3 ms·

Nuclear isn't a good dispatchable energy source though. It needs to run 100% 24/7 to have a chance of being reasonably cheap. The fuel expense is neglible after

by audunw 3y ago

Nuclear isn't a good dispatchable energy source though. It needs to run 100% 24/7 to have a chance of being reasonably cheap. The fuel expense is neglible after all. Nuclear is struggling for the same reason coal is struggling. They're thermal power plants. They're slow to react to changes in demand on the grid. Gas power is doing well because they're exceptionally good at that. That's a problem because it's pretty much a given that most countries will use at least 50% renewables. Even France is targetting that. As costs of renewables come down further, the cost of energy storage goes down, and we get more and more flexible loads, renewables will keep getting more competitive compared to nuclear base load. EVs are extremely flexible loads. Hell, my electricity provider is controlling if my EV is charging or not, hour by hour, right this very moment. V2G is also a proven technology by this point. The hydrogen production we need for ammonia (fertilizer/fuels), long distance transportation and steel production will also be a very flexible load. Some of it might be fed back to the grid on rare cases of extremely low solar+wind. We can even use the very gas power plants we have right now with hydrogen instead. It's inevitable that the cost of energy storage will keep going down, because getting good at energy storage and transformation is going to be the number 1 priority across many industries in the coming decades. It's essential for almost everything we need to do to decarbonize. Thinking we NEED nuclear is basically equivalent with assuming we won't solve climate change. Because you have to basically ignore all the other problems we have to solve that are not related to electricity production. Or you have to bet heavily on carbon-capture-and-storage.. which is just a really dumb idea that yet again delays actually solving the problem, and could end up not helping much anway due to the difficulty of controlling methane leaks. Should hedge our bets though, I'm actually very positive to keep some level of R&D and investments in nuclear. Just skeptical that it'll be important in the end.

belorn 3y ago
I would trust the storage strategy a lot more if countries were not increasing the fossil fuel capacity and were not increasing subsidies to fossil fuels. I would like to see a similar law as the recent one for EV, where construction of new fossil fuel plants should be banned by 2035. If they did that and invested in their vision of green hydrogen, grid balancing, and other storage solution, then that would at least convince me that they themselves believed in it. Sadly everything I hear tells me the opposite. Last winter during the Swedish election, those working on the green steel project was asked if and when they thought green hydrogen would start showing up in the energy grid in order to solve the current energy crisis. Their estimated was that we would see the first storage solutions first in 40-60 years from now. Green steel is just about to break even (assuming they get enough subsidies), and they are still very much in the initial phases of testing the technology at larger scale than inside a lab. They also explained in details why current gas power plants and natural gas infrastructure will not be suitable for switching to hydrogen. The official strategy of the German green party, which is also the same strategy that the Swedish green party has, is to increase the use of fossil fuel energy capacity and subsidies to that industry. During a political debate over an oil fueled power plant in south of Sweden, the green party representative argued in keeping it while the opposition wanted to replace it with a nuclear plant. Politics is about trust. We don't need nuclear, but we can't continue to increase use of fossil fuels. We can also not continue with the geopolitical situation with Russia. Even with all the sanctions, Europe is still indirectly dependent of the massive exports that Russia do in regard to the global fossil fuel market. The economy of Europe need to decouple itself from fossil fuels, which can only occur if our dependency on fossil fuel decrease. The past strategy of using natural gas was a bad plan that failed, and we need to accept and go past that conclusion. To make matters worse, the hydro power energy in Europe is both maxed out and in dire need of modernization, with research saying we need to reduce capacity in order to avoid ecological collapse and extinction of several species. This will worsen the already strained storage problem.

by audunw 3y ago

belorn 3y ago

I would trust the storage strategy a lot more if countries were not increasing the fossil fuel capacity and were not increasing subsidies to fossil fuels. I would like to see a similar law as the recent one for EV, where construction of new fossil fuel plants should be banned by 2035. If they did that and invested in their vision of green hydrogen, grid balancing, and other storage solution, then that would at least convince me that they themselves believed in it. Sadly everything I hear tells me the opposite. Last winter during the Swedish election, those working on the green steel project was asked if and when they thought green hydrogen would start showing up in the energy grid in order to solve the current energy crisis. Their estimated was that we would see the first storage solutions first in 40-60 years from now. Green steel is just about to break even (assuming they get enough subsidies), and they are still very much in the initial phases of testing the technology at larger scale than inside a lab. They also explained in details why current gas power plants and natural gas infrastructure will not be suitable for switching to hydrogen. The official strategy of the German green party, which is also the same strategy that the Swedish green party has, is to increase the use of fossil fuel energy capacity and subsidies to that industry. During a political debate over an oil fueled power plant in south of Sweden, the green party representative argued in keeping it while the opposition wanted to replace it with a nuclear plant. Politics is about trust. We don't need nuclear, but we can't continue to increase use of fossil fuels. We can also not continue with the geopolitical situation with Russia. Even with all the sanctions, Europe is still indirectly dependent of the massive exports that Russia do in regard to the global fossil fuel market. The economy of Europe need to decouple itself from fossil fuels, which can only occur if our dependency on fossil fuel decrease. The past strategy of using natural gas was a bad plan that failed, and we need to accept and go past that conclusion. To make matters worse, the hydro power energy in Europe is both maxed out and in dire need of modernization, with research saying we need to reduce capacity in order to avoid ecological collapse and extinction of several species. This will worsen the already strained storage problem.