5 ms·

Scaling battery storage does seem easier than scaling nuclear. They are mass producible as small modules and can utilise less skilled labour in factories. Gri

by 7952 5y ago

Scaling battery storage does seem easier than scaling nuclear. They are mass producible as small modules and can utilise less skilled labour in factories. Grid scale developments have negligible civil engineering requirments, ridiculously quick to build and can work on small or large sites. They are easy for investors to understand and insure. And the underlying technology can piggy back on the cell phone industry and will be required for electric cars. Also, by the time we get to nuclear scale out it may well be competing with hydrogen also.

Manuel_D 5y ago
I don't think people understand the scale of storage required to make decarbonization through renewables feasible. The USA consumes 500GWh of electricity every hour. And electricity is only about a third of total energy consumption. 8 GWh is one minute of electricity storage, 20 seconds of total energy storage. We'll need and estimated 3 weeks of storage to decarbonize through renewables: https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2018/03/01/12-hours-energy-storage-80-percent-wind-solar/ https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2018/03/01/12-hours-energy-stora... By comparison, the US just needs to build four nuclear plants for each one that exists currently. To achieve a 100% nuclear electricity grid. A bit less than that for decarbonization since we have some hydroelectric power.
- runarberg 5y ago
  Just four new nuclear power plants for every existing plant is still a lot of plants. There are 93 active reactors in the USA today. That means we need to build between 350 to 400 more reactors. There are currently only 2 new reactors under construction and 11 more planned (6 of these are NuScale modes with only 77 MW Capacity). The last reactor to open was at the Watts Bar plant in Tennessee in 2016, and before that 1996 in the same plant. Both of these reactors started construction in the 1970s. If we “just” need 350-400 more, it is gonna take us ages to get there.
  - Manuel_D 5y ago
    Building nuclear plants at the same rate as we did in the 1970s would get us there in 3 decades. You write as though this is some Herculean task, but if the US didn't reduce the pace of nuclear construction in the 1980s we would have had a decarbonized grid by 2000. It's not just hypothetically possible, this pace of nuclear construction has historical precedent. By comparison, nobody has any realistic plans to decarbonize fully through renewables. The plan is to burn gas for ~40% of our electricity when intermittent sources aren't producing, and cross our fingers while we hope for a miraculous breakthrough in energy storage. Plans to decarbonize through renewables assumes that hydrogen storage, thermal batteries, or something else will provide effectively free energy storage.
    - runarberg 5y ago
      It is not fair to extrapolate the building speed of the 1970s to today. Especially not with nuclear reactors. We don’t build things like in the 70s anymore. There are safety and environmental standards which weren’t being observed back then. And that’s a good thing. It is not a coincidence that things slowed down in the 80s. The 3 mile island partial meltdown happened in 1979 and it left a mark. If we would still be building and running our reactor like we did back then, but had 5 times more reactors to maintain, we can assume that the probability of a full meltdown and a major nuclear accident would be far higher. Chernobyl serves as a reminder of what can happen if safety standards are not adequate. The labor and logistics situation is also completely different from today then it was in the 70s. Today’s megaprojects tend to go way over budget and suffer significant delays. Land acquisition is more complicated (and again that is a good thing as many building project back then tended to displace a lot of minority residents) and a much smaller proportion of our labor pool are construction engineers. This leads to a longer and more expensive building process. As an example the only two reactors currently under construction have gone at least $10 billion over budget and are 6-7 years behind schedule. And these are reactors in the existing Plant Vogtle in Georgie. I imagine a whole new power plant would suffer even worse logistics problems. > Plans to decarbonize through renewables assumes that hydrogen storage, thermal batteries, or something else will provide effectively free energy storage. This is only partially true. Plans also include a significantly more efficient energy usage. People are pressuring governments to significantly increase investments in green infrastructure. This includes more robust energy grid, electrifying railways and ferry terminals, increased building standards for efficient power usage and retrofitting old buildings to similar standards. We don’t need to replace carbon power 1:1 if we patch up the inefficiencies of our current energy use. There are also hopes for better battery technology and carbon capture. A carbon capturing gas burning power plant is not an unrealistic advancement, nor is solid state and molten salt batteries (all of which exist today at varying levels of economic feasibility; none less feasible then new new nuclear). Meaning that we can bridge that ~40% without emitting more greenhouse gasses and without new nuclear.
- 7952 5y ago
  But hitting those big numbers is the whole point of scalability. It may be easier to build a few hundred giga factories than a few hundred nuclear plants. What you get is less useful, but politically and technically simpler. And work in other industries make storage more viable. Those HVDC links that America should build anyway make storage more viable. Reducing costs in renewables make storage more viable. Even reducing costs in nuclear power could make it more viable.
  - Manuel_D 5y ago
    The Tesla giga factory produces 35GWh of batteries per year. It would take ~14 years for a giga factory to produce just one hour's worth of storage. We need days at least, potentially weeks depending on the mix of renewables. Again, the scale just isn't there for batteries. This is why renewable evangelists assume something like hydrogen storage, or compressed air will deliver nearly-free storage. But that's just hope, who knows if these approaches will actually be competitive.
    - sudosysgen 5y ago
      By the time those 14 years are up we would also have had to throw out the batteries multiple times from degradation.
    - 7952 5y ago
      And 35 factories lets you hit the 12hr mark within five years and deliver an 85% decarbonised grid. That may not be better but it could be more achievable.

by 7952 5y ago

Manuel_D 5y ago

I don't think people understand the scale of storage required to make decarbonization through renewables feasible. The USA consumes 500GWh of electricity every hour. And electricity is only about a third of total energy consumption. 8 GWh is one minute of electricity storage, 20 seconds of total energy storage. We'll need and estimated 3 weeks of storage to decarbonize through renewables: https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2018/03/01/12-hours-energy-storage-80-percent-wind-solar/ https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2018/03/01/12-hours-energy-stora... By comparison, the US just needs to build four nuclear plants for each one that exists currently. To achieve a 100% nuclear electricity grid. A bit less than that for decarbonization since we have some hydroelectric power.

runarberg 5y ago
Just four new nuclear power plants for every existing plant is still a lot of plants. There are 93 active reactors in the USA today. That means we need to build between 350 to 400 more reactors. There are currently only 2 new reactors under construction and 11 more planned (6 of these are NuScale modes with only 77 MW Capacity). The last reactor to open was at the Watts Bar plant in Tennessee in 2016, and before that 1996 in the same plant. Both of these reactors started construction in the 1970s. If we “just” need 350-400 more, it is gonna take us ages to get there.
- Manuel_D 5y ago
  Building nuclear plants at the same rate as we did in the 1970s would get us there in 3 decades. You write as though this is some Herculean task, but if the US didn't reduce the pace of nuclear construction in the 1980s we would have had a decarbonized grid by 2000. It's not just hypothetically possible, this pace of nuclear construction has historical precedent. By comparison, nobody has any realistic plans to decarbonize fully through renewables. The plan is to burn gas for ~40% of our electricity when intermittent sources aren't producing, and cross our fingers while we hope for a miraculous breakthrough in energy storage. Plans to decarbonize through renewables assumes that hydrogen storage, thermal batteries, or something else will provide effectively free energy storage.
  - runarberg 5y ago
    It is not fair to extrapolate the building speed of the 1970s to today. Especially not with nuclear reactors. We don’t build things like in the 70s anymore. There are safety and environmental standards which weren’t being observed back then. And that’s a good thing. It is not a coincidence that things slowed down in the 80s. The 3 mile island partial meltdown happened in 1979 and it left a mark. If we would still be building and running our reactor like we did back then, but had 5 times more reactors to maintain, we can assume that the probability of a full meltdown and a major nuclear accident would be far higher. Chernobyl serves as a reminder of what can happen if safety standards are not adequate. The labor and logistics situation is also completely different from today then it was in the 70s. Today’s megaprojects tend to go way over budget and suffer significant delays. Land acquisition is more complicated (and again that is a good thing as many building project back then tended to displace a lot of minority residents) and a much smaller proportion of our labor pool are construction engineers. This leads to a longer and more expensive building process. As an example the only two reactors currently under construction have gone at least $10 billion over budget and are 6-7 years behind schedule. And these are reactors in the existing Plant Vogtle in Georgie. I imagine a whole new power plant would suffer even worse logistics problems. > Plans to decarbonize through renewables assumes that hydrogen storage, thermal batteries, or something else will provide effectively free energy storage. This is only partially true. Plans also include a significantly more efficient energy usage. People are pressuring governments to significantly increase investments in green infrastructure. This includes more robust energy grid, electrifying railways and ferry terminals, increased building standards for efficient power usage and retrofitting old buildings to similar standards. We don’t need to replace carbon power 1:1 if we patch up the inefficiencies of our current energy use. There are also hopes for better battery technology and carbon capture. A carbon capturing gas burning power plant is not an unrealistic advancement, nor is solid state and molten salt batteries (all of which exist today at varying levels of economic feasibility; none less feasible then new new nuclear). Meaning that we can bridge that ~40% without emitting more greenhouse gasses and without new nuclear.
7952 5y ago
But hitting those big numbers is the whole point of scalability. It may be easier to build a few hundred giga factories than a few hundred nuclear plants. What you get is less useful, but politically and technically simpler. And work in other industries make storage more viable. Those HVDC links that America should build anyway make storage more viable. Reducing costs in renewables make storage more viable. Even reducing costs in nuclear power could make it more viable.
- Manuel_D 5y ago
  The Tesla giga factory produces 35GWh of batteries per year. It would take ~14 years for a giga factory to produce just one hour's worth of storage. We need days at least, potentially weeks depending on the mix of renewables. Again, the scale just isn't there for batteries. This is why renewable evangelists assume something like hydrogen storage, or compressed air will deliver nearly-free storage. But that's just hope, who knows if these approaches will actually be competitive.
  - sudosysgen 5y ago
    By the time those 14 years are up we would also have had to throw out the batteries multiple times from degradation.
  - 7952 5y ago
    And 35 factories lets you hit the 12hr mark within five years and deliver an 85% decarbonised grid. That may not be better but it could be more achievable.