4 ms·
Wind & nuclear together. Britain already has large wind installations, since the sea to the east is quite shallow (it used to be a land bridge to Europe only 7
by rwmj 1y ago
Wind & nuclear together. Britain already has large wind installations, since the sea to the east is quite shallow (it used to be a land bridge to Europe only 7,000-10,000 years ago). Back that up with nuclear providing the base load and you have reasonable energy security.
- ViewTrick1002 1y ago> Back that up with nuclear providing the base load and you have reasonable energy security. So you’re saying that we should turn off the nuclear plant? What do we calculate? A generous 50% capacity factor? The new built nuclear power now costs ~40 cents/kWh. It just becomes ridiculously expensive when real world constraints are added.
- happymellon 1y agoThe current "real world constraint" is purchasing gas from Russia. Yeah, nuclear is better than that.
- ViewTrick1002 1y agoAlmost all of Europe has stopped buying Russian gas? The exception being nuclear powered France. [1] You also do know that we despite 19 sanctions packages still haven’t been able to sanction the Russian nuclear industry? We’re just too dependent on it. [1]: https://www.highnorthnews.com/en/eu-talks-tough-russian-lng-buys-more-ever-2025 https://www.highnorthnews.com/en/eu-talks-tough-russian-lng-...
- realusername 1y agoThe French gas plants have been built to support renewables, France didn't have almost any gas plants prior 2010. There's no sanctions on the Russian nuclear industry because it's a rounding error financially compared to gas or petrol.
- bauble12 1y agoThe thing Ive never quite understood is that the UK has no domestic supply of uranium.
- cjrp 1y agoCanada, Australia and Germany are all big exporters; without tempting fate, I don't think the UK will have issues importing from those countries.
- trebligdivad 1y agoYeh it probably is expensive - but we currently have no other way (other than gas) to cover the low-wind/sun periods; while there are times when the UK can almost run purely off wind, there are other periods where we get ~5% of that wind energy for a week or so; the battery storage is nowhere near useful for that.
- pfdietz 1y agoHydrogen or low capex thermal. The UK has adequate salt formations for large scale storage of hydrogen.
- MagicMoonlight 1y agoHydrogen is the worst possible fuel. It's the least dense material in existence so you need a ton of it. It has to be made from either cracking polluting materials, or using a huge amount of electricity. It is really difficult to store and really flammable. Nuclear is endless clean energy. Why do people like you keep ruining everything? If it wasn't for you, we'd have had full nuclear by 1980. No oil problems, no terrorist states, no dubai.
- pfdietz 1y agoThis would be green hydrogen. Sure, it has low density, but underground storage is pretty cheap at scale. Yes, it's flammable, but that can be handled, and is handled routinely -- the world currently produces and consumes 700 cubic kilometers (at STP) of hydrogen per year. The huge advantage of hydrogen here is that a gas turbine power plant might cost $600/kW, a tiny fraction of the cost of a nuclear power plant. So if you have a need for a backup plant whose cost will be dominated by amortization of its fixed cost, hydrogen beats nuclear.
- lostlogin 1y ago> Nuclear is endless clean energy. The UK hasn’t had any nuclear waste problems? It might be the solution but pretending it’s perfect is how we got here.
- 1y ago
- Lio 1y ago> it used to be a land bridge to Europe only 7,000-10,000 years ago) Doggerland. I've always found its geography and the idea that people lived there fascinating. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland
- DrBazza 1y agoFisherman frequently dredge up stone age (or earlier) implements from there.
- cjrp 1y agoAnd that area of the sea is still known as "Dogger" in the shipping forecast https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shipping_Forecast#/media/File:UK_shipping_forecast_zones.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shipping_Forecast#/media/File:...
- griffzhowl 1y agoThat part of the sea as well as Doggerland itself are named afer Dogger Bank, a large sandbank that must have been some promontory on Doggerland. Dogger Bank in turn seems to be named after a kind of Dutch fishing boat called a dogger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogger_Bank https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogger_Bank
- matt-p 1y agoWe could probably do with a small amount of storage as we do have days where we pay for turbines to /not/ generate.
- graemep 1y agoAFAIK the cost of nuclear is building it, but not running it. If you have enough nuclear to provide enough energy when there is no wind, then why do you need to build wind energy at all?
- RobotToaster 1y agoA big part of the cost is design. China has built a lot of nuclear capacity at a low cost by essentially copying and pasting the same design, something that should be even easier with SMRs.
- matthewdgreen 1y agoRelatively low cost. The cost of PV has dropped much faster and they’re building much more of it, even compared to their plans from a decade ago. SMRs are supposed to be the design that solves this, essentially moving nuclear into the same “build it at mass scale in a factory” footing that solar PV is on. But solar is deep down the production curve and SMRs are just beginning it.
- fred_is_fred 1y agoI believe France does (or did) this also. The US seems to be the one country to custom design each one.
- rwmj 1y agoOne immediate reason is its going to take another decade (conservatively) to even build one of these modular reactors. Another is the vast cost of nuclear compared to wind. We're deploying wind farms in large numbers right now (and even sometimes connecting them to the grid).
- chickenbig 1y ago> its going to take another decade (conservatively) to even build one of these modular reactors. So nuclear reactors can be built to supply the energy and power as the offshore wind farms get decommissioned. The rise and fall. > Another is the vast cost of nuclear compared to wind. What do you mean by cost? Capital expenditure per kW of nominal capacity, or by total energy generated? Plus should we consider other costs (backup, transmission, curtailment)?