3 ms·

renewables make sense if you can prove to me that you can make them reliable like nuclear, but you can't. Someday I suppose a high density, cheap "battery" tech

renewables make sense if you can prove to me that you can make them reliable like nuclear, but you can't. Someday I suppose a high density, cheap "battery" tech will happen that will make that true, but right now it's simply not true and the Germans are getting ready to find that out this winter, unfortunately via much higher prices via power imported from adjacent countries using dino-fuel and likely blackouts from time to time.

dane-pgp 4y ago
> reliable like nuclear To be clear, the capacity factor of France's nuclear power stations is "about 70%"[a] (and was "61 percent"[b] in 1988), while recent offshore wind farms manage a "65% capacity factor"[c]. It's also worth noting that there is less parallelism in nuclear reactor designs than in wind farms, so a single mechanical or structural fault (or just the need for regular maintenance and inspection) can take out an entire nuclear reactor, whereas a wind farm can shut down a single turbine without much impact. So there are certainly differences in the sorts of guarantees that the different types of power station can provide, but I think you need to be a lot more precise about what you mean by "reliable" in order to judge what, if anything, renewables are lacking as an alternative energy source. [a] https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-a-f/france.aspx https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-pr... [b] http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/electricit%C3%A9-de-france-history/ http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/electricit%... [c] https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/worlds-first-floating-offshore-wind-farm-65-capacity-factor https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/worlds-first-fl...