6 ms·

I don’t really understand how wind and sun could totally replace nuclear. How do we get electricity during the night? How do we get electricity when it’s cloudy

by cpach 6y ago

I don’t really understand how wind and sun could totally replace nuclear. How do we get electricity during the night? How do we get electricity when it’s cloudy but the wind is light at the same time?

JohnJamesRambo 6y ago
Store the power. Batteries, pump water up into lakes, melt salt, etc.
- kalleboo 6y ago
  From the numbers we saw during the Texas power outage, the amount of batteries required would be mind-boggling. Lots of places do not have the geography required for pumped storage, or it is already fully exploited (building a new dam is also an environmental disaster) Molten salt also still seems to be in it's infancy. The most practical solution I could see today to live without baseline power would be to build a massive inter-continental HVDC grid. Large grids have a tendency to be fragile and have catastrophic failures though.
  - godelski 6y ago
    To be honest the best probably would be to get small modular reactors (SMRs) into mass production. That would give economies of scale along with other benefits. But we aren't quite there yet. I'd imagine if SMRs became popular larger reactors would as well too.
    - manicdee 6y ago
      Can you imagine how a Texan operator of a SMR would have cut corners and what the damage to their plant would have been in this cold snap? Remembering that the damage to Texan energy production was due to failure to winterise their equipment after the last two cold snaps. It has happened before, they were told it was going to happen again, but the legislature decided that it was best to let the market decide the outcome. An SMR operator refusing to winterise their plant would end up in a similar situation: part of the equipment freezes or ices over (because antifreeze costs money), leading to an inability to scale up production until ambient temperatures rise far enough to defrost the frozen plant.
      - pbourke 6y ago
        Isn’t nuclear federally regulated today?
        godelski 6y ago
        Yes, and nuclear facilities have significantly different standards from other facilities. The parent's comment is bad because the SMR wouldn't explode or leak if it wasn't properly winterized. It would shut down. But there is a lower chance of that happening simply because the significantly higher standards surrounding nuclear.
        manicdee 6y ago
        Where did I suggest a SMR would explode or leak?
  - bildung 6y ago
    Texas' (additional) problem was lack of connectivity to the rest of the country. With a proper grid the outages wouldn't have occured.
- AtlasBarfed 6y ago
  Also, there will be hundreds of millions of EVs in about 10 years. With not-so-small batteries, charged by distributed rooftop solar. Many / most of the EVs will have batteries that are overprovisioned for daily driving in order to enable distance driving.
- adrianN 6y ago
  Making Methane is important too. We already have infrastructure for storing vast amounts of natural gas. We can just use it to store Methane made from Water, CO2 and electricity.
neolog 6y ago
Store it, or get it from somewhere else?
nl 6y ago
Transmission lines and storage. There are multiple 2500km transmission lines in use today. They are relatively cheap to build and solve almost all the intermitency issues. China has a few over 3000km long already, eg: https://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/energy/the-smarter-grid/chinas-state-grid-corp-crushes-power-transmission-records https://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/energy/the-smarter-grid... and there is a 4500km long line planned for Australia to Singapore: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia%E2%80%93ASEAN_Power_Link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia%E2%80%93ASEAN_Power_...
MrApathy 6y ago
You build a big grid. Wind won't be light everywhere. Load is lower at night, so lack of sunlight is less of an issue. Maybe people start placing battery packs in their homes. Battery technology has seen large investments over the past decade and performance is better than ever. When demand is high, inexpensive natural gas can be turned on quickly. There are a lot of options, almost all of them less expensive than nuclear. That's my point, traditionally nuclear was good for baseline and renewable doesn't have a comparable equivalent apart from hydro. But other renewables like wind are getting to be so efficient and inexpensive, that I don't see how building an excess of it can't compete with nuclear.
- nitrogen 6y ago
  Load is lower at night Only in warm climates.
  - whoooooo123 6y ago
    Yes, and also load is higher in the winter, when there's less wind and sunshine.
    - hyper_dynamics 6y ago
      Less wind in the winter is surely not true for countries in Europe.
- godelski 6y ago
  > Battery technology has seen large investments over the past decade and performance is better than ever. Battery technology still has a bit to go before it can perform this task though. Even if we don't account for freak weather events (which are becoming more common). > When demand is high, inexpensive natural gas can be turned on quickly. Is this a good option though? I think the only good argument against nuclear is cost, so I agree with that. But if we consider the cost of emissions, storage (these aren't counted in solar and wind and don't make for fair comparisons to base loads like coal, gas, or nuclear), or other factors that fall under "tragedy of the commons" (i.e. putting sources on even playing fields) the prices become more comparable (depending how you weigh factors). But it really does come down to how much you value the cost of climate and human lives (since nuclear is about 50x safer than natural gas). Cost is a good argument, but we have to define our priors because "cost" means different things to different people. I for one would rather pay more for electricity and save human lives and reduce emissions. Just at $50/ton tax (low) would make it competitive[0], assuming that we couldn't regain economies of scale. [0] https://www.axios.com/nuclear-energy-could-be-competitive-but-it-requires-pricing-carbon-78fd8c75-a534-4baa-a12b-452e8ce17c9c.html https://www.axios.com/nuclear-energy-could-be-competitive-bu...
pydry 6y ago
Overproduction, storage and demand side shifting. The market can choose which mix of these works best in which market - which might vary a lot from market to market. It's rather ironic that the carbon industry spent the last 30 years telling us through Koch institutes etc. that the market knew best (when fossil fuels were most viable financially) and now that the green energy competition is undercutting them to death, suddenly markets don't solve anything.

by cpach 6y ago

JohnJamesRambo 6y ago

Store the power. Batteries, pump water up into lakes, melt salt, etc.

kalleboo 6y ago
From the numbers we saw during the Texas power outage, the amount of batteries required would be mind-boggling. Lots of places do not have the geography required for pumped storage, or it is already fully exploited (building a new dam is also an environmental disaster) Molten salt also still seems to be in it's infancy. The most practical solution I could see today to live without baseline power would be to build a massive inter-continental HVDC grid. Large grids have a tendency to be fragile and have catastrophic failures though.
- godelski 6y ago
  To be honest the best probably would be to get small modular reactors (SMRs) into mass production. That would give economies of scale along with other benefits. But we aren't quite there yet. I'd imagine if SMRs became popular larger reactors would as well too.
  - manicdee 6y ago
    Can you imagine how a Texan operator of a SMR would have cut corners and what the damage to their plant would have been in this cold snap? Remembering that the damage to Texan energy production was due to failure to winterise their equipment after the last two cold snaps. It has happened before, they were told it was going to happen again, but the legislature decided that it was best to let the market decide the outcome. An SMR operator refusing to winterise their plant would end up in a similar situation: part of the equipment freezes or ices over (because antifreeze costs money), leading to an inability to scale up production until ambient temperatures rise far enough to defrost the frozen plant.
    - pbourke 6y ago
      Isn’t nuclear federally regulated today?
      - godelski 6y ago
        Yes, and nuclear facilities have significantly different standards from other facilities. The parent's comment is bad because the SMR wouldn't explode or leak if it wasn't properly winterized. It would shut down. But there is a lower chance of that happening simply because the significantly higher standards surrounding nuclear.
        manicdee 6y ago
        Where did I suggest a SMR would explode or leak?
- bildung 6y ago
  Texas' (additional) problem was lack of connectivity to the rest of the country. With a proper grid the outages wouldn't have occured.
AtlasBarfed 6y ago
Also, there will be hundreds of millions of EVs in about 10 years. With not-so-small batteries, charged by distributed rooftop solar. Many / most of the EVs will have batteries that are overprovisioned for daily driving in order to enable distance driving.
adrianN 6y ago
Making Methane is important too. We already have infrastructure for storing vast amounts of natural gas. We can just use it to store Methane made from Water, CO2 and electricity.

neolog 6y ago

Store it, or get it from somewhere else?

nl 6y ago

Transmission lines and storage. There are multiple 2500km transmission lines in use today. They are relatively cheap to build and solve almost all the intermitency issues. China has a few over 3000km long already, eg: https://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/energy/the-smarter-grid/chinas-state-grid-corp-crushes-power-transmission-records https://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/energy/the-smarter-grid... and there is a 4500km long line planned for Australia to Singapore: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia%E2%80%93ASEAN_Power_Link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia%E2%80%93ASEAN_Power_...

MrApathy 6y ago

You build a big grid. Wind won't be light everywhere. Load is lower at night, so lack of sunlight is less of an issue. Maybe people start placing battery packs in their homes. Battery technology has seen large investments over the past decade and performance is better than ever. When demand is high, inexpensive natural gas can be turned on quickly. There are a lot of options, almost all of them less expensive than nuclear. That's my point, traditionally nuclear was good for baseline and renewable doesn't have a comparable equivalent apart from hydro. But other renewables like wind are getting to be so efficient and inexpensive, that I don't see how building an excess of it can't compete with nuclear.

nitrogen 6y ago
Load is lower at night Only in warm climates.
- whoooooo123 6y ago
  Yes, and also load is higher in the winter, when there's less wind and sunshine.
  - hyper_dynamics 6y ago
    Less wind in the winter is surely not true for countries in Europe.
godelski 6y ago
> Battery technology has seen large investments over the past decade and performance is better than ever. Battery technology still has a bit to go before it can perform this task though. Even if we don't account for freak weather events (which are becoming more common). > When demand is high, inexpensive natural gas can be turned on quickly. Is this a good option though? I think the only good argument against nuclear is cost, so I agree with that. But if we consider the cost of emissions, storage (these aren't counted in solar and wind and don't make for fair comparisons to base loads like coal, gas, or nuclear), or other factors that fall under "tragedy of the commons" (i.e. putting sources on even playing fields) the prices become more comparable (depending how you weigh factors). But it really does come down to how much you value the cost of climate and human lives (since nuclear is about 50x safer than natural gas). Cost is a good argument, but we have to define our priors because "cost" means different things to different people. I for one would rather pay more for electricity and save human lives and reduce emissions. Just at $50/ton tax (low) would make it competitive[0], assuming that we couldn't regain economies of scale. [0] https://www.axios.com/nuclear-energy-could-be-competitive-but-it-requires-pricing-carbon-78fd8c75-a534-4baa-a12b-452e8ce17c9c.html https://www.axios.com/nuclear-energy-could-be-competitive-bu...

pydry 6y ago

Overproduction, storage and demand side shifting. The market can choose which mix of these works best in which market - which might vary a lot from market to market. It's rather ironic that the carbon industry spent the last 30 years telling us through Koch institutes etc. that the market knew best (when fossil fuels were most viable financially) and now that the green energy competition is undercutting them to death, suddenly markets don't solve anything.