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The huge problem with nuclear vs. natural gas is, that nuclear power plants have only a limited range, in which the power output can be regulated and they are n

• milesward 5y ago
  No, you just build extra for the peaks and use the low-demand period to drive capture of carbon.
  • ianai 5y ago
    I think the real problem there is carbon capture is very new and often still on the drawing board. But definitely one way to get carbon capture working is to start with whatever we’ve got.
• ianai 5y ago
  It’s not really that huge of a problem to have more energy than needed. It just takes additional engineering to put the excess to use. Having a national grid it can be moved around. Or used for energy intensive uses that can be useful elsewhere. Kind of like the flare gas oil rigs burn when those gasses aren’t economic. I’d like to see us have that excess power pull useful gasses out of the atmosphere or sea water, for instance. Done right it could act as a hydrogen source for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, for instance. Or power a national water grid. Tons of uses for more power than needed.
  • zardo 5y ago
    It's not a huge engineering problem. But it is a huge problem, lower the rates when you have excess power and we will have more uses for the energy. But if the rates are low the revenue is low. (This would not be so significant a problem if the capital costs weren't so high)
• DennisP 5y ago
  Small modular reactors may improve on that. Molten salt reactors in particular are supposed to be able to adjust to demand within a minute or so. Another possibility, for any sort of high-temperature reactor, is to use molten salt as energy storage. Heat the storage salt directly from the reactor, and put the turbine after that, so you don't have conversion losses before storage. Terrapower is working on this with their Natrium project.
  • ortusdux 5y ago
    I've seen non-photovoltaic solar collectors that heat molten salt and then store it for off-peak use. I wonder if they could be hybridized with small modular MSRs.
    • ZeroGravitas 5y ago
      Those are no longer cost competitive with PV and batteries.
      • DennisP 5y ago
        But a lot of that is the cost of concentrated solar. On the PV side, batteries are not known for being especially cheap. Lazard puts the wholesale cost of PV plus four hours storage at 8 to 14 cents/kWh, as of 2020: https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-levelized-cost-of-storage-and-levelized-cost-of-hydrogen-2020/ https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-... And four hours storage is just what you need to shift peak daytime sun to peak evening demand. You need more to get through a windless night. To cover reduced supply on cloudy winter days you need some combination of overcapacity and long-duration storage, which typically involves some kind of turbine.
        • ncmncm 5y ago
          Batteries are the most expensive storage. Storage cost is plummeting even faster than solar or wind ever did.
  • 5y ago
• rdtwo 5y ago
  Just need Bitcoin miner’s next door to regulate output
• gwbas1c 5y ago
  That's handled by grid-scale storage: Batteries, pumped storage, compressed air. Renewable energy has the same need. BTW, when I was a teenager I got to go deep inside of a mountain to tour a pumped storage facility built to pair with some early 1970s nuclear power plants. The nuclear plants are long-decommissioned, but the pumped storage is happily running with renewables.
• amluto 5y ago
  Nuclear fuel is cheap enough that it could be economical to simply [0] discard the unneeded production. [0] It’s not that simple, but dump loads exist, as do mechanisms to intentionally waste power inside a plant without producing electricity. For example: https://www.thermal-engineering.org/what-is-turbine-bypass-system-turbine-steam-dump-system-definition/ https://www.thermal-engineering.org/what-is-turbine-bypass-s...
  • cinntaile 5y ago
    The other capital and operational costs stay the same even if you just discard the production you don't need, so just focusing on fuel costs is not very helpful to determine if it's economical to do that.
    • bfdm 5y ago
      Financial profitability is not a requirement for infrastructure projects. If it is the best way to supply power in the most sustainable way, it should be subsidized by governments to make it happen. If you want to pretend it balances on paper add eco taxes elsewhere, but again thats not necessary.
      • cinntaile 5y ago
        It is not that easy, we have privatised the energy markets so there are rules that need to be followed. Ignoring cost is not something governments can or should do, there are many more factors that need to be taken into account and this combination is what should be optimized for instead of just one factor. The most sustainable way to supply power is to reduce the need to supply it in the first place, insulation and other energy saving measures are usually subsidized already.
    • amluto 5y ago
      My point is that, once you’ve paid the capital cost for, say, 1GW of nuclear, the marginal cost of energy produced is low and you can adjust the production on fairly short timescales. I’m not saying you should, but the calculation is different from a natural gas or coal plant in which the marginal cost of energy is much higher.
• belorn 5y ago
  The general preferred choice for energy that can quickly turn on and off (in terms of weather changes that cause low production in wind/solar) is hydro. As long you don't deplete the water reserves it can be turn on and off fairly fast, through there can be considerations downstream. Nuclear can help in keeping those reserves high by reducing demand and letting hydro deal with the peaks. Using natural gas is non-viable. It funds war as has been fairly obvious lately, and it puts a dependence between those that has the natural resource and those that don't. The climate can also not continue to take the continuous damage that burning/leaking natural gas causes. The choices that we have is either nuclear, renewables, and batteries. The natural gas plants need to be replaced and so one can either choose nuclear, renewables or batteries.
• i_am_proteus 5y ago
  This is not true. Modern nuclear plants can load follow. The reason they usually don't is because fuel is such a small portion of the cost of operating a nuclear plant. It's comparatively more efficient to run nuclear at 100% and idle fossil plants. But nuclear can absolutely load follow if there's a reason to, such as load sharing with renewables. You will find further information on this web site: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Load-following_power_plant https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Load-following_power_plant
  • ncmncm 5y ago
    If they load follow, their cost per joule produced becomes even worse than it already is. Anyway there will be no need to load follow, because load producing H2 and NH3, and pumping hydro and compressed air, can follow price, instead.
  • _ph_ 5y ago
    Only in a very limited way. As we move forward, we are quickly reaching the point where for more and more time, renewables can carry the whole grid load alone. Nuclear power plants would have to be switched off in those times. And while they can follow the load over a large part of their power output, they can't be swithed off and on again. So as the transition to renewables progresses, nuclear power plants are less and less a good counterpart. Gas plants however are. They are very quick and switching them off is possible and saves precious fuel. As the transition progresses, they should use less and less fuel as they are used more rareley and the fuel could be switched to renewable sources (bio, power2gas). The pre-war plans of the current German government included extending the gas infrastructure but with a clear ability for new installations to be also able to use H2 as it becomes available.
• goldenshale 5y ago
  Seems like a perfect pairing for direct air carbon capture systems, which are primarily energy limited.