3 ms·
Why electrify all the things instead of decarbonize all the things? Lots of places use zero carbon nuclear district heating to take advantage of the hot water f
by acidburnNSA 4y ago
Why electrify all the things instead of decarbonize all the things? Lots of places use zero carbon nuclear district heating to take advantage of the hot water for building heat. It can be pumped 100 km from the plant as it is at Beznau.
This makes nuclear more cost effective as well since you're using a valuable product (heat) that is otherwise wasted.
- twobitshifter 4y agoThe idea of nuclear power plants in the US near residential communities is a non-starter. Solar thermal or geothermal might be an option, but I believe heat pumps outperform those options on cost.
- acidburnNSA 4y agoHow is it a non-starter? Nuclear plants are low-carbon and extremely safe [1]. 100 km is a long way. There are millions of people in the USA living within 100 km of a nuclear plant. Showing people the numbers on nuclear isn't that hard. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy
- twobitshifter 4y agoIt will never be built for political reasons.
- euroderf 4y agoOffer it cheap and the market will clear.
- olau 4y agoI think the answer is simply that if you run the numbers, it's just not economical to use nuclear plants for district heating. It's probably great if you can use district heating for cooling, but generally nuclear plants are very expensive so you want to get as much high-valued electricity out of them as possible.
- Schroedingersat 4y agoOf you're building the district heating anyway then a district heating reservoir, a heat pump and some solar collectors plus enough wind and solar for equivalent total gross heat output (in addition to the collectors) is still cheaper.