11 ms·

As I heard today again on the radio, the narrative is "to get energy whatever the weather, we cannot rely only on wind and solar". I'm surprised that they have

As I heard today again on the radio, the narrative is "to get energy whatever the weather, we cannot rely only on wind and solar". I'm surprised that they haven't heard of the possibility of energy storage. Both already available storage solutions, and the many other solutions in development, are largely enough to enable wind/solar and other renewable sources to replace fossil fuels, without relying on nuclear.

wronglyprepaid 4y ago
> I'm surprised that they haven't heard of the possibility of energy storage. Have we not? I think the real issue is that we have capitalist pigscum that are greedy and want to burn the atmosphere if it can give them an extra buck and the EU is beholden to them that is why they made this change.
- henearkr 4y ago
  But they are allowed to hide behind this false narrative because the population is not aware enough, which is why we should speak publicly a lot of the energy storage solutions and projects.
  - wronglyprepaid 4y ago
    They are allowed to hide behind the false narrative because governments only care about shareholders and not stakeholders.
jpgvm 4y ago
I think you (and most people that talk about storage) drastically underestimate the scale of the storage required and just how tight supply is for the resources necessary to build it. For now EVs are going to consume the world's supply of batteries. Leaves you with thermal or potential energy storage like pumped hydro. All of which aren't even fully developed yet or are restricted to specific geography. As of right now, even ignoring new designs nuclear is 100% technically viable, it's just expensive. Expensive is generally easy to fix just needs scale like what we have for solar now.
- henearkr 4y ago
  I hear you, but the real argument against nuclear fission is not the economic one, it's the safety one. The safety during the (peace time) use of nuclear plants has been hugely improved, so I agree that's not anymore the main concern. But nuclear fission facilities are very cumbersome to dismantle, and they are liabilities during and after their commissioning. You can see that in Ukraine for example, Zaporizhia plant has been taken into hostage. Chernobyl was too, briefly. This kind of liability is especially concerning in our era of crisis (triggered by the global warming), that we could even suspect to be the beginning of a civilization collapse, which is a big word to say simply that situations of conflict, including internal conflict (civil wars and guerrillas) will multiply everywhere. Imagine the 6th January folks marching to a nuclear plant... There is still also the problem of the nuclear fuel: now West Africa and Sahel are providing a sizable part of it. But what will happen when they do not want to cooperate anymore with the Western world? (Russia is working very hard to push to this situation)
  - mcv 4y ago
    This is an important point. Nuclear can be very safe in theory. Under the right circumstances, all risks can be accounted for (except long term waste storage, apparently). Problem is, in the hands of profit-seeking companies and aggressive and/or corrupt governments, those circumstances will not be right. Remember that both Fukushima and Deep Water Horizon were caused by companies cutting costs in the face of warnings of the risks.
    - origin_path 4y ago
      Why can't the waste just be ejected into space. SpaceX has made launches a lot cheaper than it once was and once you push it into the solar system it'll never cause problems again.
      - mcv 4y ago
        Launching large amounts of nuclear material comes with its own risks, and if it orbits the sun in an earth-crossing orbit, we will eventually encounter it again. Launching into the sun would be nice, but that's way more expensive.
mschuster91 4y ago
The key thing is, we need a better grid in Europe. While we do have a better grid than the US, simply measured by checking outage rates, it is nowhere near large enough to allow large scale transfer of power across the continent. Assuming we had a decently sized cross-continental grid, it would be possible to have a lot of overcapacity in wind farms pretty much anywhere on the European coast lines - particularly in Portugal [1] and other areas with constant, strong wind power - and then transferring it to countries which do not have enough wind power. Additionally, we could transform our industry, particularly aluminium smelters (for example, in Germany one percent of the entire power usage of the country goes to just two huge plants in Essen and Hamburg [2]) to seasonal production - basically, they would only be allowed to produce during the summer when there is enough solar power available. This will be expensive, yes, but unlike the sparsely settled US Europe simply has nowhere to store the waste of nuclear energy. [1] https://www.evwind.es/2020/02/19/wind-energy-in-portugal-already-generates-26-of-electricity/73651 https://www.evwind.es/2020/02/19/wind-energy-in-portugal-alr... [2] https://www.handelsblatt.com/technik/das-technologie-update/energie/grossverbraucher-industrie-bangt-um-stromrabatte/9528744.html https://www.handelsblatt.com/technik/das-technologie-update/...
- pawsforthought 4y ago
  > Europe simply has nowhere to store the waste of nuclear energy. Hmm, well Finland is building a spent fuel repository: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repository https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_re...
paganel 4y ago
> I'm surprised that they haven't heard of the possibility of energy storage. They have probably heard of it, most probably they also know that it isn't scalable. It might be scalable, in I don't know how many years, but the here and now (and especially the coming winters) is closer to the EU electorate than some possible technological breakthrough that might or might not happen.
- henearkr 4y ago
  Why wouldn't it be scalable? Most of the solutions I know of are scalable (those that do not require rare minerals).
  - paganel 4y ago
    What solutions do you know? The hydro ones are not scalable, that's for sure. One, you'd never, ever get the environmental permits to build the dams behind them, and two, you can only build them in mountainous, maybe hilly terrain, that would add tons of costs related to distribution. I had also read something about using salt deposits, but maybe I'm remembering wrong. And no, Tesla-like batteries, or any batteries for the matter, are not a solution at the scales we're talking about.
    - moffkalast 4y ago
      There's nothing quite as infuriating when people scream about NIMBY being a deal breaker for nuclear, then peddle damming up entire valleys where people actually live right now to use as pumped hydro storage. It's like they can't even hear themselves speak. And as you point out, most recent battery advances seem to be on par with graphene in that they promise everything yet can't seem to leave the lab, much less be manufactured anywhere close to the scales required. Out of all the renewables I suppose wave power is the most prospective right now. It's consistent, runs 24/7, and could be placed at most shore locations. Probably not quite enough output to make a dent though.
      - henearkr 4y ago
moffkalast 4y ago
> I'm surprised that they haven't heard of the possibility of energy storage. Neither have our grid operators it seems. Current worldwide grid storage capacity is so absolutely abysmal we could call it a rounding error. In the end of the day, we'll need both renewables and nuclear combined to get us out of this fossil powered mess, and ignoring one of them won't exactly give us a good chance, with whatever tiny probability we still have left to unfuck the atmosphere.

wronglyprepaid 4y ago

> I'm surprised that they haven't heard of the possibility of energy storage. Have we not? I think the real issue is that we have capitalist pigscum that are greedy and want to burn the atmosphere if it can give them an extra buck and the EU is beholden to them that is why they made this change.

henearkr 4y ago
But they are allowed to hide behind this false narrative because the population is not aware enough, which is why we should speak publicly a lot of the energy storage solutions and projects.
- wronglyprepaid 4y ago
  They are allowed to hide behind the false narrative because governments only care about shareholders and not stakeholders.

jpgvm 4y ago

I think you (and most people that talk about storage) drastically underestimate the scale of the storage required and just how tight supply is for the resources necessary to build it. For now EVs are going to consume the world's supply of batteries. Leaves you with thermal or potential energy storage like pumped hydro. All of which aren't even fully developed yet or are restricted to specific geography. As of right now, even ignoring new designs nuclear is 100% technically viable, it's just expensive. Expensive is generally easy to fix just needs scale like what we have for solar now.

henearkr 4y ago
I hear you, but the real argument against nuclear fission is not the economic one, it's the safety one. The safety during the (peace time) use of nuclear plants has been hugely improved, so I agree that's not anymore the main concern. But nuclear fission facilities are very cumbersome to dismantle, and they are liabilities during and after their commissioning. You can see that in Ukraine for example, Zaporizhia plant has been taken into hostage. Chernobyl was too, briefly. This kind of liability is especially concerning in our era of crisis (triggered by the global warming), that we could even suspect to be the beginning of a civilization collapse, which is a big word to say simply that situations of conflict, including internal conflict (civil wars and guerrillas) will multiply everywhere. Imagine the 6th January folks marching to a nuclear plant... There is still also the problem of the nuclear fuel: now West Africa and Sahel are providing a sizable part of it. But what will happen when they do not want to cooperate anymore with the Western world? (Russia is working very hard to push to this situation)
- mcv 4y ago
  This is an important point. Nuclear can be very safe in theory. Under the right circumstances, all risks can be accounted for (except long term waste storage, apparently). Problem is, in the hands of profit-seeking companies and aggressive and/or corrupt governments, those circumstances will not be right. Remember that both Fukushima and Deep Water Horizon were caused by companies cutting costs in the face of warnings of the risks.
  - origin_path 4y ago
    Why can't the waste just be ejected into space. SpaceX has made launches a lot cheaper than it once was and once you push it into the solar system it'll never cause problems again.
    - mcv 4y ago
      Launching large amounts of nuclear material comes with its own risks, and if it orbits the sun in an earth-crossing orbit, we will eventually encounter it again. Launching into the sun would be nice, but that's way more expensive.

mschuster91 4y ago

The key thing is, we need a better grid in Europe. While we do have a better grid than the US, simply measured by checking outage rates, it is nowhere near large enough to allow large scale transfer of power across the continent. Assuming we had a decently sized cross-continental grid, it would be possible to have a lot of overcapacity in wind farms pretty much anywhere on the European coast lines - particularly in Portugal [1] and other areas with constant, strong wind power - and then transferring it to countries which do not have enough wind power. Additionally, we could transform our industry, particularly aluminium smelters (for example, in Germany one percent of the entire power usage of the country goes to just two huge plants in Essen and Hamburg [2]) to seasonal production - basically, they would only be allowed to produce during the summer when there is enough solar power available. This will be expensive, yes, but unlike the sparsely settled US Europe simply has nowhere to store the waste of nuclear energy. [1] https://www.evwind.es/2020/02/19/wind-energy-in-portugal-already-generates-26-of-electricity/73651 https://www.evwind.es/2020/02/19/wind-energy-in-portugal-alr... [2] https://www.handelsblatt.com/technik/das-technologie-update/energie/grossverbraucher-industrie-bangt-um-stromrabatte/9528744.html https://www.handelsblatt.com/technik/das-technologie-update/...

pawsforthought 4y ago
> Europe simply has nowhere to store the waste of nuclear energy. Hmm, well Finland is building a spent fuel repository: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repository https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_re...

paganel 4y ago

> I'm surprised that they haven't heard of the possibility of energy storage. They have probably heard of it, most probably they also know that it isn't scalable. It might be scalable, in I don't know how many years, but the here and now (and especially the coming winters) is closer to the EU electorate than some possible technological breakthrough that might or might not happen.

henearkr 4y ago
Why wouldn't it be scalable? Most of the solutions I know of are scalable (those that do not require rare minerals).
- paganel 4y ago
  What solutions do you know? The hydro ones are not scalable, that's for sure. One, you'd never, ever get the environmental permits to build the dams behind them, and two, you can only build them in mountainous, maybe hilly terrain, that would add tons of costs related to distribution. I had also read something about using salt deposits, but maybe I'm remembering wrong. And no, Tesla-like batteries, or any batteries for the matter, are not a solution at the scales we're talking about.
  - moffkalast 4y ago
    There's nothing quite as infuriating when people scream about NIMBY being a deal breaker for nuclear, then peddle damming up entire valleys where people actually live right now to use as pumped hydro storage. It's like they can't even hear themselves speak. And as you point out, most recent battery advances seem to be on par with graphene in that they promise everything yet can't seem to leave the lab, much less be manufactured anywhere close to the scales required. Out of all the renewables I suppose wave power is the most prospective right now. It's consistent, runs 24/7, and could be placed at most shore locations. Probably not quite enough output to make a dent though.
    - henearkr 4y ago

moffkalast 4y ago

> I'm surprised that they haven't heard of the possibility of energy storage. Neither have our grid operators it seems. Current worldwide grid storage capacity is so absolutely abysmal we could call it a rounding error. In the end of the day, we'll need both renewables and nuclear combined to get us out of this fossil powered mess, and ignoring one of them won't exactly give us a good chance, with whatever tiny probability we still have left to unfuck the atmosphere.