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Nuke is 'reliable' in a much more important way - the plant outages are scheduled and the generation is scheduled. You can (and do) bet the health of the grid o

Nuke is 'reliable' in a much more important way - the plant outages are scheduled and the generation is scheduled. You can (and do) bet the health of the grid on nuke having the output you plan when you plan for it to be there. This is referred to in generation industry jargon as 'dispatchable' power. This makes a modern zero-sum storageless grid work. Solar is non-dispatchable. You can estimate what power output will be available, you can over-provision generation and store it in expensive batteries, but you simply can not rely on it being there and expect the grid to stay online. It turns out that regular plant maintenance outages aren't particularly important compared to not being able to properly plan generation.

pydry 5y ago
Nuclear plants are "dispatchable" in the same way wind farms are "dispatchable" - you can just not feed as much of the power you are creating into the grid. Gas and hydro are actually dispatchable. You can dial down the power you are using and actually use it later.
- liketochill 5y ago
  False. You can’t make more power out of a wind farm than there is wind.
  - Arnt 5y ago
    Of course. But also not much less. If you have a 50-unit wind farm you'll have a lot of problems that reduce your output to 98% of what the wind allows until you can fix them. Not so many that reduce output to 0% of what the wind allows.
  - pydry 5y ago
    Did I say you could?
    - liketochill 5y ago
      Dispatchable means you can turn it on and turn it up when you want to.
      - pydry 5y ago
        That was my point.
        liketochill 5y ago
        Colour me confused, a nuclear power plant the operators can choose how much power they make every day and generally choose as much as possible, a wind farm they can set a limit for the maximum power generated but the actual power generated could be anywhere from zero to the set maximum depending on the wind speed. nuclear is more often considered baseload generation as opposed to dispatchable but wind is not baseload or dispatchable since it is not possible to control the wind speed.
        pydry 5y ago
        >a nuclear power plant the operators can choose how much power they make every day No. They cant. It takes 24-48 hours for them to ramp production up or down and this is both expensive and difficult. This is far too slow to be useful. Natgas takes ~7 seconds-minutes to go from 0-100% and it's cheap and easy. Same for batteries. Hydro is slower but still in the order of minutes/seconds. This IS useful. When nuclear plants have claimed ramp up/down speeds quicker than that they are always still producing the same amount of energy at the same cost they are just wasting some of it. The nuclear industry tries to blur these distinctions. >but wind is not baseload or dispatchable since it is not possible to control the wind speed. Wind can often pull the same "trick" nuclear does where if the grid only wants 100MW but it's producing 150MW it can just let 50MW go to waste. This isnt really "dispatchable" either but sometimes wind energy advocates pull the same trick.
        liketochill 5y ago
- dragontamer 5y ago
  You can dispatch nuclear power plants. Its just that their high costs make that an uneconomical decision. Nuclear fuel is damn near free, so why would you ever want to turn it off unnecessarily? Only if the price of electricity reaches into negative-territory is it economically viable to turn off a nuclear power plant. Same thing with wind / solar. As long as the price of electricity is positive, there's no point in turning them off. -------- Now think about coal / natural gas. The price of fuel in these cases dominate. Which means its economically viable to turn off when the price of electricity drops (even if its still above $0).
  - pydry 5y ago
    Nuclear fuel is not free but it is cheap, especially compared to the eye watering capital costs of nuclear power. It is helpful to turn off power production to stabilize the grid. It's not always about production costs. This is why nuclear plants and wind turbines sometimes just "waste" excess energy.
Arnt 5y ago
Of course you can decide that. That's what the French did before the price peak in 2016. The thing is that only some of the decisions involved plannable dates. They decided that when problems were discovered such that redundant security mechanisms weren't, then the problems should be fixed, with time limits. They decided what kind of problems should require fixes within set time limits, and they decided what those time limits should be. And they decided that some reactors should be taken down for planned maintenance in specific periods. When problems were discovered at inoppportune moments, the decisions combined to leave them with too few operational reactors.

pydry 5y ago

Nuclear plants are "dispatchable" in the same way wind farms are "dispatchable" - you can just not feed as much of the power you are creating into the grid. Gas and hydro are actually dispatchable. You can dial down the power you are using and actually use it later.

liketochill 5y ago
False. You can’t make more power out of a wind farm than there is wind.
- Arnt 5y ago
  Of course. But also not much less. If you have a 50-unit wind farm you'll have a lot of problems that reduce your output to 98% of what the wind allows until you can fix them. Not so many that reduce output to 0% of what the wind allows.
- pydry 5y ago
  Did I say you could?
  - liketochill 5y ago
    Dispatchable means you can turn it on and turn it up when you want to.
    - pydry 5y ago
      That was my point.
      - liketochill 5y ago
        Colour me confused, a nuclear power plant the operators can choose how much power they make every day and generally choose as much as possible, a wind farm they can set a limit for the maximum power generated but the actual power generated could be anywhere from zero to the set maximum depending on the wind speed. nuclear is more often considered baseload generation as opposed to dispatchable but wind is not baseload or dispatchable since it is not possible to control the wind speed.
        pydry 5y ago
        >a nuclear power plant the operators can choose how much power they make every day No. They cant. It takes 24-48 hours for them to ramp production up or down and this is both expensive and difficult. This is far too slow to be useful. Natgas takes ~7 seconds-minutes to go from 0-100% and it's cheap and easy. Same for batteries. Hydro is slower but still in the order of minutes/seconds. This IS useful. When nuclear plants have claimed ramp up/down speeds quicker than that they are always still producing the same amount of energy at the same cost they are just wasting some of it. The nuclear industry tries to blur these distinctions. >but wind is not baseload or dispatchable since it is not possible to control the wind speed. Wind can often pull the same "trick" nuclear does where if the grid only wants 100MW but it's producing 150MW it can just let 50MW go to waste. This isnt really "dispatchable" either but sometimes wind energy advocates pull the same trick.
        liketochill 5y ago
dragontamer 5y ago
You can dispatch nuclear power plants. Its just that their high costs make that an uneconomical decision. Nuclear fuel is damn near free, so why would you ever want to turn it off unnecessarily? Only if the price of electricity reaches into negative-territory is it economically viable to turn off a nuclear power plant. Same thing with wind / solar. As long as the price of electricity is positive, there's no point in turning them off. -------- Now think about coal / natural gas. The price of fuel in these cases dominate. Which means its economically viable to turn off when the price of electricity drops (even if its still above $0).
- pydry 5y ago
  Nuclear fuel is not free but it is cheap, especially compared to the eye watering capital costs of nuclear power. It is helpful to turn off power production to stabilize the grid. It's not always about production costs. This is why nuclear plants and wind turbines sometimes just "waste" excess energy.

Arnt 5y ago

Of course you can decide that. That's what the French did before the price peak in 2016. The thing is that only some of the decisions involved plannable dates. They decided that when problems were discovered such that redundant security mechanisms weren't, then the problems should be fixed, with time limits. They decided what kind of problems should require fixes within set time limits, and they decided what those time limits should be. And they decided that some reactors should be taken down for planned maintenance in specific periods. When problems were discovered at inoppportune moments, the decisions combined to leave them with too few operational reactors.