4 ms·

I’d bet storing excess energy for a rainy day is cheaper than storing nuclear waste for many lifetimes.

• TameAntelope 5y ago
  Not if you store it in space.
  • falcolas 5y ago
    Space launches still fail. The fallout from a failed launch of radioactive fuel would be pretty devastating. Not to mention that launch prices are still, pardon the pun, astronomical.
• PaulHoule 5y ago
  I think there is almost a theorem that storage capacity will cost at least as much as generation capacity.
• Gwypaas 5y ago
  It's all about the geographical decoupling with local storage and smart consumers to smooth the loads. For example tying the charging of your electric car while it's parked to the current price. For example using Norwegian hydro together with German, British and Danish wind. Germany <-> Norway (2021): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NordLink https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NordLink UK <-> Norway (2021) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sea_Link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sea_Link Denmark <-> Norway (1977) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skagerrak_(power_transmission_system) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skagerrak_(power_transmission_...
• ohgodplsno 5y ago
  Converting energy into anything that can be stored long time is an absolute waste. * The best option is storing it as potential energy for water, i.e. using a pump and a dam. That's 90% efficient, except, we can't exactly build dams everywhere. * Power to gas to power has a dreadful 10% efficiency ratio, and it also requires energy to make. So, you use a ton of energy to store very little energy. * Conversion to hydrogen has the same problems. Best we can do 25%. What do you do when you only have a tiny bit of excess energy? The process takes a constant amount of energy in, so you need a constant power source. Nuclear reactors, ideally. Storing nuclear waste isn't hard. France is building a storage place that will handle all our nuclear waste produced until 2080, safely for hundreds of years. The project cost 25 billion euros, and that includes looking for potential places, running tests, and everything else involved in new things. Future projets would be much cheaper. Considering the country is subsidizing renewables to the tune of 70 billion, it costs us one third of the price for a solution of literally a lifetime. That's also taking into account that, ultimately, very little of the nuclear waste is truly oh-shit-oh-shit dangerous. With a simple phone call, you can most likely go visit a low activity waste storage location, which is 90% of the waste we produce, and you can just go dance on storage tanks. Radioactivity is basically nil. Additionally, waste is only waste because we can't use it. Look at projects like Superphénix and breeder reactors, and suddenly you've got all this stored "waste" able to produce much more energy.
  • bushbaba 5y ago
    But you are storing it for thousands of years. That comes at a cost per year over thousands of years. I doubt that it comes out cheaper than building pumped storage or hydrogen facilities. Even if that means building more renewables to account for inefficiencies involved
• michaelt 5y ago
  You can certainly charge batteries from solar during the day, to charge your electric car at night. The challenge for countries like the UK is saving solar generation from summer to use for heating in the winter: The capital costs are much higher, because instead of storing one day's solar output, you need to store a few hundred days' output. Of course, nuclear is super-expensive (or at least, it is the way my country tries to build it). I don't know what the answer is.
  • bushbaba 5y ago
    How much does it cost to build pumped hydro storage/generation though. I’d bet it’s still cheaper than the long term costs of storing nuclear waste.