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Even if you didn't have loss of knowledge or increased security measures, unless future French nuclear power can lower its costs, it will inevitably have a lowe
by jhgb 5y ago
Even if you didn't have loss of knowledge or increased security measures, unless future French nuclear power can lower its costs, it will inevitably have a lower share in the French energy mix.
- speedgoose 5y agoThe CO2 cost is low though. You don’t need to fire coal and gas power plants when it’s dark and not windy.
- mdorazio 5y agoOne would hope that by 2050 energy storage and/or long-range transmission will be a non-issue for renewables, rendering this argument moot.
- speedgoose 5y agoI hope too.
- foobiekr 5y agoGiven the latency for big projects we’d likely have at least a somewhat clear idea of what that storage would be approximately now. Do we?
- caoilte 5y agowind/solar/battery projects are very fast to spin up. That's another thing which makes them attractive over nuclear.
- Joeri 5y agoThe long term vision is for those gas plants to be hydrogen-powered, with the hydrogen generated by the surplus of wind and solar during peak times. Pumped hydro for power storage is also something that will become viable. You lose a lot in conversion, but excess wind power is very cheap.
- mlindner 5y agoHonest question, but do people actually believe that? It sounds like a tactic by oil companies to sucker in gullible people in order to punt a problem down the road. It also acts as a great excuse by politicians to avoid having to deal with a problem. IMO, the reality is that these plants will never convert to anything other than natural gas and will eventually be shut down, still running on natural gas. Hydrogen is not a fuel, it's an energy storage mechanism, and not a very good one at that. If you're going to store energy there's much more efficient and/or cheaper ways of doing it. Natural gas is still a good fuel but I don't think anyone in the US at least is under any illusion that these will ever run on anything other than natural gas.
- lcvw 5y agoI seem to remember that you can’t even pump hydrogen through existing natural gas infrastructure because the smaller hydrogen molecules are more prone to leaking. I would imagine the equipment at a plant has a similar problem and combine that with lower efficiency from burning a fuel that the plant wasn’t designed for, and the abysmal efficiency from converting electric energy to hydrogen and it seems like pure snake oil. Edit: the problem I am remembering is that hydrogen actually degrades the metals used in pipelines (https://www.hollandsentinel.com/story/opinion/columns/2021/08/20/citizens-climate-lobby-replacing-natural-gas-hydrogen/8178031002/ https://www.hollandsentinel.com/story/opinion/columns/2021/0...) so I don’t see how any of this infrastructure is useful at all for hydrogen.
- m4rtink 5y agoNot to mention ignited hydrogen leaks being invisible in daylight! You can walk right into one if you are not careful - which is why you might see people walking with brooms in front of them around hydrogen equipment. :)
- jhgb 5y agoCoal gas contained significant amounts of molecular hydrogen (~50% or so) and it had been used for decades. What magic did those people know back then?