3 ms·

Nuclear is the optimal solution only in rather small niches (polar zones with long winters for example). As far as France, the drought has taken several French

Nuclear is the optimal solution only in rather small niches (polar zones with long winters for example). As far as France, the drought has taken several French nuclears offline due to the high cooling water demand for nuclear reactors: https://www.thelocal.fr/20200825/france-authorities-shut-down-nuclear-reactors-due-to-drought/ https://www.thelocal.fr/20200825/france-authorities-shut-dow... That's on top of several major aging and maintenance issues which arose some months ago: https://news.sky.com/story/nearly-half-of-frances-nuclear-reactors-taken-offline-adding-to-electricity-demand-on-european-grid-12600662 https://news.sky.com/story/nearly-half-of-frances-nuclear-re... Add in the current European wide-risk of the military destruction of the largest nuclear power plant in Ukraine, and the balance sheet for nuclear relative to solar/wind/storage looks more and more negative.

pfdietz 4y ago
Polar zones with long winters away from coastlines. Near coasts, wind is really great in polar zones. When I play with my favorite modeling site https://model.energy/ https://model.energy/ the place with the lowest cost to get to 100% renewable baseload is... Greenland!
- pfdietz 4y ago
  Oops, that's not right. The cheapest place is Antarctica. (These assume the cost to install a wind turbine is the same everywhere, which obviously isn't right, but it does give an idea how good the wind resource is in these places.)
Manuel_D 4y ago
The drought doesn't really have to affect nuclear power's output. This is because of environmental regulation that requires that the plant keep a river below a certain temperature. Because apparently warming a river is worse environmental impact than climate change. Furthermore, many nuclear plants are cooled by the ocean or by waste water. Renewables require immense amounts of storage to even out intermittency. Even just building one hour of storage is 2,500 GWh globally. We'll need around 3 weeks of storage to make a completely renewable grid: https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2018/03/01/12-hours-energy-storage-80-percent-wind-solar/ https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2018/03/01/12-hours-energy-stora... We have no feasible way of delivering that much storage. Wind and solar are cheaper to make small reductions in a grid that is mostly fossil fuels. Their intermittency isn't an issue there because it's just opportunistically shutting down the fossil fuel plants when wind and solar are producing. But actually delivering a 0% carbon grid with intermittent sources is not just hard, it's not possible.
- croes 4y ago
  But heating up rivers is one reason why nuclear energy isn't green. Our problem isn't energy production, it's energy production with the least damage to our environment.
  - Manuel_D 4y ago
    In what world does heating up a river even remotely come close to the environmental impact of, say, lithium extraction? https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/renewable/the-environmental-impact-of-lithium-batteries/ https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/renewable/the-env... Trying to shut down nuclear because a river gets too hot is the kind of faux-environmental that's hampering out efforts to combat climate change.

pfdietz 4y ago

Polar zones with long winters away from coastlines. Near coasts, wind is really great in polar zones. When I play with my favorite modeling site https://model.energy/ https://model.energy/ the place with the lowest cost to get to 100% renewable baseload is... Greenland!

pfdietz 4y ago
Oops, that's not right. The cheapest place is Antarctica. (These assume the cost to install a wind turbine is the same everywhere, which obviously isn't right, but it does give an idea how good the wind resource is in these places.)

Manuel_D 4y ago

The drought doesn't really have to affect nuclear power's output. This is because of environmental regulation that requires that the plant keep a river below a certain temperature. Because apparently warming a river is worse environmental impact than climate change. Furthermore, many nuclear plants are cooled by the ocean or by waste water. Renewables require immense amounts of storage to even out intermittency. Even just building one hour of storage is 2,500 GWh globally. We'll need around 3 weeks of storage to make a completely renewable grid: https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2018/03/01/12-hours-energy-storage-80-percent-wind-solar/ https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2018/03/01/12-hours-energy-stora... We have no feasible way of delivering that much storage. Wind and solar are cheaper to make small reductions in a grid that is mostly fossil fuels. Their intermittency isn't an issue there because it's just opportunistically shutting down the fossil fuel plants when wind and solar are producing. But actually delivering a 0% carbon grid with intermittent sources is not just hard, it's not possible.

croes 4y ago
But heating up rivers is one reason why nuclear energy isn't green. Our problem isn't energy production, it's energy production with the least damage to our environment.
- Manuel_D 4y ago
  In what world does heating up a river even remotely come close to the environmental impact of, say, lithium extraction? https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/renewable/the-environmental-impact-of-lithium-batteries/ https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/renewable/the-env... Trying to shut down nuclear because a river gets too hot is the kind of faux-environmental that's hampering out efforts to combat climate change.