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The question is what will happen when the nuclear power plans are decommissioned. Keeping nuclear running and expanding it's role further could be used to repl

• rndgermandude 5y ago
  Nuclear isn't really good at covering temporarily for less production by solar and wind, because increasing and decreasing output levels of nuclear has a lot of latency... you cannot just flip a switch. The answer to that could be burning things, along with better storage tech that you mentioned. Not necessarily fossil fuels, but biomass and gas (e.g. "cow farts"). Burning biomass, you can still stay neutral if done right, as the mass will use carbon when growing. Things like algae farming as a fast growing source of biomass may become important. With some additional tech you could filter out some carbon and other emissions and store what you filtered out, and have a negative emission balance considering the whole process. Biomass and other renewables generally have the other positive aspect that research, development and installation is relatively cheap and quick compared to nuclear. Another part of the solution surely will be to just use less energy, by investing in more efficient tech. Reducing energy consumption by merely 10% would essentially cover what nuclear in Germany produces now[0]. A lot of companies in Germany already started investing heavily into modernization to reduce their energy need, and this process is speeding up now. A lot of this effort is driven by public policy - from tax incentives to negative incentives in higher energy prices - but a lot is also driven by the realization of management that modernization efforts like this can massively drive down costs mid and long term while also ensuring the production facilities stay competitive with tech upgrades. Another way of policy incentives e.g. are the mandatory labeling of consumer goods in regard to energy consumption and efficiency, as consumers will use this information to buy stuff that's not only "better for the environment" than the competitor but also saves money on the electric bill. Right now, within the EU, such labeling is mostly for electric appliances, but it could be extended further to other areas like food or services, and could cover the entire life-cycle of a product including production and disposal, not just the time consumers operate it. By the way, I am not generally opposed to nuclear, just opposed to nuclear how we do it now and did it in the past. For one, it's artificially made cheap by subsidies everywhere you look, and that artificially cheap price does not even include the additional costs of long term waste management. And then the plants are rather unsafe, not because they have to be, but because of policy failures. Things like building nuclear plants in regions prone to earthquakes and/or tsunamis, the French having to shut down a lot of their reactors every few summers because they'd be boiling their rivers if they didn't and of course incidents like Chernobyl, Fukushima, Three Mile Island (thank the Air Force for having an airbase nearby which lead to TMI being build more sturdy than usual thus probably avoiding a really bad outcome), Windscale, etc... all that does not inspire confidence in me that humans and in particular politicians can manage the technology. When Belgium discovers "micro cracks" in high pressure boilers in nuclear power plants, and then their politicians almost immediately declare the plants to be still safe - in a timeframe where they surely cannot have thoroughly evaluated the findings - then that's not great already, then when I consider some people want to build massive nuclear power plants in areas of the world with far less stable societies than Belgium, I want to facepalm. And on top of that nuclear is not renewable. The fuel has to come from somewhere, which doesn't bode well for energy independence. Right now, a forth of uranium is mined by Kazatomprom a quasi-state-owned company in Kazakhstan, which Freedom House rates a "consolidated authoritarian regime". Being dependent on Russia for gas isn't great; being dependent on Kazakhstan for nuclear full isn't great either. PS: I would agree that getting rid of (most) fossil fuel energy production is more important than getting rid of nuclear.
  • Harvesterify 5y ago
    Your first statement is clearly wrong, or at least you should define what you call "lot of latency". Third generation nuclear reactors in France do load following all year round, with great success: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Load_following_power_plant#Pressurized_water_reactors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Load_following_power_plant#Pre...
    • rndgermandude 5y ago
      Load-following in nuclear works to a very limited degree, sure, but >These reactors have the capability to regularly vary their output between 30–100% of rated power, to maneuver power up or down by 2–5%/minute during load following activities And even the BWR can maneuver only at 10% per minute (60-100%). So first, you cannot just shut them (nearly) off when you don't need them. You will have to run them at 30% at least essentially all the time. Not great if your goal is to use solar/wind as the primary mode of generation. Then 2% to 5% per minute in changes is high latency compared to alternatives. If you need 10%-20% more NOW because there e.g. was an unscheduled break in a football (soccer) game and everybody got up, turned on the lights and the coffee maker and whatever then you're out of luck because the latency is too big to cover those additional 20% in the time you need them. 20% would take up to 10 minutes for nuclear to adjust, 2 minutes at least, realistically something like 5 minutes. And by the time it adjusts your grid will have broken down and everybody will be sitting in the dark. Load-following with nuclear plants only works well enough if you have a pretty good idea of when the load is going to change in advance. Which in many cases historically you did, and you had non-nuclear fallbacks to compensate for when you were a little or even a lot off. You had a pretty good idea because you could estimate both the demand as it progresses during a day and the generation too. E.g. you knew what a "normal work day in November with this weather forecast (cloudy average temp 8°C, here is how temps will likely develop during the day), sunrise 07:07, sunset 16:22" looks like with enough historical detail from similar past days to plan for it. With solar and wind, you still know that about the demand side, but you can be a lot less sure about the generation side. That's why you usually use gas (and historically coal) "peakers"[1]. They were and are in use for when your estimates were off, even if your base load comes from the best load-following nuclear. They can be maneuvered a lot faster with demand, and can be (almost) shut down when not needed. And what you need in a wind/solar world in particular is true peakers not base load plants with limited load following capabilities. Does this clarify what I meant? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peaking_power_plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peaking_power_plant