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Actually renewables can scale very well by covering much more area and thereby averaging out the wind and solar fluctuations across the country. The technology

Actually renewables can scale very well by covering much more area and thereby averaging out the wind and solar fluctuations across the country. The technology for achieving this is High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) a technology that has also been rapidly getting cheaper along with renewable technologies because its costs are driven by semiconductor technologies getting cheaper every year.

acidburnNSA 6y ago
Permitting transmission lines will get much, much harder with scale needed to do what you're saying. With nuclear you don't need to build vast new storage and transmission, or cover the landscape with energy harvesters.
- cycomanic 6y ago
  With nuclear you still have to cove rthe landscape with nuclear powerplants, uranium mining pits (people like to forget these because they are not in their backyard) and nuclear storage (which is still an unsolved solution). Then there is the problem that nuclear is terrible at anything but baseload, so you still need gas turbines for reacting to load. Everytime this is brought up nuclear proponents say research in new nuclear power generation will solve all of it. But they have been saying this for decades while renewable are there and all the solutions for its downsides exist.
  - eru 6y ago
    You are not exactly 'covering the landscape'. See https://www.withouthotair.com/c24/page_161.shtml https://www.withouthotair.com/c24/page_161.shtml for some of the math for the example of Britain. See the calculation starting on this page https://www.withouthotair.com/c24/page_166.shtml https://www.withouthotair.com/c24/page_166.shtml > Land use > Let’s imagine that Britain decides it is serious about getting off fossil fuels, and creates a lot of new nuclear reactors, even though this may not be “sustainable.” If we build enough reactors to make possible a significant decarbonization of transport and heating, can we fit the required nuclear reactors into Britain? The number we need to know is the power per unit area of nuclear power stations, which is about 1000W/m2 (figure 24.10). Let’s imagine generating 22 kWh per day per person of nuclear power – equivalent to 55 GW (roughly the same as France’s nuclear power), which could be delivered by 55 nuclear power stations, each occu- pying one square kilometre. That’s about 0.02% of the area of the country. Wind farms delivering the same average power would require 500 times as much land: 10% of the country. If the nuclear power stations were placed in pairs around the coast (length about 3000 km, at 5 km resolution), then there’d be two every 100 km. Thus while the area required is modest, the fraction of coastline gobbled by these power stations would be about 2% (2 kilometres in every 100). The book also has sections about the economics of clean up. About fast breeder reactors and thorium designs.
    - ljf 6y ago
      Isn't the economics of clean up that the government pays? Is there anywhere in the world where the private operator of a nuclear power plant if covering all their own costs for clean up and decommissioning? Genuine question - I am well aware I could be wrong. My understanding is that nuclear is always about energy independence - not cheap energy. (Don't get me wrong, the sooner we remove coal, biomass, wood and gas from our energy mix the better.)
      - redis_mlc 6y ago
        > Is there anywhere in the world where the private operator of a nuclear power plant if covering all their own costs for clean up and decommissioning? You have to be kidding me. No, in the US utilities are generally privately-owned, and are "responsible" for the cleanup. Their playbook is: 1) Extend the operating license for an additional 20 years, safe or not. 2) After that, declare bankruptcy.
      - eru 6y ago
        What's bad about biomass and wood? A country like eg Finland could probably run on wood burning, couldn't they? > Is there anywhere in the world where the private operator of a nuclear power plant if covering all their own costs for clean up and decommissioning? Genuine question - I am well aware I could be wrong. It's surprisingly hard to (quickly) find who is paying for those decommissioning funds. I imagine there's a levy on active nuclear power plant operations that goes into these funds. You can find a lot of discussion online about whether those funds are big enough, and worries that they might not be. Perhaps the most quantitative treatment I found is from https://www.withouthotair.com/c24/page_167.shtml https://www.withouthotair.com/c24/page_167.shtml > Economics of cleanup > What’s the cost of cleaning up nuclear power sites? The nuclear decommissioning authority has an annual budget of £2 billion for the next 25 years. The nuclear industry sold everyone in the UK 4 kWh/d for about 25 years, so the nuclear decommissioning authority’s cost is 2.3 p/kWh. That’s a hefty subsidy – though not, it must be said, as hefty as the subsidy currently given to offshore wind (7 p/kWh).
        cycomanic 6y ago
  - acidburnNSA 6y ago
    Nope because nuclear fuel energy density is 2000000x higher than all chemicals the land footprint is tiny. Like 450x less than wind total system. Nuclear can load follow but chooses not to for economics reasons. Markets are human constructs and can be adjusted as needed. Also nuclear works fine with all forms of energy storage.

acidburnNSA 6y ago

Permitting transmission lines will get much, much harder with scale needed to do what you're saying. With nuclear you don't need to build vast new storage and transmission, or cover the landscape with energy harvesters.

cycomanic 6y ago
With nuclear you still have to cove rthe landscape with nuclear powerplants, uranium mining pits (people like to forget these because they are not in their backyard) and nuclear storage (which is still an unsolved solution). Then there is the problem that nuclear is terrible at anything but baseload, so you still need gas turbines for reacting to load. Everytime this is brought up nuclear proponents say research in new nuclear power generation will solve all of it. But they have been saying this for decades while renewable are there and all the solutions for its downsides exist.
- eru 6y ago
  You are not exactly 'covering the landscape'. See https://www.withouthotair.com/c24/page_161.shtml https://www.withouthotair.com/c24/page_161.shtml for some of the math for the example of Britain. See the calculation starting on this page https://www.withouthotair.com/c24/page_166.shtml https://www.withouthotair.com/c24/page_166.shtml > Land use > Let’s imagine that Britain decides it is serious about getting off fossil fuels, and creates a lot of new nuclear reactors, even though this may not be “sustainable.” If we build enough reactors to make possible a significant decarbonization of transport and heating, can we fit the required nuclear reactors into Britain? The number we need to know is the power per unit area of nuclear power stations, which is about 1000W/m2 (figure 24.10). Let’s imagine generating 22 kWh per day per person of nuclear power – equivalent to 55 GW (roughly the same as France’s nuclear power), which could be delivered by 55 nuclear power stations, each occu- pying one square kilometre. That’s about 0.02% of the area of the country. Wind farms delivering the same average power would require 500 times as much land: 10% of the country. If the nuclear power stations were placed in pairs around the coast (length about 3000 km, at 5 km resolution), then there’d be two every 100 km. Thus while the area required is modest, the fraction of coastline gobbled by these power stations would be about 2% (2 kilometres in every 100). The book also has sections about the economics of clean up. About fast breeder reactors and thorium designs.
  - ljf 6y ago
    Isn't the economics of clean up that the government pays? Is there anywhere in the world where the private operator of a nuclear power plant if covering all their own costs for clean up and decommissioning? Genuine question - I am well aware I could be wrong. My understanding is that nuclear is always about energy independence - not cheap energy. (Don't get me wrong, the sooner we remove coal, biomass, wood and gas from our energy mix the better.)
    - redis_mlc 6y ago
      > Is there anywhere in the world where the private operator of a nuclear power plant if covering all their own costs for clean up and decommissioning? You have to be kidding me. No, in the US utilities are generally privately-owned, and are "responsible" for the cleanup. Their playbook is: 1) Extend the operating license for an additional 20 years, safe or not. 2) After that, declare bankruptcy.
    - eru 6y ago
      What's bad about biomass and wood? A country like eg Finland could probably run on wood burning, couldn't they? > Is there anywhere in the world where the private operator of a nuclear power plant if covering all their own costs for clean up and decommissioning? Genuine question - I am well aware I could be wrong. It's surprisingly hard to (quickly) find who is paying for those decommissioning funds. I imagine there's a levy on active nuclear power plant operations that goes into these funds. You can find a lot of discussion online about whether those funds are big enough, and worries that they might not be. Perhaps the most quantitative treatment I found is from https://www.withouthotair.com/c24/page_167.shtml https://www.withouthotair.com/c24/page_167.shtml > Economics of cleanup > What’s the cost of cleaning up nuclear power sites? The nuclear decommissioning authority has an annual budget of £2 billion for the next 25 years. The nuclear industry sold everyone in the UK 4 kWh/d for about 25 years, so the nuclear decommissioning authority’s cost is 2.3 p/kWh. That’s a hefty subsidy – though not, it must be said, as hefty as the subsidy currently given to offshore wind (7 p/kWh).
      - cycomanic 6y ago
- acidburnNSA 6y ago
  Nope because nuclear fuel energy density is 2000000x higher than all chemicals the land footprint is tiny. Like 450x less than wind total system. Nuclear can load follow but chooses not to for economics reasons. Markets are human constructs and can be adjusted as needed. Also nuclear works fine with all forms of energy storage.