4 ms·

>This is just not true, there's no way you can say this. Solar costs are going down massively. Hydro is dirt cheap already. So renewables can absolutely be part

by scythe 6y ago

>This is just not true, there's no way you can say this. Solar costs are going down massively. Hydro is dirt cheap already. So renewables can absolutely be part of an energetic transition in the near future, while fusion is at best many decades away. So while I think fusion energy has the potential to transform energy generation, and by extent everything about our life, it's wrong to assume renewables aren't probably our safest bet in the near future. We need nuclear to meet baseload because the storage requirements (for PV particularly, by far the largest renewable) would be absurd without it. But since peak load can be several times average and nuclear plants can't be spun up in a day, we also need storage, and with storage around renewables can be cheaper than nuclear. It's not an either-or question; both should be used. Climate agreements have largely avoided the thorny question of providing nuclear power to the developing world, but if they're to achieve a prosperous standard of living in a sustainable future based on foreseeable technology, this has to be addressed.

kbenson 6y ago
> We need nuclear to meet baseload because the storage requirements (for PV particularly, by far the largest renewable) would be absurd without it. The problem with statements like this is that when they're proven wrong (they aren't always, but when they are), it's often because of some massive underlying shift that makes a bunch of assumptions wrong, leading to a wrong prediction. If we envision a system where not only delivery, but storage is centrally managed, then yes, there's a massive amount of energy storage required, and that's hard to justify and invest in for large companies. If instead you assume that maybe electric cars will act like large battery reservoirs, and stuff like the powerwall will also be used to supplement it, then we end up with a massive amount of battery storage already distributed to different endpoints, an d paid for by individuals instead of a few massive companies. Whether that's all that likely, or even possible at a huge scale because of required rare materials is a question, but that's an entirely different type of scenario than "energy companies invest in massive batteries to leverage solar/wind for efficiently", and the type of thing that's hard to predict and because of that often overlooked. That doesn't mean stuff like that doesn't happen all the time. In fact, I would say there's a major shift like that every decade or so, we just don't necessarily notice them unless we look at them. The internet itself was a major thing. Just relating to the internet, there have been major advanced every few years. The rollout of new major advancements is unevenly distributed and often over the span of a decade, leading to it being hard to notice them. Just this last year, the massive increase in remote work will likely cause a major shift in the economics of many markets, and change how many predictions would play out. Bringing this back to energy, consider that it seems like every year California is having massive fires, and is bankrupting its public utility provider to the point that the state is prepared to take it over if it gets much worse. At that point, if the state decides it needs to actually replace a lot of infrastructure that PG&E needs to maintain, maybe pushing for some partially distributed model starts to make sense. These are all things that go into making predictions about energy really hard, since we're at an inflection point where a lot of stuff that used to work is not working very well, and new technologies are just at the cusp of being useful.
- gibolt 6y ago
  *useful and financially competitive
clomond 6y ago
Important distinction here: nobody actually cares or wants power that is baseload. In some cases it can actually be a bad thing. The property you really want is “dispatchable”. There when you want it. Not when you don’t.
- 6nf 6y ago
  Yes sure you can break it down like that. At larger scales (e.g. interstate transmission lines) you have to aggregate and then becomes baseload + surge again. Individual users want dispatchable, cities or counties becomes baseload +.
- scythe 6y ago
  >nobody actually cares or wants power that is baseload. That doesn't make sense. At all hours of the day there is some demand on the grid: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=42915 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=42915 If you only have to store for the fluctuations vs. having to store all night you end up with massively less storage. Electric cars won't do it either. There are less than 300 million registered vehicles in the US and a car battery holds about 100 kWh. That's 30 billion kWh and overnight demand may be as high as 5 billion kWh/night. You'd need an extremely high compliance rate to pull that off. But seasonal productivity fluctuations are the bigger issue with solar and wind. You might get way more power in July than you need and way less in January -- wind is also seasonal, but the peak month varies by region. You're not going to store months and months worth of electricity in cars and even grid storage facilities would become cost-prohibitive, and you can't reset a nuclear reactor on a weekly basis, but one or two starts a year might be achievable if you design for it. Currently that's not legal: http://ansnuclearcafe.org/2013/09/03/why-dont-we-mothball-nuclear-plants/ http://ansnuclearcafe.org/2013/09/03/why-dont-we-mothball-nu...
  - pfdietz 6y ago
    https://model.energy/ https://model.energy/ Go there and model (with real historical weather data) how much a solar/wind/battery/hydrogen system would cost to deliver steady power. Then compare against new nuclear. Sorry, nuclear. (The hydrogen part is essential in some places, like northern Europe, and its impact is not fully appreciated by many nuclear fans.)
pfdietz 6y ago
> We need nuclear to meet baseload because the storage requirements (for PV particularly, by far the largest renewable) would be absurd without it. This is not true. With a properly designed solar/wind/battery/hydrogen system, a steady stream of power can be delivered more cheaply than what you could get from a new nuclear reactor. This wasn't true even ten years ago, but it's true now, and many (such as yourself) have not updated your priors.

by scythe 6y ago

kbenson 6y ago

> We need nuclear to meet baseload because the storage requirements (for PV particularly, by far the largest renewable) would be absurd without it. The problem with statements like this is that when they're proven wrong (they aren't always, but when they are), it's often because of some massive underlying shift that makes a bunch of assumptions wrong, leading to a wrong prediction. If we envision a system where not only delivery, but storage is centrally managed, then yes, there's a massive amount of energy storage required, and that's hard to justify and invest in for large companies. If instead you assume that maybe electric cars will act like large battery reservoirs, and stuff like the powerwall will also be used to supplement it, then we end up with a massive amount of battery storage already distributed to different endpoints, an d paid for by individuals instead of a few massive companies. Whether that's all that likely, or even possible at a huge scale because of required rare materials is a question, but that's an entirely different type of scenario than "energy companies invest in massive batteries to leverage solar/wind for efficiently", and the type of thing that's hard to predict and because of that often overlooked. That doesn't mean stuff like that doesn't happen all the time. In fact, I would say there's a major shift like that every decade or so, we just don't necessarily notice them unless we look at them. The internet itself was a major thing. Just relating to the internet, there have been major advanced every few years. The rollout of new major advancements is unevenly distributed and often over the span of a decade, leading to it being hard to notice them. Just this last year, the massive increase in remote work will likely cause a major shift in the economics of many markets, and change how many predictions would play out. Bringing this back to energy, consider that it seems like every year California is having massive fires, and is bankrupting its public utility provider to the point that the state is prepared to take it over if it gets much worse. At that point, if the state decides it needs to actually replace a lot of infrastructure that PG&E needs to maintain, maybe pushing for some partially distributed model starts to make sense. These are all things that go into making predictions about energy really hard, since we're at an inflection point where a lot of stuff that used to work is not working very well, and new technologies are just at the cusp of being useful.

gibolt 6y ago
*useful and financially competitive

clomond 6y ago

Important distinction here: nobody actually cares or wants power that is baseload. In some cases it can actually be a bad thing. The property you really want is “dispatchable”. There when you want it. Not when you don’t.

6nf 6y ago
Yes sure you can break it down like that. At larger scales (e.g. interstate transmission lines) you have to aggregate and then becomes baseload + surge again. Individual users want dispatchable, cities or counties becomes baseload +.
scythe 6y ago
>nobody actually cares or wants power that is baseload. That doesn't make sense. At all hours of the day there is some demand on the grid: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=42915 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=42915 If you only have to store for the fluctuations vs. having to store all night you end up with massively less storage. Electric cars won't do it either. There are less than 300 million registered vehicles in the US and a car battery holds about 100 kWh. That's 30 billion kWh and overnight demand may be as high as 5 billion kWh/night. You'd need an extremely high compliance rate to pull that off. But seasonal productivity fluctuations are the bigger issue with solar and wind. You might get way more power in July than you need and way less in January -- wind is also seasonal, but the peak month varies by region. You're not going to store months and months worth of electricity in cars and even grid storage facilities would become cost-prohibitive, and you can't reset a nuclear reactor on a weekly basis, but one or two starts a year might be achievable if you design for it. Currently that's not legal: http://ansnuclearcafe.org/2013/09/03/why-dont-we-mothball-nuclear-plants/ http://ansnuclearcafe.org/2013/09/03/why-dont-we-mothball-nu...
- pfdietz 6y ago
  https://model.energy/ https://model.energy/ Go there and model (with real historical weather data) how much a solar/wind/battery/hydrogen system would cost to deliver steady power. Then compare against new nuclear. Sorry, nuclear. (The hydrogen part is essential in some places, like northern Europe, and its impact is not fully appreciated by many nuclear fans.)

pfdietz 6y ago

> We need nuclear to meet baseload because the storage requirements (for PV particularly, by far the largest renewable) would be absurd without it. This is not true. With a properly designed solar/wind/battery/hydrogen system, a steady stream of power can be delivered more cheaply than what you could get from a new nuclear reactor. This wasn't true even ten years ago, but it's true now, and many (such as yourself) have not updated your priors.