9 ms·

Or just use nuclear as base load, and battery storage as much as you can.

colechristensen 6mo ago
You don't need battery storage if you've got hydro. You need solar. Make hydro the backup, fill reservoirs as your reserve and sell extra energy when they're nearly full.
- tialaramex 6mo ago
  I can see this makes sense especially for medium term storage. A lot full of batteries is great for the next ten seconds, next ten minutes, even to some extent the next ten hours, but it surely doesn't make much sense to store ten days of electricity that way compared to just keeping the water behind a dam. We know that many of the world's large dams are capturing snow melt or other seasonal flows, running them only when solar or wind can't provide the power you need lets you make more effective use of the same resource.
  - colechristensen 6mo ago
    Except for very short term peaks (less than 15 minutes-ish) it doesn't make any sense at all to use hydro to charge batteries. You've got a dam, you might as well let water through later than incur the losses of a round trip to batteries and back to the grid.
  - hvb2 6mo ago
    Except that in many cases there's people living downstream doing agriculture using that water for irrigation. There's just this tiny dispute about that in the nile delta between Egypt and Ethiopia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Ethiopian_Renaissance_Dam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Ethiopian_Renaissance_Da...
- znkynz 6mo ago
  There are two types of hydro - run of river, and ones with large lake storage. You need the ones with large lake storage, rather that the ones with a lake to build a head.
- XorNot 6mo ago
  Pumped hydro storage only holds about 8-12 hours of power. To be economically viable to build you need to cycle it daily. It uses enormous amounts of land and capital to build, and is ongoingly dangerous in a unique way. If LiFePO4 can do 4 hours at full output already, and be placed anywhere using volume manufacturing to expand, then batteries are straight up better. Pumped hydro is an expensive dead end.
  - colechristensen 6mo ago
    I'm not talking about pumped hydro.
    - XorNot 6mo ago
      The you're talking about a geographical limited, extremely finite resource with a substantial ecological footprint.
      - colechristensen 6mo ago
        Yes... countries with extensive existing hydro using less of it by displacing it with solar, ultimately enabling the dismantling of some of the dams.
  - peterashford 6mo ago
    In NZ we're discussing pumped hydro in Lake Onslow which will provides months of backup for the country
    - hunterpayne 6mo ago
      Each way you move the energy costs you 50% in efficiency. Which is why pumped hydro has to have a 4x different in the price of energy in vs energy out to make it economically viable. That's why PG&E almost never uses their pumped storage. Only on days where the mid day price of power is very low does it make sense. And keep in mind that California is the ideal place for pumped storage. I seriously doubt that NZ has a 3x duck curve in its energy demand.
pfdietz 6mo ago
Or just gradually taper off fossil fuel use until storage and renewables carry everything. Exactly what "storage" means there is the key, especially at high latitude. Do not assume just batteries.
jdlshore 6mo ago
The economics of new nuclear plants don't make sense. They take too long to build and cost too much. By the time a new plant is ready, alternate sources (likely solar + battery and long-distance HVDC) will have eaten its lunch.
- cyjackx 6mo ago
  How much of this is unnecessary regulatory burden, though? There probably is some margin of improvement over what the anti-nuclear lobbyists have imposed.
  - Tepix 6mo ago
    Is it unnecessary burden? We've had major nuclear accidents despite regulations and that was before 9/11 and dron wars.
    - littlestymaar 6mo ago
      The definition of “major accident” used in nuclear is orders of magnitude more strict than in any other industries though, which distort the picture. The worst nuclear accident involving a nuclear plant (Chernobyl, which occurred in a country without regulation for all intent and purpose) killed less people than the food processing industry cause every year (and I'm not counting long term health effect of junk food, just contamination incidents in the processing units leading to deadly intoxications of consumers). In countries with regulations there's been 2 “major accidents”: TMI killed no one, Fukushima killed 1 guy and injured 24, in the plant itself. In any industries that would be considered workplace safety violation, not “major accident”… And it occurred in the middle of, and because, a tsunami which killed 19000! I'm actually happy this regulation exist because that's why there ate so little accidents, but claiming that it's still hazardous despite the regulations is preposterous.
      - watwut 6mo ago
        I am pretty sure we dont need to evacuate large areas and keep sarcofag over former food processing plants. The chernobyl was poisoning Russian soldiers by the start of Ukrainian invasion when they were dumb enough to sleep there.
Tepix 6mo ago
Nuclear seems to be the worst option: You can't quickly change the amount of power it generates. Which is what you need if you want to use it together with dirt cheap solar. It's very expensive. In fact, noone knows how expensive it will end up being after a couple thousand of years. It's dangerous. For millenia. Vulnerable to terrorism. Enabler of nuclear weapons. It takes a long time to build and bring online. It doesn't scale down. Finally, Kasachstan is the major producer of Uranium. Yay?
- thangalin 6mo ago
  > It's dangerous. For millenia. See https://www.jlab.org/news/releases/jefferson-lab-tapped-lead-technology-development-exploring-nuclear-waste-treatment https://www.jlab.org/news/releases/jefferson-lab-tapped-lead... > Partitioning and recycling of uranium, plutonium, and minor actinide content of used nuclear fuel can dramatically reduce this number to around 300 years.
  - hvb2 6mo ago
    The word CAN is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. Let's not pretend like the track record of energy production is free of externalities. We CAN also produce almost all of our plastics from recycled ones. We don't, because those are more expensive than new.
    - XorNot 6mo ago
      But who cares? Plastic in stabilized landfill is behaving better then the oil in the ground it was manufactured from. It doesn't matter.
    - tialaramex 6mo ago
      One reason new plastic is so cheap is that we wanted the other parts of the oil to run automobiles and planes. So if we stop doing that suddenly recycling the plastic makes more sense too...
- AnthonyMouse 6mo ago
  > You can't quickly change the amount of power it generates. Which is what you need if you want to use it together with dirt cheap solar. You always need something in the grid that can change the amount of power it generates regardless of what you use in combination with it, because the demand from the grid isn't fixed. All grids need something in the nature of storage/hydro or peaker plants. The advantage of combining solar with nuclear is that their generation profiles are different. Nuclear can generate power at night and doesn't have lower output during the peak seasonal demand period for heating. Nuclear is baseload; it doesn't make sense to have more of it than the minimum load on the grid, but no one is really proposing to. The minimum load is generally around half of the maximum load. > It's very expensive. In fact, noone knows how expensive it will end up being after a couple thousand of years. If you actually reprocess the fuel there is no "couple thousand of years". If you instead put it in a dry hole in the desert, you have a desert where nobody wanted to live to begin with that now has a box of hot rocks sealed in it. It's not clear how this is supposed to cost an unforeseeable amount of money. > Vulnerable to terrorism. Nuclear plants are kind of a hard target. The stuff inside them isn't any more of a biohazard than what's in a thousand other chemical/industrial plants that aren't surrounded in thick concrete. > Enabler of nuclear weapons. The US already has nuclear weapons and would continue to do so regardless of how much electricity is generated from what sources. The argument against building nuclear reactors in Iran is not an argument against building nuclear reactors in Ohio. > It takes a long time to build and bring online. Better get started then. > It doesn't scale down. Decent argument for not having one in your house; not a great argument for not having one in your state. > Finally, Kasachstan is the major producer of Uranium. Yay? The country with the largest uranium reserves is Australia. Kazakhstan is #2 and has about the same amount as Canada. Other countries with significant reserves include Russia, India, Brazil, China, Ukraine and several countries in Africa. The US has some itself and plenty of other places to source it. It can also be extracted from seawater. The US is also in the top 4 for thorium reserves with about 70% as much as the #1 (which is India), and thorium is 3-4 times more abundant overall than uranium.
iso1631 6mo ago
Get a drought and you have to shut them down, ask France. "Base load" is just some nonsense from nuclear fans to get the cost per GWh down.
- hunterpayne 6mo ago
  Base load is an industry term coined by the very engineers who make the grid work. But I'm sure a random poster on an Internet forum knows more than the engineers who actually do the work. PS France has the cleanest grid in Europe
  - iso1631 6mo ago
    https://www.pembina.org/blog/baseload-myths-why-we-need-change-how-we-look-our-grid https://www.pembina.org/blog/baseload-myths-why-we-need-chan...
swiftcoder 6mo ago
Nuclear doesn't really solve this particular problem - solar is already cheaper than nuclear, so no one is going to replace their entire solar capacity with nuclear. And nuclear doesn't spin up/down rapidly like natural gas, so its a lousy solution for nighttime.
- XorNot 6mo ago
  This is just wrong. Nuclear is perfectly fine for nighttime because nighttime is highly predictable and doesn't fluctuate very much. My state (NSW, Australia) for example uses no less then 6 GW at all times of day. Variable load is on top of that during the day. If we had 6GW of nuclear plants, our grid would be almost completely green and they'd run at 100% utilization.
  - ViewTrick1002 6mo ago
    Now calculate what it costs running a nuclear plant only at night. You’ll end up at $400 per MWh excluding transmissions costs, taxes etc. Your state already has coal plants forced to become peakers or be decommissioned because no one wants their expensive electricity during the daytime. Let alone a horrifyingly expensive new built nuclear plant. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-10-13/australian-coal-plant-in-extraordinary-survival-experiment/104461504 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-10-13/australian-coal-plant...
    - XorNot 6mo ago
      Not what I was responding to. Saying nuclear plants can't ramp for predictable night time demand is wrong. Nuclear plants can't do instant demand response, but they can absolutely respond over windows of several hours.
      - ViewTrick1002 6mo ago
        But not economically. And it can’t ramp twice. Once is easy. For the French to do load following they sync their entire fleet to manage it. Letting plants take turns and spread out where they are in their fuel cycle.
peterashford 6mo ago
Over-provisioning with renewables is cheaper
- hunterpayne 6mo ago
  Which of course is why the countries that do that the most have the highest energy costs in the world. And just for fun, they usually have some of the dirtiest grids because of all the drawbacks of renewables.
direwolf20 6mo ago
Nuclear takes a week to restart after a shutdown, due to xenon poisoning. It's not reliable base load.
jcattle 6mo ago
For countries that can reliably get to 99% hydro, save for some exceptional droughts, "build nuclear" is about the worst advice you can give them.
- leonidasrup 6mo ago
  Building dams is not without environmental costs especially in water stressed regions. Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam has long been a source of tension between Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt. https://www.dw.com/en/gerd-grand-ethiopian-renaissance-dam-sparks-water-concern-in-egypt-sudan/a-73886547 https://www.dw.com/en/gerd-grand-ethiopian-renaissance-dam-s... Motuo Hydropower Station - will overtake the Three Gorges dam as the world's largest. The project has attracted criticism for its potential impact on millions of Indians and Bangladeshis living downriver, as well as the surrounding environment and local Tibetans. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gk1251w14o https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gk1251w14o
  - red-iron-pine 6mo ago
    "a source of tension" is a understatement. might have have caused a war, and still could.
1718627440 6mo ago
Like you wrote you can use nuclear as a base load. It's not really useful as a short-term backup for when other plants don't work. If you need batteries and excess power for backup, you might as well create the excess power without nuclear if you can.

You don't need battery storage if you've got hydro. You need solar. Make hydro the backup, fill reservoirs as your reserve and sell extra energy when they're nearly full.

tialaramex 6mo ago
I can see this makes sense especially for medium term storage. A lot full of batteries is great for the next ten seconds, next ten minutes, even to some extent the next ten hours, but it surely doesn't make much sense to store ten days of electricity that way compared to just keeping the water behind a dam. We know that many of the world's large dams are capturing snow melt or other seasonal flows, running them only when solar or wind can't provide the power you need lets you make more effective use of the same resource.
- colechristensen 6mo ago
  Except for very short term peaks (less than 15 minutes-ish) it doesn't make any sense at all to use hydro to charge batteries. You've got a dam, you might as well let water through later than incur the losses of a round trip to batteries and back to the grid.
- hvb2 6mo ago
  Except that in many cases there's people living downstream doing agriculture using that water for irrigation. There's just this tiny dispute about that in the nile delta between Egypt and Ethiopia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Ethiopian_Renaissance_Dam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Ethiopian_Renaissance_Da...
znkynz 6mo ago
There are two types of hydro - run of river, and ones with large lake storage. You need the ones with large lake storage, rather that the ones with a lake to build a head.
XorNot 6mo ago
Pumped hydro storage only holds about 8-12 hours of power. To be economically viable to build you need to cycle it daily. It uses enormous amounts of land and capital to build, and is ongoingly dangerous in a unique way. If LiFePO4 can do 4 hours at full output already, and be placed anywhere using volume manufacturing to expand, then batteries are straight up better. Pumped hydro is an expensive dead end.
- colechristensen 6mo ago
  I'm not talking about pumped hydro.
  - XorNot 6mo ago
    The you're talking about a geographical limited, extremely finite resource with a substantial ecological footprint.
    - colechristensen 6mo ago
      Yes... countries with extensive existing hydro using less of it by displacing it with solar, ultimately enabling the dismantling of some of the dams.
- peterashford 6mo ago
  In NZ we're discussing pumped hydro in Lake Onslow which will provides months of backup for the country
  - hunterpayne 6mo ago
    Each way you move the energy costs you 50% in efficiency. Which is why pumped hydro has to have a 4x different in the price of energy in vs energy out to make it economically viable. That's why PG&E almost never uses their pumped storage. Only on days where the mid day price of power is very low does it make sense. And keep in mind that California is the ideal place for pumped storage. I seriously doubt that NZ has a 3x duck curve in its energy demand.

pfdietz 6mo ago

Or just gradually taper off fossil fuel use until storage and renewables carry everything. Exactly what "storage" means there is the key, especially at high latitude. Do not assume just batteries.

jdlshore 6mo ago

The economics of new nuclear plants don't make sense. They take too long to build and cost too much. By the time a new plant is ready, alternate sources (likely solar + battery and long-distance HVDC) will have eaten its lunch.

cyjackx 6mo ago
How much of this is unnecessary regulatory burden, though? There probably is some margin of improvement over what the anti-nuclear lobbyists have imposed.
- Tepix 6mo ago
  Is it unnecessary burden? We've had major nuclear accidents despite regulations and that was before 9/11 and dron wars.
  - littlestymaar 6mo ago
    The definition of “major accident” used in nuclear is orders of magnitude more strict than in any other industries though, which distort the picture. The worst nuclear accident involving a nuclear plant (Chernobyl, which occurred in a country without regulation for all intent and purpose) killed less people than the food processing industry cause every year (and I'm not counting long term health effect of junk food, just contamination incidents in the processing units leading to deadly intoxications of consumers). In countries with regulations there's been 2 “major accidents”: TMI killed no one, Fukushima killed 1 guy and injured 24, in the plant itself. In any industries that would be considered workplace safety violation, not “major accident”… And it occurred in the middle of, and because, a tsunami which killed 19000! I'm actually happy this regulation exist because that's why there ate so little accidents, but claiming that it's still hazardous despite the regulations is preposterous.
    - watwut 6mo ago
      I am pretty sure we dont need to evacuate large areas and keep sarcofag over former food processing plants. The chernobyl was poisoning Russian soldiers by the start of Ukrainian invasion when they were dumb enough to sleep there.

Tepix 6mo ago

Nuclear seems to be the worst option: You can't quickly change the amount of power it generates. Which is what you need if you want to use it together with dirt cheap solar. It's very expensive. In fact, noone knows how expensive it will end up being after a couple thousand of years. It's dangerous. For millenia. Vulnerable to terrorism. Enabler of nuclear weapons. It takes a long time to build and bring online. It doesn't scale down. Finally, Kasachstan is the major producer of Uranium. Yay?

thangalin 6mo ago
> It's dangerous. For millenia. See https://www.jlab.org/news/releases/jefferson-lab-tapped-lead-technology-development-exploring-nuclear-waste-treatment https://www.jlab.org/news/releases/jefferson-lab-tapped-lead... > Partitioning and recycling of uranium, plutonium, and minor actinide content of used nuclear fuel can dramatically reduce this number to around 300 years.
- hvb2 6mo ago
  The word CAN is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. Let's not pretend like the track record of energy production is free of externalities. We CAN also produce almost all of our plastics from recycled ones. We don't, because those are more expensive than new.
  - XorNot 6mo ago
    But who cares? Plastic in stabilized landfill is behaving better then the oil in the ground it was manufactured from. It doesn't matter.
  - tialaramex 6mo ago
    One reason new plastic is so cheap is that we wanted the other parts of the oil to run automobiles and planes. So if we stop doing that suddenly recycling the plastic makes more sense too...
AnthonyMouse 6mo ago
> You can't quickly change the amount of power it generates. Which is what you need if you want to use it together with dirt cheap solar. You always need something in the grid that can change the amount of power it generates regardless of what you use in combination with it, because the demand from the grid isn't fixed. All grids need something in the nature of storage/hydro or peaker plants. The advantage of combining solar with nuclear is that their generation profiles are different. Nuclear can generate power at night and doesn't have lower output during the peak seasonal demand period for heating. Nuclear is baseload; it doesn't make sense to have more of it than the minimum load on the grid, but no one is really proposing to. The minimum load is generally around half of the maximum load. > It's very expensive. In fact, noone knows how expensive it will end up being after a couple thousand of years. If you actually reprocess the fuel there is no "couple thousand of years". If you instead put it in a dry hole in the desert, you have a desert where nobody wanted to live to begin with that now has a box of hot rocks sealed in it. It's not clear how this is supposed to cost an unforeseeable amount of money. > Vulnerable to terrorism. Nuclear plants are kind of a hard target. The stuff inside them isn't any more of a biohazard than what's in a thousand other chemical/industrial plants that aren't surrounded in thick concrete. > Enabler of nuclear weapons. The US already has nuclear weapons and would continue to do so regardless of how much electricity is generated from what sources. The argument against building nuclear reactors in Iran is not an argument against building nuclear reactors in Ohio. > It takes a long time to build and bring online. Better get started then. > It doesn't scale down. Decent argument for not having one in your house; not a great argument for not having one in your state. > Finally, Kasachstan is the major producer of Uranium. Yay? The country with the largest uranium reserves is Australia. Kazakhstan is #2 and has about the same amount as Canada. Other countries with significant reserves include Russia, India, Brazil, China, Ukraine and several countries in Africa. The US has some itself and plenty of other places to source it. It can also be extracted from seawater. The US is also in the top 4 for thorium reserves with about 70% as much as the #1 (which is India), and thorium is 3-4 times more abundant overall than uranium.

iso1631 6mo ago

Get a drought and you have to shut them down, ask France. "Base load" is just some nonsense from nuclear fans to get the cost per GWh down.

hunterpayne 6mo ago
Base load is an industry term coined by the very engineers who make the grid work. But I'm sure a random poster on an Internet forum knows more than the engineers who actually do the work. PS France has the cleanest grid in Europe
- iso1631 6mo ago
  https://www.pembina.org/blog/baseload-myths-why-we-need-change-how-we-look-our-grid https://www.pembina.org/blog/baseload-myths-why-we-need-chan...

swiftcoder 6mo ago

Nuclear doesn't really solve this particular problem - solar is already cheaper than nuclear, so no one is going to replace their entire solar capacity with nuclear. And nuclear doesn't spin up/down rapidly like natural gas, so its a lousy solution for nighttime.

XorNot 6mo ago
This is just wrong. Nuclear is perfectly fine for nighttime because nighttime is highly predictable and doesn't fluctuate very much. My state (NSW, Australia) for example uses no less then 6 GW at all times of day. Variable load is on top of that during the day. If we had 6GW of nuclear plants, our grid would be almost completely green and they'd run at 100% utilization.
- ViewTrick1002 6mo ago
  Now calculate what it costs running a nuclear plant only at night. You’ll end up at $400 per MWh excluding transmissions costs, taxes etc. Your state already has coal plants forced to become peakers or be decommissioned because no one wants their expensive electricity during the daytime. Let alone a horrifyingly expensive new built nuclear plant. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-10-13/australian-coal-plant-in-extraordinary-survival-experiment/104461504 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-10-13/australian-coal-plant...
  - XorNot 6mo ago
    Not what I was responding to. Saying nuclear plants can't ramp for predictable night time demand is wrong. Nuclear plants can't do instant demand response, but they can absolutely respond over windows of several hours.
    - ViewTrick1002 6mo ago
      But not economically. And it can’t ramp twice. Once is easy. For the French to do load following they sync their entire fleet to manage it. Letting plants take turns and spread out where they are in their fuel cycle.

peterashford 6mo ago

Over-provisioning with renewables is cheaper

hunterpayne 6mo ago
Which of course is why the countries that do that the most have the highest energy costs in the world. And just for fun, they usually have some of the dirtiest grids because of all the drawbacks of renewables.

direwolf20 6mo ago

Nuclear takes a week to restart after a shutdown, due to xenon poisoning. It's not reliable base load.

jcattle 6mo ago

For countries that can reliably get to 99% hydro, save for some exceptional droughts, "build nuclear" is about the worst advice you can give them.

leonidasrup 6mo ago
Building dams is not without environmental costs especially in water stressed regions. Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam has long been a source of tension between Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt. https://www.dw.com/en/gerd-grand-ethiopian-renaissance-dam-sparks-water-concern-in-egypt-sudan/a-73886547 https://www.dw.com/en/gerd-grand-ethiopian-renaissance-dam-s... Motuo Hydropower Station - will overtake the Three Gorges dam as the world's largest. The project has attracted criticism for its potential impact on millions of Indians and Bangladeshis living downriver, as well as the surrounding environment and local Tibetans. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gk1251w14o https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gk1251w14o
- red-iron-pine 6mo ago
  "a source of tension" is a understatement. might have have caused a war, and still could.

1718627440 6mo ago

Like you wrote you can use nuclear as a base load. It's not really useful as a short-term backup for when other plants don't work. If you need batteries and excess power for backup, you might as well create the excess power without nuclear if you can.