3 ms·

Because we need a lot of energy and soon - to scrub all that CO2 gas, coal&oil threw and are still throwing into the atmosphere. Also because we need baseline

• bryanlarsen 5y ago
  > Because we need a lot of energy and soon - to scrub all that CO2 gas, coal&oil threw and are still throwing into the atmosphere. I'm not sure how nuclear plants that take 20 years to build count as "soon". > Also because we need baseline power "Baseline" is a useless word regarding supply. (It still has utility when regarding demand). There are two types of supply -- cheap and peak. It used to be that the cheapest power was that generated by running a plant at 100% 24/7, so people used the word "base" to describe cheap power. Many small utilities have 0 baseline power, they run purely on dispatchable power. They use natgas or diesel generators that they can throttle up or down to match demand. IOW, baseline power is only useful if it is cheap. Otherwise, you might as well use dispatchable power. Baseline nuclear is far from cheap, and dispatchable nuclear is even more expensive. > for when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shinning. Ways to do demand matching that are (a lot) cheaper than using dispatchable nuclear: - using a mix of renewable sources (aka wind & solar is more reliable than wind or solar) - geographic diversity, HVDC lines between grids (the wind is always blowing somewhere) - overprovisioning (IOW, size your solar plants for cloudy days rather than sunny ones. 3*$10 is still a lot less than $200. - load shifting, AKA time of use pricing - batteries - pumped hydro - hydrogen as storage - other storage - fossil plants with capture
• tlamponi 5y ago
  > Because we need a lot of energy and fast to scrub all that CO2 gas, coal&oil threw and are still throwing into the atmosphere. Nuclear power plants have lead times of about 10 years or more, so if we need more now (as in this or next year) nuclear power plants are not the answer. There are wind turbines with 10 to 15 MW from Siemens-Ganesha, Vestas and some other corporations, available now. Those do not need a lead time of ten+ years with huge initial investment and permanent high security and waste management overhead like new nuclear power plant do. 75 of those replace one nuclear plant block, as most of those output ~1 GW. > Also because we need baseline power for when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shinning. Wind turbine towers have heights of 100 to 250 m, there wind is not as restricted as at ground level, at least if not in very mountainous regions and rather steady. No wind is just not a thing in the atmosphere at that level, albeit too much wind can happen in storms. For the theoretical no wind and the more real, but not frequent, too much wind you can use power storage and load management, which needs to be (and is already) implemented anyway. Same for sun, albeit not shining can be a real problem there. Now, Lithium or soon also NaCl batteries, to Pumped-storage hydroelectricity to storing energy mechanically are all great but just help for very short to a day or so, what do for the rest? Well, the problem for too much wind (or the hypothetical no wind) is always local to a few 100 km radius, continental Europe (for example) has huge in-sync grids with a bunch of 360 kV AC or 10+ kV DC interconnects to move around 100s of GW for a reason, so just take it from somewhere else (often things even cancel out).
  • tlamponi 5y ago
    Can some of the downvoters actually comment on why they did so? Would be honestly interesting to see if/where I wrote something wrong or if I was misinformed, or if it's just out of spite..
    • nickpp 5y ago
      I for one didn't. I think both your and your sibling's comments add a lot of interesting info to the discussion. I am still going through them.