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Even the poster boy for nuclear is reducing nuclear output as its fleet ages and filling that gap with renewables (reducing its electricity emissions from 2005

Even the poster boy for nuclear is reducing nuclear output as its fleet ages and filling that gap with renewables (reducing its electricity emissions from 2005 when their nuclear peaked too). So it apparently doesn't matter what your existing grid is, coal, gas, nuclear, hydro, of whatever mix, the thing you should be building now is mostly solar, wind and (not quite caught on globally but just about to make a very big splash) batteries.

cm2187 1y ago
The batteries mentioned in the article have only a few hours of capacity, and are designed to smooth the peak usage intraday. I think many people are confused and seem to think batteries are a viable way to address the volatility of wind, where you may deal with weeks with no/low wind, or solar, which in countries with cold winters is of little help. I have yet to see a cheap scalable alternative to carbon to deal with that volatility. Hydro perhaps in a handful of smaller, mountainous countries (and if you are not too regarding of the environmental damages). Right now the UK is using LNG to compensate wind.
- Veliladon 1y ago
  Normally this would be handled by a wider synchronized network. The EU has a continent wide synchronized network and the UK isn’t part of it. There are also other ways to store energy. For polar regions sand batteries are capable of storing heat for months. High grade heat to the point they can siphon off that heat for power generation.
  - dfawcus 1y ago
    The interconnectors between UK and the continent are HVDC. As such they are essentially massive switching-mode PSUs, and there is no possibility of having a synchronised connection, as the AC has to be synthesised, following the local spinning iron.
    - cm2187 1y ago
      But also europe isn't that large. When there is no wind in the UK, there is no wind in France or Italy. Which means not only do they not provide diversification, they will import at the same time.
- Qwertious 1y ago
  Long-form storage is inherently unprofitable - a battery that's used daily will make 365x the sales of a battery that's used only once a year. So inevitably, the first batteries will always prioritize daily arbitrage, and only once that market is capped out will some battery projects target weekly/monthly/yearly arbitrage. In countries with cold winters, the obvious solution is heat-energy storage systems, which don't output electricity but instead store and output heat directly; they're basically just a big pile of sand/stones/bricks wrapped in a ton of insulation. Thanks to the cube-square law, they scale up unbelievably well and can easily store months worth of heat. Due to that scale they don't make much sense without district heating, but energy storage is a numbers-game and lots of cold places already have district heating that could be quite easily retrofitted.
- ZeroGravitas 1y ago
  The UK uses far more gas to heat homes than to generate electricity, and uses some for industrial purposes so it seems weird to attribute LNG use to wind, the technology that more than any other has reduced gas usage in the UK.
  - dfawcus 1y ago
    The increase in use of wind, being intermittent and non-dispatchable means there has to be 1-for-1 back up wind generation. That is gas. We also have periods in the winter (so solar of little to no use), where we can have a week or two of no wind. As the gas generators are not run constantly, they're more expensive than if they were. There are various (at least 3) UK "gridwatch" sites available, offering real time and historical generation mix. Maybe have a look. From memory, so probably flawed, we still tend to depend upon nuclear and gas for around 40 - 50 % of our generation (nuke being low - say between 5 and 10).
    - cm2187 1y ago
      you can actually see it live here: https://gridwatch.co.uk/ https://gridwatch.co.uk/ It illustrates both the volatility of wind (which regularly goes to zero for at least a week), and how it is currently pretty much 100% offset with gas.
    - ZeroGravitas 1y ago
      Since year 2000 wind has gone from 0 to 30% of UK electricity generation Coal has gone from 32% to 0. Gas has gone from 40% to 30% How do you square these numbers with wind being responsible for the amount of gas burned?
      - cm2187 1y ago
        You are not going to observe that in annual averages. As mentioned in my other comment, you can observe that very clearly in the energy production charts: https://gridwatch.co.uk/ https://gridwatch.co.uk/
- epistasis 1y ago
  You don't need batteries with longer capacity in terms of power:energy ratio, you simply need more batteries. Getting to France's level of nuclear decarbonization with batteries is cheap and easy with current prices. Using existing thermal plants for a few weeks a year and renewables for the rest is quite similar overall to France's mix. What's challenging is the final 10%, 5%, and 1%. But it will take 15-20 years of deployment of our current cheap renewables+storage technology before we need to solve those final percents. In that time, technology will have advanced tremendously and we don't know what the cheapest solution will be, just that it will be cheaper than current tech. Plus it would take much longer than 15 years to even build nuclear in any significant quantity! France said a few years ago that they would be building handful of new reactors but I still have not seen progress!
mpweiher 1y ago
France? France is increasing its nuclear output. And planning to build new plants. (Expanding nuclear generation was prohibited by law up until March of 2023). The added renewables help to make the nuclear plants more efficient and profitable, by taking up a good amount of the variable demand.
- ViewTrick1002 1y ago
  The French are wholly unable to build new nuclear power. Flamanville 3 is 7x over budget and 12 years late on a 5 year construction program. The EPR2 program is in absolute shambles. Currently they can’t even agree on how to fund the absolutely insanely bonkers subsidies. Now targeting investment decision in H2 2026. And the French government just fell and was reformed because they are underwater in debt and have a spending problem which they can’t agree on how to fix. A massive handout to the dead end nuclear industry sounds like the perfect solution!
  - mpweiher 1y ago
    FV3 was a shambles. For a number of fairly well-understood reasons: 1. It's a FOAK design. 2. France stopped building reactors, so expertise was sparse 3. The EPR is too complex, partly because it was designed for German safety standards, which in turn were specifically designed to make nuclear reactors economically unviable (they did not succeed with this). Those regulations are also prescriptive instead of requirements-based, so they don't allow simpler+safer passive cooling like the AP-1000s. It's silliness layered on top of silliness. 4. It was built as a single unit, instead of a series of overlapping builds of the same reactor design. This was because until March 2023, expanding French nuclear capacity was forbidden by law. So they couldn't legally build in a way that is efficient and effective. The EPR2 project addresses this in a number of ways: 1. The EPR2 is dramatically simplified relative to the EPR. 2. The law was rescinded in March 2023, so they will be building six of them initially, in batches of 2, with overlap between all the units. 8 more are planned for later. 3. They are making much more realistic assumptions at the start I am not sure how you can claim that the EPR2 program is "a shambles" when they haven't begun building in earnest yet and are explicitly addressing most if not all the issues with FV3. Seems a tad premature. Of course nuclear is one of the things that is financing the French state and industry, with EDF returning massive profits to its owner (the state) and the ARENH program subsidizing industry.

cm2187 1y ago

The batteries mentioned in the article have only a few hours of capacity, and are designed to smooth the peak usage intraday. I think many people are confused and seem to think batteries are a viable way to address the volatility of wind, where you may deal with weeks with no/low wind, or solar, which in countries with cold winters is of little help. I have yet to see a cheap scalable alternative to carbon to deal with that volatility. Hydro perhaps in a handful of smaller, mountainous countries (and if you are not too regarding of the environmental damages). Right now the UK is using LNG to compensate wind.

Veliladon 1y ago
Normally this would be handled by a wider synchronized network. The EU has a continent wide synchronized network and the UK isn’t part of it. There are also other ways to store energy. For polar regions sand batteries are capable of storing heat for months. High grade heat to the point they can siphon off that heat for power generation.
- dfawcus 1y ago
  The interconnectors between UK and the continent are HVDC. As such they are essentially massive switching-mode PSUs, and there is no possibility of having a synchronised connection, as the AC has to be synthesised, following the local spinning iron.
  - cm2187 1y ago
    But also europe isn't that large. When there is no wind in the UK, there is no wind in France or Italy. Which means not only do they not provide diversification, they will import at the same time.
Qwertious 1y ago
Long-form storage is inherently unprofitable - a battery that's used daily will make 365x the sales of a battery that's used only once a year. So inevitably, the first batteries will always prioritize daily arbitrage, and only once that market is capped out will some battery projects target weekly/monthly/yearly arbitrage. In countries with cold winters, the obvious solution is heat-energy storage systems, which don't output electricity but instead store and output heat directly; they're basically just a big pile of sand/stones/bricks wrapped in a ton of insulation. Thanks to the cube-square law, they scale up unbelievably well and can easily store months worth of heat. Due to that scale they don't make much sense without district heating, but energy storage is a numbers-game and lots of cold places already have district heating that could be quite easily retrofitted.
ZeroGravitas 1y ago
The UK uses far more gas to heat homes than to generate electricity, and uses some for industrial purposes so it seems weird to attribute LNG use to wind, the technology that more than any other has reduced gas usage in the UK.
- dfawcus 1y ago
  The increase in use of wind, being intermittent and non-dispatchable means there has to be 1-for-1 back up wind generation. That is gas. We also have periods in the winter (so solar of little to no use), where we can have a week or two of no wind. As the gas generators are not run constantly, they're more expensive than if they were. There are various (at least 3) UK "gridwatch" sites available, offering real time and historical generation mix. Maybe have a look. From memory, so probably flawed, we still tend to depend upon nuclear and gas for around 40 - 50 % of our generation (nuke being low - say between 5 and 10).
  - cm2187 1y ago
    you can actually see it live here: https://gridwatch.co.uk/ https://gridwatch.co.uk/ It illustrates both the volatility of wind (which regularly goes to zero for at least a week), and how it is currently pretty much 100% offset with gas.
  - ZeroGravitas 1y ago
    Since year 2000 wind has gone from 0 to 30% of UK electricity generation Coal has gone from 32% to 0. Gas has gone from 40% to 30% How do you square these numbers with wind being responsible for the amount of gas burned?
    - cm2187 1y ago
      You are not going to observe that in annual averages. As mentioned in my other comment, you can observe that very clearly in the energy production charts: https://gridwatch.co.uk/ https://gridwatch.co.uk/
epistasis 1y ago
You don't need batteries with longer capacity in terms of power:energy ratio, you simply need more batteries. Getting to France's level of nuclear decarbonization with batteries is cheap and easy with current prices. Using existing thermal plants for a few weeks a year and renewables for the rest is quite similar overall to France's mix. What's challenging is the final 10%, 5%, and 1%. But it will take 15-20 years of deployment of our current cheap renewables+storage technology before we need to solve those final percents. In that time, technology will have advanced tremendously and we don't know what the cheapest solution will be, just that it will be cheaper than current tech. Plus it would take much longer than 15 years to even build nuclear in any significant quantity! France said a few years ago that they would be building handful of new reactors but I still have not seen progress!

mpweiher 1y ago

France? France is increasing its nuclear output. And planning to build new plants. (Expanding nuclear generation was prohibited by law up until March of 2023). The added renewables help to make the nuclear plants more efficient and profitable, by taking up a good amount of the variable demand.

ViewTrick1002 1y ago
The French are wholly unable to build new nuclear power. Flamanville 3 is 7x over budget and 12 years late on a 5 year construction program. The EPR2 program is in absolute shambles. Currently they can’t even agree on how to fund the absolutely insanely bonkers subsidies. Now targeting investment decision in H2 2026. And the French government just fell and was reformed because they are underwater in debt and have a spending problem which they can’t agree on how to fix. A massive handout to the dead end nuclear industry sounds like the perfect solution!
- mpweiher 1y ago
  FV3 was a shambles. For a number of fairly well-understood reasons: 1. It's a FOAK design. 2. France stopped building reactors, so expertise was sparse 3. The EPR is too complex, partly because it was designed for German safety standards, which in turn were specifically designed to make nuclear reactors economically unviable (they did not succeed with this). Those regulations are also prescriptive instead of requirements-based, so they don't allow simpler+safer passive cooling like the AP-1000s. It's silliness layered on top of silliness. 4. It was built as a single unit, instead of a series of overlapping builds of the same reactor design. This was because until March 2023, expanding French nuclear capacity was forbidden by law. So they couldn't legally build in a way that is efficient and effective. The EPR2 project addresses this in a number of ways: 1. The EPR2 is dramatically simplified relative to the EPR. 2. The law was rescinded in March 2023, so they will be building six of them initially, in batches of 2, with overlap between all the units. 8 more are planned for later. 3. They are making much more realistic assumptions at the start I am not sure how you can claim that the EPR2 program is "a shambles" when they haven't begun building in earnest yet and are explicitly addressing most if not all the issues with FV3. Seems a tad premature. Of course nuclear is one of the things that is financing the French state and industry, with EDF returning massive profits to its owner (the state) and the ARENH program subsidizing industry.