9 ms·

Renewables are not baseload. If you add batteries to the mix, nuclear is better. Not to mention the quantity of power produced. Nuclear is expensive because i

• elproxy 4y ago
  Nuclear is expensive first and foremost because of the unreasonable yield demands of capital and the advent of neoliberalism causing states to cave to said demands (source: https://www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Hinkley-Point-C.pdf https://www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Hinkley-Po...)
• raxxorraxor 4y ago
  It doesn't have to be batteries, it can be pump storage plant or similar installations. Problem that those don't work aren't technical. There are often legislative in nature or the infrastructure for energy transportation is inadequate. We don't know how feasibly we can get Uranium. The market is unstable right now because of political problems. The topic is very complex, there are disadvantages with every form of energy production and nuclear isn't an exception. It is only clean if you reduce the question to CO2.
  • loup-vaillant 4y ago
    > it can be pump storage plant or similar installations. Not sure about the rest of the world, but in the EU we basically maxed out those years (decades?) ago. We won't be getting much more. (I mean, without actual mountains, your pump storage plant is going to be prohibitively expensive.) > The topic is very complex, there are disadvantages with every form of energy production True. In France, we had a very recent report[1] that outlines various scenarios towards 2050, and it appeared that the least risky ones involved a fairly diverse energetic mix. [1]: https://assets.rte-france.com/prod/public/2022-01/Energy%20pathways%202050_Key%20results.pdf https://assets.rte-france.com/prod/public/2022-01/Energy%20p...
    • ncmncm 4y ago
      We have maxed out only hydro power dams. Pumped storage is not limited to hydro power dams. All you really need is a hill and water, although it costs less with a depression near the hilltop. No watershed needed. Actually you do not need the hill. An underground cavity suffices. And, there are numerous other cheap alternatives.
      • loup-vaillant 4y ago
        How many joules would your hill/cavity-and-water (or any of your "numerous cheap alternatives" for that matter) would hold for each dollar spent? How would that compare to actual dams? I need sources & links. Right now I would bet on a highly unfavourable comparison to be honest. Dams have the overwhelming advantage of letting you build a relatively small wall (compared to the lake you're holding), to hold a gigantic volume of water. The mountain an the river are already there, so you don't need to build them.
        • ncmncm 4y ago
          Ask the people who build them. Hydro power systems need to store a year or more. Utilities will need at most a few weeks. You don't need or want a river. Dams are f'ing expensive because they need geological support for extreme pressure. An earthen dike suffices if you don't already have a depression. Only the penstock needs to hold back high pressure.
          • loup-vaillant 4y ago
            Give me sources or it does not exist. I'm aware of dams. I'm not aware of your fancy alternatives. It is therefore reasonable to assume that those fancy alternatives aren't widely deployed. And that the main reason for this is that they're more expensive (per energy unit). Without sources, your (admittedly plausible) qualitative arguments are just a pretty story.
            • ncmncm 4y ago
  • jokoon 4y ago
    Uranium is easier to find than copper and other rare metals, because by weight, it can generate more power. There is uranium in sea water, and I bet it's efficient enough to filter that uranium.
    • YawningAngel 4y ago
      https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/48/039/48039446.pdf https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/... It's more expensive than mining but not by an order of magnitude
    • ncmncm 4y ago
      Uranium is cheap-ish. Extracting power from it is extremely expensive, and not getting cheaper.
  • simmerup 4y ago
    I’ve heard using offshore wind turbines to create hydrogen that can be burned is a good way forward
  • Joeri 4y ago
    Pumped storage has a carbon impact because of the massive amounts of concrete involved. The EU is looking at hydrogen storage instead, with the idea being that the natural gas distribution and storage network will gradually shift over to hydrogen which is produced from surplus solar and wind. Ofcourse, you first need surplus solar and wind, and that's what the real problem is. There is still plenty of headroom to build more solar and wind for immediate use before we reach the point where some of the produced energy needs to be stored.
    • ncmncm 4y ago
      Pumped storage does not need concrete. Ammonia will probably turn out more practical as a transportable storage medium. Hydrogen works stored underground.
  • belorn 4y ago
    There isn't a single existing pump storage plant in the world that charge with renewables energy and resells it when demand is high. There exist a few proof of concepts, but the only commercial one that I know off do so by charging it from fossil fuel power plants. It act as a large subsidized grid stabilizer for when different fossil fuel power power down. When there are articles about pumped storage plants the usual problems are not legislative or infrastructure. The biggest issue is that investors don't like to create overcapacity, which mean that there isn't a lot of available renewable energy to buy cheap in order to sell expensively later to recover the cost of storage. When overcapacity occur the enthusiasm for more capacity quickly drop. The secondary issues tend to be more physical in nature. Salt water is very problematic in any situation, so putting pumped storage plants near the ocean has many problems. If you use fresh water you compete with existing utilization, and most suitable locations for pumped storage already have existing hydroelectric power. Fresh water has often a very complex ecosystems and everything from nature to human depend on it.
    • raxxorraxor 4y ago
      There are a lot of pump storage plants with various forms of storage mechanisms. Renewables are part of the general energy mix so of course these storage plants also store energy from renewables. In Switzerland and Austria it has become a business because of the overproduction of Germany. Given, they have the matching topography that make them easier to build, but you won't necessarily need that. Hydroelectric power and pumped storage have synergies, they aren't competing. Stored power isn't overcapacity. Investors care about expensive energy and renewables are the cheapest and cleanest option.
      • belorn 4y ago
        k, I will bite. Give me a source for a pumped storage facility that buy wind or solar when overproduction causes the prices to be low, and then sells it when the price is high. How much do they pay on average, how much at the point of sale, and how is the ROI per kw/h. All the existing pumped storage facilities that I know of do not generate their profit from buying low and selling high. They generate profits by providing a service of balancing the grid for short duration so that when a power plant is ramping down, there is a equal force being provided as a service so that the grid doesn't break down. The period of ramping down/up need to be covered somehow, a cost that either the grid operator or the individual power plants need to pay for. The end customer who pays by the kw/h do not see this cost, and it is a very insignificant cost of the whole since it only occur at start and stop. But I am happy to be proven wrong. Please give me that link of one that buy low and sell high. A commercial operated pumped storage that buy renewable energy when its low and sell when it is high can be scaled up to be used whenever the price difference between low and high is great enough. The cost of operation and investment just need to be low enough that the margin between low and high price points can support it.
  • natmaka 4y ago
    The more we obtain uranium (prospecting, mining, milling...), the more we add to the associated carbon footprint. Therefore a sustained growth of installed nuclear capacity will lead us to exploit mines at always lowering ore grades => more emissions. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/222817608_Life_cycle_energy_and_greenhouse_gas_emissions_of_nuclear_energy_A_review https://www.researchgate.net/publication/222817608_Life_cycl... https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2051332 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2051332
• onethought 4y ago
  Why aren’t they base load? If every country over provisioned renewables, then you have a transmission problem not a storage problem. The sun does always shine, the wind does always blow.
  • jokoon 4y ago
    You can't transmit energy efficiently over very large distances, power lines will have too much loss power due to resistance.
    • Gwypaas 4y ago
      That's a solved problem today. China has a 12 GW 3,300 km (2,100 mi) HVDC line in use for a couple of years now. The loss is 2-3% per 1,000 km depending on the voltage of the system. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current
      • robertlagrant 4y ago
        If you add in "rebuild all the transmission lines" to the cost then that would be good. Comparing some costs of renewables to total cost of nuclear is a fun pastime, but doesn't help the debate.
        • ncmncm 4y ago
          Nukes also involve big transmission line projects, so it is a wash,.
          • robertlagrant 4y ago
            This seems to misunderstand the context. Previous poster was saying that with enough renewables hundreds or thousands of miles apart, there will always be enough power generation capacity. The response was around how the newest transmission technology isn't so lossy. But that would mean we'd have to replace all transmission lines. This doesn't apply to nuclear because it doesn't rely on generation potentially coming from 500 miles away to make it work.
• mytailorisrich 4y ago
  If workable (obviously crucial point!), I like the idea of using renewables, e.g. offshore wind farms, to produce hydrogen. This would solve storage issues, vehicles could be refilled pretty much the way they are now, gas boilers could be swapped for hydrogen, no need for polluting batteries, no major upgrades of electric grid, etc.
  • ncmncm 4y ago
    Hydrogen, or ammonia. Ammonia is more practical for transport in tankage.
    • largolagrande 4y ago
      You need hydrogen to synthesize ammonia.
      • ncmncm 4y ago
        Strangely, not. Water + air + electric in, NH3 + O2 out.
        • largolagrande 4y ago
          Thanks, I didn't know that. From "Electrochemical synthesis of ammonia as a potential alternative to the Haber–Bosch process" (2019) : Water electrolysis, combined with an improved smallerscale Haber–Bosch process, seems to be a short-term solution for the generation of ammonia from renewables at a matching scale. There is a major research focus on reducing the NH3 synthesis reaction pressure and temperature, while keeping the catalyst cost and means to follow the intermittent electrical power input. These technologies are anticipated to be developed within next few years. Electrochemical ammonia production is much more distant from commercialization, however, potential benefits of electrochemical ammonia production, such as reduced energy consumption and associated footprint, scalability, lower process pressures and temperatures, the ability to follow the intermittent electrical power input and use nitrogen with reduced purity justify further research. From "Electrochemical Synthesis of Ammonia: Progress and Challenges" (2021) : On the whole, a lot of attempts and significant progress have been made, but the electrochemical synthesis of ammonia is still in the infancy stage with great challenges remained to be addressed.
• beanjuice 4y ago
  > there are sourced charts about this If you wouldn't mind, could you please source the charts?
• cycomanic 4y ago
  Yes renewables are baseload. People look up what it actually means, before you repeat this stuff. Quoting directly from the Wikipedia article: > The base load[1] (also baseload) is the minimum level of demand on an electrical grid over a span of time, for example, one week. This demand can be met by unvarying power plants,[2] dispatchable generation,[3] or by a collection of smaller intermittent energy sources,[4] depending on which approach has the best mix of cost, availability and reliability in any particular market. Wind and solar are intermittent sources.