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Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power
141–150 of 306 posts
Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
So in the winter everyone just freezes to death since they can't afford heat? That's a solution?
You'd obviously have to limit the price fluctuations for consumer contracts. But currently I'm just starting the dishwasher or washing machine when I fill them, but I don't care when they're done as long as it's within ~12 hours. In many places I can get cheaper electricity at night and save a bit by running them then. But with renewables surplus might happen at any time of day, not just at night. A smart meter combi…
It just seems to me like as we move all the very heavy energy consumption like transportation and heating from oil and gas to electricity, small gains like your washing machine are going to be negligible.
I'm from a country where in the north the sun goes down for good for a few weeks in the winter. We've managed until now with nuclear but those are all nearing end-of-life and are being shut down and we have no alternatives ready.
Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
If there is "excess" energy given away for free, mining cryptos, by definition, would not be profitable. Instead, solar and wind generators can simply decrease production (in milliseconds) when not needed.
Plenty of crypto mining places using old hydroelectric dams around the world. It also means the maintenance of said hydroelectric dams are paid for. Even oil companies are looking at ways to harness the energy from burning gases on oil rigs for crypto mining. In a way, crypto is turning the world greener by not wasting energy. https://bitcoin.ca/canada-just-got-a-huge-new-bitcoin-mining... https://www.cbc.ca/news/can…
Fine, except that that is completely false. Crypto mining mainly runs on carbon-emitting generation, much of it stolen where that is easiest, and actively speeds arrival of climate catastrophe.
Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power
#144This is great, and hopefully it will stop the premature shutdown of existing nuclear reactors. But it's pretty tiny climate news overall. Nuclear reactors are aging out and nobody in Western Europe or the US seems to know how to build in a cost competitive way anymore. Deploying 5GW of solar and storage, or 3-4GW of wind, is far easier, faster, and cheaper than trying to build a new reactor, which won't come on line…
It's not that simple. People quote low prices for renewables today that we might be scoffing at in 50 years just like we scoff at the early claim that "nuclear power is too cheap to meter" Specifically, you can't compare a nuclear reactor that delivers predictable power to solar and wind systems that deliver power when they want to deliver power. Germany has already had episodes where the spot price for electricity w…
> The story for storage looks better than it ever has but it is still orders of magnitude more expensive more expensive than it needs to be to be practical.
Source on this claim, please.
Strange that this "orders of magnitude more expensive than it needs to be to be practical" technology is seeing massive growth: https://www.google.com/search?q=energy+storage+market+growth
Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
So in the winter everyone just freezes to death since they can't afford heat? That's a solution?
There should be some limit on how far the price varies, but it is an illusion, that electricity costs the same independent of time. For normal household appliances, there isn't too much flexibility - you need light, when it is dark, cook for the meals etc. But with heating and especially with electric cars, flexible costs make a lot of sense. Even more in the industry, which is the larger consumer of electricity and…
> Even more in the industry, which is the larger consumer of electricity and needs incentives, to shape there consumption on availability, as far as it makes sense
The shape of consumption is going to be - industry flees the country, and goes somewhere cheaper (and dirtier)
Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cookiewalled video is on the channel Sabine Hossenfelder (German theoretical phycisist), titled "Is Nuclear Power Green?" The conclusion chapter transcription: > What speaks in favor of nuclear is that it's climate-friendly, has a small landuse and creates power on demand. What speaks against it is that it's expensive and ultimately not renewable. The disadvantages could be alleviated with new technologies, but it's…
What I'm missing in this conclusion is weighing it against other options. At all. Sure, it's expensive. It is also expensive as compared to buying farmland for solar panels and getting food from elsewhere? And as compared to finding enough people that are okay with wind turbines nearby? (If you can't just get it all from the sea of course.) From my point of view we ought to work on both fronts, I'm not sure this was…
In general, solar is not in the same category of energy generation as nuclear because it can't carry the base load of the energy grid, because it is so inconsistent.
We do not currently have a general-purpose battery for solar and wind that could power the grid when they stop producing. (Some regions can through pumped storage hydro.)
Nuclear compares against base-load power sources: coal, gas, oil, hydro, geothermal.
Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power
#147This is great, and hopefully it will stop the premature shutdown of existing nuclear reactors. But it's pretty tiny climate news overall. Nuclear reactors are aging out and nobody in Western Europe or the US seems to know how to build in a cost competitive way anymore. Deploying 5GW of solar and storage, or 3-4GW of wind, is far easier, faster, and cheaper than trying to build a new reactor, which won't come on line…
> Deploying 5GW of solar and storage, or 3-4GW of wind, is far easier, faster, and cheaper than trying to build a new reactor, Source? The largest grid scale batteries to date don't come close to the numbers you are talking about. The largest operational deployment gives a paltry 0.4 GW and can only sustain that for a few hours[1]. People love to hand wave away storage, but it is a monumental and unsolved problem. [1…
We already know that only a very small fraction of storage will ever be batteries, initially enough for load-leveling and eventually for evening peaking.
We also know that money put into storage before enough renewables have been built out to displace fossil generation and charge the storage is money wasted that could have been spent building out generation capacity. When storage becomes a good use of money, it will be much, much cheaper to build. Pointing to not much storage built out yet is a shuck.
Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not that simple. People quote low prices for renewables today that we might be scoffing at in 50 years just like we scoff at the early claim that "nuclear power is too cheap to meter" Specifically, you can't compare a nuclear reactor that delivers predictable power to solar and wind systems that deliver power when they want to deliver power. Germany has already had episodes where the spot price for electricity w…
Pumped storage combined with solar and wind isnt orders of magnitude more than nuclear power. It's still cheaper. Fengning is less than half the cost of a nuclear plant and delivers twice as much power. It's a very effective battery. Pumped (or indeed, any kind of) storage just isnt very economic when youve got oodles of cheap, dispatchable gas. Nuclear power almost always exists to help prop up military nuclear requ…
The geology needed for pumped storage is incredibly expensive and difficult, the vast majority of the world can't do it and would be even more expensive than nuclear.
Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
Base power is nice, but I think we need to be more creative in setting up infrastructure that can work with varying price.
So in the winter everyone just freezes to death since they can't afford heat? That's a solution?
Why not spend the winter somewhere naturally warm?
Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power
#150This is great, and hopefully it will stop the premature shutdown of existing nuclear reactors. But it's pretty tiny climate news overall. Nuclear reactors are aging out and nobody in Western Europe or the US seems to know how to build in a cost competitive way anymore. Deploying 5GW of solar and storage, or 3-4GW of wind, is far easier, faster, and cheaper than trying to build a new reactor, which won't come on line…
> nobody in Western Europe or the US seems to know how to build in a cost competitive way anymore Given the huge subsidies for nuclear reactors, did they ever know? Regardless of the environmental merits, it’s not a cheap technology, and due to the limited number of reactors built it’s not exactly a competitive market either. At least at this point in time, building new reactors is necessarily slow and expensive.
And, by the time one can be completed, it will be unable to compete with other generation built and deployed since the project started. Bidding only at night, it is even less competitive, because costs are 24/7, so prices would need to be 3x higher.