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There's a weird sociological phenomenon where people declare that "renewables won't get us there" without any real justification. A recently announced deal in

There's a weird sociological phenomenon where people declare that "renewables won't get us there" without any real justification. A recently announced deal in California would build out solar for $20/MWh compared to your $200/MWh nuclear worst case. Renewables can and will get us 90% of the way there. I recognize that a renewables based grid will require massive investments in grid infrastructure, which are long overdue anyway, as well as eventually storage/batteries, which is still on an exponential cost reduction curve. Bbut given the massive cost difference of generation, that would still be a dramatic net benefit. Particularly when nuclear plants take a decade to build compared to a year for a solar plant. I get that nuclear is cool, particularly fusion, but I really don't understand this "renewables won't get us there" argument beyond that.

nerbert 4y ago
Seems like in 2022 renewables are getting us there: https://ember-climate.org/insights/research/global-electricity-mid-year-insights-2022/ https://ember-climate.org/insights/research/global-electrici...
- elevaet 4y ago
  > +389 Change in global electricity demand (TWh) > +416 Change in renewable generation (TWh) > +5 Change in fossil generation (TWh) I'm confused by this, it doesn't add up: change in renewables + fossil generation = +421TWh, so why does it say +389TWh for change in global electricity demand? Is 32TWh just going to waste?
  - confidantlake 4y ago
    Maybe a third category (perhaps nuclear) went down? Just speculating, it isn't very clear.
- lm28469 4y ago
  Are they ? Seems like we're using just as much fossil fuel as previously, which is still waaaaaay too much for any kind of sustainability As always the rebound effect is kicking our ass, instead of producing the same and polluting less we pollute the same and produce more
notacop31337 4y ago
Whilst I understand that in reality the costs will always win out, I think only addressing the cost aspect is a strange way of tackling the issue given that cheap energy has gotten us where we are. Not to mention that you're comparing costs unfairly, given the costs of nuclear include the costs of processing and storage of waste output, and nuclear is the only energy source in which we control all outputs and have dedicated and well engineering processes for dealing with those outputs. I think that people are being completely unrealistic regarding the cleanliness of solar and wind, currently we bury the blades and we just turf the panels, both of which are hardware that needs to be upgraded. The heavy metals in panels do not break down at all. Which is funny given everyones focus on the radioactivity of nuclear waste, which even though takes a long time to completely stop being toxic, does actually stop being toxic. I think there's a happy middle ground, and we need a good mix of sources, but people are comparing on features that they want to compare on, and ignoring others.
- uup 4y ago
  Burying blades is worse than burying nuclear waste?
  - notacop31337 4y ago
    I think I understand the point you're trying to make, but funnily enough, based on the current methods, yes. That's not to say that the blades are more dangerous than the nuclear waste, just that the nuclear waste has many years of waste management engineering behind it, due to its danger. So there are defined processes of management that are well tested, well designed and well implemented. Processes for blades currently are just bury them in landfill, which causes a bunch of unmitigated issues. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-02-05/wind-turbine-blades-can-t-be-recycled-so-they-re-piling-up-in-landfills https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-02-05/wind-turb... The idea that we "just bury" nuclear waste in the same way a dog buries a bone, is kinda funny, but very far from reality. This also doesn't even touch on nuclear waste recycling, which is enormously beneficial.
    - cycomanic 4y ago
lovemenot 4y ago
You are right. I believe the disconnect with many of those who argue like your parent is that they expect no societal changes should be forthcoming. So nuclear (both kinds) is the only way to continue with this lifestyle. As wastefully as we may wish, since massive over-provisioning is a possibility with these technologies. I disagree with the premise and therefore with their conclusion. Renewables (plus storage, plus demand management, plus HVDC transmission) will get us there. But there isn't here
- myspy 4y ago
  When I read here about nuclear as a solution I never read about how much fuel there is left, where it comes from, how much CO2 digging up the fuel and processing it is created as well as the waste management. The waste is not a solved problem. In Germany we have huge problems with it hence why nuclear is on the way out. Nuclear in France had problems with running during the summer due to the water in rivers being too hot and the system not maintaining the correct temperature difference.
  - towaway15463 4y ago
    Those numbers are easily found but you also have to ask the same questions about waste produced by manufacturing renewables.
  - llsf 4y ago
    Good questions. Just the first question is a rabbit hole on its own. How much nuclear fuel (lets focus on uranium) is left on Earth ? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_uranium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_uranium Looks like there is uranium everywhere, including under your feet. There is more uranium than gold for instance. The question is about cost to extract. The more you spend the more you find. And the more you look and the more you find. "As of 2017, identified uranium reserves recoverable at US$130/kg were 6.14 million tons (compared to 5.72 million tons in 2015)". Then on the other hand, it depends on how much uranium we use. "LWRs only consume about half of one percent of their uranium fuel while fast breeder reactors will consume closer to 99%. Currently, more than 80% of the World's reactors are Light Water Reactors (LWRs)." So moving to fast breeder reactors would essentially live us with enough uranium for hundreds of years.
drdrey 4y ago
The justification is that renewable* power can not be easily adjusted to match demand and storing electricity on a large scale is tricky and expensive *really just solar and wind, which seems to be mostly what people mean when they say renewables
- epistasis 4y ago
  A weird thing to bring up when nuclear has the same problem. Making reactors that can respond to load is.... not cheap or trivial. And basic baseload type start out an excessive level of expense and complexity.
  - XorNot 4y ago
    Running a reactor over the grid demand load is wasteful of fuel, but can be done whenever. You just factor that into your cost equation. A renewable does the same thing, but when there isn't sunshine or wind you cannot just bring more in.
    - epistasis 4y ago
      It's trivial to shut off an inverter or to feather a wind turbine's blades and stop generating. Throttling a nuclear reactor can not happen as quickly, and the have much slower ramp rates as well. Pumped hydro storage was developed because of this reason. We would likely use batteries today, instead of more pumped hydro.
      - XorNot 4y ago
        Missing my entire point: you can't cycle up renewables whenever you want, and that's the problem.
        epistasis 4y ago
        If you want to cycle renewables up, but can't because of limited capacity, the one simply hasn't installed enough renewables or storage. Same answer for nuclear, if you can't turn it up enough, then you simply haven't installed enough. Storage can help mitigate the ramping concerns about having lots of nuclear on the grid. For France to be able to have 70% of generation as nuclear, they depend on using the continents grid for balancing, in addition to having some very high priced fast damping nuclear plants. But charging storage with solar, and using that stored electricity, is cheaper than using nuclear in the first place. And at current prices of roughly $200/MWh for nuclear, and $20/MWh for solar, you can throw away an awful lot of solar capacity before nuclear makes any sense financially. And at $160/MWh for storage, which is a levelized cost which includes charging at ~$50/MWh, there's even room to not use all the battery capacity everyday and still have a firm energy source cheaper than nuclear.
melling 4y ago
10 years ago people said nuclear power plants take 10 years Battery technology is NOT on any kind of exponential curve. We’ve been waiting decades for the promise of renewable energy. Time is running out quickly. 100 million barrels of oil a day and 40% of electric power generated from coal. I get that no one likes to admit they were wrong, but it’s 2022 and not 1985. All that squandered time means we’re unlikely to avoid serious climate issues UPDATE Just to be crystal clear: Battery technology is NOT on any kind of exponential curve. People who are telling us to wait because they think they’re improving exponentially are sending us past the point of no return
- epistasis 4y ago
  > 10 years ago people said nuclear power plants take 10 years More like they said five, then ten after five years ahf passed. >Battery technology isn’t on any kind of exponential curve. Thats simply false, and a weird thing to fabricate. The very idea discredits the rest of a person's assessment of tech. https://news.mit.edu/2021/lithium-ion-battery-costs-0323 https://news.mit.edu/2021/lithium-ion-battery-costs-0323 > I get that no one likes to admit they were wrong, This is some extremely strong projection. J'accuse
  - melling 4y ago
    Where do you see an exponential curve? The article doesn’t discuss any exponential decrease for a reason. And most of the “dramatic drop” looks like it happened in the first 10 years Time is running out.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - erikmolin 4y ago
      Ok, here's one with a log scale so you can clearly see the exponential trend line https://spectrum.ieee.org/chart-behind-the-three-decade-collapse-of-lithium-ion-battery-costs https://spectrum.ieee.org/chart-behind-the-three-decade-coll...
XorNot 4y ago
Solar reliability is a big unsolved problem. Even at nation-state scale, we can't store power at enough scale without having to massively overbuild and even then. The right way to fix this of course would be to take the same technology that lays undersea fiber optics, and take REBCO superconducting tapes and lay completely efficient under-sea power cables to locations with 8 hour separations around the world, then build solar their. It becomes a very different equation if you start having reliable sunlight. We could do this today - none of it requires new technology. What it would require is a degree of international cooperation and trust which would be more or less unprecedented. I do kind of wish some "change the world" billionaires would get interested in this, because it's an expensive project but it can both make money and is not the sort of the thing that requires more then commercial cooperation agreements to get started. And a single, global-scale electricity grid would definitely revolutionize things.
- gregw2 4y ago
  It’s one form of risk to potentially allow your adversary to cut your undersea communication channel which has an over the air transmission backup, quite another to allow an adversary to cut your energy channel used by all homes hospitals and businesses, and with even less of a backup. To get a billionaire interested you can’t position this tech as a global solution; it’s a nonstarter. However you could get a billionaire interested if you identify an economic arbitrage opportunity it enables that isn’t easily eroded.
neilwilson 4y ago
For renewables to be renewable you have to make the solar panels and turbines and storage systems from the energy generated by solar panels and turbines - from raw materials to raw materials. When you do that you find that although you may be able to build the current version of renewables cheaply, that is because we are leveraging very cheap fossil fuel energy from China, and a world full of fossil vehicles, not sustainable vehicles. Renewables wear out - far faster than initially thought - particularly turbines. When they come to need replacing the costs will be very much higher - as the material and power requirements will be competing at that point with a world that can't use fossil power or fossil locomotion. Nuclear, on the other hand, can go the other way. Nuclear power in a shipping container (ie the same system we use on submarines) should mean we can bring economies of scale to fission, using little more than steel pipes and a bit of wiring, with the waste transportable in the same way as submarines. After all we've been able to control nuclear plants since the 1950s using relatively simple technology.
- esperent 4y ago
  > For renewables to be renewable you have to make the solar panels and turbines and storage systems from the energy generated by solar panels and turbines This is only true if you're going for some pedantic definition of renewable energy where it only counts if you're at 100%. Which, this being HN, is the kind of thing I expect but... The reality is different: we need to reduce the impact of climate change by any means necessary since are already in a state of climate emergency. If we calculate that using fossil fuels to build solar/wind turbines/wave energy/etc. and then using those to power homes will be a net negative in global emissions, then we should do it. We can build the next generation using renewable energy. Worrying about whether this fits some definition of renewable energy is just a distraction. Renewable energy is not the end goal, tackling climate change and reducing pollution is.
  - headsoup 4y ago
    I don't think you answered the argument there, merely suggesting it's fine to kick the can down the road because "emergency now!" First, we need to look at where renewables are being used and if they're actually in the areas of greatest pollution, i.e creating a net reduction rather than just meeting a government number.
thrown_22 4y ago
> There's a weird sociological phenomenon where people declare that "renewables won't get us there" without any real justification. Sun doesn't shine at night. The end.
- Archelaos 4y ago
  Rivers flow, when it is not raining. The beginning.
  - thrown_22 4y ago
    >From the Danube to the Loire, Europe's prime rivers — lifelines for the continent's economy — are running low after a brutal five-month drought. After years of dry weather, scientists are warning that low-water conditions could become the norm in Europe as the climate changes. https://e360.yale.edu/features/europe-rivers-drought https://e360.yale.edu/features/europe-rivers-drought Not any more.
    - TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
      Similar story for the Colorado river in the US.
- hebrox 4y ago
  Just add some other renewables, storage, load shifting and interconnects, and the story continues.
  - thrown_22 4y ago
    At ten times the cost of a nuclear plant of the same capacity.
- pvaldes 4y ago
  There is always some place in the planet when the sun is shining, and it is happening since the entire history of the planet. Imagine a world when we could move stuff and communicate with the other coin of the planet from coast to coast. We could call it pipelines, internet, telephone cables or something like this. Can't wait for this to be invented
headsoup 4y ago
There are also just as many people stating "renewables will get us there" without any real justification...
belorn 4y ago
California is an excellent place to build out solar. They got the Mojave Desert, the Colorado Desert, and the Great Basin Desert, the later being the largest one in North America. The only time they need storage support is for the predictable hours of the night, and rare weather conditions. The first is solved by a few hours of battery capacity, and the later is solved by fossil fuels or imports. They don't even need that massive investments into grid infrastructure to span the distance between deserts and population centers. California is the great example for solar power without needing a lot of storage/imports, in a similar way that Iceland is a great example for geothermal.
greggman3 4y ago
Sabine Hossenfelder had a pretty good video about the issues not yet solved with renewables. In particular we don't have viable method for storage https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8xsg9iK5yo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8xsg9iK5yo The short version, when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow you need storage. How much, in many places you'd need several weeks of storage. One way to do storage is to pump water into a reservoir. That is currently 80% of our storage. We'd need 500x what we currently have in that kind of storage to cover our needs. For batteries, we'd need 250,000x the amount of all batteries the currently exist in the entire world. She goes over other methods of storage. She also goes over how much energy we get from things. Examples: 1kg of oil generates 13 kWh (13 kilowatts for 1 hour or 1 kilowatt for 13 hours) 1kg of coal 8 kWh 1kg of lithium battery 0.2 kWh 1kg of water 2.7 Wh (not kilowatts, watts so 1000x less) 1kg of uranium 24 GWh (24 gigawatts, so 1 million more than oil kilo->mega->giga) She also goes over how much pollution the storage itself makes.
- pydry 4y ago
  The amount of storage required is perfectly doable: https://reneweconomy.com.au/a-near-100-per-cent-renewables-grid-is-well-within-reach-and-with-little-storage/ https://reneweconomy.com.au/a-near-100-per-cent-renewables-g... It's also quite a bit cheaper doing this than building out enough nuclear power + storage to service our needs.
  - fendy3002 4y ago
    overshoot production, my go-to way in Factorio until mass-production accumulator is available
  - thrown_22 4y ago
    > The amount of storage required is perfectly doable: Snowy 2.0 can provide about 5% of the power NSW needs. That means we only need to build another 20 of those. And that's only for power, we're not even talking about energy here. And we're already out of mountains. So no: it isn't doable even until we can build mountains on demand.
raxxorraxor 4y ago
Plus fission has its own problems and is very expensive and the storage problem is not solved. Doesn't mean you should turn of any power plant, but it is just not a very good or efficient way to generate energy right now. Economic considerations will always restrict security. It was the case in Japan and will be the case everywhere else as well. Fission is only efficient if you manage to reduce the question of ecological impact to CO2. But the overall calculation is far more in favor of renewable forms of energy.
- llsf 4y ago
  Nuclear waste storage is solved. And for the last generation (4th) of nuclear power plants, the waste gets back to natural level of radioactivity in only 1,000 years. We have in France bridges that are older than that. Running a nuclear power plant is very cheap. Building it is expensive and requires lots of capital upfront. The cost of nuclear is mostly interest. That is why it is a bit more expensive in UK (private capital) vs France (state capital). How "the overall calculation is far more in favor of renewable forms of energy." ? In order to build enough solar or wind, plus batteries to replace all the nuclear production, we will have to extract a lot of resources (rare earth, lithium, etc.) pour a lot of concrete (for wind) which creates a lot of CO2, make lots of iron (energy hungry and producing lots of CO2). And all the waste involved, and they also have a lifespan, and needs to be replaced over time. Not saying that we should not use solar/wind. But I am not convinced that it is the silver bullet and we can replace all the current and growing energy production with solely solar+ wind. It seems to me more reasonable to have a base line with nuclear, esp. if CO2 reduction and preparing for oil/gaz/coal peak are the goal.
mgoetzke 4y ago
Yes! And without data to back that up. Auke Hoekstra would disagree with the claim EE alone is not sufficient. https://twitter.com/AukeHoekstra/status/1557466581185224704 https://twitter.com/AukeHoekstra/status/1557466581185224704
zackees 4y ago

nerbert 4y ago

Seems like in 2022 renewables are getting us there: https://ember-climate.org/insights/research/global-electricity-mid-year-insights-2022/ https://ember-climate.org/insights/research/global-electrici...

elevaet 4y ago
> +389 Change in global electricity demand (TWh) > +416 Change in renewable generation (TWh) > +5 Change in fossil generation (TWh) I'm confused by this, it doesn't add up: change in renewables + fossil generation = +421TWh, so why does it say +389TWh for change in global electricity demand? Is 32TWh just going to waste?
- confidantlake 4y ago
  Maybe a third category (perhaps nuclear) went down? Just speculating, it isn't very clear.
lm28469 4y ago
Are they ? Seems like we're using just as much fossil fuel as previously, which is still waaaaaay too much for any kind of sustainability As always the rebound effect is kicking our ass, instead of producing the same and polluting less we pollute the same and produce more

notacop31337 4y ago

Whilst I understand that in reality the costs will always win out, I think only addressing the cost aspect is a strange way of tackling the issue given that cheap energy has gotten us where we are. Not to mention that you're comparing costs unfairly, given the costs of nuclear include the costs of processing and storage of waste output, and nuclear is the only energy source in which we control all outputs and have dedicated and well engineering processes for dealing with those outputs. I think that people are being completely unrealistic regarding the cleanliness of solar and wind, currently we bury the blades and we just turf the panels, both of which are hardware that needs to be upgraded. The heavy metals in panels do not break down at all. Which is funny given everyones focus on the radioactivity of nuclear waste, which even though takes a long time to completely stop being toxic, does actually stop being toxic. I think there's a happy middle ground, and we need a good mix of sources, but people are comparing on features that they want to compare on, and ignoring others.

uup 4y ago
Burying blades is worse than burying nuclear waste?
- notacop31337 4y ago
  I think I understand the point you're trying to make, but funnily enough, based on the current methods, yes. That's not to say that the blades are more dangerous than the nuclear waste, just that the nuclear waste has many years of waste management engineering behind it, due to its danger. So there are defined processes of management that are well tested, well designed and well implemented. Processes for blades currently are just bury them in landfill, which causes a bunch of unmitigated issues. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-02-05/wind-turbine-blades-can-t-be-recycled-so-they-re-piling-up-in-landfills https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-02-05/wind-turb... The idea that we "just bury" nuclear waste in the same way a dog buries a bone, is kinda funny, but very far from reality. This also doesn't even touch on nuclear waste recycling, which is enormously beneficial.
  - cycomanic 4y ago

lovemenot 4y ago

You are right. I believe the disconnect with many of those who argue like your parent is that they expect no societal changes should be forthcoming. So nuclear (both kinds) is the only way to continue with this lifestyle. As wastefully as we may wish, since massive over-provisioning is a possibility with these technologies. I disagree with the premise and therefore with their conclusion. Renewables (plus storage, plus demand management, plus HVDC transmission) will get us there. But there isn't here

myspy 4y ago
When I read here about nuclear as a solution I never read about how much fuel there is left, where it comes from, how much CO2 digging up the fuel and processing it is created as well as the waste management. The waste is not a solved problem. In Germany we have huge problems with it hence why nuclear is on the way out. Nuclear in France had problems with running during the summer due to the water in rivers being too hot and the system not maintaining the correct temperature difference.
- towaway15463 4y ago
  Those numbers are easily found but you also have to ask the same questions about waste produced by manufacturing renewables.
- llsf 4y ago
  Good questions. Just the first question is a rabbit hole on its own. How much nuclear fuel (lets focus on uranium) is left on Earth ? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_uranium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_uranium Looks like there is uranium everywhere, including under your feet. There is more uranium than gold for instance. The question is about cost to extract. The more you spend the more you find. And the more you look and the more you find. "As of 2017, identified uranium reserves recoverable at US$130/kg were 6.14 million tons (compared to 5.72 million tons in 2015)". Then on the other hand, it depends on how much uranium we use. "LWRs only consume about half of one percent of their uranium fuel while fast breeder reactors will consume closer to 99%. Currently, more than 80% of the World's reactors are Light Water Reactors (LWRs)." So moving to fast breeder reactors would essentially live us with enough uranium for hundreds of years.

drdrey 4y ago

The justification is that renewable* power can not be easily adjusted to match demand and storing electricity on a large scale is tricky and expensive *really just solar and wind, which seems to be mostly what people mean when they say renewables

epistasis 4y ago
A weird thing to bring up when nuclear has the same problem. Making reactors that can respond to load is.... not cheap or trivial. And basic baseload type start out an excessive level of expense and complexity.
- XorNot 4y ago
  Running a reactor over the grid demand load is wasteful of fuel, but can be done whenever. You just factor that into your cost equation. A renewable does the same thing, but when there isn't sunshine or wind you cannot just bring more in.
  - epistasis 4y ago
    It's trivial to shut off an inverter or to feather a wind turbine's blades and stop generating. Throttling a nuclear reactor can not happen as quickly, and the have much slower ramp rates as well. Pumped hydro storage was developed because of this reason. We would likely use batteries today, instead of more pumped hydro.
    - XorNot 4y ago
      Missing my entire point: you can't cycle up renewables whenever you want, and that's the problem.
      - epistasis 4y ago
        If you want to cycle renewables up, but can't because of limited capacity, the one simply hasn't installed enough renewables or storage. Same answer for nuclear, if you can't turn it up enough, then you simply haven't installed enough. Storage can help mitigate the ramping concerns about having lots of nuclear on the grid. For France to be able to have 70% of generation as nuclear, they depend on using the continents grid for balancing, in addition to having some very high priced fast damping nuclear plants. But charging storage with solar, and using that stored electricity, is cheaper than using nuclear in the first place. And at current prices of roughly $200/MWh for nuclear, and $20/MWh for solar, you can throw away an awful lot of solar capacity before nuclear makes any sense financially. And at $160/MWh for storage, which is a levelized cost which includes charging at ~$50/MWh, there's even room to not use all the battery capacity everyday and still have a firm energy source cheaper than nuclear.

melling 4y ago

10 years ago people said nuclear power plants take 10 years Battery technology is NOT on any kind of exponential curve. We’ve been waiting decades for the promise of renewable energy. Time is running out quickly. 100 million barrels of oil a day and 40% of electric power generated from coal. I get that no one likes to admit they were wrong, but it’s 2022 and not 1985. All that squandered time means we’re unlikely to avoid serious climate issues UPDATE Just to be crystal clear: Battery technology is NOT on any kind of exponential curve. People who are telling us to wait because they think they’re improving exponentially are sending us past the point of no return

epistasis 4y ago
> 10 years ago people said nuclear power plants take 10 years More like they said five, then ten after five years ahf passed. >Battery technology isn’t on any kind of exponential curve. Thats simply false, and a weird thing to fabricate. The very idea discredits the rest of a person's assessment of tech. https://news.mit.edu/2021/lithium-ion-battery-costs-0323 https://news.mit.edu/2021/lithium-ion-battery-costs-0323 > I get that no one likes to admit they were wrong, This is some extremely strong projection. J'accuse
- melling 4y ago
  Where do you see an exponential curve? The article doesn’t discuss any exponential decrease for a reason. And most of the “dramatic drop” looks like it happened in the first 10 years Time is running out.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - erikmolin 4y ago
    Ok, here's one with a log scale so you can clearly see the exponential trend line https://spectrum.ieee.org/chart-behind-the-three-decade-collapse-of-lithium-ion-battery-costs https://spectrum.ieee.org/chart-behind-the-three-decade-coll...

XorNot 4y ago

Solar reliability is a big unsolved problem. Even at nation-state scale, we can't store power at enough scale without having to massively overbuild and even then. The right way to fix this of course would be to take the same technology that lays undersea fiber optics, and take REBCO superconducting tapes and lay completely efficient under-sea power cables to locations with 8 hour separations around the world, then build solar their. It becomes a very different equation if you start having reliable sunlight. We could do this today - none of it requires new technology. What it would require is a degree of international cooperation and trust which would be more or less unprecedented. I do kind of wish some "change the world" billionaires would get interested in this, because it's an expensive project but it can both make money and is not the sort of the thing that requires more then commercial cooperation agreements to get started. And a single, global-scale electricity grid would definitely revolutionize things.

gregw2 4y ago
It’s one form of risk to potentially allow your adversary to cut your undersea communication channel which has an over the air transmission backup, quite another to allow an adversary to cut your energy channel used by all homes hospitals and businesses, and with even less of a backup. To get a billionaire interested you can’t position this tech as a global solution; it’s a nonstarter. However you could get a billionaire interested if you identify an economic arbitrage opportunity it enables that isn’t easily eroded.

neilwilson 4y ago

For renewables to be renewable you have to make the solar panels and turbines and storage systems from the energy generated by solar panels and turbines - from raw materials to raw materials. When you do that you find that although you may be able to build the current version of renewables cheaply, that is because we are leveraging very cheap fossil fuel energy from China, and a world full of fossil vehicles, not sustainable vehicles. Renewables wear out - far faster than initially thought - particularly turbines. When they come to need replacing the costs will be very much higher - as the material and power requirements will be competing at that point with a world that can't use fossil power or fossil locomotion. Nuclear, on the other hand, can go the other way. Nuclear power in a shipping container (ie the same system we use on submarines) should mean we can bring economies of scale to fission, using little more than steel pipes and a bit of wiring, with the waste transportable in the same way as submarines. After all we've been able to control nuclear plants since the 1950s using relatively simple technology.

esperent 4y ago
> For renewables to be renewable you have to make the solar panels and turbines and storage systems from the energy generated by solar panels and turbines This is only true if you're going for some pedantic definition of renewable energy where it only counts if you're at 100%. Which, this being HN, is the kind of thing I expect but... The reality is different: we need to reduce the impact of climate change by any means necessary since are already in a state of climate emergency. If we calculate that using fossil fuels to build solar/wind turbines/wave energy/etc. and then using those to power homes will be a net negative in global emissions, then we should do it. We can build the next generation using renewable energy. Worrying about whether this fits some definition of renewable energy is just a distraction. Renewable energy is not the end goal, tackling climate change and reducing pollution is.
- headsoup 4y ago
  I don't think you answered the argument there, merely suggesting it's fine to kick the can down the road because "emergency now!" First, we need to look at where renewables are being used and if they're actually in the areas of greatest pollution, i.e creating a net reduction rather than just meeting a government number.

thrown_22 4y ago

> There's a weird sociological phenomenon where people declare that "renewables won't get us there" without any real justification. Sun doesn't shine at night. The end.

Archelaos 4y ago
Rivers flow, when it is not raining. The beginning.
- thrown_22 4y ago
  >From the Danube to the Loire, Europe's prime rivers — lifelines for the continent's economy — are running low after a brutal five-month drought. After years of dry weather, scientists are warning that low-water conditions could become the norm in Europe as the climate changes. https://e360.yale.edu/features/europe-rivers-drought https://e360.yale.edu/features/europe-rivers-drought Not any more.
  - TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
    Similar story for the Colorado river in the US.
hebrox 4y ago
Just add some other renewables, storage, load shifting and interconnects, and the story continues.
- thrown_22 4y ago
  At ten times the cost of a nuclear plant of the same capacity.
pvaldes 4y ago
There is always some place in the planet when the sun is shining, and it is happening since the entire history of the planet. Imagine a world when we could move stuff and communicate with the other coin of the planet from coast to coast. We could call it pipelines, internet, telephone cables or something like this. Can't wait for this to be invented

headsoup 4y ago

There are also just as many people stating "renewables will get us there" without any real justification...

belorn 4y ago

California is an excellent place to build out solar. They got the Mojave Desert, the Colorado Desert, and the Great Basin Desert, the later being the largest one in North America. The only time they need storage support is for the predictable hours of the night, and rare weather conditions. The first is solved by a few hours of battery capacity, and the later is solved by fossil fuels or imports. They don't even need that massive investments into grid infrastructure to span the distance between deserts and population centers. California is the great example for solar power without needing a lot of storage/imports, in a similar way that Iceland is a great example for geothermal.

greggman3 4y ago

Sabine Hossenfelder had a pretty good video about the issues not yet solved with renewables. In particular we don't have viable method for storage https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8xsg9iK5yo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8xsg9iK5yo The short version, when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow you need storage. How much, in many places you'd need several weeks of storage. One way to do storage is to pump water into a reservoir. That is currently 80% of our storage. We'd need 500x what we currently have in that kind of storage to cover our needs. For batteries, we'd need 250,000x the amount of all batteries the currently exist in the entire world. She goes over other methods of storage. She also goes over how much energy we get from things. Examples: 1kg of oil generates 13 kWh (13 kilowatts for 1 hour or 1 kilowatt for 13 hours) 1kg of coal 8 kWh 1kg of lithium battery 0.2 kWh 1kg of water 2.7 Wh (not kilowatts, watts so 1000x less) 1kg of uranium 24 GWh (24 gigawatts, so 1 million more than oil kilo->mega->giga) She also goes over how much pollution the storage itself makes.

pydry 4y ago
The amount of storage required is perfectly doable: https://reneweconomy.com.au/a-near-100-per-cent-renewables-grid-is-well-within-reach-and-with-little-storage/ https://reneweconomy.com.au/a-near-100-per-cent-renewables-g... It's also quite a bit cheaper doing this than building out enough nuclear power + storage to service our needs.
- fendy3002 4y ago
  overshoot production, my go-to way in Factorio until mass-production accumulator is available
- thrown_22 4y ago
  > The amount of storage required is perfectly doable: Snowy 2.0 can provide about 5% of the power NSW needs. That means we only need to build another 20 of those. And that's only for power, we're not even talking about energy here. And we're already out of mountains. So no: it isn't doable even until we can build mountains on demand.

raxxorraxor 4y ago

Plus fission has its own problems and is very expensive and the storage problem is not solved. Doesn't mean you should turn of any power plant, but it is just not a very good or efficient way to generate energy right now. Economic considerations will always restrict security. It was the case in Japan and will be the case everywhere else as well. Fission is only efficient if you manage to reduce the question of ecological impact to CO2. But the overall calculation is far more in favor of renewable forms of energy.

llsf 4y ago
Nuclear waste storage is solved. And for the last generation (4th) of nuclear power plants, the waste gets back to natural level of radioactivity in only 1,000 years. We have in France bridges that are older than that. Running a nuclear power plant is very cheap. Building it is expensive and requires lots of capital upfront. The cost of nuclear is mostly interest. That is why it is a bit more expensive in UK (private capital) vs France (state capital). How "the overall calculation is far more in favor of renewable forms of energy." ? In order to build enough solar or wind, plus batteries to replace all the nuclear production, we will have to extract a lot of resources (rare earth, lithium, etc.) pour a lot of concrete (for wind) which creates a lot of CO2, make lots of iron (energy hungry and producing lots of CO2). And all the waste involved, and they also have a lifespan, and needs to be replaced over time. Not saying that we should not use solar/wind. But I am not convinced that it is the silver bullet and we can replace all the current and growing energy production with solely solar+ wind. It seems to me more reasonable to have a base line with nuclear, esp. if CO2 reduction and preparing for oil/gaz/coal peak are the goal.

mgoetzke 4y ago

Yes! And without data to back that up. Auke Hoekstra would disagree with the claim EE alone is not sufficient. https://twitter.com/AukeHoekstra/status/1557466581185224704 https://twitter.com/AukeHoekstra/status/1557466581185224704

zackees 4y ago