4 ms·
Its a nice appeal to simplicity to say nuclear is just 'heating water and spinning a turbine', I could also say the sun is a very large carbon-free maintenance-
by integer42 6y ago
Its a nice appeal to simplicity to say nuclear is just 'heating water and spinning a turbine', I could also say the sun is a very large carbon-free maintenance-free opex-free reactor in the sky and we just need to design a secondary stage of the power plant to transform the energy to electricity.
And instead of pistons OR turbines, we can use a new type of machine specifically built for this purpose aka renewable energy technologies.
The reality is it doesn't matter how you word it or what you think should be simpler. Its what the economy can actually build, and including risk, buying solar panels which have no moving parts and last for decades are currently the more efficient way to add a watt to the grid.
Your "blunt" assertion where you predict the capacity of the grid to accomodate renewables and the quantity of battery storage and the feasibility of every potential upcoming storage technology probably requires a few sources to be taken seriously as well.
- manfredo 6y agoCorrect, the sun is a great source of energy. But we use most of our energy when the sun is blocked by the earth. The sun is opex and capex free, but the storage necessary to make it feasible requires massive capital expenditure and massive operational expenditure. The point is, just adding watts to the grid is not a solution. You needed watt when they're needed and where they're needed. And doing that with renewables is a lot harder, hence why we're really just supplementing fossil fuels with wind and solar not really working towards full decarbonization. My assertions about the capacity of battery production were indeed backed by sources of predicted growth of battery production. In case you missed it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25283498 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25283498