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Nuclear plants are economical for their use case. In days in which renewables cannot provide enough energy, your clean energy alternatives are batteries (of whi
by epups 3y ago
Nuclear plants are economical for their use case. In days in which renewables cannot provide enough energy, your clean energy alternatives are batteries (of which we don't have nearly enough of, and are not economically viable today as an option) and hydro (we already tapped most possible resources for it).
- hn_throwaway_99 3y agoThose are not the only alternatives for storage. I think Power-to-gas, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-to-gas https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-to-gas, will be an important part of energy storage. Basically, use excess renewable energy to create hydrogen and methane by means of electrolysis. That's essentially natural gas, which can then be used by conventional natural gas power plants.
- epups 3y agoWill be, or is? I'm talking about the current state of technology. There is no clean viable alternative to nuclear except hydro.
- hn_throwaway_99 3y agoWell, if you're talking about "the current state of technology", the general consensus as I understand it is that building new nuclear power plants is not cost effective with other forms of energy storage/generation capacity. I'm all for keeping existing nuclear plants online, but I don't think building new ones is the right decision. Also, yes, there are viable green hydrogen plants being built today: https://totalenergies.com/media/news/press-releases/total-and-engie-to-develop-france-s-largest-site-of-green-hydrogen https://totalenergies.com/media/news/press-releases/total-an... . Also, France is likely to lead in this area because they just got hydrogen produced with nuclear to be considered "green", which is a great thing in my opinion.
- epups 3y ago> the general consensus as I understand it is that building new nuclear power plants is not cost effective with other forms of energy storage/generation capacity. Different forms of energy generation serve different purposes. I hope you can see why comparing nominal prices of solar panel installations vs a nuclear power plant is misguided. The latter can take you through a tough winter, the former cannot. Renewables are great, let's keep building them. For the times where they cannot help us, we can then choose to use a technology that is costly in dollars (nuclear) or lives (gas/oil/coal).
- hn_throwaway_99 3y agoYou're mistaking operational costs with capital costs. Nuclear has huge up front capital costs, which makes building new plants a non-starter if it is believed that other storage options (including batteries and things like green hydrogen) will be cheaper before the lifespan of a power plant can essentially recoup its large up front costs.
- epups 3y agoNo, I'm not. I'm saying that just because renewables are cheaper, you cannot simply replace anything with them or you would have severe unreliability.
- donkykong22 3y ago[flagged]
- jillesvangurp 3y agoEconomical viability of renewables is being proven by the hundreds of GW per year deployment. Real world deployments. Across the world. Batteries too (produced by the twh/year now). Nuclear, ... not so much. For whatever reason, it's not happening at any scale worth talking about. A handful of plants here and there. Invariably and reliably way over budget years later than planned. I'm sorry to burst your bubble but nuclear has an absolutely terrible track record. Compared to the things you dismiss that are currently running circles around nuclear in terms of cost, GW delivered, etc. It's outpacing nuclear every year more and more. If somebody figures out how to do nuclear 10-20 times cheaper and faster, I'm all for it. But so far that doesn't exist.
- epups 3y agoPlease cite one example of an alternative to nuclear that is viable today - no trend, no future projections, today - that fulfills the following criteria: 1) Can be deployed at scale (ie, can cover for up to at least 10% of the world's energy needs) 2) Costs less than nuclear 3) Is cleaner than nuclear 4) Is not hydro Nuclear is not a replacement for renewables. It does not have to compete in price with them. It is, however, our only viable alternative TODAY for base load needs, which obviously cannot be reliably supplied only with renewables.
- bryanlarsen 3y agoA large, diverse, distributed grid.
- epups 3y agoNo, the energy ultimately has to come from somewhere. If its a day without wind or Sun over, say, Europe, how do you propose a distributed grid would work without nuclear energy?
- bryanlarsen 3y ago> If its a day without wind or Sun over, say, Europe, That has never happened once in the last 30 years. The wind is always blowing somewhere. There have been times without both sun and wind in every single European country, but there has never been a time without both sun and wind across the entire continent, as long as you include the North Sea as part of the continent.