5 ms·

> The path to 100% green energy without coercing people and making decisions that could backfire, is to upgrade the energy grid to the point that electricity is

by ajross 4y ago

> The path to 100% green energy without coercing people and making decisions that could backfire, is to upgrade the energy grid to the point that electricity is dirt cheap How does installing the most expensive generator in the country not work directly against that principle? Per a quick check on Wikipedia, it looks like the ~1.2GW Vogtle 3/4 is going to cost $28.5B, which is about eighteen times what an equivalent windfarm (at $1.3M/MW) would cost to install. And that's just counting construction costs, operating costs are even more skewed against nuclear. Sorry, but to be blunt: nuclear is snake oil being marketed to right-leaning tech bros who think wind and solar are something only granola munching hippies should love. It doesn't work on a balance sheet. And frankly it's not remotely close. If you genuinely care about the goals you espoused, you need to get off then nuclear horse. Once we've filled the channel with actually cheap renewables, it's time to go back and cover the remaining 2-5% or whatever with expensive stuff. Not now.

endisneigh 4y ago
Why do you believe people who like nuclear are right leaning?
mh7 4y ago
>equivalent windfarm (at $1.3M/MW) Does that include storage costs? Because a windfarm alone cannot replace a nuclear power plant no matter how cheaper or how much electricity the windturbines generate because on days without wind they generate zero Wh.
- ajross 4y ago
  That's simply not true, because wind output never goes to zero across the whole grid. Even assuming the pessimal case[1], wind needs to drop below 5.5% (1/18th) of its average capacity before nuclear even reaches break-even! What fraction of the time is whole-grid-amortized wind capacity running at 5% of average? Has that ever even happened? I don't have numbers, but I'm willing to bet that this has never actually happened. What you've done is try to counter my overwhelming quantitative argument with a qualitative hedge ("but storage"). Please, (please!) look up the numbers here. Nuclear is a borderline scandal. If it was some other federal subsidy of an industry you disliked, you'd almost certainly call it fraud. [1] i.e. no use of gas peaker plants, legacy nuclear, solar, pumped hydro, batteries, etc... Literally trying to run the whole grid on wind and wind alone.
  - infamia 4y ago
    How do you explain the grid meltdowns in recent years in areas that have tilted their output towards renewables? California and Europe have had some pretty epic grid destabilizations recently, and all the analysis I've looked at points squarely at the unreliability of renewables. Base load matters, we have seen this time and again. Stitching together a bazaar of unreliable renewables with overlapping failure modes and claiming it is just as good as traditional base load providers has been proven false thus far. Either it can't be done with our current tech, or we don't know how to do it (and we should not try until we are confident we can make it work well).
    - ajross 4y ago
      I'm not sure I see the evidence you're invoking? "Grid meltdowns" are quite rare, actually, and on the whole electrical infrastructure has been getting more reliable over time, not less. And in any case the two biggest "meltdown" events in recent history in the USA were in... Texas, and had to do with weather effects on fossil fuel generators.
      - pfdietz 4y ago
        Also weather effects on a nuclear plant there.
      - infamia 4y ago
        California has had rolling outages for years and in 2020 they had a blackout that impacted hundreds of thousands of residents during a heatwave. The failure occurred a bit after dusk when solar stopped producing and other states didn't have as much power to send to California to make up he difference. All the information is in the link below. California's energy policy looks a lot like Germany's which is to heavily weight your grid towards renewables, call yourself green, and then prey your neighbors produce enough energy to keep your grid stable. All the information is in the link below. The governor of California enacted a state of emergency concerning power shortages and narrowly averted another grid failure last month, so I wouldn't say that their reliability is anywhere close to acceptable. https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/business/story/2020-10-07/report-a-combination-of-factors-led-to-californias-rolling-blackouts-in-august https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/business/story/2020-10-...
matwood 4y ago
But you have to factor in land usage, wind variability and general location challenges of wind. I think wind is great where it makes sense, but I'm not sure it plus solar alone will get us over the hump and completely off fossil fuels. https://medium.com/@alkidel/the-land-footprint-of-solar-and-nuclear-and-wind-power-b4a8b2c42ba9 https://medium.com/@alkidel/the-land-footprint-of-solar-and-...
- epistasis 4y ago
  The cost already factors all those in. Land usage or energy density or amount of materials used are all red herrings.
  - algoatecorn 4y ago
    Just because you say they are red herrings doesn't make it so. Eventually you will need to reconcile with the laws of physics.
    - epistasis 4y ago
      Which law of physics are you talking about here? I sometimes see mention "laws of physics" as a reasons renewables won't work, but nobody has ever, literally ever, been able to point to the law. Or run the numbers on why renewables would be be feasible for supplying all our power and even an order of magnitude more than we currently consume.
      - algoatecorn 4y ago
        https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262536165/energy-and-civilization/ https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262536165/energy-and-civilizati...
        epistasis 4y ago
        That doesn't answer the question. Since you say "laws of physics" prevent renewables from supplying out energy. I call bullshit. Name the law.
proc0 4y ago
It mainly is the output, and we've had nuclear tech for decades. We could have built enough to go 100% green already and I don't think at the moment we have the necessary tech for wind and solar to satisfy everything going electric, let alone the current consumption. If wind and solar were cheap and reliable, people would have switched already.
ufmace 4y ago
The nuclear plant can be relied upon to produce its full rated 1.2GW 24/7/365 absent maintenance periods scheduled well in advance. Wind power etc will produce its rated power only when it feels like it with no warning or predictability. To get actual continuous reliable power you need either massive grid-scale storage that nobody's even seriously proposed constructing, or massive over-capacity distributed over a continent-sized area with enough grid capacity to transfer sufficient power from areas with access to areas with shortages, which we also don't have and don't seem to have seriously proposed constructing. Probably both actually. IMO there's no question that we've gotta get out metaphorical shit together and build lots more nuclear faster if we ever want to actually decrease carbon emissions in our lifetime.
- ajross 4y ago
  Can you try to make that argument with price numbers and not rhetoric? I used to think like you did. Then I started looking up quantitative stuff. Please do the same.
  - algoatecorn 4y ago
    How about you provide some of this "quantitative stuff" you've found then.
    - ajross 4y ago
      I literally did, check upthread. What's happened is that replies are choosing to ignore those numbers, thus my pleading that you look them up yourself since you won't read what I provide.
  - ufmace 4y ago
    My argument is not really about price, but instead capability. I'm not saying that everything is just great with nuclear now - my impression is that it's vastly overpriced due to excessive regulation and red tape and being over-cautious. Part of my argument is that one of the things we need to do is cut way back on all that stuff to make more plants faster and for less money than we currently spend on them. If you total up all of the deaths from all nuclear power incidents that have ever happened, including Chernobyl, the total is orders of magnitude less than what the Global Warming people tell us is going to happen if we keep pumping out CO2. We know how to build the plants now, we know we need to get CO2 emissions down now, so let's do it. Bottom line IMO, either A) the Global Warming people are full of shit and they know it or B) we absolutely must get serious about nuclear power now, evaluating the cost both in dollars and lives against what unchecked CO2 emissions will do. We should be building them fast and cheap and cutting corners - I don't want people to die in nuclear accidents, but if we don't have anybody dying in accidents, then we're probably not building them fast enough. Kind of like how Elon Musk said about his rockets, if you're not failing, then you're not moving fast enough. We've got to get it done yesterday, waiting on grid-scale storage and transport improvements won't be fast enough.
Schroedingersat 4y ago
I'd argue that now is the time. The time to spend $1 trillion on renewables to cover 90% of the load and another $1 trillion on reduction such as electrified rail, active transit infrastructure, insulation, and industrial efficiency and another $1 trillion on nuclear + tidal + mmwave geothermal + whatever other technologies work in principle but not in practice. But if you are going to cut one because we would rather spend it on military it should be the least effective one.

by ajross 4y ago

endisneigh 4y ago

Why do you believe people who like nuclear are right leaning?

mh7 4y ago

>equivalent windfarm (at $1.3M/MW) Does that include storage costs? Because a windfarm alone cannot replace a nuclear power plant no matter how cheaper or how much electricity the windturbines generate because on days without wind they generate zero Wh.

ajross 4y ago
That's simply not true, because wind output never goes to zero across the whole grid. Even assuming the pessimal case[1], wind needs to drop below 5.5% (1/18th) of its average capacity before nuclear even reaches break-even! What fraction of the time is whole-grid-amortized wind capacity running at 5% of average? Has that ever even happened? I don't have numbers, but I'm willing to bet that this has never actually happened. What you've done is try to counter my overwhelming quantitative argument with a qualitative hedge ("but storage"). Please, (please!) look up the numbers here. Nuclear is a borderline scandal. If it was some other federal subsidy of an industry you disliked, you'd almost certainly call it fraud. [1] i.e. no use of gas peaker plants, legacy nuclear, solar, pumped hydro, batteries, etc... Literally trying to run the whole grid on wind and wind alone.
- infamia 4y ago
  How do you explain the grid meltdowns in recent years in areas that have tilted their output towards renewables? California and Europe have had some pretty epic grid destabilizations recently, and all the analysis I've looked at points squarely at the unreliability of renewables. Base load matters, we have seen this time and again. Stitching together a bazaar of unreliable renewables with overlapping failure modes and claiming it is just as good as traditional base load providers has been proven false thus far. Either it can't be done with our current tech, or we don't know how to do it (and we should not try until we are confident we can make it work well).
  - ajross 4y ago
    I'm not sure I see the evidence you're invoking? "Grid meltdowns" are quite rare, actually, and on the whole electrical infrastructure has been getting more reliable over time, not less. And in any case the two biggest "meltdown" events in recent history in the USA were in... Texas, and had to do with weather effects on fossil fuel generators.
    - pfdietz 4y ago
      Also weather effects on a nuclear plant there.
    - infamia 4y ago
      California has had rolling outages for years and in 2020 they had a blackout that impacted hundreds of thousands of residents during a heatwave. The failure occurred a bit after dusk when solar stopped producing and other states didn't have as much power to send to California to make up he difference. All the information is in the link below. California's energy policy looks a lot like Germany's which is to heavily weight your grid towards renewables, call yourself green, and then prey your neighbors produce enough energy to keep your grid stable. All the information is in the link below. The governor of California enacted a state of emergency concerning power shortages and narrowly averted another grid failure last month, so I wouldn't say that their reliability is anywhere close to acceptable. https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/business/story/2020-10-07/report-a-combination-of-factors-led-to-californias-rolling-blackouts-in-august https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/business/story/2020-10-...

matwood 4y ago

But you have to factor in land usage, wind variability and general location challenges of wind. I think wind is great where it makes sense, but I'm not sure it plus solar alone will get us over the hump and completely off fossil fuels. https://medium.com/@alkidel/the-land-footprint-of-solar-and-nuclear-and-wind-power-b4a8b2c42ba9 https://medium.com/@alkidel/the-land-footprint-of-solar-and-...

epistasis 4y ago
The cost already factors all those in. Land usage or energy density or amount of materials used are all red herrings.
- algoatecorn 4y ago
  Just because you say they are red herrings doesn't make it so. Eventually you will need to reconcile with the laws of physics.
  - epistasis 4y ago
    Which law of physics are you talking about here? I sometimes see mention "laws of physics" as a reasons renewables won't work, but nobody has ever, literally ever, been able to point to the law. Or run the numbers on why renewables would be be feasible for supplying all our power and even an order of magnitude more than we currently consume.
    - algoatecorn 4y ago
      https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262536165/energy-and-civilization/ https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262536165/energy-and-civilizati...
      - epistasis 4y ago
        That doesn't answer the question. Since you say "laws of physics" prevent renewables from supplying out energy. I call bullshit. Name the law.

proc0 4y ago

It mainly is the output, and we've had nuclear tech for decades. We could have built enough to go 100% green already and I don't think at the moment we have the necessary tech for wind and solar to satisfy everything going electric, let alone the current consumption. If wind and solar were cheap and reliable, people would have switched already.

ufmace 4y ago

The nuclear plant can be relied upon to produce its full rated 1.2GW 24/7/365 absent maintenance periods scheduled well in advance. Wind power etc will produce its rated power only when it feels like it with no warning or predictability. To get actual continuous reliable power you need either massive grid-scale storage that nobody's even seriously proposed constructing, or massive over-capacity distributed over a continent-sized area with enough grid capacity to transfer sufficient power from areas with access to areas with shortages, which we also don't have and don't seem to have seriously proposed constructing. Probably both actually. IMO there's no question that we've gotta get out metaphorical shit together and build lots more nuclear faster if we ever want to actually decrease carbon emissions in our lifetime.

ajross 4y ago
Can you try to make that argument with price numbers and not rhetoric? I used to think like you did. Then I started looking up quantitative stuff. Please do the same.
- algoatecorn 4y ago
  How about you provide some of this "quantitative stuff" you've found then.
  - ajross 4y ago
    I literally did, check upthread. What's happened is that replies are choosing to ignore those numbers, thus my pleading that you look them up yourself since you won't read what I provide.
- ufmace 4y ago
  My argument is not really about price, but instead capability. I'm not saying that everything is just great with nuclear now - my impression is that it's vastly overpriced due to excessive regulation and red tape and being over-cautious. Part of my argument is that one of the things we need to do is cut way back on all that stuff to make more plants faster and for less money than we currently spend on them. If you total up all of the deaths from all nuclear power incidents that have ever happened, including Chernobyl, the total is orders of magnitude less than what the Global Warming people tell us is going to happen if we keep pumping out CO2. We know how to build the plants now, we know we need to get CO2 emissions down now, so let's do it. Bottom line IMO, either A) the Global Warming people are full of shit and they know it or B) we absolutely must get serious about nuclear power now, evaluating the cost both in dollars and lives against what unchecked CO2 emissions will do. We should be building them fast and cheap and cutting corners - I don't want people to die in nuclear accidents, but if we don't have anybody dying in accidents, then we're probably not building them fast enough. Kind of like how Elon Musk said about his rockets, if you're not failing, then you're not moving fast enough. We've got to get it done yesterday, waiting on grid-scale storage and transport improvements won't be fast enough.

Schroedingersat 4y ago

I'd argue that now is the time. The time to spend $1 trillion on renewables to cover 90% of the load and another $1 trillion on reduction such as electrified rail, active transit infrastructure, insulation, and industrial efficiency and another $1 trillion on nuclear + tidal + mmwave geothermal + whatever other technologies work in principle but not in practice. But if you are going to cut one because we would rather spend it on military it should be the least effective one.