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From a defense perspective, Ukraine has shown that power plants are a vulnerable asset. Even sidestepping war, power plants represent a centralized risk that re
by cheschire 2y ago
From a defense perspective, Ukraine has shown that power plants are a vulnerable asset. Even sidestepping war, power plants represent a centralized risk that renewables could conceivably mitigate.
On the other hand there’s a little uptick in France’s nuclear power at the very end of the article, at the very end of the graph, that represents one of the key benefits of nuclear. Even with the huge push by Germany to go renewable, they didn’t have enough power to survive when the Russian gas got shut off and they had to import France’s nuclear. It just makes so much damn power.
- rich_sasha 2y agoArguing in good faith: places like Ukraine would need significant storage. If it's battery-based, how vulnerable is that? How big a boom do you get from a fully charged, ready for winter seasonal battery storage?
- cheschire 2y agoSure, these are important questions. Battery storage is more versatile than nuclear power due to its distributability. For example in Puerto Rico there is a concept[0] of a virtual power plant which requires battery owners to sign up to contribute in return for compensation. There will of course be economies of scale possible by centralizing battery storage, for example with non-chemical battery storage such as water batteries[1] that are more vulnerable than the highly distributed model. The point is more that there's more flexibility and variety available to deal with risks of many types. 0: https://www.tesla.com/support/energy/virtual-power-plant/puerto-rico https://www.tesla.com/support/energy/virtual-power-plant/pue... 1: https://www.science.org/content/article/how-giant-water-batteries-could-make-green-power-reliable https://www.science.org/content/article/how-giant-water-batt...
- hi-v-rocknroll 2y agoNope, you made a strawman while claiming not to be. PES and distributed battery V2G also exist.
- m4rtink 2y agoWell, no one really dorectly struck a nuclear power plant in the war so far (though watchin the Russian infantry fight for the Zaporozia one on a livestreem back in 2022 was kinda hair raising) and thus nuclear powerplants provided important source of power for Ukraine. No one wants to risk serious damage to a nuclear powerplant, given not just international outcry, but even just bad weather ending up contaminating you own country for decades. In that regard nuclear powerplans end up being an important sanctuary in a conflict.