3 ms·

If you have time machine, go back twenty five years, make Al Gore president, and have him build tons of nuclear power plants. Or go forward decades, grab the pl

If you have time machine, go back twenty five years, make Al Gore president, and have him build tons of nuclear power plants. Or go forward decades, grab the plans for fusion power and bring them back. We do need all the energy which is why building something expensive is bad idea. When could build multiple times as much power with renewables. If you want 100§ nuclear, then we can build 500§ wind and solar.

ClumsyPilot 4y ago
But you need 5x as much wind and solar because you will have to store it in the form of hydrogen for 50-80% loss in round-trip back to electricity There will never be enough batteries and hydro storage in the world.
- sunshinesnacks 4y ago
  > There will never be enough batteries and hydro storage in the world. Do you have a source to back that up? An amount of storage that would be needed and what it isn't reachable?
- pfdietz 4y ago
  The levelized cost of wind/solar/storage will likely still end up cheaper, even for the use case of providing synthesized baseload power.
- ianburrell 4y ago
  For 5x wind and solar, you don’t need long term storage. Just short term storage for time shifting. It is fine to use gas peaker plants in emergencies and use the extra capacity to pump the carbon out of the air. Hydrogen would also work welll for few times it is needed. The nice thing is that use fuel that already use, but do have to worry about backup plants not being maintained. Also, nuclear is so slow to build that we don’t know what storage will look like in the future. Nuclear is impeding against the unknown storage tech in 15 years.
  - pasttense01 4y ago
    In Minnesota solar produces three times as much electricity in the longest days of summer than in the shortest days of winter. So either you need massive overcapacity or lots of long term storage or a massive expansive expansion of the electric grid [which Nimbys will oppose]--and probably all three.
    - pfdietz 4y ago
      Or wind, which is somewhat anticorrelated with solar. Also, the PV can be arranged at an angle that maximizes production in winter rather than total annual production. This has the added benefit of allowing some sun to hit the ground in summer, so something can be grown there.
    - ianburrell 4y ago
      The point is that renewables are cheap enough that can build overcapacity for same price as nuclear capacity. Overcapacity is an advantage since there can be dispatchable users of the free power. We will need to pull carbon from air, make hydrogen, and make carbon fuel. Those could turn out to be long term storage. Also, we shouldn’t think of power regionally. Minnesota is good at wind, Arizona is good at solar, California and Texas are good at solar and wind. This will require more transmission lines but those are affordable compared to alternatives. We would need more transmission lines in all nuclear world.
belorn 4y ago
I would like to see country try go the full route of building 500§ wind and solar. Twenty five years ago we did have a country in EU that started this route. Denmark reached 100% capacity 10 years ago. At that point the interest to build more wind and solar drastically dropped. Imports (which are around 1/3 to 1/2 of consumption) of nuclear and hydro energy is critical to keep their gird operational, and their investments into wind and solar would not function without those imports. We also have countries like France that relied on their nuclear power plants the last 25 years and are now in dire need to modernize their plants. We have Sweden which heavily relied on their hydro power plants and are now in dire need to replace and repair them unless multiple species end up extinct. We got Germany and others that depended on cheap fossil fuel, primarily with the plan to upgrade into green hydrogen some time in the future. None of those strategies ended up being a winner and everyone is rushing for new strategies. In 25 years from now we will see which bets won, if any. Maybe it will be that undersea cable from north Africa. We don't know, through I expect all of them to be more expensive than the cheapest option.
- jltsiren 4y ago
  There is no one-size-fits-all strategy. Energy production is a regional problem with regional solutions. You can't copy a strategy from somewhere else and expect it to work under different conditions without major changes. In the Nordic countries, clean electricity is essentially a solved problem. The current mix of wind, hydro, and nuclear works well enough for now. Of course, the target is always moving. You can always do something better, and sometimes old solutions become obsolete. But right now, electricity generation is not a pressing issue. Heating, industrial processes, and transportation are more acute problems. Decarbonization of transportation is moving particularly slowly.

ClumsyPilot 4y ago

But you need 5x as much wind and solar because you will have to store it in the form of hydrogen for 50-80% loss in round-trip back to electricity There will never be enough batteries and hydro storage in the world.

sunshinesnacks 4y ago
> There will never be enough batteries and hydro storage in the world. Do you have a source to back that up? An amount of storage that would be needed and what it isn't reachable?
pfdietz 4y ago
The levelized cost of wind/solar/storage will likely still end up cheaper, even for the use case of providing synthesized baseload power.
ianburrell 4y ago
For 5x wind and solar, you don’t need long term storage. Just short term storage for time shifting. It is fine to use gas peaker plants in emergencies and use the extra capacity to pump the carbon out of the air. Hydrogen would also work welll for few times it is needed. The nice thing is that use fuel that already use, but do have to worry about backup plants not being maintained. Also, nuclear is so slow to build that we don’t know what storage will look like in the future. Nuclear is impeding against the unknown storage tech in 15 years.
- pasttense01 4y ago
  In Minnesota solar produces three times as much electricity in the longest days of summer than in the shortest days of winter. So either you need massive overcapacity or lots of long term storage or a massive expansive expansion of the electric grid [which Nimbys will oppose]--and probably all three.
  - pfdietz 4y ago
    Or wind, which is somewhat anticorrelated with solar. Also, the PV can be arranged at an angle that maximizes production in winter rather than total annual production. This has the added benefit of allowing some sun to hit the ground in summer, so something can be grown there.
  - ianburrell 4y ago
    The point is that renewables are cheap enough that can build overcapacity for same price as nuclear capacity. Overcapacity is an advantage since there can be dispatchable users of the free power. We will need to pull carbon from air, make hydrogen, and make carbon fuel. Those could turn out to be long term storage. Also, we shouldn’t think of power regionally. Minnesota is good at wind, Arizona is good at solar, California and Texas are good at solar and wind. This will require more transmission lines but those are affordable compared to alternatives. We would need more transmission lines in all nuclear world.

belorn 4y ago

I would like to see country try go the full route of building 500§ wind and solar. Twenty five years ago we did have a country in EU that started this route. Denmark reached 100% capacity 10 years ago. At that point the interest to build more wind and solar drastically dropped. Imports (which are around 1/3 to 1/2 of consumption) of nuclear and hydro energy is critical to keep their gird operational, and their investments into wind and solar would not function without those imports. We also have countries like France that relied on their nuclear power plants the last 25 years and are now in dire need to modernize their plants. We have Sweden which heavily relied on their hydro power plants and are now in dire need to replace and repair them unless multiple species end up extinct. We got Germany and others that depended on cheap fossil fuel, primarily with the plan to upgrade into green hydrogen some time in the future. None of those strategies ended up being a winner and everyone is rushing for new strategies. In 25 years from now we will see which bets won, if any. Maybe it will be that undersea cable from north Africa. We don't know, through I expect all of them to be more expensive than the cheapest option.

jltsiren 4y ago
There is no one-size-fits-all strategy. Energy production is a regional problem with regional solutions. You can't copy a strategy from somewhere else and expect it to work under different conditions without major changes. In the Nordic countries, clean electricity is essentially a solved problem. The current mix of wind, hydro, and nuclear works well enough for now. Of course, the target is always moving. You can always do something better, and sometimes old solutions become obsolete. But right now, electricity generation is not a pressing issue. Heating, industrial processes, and transportation are more acute problems. Decarbonization of transportation is moving particularly slowly.