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Nuclear energy is clean

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Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#241

Post by p1mrx »

bob1029 wrote: post #220
Panzer04 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Batteries are more "inertia" than any rotational generator could ever hope to be. Inertia is only a concept because the grid has traditionally relied on rotational generators (which do have inertia). It's by no means necessary for the functioning of a power grid - isolated inverters don't need it, nor do portable rotational generators. It's useful in traditional grids because we didn't have electronics that could mor…

Even with synthetic inertia supplied by every inverter, you will still eventually run into a situation where the system begins to oscillate wildly if you do not have enough spinning mass.

What does a large spinning mass do that a computer-controlled inverter with batteries cannot?

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#242

Post by samatman »

throw827474737 wrote: post #76
bob1029 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Solar has less single points of failure and if it fails not much happens On the surface this is very true. However, types of solar have caveats that do not manifest until you have a certain amount of utilization in the grid. Photovoltaics do not contribute to inertia. This is the Newtonian concept that ensures instantaneous voltage stability separate from any active demand/generation management functions. The more…

> Photovoltaics do not contribute to inertia. This is the Newtonian concept that ensures instantaneous voltage stability separate from any active demand/generation management functions. Wait what, Newton's inertia was about physical objects, not voltage stability? You talking base vs peak demand or what?

The rotors of electrical generators are physical objects, with inertia.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#243

Post by lmm »

runarberg wrote: post #150
lmm wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how does that compare to the business-as-usual shutdowns of solar (every night, cloudy days, winter as a whole) which unlike nuclear are highly correlated between separate plants? If storage is cheap enough then solar will be an important part of the mix. But unless you have the right geography for geothermal or hydro (which probably means flooding a bigger area than the chernobyl exclusion zone before you've eve…

I heard somewhere that the base load of power is an mostly an outdated concern at this point. As more homes get solar and offload their excess power back into the grid during the the daytime. Reducing the baseload to negative. https://www.nrdc.org/experts/kevin-steinberger/debunking-thr...

You have to read these partisan pieces carefully. When they say "a mix of renewables and natural gas can x", they actually mean "natural gas can x" - but burning natural gas emits CO2. And a 30% wind grid in Texas worked out right until it didn't (the media blamed it all on lack of "winterization" which may be the immediate cause, but the fact is that the high wind mix meant the grid was having to work a lot harder and is one of the biggest underlying causes).

For all that article's efforts to quibble with definitions, the fact is that a grid that is all or mostly renewables (except for hydro and geothermal, which are great for the places that are suitable for them, but not available everywhere) will have blackouts. Lots of things can be demand-managed but lots of things can't. If you want electricity to be available 24/7 then the grid absolutely does need to "overpay" for generators that are available 24/7 (and sure, nuclear plants have unexpected shutdowns like anything else, but those outages are going to be uncorrelated with each other), and whether you call that "baseload" or some other term is neither here nor there.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#244

Post by pfdietz »

m2fkxy wrote: post #215
KennyBlanken wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wind and solar coupled with energy storage systems, all of which have been plunging in price like a rock over the last twenty years.

What large scale energy storage systems are in operation today, or even ready to be rolled out? I quote myself under another of your comment: > Why does Germany performs abysmally wrt. electrical production carbon intensity despite having enough wind/solar installed capacity to cover their consumption?

Grid connected batteries are being installed all over the place.

And now hydrogen storage is being rolled out too. The hydrogen storage project in Delta, Utah could ultimately (when the salt formation there is fully utilized) store enough hydrogen to supply the entire US average grid power demand for 30 hours.

BTW, electrolyzers from China are now being sold to the international market for $0.30/W. Their prices are crashing just like PV did.

> Germany

Some combination of difficulty of dislodging incumbents whose capital cost is sunk, and political implications from parts of society depending on coal mining. They should have been building more renewables, I agree, and it's too bad for them now that they didn't.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#245

Post by runarberg »

mgfist wrote: post #127
Flocular wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is just to show that nuclear isn't a magical always-on power source that some of the pro-nuclear folks make it out to be. Also: we can install twice the capacity in MW for solar and still have money left over to put into a smarter grid or storage compared to nuclear.

The big con for a solar/battery grid isn't the cost, it's the raw materials. We need an absurd amount of copper/lithium/cobalt etc.. and we need to be mining orders of magnitudes more than we do now.

That is not a proven fact. We probably need more silicon for the solar cells. But there is nothing about lithium ion batteries which makes them our only good choice for storing energy from renewables. Gravity is probably our best energy storage at present, there is also nickle metal hydrade for home storage, and in the near future we are probably gonna be looking at molten salt batteries (e.g. calcium-antimony liquid-metal batteries) for large scale storage. We are probably only gonna need to mine the lithium and cobalt for our consumer electronics (including electric cars). For public transit systems that can’t connect to the power grid for some reason, there is always hydrogen fuel-cells.

So no, we are not going to be needing an absurd amount of any one mineral (except maybe silicon) as they all have alternatives which quite often are even better then lithium and cobalt.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#246

Post by sva_ »

joak wrote: post #165

There is this idea that nuclear is not being deployed because people have a wrong perception of risks. However, the main reason is the economy. The costs of solar, wind and batteries are dropping exponentially but the costs of nuclear are not improving. We can blame regulation and the hypothetically wrong public perception about safety, but the reality is that costs cannot go down easily because of the innovation dyn…

Indeed, we should rather put all our hopes in generating energy from a resource that can/will be disrupted by a small volcanic eruption.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#247

Post by p1mrx »

tcfhgj wrote: post #197
credit_guy wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just math. If you have a storage solution where you can recoup you capital costs by charging every day and selling electricity every night, you will recoup only one hundredth of that if you charge one day and sell 100 days later. Currently the capital costs of batteries add a few cents to the kWh (the average price of 1 kWh in the US in 2021 was 14 cents). If you multiply that number by one hundred, you end up w…

Logical fallacy: Every storage technology is scaled up/down linearly in terms of cost from a daily to monthly or even higher cycle Another thing: Demand based power consumption

"Demand based consumption" is a fancy way to say shortage.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#248

Post by pfdietz »

MisterMower wrote: post #226
m2fkxy wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We need the very fastest ways to reduce carbon generation Why does Germany performs abysmally wrt. electrical production carbon intensity despite having enough wind/solar installed capacity to cover their consumption?

Yeah, it’s nice how he just glosses over the impact of subsidies for wind and solar. We could power the whole grid with wood stoves and steam turbines with big enough subsidies. The fact that a heavily subsidized energy production method outperforms a heavily regulated and unsubsidized one shouldn’t be surprising to anyone.

Globally solar and wind are blowing away the competition. Is that ALL subsidized? Of course not. They have really gotten cheaper.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#249

Post by pfdietz »

thatfrenchguy wrote: post #98
TheDong wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hydroelectric dams typically cause even more damage when they fail, but I rarely see people worrying about whether using them for power will lead to war-time issues. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dam_failure Of course, the Geneva Convention bans attacking dams, just like it bans attacking nuclear power plants. The pollution from burning coal has already killed more people than nuclear disasters conceivably could. If…

The other issue with solar/wind of course being that it’s not a suitable electricity source for base load on a grid :-/

Of course it is, with suitable storage. And probably cheaper than nuclear for that.

https://model.energy/

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#250

Post by pfdietz »

MisterMower wrote: post #229
desindol wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If one more reactor goes down nuclear isn’t either in your country. Germany has to run their load balancing gas plants right now to fix your nuclear fever dreams.

And what is the probability of a reactor going down unexpectedly versus a weather event that causes renewable sources to stop producing? I think we learned the answer to that question last winter down in Texas.

You back up the renewables with hydrogen-burning combined cycle plants.

A combined cycle plant costs around $1/W. A nuclear power plant costs around $10/W.

Why do you want to spend so much more money than you have to, just so you can split atoms?

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