4 ms·

> The speed that Nuclear can ramp, even in the best case is not enough to match demand spikes. Because Nuclear isn't 100% of all power output. Of course it can

> The speed that Nuclear can ramp, even in the best case is not enough to match demand spikes. Because Nuclear isn't 100% of all power output. Of course it can't ramp up from, say 20% to 100%. And yet, it does ramp up quickly. > It doesn't ramp as fast as gas plants and gas plants don't ramp as fast as batteries. 5% of rated power per minute is plenty fast. Not as fast as gas plants, true. And for batteries... There's this funny little things of: there are literally no batteries at scale required by demand spikes. And won't be in any near future. Meanwhile if you followed the links, you could see the graph showing how nuclear power plants go from ~650 MW to ~1400MW to meat demand (which is mostly predictable day to day). How many batteries you need to have extra ~800 MW per plant every day? And how many renewable sources to provide that excess? (Edit: largest energy storage seems to be Ouarzazate Solar Power Station with 510 MW of storage, thermal storage. Everything else is lower. To keep up with a single nuclear plant in the report you'd need two of those) > Just like you'd do with excess renewables. Except, for "excess renewables" you need to both overbuild them significantly more, and provide significantly more batteries because besides fast load following (which they can't do, and nuclear can) their base load is literally zero (and it's never zero with nuclear unless you take the plant completely offline).

adgjlsfhk1 4y ago
Spikes occur at various timescales. There are seasonal spikes (due to heating/AC), daily spikes (more power in morning and evening), and spikes on the millisecond to minute level due to random chance. Nuclear can't deal with the short spikes, and while it can deal with the long spikes, it's not efficient to do so since roughly 100% of the costs of nuclear are initial construction and personnel so running at reduced power levels doesn't save any cost. Batteries already exist that handle demand spikes on the shorter timescales (e.g. in Australia). and hydro is currently the best for medium timescale storage (that said there's a bunch of R&D currently into better grid batteries since they have very different performance requirements than portable batteries since weight and volume don't matter, just cost and cycles). Nuclear is pretty much the worst tech to overbuild because it's already expensive and it's price per kwh goes way up if you use it infrequently.
- illiarian 4y ago
  > Spikes occur at various timescales. There are seasonal spikes (due to heating/AC), daily spikes (more power in morning and evening), and spikes on the millisecond to minute level due to random chance. The first two are easily handled by nuclear (which you'd know if you read the report). Literally nothing can handle "millisecond spikes due to random chance". Renewables like solar and wind can't really handle any of the three because their power generation is intermittent. So you have to overbuild both them and their storage. > Batteries already exist that handle demand spikes on the shorter timescales (e.g. in Australia). Of course they don't exist. Not anywhere near the scale required. > and hydro is currently the best for medium timescale storage Ah yes, hydro. That is so easily available and easy to build just about anywhere, and on the required scale. > Nuclear is pretty much the worst tech to overbuild because it's already expensive and it's price per kwh goes way up if you use it infrequently. Of course it's the best tech to "overbuild" (because you don't need to overbuild much). Once again: - it's the highest energy density we know - it's stable power generation (not intermittent like most renewables) - it requires significantly less storage (because it can scale up quickly: most renewables can't even handle daily power spikes) - it requires significantly less area to build - the costs for renewables somehow never include the costs for the required overbuilding and the costs for required storage. Again: in the report you can see just one of the power plants easily scale from 650MW to 1400 MW during the day. And that's for power plants built 45 years ago. What are your renewable + battery solutions capable of that, and their cost?
  - adgjlsfhk1 4y ago
    > The first two are easily handled by nuclear I never said or implied otherwise. > Literally nothing can handle "millisecond spikes due to random chance". Batteries can (see https://energytransition.org/2015/06/batteries-stabilize-the-grid/ https://energytransition.org/2015/06/batteries-stabilize-the...) > Of course they don't exist. Wrong. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/08/australia-switches-on-victoria-big-battery-powered-by-tesla-megapacks.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/08/australia-switches-on-victor... > That is so easily available and easy to build just about anywhere, and on the required scale. I know, right! It's so cool! https://www.energy.gov/eere/water/hydropower-program https://www.energy.gov/eere/water/hydropower-program > because you don't need to overbuild much). Based on variation of demand, you need to overbuild any source by at least 50% https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_of_the_United_States#/media/File:Electric_Energy_Consumption_Profile_2019_&_2020.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_of_the_Unit... > it's the highest energy density we know Doesn't matter at all. We don't pay by land used, we pay by total cost. > it's stable power generation True. That's why it makes sense to have for baseload (but is stupid to overbuild) > it requires significantly less storage Not really since no one would ever build a purely nuclear grid because it would cost way too much. > it requires significantly less area to build Again. Irrelevant > the costs for renewables somehow never include the costs for the required overbuilding and the costs for required storage. That's because the amount of overbuilding and storage needed depend strongly on a bunch of factors and aren't that useful. Using https://www.lazard.com/research-insights/levelized-cost-of-energy-levelized-cost-of-storage-and-levelized-cost-of-hydrogen-2021/ https://www.lazard.com/research-insights/levelized-cost-of-e... as a source for LCOE numbers by power plant type (there may be a better one). Solar has LCOE of (very roughly) $70/MWH while nuclear has LCOE of roughly $175 if you ignore nuclear's decommissioning and operational costs (which are both significant and would almost certainly push the figure up to over $200). This yields a pure nuclear grid cost of approximately $85B. Alternatively, you can overbuild solar and wind by 3x and have a couple days of storage (which is doable with hydro), and you come out ahead.

adgjlsfhk1 4y ago

Spikes occur at various timescales. There are seasonal spikes (due to heating/AC), daily spikes (more power in morning and evening), and spikes on the millisecond to minute level due to random chance. Nuclear can't deal with the short spikes, and while it can deal with the long spikes, it's not efficient to do so since roughly 100% of the costs of nuclear are initial construction and personnel so running at reduced power levels doesn't save any cost. Batteries already exist that handle demand spikes on the shorter timescales (e.g. in Australia). and hydro is currently the best for medium timescale storage (that said there's a bunch of R&D currently into better grid batteries since they have very different performance requirements than portable batteries since weight and volume don't matter, just cost and cycles). Nuclear is pretty much the worst tech to overbuild because it's already expensive and it's price per kwh goes way up if you use it infrequently.

illiarian 4y ago
> Spikes occur at various timescales. There are seasonal spikes (due to heating/AC), daily spikes (more power in morning and evening), and spikes on the millisecond to minute level due to random chance. The first two are easily handled by nuclear (which you'd know if you read the report). Literally nothing can handle "millisecond spikes due to random chance". Renewables like solar and wind can't really handle any of the three because their power generation is intermittent. So you have to overbuild both them and their storage. > Batteries already exist that handle demand spikes on the shorter timescales (e.g. in Australia). Of course they don't exist. Not anywhere near the scale required. > and hydro is currently the best for medium timescale storage Ah yes, hydro. That is so easily available and easy to build just about anywhere, and on the required scale. > Nuclear is pretty much the worst tech to overbuild because it's already expensive and it's price per kwh goes way up if you use it infrequently. Of course it's the best tech to "overbuild" (because you don't need to overbuild much). Once again: - it's the highest energy density we know - it's stable power generation (not intermittent like most renewables) - it requires significantly less storage (because it can scale up quickly: most renewables can't even handle daily power spikes) - it requires significantly less area to build - the costs for renewables somehow never include the costs for the required overbuilding and the costs for required storage. Again: in the report you can see just one of the power plants easily scale from 650MW to 1400 MW during the day. And that's for power plants built 45 years ago. What are your renewable + battery solutions capable of that, and their cost?
- adgjlsfhk1 4y ago
  > The first two are easily handled by nuclear I never said or implied otherwise. > Literally nothing can handle "millisecond spikes due to random chance". Batteries can (see https://energytransition.org/2015/06/batteries-stabilize-the-grid/ https://energytransition.org/2015/06/batteries-stabilize-the...) > Of course they don't exist. Wrong. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/08/australia-switches-on-victoria-big-battery-powered-by-tesla-megapacks.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/08/australia-switches-on-victor... > That is so easily available and easy to build just about anywhere, and on the required scale. I know, right! It's so cool! https://www.energy.gov/eere/water/hydropower-program https://www.energy.gov/eere/water/hydropower-program > because you don't need to overbuild much). Based on variation of demand, you need to overbuild any source by at least 50% https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_of_the_United_States#/media/File:Electric_Energy_Consumption_Profile_2019_&_2020.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_of_the_Unit... > it's the highest energy density we know Doesn't matter at all. We don't pay by land used, we pay by total cost. > it's stable power generation True. That's why it makes sense to have for baseload (but is stupid to overbuild) > it requires significantly less storage Not really since no one would ever build a purely nuclear grid because it would cost way too much. > it requires significantly less area to build Again. Irrelevant > the costs for renewables somehow never include the costs for the required overbuilding and the costs for required storage. That's because the amount of overbuilding and storage needed depend strongly on a bunch of factors and aren't that useful. Using https://www.lazard.com/research-insights/levelized-cost-of-energy-levelized-cost-of-storage-and-levelized-cost-of-hydrogen-2021/ https://www.lazard.com/research-insights/levelized-cost-of-e... as a source for LCOE numbers by power plant type (there may be a better one). Solar has LCOE of (very roughly) $70/MWH while nuclear has LCOE of roughly $175 if you ignore nuclear's decommissioning and operational costs (which are both significant and would almost certainly push the figure up to over $200). This yields a pure nuclear grid cost of approximately $85B. Alternatively, you can overbuild solar and wind by 3x and have a couple days of storage (which is doable with hydro), and you come out ahead.