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None of these storage technologies are currently being used at scale. Not a single country is relying on batteries or hydrogen to solve the problem I mentioned

by epups 3y ago

None of these storage technologies are currently being used at scale. Not a single country is relying on batteries or hydrogen to solve the problem I mentioned above.

pfdietz 3y ago
Ah, the good old "if it hasn't happened yet, it can't ever happen" argument. Priceless. Remember, we're talking about a claim that renewables are fundamentally blocked from providing the power for the grid in most countries. If you exclude the possibility of additional foreseeable technological development, then nuclear also fails, since existing commercial reactors very quickly exhaust the available economical uranium if they are asked to power the world.
- epups 3y ago
  Your statement about uranium is incorrect for a couple of reasons, but that's beside the point. You're asking us to take a leap of faith and believe in experimental technologies that have not been proven to work at scale at all. I'm not denying they might work one day, and I'm all for investing in them to see if they do. But in the meantime, hundreds of thousands of people will die due to switching to coal reactors. This is a concrete fact that is happening today. We have a safe energy source in nuclear, and we should make use of it to avoid these real, measurable, tangible consequences.
  - pfdietz 3y ago
    CANDU reactors may be an exception, since they can operate with a conversion ratio of nearly 1 (about 0.9, IIRC, which will extend the uranium concentration by an order of magnitude). But breeders are not currently commercial reactors -- there have been prototypes, but they are not commercial. Nor is seawater uranium extraction commercially demonstrated (it's not even ready for that; the resins have too short a lifespan, for one thing).
- pyuser583 3y ago
  So you’re saying we can expect batteries to scale?
  - pfdietz 3y ago
    Yes. Are you saying all the thousands of possible battery chemistries, and all the non-battery storage technologies, will fail? This is what the nuclear stans are saying. Of course speculative (or previously failed) nuclear technologies are sold as sure things.

by epups 3y ago

None of these storage technologies are currently being used at scale. Not a single country is relying on batteries or hydrogen to solve the problem I mentioned above.

pfdietz 3y ago

Ah, the good old "if it hasn't happened yet, it can't ever happen" argument. Priceless. Remember, we're talking about a claim that renewables are fundamentally blocked from providing the power for the grid in most countries. If you exclude the possibility of additional foreseeable technological development, then nuclear also fails, since existing commercial reactors very quickly exhaust the available economical uranium if they are asked to power the world.

epups 3y ago
Your statement about uranium is incorrect for a couple of reasons, but that's beside the point. You're asking us to take a leap of faith and believe in experimental technologies that have not been proven to work at scale at all. I'm not denying they might work one day, and I'm all for investing in them to see if they do. But in the meantime, hundreds of thousands of people will die due to switching to coal reactors. This is a concrete fact that is happening today. We have a safe energy source in nuclear, and we should make use of it to avoid these real, measurable, tangible consequences.
- pfdietz 3y ago
  CANDU reactors may be an exception, since they can operate with a conversion ratio of nearly 1 (about 0.9, IIRC, which will extend the uranium concentration by an order of magnitude). But breeders are not currently commercial reactors -- there have been prototypes, but they are not commercial. Nor is seawater uranium extraction commercially demonstrated (it's not even ready for that; the resins have too short a lifespan, for one thing).
pyuser583 3y ago
So you’re saying we can expect batteries to scale?
- pfdietz 3y ago
  Yes. Are you saying all the thousands of possible battery chemistries, and all the non-battery storage technologies, will fail? This is what the nuclear stans are saying. Of course speculative (or previously failed) nuclear technologies are sold as sure things.