4 ms·

Right now, today, small village can take $30k from their budget and build small solar plant in their backyard in month or two, and then scale it up next year, a

by dvh 5y ago

Right now, today, small village can take $30k from their budget and build small solar plant in their backyard in month or two, and then scale it up next year, and the next year. No multi-decade committees and multinational efforts needed. Nuclear will never be cheaper, solar is practically infinitely scalable. Time for nuclear was in the 80s, now that we have better options, we should pool all our resources into solar. We no longer have the time! We already have the silver bullet and it's solar. Anything nuclear-related is ridiculously expensive, if all those wasted resources went to solar we would be carbon neutral by now.

p_l 5y ago
And that power will be uncontrollable, annoying on the grid (demand and supply must be in sync otherwise !FUN! happens), and costs of storage that make for fully renewable grid quickly eclipse costs of the more expensive nuclear options.
- ZeroGravitas 5y ago
  How would you build a fully nuclear grid without storage? Seems a really weird thing for nuclear enthusiasts to mention. It's like you're just passing on fossil fuel talking points without even reflecting on whether they make sense for nuclear.
  - p_l 5y ago
    You don't need large amounts of storage for nuclear-based power grid, only enough to provide frequency maintenance buffer while you change power output on the plant. You need huge storage amounts for renewables just to make sure you don't have rolling blackouts (undersupply vs. nuclear's oversupply) or, what happens in reality, fossil fuel backup. There is an equivalent of small village with fully renewable power grid (ok, maybe 99%, I think they had an oil generator or two). You have to deal with low limits of power you can draw, react in time to alerts to curtail your usage (or face disconnection), etc. etc. Forget about things like electric heating or charging BEVs, you have to worry if you can run the washing machine. The typical "village invests $30k in renewables" hides a ton of externalities taken up elsewhere due to how random the introduced supply power is.
    - ZeroGravitas 5y ago
      Even coal or nuclear heavy grids have traditionally needed gas or pumped hydro to meet peaky demand. France got to like 75% of their electricity nuclear, with 10% hydro, but only 20% of heating electrified, giving about 2/5ths of total energy (though that's misleading as about half of fossil fuels is wasted as heat, so lets say they got over 50%), I don't think we can just handwave the other half away. So, clearly you're not going to use gas, because you don't sound at all pleased by renewebles relying on "fossil fuel backup" to fill in the gaps, so what's left? Are you thinking about Pink Hydrogen? i mean that's a good plan but it's also basically storage, the same as green Hydrogen would be, no?
      - p_l 5y ago
        Nuclear is easier to dispatch than building enough storage. Fossil peakers are just cheaper and we are still operating on what brings most profit, not what's best for us long term. Thing is, if you do have option for new pumped hydro, go for it. It's usually less problematic than normal hydrogeneration, and it's great storage system. I'm all for it where possible. For smoothing lead-following reactors, the storage tech we have is pretty good. More can be gained by moving inelastic but high inertia sinks to nuclear power - various material processing (steel, aluminum, etc.) as well as making green hydrogen (necessary not just for storage, but also for smelting - renewables really don't look good on green hydrogen without nuclear) and so on. My imaginary best option is switching the financials of power generation to benefit any fully dispatchable sources - This is easier to do with nuclear or classic hydropower, but such categorisation would also allow for renewable Virtual Power Plants (i.e. mixed renewables and storage, possibly with some demand control). At the same time this would cut down on instability caused by peak renewable production cratering prices for everyone else. At the same time, let's target for grid that has oversupply and switchable sinks like green hydrogen, climate-neutral fuels for things that can't be easily powered by grid, etc.

by dvh 5y ago

p_l 5y ago

And that power will be uncontrollable, annoying on the grid (demand and supply must be in sync otherwise !FUN! happens), and costs of storage that make for fully renewable grid quickly eclipse costs of the more expensive nuclear options.

ZeroGravitas 5y ago
How would you build a fully nuclear grid without storage? Seems a really weird thing for nuclear enthusiasts to mention. It's like you're just passing on fossil fuel talking points without even reflecting on whether they make sense for nuclear.
- p_l 5y ago
  You don't need large amounts of storage for nuclear-based power grid, only enough to provide frequency maintenance buffer while you change power output on the plant. You need huge storage amounts for renewables just to make sure you don't have rolling blackouts (undersupply vs. nuclear's oversupply) or, what happens in reality, fossil fuel backup. There is an equivalent of small village with fully renewable power grid (ok, maybe 99%, I think they had an oil generator or two). You have to deal with low limits of power you can draw, react in time to alerts to curtail your usage (or face disconnection), etc. etc. Forget about things like electric heating or charging BEVs, you have to worry if you can run the washing machine. The typical "village invests $30k in renewables" hides a ton of externalities taken up elsewhere due to how random the introduced supply power is.
  - ZeroGravitas 5y ago
    Even coal or nuclear heavy grids have traditionally needed gas or pumped hydro to meet peaky demand. France got to like 75% of their electricity nuclear, with 10% hydro, but only 20% of heating electrified, giving about 2/5ths of total energy (though that's misleading as about half of fossil fuels is wasted as heat, so lets say they got over 50%), I don't think we can just handwave the other half away. So, clearly you're not going to use gas, because you don't sound at all pleased by renewebles relying on "fossil fuel backup" to fill in the gaps, so what's left? Are you thinking about Pink Hydrogen? i mean that's a good plan but it's also basically storage, the same as green Hydrogen would be, no?
    - p_l 5y ago
      Nuclear is easier to dispatch than building enough storage. Fossil peakers are just cheaper and we are still operating on what brings most profit, not what's best for us long term. Thing is, if you do have option for new pumped hydro, go for it. It's usually less problematic than normal hydrogeneration, and it's great storage system. I'm all for it where possible. For smoothing lead-following reactors, the storage tech we have is pretty good. More can be gained by moving inelastic but high inertia sinks to nuclear power - various material processing (steel, aluminum, etc.) as well as making green hydrogen (necessary not just for storage, but also for smelting - renewables really don't look good on green hydrogen without nuclear) and so on. My imaginary best option is switching the financials of power generation to benefit any fully dispatchable sources - This is easier to do with nuclear or classic hydropower, but such categorisation would also allow for renewable Virtual Power Plants (i.e. mixed renewables and storage, possibly with some demand control). At the same time this would cut down on instability caused by peak renewable production cratering prices for everyone else. At the same time, let's target for grid that has oversupply and switchable sinks like green hydrogen, climate-neutral fuels for things that can't be easily powered by grid, etc.