3 ms·

Burning dung or wood in a little stove in the house is far worse. A huge part of the world would dream to have an energy grid in which there are centralized pow

by rsj_hn 4y ago

Burning dung or wood in a little stove in the house is far worse. A huge part of the world would dream to have an energy grid in which there are centralized power plants that burn coal and distribute energy to every home without the need to spend many hours each day collecting scraps of wood and other biomaterials in order to be able to cook for and heat your household. They also deserve to develop, and in fact nothing can stop them from developing. In an ideal world, we are all powering the world from nuclear reactors and a reliable grid, but we haven't gotten there yet.

mrguyorama 4y ago
We should stop complaining that they are trying to develop using cheap coal, and instead invest in these developing economies so they can leapfrog coal into a sustainable energy solution like mixed solar and wind.
- sieabahlpark 4y ago
- rsj_hn 4y ago
  Germany has spent hundreds of billons developing solar and wind, and yet they are deindustrializing now with just a moderate decrease in natural gas supply. People are going into forests, chopping down trees in European countries when faced with a reduction in fossil fuel supply. In that case, what hope is there for a developing country? Wind and Solar are not -- and have never been -- a replacement for reliable energy sources, because the energy storage problem has not been solved for them. This is not what solar advocates want to hear, but it's the truth. Nuclear, on the other hand, is a reliable source of energy. Hydro and geothermal are also reliable, but their supply is limited.
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    Intermittency is not unreliability. Wind and solar are intermittent, but quite predictable -- especially in aggregate. A NPP like Civaux is unreliable. Unreliability is much worse and correlated unreliability is worst because you might have half of your fleet offline at the beginning of winter during an energy crisis with no notice. It takes 100t of new Uranium at ~3.5% to bring an AP1000 online. Reprocessing reduces this by up to 15% It takes 7.4kg of natural Uranium to produce 1kg of 3.5% enriched Uranium. World production of Natural Uranium is 45,000t. Doubling this would allow bringing 6GW of new NPP on line per year. Increasing it tenfold would almost match the net power additions of renewables this year, but after one year of additions your new fleet would have under a decade worth of fuel. Storage is only 'not solved' insofar as renewables + storage cost almost as much as nuclear for the same level of availability.
- janef0421 4y ago
  I think a these countries would also benefit greatly from support to deploy nuclear energy.
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    New PWR production is a resource-constrained, overly expensive non-solution that does nothing except indebt the recipient and make them dependent on the producer for fuel. You'd need to increase Uranium mining tenfold to provide the initial fuel load to match current levels of renewable installation. By all means invest in breeders, but the very precious U235 reserves should be kept for CANDUs to produce necessary isotopes for other purposes until there is one that works.

by rsj_hn 4y ago

mrguyorama 4y ago

We should stop complaining that they are trying to develop using cheap coal, and instead invest in these developing economies so they can leapfrog coal into a sustainable energy solution like mixed solar and wind.

sieabahlpark 4y ago
rsj_hn 4y ago
Germany has spent hundreds of billons developing solar and wind, and yet they are deindustrializing now with just a moderate decrease in natural gas supply. People are going into forests, chopping down trees in European countries when faced with a reduction in fossil fuel supply. In that case, what hope is there for a developing country? Wind and Solar are not -- and have never been -- a replacement for reliable energy sources, because the energy storage problem has not been solved for them. This is not what solar advocates want to hear, but it's the truth. Nuclear, on the other hand, is a reliable source of energy. Hydro and geothermal are also reliable, but their supply is limited.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  Intermittency is not unreliability. Wind and solar are intermittent, but quite predictable -- especially in aggregate. A NPP like Civaux is unreliable. Unreliability is much worse and correlated unreliability is worst because you might have half of your fleet offline at the beginning of winter during an energy crisis with no notice. It takes 100t of new Uranium at ~3.5% to bring an AP1000 online. Reprocessing reduces this by up to 15% It takes 7.4kg of natural Uranium to produce 1kg of 3.5% enriched Uranium. World production of Natural Uranium is 45,000t. Doubling this would allow bringing 6GW of new NPP on line per year. Increasing it tenfold would almost match the net power additions of renewables this year, but after one year of additions your new fleet would have under a decade worth of fuel. Storage is only 'not solved' insofar as renewables + storage cost almost as much as nuclear for the same level of availability.
janef0421 4y ago
I think a these countries would also benefit greatly from support to deploy nuclear energy.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  New PWR production is a resource-constrained, overly expensive non-solution that does nothing except indebt the recipient and make them dependent on the producer for fuel. You'd need to increase Uranium mining tenfold to provide the initial fuel load to match current levels of renewable installation. By all means invest in breeders, but the very precious U235 reserves should be kept for CANDUs to produce necessary isotopes for other purposes until there is one that works.