Nuclear energy is by far the most expensive form of energy. Also, the nuclear waste problem remains unresolved.
Nuclear is back on the table for a green future
461–470 of 818 posts
Re: Nuclear is back on the table for a green future
#462It's not that we don't have nuclear power plants, nuclear fuel, and nuclear technology.
One problem is that France's nuclear industry has committments to use something like 2/3rds of the world's reserves of Uranium Ore.
Another problem is, we've had 3 once-in-1000 years accidents in 40 years. By my calculations, the entire world will be a radioactive waste dump in 250,000 years, given the rate of land contamination by nuclear accidents.
Why do nuclear cheerleaders ignore this fact? They must.
Re: Nuclear is back on the table for a green future
#463Earlier quoted context omitted.
The thing is, 183GW from PV is like 20-30GW of nuclear, because nuclear's capacity factor is near 100% and PV's is often near 10%. Storage seems hard and expensive. We're going to need a whole lot of approaches: - Wind taking a bigger share of renewables - Whatever storage we can reasonably build, including some exotic stuff like power-to-gas-to-power. - Nuclear filling in a little bit - PV comically overbuilt and ro…
PV throwing off excess during peak is fine - if we have storage. Storage is has only recently become feasible, it would likely be utility-grade storage, Powerwall/home storage or Vehicle2Grid integration by the 2050 timeframe. Storage cost being excessive means it's early adoption timeframe. As the need for it becomes clear options will open up.
> PV throwing off excess during peak is fine
PV throwing off excess during peak is fine even if we don't have storage, because it means PV is adequate for a bigger fraction of the morning and evening (and in turn, the needs for storage become a little less because of the over-provisioning of production).
Re: Nuclear is back on the table for a green future
#464Earlier quoted context omitted.
Mining of what? Hydrogen as storage medium for example doesn't require all that much mining. Are you assuming storage will be in the form of Lithium batteries?
I'm assuming currently proven tech of batteries. And we need to act now for climate change, with current tech. Electricity to H2 to electricity has horrendous efficiency (about 20% at most IIRC). We'd be much better off CO2-speaking using it to replace coal in steel production, and replace gas in fertilizer production. Both of which are proven tech (but not globally deployed, as coal and gas are cheap)
Where are you getting that 20% number from?
https://www.irena.org/-/media/Files/IRENA/Agency/Publication...
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/round-trip-...
The round trip efficiency is 30% or more and rising with better electrolysis and reverse electrolysis being developed.
Re: Nuclear is back on the table for a green future
#465Nuclear energy is by far the most expensive form of energy. Also, the nuclear waste problem remains unresolved.
And, waste is the least of its problems.
Re: Nuclear is back on the table for a green future
#466Earlier quoted context omitted.
The global supply chains for lithium batteries are already struggling to keep up just with current demand. Where are we going to get enough cobalt? Hopefully not DR Congo.
>Where are we going to get enough cobalt? Nobody would use this kind of lithium ion battery for grid storage. Instead use Lithium Iron Phosphate (LiFePo4) batteries- no cobalt needed. LiFePo4 batteries are absolutely good enough right now for grid storage.
And any sort of lithium battery is the most expensive storage.
Utilities are not generally in a habit of reflexively choosing the most expensive alternative, even if some have plumped for nukes in places where ratepayers have no say.
Re: Nuclear is back on the table for a green future
#467Earlier quoted context omitted.
Mining of what? Hydrogen as storage medium for example doesn't require all that much mining. Are you assuming storage will be in the form of Lithium batteries?
Personally, I expect something made with iron or sodium to take over. For hydrogen, we have to solve the horrible cycle efficiency of its storage. It's not so bad for use as a fuel (e.g. for airplanes), but as static storage hydrogen is currently a very bad choice.
Cycle efficiency is trivially resolved by feeding in more zero-opex power.
But hydrogen efficiency is improving as fast as all renewable tech.
Re: Nuclear is back on the table for a green future
#468Earlier quoted context omitted.
And district heating systems. Where a 1-2GWh thermal accumulator will be used.
District heating systems distribute heat, usually scavenged from a power plant. They don't store heat really - they do in a pedantic sense in that heat is "stored" in the distribution pipelines, but not in the sense of a battery. And they don't transfer heat at gradients large enough to generate electricity effectively.
They store heat in the sense that one of the components is a giant thermal accumulator.
Re: Nuclear is back on the table for a green future
#469Earlier quoted context omitted.
The global supply chains for lithium batteries are already struggling to keep up just with current demand. Where are we going to get enough cobalt? Hopefully not DR Congo.
Batteries will be a negligible fraction of utility storage, so that is moot.
Why? What will the rest be?
Re: Nuclear is back on the table for a green future
#470Earlier quoted context omitted.
Regardless of how you're generating your power, you're going to need to overprovision your generation capacity slightly to account for downtime. You only need storage if all of your generation capacity is offline at the same time, which is inevitable with solar power (nighttime), possible with gas (pipeline failure?), but less inherently likely with nuclear. > backup fossil fuel In practice this means fossil fuels be…
I sincerely believe that HVDC is a game changer here, it allows you to move energy around at a fraction of the losses that were considered normal before allowing for overcapacity in one place to be used elsewhere eliminating a major requirement for storage, on that scale there is no lack of combined sun/wind availability.
Anyway transmission losses are immaterial when top-line generating capacity is so cheap.
China is building solar in Chile, at their antipodes, and a transmission line back to China with only 50% loss, for solar energy through the night.