5 ms·

The problem is that the sun is not always shining (and half the year not at the right angle), and wind is not always blowing. Unless a country has access to alw

by manmal 4y ago

The problem is that the sun is not always shining (and half the year not at the right angle), and wind is not always blowing. Unless a country has access to always-on sources (like sea currents), energy must be stored or things must be burned. Storage is hard and energy intensive to build, and many countries would need a few months worth of storage to never bother about burning stuff again. And that’s _a lot_, you wouldn’t believe the kind of power needed to support some branches of industry, and they won’t shut down in winter of course.

adrianN 4y ago
Storage is certainly not harder to build than nuclear power plants. Power-to-Gas is technologically quite straightforward. The research that's currently happening is just to make it cheaper until we have enough renewables for grid-scale storage to make sense. The really hard part of becoming carbon neutral is the sectors other than electricity, e.g. heating and transportation, but nuclear power won't help you there.
- depressedpanda 4y ago
  Why do you think fission can't help with heating? Heat is one of the by-products of running a reactor. E.g.: https://www.wsj.com/articles/nuclear-power-could-heat-your-home-cogeneration-district-heating-energy-steam-china-ap1000-11657734413?mod=latest_headlines https://www.wsj.com/articles/nuclear-power-could-heat-your-h... https://www.powermag.com/district-heating-supply-from-nuclear-power-plants/ https://www.powermag.com/district-heating-supply-from-nuclea...
  - adrianN 4y ago
    Because the problematic part is switching millions and millions of buildings from gas and oil to either heat pumps or district heating, not generating heat or electricity.
- manmal 4y ago
  Power to gas (incl reverse) is terribly lossy right now.
  - adrianN 4y ago
    Surplus renewable electricity is incredibly cheap. Losses matter a lot less than the cost of the infrastructure you need for storage. Batteries have great efficiency, but they're not cheap. We already have a bunch of infrastructure that can handle gas.
cycomanic 4y ago
If your grid is large enough (and that is already happening in Europe for economic reasons), you have enough geographic distribution to average out variations. There have been studies that showed you could run the US on something like 500% overcapacity with a fully integrated grid using only renewables and no storage. Moreover nuclear are slow moving, they typically don't load follow, so even with a combined nuclear/renewables you still either need significant overcapacity or some sort of peaker. So you haven't actually solved the variation problem. Finally, because cost for nuclear is largely dominated by capex (construction cost, both in dollars and CO2 foodprint), not running the nuclear plant as close to capacity as possible will even more increase the price and also reduce the CO2 lifetime emission. In usual comparisons which puts nuclear on par with renewables, nuclear is assumed to run essentially 24/7 while solar/wind are based on some statistical uptime. If we operate a nuclear not close to capacity its lifetime carbon footprint becomes significantly worse.
- dmitriid 4y ago
  > Moreover nuclear are slow moving, they typically don't load follow Which is not entirely true: https://www.oecd-nea.org/upload/docs/application/pdf/2021-12/technical_and_economic_aspects_of_load_following_with_nuclear_power_plants.pdf https://www.oecd-nea.org/upload/docs/application/pdf/2021-12... Even older designs could do load following.
  - logifail 4y ago
    The problem isn't really to what extent nuclear is load-following, but that the economics of nuclear look even worse than they already do if we want to follow the cheapest generator. To be blunt: if the sun is shining and it's windy, no-one really wants to buy a nuclear plant's output. Not at an agreed fixed price, or possibly at any price. The idea of nuclear getting paid the same price - or worse, an index-linked price - for the lifetime of the plant, regardless of what the future holds, and even on those sunny and windy days, just seems horrendously anticompetitive. If nuclear is as necessary, competitive and flexible as some make out, then go right ahead and build your plant(s). Just don't expect taxpayers to underwrite anything.

by manmal 4y ago

adrianN 4y ago

Storage is certainly not harder to build than nuclear power plants. Power-to-Gas is technologically quite straightforward. The research that's currently happening is just to make it cheaper until we have enough renewables for grid-scale storage to make sense. The really hard part of becoming carbon neutral is the sectors other than electricity, e.g. heating and transportation, but nuclear power won't help you there.

depressedpanda 4y ago
Why do you think fission can't help with heating? Heat is one of the by-products of running a reactor. E.g.: https://www.wsj.com/articles/nuclear-power-could-heat-your-home-cogeneration-district-heating-energy-steam-china-ap1000-11657734413?mod=latest_headlines https://www.wsj.com/articles/nuclear-power-could-heat-your-h... https://www.powermag.com/district-heating-supply-from-nuclear-power-plants/ https://www.powermag.com/district-heating-supply-from-nuclea...
- adrianN 4y ago
  Because the problematic part is switching millions and millions of buildings from gas and oil to either heat pumps or district heating, not generating heat or electricity.
manmal 4y ago
Power to gas (incl reverse) is terribly lossy right now.
- adrianN 4y ago
  Surplus renewable electricity is incredibly cheap. Losses matter a lot less than the cost of the infrastructure you need for storage. Batteries have great efficiency, but they're not cheap. We already have a bunch of infrastructure that can handle gas.

cycomanic 4y ago

If your grid is large enough (and that is already happening in Europe for economic reasons), you have enough geographic distribution to average out variations. There have been studies that showed you could run the US on something like 500% overcapacity with a fully integrated grid using only renewables and no storage. Moreover nuclear are slow moving, they typically don't load follow, so even with a combined nuclear/renewables you still either need significant overcapacity or some sort of peaker. So you haven't actually solved the variation problem. Finally, because cost for nuclear is largely dominated by capex (construction cost, both in dollars and CO2 foodprint), not running the nuclear plant as close to capacity as possible will even more increase the price and also reduce the CO2 lifetime emission. In usual comparisons which puts nuclear on par with renewables, nuclear is assumed to run essentially 24/7 while solar/wind are based on some statistical uptime. If we operate a nuclear not close to capacity its lifetime carbon footprint becomes significantly worse.

dmitriid 4y ago
> Moreover nuclear are slow moving, they typically don't load follow Which is not entirely true: https://www.oecd-nea.org/upload/docs/application/pdf/2021-12/technical_and_economic_aspects_of_load_following_with_nuclear_power_plants.pdf https://www.oecd-nea.org/upload/docs/application/pdf/2021-12... Even older designs could do load following.
- logifail 4y ago
  The problem isn't really to what extent nuclear is load-following, but that the economics of nuclear look even worse than they already do if we want to follow the cheapest generator. To be blunt: if the sun is shining and it's windy, no-one really wants to buy a nuclear plant's output. Not at an agreed fixed price, or possibly at any price. The idea of nuclear getting paid the same price - or worse, an index-linked price - for the lifetime of the plant, regardless of what the future holds, and even on those sunny and windy days, just seems horrendously anticompetitive. If nuclear is as necessary, competitive and flexible as some make out, then go right ahead and build your plant(s). Just don't expect taxpayers to underwrite anything.