521–530 of 818 posts
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When your argument depends on all existing trends reversing, that tells us all we need to know about your conclusion.
You seem to ignore the fact that existing trends were artificially manipulated to suppress the nuclear energy use.
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Note that none of these exotic storage systems have ever actually been deployed commercially. Yes, liquid nitrogen is used for things like cooling. But no one has deployed a grid-scale storage system using liquid nitrogen. Liquid hydrogen has been used in rocket launches, but has not been used for energy storage. These technologies are mature in applications besides energy storage . They are not at all mature in the…
You can insist until you are blue in the face that these are all untried and exotic, but you will be wrong throughout. And you know you are wrong as you say it. If in fact they were exotic and untried, billions of dollars would not already be committed to factories to produce them in industrial volume. The processes involved are used industrially billions of times worldwide every day. You only wish they were exotic b…
Yes, for purposes different from energy storage. The massive amounts of ammonia synthesized through the Haber process for fertilizer production does nothing to demonstrate ammonia's viability for electric grid storage.
Likewise the hydrogen used in space rockets has no bearing on the feasibility of electrolyzing water, storing the hydrogen, and converting it back to electricity. If anything, the fact that most hydrogen is produced through steam reformation highlights the difficulties of electrolysis at scale.
We have plenty of experience with flywheels. Almost every car has a flywheel in it. Does that mean it's guaranteed to be extremely cheap and scalable to store electricity by spinning a bunch of giant flywheels? That's the kind of leap you're making here.
When someone actually builds and operates a facility that takes in electricity, produces ammonia, and then taps that stored ammonia to produce electricity later, then we can actually measure real-world cost of such a storage system. Until then, it's just optimistic predictions. And optimistic predictions don't actually store any energy.
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Sure, if we have all our electricity produced through non intermittent sources we don't need grid storage. EVs charge from the grid and drive around just fine. Nobody doubts that. But if we are going to predominantly use intermittent energy sources we'd need massive amounts of grid storage. Delivering this through batteries is not feasible. We need to conserve battery supply for things that cannot be directly powered…
For me, this is the biggest part of the debate. It's not whether solar is up to the task or not, it's whether supply chains can support solar. From what we've seen, no, they cannot. You can provision the solar plant and the storage array, but there likely just won't be enough panels or batteries being produced to build it. Pumped hydro storage is only viable in some places, and from what it seems to me all the other…
Funny article in that it doesn't discuss lifecycle costs. A side-by-side comparison of the cost of grids powered by nuclear power plant relative to those powered by wind/solar/storage is what I'd expect to see from a 'paper of record' like the NYTimes. Except in some specific cases (Finland, other Arctic regions with long periods of low sunlight) I'm pretty sure this cost comparison comes down firmly on the side of w…
>Except in some specific cases (Finland, other Arctic regions with long periods of low sunlight) I'm pretty sure this cost comparison comes down firmly on the side of wind/solar/storage. Storage is the main cost barrier for 100% renewable-powered grids, but this is also an area where technological development is possible. Why the progress is possible only for Solar and storage and in your opinion not possible for nuc…
Funny article in that it doesn't discuss lifecycle costs. A side-by-side comparison of the cost of grids powered by nuclear power plant relative to those powered by wind/solar/storage is what I'd expect to see from a 'paper of record' like the NYTimes. Except in some specific cases (Finland, other Arctic regions with long periods of low sunlight) I'm pretty sure this cost comparison comes down firmly on the side of w…
On what basis do you make this assertion?
Because when it comes to renewables, I very rarely see any inclusion of the costs of additional large scale energy storage (probably because it still remains an unsolved issue) and I never see any inclusion of the cost of new transmission lines from any new renewables site.
The Germans have invested billions upon billions in becoming wholly renewable, with miles of new grid infrastructure (but next to no energy storage) and they are still at the mercy of Russian gas supplies... and dependant upon French nuclear power.
It's time to face reality and start investing in fission again, at least until fusion becomes a viable alternative.
Funny article in that it doesn't discuss lifecycle costs. A side-by-side comparison of the cost of grids powered by nuclear power plant relative to those powered by wind/solar/storage is what I'd expect to see from a 'paper of record' like the NYTimes. Except in some specific cases (Finland, other Arctic regions with long periods of low sunlight) I'm pretty sure this cost comparison comes down firmly on the side of w…
Everybody always says that solar + storage is cheaper. And sometimes there are even studies to support it. But if that's true where is it ?
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You seem to ignore the fact that existing trends were artificially manipulated to suppress the nuclear energy use.
"The fact". I think not.
"Has Russia Been Financing Western Environmentalism?" (2022) [1]
"Putin Is Funding Green Groups to Discredit Natural Gas Fracking" (2017) [2]
"German green group branded a Russian ‘puppet’ over Nord Stream II gas pipeline" (2021) [3]
[1]: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18330/russia-funding-envi...
[2]: https://www.newsweek.com/putin-funding-green-groups-discredi...
[3]: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/german-green-group-brande...
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> it's been >70 years of nuclear power and there still does not exist a long term storage facility in the world It's bizarre how anti-nuclear activists point at problems caused by anti-nuclear activism and ask, like Eric Andre, "how could nuclear power do this?"
Even a superficial glance would tell you that this doesn't make sense. We have had >70 years of peaceful nuclear power. A significant anti nuclear movement has existed for maybe 40 years and it has clearly not been influencial until maybe the last 20 years. So why has the nuclear power industry not solved the issues in the first 30 years? Moreover, why has France which hasn't had a significant antinuclear movement ev…
The insurance issue is similar identical to other energy sources. Why isn't hydro power insured in the case of accidental flooding? If they were it wouldn't be possible to run them at current energy prices. We don't see fossil fuel plants being insured against increased air pollution, nor do they have to pay if people around them get sick. If a hydrodam causes a flood, then there will be a flood. Hopefully those people downstream has their own insurance.
Funny article in that it doesn't discuss lifecycle costs. A side-by-side comparison of the cost of grids powered by nuclear power plant relative to those powered by wind/solar/storage is what I'd expect to see from a 'paper of record' like the NYTimes. Except in some specific cases (Finland, other Arctic regions with long periods of low sunlight) I'm pretty sure this cost comparison comes down firmly on the side of w…
Is the environmentalist lobby ready to allow the amount of mining required to produce the copper, nickel, cobalt, and aluminum needed to support going "100% renewable asap"?
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I agree that hydrogen efficiency doesn't matter here, but the capital expenditure to build a giant electrolyzer with 5% utilization doesn't really make sense. The cost of the electrolyzer is the things that needs to greatly fall if hydrogen is going to be used for long-term storage.
Electrolyzers driven by otherwise curtailed renewables would have a capacity factor much higher than 10%. If I go to https://model.energy/ and solve for the optimal solution for the US for 2011 weather and 2030 cost assumptions, the capacity factor of the electrolyzers is 43%.