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> Not to start the usual HN debate Then maybe don't throw up a giant strawman? No one is advocating for an exclusively wind-based power grid, so why pretend t
by ajross 4y ago
> Not to start the usual HN debate
Then maybe don't throw up a giant strawman? No one is advocating for an exclusively wind-based power grid, so why pretend they are? Real systems won't have the failure mode you posit.
In fact real grids (c.f. the Republic of Texas, or for that matter most of the developing world) are operating today with genuinely terrible reliability without the kind of "high-severity catastrophe" you are analogizing to a nuclear meltdown.
- a9h74j 4y agoAFAIK safety engineering, at its heart, allows for different levels of severity, and does not censor lesser-severity events as outside its scope. AFAIK the whole meaning of the discipline is to not brush things off. No one is advocating for any of our current status-quo systems, but that is what we have, for now.
- ajross 4y ago> AFAIK safety engineering, at its heart, allows for different levels of severity That sounds to me like exactly the opposite point to the one your were making upthread? Yes, that's true. The possibility of generation shortfall due to weather in a wind or solar-dominated grid environment is, for sure, a problem to be solved. Yet it is nonetheless at a "different level of severity" than a nuclear meltdown. Saying that is not "censoring" discussion of anything, it's literally engaging in the discussion.
- a9h74j 4y agoI was attempting to be generous in advance to multiple views and did not wordsmith or use qualifying words well enough.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Georgelemental 4y agoUh, plenty of politicians and people in the media advocate for making wind and solar a majority of the grid.
- ajross 4y agoThis simply isn't true, or at least not in the way you're imagining (which makes it, I guess, an unintentional strawman). First "Wind and Solar" doesn't have a single failure mode. You're now looking for failures of multiple days with minimal wind and high cloud cover if you want to invoke a "catastrophe" per the upthread phrasing. And that's much harder to do, statistically. It also discounts that "majority of the grid" doesn't mean "without backup/storage solutions". Those gas plants aren't going away, they're just going to end up mothballed as (to be fair, very expensive) peaker plants. People are working hard on storage solutions like batteries and pumped hydro, wider grid connectivity for cross-continent buffering, etc... It's totally a solvable problem (quite frankly it's significantly more solvable than "nuclear is an order of magnitude too expensive", which is the real thing holding reactors back). There will be no "catastrophes" in a renewable-driven grid, there just won't. So please stop with the FUD, and stop reading sources that are feeding it to you. Nuclear has a place in the world, but it has to get its act together and compete in the market. You can't just argue that its competitors won't work, because it's wrong.
- Georgelemental 4y ago> "Wind and Solar" doesn't have a single failure mode. You're now looking for failures of multiple days with minimal wind and high cloud cover That happens all the time. > People are working hard on storage solutions Glad they are working hard, but that doesn't mean the technology is there yet, or will be anytime soon > nuclear is an order of magnitude too expensive. Because of all the ridiculous regulations in Western nations. South Korea and China have solved this problem.