4 ms·

I agree, I think from a technical perspective most of these plants are fine and they could be used for an additional time. Since the last will shut down next ye

I agree, I think from a technical perspective most of these plants are fine and they could be used for an additional time. Since the last will shut down next year, I would assume the plans are locked in by now. Nuclear has some advantages for base loads in some scenarios, but it cannot really compete with renewables down the road.

throwaway894345 5y ago
> Since the last will shut down next year, I would assume the plans are locked in by now. Sadly, I assume you're correct. > Nuclear has some advantages for base loads in some scenarios, but it cannot really compete with renewables down the road. To be clear, I would love it if we could power everything off of solar and wind, but we still don't have any scalable technology for storing weeks worth of energy which means that solar and wind cannot be used for base load generation. Hydro simply doesn't have the capacity. Nuclear is the only clean energy option for base load for the foreseeable future. Hoping for a storage tech breakthrough in the coming decades isn't a plan; we should really be investing in nuclear and storage in case one of those two don't pan out. Even today, there are some interesting Small Modular Reactor (SMRs) which allow nuclear plants to be built more quickly, safely, compactly, and efficiently than traditional nuclear plants. We should build some of these and iterate on them while simultaneously investing in solving the storage problem.
- cesarb 5y ago
  > but we still don't have any scalable technology for storing weeks worth of energy Why would we need to store weeks worth of energy? Wouldn't a more realistic amount be just a couple of days, or even less?
  - throwaway894345 5y ago
    You have to account for increasingly frequent continent-scale weather patterns which can last for weeks in extreme cases. "Weeks" is a figure I heard a few times in the media, but even "days" is a herculean task considering we're presently at "minutes" or worse. Note also that part of solving for emissions means "electrifying more applications" which means it's not sufficient to store days or weeks of today's energy demands, but rather days or weeks of future energy demands which will be much higher (e.g., today our entire transport industry isn't electrified--in the future our grid will need to supply the energy to move cars and trucks and trains which means the overall demand is much larger and consequently we'll have greater storage demands).
- pfdietz 5y ago
  Hydrogen can be made and stored underground using existing technology. This is not currently competitive, but it doesn't involve inventing anything new. Storing hydrogen in underground solution mind salt caverns is very cheap per unit of energy storage capacity, some two orders of magnitude cheaper than batteries.
  - throwaway894345 5y ago
    It seems like a contradiction to say “it’s not currently competitive” (with what? batteries?) but it’s also “two orders of magnitude cheaper than batteries”. Why aren’t we doing this?
    - pfdietz 5y ago
      It's not currently competitive with fossil fuels unburdened by CO2 charges. There is no reason to make and store hydrogen when natural gas is much cheaper. This doesn't mean that when fossil fuels are banned, it won't be competitive with the remaining alternatives.

throwaway894345 5y ago

> Since the last will shut down next year, I would assume the plans are locked in by now. Sadly, I assume you're correct. > Nuclear has some advantages for base loads in some scenarios, but it cannot really compete with renewables down the road. To be clear, I would love it if we could power everything off of solar and wind, but we still don't have any scalable technology for storing weeks worth of energy which means that solar and wind cannot be used for base load generation. Hydro simply doesn't have the capacity. Nuclear is the only clean energy option for base load for the foreseeable future. Hoping for a storage tech breakthrough in the coming decades isn't a plan; we should really be investing in nuclear and storage in case one of those two don't pan out. Even today, there are some interesting Small Modular Reactor (SMRs) which allow nuclear plants to be built more quickly, safely, compactly, and efficiently than traditional nuclear plants. We should build some of these and iterate on them while simultaneously investing in solving the storage problem.

cesarb 5y ago
> but we still don't have any scalable technology for storing weeks worth of energy Why would we need to store weeks worth of energy? Wouldn't a more realistic amount be just a couple of days, or even less?
- throwaway894345 5y ago
  You have to account for increasingly frequent continent-scale weather patterns which can last for weeks in extreme cases. "Weeks" is a figure I heard a few times in the media, but even "days" is a herculean task considering we're presently at "minutes" or worse. Note also that part of solving for emissions means "electrifying more applications" which means it's not sufficient to store days or weeks of today's energy demands, but rather days or weeks of future energy demands which will be much higher (e.g., today our entire transport industry isn't electrified--in the future our grid will need to supply the energy to move cars and trucks and trains which means the overall demand is much larger and consequently we'll have greater storage demands).
pfdietz 5y ago
Hydrogen can be made and stored underground using existing technology. This is not currently competitive, but it doesn't involve inventing anything new. Storing hydrogen in underground solution mind salt caverns is very cheap per unit of energy storage capacity, some two orders of magnitude cheaper than batteries.
- throwaway894345 5y ago
  It seems like a contradiction to say “it’s not currently competitive” (with what? batteries?) but it’s also “two orders of magnitude cheaper than batteries”. Why aren’t we doing this?
  - pfdietz 5y ago
    It's not currently competitive with fossil fuels unburdened by CO2 charges. There is no reason to make and store hydrogen when natural gas is much cheaper. This doesn't mean that when fossil fuels are banned, it won't be competitive with the remaining alternatives.