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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 proble

by 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.
  - Retric 5y ago
    A a general rule, places where droughts are a problem don’t get enough precipitation to generate significant hydropower. That said, when you start talking 0.01% edge cases plenty of options open up. Burning fossil fuels at that scale for example is nowhere near a significant CO2 source compared to current releases. I fully expect hospitals to have backup generators and that’s not a significant issue.
    - _-david-_ 5y ago
      Droughts are supposed to get worse with global warming. If that is the case then places where they are not currently a problem could become a problem. I have no issues using hydro, I just don't think it should be placed in the reliable category. I think coal, gas, nuclear, etc should be in that category.
      - Retric 5y ago
        That might be your gut feeling, but the utter simplicity of hydro made it vastly more reliable than those options you mention. Individual coal, gas, nuclear etc all needs to be regularly taken offline due to various issues from mechanical faults to weather and supply chain issues. As demonstrated by the multiple recent power outages in Texas coal, gas, and nuclear even have dependencies to the weather and the wider electric grid which will take them down at the same time. Of course total capacity on an annual basis basis varies. But we care about the ability to reliably produce power when necessary far more than maximum capacity across months. Markets adjust to supply limits on an annual basis far more easily than a power outage.
- i_am_proteus 5y ago
  Which are the sites in California where new hydro power plants can be feasibly installed?
  - Retric 5y ago
    We don’t need extra hydro, we need to reserve what’s already built as a monumental self filling battery. Also, moving solar power from California to Washington state and hydro from Washington state to California is cheaper than building excess generating capacity in each state. It’s already part of the same transition grid, transmission capacity is simply insufficient right now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_power_transmission_grid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_power_transmiss...
    - erentz 5y ago
      Hydro currently produces ~7% of US electricity. Things like pumped hydro and conservation are just a smaller nice to have part of the picture, they're not the solution. CA uses ~15GW of gas power when the sun turns off at 6pm. It still uses 8-10GW of gas during the day when the sun is shining. That gas is going to increase another 2GW when Diablo canyon is switched off. During the day while solar is running it additionally imports 4-6GW from the NW and SW interchanges. When the sun turns off at 6pm it jumps up to 8GW sometimes more of imported electricity. Meanwhile during the afternoon and evening the NW region is generating 20GW with fossil gas and coal power. While only managing to generate 16GW at these same peaks with its hydro power. There is not enough hydro to do this, and you can't build more. CA is a power hungry state that has outsourced much of its pollution to other states. This is a result of targeting renewables rather than targeting clean power. It needs to build firm clean power, whatever form that takes. Targets should be for CO2 emissions. Not for some favored technology.
      - Retric 5y ago
        You misunderstood, the day to day solution is batteries. Hydropower is for when your not getting enough sunlight in the day not when the sun goes down at night. Currently, 5% of all solar power generated in California is wasted and that number keeps increasing because people just keep adding more solar. Storage is currently cost effective, and it’s only getting cheaper. More storage means building even more solar is again cost effective until eventually the grid ends up looking very different.
- pg_bot 5y ago
  Based on my research liquid air batteries seem to be the best complement to wind and solar. The cost is comparable to pumped hydro and has no geographic restrictions. You can solve the rest of the problem with enough interconnections across the grid.
  - Retric 5y ago
    In theory they might be a great solution, but it’s still very experimental. That said, the technology is currently much worse than generally described. Going from 25% to 50% AC to AC efficiency is straightforward, but getting 70% requires a “low grade” heat source in other words it’s not actually 70% efficient it’s converting a stream of thermal energy into electricity alongside the stated 50% efficiency.
- twojacobtwo 5y ago
  New studies are showing that hydro is not as clean as we once thought and may be producing large amounts of methane (due to anaerobic breakdown of organic materials in flood basins), which is orders of magnitude worse than CO2 per unit volume for greenhouse effects in the short-to-medium term.
  - Retric 5y ago
    That’s missing the wider context, organic matter breaking down in rivers and estuaries also produces methane. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20390897/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20390897/ Dams net climate change impact is very close to zero.
    - twojacobtwo 5y ago
      The fact that a problem already exists in nature does not justify further exacerbating the problem. Their net climate change impact can only be considered close to zero when considered as offset fossil-fuel based sources. If they're emitting large amounts of methane and CO2 (until we get net 0 concrete), it seems extremely unlikely that the impact is close to 0.
      - Retric 5y ago
        They don’t make it worse because dams aren’t generating organic matter. Organic matter that falls into rivers is going to break down either way, and in a free flowing river it’s often going to break down where the water slows down in estuaries. Essentially you need to subtract the methane that would have been produced in other locations. In terms of concrete, the percentage of concrete produced worldwide that ends up in dams is minuscule. Only 34 states even have any hydroelectric dams. The US alone is producing 90 million metric tons per year, look for the most recent large hydroelectric dam in the US it wasn’t produced in 2021, or 2020, or 2019, or …

by p1mrx 5y ago

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.
- Retric 5y ago
  A a general rule, places where droughts are a problem don’t get enough precipitation to generate significant hydropower. That said, when you start talking 0.01% edge cases plenty of options open up. Burning fossil fuels at that scale for example is nowhere near a significant CO2 source compared to current releases. I fully expect hospitals to have backup generators and that’s not a significant issue.
  - _-david-_ 5y ago
    Droughts are supposed to get worse with global warming. If that is the case then places where they are not currently a problem could become a problem. I have no issues using hydro, I just don't think it should be placed in the reliable category. I think coal, gas, nuclear, etc should be in that category.
    - Retric 5y ago
      That might be your gut feeling, but the utter simplicity of hydro made it vastly more reliable than those options you mention. Individual coal, gas, nuclear etc all needs to be regularly taken offline due to various issues from mechanical faults to weather and supply chain issues. As demonstrated by the multiple recent power outages in Texas coal, gas, and nuclear even have dependencies to the weather and the wider electric grid which will take them down at the same time. Of course total capacity on an annual basis basis varies. But we care about the ability to reliably produce power when necessary far more than maximum capacity across months. Markets adjust to supply limits on an annual basis far more easily than a power outage.
i_am_proteus 5y ago
Which are the sites in California where new hydro power plants can be feasibly installed?
- Retric 5y ago
  We don’t need extra hydro, we need to reserve what’s already built as a monumental self filling battery. Also, moving solar power from California to Washington state and hydro from Washington state to California is cheaper than building excess generating capacity in each state. It’s already part of the same transition grid, transmission capacity is simply insufficient right now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_power_transmission_grid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_power_transmiss...
  - erentz 5y ago
    Hydro currently produces ~7% of US electricity. Things like pumped hydro and conservation are just a smaller nice to have part of the picture, they're not the solution. CA uses ~15GW of gas power when the sun turns off at 6pm. It still uses 8-10GW of gas during the day when the sun is shining. That gas is going to increase another 2GW when Diablo canyon is switched off. During the day while solar is running it additionally imports 4-6GW from the NW and SW interchanges. When the sun turns off at 6pm it jumps up to 8GW sometimes more of imported electricity. Meanwhile during the afternoon and evening the NW region is generating 20GW with fossil gas and coal power. While only managing to generate 16GW at these same peaks with its hydro power. There is not enough hydro to do this, and you can't build more. CA is a power hungry state that has outsourced much of its pollution to other states. This is a result of targeting renewables rather than targeting clean power. It needs to build firm clean power, whatever form that takes. Targets should be for CO2 emissions. Not for some favored technology.
    - Retric 5y ago
      You misunderstood, the day to day solution is batteries. Hydropower is for when your not getting enough sunlight in the day not when the sun goes down at night. Currently, 5% of all solar power generated in California is wasted and that number keeps increasing because people just keep adding more solar. Storage is currently cost effective, and it’s only getting cheaper. More storage means building even more solar is again cost effective until eventually the grid ends up looking very different.
pg_bot 5y ago
Based on my research liquid air batteries seem to be the best complement to wind and solar. The cost is comparable to pumped hydro and has no geographic restrictions. You can solve the rest of the problem with enough interconnections across the grid.
- Retric 5y ago
  In theory they might be a great solution, but it’s still very experimental. That said, the technology is currently much worse than generally described. Going from 25% to 50% AC to AC efficiency is straightforward, but getting 70% requires a “low grade” heat source in other words it’s not actually 70% efficient it’s converting a stream of thermal energy into electricity alongside the stated 50% efficiency.
twojacobtwo 5y ago
New studies are showing that hydro is not as clean as we once thought and may be producing large amounts of methane (due to anaerobic breakdown of organic materials in flood basins), which is orders of magnitude worse than CO2 per unit volume for greenhouse effects in the short-to-medium term.
- Retric 5y ago
  That’s missing the wider context, organic matter breaking down in rivers and estuaries also produces methane. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20390897/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20390897/ Dams net climate change impact is very close to zero.
  - twojacobtwo 5y ago
    The fact that a problem already exists in nature does not justify further exacerbating the problem. Their net climate change impact can only be considered close to zero when considered as offset fossil-fuel based sources. If they're emitting large amounts of methane and CO2 (until we get net 0 concrete), it seems extremely unlikely that the impact is close to 0.
    - Retric 5y ago
      They don’t make it worse because dams aren’t generating organic matter. Organic matter that falls into rivers is going to break down either way, and in a free flowing river it’s often going to break down where the water slows down in estuaries. Essentially you need to subtract the methane that would have been produced in other locations. In terms of concrete, the percentage of concrete produced worldwide that ends up in dams is minuscule. Only 34 states even have any hydroelectric dams. The US alone is producing 90 million metric tons per year, look for the most recent large hydroelectric dam in the US it wasn’t produced in 2021, or 2020, or 2019, or …