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Waste is an incredibly easy problem to solve: bury it in impermeable bedrock. That said, there's no real point in storing existing nuclear waste since we don't

Waste is an incredibly easy problem to solve: bury it in impermeable bedrock. That said, there's no real point in storing existing nuclear waste since we don't reprocess our fuel. So the existing waste is a source of fuel in the future. Solar and wind should also be transparent in the fact they require fossil fuels to fill in gaps in production. Thus, they do not represent a solution to climate change but merely delay it. Thus the cost of solar and wind includes the cost of climate disaster.

pfdietz 4y ago
Solar and wind currently use fossil fuels to fill in gaps, but they don't require that. It's just that while we're still burning fossil fuels without CO2 charges, using them for gap filling is the cheapest thing that will do it.
- Manuel_D 4y ago
  They will continue to require fossil fuels until energy storage comes along and we have no idea when that will occur. So far, all of our storage systems have proven inadequate.
- tsimionescu 4y ago
  It does until we achieve many times cheaper storage technology. Existing storage solutions don't provide nearly enough capacity to scale (especially since Li is very scarce, and is also required for cars and other modes of transport).
  - adrianN 4y ago
    Hydrogen (or Methane) are an existing storage solution that scales very easily. The truth is that currently we have so little renewable generation capacity that we save more CO2 by building more wind turbines and PV per dollar than by building storage.
    - Manuel_D 4y ago
      No, hydrogen and methane storage do not scale easily. Almost all hydrogen production is done through steam reformation, which emits carbon dioxide. Electrolysis has continued to be difficult to do at scale, due to inefficiency and difficulty in getting reliable electrolysis sytems. Then there's the issue of storing and transporting that hydrogen, which is mostly handwaved by assuming there's a salt cavern handy wherever people need to store hydrogen. Synthetic methane requires hydrogen as an input, so all of the above applies to it, too. It also requires as source of carbon dioxide. Extracting carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is not viable, which leaves either scavenging CO2 byproducts from industrial processes and biofuels. Both of those are not in sufficient availability to produce synthetic methane at grid scale. We already have excess renewable generation in several energy markets. And it's been the case for years, but the promised energy storage revolution has not come to pass.
      - adrianN 4y ago
        Electrolysis can easily be done at scale. A couple of megawatts of electrolysis equipment is about the size of a shipping container. Many such systems are in operations right now and have been for a decade. The technology is fairly mature and reaches efficiencies of 70-80%. You also don't need salt caverns to store the hydrogen. You can store it underground without a salt cavern. Sure, there are losses, but they're not unmanageable. We're also not going to run out of industrial processes that produce large amounts of carbon dioxide, at least as long as we still build things out of concrete, so if for some reason hydrogen is too hard to transport or store, we can pay the extra price of turning it into methane and use all the infrastructure that we already have for natural gas. We can even recapture most of the carbon when we burn the methane again.
        tsimionescu 4y ago
        This really doesn't scale to the level of a whole country, or continent, having to contend with low power output for months, as recently happened with wind in Europe. And even if it can in principle scale, it's unproven and requires much more complex ops than a nuclear plant, which has been a well understood solution for decades. Not to mention, this requires huge over-production, which is a problem in areas with already high land usage, such as Europe. It is probably much less of a problem in the USA, so maybe there the calculations are different.
7952 4y ago
You can't adequately model energy with a single price per MWh. There is more to it than that and that is true of all energy types. But the low cost of renewables is still a feature that grids can exploit. It will make storage viable when it otherwise wouldn't have been. No source of energy is a silver bullet for climate change. Wind and solar aren't. And neither is the nuclear industry. There just isn't a serious plan for scaling up quickly enough. The supply chain and expertise just doesn't exist and will take years. And moaning about mistakes in the past is irrelevant to the present.

pfdietz 4y ago

Solar and wind currently use fossil fuels to fill in gaps, but they don't require that. It's just that while we're still burning fossil fuels without CO2 charges, using them for gap filling is the cheapest thing that will do it.

Manuel_D 4y ago
They will continue to require fossil fuels until energy storage comes along and we have no idea when that will occur. So far, all of our storage systems have proven inadequate.
tsimionescu 4y ago
It does until we achieve many times cheaper storage technology. Existing storage solutions don't provide nearly enough capacity to scale (especially since Li is very scarce, and is also required for cars and other modes of transport).
- adrianN 4y ago
  Hydrogen (or Methane) are an existing storage solution that scales very easily. The truth is that currently we have so little renewable generation capacity that we save more CO2 by building more wind turbines and PV per dollar than by building storage.
  - Manuel_D 4y ago
    No, hydrogen and methane storage do not scale easily. Almost all hydrogen production is done through steam reformation, which emits carbon dioxide. Electrolysis has continued to be difficult to do at scale, due to inefficiency and difficulty in getting reliable electrolysis sytems. Then there's the issue of storing and transporting that hydrogen, which is mostly handwaved by assuming there's a salt cavern handy wherever people need to store hydrogen. Synthetic methane requires hydrogen as an input, so all of the above applies to it, too. It also requires as source of carbon dioxide. Extracting carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is not viable, which leaves either scavenging CO2 byproducts from industrial processes and biofuels. Both of those are not in sufficient availability to produce synthetic methane at grid scale. We already have excess renewable generation in several energy markets. And it's been the case for years, but the promised energy storage revolution has not come to pass.
    - adrianN 4y ago
      Electrolysis can easily be done at scale. A couple of megawatts of electrolysis equipment is about the size of a shipping container. Many such systems are in operations right now and have been for a decade. The technology is fairly mature and reaches efficiencies of 70-80%. You also don't need salt caverns to store the hydrogen. You can store it underground without a salt cavern. Sure, there are losses, but they're not unmanageable. We're also not going to run out of industrial processes that produce large amounts of carbon dioxide, at least as long as we still build things out of concrete, so if for some reason hydrogen is too hard to transport or store, we can pay the extra price of turning it into methane and use all the infrastructure that we already have for natural gas. We can even recapture most of the carbon when we burn the methane again.
      - tsimionescu 4y ago
        This really doesn't scale to the level of a whole country, or continent, having to contend with low power output for months, as recently happened with wind in Europe. And even if it can in principle scale, it's unproven and requires much more complex ops than a nuclear plant, which has been a well understood solution for decades. Not to mention, this requires huge over-production, which is a problem in areas with already high land usage, such as Europe. It is probably much less of a problem in the USA, so maybe there the calculations are different.

7952 4y ago

You can't adequately model energy with a single price per MWh. There is more to it than that and that is true of all energy types. But the low cost of renewables is still a feature that grids can exploit. It will make storage viable when it otherwise wouldn't have been. No source of energy is a silver bullet for climate change. Wind and solar aren't. And neither is the nuclear industry. There just isn't a serious plan for scaling up quickly enough. The supply chain and expertise just doesn't exist and will take years. And moaning about mistakes in the past is irrelevant to the present.