works very well at matching up supply with demand. It broke down completely in the late 1970's when the government imposed price controls and allocation controls at the pump. When Reagan repealed all that, things worked fine again.
    - NickNameNick 7y ago
      Not in the US, but I have two meters on my house. One meter is attached to most of the circuits, and charges the 24/7 rate. The other meter is attached to the heater system, only works off-peak, and charges a discounted rate. The heater is basically a slab of steel, wrapped in heating elements, surrounded by insulation. It heats up when the power is on, and temperature controlled vents let air circulate when it's cold in the house. Works ok, but I'll probably change it out for a heat-pump soon.
      - rahimnathwani 7y ago
- ApolloFortyNine 7y ago
  Then start investing in reducing the energy consumption of air conditioners, as that's by far the biggest consumer of energy in a home, and it's rather useless if it doesn't run during the day.
  - icebraining 7y ago
    But during the day is exactly when you less need batteries, since the sun is shining on the solar panels...
    - nicoburns 7y ago
      Yeah, solar seems like a pretty perfect match for aircon. It's also hottest when the sun is shining...
    - merpnderp 7y ago
      I don't know about LA, but in the midwest temps usually peak around 4pm, so AC really starts to crank right when solar is letting up.
      - ido 7y ago
        Depends on latitude I guess? In Berlin at the peak of summer sunset is around 10pm.
rb808 7y ago
Solar & Batteries work great in California when peak demand is when its hot. In the frozen North though its different, esp if you want to replace gas/oil heating with heat pumps, peak demand would be cold nights in January.
- godelski 7y ago
  This is the key that people forget. Not all power source work equally as well in all areas. There is a need for a diversified energy portfolio. I do want to follow this up saying that I fully support building as much solar and wind as we can. Not doing so is kinda dumb. Just saying it isn't a cure all.
- joncrane 7y ago
  Peak demand for energy. But peak demand for electricity is during peak AC season just like California. I don't think anyone is saying we're replacing natural gas to cook and heat with. (At least I hope not, cooking with gas is an indulgence I partake of regularly.)
  - mattlondon 7y ago
    Certainly in the UK there is talk of trying to wean people off of using gas to heat homes.(1). Options to replace it are electric heat pumps and/or hydrogen-based systems. Most people I know have abandoned gas hobs and replaced them with induction hobs - they feel a lot like cooking with gas (unlike halogen or ceramic ones), but are a lot more practical (e.g. cleaning, extra space etc) and better for air quality. 1 - https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/mar/13/hammond-says-gas-heating-will-be-replaced-by-low-carbon-systems https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/mar/13/hammond-...
    - viraptor 7y ago
      > induction hobs - they feel a lot like cooking with gas This really depends on the hobs. Bad ones are nowhere near gas quality and trend to regulate the heat by going a few seconds full power then few seconds off. Good ones regulate in a much smoother / more consistent way. We can't compare generic "induction hob" - it doesn't exist.
rakoo 7y ago
It is cheaper than fossil fuel but reliable intermittent electricity is still polluting way too much to efficiently curb green house gases.

dudul 7y ago

And surprisingly, there is a constant "let's end nuclear!" campaign going on in France. A lot of people complain about the risks of accident and the nuclear waste.

pgeorgi 7y ago
Nuclear reactors are delicate machines, and owners all over the world treat them badly to maximize profits, those in France being no exception. In theory there's lots of controls and oversight and everything, in practice the nuclear industry has waste products that are suitable for military purposes, and so they can get away with rather a lot as their watchdog ultimately also owns a military. These campaigns to "end nuclear" might have less traction if the owners managed their systems properly.

rabidrat 7y ago

We've got 300k years of fissile material, at current usage rates, which is only a small fraction of our current energy usage. If we magically went to 100% nuclear fission for energy (which is not reasonable for personal transportation, at least), and continued to increase energy consumption per business as usual (developed economies not reducing, and developing economies rapidly catching up to developed usage per capita), then it would not last nearly as long, by 2 orders of magnitude. Also I think that estimate imagines efficient breeder reactors and "complete burning" of the material, and does not take into account our current incredibly wasteful techniques of using 5% of the available energy and burying the rest in an unrecoverable mountain sludge. I know that a few thousand years still feels like a long time, but with nuclear fission, it is truly the most non-renewable resource, being formed only in stellar explosions. Let's put aside the science fiction of asteroid mining nuclear fuel for now; I think a reasonable argument could be made to not spend nuclear fuel for our primary energy needs. If we have dreams of ever being able to do mass interstellar travel, nuclear material is the only fuel we have so far with reasonable energy density for the speeds and distances involved. (Of course some will say "nuclear fusion" or "light sails", to which I say, we should defer mass consumption of fissile material until we have a reasonable expectation that those methods are viable).

Rylinks 7y ago
it's the most non-renewable resource, but it also goes away whether we use it or not.
- Retric 7y ago
  It’s going away on the scale of billions of years. Personally, I think it’s much better to use it for space exploration than unusually expensive electrical power. Now if was even vaguely cost competitive with battery backed up wind and solar then that’s a reasonable argument, but until then I just don’t see the point.
- nanomonkey 7y ago
  For all intents and purposes it is a renewable resource. Breeder reactors allow us to utilize our fissible materials for an absurd amount of time.

r00fus 7y ago

Just imagine if we were fully nuclear here, and reprocessing the fuel like France. Perhaps the climate would be in a non-crisis mode.

TomK32 7y ago

Nuclear energy always has and will be a purely political thing. Without state funding no private or public company would have taken on the potential future risks of harnessing the same power that laid waste to two cities and forced the Japanese Empire into decades of submission. Sadly we live in a world were future risks are ignored and lessons from the past, be it nuclear bombs or warfare in general, are forgotten and ignored.

geophertz 7y ago

By 300,000 years I hope you mean 200? https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-long-will-global-uranium-deposits-last/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-long-will-glo... Not the only source but I couldn't bother to search more. EDIT: this article says 90 years normally and 5 years if everything was run on nuclear power https://phys.org/news/2011-05-nuclear-power-world-energy.html https://phys.org/news/2011-05-nuclear-power-world-energy.htm...

roenxi 7y ago
Good news! That figure probably grossly underestimates how much uranium can be extracted. Indeed, I'd interpret that 200 figure as 1,000-2,000 years worth of supply. If nothing else, people havn't seriously looked. For example, in Australia, the state of NSW "proclaimed on 14 September 2012 ... [the removal of] the ban on uranium exploration" [0]. Australia has worlds most extensive uranium resources in the world, although not in the state of NSW for obvious reasons. Possibly we can extend our lead. But practically, the 'resources' definition that that article is relying on (going purely off the Australian legal framework) likely involves investment on the part of companies to be able to advertise. We've a lead-silver mine in Australia that have '20 years of resources' on the books over 80 year periods, because every time they need a mine extension they go out and 'discover' a bit more of the resource that everyone knows is there but havn't officially measured yet. The current 20 years of resource is a polite lie as well, they've got lots more. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_mining_in_Australia#Recent_legislative_changes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_mining_in_Australia#Re...

notinversed 7y ago

We have already cracked solar and battery tech. Coal is dying. Nuclear appears to be near dying as well. This has happened in the past three years or so.

charlesju 7y ago

If we believe climate change is a catastrophic disaster for humans now and near future, we should do everything to protect ourselves. There is a false dichotomy of renewables vs nuclear. Pursuing these options are not mutually exclusive. Only in so far that we want to devote limited resources to the problem. The real solution is that we should pursue both. Nuclear so we have a back stop to the problem. Renewables so that we have hope for the best case clean and safe energy future. It is foolish to believe the projections on renewables will absolutely happen. There are a lot of problems that can happen with technology at scale. Nuclear is a surefire bet, with risks being nuclear meltdowns and improper waste management.

rswskg 7y ago

We would have done the same in the UK, except it was foiled by an anti nuclear movement which is still informing the environmental movement today. It's a heart breaking own goal.