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Nuclear is also in practice significantly geographically dependent. Cities basically won't let you put a nuclear power station within a stone's throw, never mi
by tialaramex 6mo ago
Nuclear is also in practice significantly geographically dependent.
Cities basically won't let you put a nuclear power station within a stone's throw, never mind in their midst. Have you ever visited London? There's a wonderful modern art gallery, on the side of the Thames called Tate Modern, and it has this enormous space which is called the "Turbine Hall". Huh. Tate Modern's shell was a 300MW oil fired power station named "Bankside". They burned tonnes of oil right in the heart of London until the 1980s to make electricity. People weren't happy about it, but they designed, built, and operated the station because although any fool can see there's toxic smoke pouring out of it into your city, electricity is pretty useful.
In practice nuclear power stations get built somewhere with abundant cheap water, far from population centres yet easily connected to the grid. England has more places to put a Nuke than say, a Hydro dam, but they are not, as you've suggested, "geographically independent", unlike say solar PV which doesn't even stop you grazing animals on the land or parking vehicles or whatever else you might want to do.
- Manuel_D 6mo agoWhat you're describing is substantially different than, say, attempting to build a dam in a flat place with no rivers. "It can function here, but people choose not to" is a very different kind of geographic restrictions than "it is physically impossible for it to work here" Nuclear power is definitely more geographically independent than solar. There's easily a factor of 3 or 4 difference in output between a solar panel in Australia vs Northern Europe: https://www.altestore.com/pages/solar-insolation-map-for-the-world?srsltid=AfmBOoqj6T38MhutG1MX6gYLBJMUHAYfznnRe31rB7DY66vjVXAxJYt https://www.altestore.com/pages/solar-insolation-map-for-the... The only thing a nuclear plant - any thermal plant for that matter - requires is cooling. But that doesn't need to be freshwater. It can be seawater or waste-water, like the Palo Verde plant.
- rootusrootus 6mo ago> There's easily a factor of 3 or 4 difference in output between a solar panel in Australia vs Northern Europe That only really matters if there is some constraint preventing you from building a proportionally larger array at the northern latitudes.
- Manuel_D 6mo agoNo, you cannot just build a larger array. That map doesn't effectively capture the intermittency of solar energy in different climates. In Britain the country gets less than 8 hours of energy during peak winter. It also often goes with overcast skies for extended periods of time. A bigger array does not solve these extended periods of non-production.
- rootusrootus 6mo agoI do not think anyone is suggesting a pure solar solution.
- Manuel_D 6mo agoYour reply to me quite explicitly suggested that countries in far northern latitudes just build a proportionally larger array: > That only really matters if there is some constraint preventing you from building a proportionally larger array at the northern latitudes.
- rootusrootus 6mo agoI was replying to the assertion that the difference in power density at different latitudes was a deal breaker.
- esseph 6mo agoIt absolutely can be. Solar would even be harder hit in a place like Alaska, with the dual whammy of very cloudy and overcast for 9-10 months, and then so far north that the sun just barely sits on the horizon, which makes gathering sunlight very hard (very directional, 60deg angle panel, limited positioning). Works fine in summer of course, that's just a 2mo or so window.
- themanualstates 6mo agoToday, around 1/3 of homes in the Netherlands have rooftop solar, accounting for 21% of total electric energy consumption. Compare and contrast to the stats for 2013, when solar power made up just 0.16% of overall electricity generation and a negligible 0.96% of residences were fitted with PV systems. The UK and NL are time zone neighbours, so I'd argue solar energy / duration are close also. Apparently the sun keeps shining in winter or with overcast skies regardless. Initially I also had my doubts, but it seems we've got solar everywhere before the nuclear power mega projects are done with construction. Take the European Pressurised Reactor. A French 'mass production' design from 1995, constructed starting 2005 in Finland, and commissioned in 2023. France got theirs running in 2025. China managed to generate electricity from a European Pressurised Reactor just a tad earlier, back in 2018, but the stats are filled with inaccuracies. The mass production hype has been exceptionally farcical, considering we ended up with only three units.