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The continued existence of the "baseload myth" is a good example how well nuclear lobbying works. To clarify, lets look at what baseload means. Lets take wikip

The continued existence of the "baseload myth" is a good example how well nuclear lobbying works. To clarify, lets look at what baseload means. Lets take wikipedia's definition: > The baseload (also base load) is the minimum level of demand on an electrical grid over a span of time for example, one week... Electricity demand varies over time (on various time scales). Electricity providers need to make sure that they can supply both the continuous demand (i.e. the lowest point of the noisy curve that is supply) and the fluctuations (using some sort of adjustable supplies). Traditionally it was cheaper to have some power plants run 24/7 at constant output power (e.g. your nuclear power plants), to supply the baseload and use more expensive adjustable sources, e.g. gas peakers to supply varying demand. That is an economic decision, if gas peakers are cheaper than those plants running 24/7 you would never use them, because the variable sources give you much more flexibility. With renewables we are in exactly this situations. Renewables give you varying supply, so essentially a noisy supply curve with some average and a minimum supply, given a sufficiently large grid that supply will not be zero and with enough build out, you will always have enough supply to cover baseload. Because renewables are so much cheaper than nuclear, economically you would always build more renewables to lift up your ability to supply baseload, moreover because (most) renewables are varying, you actually also create capability to supply the varying demand (something you can't do with a nuclear power plant). So in short, intermittent renewables can supply baseload (in fact they are better at that then working as "peakers"). If they are much cheaper than nuclear (which has been the case for many countries) it makes more economic sense to build more renewables than large nuclear plants. incidentally the wikipedia article talks about the fact that you can use intermittent sources for baseload just in the next sentence > This demand can be met by unvarying power plants,[2] dispatchable generation,[3] or by a collection of smaller intermittent energy sources,[4] depending on which approach has the best mix of low cost, availability and high reliability in any particular market. So in short it is a myth that you require nuclear (or any large 24/7 power plant) for baseload. If renewables are significantly cheaper than nuclear, then it makes sense to invest in renewables to supply that baseload.

Mrdarknezz 4y ago
Yet this "myth" is what has lead to countries with heavy amounts of green baseloads being able to decarbonize and those without are still struggling. The failure of the Germany energiewende is a great example, Californias struggle is another.
- cycomanic 4y ago
  What failure are you talking about? The German Energiewende despite significant opposition from lobbying groups has lead to >20% of electricity generated from renewables. It also kicked off a large boom in renewable energy research and industries, Germany was world leader in solar and wind industries (the following governments policies toward fossil and back to nuclear ran into the ground)
  - breadloaf 4y ago
    Target of Energiewende was clean, cheap and reliable energy. It is not cheap and thanks to intermittency and lack of grid build up (Suedlink problems) will soon also be unreliable.
    - uecker 4y ago
      It is clean (compared to what it was before) and reliable. Cheap was never a target. In fact, household prices are artificially and intentionally (as by design) kept high to promote conservation. Average day-ahead market prices at EPEX SPOT in 2021 were lower than prices for France.
      - breadloaf 4y ago
        This was the promise of Energiewende: >The promise was sweet: Germany's transition towards a low-carbon society would cost the average household no more than €1 ($1.1) per month, "the price of a scoop of ice cream," as Jürgen Trittin, then minister for the environment, put it in 2004. So please don't try to rewrite the history. It was supposed to be cheap.
- 4y ago
audunw 4y ago
In addition to what you say here, if we're going to actually solve the CO2-emissions problem, we're going to have a HUGE amount of variable load to match with variable production. We're going to need a massive amount of green hydrogen for trucks, planes, ships, e-fuel, fertilizers, steel, etc. That's going to be fairly easy to balance with the variable output from renewables. The cost of electrolysis is also coming down, so over-capacity on the load side is also viable. It may even be possible to store some of the hydrogen, and feed it back into existing gas peaker plants (expensive, but should only rarely be needed) People who say we require nuclear (I'm not against it, just skeptical of the claim that we require it, or that it makes economic sense), rarely seems to keep the big picture in mind. CO2-emissions is about far more than electricity production, and most of the required solutions will inherently add energy storage or load balancing capability (since that's part of the reason we use fossil fuels: they help us store energy for when we need it)
- p_l 4y ago
  The low capacity factor of wind/solar, especially in less sunny regions (did you know that Boston is way sunnier than considerable portion of Europe?) is a problem. When renewable power + green hydrogen plan starts to require >450 GW capacity installed (in a country with peak power usage of ~45GW for just electricity) and that's the optimistic calculation, things become more problematic. However, electrolysis is a great source of variable load, and changing pricing structure to prioritise dispatchable sources (including renewable+storage mixes operating as virtual power plants) would also change the economics of nuclear power plants without wrecking economics of renewables. Prioritise dispatchable power (buying from NPPs, hydro and renewable+storage VPP) then match the rest of the load with green hydrogen production using electrolysis and push hydrogen into other sections of the economy (metallurgy, vehicles that can't go for batteries, etc.) so that your target is always to overproduce electrical power using hydrogen as sink - is in my opinion a much better setup than backfilling renewables 1:1 with gas turbines, and fixes renewables being "destabilising factor" in energy market.
- trashtester 4y ago
  The price of electrolysis may be coming down, but it is still very expensive....
tomp 4y ago
You accuse "nuclear lobbying" of promoting "myths" but then this: > moreover because (most) renewables are varying, you actually also create capability to supply the varying demand (something you can't do with a nuclear power plant). which is just pure fantasy / fake news. Two random noises (varying renewable supply + variable demand) will very rarely cancel out.
- cycomanic 4y ago
  I never said they would cancel out. However if you design a supply based on intermittent sources to supply your baseload (i.e. the lowest demand over a time period), the average supplied power will be significantly higher than the baseload level. In other words if you have two uncorrelated randomly varying timeseries, the overlap area under the curve will be higher than just the area of the rectangle using just the lowest point under the curve.
  - tomp 4y ago
    Yeah you can do the same with non-varying nuclear. Designing for overcapacity has nothing to do neither with renewables nor with being varying.
  - natmaka 4y ago
    Wind power is in most places the major contributor. Therefore correlations between wind regimes in the considered geographic zone is key. At a continental level (according to various scientific studies: in Europe, China and the US) it is low enough to offer ways to obtain a wind-powered baseload. Other ways are complementary: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31557422 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31557422
    - tomp 4y ago
      Did you actually read the article you posted in the other comment? > With a more cooperatively designed system, this could be reduced to just 20 GW across the continent. So, no, you cannot sustain baseload power with wind, even with cooperation, you still need powerplants (carbon? coal. green? nuclear)
klabb3 4y ago
> So in short it is a myth that you require nuclear (or any large 24/7 power plant) for baseload. I don't think anyone thinks that literally, but rather that in most places that's true in practice given the alternatives. Solar won't contribute to baseload at all for large parts of the day, meaning that no amount of overprovisioning helps. Wind has more noise on a day-cycle, so can be "averaged out" for large geographical areas, in theory. In practice though, I don't think wind provides baseload supply anywhere, currently, but happy to be proven wrong.

Mrdarknezz 4y ago

Yet this "myth" is what has lead to countries with heavy amounts of green baseloads being able to decarbonize and those without are still struggling. The failure of the Germany energiewende is a great example, Californias struggle is another.

cycomanic 4y ago
What failure are you talking about? The German Energiewende despite significant opposition from lobbying groups has lead to >20% of electricity generated from renewables. It also kicked off a large boom in renewable energy research and industries, Germany was world leader in solar and wind industries (the following governments policies toward fossil and back to nuclear ran into the ground)
- breadloaf 4y ago
  Target of Energiewende was clean, cheap and reliable energy. It is not cheap and thanks to intermittency and lack of grid build up (Suedlink problems) will soon also be unreliable.
  - uecker 4y ago
    It is clean (compared to what it was before) and reliable. Cheap was never a target. In fact, household prices are artificially and intentionally (as by design) kept high to promote conservation. Average day-ahead market prices at EPEX SPOT in 2021 were lower than prices for France.
    - breadloaf 4y ago
      This was the promise of Energiewende: >The promise was sweet: Germany's transition towards a low-carbon society would cost the average household no more than €1 ($1.1) per month, "the price of a scoop of ice cream," as Jürgen Trittin, then minister for the environment, put it in 2004. So please don't try to rewrite the history. It was supposed to be cheap.
4y ago

audunw 4y ago

In addition to what you say here, if we're going to actually solve the CO2-emissions problem, we're going to have a HUGE amount of variable load to match with variable production. We're going to need a massive amount of green hydrogen for trucks, planes, ships, e-fuel, fertilizers, steel, etc. That's going to be fairly easy to balance with the variable output from renewables. The cost of electrolysis is also coming down, so over-capacity on the load side is also viable. It may even be possible to store some of the hydrogen, and feed it back into existing gas peaker plants (expensive, but should only rarely be needed) People who say we require nuclear (I'm not against it, just skeptical of the claim that we require it, or that it makes economic sense), rarely seems to keep the big picture in mind. CO2-emissions is about far more than electricity production, and most of the required solutions will inherently add energy storage or load balancing capability (since that's part of the reason we use fossil fuels: they help us store energy for when we need it)

p_l 4y ago
The low capacity factor of wind/solar, especially in less sunny regions (did you know that Boston is way sunnier than considerable portion of Europe?) is a problem. When renewable power + green hydrogen plan starts to require >450 GW capacity installed (in a country with peak power usage of ~45GW for just electricity) and that's the optimistic calculation, things become more problematic. However, electrolysis is a great source of variable load, and changing pricing structure to prioritise dispatchable sources (including renewable+storage mixes operating as virtual power plants) would also change the economics of nuclear power plants without wrecking economics of renewables. Prioritise dispatchable power (buying from NPPs, hydro and renewable+storage VPP) then match the rest of the load with green hydrogen production using electrolysis and push hydrogen into other sections of the economy (metallurgy, vehicles that can't go for batteries, etc.) so that your target is always to overproduce electrical power using hydrogen as sink - is in my opinion a much better setup than backfilling renewables 1:1 with gas turbines, and fixes renewables being "destabilising factor" in energy market.
trashtester 4y ago
The price of electrolysis may be coming down, but it is still very expensive....

tomp 4y ago

You accuse "nuclear lobbying" of promoting "myths" but then this: > moreover because (most) renewables are varying, you actually also create capability to supply the varying demand (something you can't do with a nuclear power plant). which is just pure fantasy / fake news. Two random noises (varying renewable supply + variable demand) will very rarely cancel out.

cycomanic 4y ago
I never said they would cancel out. However if you design a supply based on intermittent sources to supply your baseload (i.e. the lowest demand over a time period), the average supplied power will be significantly higher than the baseload level. In other words if you have two uncorrelated randomly varying timeseries, the overlap area under the curve will be higher than just the area of the rectangle using just the lowest point under the curve.
- tomp 4y ago
  Yeah you can do the same with non-varying nuclear. Designing for overcapacity has nothing to do neither with renewables nor with being varying.
- natmaka 4y ago
  Wind power is in most places the major contributor. Therefore correlations between wind regimes in the considered geographic zone is key. At a continental level (according to various scientific studies: in Europe, China and the US) it is low enough to offer ways to obtain a wind-powered baseload. Other ways are complementary: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31557422 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31557422
  - tomp 4y ago
    Did you actually read the article you posted in the other comment? > With a more cooperatively designed system, this could be reduced to just 20 GW across the continent. So, no, you cannot sustain baseload power with wind, even with cooperation, you still need powerplants (carbon? coal. green? nuclear)

klabb3 4y ago

> So in short it is a myth that you require nuclear (or any large 24/7 power plant) for baseload. I don't think anyone thinks that literally, but rather that in most places that's true in practice given the alternatives. Solar won't contribute to baseload at all for large parts of the day, meaning that no amount of overprovisioning helps. Wind has more noise on a day-cycle, so can be "averaged out" for large geographical areas, in theory. In practice though, I don't think wind provides baseload supply anywhere, currently, but happy to be proven wrong.