4 ms·

What are you suggesting as an alternative? As I understand it, we aren't ready for storage of renewable energy either.

olau 7y ago
We don't need to suggest alternatives here. The market is already supplying them. Yes, long-term storage is expensive. But there are options: Overprovisioning, hydropower, thermal storage if you just need to heat up houses, thermal-electric storage if you need the electricity, biomass (plants store the energy). Thermal and thermal-electric storage is still in its infancy, but if you show up with the need and the money, you could buy a plant to be installed in a year or two.
specialist 7y ago
I'm observing, not suggesting. Not an expert, just a self-preserving layperson. -- As I currently understand it: Most power generation will addressed with wind plus solar, and adopting direct power for our grid. The challenges here are time, money, politics. We'll need to prop up existing nuclear during the transition. Say 10-20 years. Better batteries (storage) will be better, sure. But batteries are no longer a blocker. We can kinda us see how transportation will play out. 20-30 years to transition to EVs. Carbon taxes to greatly discourage shipping and air travel. Construction and agriculture are all but unaddressed, much less solved. -- Meanwhile, atmospheric carbon will continue to rise due to burning forests, ocean acidification, thawing tundra. These "natural" sources are 2-3x greater than anthropogenic. They are in a positive feedback loop. They are currently unstoppable. For which we have no plan. We'll need carbon capture. Olivine, CO2-to-ammonia, CO2 scrubbers, algae bioreactors are the only concrete proposals I've heard (and now remember). It won't be enough. We should dump money into every half-way plausible idea (a la X Prizes) and hope some of it works. Somehow remove carbon faster than it's being added. More far fetched notions will be tried too. Dumping iron into the ocean. Aerosols to dim sunlight. Light up some volcanos. Hopefully something helps.
ZeroGravitas 7y ago
Storage is an interesting problem, but it's also a problem for nuclear. You don't get nuclear peaker plants because they cost so much you need to run them flat out, and then export your excess to other countries, plus subsidize your nuclear program under the table, before the math even starts to work out. Someone suggested that you could use the excess electricity to generate hydrogen. Yes you could, but you could generate more hydrogen for less money with solar/wind. Two options, with similar drawbacks, one of which is cheap and easy to build (well, conparitively, those windmills are stupid big) and roll out around the globe and one that isn't. People are seriously working right now on how to get to 100% renewables. Lots of interesting proposals and plans. Basically every government is on board with this. It's just fiddling with the details. 80% is considered pretty easy. No one is working on aiming for 100% nuclear because it's just a plain stupid idea. Build a wall and get Mexico to pay for it levels of stupid, as similarly it wouldn't even solve the problem. Yet somehow you can pretend to be the adult in the room by armchair quarterbacking it as what we should have done if the sensible people were in charge.
- pjc50 7y ago
  > No one is working on aiming for 100% nuclear because it's just a plain stupid idea. That was the France plan from the 1970s: 100% nuclear, as a way of getting off oil dependency. As we can see, 80% was achievable, 100% wasn't, and the decommissioning costs are starting to become a question.

olau 7y ago

We don't need to suggest alternatives here. The market is already supplying them. Yes, long-term storage is expensive. But there are options: Overprovisioning, hydropower, thermal storage if you just need to heat up houses, thermal-electric storage if you need the electricity, biomass (plants store the energy). Thermal and thermal-electric storage is still in its infancy, but if you show up with the need and the money, you could buy a plant to be installed in a year or two.

specialist 7y ago

I'm observing, not suggesting. Not an expert, just a self-preserving layperson. -- As I currently understand it: Most power generation will addressed with wind plus solar, and adopting direct power for our grid. The challenges here are time, money, politics. We'll need to prop up existing nuclear during the transition. Say 10-20 years. Better batteries (storage) will be better, sure. But batteries are no longer a blocker. We can kinda us see how transportation will play out. 20-30 years to transition to EVs. Carbon taxes to greatly discourage shipping and air travel. Construction and agriculture are all but unaddressed, much less solved. -- Meanwhile, atmospheric carbon will continue to rise due to burning forests, ocean acidification, thawing tundra. These "natural" sources are 2-3x greater than anthropogenic. They are in a positive feedback loop. They are currently unstoppable. For which we have no plan. We'll need carbon capture. Olivine, CO2-to-ammonia, CO2 scrubbers, algae bioreactors are the only concrete proposals I've heard (and now remember). It won't be enough. We should dump money into every half-way plausible idea (a la X Prizes) and hope some of it works. Somehow remove carbon faster than it's being added. More far fetched notions will be tried too. Dumping iron into the ocean. Aerosols to dim sunlight. Light up some volcanos. Hopefully something helps.

ZeroGravitas 7y ago

Storage is an interesting problem, but it's also a problem for nuclear. You don't get nuclear peaker plants because they cost so much you need to run them flat out, and then export your excess to other countries, plus subsidize your nuclear program under the table, before the math even starts to work out. Someone suggested that you could use the excess electricity to generate hydrogen. Yes you could, but you could generate more hydrogen for less money with solar/wind. Two options, with similar drawbacks, one of which is cheap and easy to build (well, conparitively, those windmills are stupid big) and roll out around the globe and one that isn't. People are seriously working right now on how to get to 100% renewables. Lots of interesting proposals and plans. Basically every government is on board with this. It's just fiddling with the details. 80% is considered pretty easy. No one is working on aiming for 100% nuclear because it's just a plain stupid idea. Build a wall and get Mexico to pay for it levels of stupid, as similarly it wouldn't even solve the problem. Yet somehow you can pretend to be the adult in the room by armchair quarterbacking it as what we should have done if the sensible people were in charge.

pjc50 7y ago
> No one is working on aiming for 100% nuclear because it's just a plain stupid idea. That was the France plan from the 1970s: 100% nuclear, as a way of getting off oil dependency. As we can see, 80% was achievable, 100% wasn't, and the decommissioning costs are starting to become a question.