7 ms·

Yada yada yada. Renewables are intermittent and cannot be trusted. We need nuclear. Sure, just that it's not even remotely price competitive despite decades of

by ricw 5y ago

Yada yada yada. Renewables are intermittent and cannot be trusted. We need nuclear. Sure, just that it's not even remotely price competitive despite decades of R&D and subsidies and nobody wants Nuclear in their back yard. What they miss entirely is building an international electrical grid that can deal with intermittency of any energy source (even nuclear reactors go down for half years at a time). Why does Chile want to provide power to Asia, rather than the US (or in fact any of the countries along the pacific coastline)? Just as transportation infrastructure (containers, highways, trains etc) liberalised and reduced the cost of international trade, a grid would do the same to energy. Great international electrical grids is what we really need. Then let the market solve for who, where and what supplies the power (with the right incentives of course)...

droidist2 5y ago
Can the electricity be efficiently transmitted that far though? If so, this idea is incredible, the sun is always shining somewhere on Earth.
- csee 5y ago
  Yes it can. It's a good idea but the main downside is it ignores self-defense risk.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- gbasin 5y ago
  No, there is massive loss from transmission as a function of distance
- _Microft 5y ago
  High-voltage direct current connections have a loss in the order of 3.5%/1000km (that's approximately 10% loss per 3000km). China is operating several power lines at even higher voltages because that makes it more efficient. The loss for direct current depends on the square of the current, so you really want to reduce the current (which transmitting the same power at a higher voltage does). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current#Advancements_in_UHVDC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current#Ad... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-high-voltage_electricity_transmission_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-high-voltage_electricity...
thanatosmin 5y ago
As a matter of fact, the article repeatedly mentions the benefits of nuclear power.
p1mrx 5y ago
The message here is not "we need nuclear", but rather "we need clean reliable energy sources to complement wind/solar." If we can at least agree on what problem we're trying to solve, then we can rationally weigh the tradeoffs of nuclear against other expensive energy sources (like geothermal and carbon storage) that satisfy the requirement. Building new transmission lines is quite difficult, especially in the USA.
- Retric 5y ago
  Hydro is a cheap and clean energy source that complements wind and solar just fine. There is high variability in solar if your expecting 100% of solar power to be consumed, if you accept most solar power is going to be wasted because it’s still cheap at twice the price then things start to very very different. 2X = 4c/kWh solar + batteries + wind + hydro solves the grid just about everywhere. US might only get 6.6% of annual electricity from hydro, but it’s already a huge grid scale battery storing up extremely intermittent rain into dependable power. 6.6% 100% of the time is already an 80+% solution 5% of the time.
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    >Hydro is a clean energy source that complements wind and solar just fine Hydro has some serious downsides for the ecosystem of whatever watershed it bottles up. Maybe newer implementations solve that?
    - Retric 5y ago
      We want some dams for water storage and flood control, having hydro power in those locations doesn’t add new environmental concerns. Small dams don’t produce significant power and can be removed. It is worth considering larger dams, but I doubt people are going to be willing to remove any major US dams any time soon.
  - _-david-_ 5y ago
    The problem with hydro is that there are draughts. Is global warming going to make that better? Nuclear can run fine in rain or shine. Hydro should be put in the same category as wind and solar.
hcurtiss 5y ago
As a former linear corridor permitting attorney who is married to a current linear corridor permitting attorney, I can tell you with confidence that there is no universe where we build any meaningful amount of new energy transmission in the PNW USA. We can't get a single powerline across the Cascades, much less the dozens we would need for this kind of grid resiliency. The current suite of environmental laws are an effective veto on significant new development through federal lands.
- baggy_trough 5y ago
  Climate change politics in a nutshell. At some point, some large group of people is going to have to do something they very much don't want to do, and guess what? They resist doing it.
- ricw 5y ago
  Could just avoid all of that by going underwater along the coast. But yes, good point in that power grid lines are as controversial and politically fraught as nuclear power...
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    >Could just avoid all of that by going underwater along the coast. Not at a tractable price. Adding saltwater never makes things cheaper.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  Kind of ironic, as running power lines seems as environmentally insignificant as they come.
  - LeoPanthera 5y ago
    The town of Paradise, CA would disagree with you. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradise,_California https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradise,_California
  - hadlock 5y ago
SonicScrub 5y ago
Related video to this topic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gacGuWjqKco https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gacGuWjqKco The video profiles the EU's efforts to do exactly this. One example used is how Spain (geographically blessed with solar power), and Denmark (geographically blessed with wind), can both use France's nuclear power as a buffer between them to smooth out the peaks/throughs in their output, and therefore are able to invest in more renewable power. Interconnected grids that straddle national borders are absolutely essential to increasing the amount of renewable energy we can build. The technical limitations are easy to overcome (especially for neighboring countries). The barriers are purely political, as this system requires a common electricity market on the grid, and co-operation between national governments. Hopefully North America can get it's crap together on this. As it stands right now, the USA can't even get a common grid within it's own nation. Maine voters just rejected an interconnection from Hydro-Quebec. Which is disappointing since Quebec is blessed with near perfect geography for hydro-electric, and can no longer expand this energy production since it's capacity outstrips the demand.
- 908B64B197 5y ago
  > Maine voters just rejected an interconnection from Hydro-Quebec. Which is disappointing since Quebec is blessed with near perfect geography for hydro-electric, and can no longer expand this energy production since it's capacity outstrips the demand. That's completely crazy. HQ's offer was something like 5 cents per KW/h. That's 3 times less than what New England is paying for right now with natural gas. The lobbyists really did a great job here.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- SllX 5y ago
  Based on everything I’ve read from actual Maine voters on that topic, they did so for good reasons. An interconnect with Hydro-Quebec can happen, if you find a way to bring Maine voters on board and that is a solvable problem. But if you treat their concerns as unimportant and you throw around words like “grand scheme of things”, then yeah, they will continue to reject Hydro-Quebec. Part of politics is coalition building. If you can’t do it then you get what you get.
photochemsyn 5y ago
There was a North Africa project to power Europe using this approach called Desertec. Here's a fairly negative review of what happened. https://www.ecomena.org/desertec/ https://www.ecomena.org/desertec/ One issue is that they tried to set up an export system for solar electricity before they ensured that the local economies would have priority access to reliable power, that may have been a central problem.
- woah 5y ago
  Unfortunately many leftists are more interested in manipulating green energy to meet their unrelated political goals than solving global warming. If a green power project does not also bring about an international dictatorship of the proletariat to free the world from corporate oppression, they are happy to block it. They never mention that their obstructionism is an affirmative vote in favor of our current unsustainable practices. In this case, the article's author is worried that Desertec, while much cleaner, and a clear environmental win, could replicate some of the political dynamics of oil extraction in the middle east. He pretends that he would like to see "decentralized small-scale projects that can be democratically managed and controlled by local communities that promote energy autonomy". But has this been created? No. By opposing actual real projects, he is voting to keep extracting and burning oil. With this article, he is actively promoting oil and the dictatorships propped up by it, while pretending to fight against injustice.
  - omegaworks 5y ago
    So we just have to be ok creating new systems that reproduce the extractive, abusive relationships between Europe and Africa that existed in the past (and continue to exist today)? Build a conveyor belt that literally transmits the solar resources of African countries to Europe that does not guarantee that Africans actually benefit from the transaction? The climate crisis should not be used as an excuse for rich countries to plunder underdeveloped ones.
    - woah 5y ago
      Sunlight is renewable, and will not run out
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
roenxi 5y ago
> Sure, just that it's not even remotely price competitive despite decades of R&D and subsidies There are rather clear signs [0] of political interference in the price of nuclear. It might be the only technology I've ever seen where the learning curve suddenly inverted. The demand isn't even that we have to go nuclear at all costs, it is just ... if the global warming people are serious then a Fukushima every 40 years is nothing and we should be letting cheap nuclear (the safest, cleanest, most reliable form of energy we know of) take over. Instead it is being held to impossible safety standards and we're using coal (basically the least safe, most polluting form of energy we know about). This is madness. Renewables are acceptable to me personally now the price has come down, but it is hard to overlook that places that go renewable all end up in the headlines for an energy crisis a few years later. Wind power is cheap but it isn't reliable. [0] https://cama.crawford.anu.edu.au/sites/default/files/publication/cama_crawford_anu_edu_au/2017-11/4_2017_lang_0.pdf https://cama.crawford.anu.edu.au/sites/default/files/publica...
- mikeyouse 5y ago
  That's a weird paper.. no mention of Chernobyl, Three-Mile Island or any of the other major meltdowns or near catastrophes in the 1970s/1980s. Perhaps the cheaper generation of nuclear plants were inherently unsafe, hence the more expensive costs going forward, necessitating a new learning curve as we "overbuilt" the plants to avoid thousand-square mile exclusion zones?
  - roenxi 5y ago
    Even taking that on as a given (which, I mean, yeah pretty reasonable to tighten standards) ... that should be a step change as new standards are bought in, not a linear uptrend. Then the downwards sloping learning curve should resume.

by ricw 5y ago

droidist2 5y ago

Can the electricity be efficiently transmitted that far though? If so, this idea is incredible, the sun is always shining somewhere on Earth.

csee 5y ago
Yes it can. It's a good idea but the main downside is it ignores self-defense risk.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
gbasin 5y ago
No, there is massive loss from transmission as a function of distance
_Microft 5y ago
High-voltage direct current connections have a loss in the order of 3.5%/1000km (that's approximately 10% loss per 3000km). China is operating several power lines at even higher voltages because that makes it more efficient. The loss for direct current depends on the square of the current, so you really want to reduce the current (which transmitting the same power at a higher voltage does). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current#Advancements_in_UHVDC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current#Ad... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-high-voltage_electricity_transmission_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-high-voltage_electricity...

thanatosmin 5y ago

As a matter of fact, the article repeatedly mentions the benefits of nuclear power.

p1mrx 5y ago

The message here is not "we need nuclear", but rather "we need clean reliable energy sources to complement wind/solar." If we can at least agree on what problem we're trying to solve, then we can rationally weigh the tradeoffs of nuclear against other expensive energy sources (like geothermal and carbon storage) that satisfy the requirement. Building new transmission lines is quite difficult, especially in the USA.

Retric 5y ago
Hydro is a cheap and clean energy source that complements wind and solar just fine. There is high variability in solar if your expecting 100% of solar power to be consumed, if you accept most solar power is going to be wasted because it’s still cheap at twice the price then things start to very very different. 2X = 4c/kWh solar + batteries + wind + hydro solves the grid just about everywhere. US might only get 6.6% of annual electricity from hydro, but it’s already a huge grid scale battery storing up extremely intermittent rain into dependable power. 6.6% 100% of the time is already an 80+% solution 5% of the time.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  >Hydro is a clean energy source that complements wind and solar just fine Hydro has some serious downsides for the ecosystem of whatever watershed it bottles up. Maybe newer implementations solve that?
  - Retric 5y ago
    We want some dams for water storage and flood control, having hydro power in those locations doesn’t add new environmental concerns. Small dams don’t produce significant power and can be removed. It is worth considering larger dams, but I doubt people are going to be willing to remove any major US dams any time soon.
- _-david-_ 5y ago
  The problem with hydro is that there are draughts. Is global warming going to make that better? Nuclear can run fine in rain or shine. Hydro should be put in the same category as wind and solar.

hcurtiss 5y ago

As a former linear corridor permitting attorney who is married to a current linear corridor permitting attorney, I can tell you with confidence that there is no universe where we build any meaningful amount of new energy transmission in the PNW USA. We can't get a single powerline across the Cascades, much less the dozens we would need for this kind of grid resiliency. The current suite of environmental laws are an effective veto on significant new development through federal lands.

baggy_trough 5y ago
Climate change politics in a nutshell. At some point, some large group of people is going to have to do something they very much don't want to do, and guess what? They resist doing it.
ricw 5y ago
Could just avoid all of that by going underwater along the coast. But yes, good point in that power grid lines are as controversial and politically fraught as nuclear power...
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  >Could just avoid all of that by going underwater along the coast. Not at a tractable price. Adding saltwater never makes things cheaper.
WalterBright 5y ago
Kind of ironic, as running power lines seems as environmentally insignificant as they come.
- LeoPanthera 5y ago
  The town of Paradise, CA would disagree with you. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradise,_California https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradise,_California
- hadlock 5y ago

SonicScrub 5y ago

Related video to this topic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gacGuWjqKco https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gacGuWjqKco The video profiles the EU's efforts to do exactly this. One example used is how Spain (geographically blessed with solar power), and Denmark (geographically blessed with wind), can both use France's nuclear power as a buffer between them to smooth out the peaks/throughs in their output, and therefore are able to invest in more renewable power. Interconnected grids that straddle national borders are absolutely essential to increasing the amount of renewable energy we can build. The technical limitations are easy to overcome (especially for neighboring countries). The barriers are purely political, as this system requires a common electricity market on the grid, and co-operation between national governments. Hopefully North America can get it's crap together on this. As it stands right now, the USA can't even get a common grid within it's own nation. Maine voters just rejected an interconnection from Hydro-Quebec. Which is disappointing since Quebec is blessed with near perfect geography for hydro-electric, and can no longer expand this energy production since it's capacity outstrips the demand.

908B64B197 5y ago
> Maine voters just rejected an interconnection from Hydro-Quebec. Which is disappointing since Quebec is blessed with near perfect geography for hydro-electric, and can no longer expand this energy production since it's capacity outstrips the demand. That's completely crazy. HQ's offer was something like 5 cents per KW/h. That's 3 times less than what New England is paying for right now with natural gas. The lobbyists really did a great job here.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
SllX 5y ago
Based on everything I’ve read from actual Maine voters on that topic, they did so for good reasons. An interconnect with Hydro-Quebec can happen, if you find a way to bring Maine voters on board and that is a solvable problem. But if you treat their concerns as unimportant and you throw around words like “grand scheme of things”, then yeah, they will continue to reject Hydro-Quebec. Part of politics is coalition building. If you can’t do it then you get what you get.

photochemsyn 5y ago

There was a North Africa project to power Europe using this approach called Desertec. Here's a fairly negative review of what happened. https://www.ecomena.org/desertec/ https://www.ecomena.org/desertec/ One issue is that they tried to set up an export system for solar electricity before they ensured that the local economies would have priority access to reliable power, that may have been a central problem.

woah 5y ago
Unfortunately many leftists are more interested in manipulating green energy to meet their unrelated political goals than solving global warming. If a green power project does not also bring about an international dictatorship of the proletariat to free the world from corporate oppression, they are happy to block it. They never mention that their obstructionism is an affirmative vote in favor of our current unsustainable practices. In this case, the article's author is worried that Desertec, while much cleaner, and a clear environmental win, could replicate some of the political dynamics of oil extraction in the middle east. He pretends that he would like to see "decentralized small-scale projects that can be democratically managed and controlled by local communities that promote energy autonomy". But has this been created? No. By opposing actual real projects, he is voting to keep extracting and burning oil. With this article, he is actively promoting oil and the dictatorships propped up by it, while pretending to fight against injustice.
- omegaworks 5y ago
  So we just have to be ok creating new systems that reproduce the extractive, abusive relationships between Europe and Africa that existed in the past (and continue to exist today)? Build a conveyor belt that literally transmits the solar resources of African countries to Europe that does not guarantee that Africans actually benefit from the transaction? The climate crisis should not be used as an excuse for rich countries to plunder underdeveloped ones.
  - woah 5y ago
    Sunlight is renewable, and will not run out

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

roenxi 5y ago

> Sure, just that it's not even remotely price competitive despite decades of R&D and subsidies There are rather clear signs [0] of political interference in the price of nuclear. It might be the only technology I've ever seen where the learning curve suddenly inverted. The demand isn't even that we have to go nuclear at all costs, it is just ... if the global warming people are serious then a Fukushima every 40 years is nothing and we should be letting cheap nuclear (the safest, cleanest, most reliable form of energy we know of) take over. Instead it is being held to impossible safety standards and we're using coal (basically the least safe, most polluting form of energy we know about). This is madness. Renewables are acceptable to me personally now the price has come down, but it is hard to overlook that places that go renewable all end up in the headlines for an energy crisis a few years later. Wind power is cheap but it isn't reliable. [0] https://cama.crawford.anu.edu.au/sites/default/files/publication/cama_crawford_anu_edu_au/2017-11/4_2017_lang_0.pdf https://cama.crawford.anu.edu.au/sites/default/files/publica...

mikeyouse 5y ago
That's a weird paper.. no mention of Chernobyl, Three-Mile Island or any of the other major meltdowns or near catastrophes in the 1970s/1980s. Perhaps the cheaper generation of nuclear plants were inherently unsafe, hence the more expensive costs going forward, necessitating a new learning curve as we "overbuilt" the plants to avoid thousand-square mile exclusion zones?
- roenxi 5y ago
  Even taking that on as a given (which, I mean, yeah pretty reasonable to tighten standards) ... that should be a step change as new standards are bought in, not a linear uptrend. Then the downwards sloping learning curve should resume.