5 ms·

> Ontario itself A need for more baseload to work with the large amount of solar and wind that Ontario has added in the last 10 years. Chasing baseload is a fo

> Ontario itself A need for more baseload to work with the large amount of solar and wind that Ontario has added in the last 10 years. Chasing baseload is a fool's game. You will always have a mismatch between power needed and power produced. Power storage is necessary to move excess power produced to times of excess power need. e.g., shave the peaks to fill the valleys. Any storage reduces the need for baseload and peaker plants. 4-6 hrs move daytime excess solar to fill evening needs. Overnight baseload excess can refill the batteries to cover the morning excess need before solar fully kicks in. Expanding battery capacity to 8-12 hours further reduces the need for expensive power sources such as nuclear and gas.

phil21 3mo ago
Your power storage is the Uranium fuel, which is a better battery than batteries. Much denser and lasts longer. In a sanely designed grid you overprovision non-reliable renewables like solar and wind to provide your peak daytime usage and nuclear (or hydro if you are lucky enough) takes up the rest during the night and when wind is not blowing. Batteries to further flatten the duck curve and provide grid firming as required. Then you have fallback to nuclear and load shedding programs for rare seasonal issues solving that last 1-3% that is incredibly expensive with non-dispatchable power sources. No need to build natural gas plants that sit idle 95% of the time. You overbuild solar since it's basically free from a capex standpoint and use that to charge your batteries when the sun shines. This lets you maximize capital investment over your entire generating fleet while still providing relatively cheap and - most importantly - reliable power for industrial usage. Of course, the choice society has made to make nuclear exceedingly expensive might make it pencil out that it's cheaper to subsidize natural gas. But I think that's naive and foolish for the long run. Nuclear waste would be the other large remaining issue, but again - society chose to create that problem and not solve it. It's not technical in nature. Batteries have no reasonable path forward for seasonal storage in many locations in the world. Nuclear does. Solving overnight storage is simply not interesting, as it's the easy problem to solve. tldr; Build it all. Nuclear, solar, wind, batteries, and hell - even natural gas as a last resort.
- awesome_dude 3mo ago
  > Nuclear waste would be the other large remaining issue, but again - society chose to create that problem and not solve it. It's not technical in nature. Care to explain, I've never seen a genuine solution that goes beyond hand waving, bad faith arguing, and aggressiveness.
  - zdragnar 3mo ago
    For one thing, nuclear power plants produce much less waste than most people imagine. Waste can also be reprocessed into new fuel, further reducing it. In the US, we have a suitable site that has been authorized and cancelled for 20 some years now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_repository https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_r... The reasons it keeps being cancelled, and the waste is stored on-site at nuclear plants instead, is purely political and nothing to do with the technological or safety aspects, according to the GAO.
    - awesome_dude 3mo ago
      I've never understood how people think "less" solves the issue, it's not negligible and asking to increase the number of plants surely increases the waste. Reprocessing, isn't infinite. There's going to be waste to deal with. You've not presented any technical solutions, instead you made it political by claiming that's the only problem. Do you have an actual understanding of the problems or are you just pushing nuclear because it's aligning with you politically Edit: it's clear from the down votes i am getting that this is political, not technical. If you're down voting with no technical understanding you're political.
      - fc417fc802 3mo ago
        I think it is you who hasn't bothered to do basic research before forming an opinion. I suggest at least skimming the wikipedia page on radioactive waste. [0] There's also a page documenting the various national management plans. [1] > I've never understood how people think "less" solves the issue, it's not negligible ... It just needs to be little enough that the cost of constructing long term storage space isn't cost prohibitive. The amount produced is something like 25 to 30 tons per GW per year before reprocessing; after reprocessing it's something like ~5% of that. Unfortunately I couldn't readily find numbers for the dilution rate when vitrifying the waste for geological disposal. Regardless, that amount is almost nothing when considered in terms of volume. A full size shipping container is somewhere between 75 and 108 cubic meters depending on which standard you prefer. To give a rough idea that equates to ~180 (US) tons of borosilicate glass (one of the materials commonly used to vitrify high level waste) on the low end (assuming I got the math right). There are also alternative disposal methods to consider such as breeder reactors (rather expensive at present) or horizontal drillholes. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-level_radioactive_waste_management#National_management_plans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-level_radioactive_waste_m...
chongli 3mo ago
We're talking about Ontario. I live in Ontario. The sky is overcast 8 months of the year. We're not building enough storage to charge for 4 months and drain for 8.
- theptip 3mo ago
  You have wind right?
  - chongli 3mo ago
    Overcast winter days tend to be very calm as well. These are periods of minimal solar+wind generation and maximal heating demand. Having a grid with no baseload generation and only storage is going to spell disaster during extended cold+calm periods. Rolling blackouts when it’s -30C outside…
- brainwad 3mo ago
  Ontario _already_ gets a quarter of its power from storage, in the form of hydro. If you add some pumps you can use the existing dam capacity more.
  - chongli 3mo ago
    Adding pumps isn’t the same as adding battery storage. More batteries means more peak power. Peak power for hydro is limited by the peak power output of the turbines, not the dam capacity.
red75prime 3mo ago
The massive solar overcapacity that is required to deal with seasonal variation and the massive energy storage make this endeavor much more costly than nuclear. For example, in Denmark[1] a solar-dominated grid would cost around 565 EUR/MWh. A nuclear-dominated grid would cost around 141 EUR/MWh. [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544226009837 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S036054422... Fig. 3
- magicalist 3mo ago
  > For example, in Denmark[1] a solar-dominated grid would cost around 565 EUR/MWh. A nuclear-dominated grid would cost around 141 EUR/MWh. That's not what it says. It says that would be the cost assuming the current grid and power came from only solar or only nuclear. The majority of the cost then is for overprovisioning and storage, especially to handle the lack of sun in the winter. The actual low cost power comes from mixes of renewables, that they note nuclear can't compete with (especially in their hypothetical future energy system with things like scheduled EV charging). They give an example of offshore wind (66%), solar (8%), CCGT (26%) (primarily natural gas) for 66 EUR/MWh, or, restricting to biomass for the gas plant: offshore wind (84%), solar (13%), CCGT (3%) at 99 EUR/MWh. (it's also worth noting that this is for Denmark. Something like 98% of Canadians live south of Denmark's southernmost line of latitude).
  - looofooo0 3mo ago
    There is not enough wind capacity in most countries
  - red75prime 3mo ago
    I chose those numbers to emphasize the system cost. Too many people go "Solar panels are cheap! Why don't we have them everywhere?" That's why.
    - brainwad 3mo ago
      Even then, the costs came down 10x in a decade, so it seems foolish to commit to nuclear which has no prospects of getting cheaper.
Manuel_D 3mo ago
You don't need storage if you have enough non-intermittent power to satisfy peak load. Canada uses 1,500 GWh of electricity per day. 12 hours of storage is 750 GWh of storage. Estimated for grid storage costs range from $125 to $250 per kwh for fully installed and connected systems (not just the cost of the cells alone). At $200/KWh Canada would be looking at $150 billion for 12 hours of storage.
troupo 3mo ago
> Chasing baseload is a fool's game. You will always have a mismatch between power needed and power produced. That's why all modern (aka the last 40-50 years or so) nuclear reactors are capable of changing power output at 3-5% of nameplate capacity per minute: https://www.oecd-nea.org/upload/docs/application/pdf/2021-12/technical_and_economic_aspects_of_load_following_with_nuclear_power_plants.pdf https://www.oecd-nea.org/upload/docs/application/pdf/2021-12... This way you don't need to ridiculously overbuild solar and wind, and you have a better guarantee for power supply. Especially in colder climates: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48640358 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48640358 > Overnight baseload excess can refill the batteries to cover the morning excess need before solar fully kicks in. Expanding battery capacity to 8-12 hours further So, at best 20 hours of power supply from storage?
- myrmidon 3mo ago
  > nuclear reactors are capable of changing power output at 3-5% of nameplate capacity per minute This is not a technical problem, but nuclear plants already struggle to compete on cost of energy when running 24/7. Every minute such a plant runs at less than nominal output, those already bad economics grow worse.
  - mpweiher 3mo ago
    They actually do not. Struggle, that is. But yes, it absolutely makes more sense to run those plants 24/7 at 100% capacity. And we have base-load that matches this reliable generating capacity very well. The 40%-60% base load absolutely should be provided by nuclear if you don't have hydro (and even if you have hydro, some nuclear still makes sense). The remainder should almost certainly be a mix: some more reliable nuclear, some storage, some wind, some solar.
    - cycomanic 3mo ago
      That's not how electricity markets operate. Say you have 100GW demand (number are not in any way related to reality) and your Nuclear plant has a capacity of 50 GW. However it's a sunny day and solar is producing 80 GW. That solar will be producing at a much lower price, so no one is interested in buying that extra expensive 30 GW from the Nuclear plant (I'm glancing a bit over how pricing works exactly, but it comes to the same thing). So either you restrict the amount of solar that can be produced or you subsidize the Nuclear prices. Both solutions are increasing prices for idiological reasons. If we do that might as well invest in solutions that are on exponential trajectories, like solar and battery. The whole baseload argument when talking about renewables is a strawman. Both intermittent (like solar and wind) and constant output (like Nuclear) are baseload technologies, despite working very differently. Both require over provisioning, on demand sources or storage. It does not make any sense to bet on a solution that despite significant subsidise over almost 70 years has failed to produce any exponential count reduction, if the other solution is on an exponential curve right now.
mpweiher 3mo ago
Baseload is a large part of the total load, so it absolutely makes sense to provide solid plants that can run predictably at close to 100% capacity for most of the time (maintenance and occasional outages excepted). Storage can paper over the unreliability problems of the intermittent producers to some extent, but at relatively high cost for comparatively short amount of times. Filling constant demand with intermittent producers + storage does not make sense.

phil21 3mo ago

Your power storage is the Uranium fuel, which is a better battery than batteries. Much denser and lasts longer. In a sanely designed grid you overprovision non-reliable renewables like solar and wind to provide your peak daytime usage and nuclear (or hydro if you are lucky enough) takes up the rest during the night and when wind is not blowing. Batteries to further flatten the duck curve and provide grid firming as required. Then you have fallback to nuclear and load shedding programs for rare seasonal issues solving that last 1-3% that is incredibly expensive with non-dispatchable power sources. No need to build natural gas plants that sit idle 95% of the time. You overbuild solar since it's basically free from a capex standpoint and use that to charge your batteries when the sun shines. This lets you maximize capital investment over your entire generating fleet while still providing relatively cheap and - most importantly - reliable power for industrial usage. Of course, the choice society has made to make nuclear exceedingly expensive might make it pencil out that it's cheaper to subsidize natural gas. But I think that's naive and foolish for the long run. Nuclear waste would be the other large remaining issue, but again - society chose to create that problem and not solve it. It's not technical in nature. Batteries have no reasonable path forward for seasonal storage in many locations in the world. Nuclear does. Solving overnight storage is simply not interesting, as it's the easy problem to solve. tldr; Build it all. Nuclear, solar, wind, batteries, and hell - even natural gas as a last resort.

awesome_dude 3mo ago
> Nuclear waste would be the other large remaining issue, but again - society chose to create that problem and not solve it. It's not technical in nature. Care to explain, I've never seen a genuine solution that goes beyond hand waving, bad faith arguing, and aggressiveness.
- zdragnar 3mo ago
  For one thing, nuclear power plants produce much less waste than most people imagine. Waste can also be reprocessed into new fuel, further reducing it. In the US, we have a suitable site that has been authorized and cancelled for 20 some years now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_repository https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_r... The reasons it keeps being cancelled, and the waste is stored on-site at nuclear plants instead, is purely political and nothing to do with the technological or safety aspects, according to the GAO.
  - awesome_dude 3mo ago
    I've never understood how people think "less" solves the issue, it's not negligible and asking to increase the number of plants surely increases the waste. Reprocessing, isn't infinite. There's going to be waste to deal with. You've not presented any technical solutions, instead you made it political by claiming that's the only problem. Do you have an actual understanding of the problems or are you just pushing nuclear because it's aligning with you politically Edit: it's clear from the down votes i am getting that this is political, not technical. If you're down voting with no technical understanding you're political.
    - fc417fc802 3mo ago
      I think it is you who hasn't bothered to do basic research before forming an opinion. I suggest at least skimming the wikipedia page on radioactive waste. [0] There's also a page documenting the various national management plans. [1] > I've never understood how people think "less" solves the issue, it's not negligible ... It just needs to be little enough that the cost of constructing long term storage space isn't cost prohibitive. The amount produced is something like 25 to 30 tons per GW per year before reprocessing; after reprocessing it's something like ~5% of that. Unfortunately I couldn't readily find numbers for the dilution rate when vitrifying the waste for geological disposal. Regardless, that amount is almost nothing when considered in terms of volume. A full size shipping container is somewhere between 75 and 108 cubic meters depending on which standard you prefer. To give a rough idea that equates to ~180 (US) tons of borosilicate glass (one of the materials commonly used to vitrify high level waste) on the low end (assuming I got the math right). There are also alternative disposal methods to consider such as breeder reactors (rather expensive at present) or horizontal drillholes. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-level_radioactive_waste_management#National_management_plans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-level_radioactive_waste_m...

chongli 3mo ago

We're talking about Ontario. I live in Ontario. The sky is overcast 8 months of the year. We're not building enough storage to charge for 4 months and drain for 8.

theptip 3mo ago
You have wind right?
- chongli 3mo ago
  Overcast winter days tend to be very calm as well. These are periods of minimal solar+wind generation and maximal heating demand. Having a grid with no baseload generation and only storage is going to spell disaster during extended cold+calm periods. Rolling blackouts when it’s -30C outside…
brainwad 3mo ago
Ontario _already_ gets a quarter of its power from storage, in the form of hydro. If you add some pumps you can use the existing dam capacity more.
- chongli 3mo ago
  Adding pumps isn’t the same as adding battery storage. More batteries means more peak power. Peak power for hydro is limited by the peak power output of the turbines, not the dam capacity.

red75prime 3mo ago

The massive solar overcapacity that is required to deal with seasonal variation and the massive energy storage make this endeavor much more costly than nuclear. For example, in Denmark[1] a solar-dominated grid would cost around 565 EUR/MWh. A nuclear-dominated grid would cost around 141 EUR/MWh. [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544226009837 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S036054422... Fig. 3

magicalist 3mo ago
> For example, in Denmark[1] a solar-dominated grid would cost around 565 EUR/MWh. A nuclear-dominated grid would cost around 141 EUR/MWh. That's not what it says. It says that would be the cost assuming the current grid and power came from only solar or only nuclear. The majority of the cost then is for overprovisioning and storage, especially to handle the lack of sun in the winter. The actual low cost power comes from mixes of renewables, that they note nuclear can't compete with (especially in their hypothetical future energy system with things like scheduled EV charging). They give an example of offshore wind (66%), solar (8%), CCGT (26%) (primarily natural gas) for 66 EUR/MWh, or, restricting to biomass for the gas plant: offshore wind (84%), solar (13%), CCGT (3%) at 99 EUR/MWh. (it's also worth noting that this is for Denmark. Something like 98% of Canadians live south of Denmark's southernmost line of latitude).
- looofooo0 3mo ago
  There is not enough wind capacity in most countries
- red75prime 3mo ago
  I chose those numbers to emphasize the system cost. Too many people go "Solar panels are cheap! Why don't we have them everywhere?" That's why.
  - brainwad 3mo ago
    Even then, the costs came down 10x in a decade, so it seems foolish to commit to nuclear which has no prospects of getting cheaper.

Manuel_D 3mo ago

You don't need storage if you have enough non-intermittent power to satisfy peak load. Canada uses 1,500 GWh of electricity per day. 12 hours of storage is 750 GWh of storage. Estimated for grid storage costs range from $125 to $250 per kwh for fully installed and connected systems (not just the cost of the cells alone). At $200/KWh Canada would be looking at $150 billion for 12 hours of storage.

troupo 3mo ago

> Chasing baseload is a fool's game. You will always have a mismatch between power needed and power produced. That's why all modern (aka the last 40-50 years or so) nuclear reactors are capable of changing power output at 3-5% of nameplate capacity per minute: https://www.oecd-nea.org/upload/docs/application/pdf/2021-12/technical_and_economic_aspects_of_load_following_with_nuclear_power_plants.pdf https://www.oecd-nea.org/upload/docs/application/pdf/2021-12... This way you don't need to ridiculously overbuild solar and wind, and you have a better guarantee for power supply. Especially in colder climates: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48640358 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48640358 > Overnight baseload excess can refill the batteries to cover the morning excess need before solar fully kicks in. Expanding battery capacity to 8-12 hours further So, at best 20 hours of power supply from storage?

myrmidon 3mo ago
> nuclear reactors are capable of changing power output at 3-5% of nameplate capacity per minute This is not a technical problem, but nuclear plants already struggle to compete on cost of energy when running 24/7. Every minute such a plant runs at less than nominal output, those already bad economics grow worse.
- mpweiher 3mo ago
  They actually do not. Struggle, that is. But yes, it absolutely makes more sense to run those plants 24/7 at 100% capacity. And we have base-load that matches this reliable generating capacity very well. The 40%-60% base load absolutely should be provided by nuclear if you don't have hydro (and even if you have hydro, some nuclear still makes sense). The remainder should almost certainly be a mix: some more reliable nuclear, some storage, some wind, some solar.
  - cycomanic 3mo ago
    That's not how electricity markets operate. Say you have 100GW demand (number are not in any way related to reality) and your Nuclear plant has a capacity of 50 GW. However it's a sunny day and solar is producing 80 GW. That solar will be producing at a much lower price, so no one is interested in buying that extra expensive 30 GW from the Nuclear plant (I'm glancing a bit over how pricing works exactly, but it comes to the same thing). So either you restrict the amount of solar that can be produced or you subsidize the Nuclear prices. Both solutions are increasing prices for idiological reasons. If we do that might as well invest in solutions that are on exponential trajectories, like solar and battery. The whole baseload argument when talking about renewables is a strawman. Both intermittent (like solar and wind) and constant output (like Nuclear) are baseload technologies, despite working very differently. Both require over provisioning, on demand sources or storage. It does not make any sense to bet on a solution that despite significant subsidise over almost 70 years has failed to produce any exponential count reduction, if the other solution is on an exponential curve right now.

mpweiher 3mo ago

Baseload is a large part of the total load, so it absolutely makes sense to provide solid plants that can run predictably at close to 100% capacity for most of the time (maintenance and occasional outages excepted). Storage can paper over the unreliability problems of the intermittent producers to some extent, but at relatively high cost for comparatively short amount of times. Filling constant demand with intermittent producers + storage does not make sense.