4 ms·

Doesn't that make renewables the optimal solution? Recyclable, no pollution to speak of when generating electricity and no radiological risks.

lm28469 5y ago
The thing is we don't live in a fairy tale, we're limited in resources and time. We can't ditch both nuclear + fossil right now so we have to prioritize one over the other for the next xx years until we figure out a way of making renewables good enough, right now they're a good addition at best and a gimmick at worst. And it's not like renewables are a silver bullet either. If you ditch nuclear to import panels or wind mills from countries like China I'd like to see a full life cycle pollution/emission report
acidburnNSA 5y ago
Briefly setting aside the term 'renewable' and focusing on wind and solar, the primary disadvantage of wind and solar of course is their intermittency. Due to low capacity factors, you have to build a lot more capacity (in GW) than your peak demand. For example, CA uses about 25 GW-day of electricity per day. To make that much on a perfectly calm CA winter day, you need to have about 100 GW of solar capacity standing by. Then, you need to also build energy storage/shifting systems that can shift the energy from the noontime peak to the night, where baseload demand never falls below 20 GWe. Now consider that there are often 15-day wind lulls in huge regional areas, and sometimes these coincide with big cloudy areas. The oft quoted "low" costs of wind and solar in levelized $/kWh completely ignore and hide the fact that you have to overbuild at this magnitude and include the storage. The overbuild also implies a massive over-taxing of earth's land and mineral resources to build and rebuild the collectors and storage system. Saying solar is the cheapest form of energy is like saying kids tents in the yard are the cheapest form of housing, and just pretending the indoor plumbing and heating and pantry of the parent's house cost nothing. Systems costs are what matter. LCOE must stop driving policy. Building 30 GW of load-following nuclear would be cheaper and have far lower impact on the environment. The alternate less cooperative answer is no. 'Renewables' as a concept are not the answer. Biofuel is renewable but causes climate change and air pollution while nuclear is low carbon and low pollution but not considered renewable. Furthermore, nuclear fuel on earth can power 100% of our primary energy for 4 billion years using the known and demonstrated technology of breeder reactors. This is just as long as the nuclear fusion fuel that powers solar, wind, hydro, bio will last, and so nuclear is just as renewable as those.
- natmaka 5y ago
  Spreading out production units (mainly wind turbines) and mixing sources (wind, solar...) considerably lowers the burden of intermittency. LCOE is pertinent because the very low total cost of electricity generated by renewables spares money, enabling investments needed to compensate intermittency (over-provisionning, storage...). Not a single industrial breeder reactor works satisfactorily (after many decades of R&D backed by huge investments in nations).

lm28469 5y ago

The thing is we don't live in a fairy tale, we're limited in resources and time. We can't ditch both nuclear + fossil right now so we have to prioritize one over the other for the next xx years until we figure out a way of making renewables good enough, right now they're a good addition at best and a gimmick at worst. And it's not like renewables are a silver bullet either. If you ditch nuclear to import panels or wind mills from countries like China I'd like to see a full life cycle pollution/emission report

acidburnNSA 5y ago

Briefly setting aside the term 'renewable' and focusing on wind and solar, the primary disadvantage of wind and solar of course is their intermittency. Due to low capacity factors, you have to build a lot more capacity (in GW) than your peak demand. For example, CA uses about 25 GW-day of electricity per day. To make that much on a perfectly calm CA winter day, you need to have about 100 GW of solar capacity standing by. Then, you need to also build energy storage/shifting systems that can shift the energy from the noontime peak to the night, where baseload demand never falls below 20 GWe. Now consider that there are often 15-day wind lulls in huge regional areas, and sometimes these coincide with big cloudy areas. The oft quoted "low" costs of wind and solar in levelized $/kWh completely ignore and hide the fact that you have to overbuild at this magnitude and include the storage. The overbuild also implies a massive over-taxing of earth's land and mineral resources to build and rebuild the collectors and storage system. Saying solar is the cheapest form of energy is like saying kids tents in the yard are the cheapest form of housing, and just pretending the indoor plumbing and heating and pantry of the parent's house cost nothing. Systems costs are what matter. LCOE must stop driving policy. Building 30 GW of load-following nuclear would be cheaper and have far lower impact on the environment. The alternate less cooperative answer is no. 'Renewables' as a concept are not the answer. Biofuel is renewable but causes climate change and air pollution while nuclear is low carbon and low pollution but not considered renewable. Furthermore, nuclear fuel on earth can power 100% of our primary energy for 4 billion years using the known and demonstrated technology of breeder reactors. This is just as long as the nuclear fusion fuel that powers solar, wind, hydro, bio will last, and so nuclear is just as renewable as those.

natmaka 5y ago
Spreading out production units (mainly wind turbines) and mixing sources (wind, solar...) considerably lowers the burden of intermittency. LCOE is pertinent because the very low total cost of electricity generated by renewables spares money, enabling investments needed to compensate intermittency (over-provisionning, storage...). Not a single industrial breeder reactor works satisfactorily (after many decades of R&D backed by huge investments in nations).