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> No you don't from your arguments. One can be a fan of something without trying to blindly apply it to areas where it doesn't make sense. > nuclear reactors

by driest 5y ago

> No you don't from your arguments. One can be a fan of something without trying to blindly apply it to areas where it doesn't make sense. > nuclear reactors designs from the 70s are statistically safer than coal. And kill a lot less than coal. That's a strawman's argument, I'm not arguing for coal, I'm arguing for storage of renewables. > France had one of the cheapest electricity in Europe for 3 decades [...] Nuclear is cheap [...] That is simply false. The levelized cost of nuclear is about twice as high as that of solar or wind, see page 8 of the referenced EIA report [1]. > There is today not a single installation world wide existing of power to gas to the scale it would be needed Again, strawman's argument. The discussion is about what should be built, not what has been built. There are already megawatt scale plants running for years without problems [2], and there are shipping container scale demonstrators for higher efficient versions [3]. So it's pretty obvious that the technology around power to gas is well understood, and ready for mass production and deployment. > And that would anhiliate any hypothetical cost of the renewable energy anyway Again, this is false. As explained above, nuclear energy is twice as expensive as renewables, and power to gas has an end to end loss of roughly 50%. So in reality, renewables + power to gas has roughly the same cost as nuclear, without the proliferation, safety, security, and waste problems. And as an added bonus every MWh you use while renewables are producing costs half of nuclear ;). [1] https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation.pdf https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation.... [2] http://hybalance.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Large-scale-PEM-electrolysis.pdf http://hybalance.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Large-scale-P... [3] http://www.helmeth.eu/images/joomlaplates/documents/Publishable_summary.pdf http://www.helmeth.eu/images/joomlaplates/documents/Publisha...

adev_ 5y ago
> One can be a fan of something without trying to blindly apply it to areas where it doesn't make sense. Starting a discussion with a "I'm a huge fan" before spending the next 10 min to debunk the thing is not "being a fan of" but just a sign of being hypocritical, or manuipulative or both. > That's a strawman's argument, I'm not arguing for coal, I'm arguing for storage of renewables. Renewable alone (Without Coal or Gas) implies nationally to have close to 100% of the production capacity in storage alone (Battery, power2Gas or hydro storage) to compensate solar / wind intermittency. Which no country on Earth is able to do right now: not even close to, not even as a minor part of their production. That is the real straw-man argument. Climate emergency need actions and solutions now, Nuclear is one of them. Dreams scenario where storage does everything renewable cannot do is not realist with the current technology available excepted in powerpoint bullshit slides. And it will not for the next 20 years even with a Colosseum size investment. > The levelized cost of nuclear is about twice as high as that of solar or wind, see page 8 of the referenced EIA report [1]. Solar and winds are currently highly subsidized and are still intermittent. With storage cost considered, any of their hypothetical advances goes into vapor. At the opposite, France was producing electricity cheaper than its neighbours for around 30 years before photovoltaic and Wind power even became a thing. > Again, strawman's argument. The discussion is about what should be built, not what has been built. The discussion is about what can be and should be done now to reduce CO2 emission as fast as possible if we do not want get toasted in 20 years. Bcause in 20 years, it is already too late. And the easy answer is built damn nuclear power plants and at the world scale. Not take 20 years to play with techs that are still on the design board: Power2Gas is one of them. And everything else is not scalable in term of storage. > and power to gas has an end to end loss of roughly 50% I do see power to gas as the last desperate attempt of the oil and gas industry to stay relevant in the next decade. Nothing more. For the rest it's a joke. It is a joke in term of investment, it is a joke in term of efficiency, it is a joke in term of economical viability. Hydrogen has its usage, but not as backbone of the power grid.
- it_citizen 5y ago
  If everybody in the room agrees on the benefits, why not spend most of the discussion debating the drawbacks and the contentious points? That’s a very common situation in my professional life.
  - driest 5y ago
    Usually the reason for this behaviour is that at least one of the parties is not interested in resolving any contentious points, but merely in "winning" the debate by focusing on arguments where they can exploit a weakness in the reasoning of their counterpart. Usually it's best to not waste time on these people and simply ignore them, up until now I wasn't sure this was really the case, though.
- driest 5y ago
  I'm not debunking nuclear, I'm simply stating that just because you have a hammer climate change doesn't magically become a nail. Nuclear is great, but for the reasons I mentioned it is not suitable to combat climate change right now. I'm not advocating against nuclear, I'm simply saying that it's expensive, has problems other energy sources don't have, and relying on the building of new, safe, and cheap, designs will take way too long. > Renewable alone (Without Coal or Gas) implies nationally to have close to 100% of the production capacity in storage alone (Battery, power2Gas or hydro storage) to compensate solar / wind intermittency. Which no country on Earth is able to do right now again, straw man's argument. No country is close to 100% nuclear power either. France is pretty far, and they are sitting at less than 70%. and the reactors they are trying to build to increase this number are plagued by budget and timescale overruns of massive proportions. See the new safer EPR designs they have been trying to build since 2005, which are still not finished and have already consumed more than 300% of the initial projected cost [1]. it is delusional to believe we can somehow quickly scale nuclear power to the capacity needed to combat climate change. cursing and claiming that things are a joke that have already been successfully demonstrated is not going to help make your point... [1] https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a33499619/france-nuclear-reactor-epr-expensive-mess/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a33499619/fr...

by driest 5y ago

adev_ 5y ago

> One can be a fan of something without trying to blindly apply it to areas where it doesn't make sense. Starting a discussion with a "I'm a huge fan" before spending the next 10 min to debunk the thing is not "being a fan of" but just a sign of being hypocritical, or manuipulative or both. > That's a strawman's argument, I'm not arguing for coal, I'm arguing for storage of renewables. Renewable alone (Without Coal or Gas) implies nationally to have close to 100% of the production capacity in storage alone (Battery, power2Gas or hydro storage) to compensate solar / wind intermittency. Which no country on Earth is able to do right now: not even close to, not even as a minor part of their production. That is the real straw-man argument. Climate emergency need actions and solutions now, Nuclear is one of them. Dreams scenario where storage does everything renewable cannot do is not realist with the current technology available excepted in powerpoint bullshit slides. And it will not for the next 20 years even with a Colosseum size investment. > The levelized cost of nuclear is about twice as high as that of solar or wind, see page 8 of the referenced EIA report [1]. Solar and winds are currently highly subsidized and are still intermittent. With storage cost considered, any of their hypothetical advances goes into vapor. At the opposite, France was producing electricity cheaper than its neighbours for around 30 years before photovoltaic and Wind power even became a thing. > Again, strawman's argument. The discussion is about what should be built, not what has been built. The discussion is about what can be and should be done now to reduce CO2 emission as fast as possible if we do not want get toasted in 20 years. Bcause in 20 years, it is already too late. And the easy answer is built damn nuclear power plants and at the world scale. Not take 20 years to play with techs that are still on the design board: Power2Gas is one of them. And everything else is not scalable in term of storage. > and power to gas has an end to end loss of roughly 50% I do see power to gas as the last desperate attempt of the oil and gas industry to stay relevant in the next decade. Nothing more. For the rest it's a joke. It is a joke in term of investment, it is a joke in term of efficiency, it is a joke in term of economical viability. Hydrogen has its usage, but not as backbone of the power grid.

it_citizen 5y ago
If everybody in the room agrees on the benefits, why not spend most of the discussion debating the drawbacks and the contentious points? That’s a very common situation in my professional life.
- driest 5y ago
  Usually the reason for this behaviour is that at least one of the parties is not interested in resolving any contentious points, but merely in "winning" the debate by focusing on arguments where they can exploit a weakness in the reasoning of their counterpart. Usually it's best to not waste time on these people and simply ignore them, up until now I wasn't sure this was really the case, though.
driest 5y ago
I'm not debunking nuclear, I'm simply stating that just because you have a hammer climate change doesn't magically become a nail. Nuclear is great, but for the reasons I mentioned it is not suitable to combat climate change right now. I'm not advocating against nuclear, I'm simply saying that it's expensive, has problems other energy sources don't have, and relying on the building of new, safe, and cheap, designs will take way too long. > Renewable alone (Without Coal or Gas) implies nationally to have close to 100% of the production capacity in storage alone (Battery, power2Gas or hydro storage) to compensate solar / wind intermittency. Which no country on Earth is able to do right now again, straw man's argument. No country is close to 100% nuclear power either. France is pretty far, and they are sitting at less than 70%. and the reactors they are trying to build to increase this number are plagued by budget and timescale overruns of massive proportions. See the new safer EPR designs they have been trying to build since 2005, which are still not finished and have already consumed more than 300% of the initial projected cost [1]. it is delusional to believe we can somehow quickly scale nuclear power to the capacity needed to combat climate change. cursing and claiming that things are a joke that have already been successfully demonstrated is not going to help make your point... [1] https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a33499619/france-nuclear-reactor-epr-expensive-mess/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a33499619/fr...