4 ms·

All of this is interesting, but for instance it states that nuclear plants occupy large amount of land (20.5km2 on average) and needs lots of resources. However

by wazoox 7y ago

All of this is interesting, but for instance it states that nuclear plants occupy large amount of land (20.5km2 on average) and needs lots of resources. However without a comparison to alternative technology, this is a moot point. Having a quick look at requirements for solar plants, it's easy to check that typical ones occupy about 14km2 per GW of power. So solar requires several orders of magnitude more land than nuclear (taking into account actual power production: 80% yield for nuclear, 15% at most for solar). Furthermore, it's also easy to check that contrary to nuclear plants where land grab is largely a safety zone, a solar plant actually covers land with hardware, most of it requiring much more rare earths and exotic materials than nuclear power plants (where 95% of stuff in weight is concrete and steel). The actual take for me is the following: in the coming years, we'll go through a huge reduction in energy availability, because fossil fuels are at least 80% of world energy consumption and they'll run out at some point anyway; which implies a huge reduction in economic activity. This is absolutely unavoidable in the next few decades unless some actual miracle such as cheap and easy cold fusion happens real soon now .

Tade0 7y ago
a solar plant actually covers land with hardware, most of it requiring much more rare earths and exotic materials The most exotic material in crystalline solar panels is silver or perhaps tin. No rare earths whatsoever.
- wazoox 7y ago
  To be a somewhat believable alternative to nuclear, you'll also need tons of batteries. Many, many tons of them, full of lithium and cobalt and other things. Because a solar plant produces power along a very steep bell curve centered around noon, while a nuclear plant produces linearly exactly the amount you're asking for 80 to 95% of the time. This is only alluded to in the article, but intermittency is a major nuisance and hinders significantly actual utility of renewable power, because we need a base level of production they're totally incapable to provide unless backed with literal mountains of storage (storage technology at scale we don't know how to build or manage today).
  - Tade0 7y ago
    while a nuclear plant produces linearly exactly the amount you're asking for 80 to 95% of the time. Only if it serves as baseload. In other cases you have to throttle it, which quickly makes the whole business much more expensive per kWh. And this is the reason nuclear will never be the solution. Overprovisioned renewables combined with gas peaker plants are simply way cheaper and much faster to deploy. Also batteries needen't be li-ion. Here's an example of a company that is currently in the process of scaling up their battery product: https://eosenergystorage.com/ https://eosenergystorage.com/
    - Accujack 7y ago
      >Only if it serves as baseload. ...which is the whole point of nuclear. It's constant power. The means to manufacture, service and maintain battery capacity sufficient to meet our civilization's energy needs from renewables simply does not exist in any technology, period.
      - Tade0 7y ago
        But demand is not constant. You either have unmatched supply/demand or expensive power. For this reason nuclear is already losing on the economical front. As for the batteries: citation needed.
        wazoox 7y ago
        Renewables are extremely cheap only because they produce power when it isn't needed and therefore is literally worth nothing. As for batteries, the biggest batteries in service now are 150MWh. If we want to power the world with renewable, we'll need TWh of batteries. We just don't know how to build something like that. We haven't got the technology (lithium isn't an option at these scales). Renewables have an effect only as long as you have a steerable baseload of coal, gas or nuclear to actually feed the demand. They have a positive effect only as long as you haven't phased out all of your coal. As long as there is no coal burner left, they'll set a high limit on emissions. Unless, of course, we build as many nuclear plants as possible in the meanwhile instead of masses of gas firing plants (400g/CO2/KWh). We could build batteries and much more solar and wind power plant instead, but even if we suppose a non-existent cheap battery technology, providing large scale power this way would be tremendously expensive (5 to 30 times more expensive than nuclear, depending upon the hypotheses). Solar has an actual output of 15% its theoretical power. Wind is about 30% (onshore) to 40% (offshore). So to produce x GW of power, first you'll need x * 3 to x * 6 GW of installed capacity; second you'll need additional capacity and batteries to offset times of no wind or no sun. Figuring the price of several hundred GWh of battery storage is left as an exercise to the reader, but it can't be cheap. Plus the grid enhancements needed to transport the additional peak capacity from power plants to batteries, etc.
magduf 7y ago
You can put solar panels on rooftops. If you go to Europe, you'll see them on rooftops everywhere, even on barns.
- wazoox 7y ago
  These small solar arrays are connected to the grid and can't work without it. Furthermore, they actually tend to add too much load to the grid because it's not built to manage numerous random power sources dispatched across the network. And this is not the efficient thermal solar power the article mentions, either. They're between pretty inefficient and very inefficient (depending upon roof angle and orientation), heavily subsidized and in a period of dwindling resource availability, a piss-poor allocation of money compared to unsexy things such as proper building insulation and heat pumps everywhere. Anyone spending some time on analysing the numbers would be baffled by how poor the ROI is on renewable overall. They really can't stand on their own much.
  - magduf 7y ago
    >These small solar arrays are connected to the grid and can't work without it. Huh? Everything is connected to the grid, whether it's producing or consuming electricity. What kind of argument is this? >Furthermore, they actually tend to add too much load to the grid because it's not built to manage numerous random power sources dispatched across the network. Apparently, it works just fine in Germany. >They're between pretty inefficient and very inefficient (depending upon roof angle and orientation), heavily subsidized and in a period of dwindling resource availability, a piss-poor allocation of money compared to unsexy things such as proper building insulation and heat pumps everywhere. Insulation and heat pumps don't generate electricity. Germany generates a huge portion of its total electricity with renewables, including solar, which is pretty remarkable considering it has a high latitude. >Anyone spending some time on analysing the numbers would be baffled by how poor the ROI is on renewable overall. They really can't stand on their own much. Do you work for the oil industry? Considering that Germany is one of the leading economies of the whole world, and especially the EU, and that they're quite successful with renewables, your statement sounds ridiculous.

by wazoox 7y ago

Tade0 7y ago

a solar plant actually covers land with hardware, most of it requiring much more rare earths and exotic materials The most exotic material in crystalline solar panels is silver or perhaps tin. No rare earths whatsoever.

wazoox 7y ago
To be a somewhat believable alternative to nuclear, you'll also need tons of batteries. Many, many tons of them, full of lithium and cobalt and other things. Because a solar plant produces power along a very steep bell curve centered around noon, while a nuclear plant produces linearly exactly the amount you're asking for 80 to 95% of the time. This is only alluded to in the article, but intermittency is a major nuisance and hinders significantly actual utility of renewable power, because we need a base level of production they're totally incapable to provide unless backed with literal mountains of storage (storage technology at scale we don't know how to build or manage today).
- Tade0 7y ago
  while a nuclear plant produces linearly exactly the amount you're asking for 80 to 95% of the time. Only if it serves as baseload. In other cases you have to throttle it, which quickly makes the whole business much more expensive per kWh. And this is the reason nuclear will never be the solution. Overprovisioned renewables combined with gas peaker plants are simply way cheaper and much faster to deploy. Also batteries needen't be li-ion. Here's an example of a company that is currently in the process of scaling up their battery product: https://eosenergystorage.com/ https://eosenergystorage.com/
  - Accujack 7y ago
    >Only if it serves as baseload. ...which is the whole point of nuclear. It's constant power. The means to manufacture, service and maintain battery capacity sufficient to meet our civilization's energy needs from renewables simply does not exist in any technology, period.
    - Tade0 7y ago
      But demand is not constant. You either have unmatched supply/demand or expensive power. For this reason nuclear is already losing on the economical front. As for the batteries: citation needed.
      - wazoox 7y ago
        Renewables are extremely cheap only because they produce power when it isn't needed and therefore is literally worth nothing. As for batteries, the biggest batteries in service now are 150MWh. If we want to power the world with renewable, we'll need TWh of batteries. We just don't know how to build something like that. We haven't got the technology (lithium isn't an option at these scales). Renewables have an effect only as long as you have a steerable baseload of coal, gas or nuclear to actually feed the demand. They have a positive effect only as long as you haven't phased out all of your coal. As long as there is no coal burner left, they'll set a high limit on emissions. Unless, of course, we build as many nuclear plants as possible in the meanwhile instead of masses of gas firing plants (400g/CO2/KWh). We could build batteries and much more solar and wind power plant instead, but even if we suppose a non-existent cheap battery technology, providing large scale power this way would be tremendously expensive (5 to 30 times more expensive than nuclear, depending upon the hypotheses). Solar has an actual output of 15% its theoretical power. Wind is about 30% (onshore) to 40% (offshore). So to produce x GW of power, first you'll need x * 3 to x * 6 GW of installed capacity; second you'll need additional capacity and batteries to offset times of no wind or no sun. Figuring the price of several hundred GWh of battery storage is left as an exercise to the reader, but it can't be cheap. Plus the grid enhancements needed to transport the additional peak capacity from power plants to batteries, etc.

magduf 7y ago

You can put solar panels on rooftops. If you go to Europe, you'll see them on rooftops everywhere, even on barns.

wazoox 7y ago
These small solar arrays are connected to the grid and can't work without it. Furthermore, they actually tend to add too much load to the grid because it's not built to manage numerous random power sources dispatched across the network. And this is not the efficient thermal solar power the article mentions, either. They're between pretty inefficient and very inefficient (depending upon roof angle and orientation), heavily subsidized and in a period of dwindling resource availability, a piss-poor allocation of money compared to unsexy things such as proper building insulation and heat pumps everywhere. Anyone spending some time on analysing the numbers would be baffled by how poor the ROI is on renewable overall. They really can't stand on their own much.
- magduf 7y ago
  >These small solar arrays are connected to the grid and can't work without it. Huh? Everything is connected to the grid, whether it's producing or consuming electricity. What kind of argument is this? >Furthermore, they actually tend to add too much load to the grid because it's not built to manage numerous random power sources dispatched across the network. Apparently, it works just fine in Germany. >They're between pretty inefficient and very inefficient (depending upon roof angle and orientation), heavily subsidized and in a period of dwindling resource availability, a piss-poor allocation of money compared to unsexy things such as proper building insulation and heat pumps everywhere. Insulation and heat pumps don't generate electricity. Germany generates a huge portion of its total electricity with renewables, including solar, which is pretty remarkable considering it has a high latitude. >Anyone spending some time on analysing the numbers would be baffled by how poor the ROI is on renewable overall. They really can't stand on their own much. Do you work for the oil industry? Considering that Germany is one of the leading economies of the whole world, and especially the EU, and that they're quite successful with renewables, your statement sounds ridiculous.