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French electrical power is 70% nuclear and has an installed capacity of 135 GW of power today. That comes out to 94.5 GW of nuclear power in France alone. Is th

• adrianN 4y ago
  I don't think that's a common use of "unsolved at scale". We know how to do it, it just doesn't make economic sense right now. I mean, suppose you have hundreds of GW of storage of some form installed. You could just claim it's still not "solved at scale" because the global energy consumption is even higher.
  • philwelch 4y ago
    The global supply chains for lithium batteries are already struggling to keep up just with current demand. Where are we going to get enough cobalt? Hopefully not DR Congo.
    • adrianN 4y ago
      Who says Lithium batteries are the best technology for grid scale storage? (Besides Elon, I guess?)
      • wumpus 4y ago
        There are multiple kinds of grid storage. Australia, for example, wants these batteries to provide fast-acting frequency stabilization... in addition to stabilizing the output of various wind and solar facilities.
    • jhallenworld 4y ago
      >Where are we going to get enough cobalt? Nobody would use this kind of lithium ion battery for grid storage. Instead use Lithium Iron Phosphate (LiFePo4) batteries- no cobalt needed. LiFePo4 batteries are absolutely good enough right now for grid storage.
      • ncmncm 4y ago
        And any sort of lithium battery is the most expensive storage. Utilities are not generally in a habit of reflexively choosing the most expensive alternative, even if some have plumped for nukes in places where ratepayers have no say.
    • ncmncm 4y ago
      Batteries will be a negligible fraction of utility storage, so that is moot.
      • sanderjd 4y ago
        Why? What will the rest be?
        • zdragnar 4y ago
          Kinetic (water gravity, flywheel) or thermal (molten salt baths which can be supplemented with solar thermal). None of these things exist at a large scale except for pumped hydro / water gravity, and that requires very convenient topography and geology to work. Generally, any non-chemical storage system is overpriced (too inefficient) or a maintenance disaster.
          • sanderjd 4y ago
            Do you think those technologies will be scaled such that batteries are a "negligible fraction" of utility storage, or are you just giving examples of possibilities?
            • ncmncm 4y ago
              Numerous technologies will be scaled. Those mentioned adjacent are just very easily understood examples. Utilities will have criteria other than "easily understood", cost chief among them.
          • User23 4y ago
            Flywheels and molten salt both have pretty gnarly failure modes too. Not Chernobyl bad, but still no fun.
            • ncmncm 4y ago
              Underground flywheels are perfectly safe, and more easily kept evacuated. But they won't be used much at utility scale, because they are expensive per Wh stored. Maximum storage is dictated by tensile strength of the wheel material, and each wheel needs its own motor / generator.
    • nine_k 4y ago
      There is a number of battery chemistries more cheap and even efficient than Lithium-based, but with lower energy density. High energy density is important for handheld devices, for flying devices, even for cars. But stationary energy storage can be much heavier and bulkier per kWh stored, as long as it's cheaper, and can sustain more than a few thousand recharge cycles. Lithium batteries have the momentum and are dropping in price because of the EV cars revolution happening right now. When solar revolution will happen i utility scale, the utility-type batteries that will emerge may be seriously different.
      • belorn 4y ago
        Since you are 100% certain that such technology will emerge in an economical viable state to solve the storage problem for Europe, could you please provide a date so we can draft a EU law that forbids burning of fossil fuel in the European market by that date. If you can do it by this winter it would solve inflation, enable a complete sanction packet against Russian oil and gas, solve several political conflicts within EU in regard to the Ukraine war, eliminate the food shortage problem and significant reduce the cost of farming, make a large dent in reducing global warming, improve GDP, and boost prosperity in general.
        • nine_k 4y ago
          Alternative chemisitries are many, and are actively developed; here's a 2021 overview: https://www.mining.com/non-lithium-battery-chemistries-to-grow-in-importance-for-stationary-energy-storage-sector-report/ https://www.mining.com/non-lithium-battery-chemistries-to-gr... What I can't predict is when some of them will become competitive enough to matter, and thus used in some large infrastructure projects.
        • adrianN 4y ago
          If we had completely free, 100% efficient grid scale storage of unlimited capacity today we couldn't stop burning fossil fuels because we don't have enough renewable generation capacity installed to fill any form of storage.
          • 4y ago
    • WalterBright 4y ago
      The advantage of lithium batteries is energy/weight and energy/volume. With grid storage, neither weight nor volume is much of an issue. A couple years back, "60 Minutes" ran a segment of somebody developing grid batteries with seawater and dirt. They didn't store much energy per weight and volume, but who cares for grid batteries. I wonder what happened to this technology.
  • BenoitP 4y ago
    At scale means with mining requirements as well. With current and projected reserves we can manage intra-day requirements for the whole world. This is the we mine it all option. But we need intra-year storage capacity. Nuclear is clearly the easier and only option (and the most environment-friendly to me, considering the mining requirements)
    • adrianN 4y ago
      Mining of what? Hydrogen as storage medium for example doesn't require all that much mining. Are you assuming storage will be in the form of Lithium batteries?
      • BenoitP 4y ago
        I'm assuming currently proven tech of batteries. And we need to act now for climate change, with current tech. Electricity to H2 to electricity has horrendous efficiency (about 20% at most IIRC). We'd be much better off CO2-speaking using it to replace coal in steel production, and replace gas in fertilizer production. Both of which are proven tech (but not globally deployed, as coal and gas are cheap)
        • pfdietz 4y ago
          Power2Gas2Power has low round trip efficiency (say 40%), but as only a fairly small fraction of the energy flow goes through it that doesn't matter that much at the end of the day. If it did, that just means heavy industries would migrate to less seasonally variable places.
        • ncmncm 4y ago
          Inefficiency just requires extra capex, not opex. And the capex is capex is still falling at an exponential rate. So, no.
        • Sinidir 4y ago
          Where are you getting that 20% number from? https://www.irena.org/-/media/Files/IRENA/Agency/Publication/2019/Sep/IRENA_Power-to-Hydrogen_Innovation_2019.pdf?page=11 https://www.irena.org/-/media/Files/IRENA/Agency/Publication... https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/round-trip-efficiency https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/round-trip-... The round trip efficiency is 30% or more and rising with better electrolysis and reverse electrolysis being developed.
  • cycomanic 4y ago
    Well nuclear proponents handwave away the massively higher costs, the still unsolved long term storage problem (it's been >70 years of nuclear power and there still does not exist a long term storage facility in the world), and insurance for the case of a disaster.
    • philwelch 4y ago
      > it's been >70 years of nuclear power and there still does not exist a long term storage facility in the world It's bizarre how anti-nuclear activists point at problems caused by anti-nuclear activism and ask, like Eric Andre, "how could nuclear power do this?"
      • ncmncm 4y ago
        Nukes' problems are not caused by activists. They have nowhere near that much influence. Nukes' problems are inherent. Biggest, by a large margin, is capex which simply prices it completely out of the market.
      • cycomanic 4y ago
        Even a superficial glance would tell you that this doesn't make sense. We have had >70 years of peaceful nuclear power. A significant anti nuclear movement has existed for maybe 40 years and it has clearly not been influencial until maybe the last 20 years. So why has the nuclear power industry not solved the issues in the first 30 years? Moreover, why has France which hasn't had a significant antinuclear movement ever solved any of the issues?
        • belorn 4y ago
          The storage problem has yet to be solved for the same reason why any nation has yet to solve the issue of pollution from fossil fuels. It cost money and any increase in energy costs is detrimental to growth. The insurance issue is similar identical to other energy sources. Why isn't hydro power insured in the case of accidental flooding? If they were it wouldn't be possible to run them at current energy prices. We don't see fossil fuel plants being insured against increased air pollution, nor do they have to pay if people around them get sick. If a hydrodam causes a flood, then there will be a flood. Hopefully those people downstream has their own insurance.
• Ajedi32 4y ago
  Not just hundreds of Gigawatts, but also tens of thousands of Gigawatt-hours. Unless you're willing to accept regular black-outs, you need to build enough capacity to account for the occasional long, sustained period of cloudy days with low wind. The cost of that extra necessary-but-rarely-used capacity needs to be factored in to any comparison of wind/solar vs other energy sources.
  • aidenn0 4y ago
    It might make more sense to have either fossil-fuels as backups for such times, or for HVDC lines to connect geographically disparate regions (it's always sunny or windy somewhere).
    • carry_bit 4y ago
      As we're seeing from Russia and Europe, depending on someone else means you can find yourself being threatened or actually being cut off.
      • ncmncm 4y ago
        There will be plenty of tropical suppliers of synthetic anhydrous ammonia competing, if transmission capacity or availability falls short. People might even keep a stock on hand.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
• cycomanic 4y ago
  Why would you need 100% storage supply. Also note if France would go 100% nuclear they would need either significant overprovisioning or storage as well. Nuclear is not an load following source. Even less so if you want to operate economically.
  • philwelch 4y ago
    > Why would you need 100% storage supply. So you don't have power outages on windless nights.
    • cinntaile 4y ago
      You generally use peaker plants or backup fossil fuel or hydro for that use case, at this point in time batteries are used to supply power for a couple of hours at best. You need that backup power anyway for when the nuclear plant is out of commission for some reason.
      • philwelch 4y ago
        Regardless of how you're generating your power, you're going to need to overprovision your generation capacity slightly to account for downtime. You only need storage if all of your generation capacity is offline at the same time, which is inevitable with solar power (nighttime), possible with gas (pipeline failure?), but less inherently likely with nuclear. > backup fossil fuel In practice this means fossil fuels become the baseload power source.
        • cinntaile 4y ago
          > In practice this means fossil fuels become the baseload power source. As the name baseload power implies, it would have to be providing power all the time and that's not what is needed.
          • belorn 4y ago
            That is correct. The term I see by my government is "reserve energy". In practice this mean a country subsidize a fossil fuel plant to keep engines running when demand is low, and then the plant get paid a second time if and when the plant is running. It is one of the main reason why investing in fossil fuel energy when countries turn to wind power is fairly good choice. The plant has lower costs in terms of fuels, when it burn fuel it does so when the market price is at the highest possible, and it get paid regardless from the government. The government are also locked into continuing this scheme as the alternative is to not have the reserve energy when needed which makes voters very angry. Burning fossil fuels when the price is lowest and without any government subsidies is just something people with too much fossil fuel can afford to do.
• guerby 4y ago
  France installed nuclear capacity is 61370 MWe, I suspect you looked at MWth (thermal output, not electrical output). Source: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrie_nucl%C3%A9aire_en_France#cite_ref-centrale_77-1 https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrie_nucl%C3%A9aire_en_Fr... Currently the capacity factor for french nuclear reactors is less than 50% because of various technical issues and maintenance schedule slippage. It will go further down because of a very hot summer and regulations on maximum released water temperatures.
• AtlasBarfed 4y ago
  At a minimum, the EV demand will solve this. 150 wh/kg Sodium Ion (good enough for likely 300 mile cars) is coming next year, and 230 wh/kg LFP is coming later this year (350-450 mile cars). Grid storage should be a core use case of Sodium Ion. Lithium Sulfur looks VERY PROMISING, and other schemes and grid-specific chemistries will be developed. Within the timeframe of any new nuclear construction, you cannot predict the cost targets with respect to any of these industries/technologies: they all are in prime economies of scale and technological improvement curves. I don't think they will improve as well as the last decade where solar dropped double-digits per year, but we'll see. Nuclear keeps trying to say the scale isn't solvable with wind/solar/battery. That is a completely unproven/unsubstantiated claim. It's basically FUD. The materials being targeted for near-term alt energy will be massively scalable.