6 ms·

The alternative is not fossil fuels, that's arguing a strawman, it is renewables.

BurningFrog 4y ago
As long as we have fossil fuel power plants, adding nuclear plants makes it possible to close them. That makes them alternatives!
kemiller 4y ago
It’s not a straw man, it’s the whole point, and no one is saying not to push as hard as possible on renewables too. Porque no los dos? The best part of nuclear is that it slots in for coal as base load with no other changes. If we can do that until solar+wind+storage catch up we can get to net zero faster.
- pfdietz 4y ago
  "Nuclear" and "faster" don't belong in the same sentence. Renewables can be brought online, and start displacing CO2 emissions, far faster than nuclear can. Any expenditure on new nuclear is a move away from the optimal path to reducing CO2 emission.
  - kemiller 4y ago
    Renewable sources, yes. But not storage, and it’s that base load where nuclear can help.
    - pfdietz 4y ago
      Storage can be brought on very quickly as well. And more importantly, we don't need storage for renewables to displace CO2 right now.
alerighi 4y ago
Good. Are you willing to renounce to your current lifestyle? Because renewable energy alone can't, even considering the most optimistic prediction, and even ignoring costs and production scale problem, substitute fossil fuels. That means that we need to reduce the amount of energy that we use, if we don't want to substitute fossil fuel with nuclear, so are you willing to do so? I think that nuclear is the best compromise, the argument that it costs a lot of money, it doesn't make sense, I live in Europe and we are losing billions of euros each day, most of energy intensive companies have shut down, they are not producing, because energy cost is 10 times higher than usual, there are companies that got millions euros energy bill, they go bankrupt. Now how many nuclear reactors would you have built with this amount of money that is lost every day? Now let's talk about renewable energy, the same renewable energy that in 50 years that we talk about didn't do mostly anything to reduce the dependency from Russian gas. To the point that the inevitable happened, the thing that everyone knew will someday happen but didn't want to admit that there was that possibility...
- epistasis 4y ago
  A future of renewables means a future of energy abundance, of electricity far far cheaper than it is today. A future with nuclear means extremely pricy electricity. Now, as California shows, high electricity prices don't spell doom for the economy, it means that people simply use electricity far more effectively. So if we had the logistical capability to build expensive nuclear, it wouldn't spell the end of our lifestyles, but it would be a bit harder and require that we shift around a bit how we do it.
  - strawhatguy 4y ago
    Something has to cover renewable’s shortfalls when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow. In Texas and Germany now, it has shown that over reliance on them have led to more instability in the grid, leading to higher fossil fuels use. Basically you can’t really have renewables without nuclear to back it. They’re a package deal. I don’t know where this renewable purity comes from, but it’s not helpful.
    - Gwypaas 4y ago
      > B. Dealing With Variability and Stability > Much of the resistance towards 100% RE systems in the literature seems to come from the a-priori assumption that an energy system based on solar and wind is impossible since these energy sources are variable. Critics of 100% RE systems like to contrast solar and wind with ’firm’ energy sources like nuclear and fossil fuels (often combined with CCS) that bring their own storage. This is the key point made in some already mentioned reactions, such as those by Clack et al. [225], Trainer [226], Heard et al. [227] Jenkins et al. [228], and Caldeira et al. [275], [276]. However, while it is true that keeping a system with variable sources stable is more complex, a range of strategies can be employed that are often ignored or underutilized in critical studies: oversizing solar and wind capacities; strengthening interconnections [68], [82], [132], [143], [277], [278]; demand response [279], [172], e.g. smart electric vehicles charging using delayed charging or delivering energy back to the electricity grid via vehicle-to-grid [181], [280]–[282]; storage [40]–[43], [46], [83], [140], [142], such as stationary batteries; sector coupling [16], [39], [90]–[92], [97], [132], [216], e.g. optimizing the interaction between electricity, heat, transport, and industry; power-to-X [39], [106], [134], [176], e.g. producing hydrogen at moments when there is abundant energy; et cetera. Using all these strategies effectively to mitigate variability is where much of the cutting-edge development of 100% RE scenarios takes place. > With every iteration in the research and with every technological breakthrough in these areas, 100% RE systems become increasingly viable. Even former critics must admit that adding e-fuels through PtX makes 100% RE possible at costs similar to fossil fuels. These critics are still questioning whether 100% RE is the cheapest solution but no longer claim it would be unfeasible or prohibitively expensive. Variability, especially short term, has many mitigation options, and energy system studies are increasingly capturing these in their 100% RE scenarios. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9837910 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9837910

As long as we have fossil fuel power plants, adding nuclear plants makes it possible to close them. That makes them alternatives!

kemiller 4y ago

It’s not a straw man, it’s the whole point, and no one is saying not to push as hard as possible on renewables too. Porque no los dos? The best part of nuclear is that it slots in for coal as base load with no other changes. If we can do that until solar+wind+storage catch up we can get to net zero faster.

pfdietz 4y ago
"Nuclear" and "faster" don't belong in the same sentence. Renewables can be brought online, and start displacing CO2 emissions, far faster than nuclear can. Any expenditure on new nuclear is a move away from the optimal path to reducing CO2 emission.
- kemiller 4y ago
  Renewable sources, yes. But not storage, and it’s that base load where nuclear can help.
  - pfdietz 4y ago
    Storage can be brought on very quickly as well. And more importantly, we don't need storage for renewables to displace CO2 right now.

alerighi 4y ago

Good. Are you willing to renounce to your current lifestyle? Because renewable energy alone can't, even considering the most optimistic prediction, and even ignoring costs and production scale problem, substitute fossil fuels. That means that we need to reduce the amount of energy that we use, if we don't want to substitute fossil fuel with nuclear, so are you willing to do so? I think that nuclear is the best compromise, the argument that it costs a lot of money, it doesn't make sense, I live in Europe and we are losing billions of euros each day, most of energy intensive companies have shut down, they are not producing, because energy cost is 10 times higher than usual, there are companies that got millions euros energy bill, they go bankrupt. Now how many nuclear reactors would you have built with this amount of money that is lost every day? Now let's talk about renewable energy, the same renewable energy that in 50 years that we talk about didn't do mostly anything to reduce the dependency from Russian gas. To the point that the inevitable happened, the thing that everyone knew will someday happen but didn't want to admit that there was that possibility...

epistasis 4y ago
A future of renewables means a future of energy abundance, of electricity far far cheaper than it is today. A future with nuclear means extremely pricy electricity. Now, as California shows, high electricity prices don't spell doom for the economy, it means that people simply use electricity far more effectively. So if we had the logistical capability to build expensive nuclear, it wouldn't spell the end of our lifestyles, but it would be a bit harder and require that we shift around a bit how we do it.
- strawhatguy 4y ago
  Something has to cover renewable’s shortfalls when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow. In Texas and Germany now, it has shown that over reliance on them have led to more instability in the grid, leading to higher fossil fuels use. Basically you can’t really have renewables without nuclear to back it. They’re a package deal. I don’t know where this renewable purity comes from, but it’s not helpful.
  - Gwypaas 4y ago
    > B. Dealing With Variability and Stability > Much of the resistance towards 100% RE systems in the literature seems to come from the a-priori assumption that an energy system based on solar and wind is impossible since these energy sources are variable. Critics of 100% RE systems like to contrast solar and wind with ’firm’ energy sources like nuclear and fossil fuels (often combined with CCS) that bring their own storage. This is the key point made in some already mentioned reactions, such as those by Clack et al. [225], Trainer [226], Heard et al. [227] Jenkins et al. [228], and Caldeira et al. [275], [276]. However, while it is true that keeping a system with variable sources stable is more complex, a range of strategies can be employed that are often ignored or underutilized in critical studies: oversizing solar and wind capacities; strengthening interconnections [68], [82], [132], [143], [277], [278]; demand response [279], [172], e.g. smart electric vehicles charging using delayed charging or delivering energy back to the electricity grid via vehicle-to-grid [181], [280]–[282]; storage [40]–[43], [46], [83], [140], [142], such as stationary batteries; sector coupling [16], [39], [90]–[92], [97], [132], [216], e.g. optimizing the interaction between electricity, heat, transport, and industry; power-to-X [39], [106], [134], [176], e.g. producing hydrogen at moments when there is abundant energy; et cetera. Using all these strategies effectively to mitigate variability is where much of the cutting-edge development of 100% RE scenarios takes place. > With every iteration in the research and with every technological breakthrough in these areas, 100% RE systems become increasingly viable. Even former critics must admit that adding e-fuels through PtX makes 100% RE possible at costs similar to fossil fuels. These critics are still questioning whether 100% RE is the cheapest solution but no longer claim it would be unfeasible or prohibitively expensive. Variability, especially short term, has many mitigation options, and energy system studies are increasingly capturing these in their 100% RE scenarios. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9837910 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9837910