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Not directly related to the article, but I wonder if the renewables industry being so hostile to nuclear is actually because renewables don't make sense with nu
by rich_sasha 5y ago
Not directly related to the article, but I wonder if the renewables industry being so hostile to nuclear is actually because renewables don't make sense with nuclear.
We started off with 100% of power generation being either fossil fuels or nuclear (+hydro etc. but these are minor for most places). As part-time renewables enter the stage, they take priority over the fossil fuel plants when they do produce, and simply go quiet when the wind don't blow and the sun don't shine. We accept that, because we're fundamentally still in a fossil fuel energy mindset.
So what does the post-fossil fuel world look like, with a nuclear+renewables mix? Well, we have as much renewables as we'd like, but really (and here's the kicker) we also need enough nuclear for windless nights (or winter days which in e.g. Northern Europe barely count as daytime). So really, we need to be able to power nearly 100% of the economy through nuclear alone in those cases.
But then, that begs the question, do we still need the renewables at all? Right now it probably makes sense, because it lets you throttle back the fossil fuel burning, so is a net win. But if your baseload generation is carbon-free (at the margin anyway), it doesn't matter. You just don't need the renewables.
This is somewhat oversimplified, perhaps. E.g. the times when you are less likely to have wind and solar are at night, when energy use is lower (though will that remain the case when everyone's electric car is then charging?). Also, winters drive heating demand. Perhaps some small amount of storage makes a big difference; e.g. if we could store a week's worth of power, that takes us through all but the biggest troughs in power generation, and you need less nuclear (though again, not sure how that works with winters).
I'm not nuclear-crazy, if we could do solar+wind+batteries, why not. But I find the renewables lobby just says "yeah prices will fall, we will solve energy storage, just go all in on renewables, perish nuclear", which just seems like crazy wishful thinking. Whereas nuclear is always described based on 1970s technology and with the most exaggerated (un)safety numbers.
- Hypx_ 5y agoThere's only two viable paths to a zero emissions society. One is nuclear and the other is hydrogen. We have to pick one or the other (or both) as all other ideas have fallen far short of the goal.
- rich_sasha 5y agoWell, I don't know. Are batteries + renewables a prior impossible? I can't see why, especially if we're talking about utility-scale batteries, which could be heavy and bulky. My point is we don't have them at a competitive price, and yet the renewables people insist we definitely well. We might, we might not.
- vonadz 5y agoOne of the big issues with nuclear plants is that they aren't very flexible in terms of their energy production. Their production is super steady, so what happens when there's a huge peak in electricity demand at 6 pm when everyone gets home? Fossil fuels are great for their relatively short start up time. Maybe renewables + batteries could somehow fill this niche?
- smileysteve 5y agoPower plants have giant flywheels and batteries (vanadium redox) that can help peak demand. Hydroelectric can also be managed for this.
- rich_sasha 5y agoIIUC modern reactors load-follow just fine, like in France.
- jacquesm 5y agoFor really fast fluctuations gas fired turbines and pumped storage are preferred.
- melling 5y agoSo what you’re saying is it would be best for base load and only good for about 75% of our electricity? Imagine if we had said that 40 years ago. We’d be talking about getting to net zero by 2075 instead of 2050. Now we’re still waiting for renewables
- 5y ago
- fleischhauf 5y agoI still havent heard of a solution to nuclear waste. In my opinion nuclear could be the transition technology though. Also nuclear is not cheap at all from what ive read..
- rich_sasha 5y agoI remember reading that nuclear costs about the same as fossil fuel + carbon capture, and, at current prices, much less than renewables + enough storage to make them continuous. This to me is the fair comparison. Further, I'd rather live near a nuclear plant than a coal plant sitting on tons of compressed CO2, ready to pop and asphyxiate everyone in the vicinity. I agree storage is a problem, maybe not as big as it is generally made out, but even then, would I rather struggle with nuclear waste, or millions of tons of CO2 in the atmosphere? The latter will lead to a planetary-scale disaster, the former at worst to minor regional ones.
- ciphol 5y agoThe solution to nuclear waste is "status quo". As far as I know, no person has ever been harmed much less killed by waste from a nuclear power plant. Also, the dangerous isotopes are also the ones which decay most quickly. Let the waste sit for 300 years and it will be no more radioactive than the uranium ore it was originally mined from. At that point you can dump it back into the uranium mine, or else keep it anywhere else you think would be safer than an abandoned uranium mine, the risks are miniscule either way.
- ostenning 5y agoBut generally this isn't what happens right? Often the waste gets dumped in surrounding oceans of Europe. Nuclear is an amazing source of cheap and clean energy, but the problem has always been the management of Nuclear plants and waste that has resulted in environmental disasters. I'm honestly not confident in anyone to handle the Nuclear properly, not private enterprise or government. As history tells us, nobody can seem to get it right 100% of the time. Maybe advancement in technology means safer Nuclear plants and easier to manage waste, but maybe they thought the same thing when they built the Fukushima or Chernobyl plants. History has a knack for repeating itself.
- philwelch 5y agoThere’s nothing wrong with more energy. People seem to assume that we need X amount of energy and if we can provide X amount of energy with one source or the other, we don’t need any more energy. That’s ridiculous. Energy is a commodity like anything else, and when you have more of it, you can do more stuff.
- rich_sasha 5y agoHow many industries are throttled on energy cost/availability and nothing else? Crypto mining for sure. What else? Aluminium smelting perhaps? For whatever reason, energy production seems to be about meeting demand, rather than finding use for surpluses.
- philwelch 5y agoThat’s mostly because we don’t use a lot of renewables though.
- treeman79 5y agoWould hate to think of how much worse crypto would be If power was free. Mining for materials, waste products, waste heat, noise. Already have regular extended family complaining about the huge number of noisy shipping containers in their communities. These are middle of nowhere towns.
- philwelch 5y agoSee, this is exactly what I'm talking about. People have the intuition that it's somehow inherently virtuous to use less energy, even if it's from clean and sustainable sources.
- belorn 5y agoIn context of Sweden: Steel production require massive amount of energy, especially if you want to go coal free. Forest products also depend on cheap energy. An other area is concrete production. After those I suspect it is food production. Read somewhere that fish farms on land is suffering in particular. Basically any production dealing with raw materials.