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Do you mean, replace just the nuclear with solar in 2 years, but keep the rest of the infra (Coal and other source of power generation) as is? If so, it can on
by calvinbhai 7y ago
Do you mean, replace just the nuclear with solar in 2 years, but keep the rest of the infra (Coal and other source of power generation) as is?
If so, it can only mean exponentially more coal/gas power generation to supply power during peak demand. How does that help?
- toomuchtodo 7y agoCoal is going away regardless due to it not being competitive against natural gas, no solar required. I’m saying nuclear should stick around until it’s the last base load left, but not bother building one more nuclear generating unit. Safely extend operating licenses whenever possible. Batteries and their lower costs will meet us at peaking needs in 3-5 years. There are hundreds of GWs of battery manufacturing capacity coming online over that time frame. Every million Tesla EVs is 10GW of controllable battery storage load on demand (example used only because I’m familiar with their presentation on it, and have seen it’s orchestration demo).
- calvinbhai 7y agoI agree
- wongarsu 7y agoNatural gas burns fairly clean and will likely be supplanted by as better gridscale storage technologies reach the market (which will happen now that demand is there). Coal is on its way out anyways because it can't compete with natural gas. Coal is more expensive than natural gas and the plants are more expensive to operate and can't react to demand as quickly (you can turn a gas valve faster than you can light coal). Coal will silently vanish as existing plants reach the end of their life and no new ones are built.
- StreamBright 7y agoYou are arguing that we should keep burning (400.000-1M years old technology) instead of using nuclear fission (70 years old tech) because natural gas burns fairly clean?