4 ms·

As others have said, nuclear not is comparable to wind and solar. Nuclear provides base load, something that wind or solar can't do. Here is a graph: https:/

by nabla9 4y ago

As others have said, nuclear not is comparable to wind and solar. Nuclear provides base load, something that wind or solar can't do. Here is a graph: https://i.imgur.com/SaC1HR4.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/SaC1HR4.jpeg Wind electricity production in x-axis (MWh/h), y-axis is consumption of electricity (MWh/h). Each do is one hour, dot color is a month. There is no correlation. Here is great summary of how Finland can go 100% fossil fuel free electricity with nuclear: http://smartenergytransition.fi/en/clean-electricity-production-must-increase-massively-to-replace-fossil-fuel-combustion/ http://smartenergytransition.fi/en/clean-electricity-product...

bryanlarsen 4y ago
No generator provides base load, because load is usage, not power. Lots of places in the world satisfy base load with dispatchable power.
- nabla9 4y ago
  > dispatchable power. Using hydrocarbons. The very thing nuclear power avoids.
  - epistasis 4y ago
    France's grid is still quite dependent on hydrocarbons, despite being mostly nuclear. So it's not clear how nuclear helps here.
- dahfizz 4y ago
  Instead of nitpicking terminology, let's talk about the issue directly: What do you do when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing? There isn't enough batteries on earth to even make a dent in the storage you would need. We don't want to burn any more hydrocarbons. What are our other options? Massive pumped hydro might get us there, but that construction is on a similar time horizon to a new nuclear plant anyway.
  - bryanlarsen 4y ago
    We'd need about 50 TWh of batteries. We can build that faster than we can build a single nuclear plant. And what do nukes do during peak periods of they are supplying base power?
    - dahfizz 4y ago
      > We'd need about 50 TWh of batteries. We can build that faster than we can build a single nuclear plant. That's a huge [citation needed]. Global battery production is currently around 0.5 TWh per year[1]. Even if we continue to scale battery production, 50TWh is decades worth of our manufacturing capacity. Also, don't forget that the latest and greatest battery packs last ~10 years. Just the upkeep on your grid scale battery is 5 TWh/year. We don't have anything close to enough manufacturing. [1] https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights/blog/top-electric-vehicle-markets-dominate-lithium-ion-battery-capacity-growth https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights...
      - bryanlarsen 4y ago
        We're doubling battery factory capacity every 12-18 months.
  - ncmncm 4y ago
    Only a negligible fraction of the storage that will be built will be batteries, so talking about batteries is just blowing smoke. Storage cost is falling even faster than renewables cost ever did. There are many different storage options. Each place will adopt the mix of them that makes sense for that place. Until new renewable generating capacity no longer displaces carbon emission, spending on storage would be stupid.
    - epistasis 4y ago
      I disagree, we are in the hundreds of GWh/year of lithium ion production now, and it grows 10x roughly every five years. It's unlikely that any other storage tech can build supply chains quickly enough to compete with that growth. I certainly don't see pumped hydro doing this, unless we can stop relying on geography and construction projects. To make pumped hydro economical we would need something like spheres bolted to the ocean/lake floors, that pump water out and in for storage. And the materials costs for that are not falling in the same way as chemical storage.
jka 4y ago
Is there a corresponding graph for solar electricity production, out of interest?
- nabla9 4y ago
  Heh. In Finland you have solar even in the night during summers and very little during winters. https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Hourly-PV-output-for-Helsinki-Finland-over-a-year-with-1-hour-resolution-for-a-30_fig1_325991961 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Hourly-PV-output-for-Hel...
  - ncmncm 4y ago
    In winter, at times when wind falls off and demand exceeds transmission line delivery capacity, synthetic fuel will be shipped in from the tropics. The amount of synthetic fuel to stockpile is a cost optimization exercise.
Krasnol 4y ago
I love to dig out this old article on why "baseload" is a bullshit argument against reneawbles and surprisingly, "baseload" comes up only when it's nuclear astroturf time again. Weird eh? https://skepticalscience.com/print.php?r=374 https://skepticalscience.com/print.php?r=374
- ReflectedImage 4y ago
  Solving the climate crisis with Future Tech is nice and all, but the word "future" does have a meaning. More practically, we should we be building the last generation of nuclear reactors to cover us for the next 50 years until the Future Tech actually exists.
  - epistasis 4y ago
    At this point, the untested "future tech" is nuclear. Storage is far more reliably produced than nuclear, and its silly to pretend otherwise when we have extremely robust supply chains for storage that produce absolutely massive amounts, whereas nuclear just creeps along with failures and schedule delays and excuse after excuse after excuse. Nuclear is not a serious tech, it's barely a tech at all because it gets more expensive rather than cheaper the more we discover about it. Almost an anti-technology in fact, mostly a boondoggle to fund decrepit contractors that have killed subways and transit and all sorts of other construction in the Western world. Current lithium ion storage production is at 200-300 GWh/year, which, with daily discharge is 8-12 nuclear reactors' worth of energy. Per year. And this capacity is growing 10x every 5 years, and massively dropping costs. Every. Single. Year. Nuclear is an absolute joke compared to that.

by nabla9 4y ago

bryanlarsen 4y ago

No generator provides base load, because load is usage, not power. Lots of places in the world satisfy base load with dispatchable power.

nabla9 4y ago
> dispatchable power. Using hydrocarbons. The very thing nuclear power avoids.
- epistasis 4y ago
  France's grid is still quite dependent on hydrocarbons, despite being mostly nuclear. So it's not clear how nuclear helps here.
dahfizz 4y ago
Instead of nitpicking terminology, let's talk about the issue directly: What do you do when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing? There isn't enough batteries on earth to even make a dent in the storage you would need. We don't want to burn any more hydrocarbons. What are our other options? Massive pumped hydro might get us there, but that construction is on a similar time horizon to a new nuclear plant anyway.
- bryanlarsen 4y ago
  We'd need about 50 TWh of batteries. We can build that faster than we can build a single nuclear plant. And what do nukes do during peak periods of they are supplying base power?
  - dahfizz 4y ago
    > We'd need about 50 TWh of batteries. We can build that faster than we can build a single nuclear plant. That's a huge [citation needed]. Global battery production is currently around 0.5 TWh per year[1]. Even if we continue to scale battery production, 50TWh is decades worth of our manufacturing capacity. Also, don't forget that the latest and greatest battery packs last ~10 years. Just the upkeep on your grid scale battery is 5 TWh/year. We don't have anything close to enough manufacturing. [1] https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights/blog/top-electric-vehicle-markets-dominate-lithium-ion-battery-capacity-growth https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights...
    - bryanlarsen 4y ago
      We're doubling battery factory capacity every 12-18 months.
- ncmncm 4y ago
  Only a negligible fraction of the storage that will be built will be batteries, so talking about batteries is just blowing smoke. Storage cost is falling even faster than renewables cost ever did. There are many different storage options. Each place will adopt the mix of them that makes sense for that place. Until new renewable generating capacity no longer displaces carbon emission, spending on storage would be stupid.
  - epistasis 4y ago
    I disagree, we are in the hundreds of GWh/year of lithium ion production now, and it grows 10x roughly every five years. It's unlikely that any other storage tech can build supply chains quickly enough to compete with that growth. I certainly don't see pumped hydro doing this, unless we can stop relying on geography and construction projects. To make pumped hydro economical we would need something like spheres bolted to the ocean/lake floors, that pump water out and in for storage. And the materials costs for that are not falling in the same way as chemical storage.

jka 4y ago

Is there a corresponding graph for solar electricity production, out of interest?

nabla9 4y ago
Heh. In Finland you have solar even in the night during summers and very little during winters. https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Hourly-PV-output-for-Helsinki-Finland-over-a-year-with-1-hour-resolution-for-a-30_fig1_325991961 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Hourly-PV-output-for-Hel...
- ncmncm 4y ago
  In winter, at times when wind falls off and demand exceeds transmission line delivery capacity, synthetic fuel will be shipped in from the tropics. The amount of synthetic fuel to stockpile is a cost optimization exercise.

Krasnol 4y ago

I love to dig out this old article on why "baseload" is a bullshit argument against reneawbles and surprisingly, "baseload" comes up only when it's nuclear astroturf time again. Weird eh? https://skepticalscience.com/print.php?r=374 https://skepticalscience.com/print.php?r=374

ReflectedImage 4y ago
Solving the climate crisis with Future Tech is nice and all, but the word "future" does have a meaning. More practically, we should we be building the last generation of nuclear reactors to cover us for the next 50 years until the Future Tech actually exists.
- epistasis 4y ago
  At this point, the untested "future tech" is nuclear. Storage is far more reliably produced than nuclear, and its silly to pretend otherwise when we have extremely robust supply chains for storage that produce absolutely massive amounts, whereas nuclear just creeps along with failures and schedule delays and excuse after excuse after excuse. Nuclear is not a serious tech, it's barely a tech at all because it gets more expensive rather than cheaper the more we discover about it. Almost an anti-technology in fact, mostly a boondoggle to fund decrepit contractors that have killed subways and transit and all sorts of other construction in the Western world. Current lithium ion storage production is at 200-300 GWh/year, which, with daily discharge is 8-12 nuclear reactors' worth of energy. Per year. And this capacity is growing 10x every 5 years, and massively dropping costs. Every. Single. Year. Nuclear is an absolute joke compared to that.