8 ms·
Knowing its 42°C currently in France and 40°C in UK, that we blasted previous temp records two times in two months, well I think we should make it mandatory to
by quadcore 4y ago
Knowing its 42°C currently in France and 40°C in UK, that we blasted previous temp records two times in two months, well I think we should make it mandatory to build reactors.
- ajsnigrutin 4y ago"but those take 10 years to build, that's too long" -people telling me this 5 years ago -also people telling me the same 10 years ago -also people telling me the same 15 years ago -also people telling me te same 20 years ago -and of course, people telling me this now.
- TheLoafOfBread 4y agoPeople also tell to build wind and solar, while ignoring that those two needs to be backed up by coal and gas.
- abakker 4y agoor batteries / battery analogs. It is possible to solve this problem with tools we currently have. If we're thinking long term, we do not require coal or gas for power generation given sufficient hydro, wind, solar and storage. Cryogenic air, pumped hydro, and other storage designs are possible.
- TheLoafOfBread 4y agoChemical batteries are completely useless and expensive gimmick in state-wide storage of electric energy. Cost is main reason why it is cheaper to build coal/gas plant instead.
- Pxtl 4y agoFrom what I've read batteries are the preferred option for short-term zero-emissions levelling but once you get into longer term stuff you start looking at storing compressed air or hydrogen in salt caverns. But hydrogen cracking/storage as a grid-level utility is still at the experimental stage.
- TheLoafOfBread 4y agoPower-to-gas (Hydrogen or Methane) as battery is from my perspective only viable solution. Everything else appears to be more or less elaborate attempt to suck subsidies, but provide inadequate system.
- imtringued 4y agoHere is a cool pipe dream: https://heindl-energy.com/ https://heindl-energy.com/
- Pxtl 4y agoThe only gravity storage that isn't nonsense is pumped hydro. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGGOjD_OtAM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGGOjD_OtAM
- pydry 4y agoOr pumped storage. People keep telling me that there arent enough geographical locations for it but all studies Ive seen refute this. E.g. https://www.anu.edu.au/news/all-news/anu-finds-530000-potential-pumped-hydro-sites-worldwide https://www.anu.edu.au/news/all-news/anu-finds-530000-potent... Never mind that nuclear isnt dispatchable either (ramping down production can be done but it basically just wastes energy) and also needs to be paired with storage or gas to work.
- TheLoafOfBread 4y agoThere is not enough geographical locations. Sorry to bust your dream, but not every country in Europe is Switzerland or Austria with useful valleys and rivers in them
- rwcarlsen 4y agoDepending on who you talk to and your definitions, nuclear is generally considered dispatchable. The only definitively non-dispatchable sources are e.g. wind and solar where they cannot guarantee power levels and availability during the dispatching window. It is a bit of a spectrum - some sources (i.e. nat gas plants) are considered highly dispatchable because they can be spun up and down and adjust power levels very quickly (i.e. load following).
- phh 4y agoDoes it? I feel like if we overbuild wind by like a factor of x5 in whole of Europe (on top of the median load factor, not assuming 100% of course), we would pretty much not need coal or gas. x5 ratio is still lower than nuclear reactor budget and time ratios overrun in the last 2 decades. That being said I'm all for not putting all our eggs in the same basket, and having both nuclear, wind, solar AND coal and gas plants is fine by me (but the plan must say that the coal and gas plants will never be in use, but they are ready "just in case")
- aembleton 4y agoWhat do we do when there is no wind?
- Gwypaas 4y agoIf there's a continent scale lack of wind in Europe I would be more afraid about the general state of our sun. Try find a windless day here. https://www.windy.com/?50.345,6.328,3 https://www.windy.com/?50.345,6.328,3
- TheLoafOfBread 4y agoYou mean like half of 2021? https://theconversation.com/what-europes-exceptionally-low-winds-mean-for-the-future-energy-grid-170135 https://theconversation.com/what-europes-exceptionally-low-w...
- Gwypaas 4y agoWe of course need to overbuild. You can do x4 for off shore wind and still come out ahead of nuclear. That map also corresponds to the time of year solar works 16 hours per day in Europe. It also shows that France Italy and the eastern part of the Baltics had more wind than usual.
- KptMarchewa 4y agoWind capacity regularly drops below 10% in Poland. https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/PL https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/PL
- cinntaile 4y agoAt this point the same goes for nuclear, if a reactor is offline you need some coal and or gas backup. Unless you have hydro.
- StillBored 4y agoFirst, as others have pointed out, Nukes can be throttled, they don't tend to be because its not economically efficient (basically the entire cost is front loaded in the construction). But there is a _HUGE_ difference between simply not having the capacity because the wind isn't blowing, and having to predict 12-24 hours in advance what the energy load is going to be. In the latter case its entirely possible to spin a nuke or coal plant up in anticipation of the need. Plus, if you overbuilt nukes, and could guarantee a consistent energy overproduction then you could build all kinds of energy soaking plants, to say desalinate sea water, produce various liquid fuels, etc as well as drive the acceptance of electric cars with free night/weekend charging schedules. This is actually one of my issues with the Biden administrations "we need more charging" stations drive recently. Charging stations are a problem that will fix themselves when people can look at electric cars and actually say "i'm not driving a coal burner around" and its a no brainier to charge this thing vs buying gas. Until recently that calculation isn't clear, your playing around the edges with the numbers, and the best cases aren't even 2x. Continent wide off peak free and clean electricity for charging makes it obvious which is better. When that happens gas stations will scramble to install charging.
- zdragnar 4y agoThere's a story making the rounds here about a family who is out $11k because they bought a used ford fusion. Within 6 months of buying it, the battery died. If they could buy a replacement battery, it would run them another $14k, but they can't even do that, because the batteries for the fusion aren't being made anymore. The dealer offered them $500 to take the car off their hands. I think the current median price for a new electric car is something like $67k. Buying used is a bit like taking the gamble of not having health insurance- maybe you'll be fine, maybe you'll get a life-wrecking bill.
- StillBored 4y agoRight when you hear about power problem in TX, its _always_ when the wind isn't blowing. All that wind power has slowed investment in anything that isn't a gas plant, yet its all those gas plants running at 100% capacity and the wind basically producing at <10% which are a problem. Because apparently ERCOT is just adding the wind power (well based on some statistical weather analysis) to the total state capacity instead of assuming its 0% in their worse case calculations. During the shortages two weeks ago the wind farms were producing at 8% of rated capacity, and that isn't an unusual amount for this time of year. The wind farms do fantastic in the spring/fall when we don't need much energy, but then in the winter and summer they are frequently less than 15% of rated capacity.
- ajsnigrutin 4y agoYep... you need 100% of use covered even if it's a windless night (no solar, no wind), and then turn off (eg hydro, gas) when you have both wind and sun. Puting just wind and sun infrastructure means constant blackouts.
- layer8 4y agoJust like software developers, politicians focus too much on the short term.
- highwaylights 4y agoThat's democracy for you. All political decisions in western democracies have a hard limit of a four year time horizon. Sure, there are times when collective decisions can be made with decades of planning - but only if they can fall through the increasingly narrow gaps between left/right politics. Don't get me wrong, it's still better than any alternative I've seen anywhere, but it has its weaknesses.
- jen20 4y ago> All political decisions in western democracies have a hard limit of a four year time horizon. 5 years in the UK, though it's been a long time since there was a change in power between parties without a 10+ year stint in office first.
- highwaylights 4y agoYeah, but that limits decision making to about 4 years if you have 5 year election cycles. The last year you don’t want to piss off the voters so you have to be very sparse in getting anything done, so the last year in the election run up is spent pandering to as many people as possible rather than actually doing any of the real work. Even if in the end you get multiple terms in office, you were never guaranteed re-election, so you were forced to make short term plans regardless (to stop the other lot getting in instead).
- imtringued 4y agoMerkel was in office for 16 years. Schröder 8 years. Kohl 16 years.
- highwaylights 4y agoCorrect? Not sure I follow your point. Elections happen every X years whether you win them or not. The job of a politician is to pander to the electorate, not take action.
- thrown_22 4y agoThe best time to build a nuclear reactor is 20 years ago. The second best is today.
- dividedbyzero 4y agoPerhaps the best time to build one is 20 years from now with the hope that by then someone else has sorted out how to do it without exceeding an already enormous budget by a factor of four as with Olkiluoto (so far, it's still in trials that it failed on the first attempt). Plus, to get out of gas you'd need tons of storage anyway as current nuclear reactors aren't very reactive, that's what gas plants do. But if you do invest in storage and make that work well, might just overbuild renewables and limit nuclear reactors to specific niches.
- ajsnigrutin 4y ago> how to do it without exceeding an already enormous budget by a factor of four as with Olkiluoto How about imprisoning the responsible for the exceeded budget? How does Microsoft/Walmart deal with someone promising a thing will cost X but then costs 4X?
- nathanaldensr 4y agoI find it amusing how the phrase "overbuild renewables" is thrown about several times in this thread as if it's a good thing. It's not. You must acknowledge that the materials and supply chain required for the wind/solar hypothetical simply don't exist.
- imtringued 4y agoNobody cared about climate change 20 years ago, at least not enough to build nuclear power. People laughed at Al Gore and called it a hoax or denies it. People only really started abandoning nuclear power with the advent of fukushima.
- wizofaus 4y agoNobody cares enough about climate change even now to actually do anything serious about it. Even in countries where both sides of politics pay lip service to agreeing for the need for radical changes they haven't been happening. And in others we still have entire political parties arguing against even minimal adjustments to our economies. We're basically hanging all our hopes on some sort of technological miracle.
- MagnumOpus 4y ago"Nobody" cared, yet the Vice President on the US was picked partly because of his strong credentials on the issue. Gore published "Earth in Balance" exactly 20 years ago, and even then it contained nothing new or controversial outside the Fox News bubble.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]