3 ms·
> Nuclear takes hours to days to respond to load change Days? Seriously? You know that is not true, don't you? The French nuclear power plants are an existe
by peterfirefly 4y ago
> Nuclear takes hours to days to respond to load change
Days? Seriously? You know that is not true, don't you? The French nuclear power plants are an existence proof of that.
Nuclear does need to be supplemented with something else with low construction/fixed costs for handling the rare, extreme peaks. That will most often be some sort of gas-powered plants. This has nothing to do with nuclear powers "inability" to "respond to load change" and everything to do with the cost of building enough nuclear power capacity that will almost never be used.
On the other hand, we are still very, very far from being able to do really large-scale battery storage. We don't have the manufacturing capacity for the enormous number of battery cells needed and even if we did, the cost would be prohibitive. This will of course change for the better in the future but that is how things are for now.
- cauch 4y agoI thought French nuclear were only doing base load, the load following part being done by other sources. I believe the French facilities have the capacity of doing load following, but are not doing it because it is less efficient (and therefore more expensive). So I would also not say "days", but it is also true that one cannot directly take a situation where nuclear has, so far, being used only for base load and pretend that load following will work exactly the same way. I'm not sure why you say "rare, extreme peaks": the current demand is non-flat every day, with a difference between the trough and peak that is typically ~50% of the peak. I agree that large scale battery storage is challenging. Maybe the solution would be to have some storage and some "wasted efficiency" by using nuclear plants in load following and turning them in stand-by every day during off-peak hours.
- Zopieux 4y agoCorrect, French nuclear is base load, but it still does a non-trivial amount of load following to e.g. absorb peaks. Check out [0] for some cool live graphs! [0] https://www.rte-france.com/en/eco2mix/power-generation-energy-source https://www.rte-france.com/en/eco2mix/power-generation-energ...