this is great, but couldn't a future cabinet undo this? best to save the applause for when it's built and operational
Or, hold it until they come to their senses and build out massively more productive renewables.
"What is base load?"
Sweden’s incoming cabinet says new nuclear reactors will be built
81–90 of 583 posts
Re: Sweden’s incoming cabinet says new nuclear reactors will be built
#82Quoted post unavailable.
If you believe that, you're probably in a cult. The most extreme climate models don't predict anything you could reasonably characterize as "won't be a planet left."
Not to start this whole flamewar but I was totally in the other camp (not yours) and then covid hit and now my trust in consensus science is super worn out and have basically started to believe it might be fine.
Re: Sweden’s incoming cabinet says new nuclear reactors will be built
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
How exactly will you be 100% renewable during a cloudy and windless period with solar and wind?
Quoted post unavailable.
The comment you are replying to was not "trolling"; it raised a legitimate, technical objection to a policy in a manner that invites constructive responses (for example, "with storage technology" is a common response I see).
Re: Sweden’s incoming cabinet says new nuclear reactors will be built
#84The only green solution to our current energy problem is more nuclear power plants. We have to stop relying on coal, wood, oil, gas and the rest of the “dirty” materials.
Except nuclear is expensive and takes decades to build, runs on non renewable materials (a good percentage of which come from Russia), leaves waste that is deadly for 100.000s of years, and promising new technologies will need decades to reach maturity. Now why is it so great compared to, say, solar or geothermal?
Oh wait! And will stop working if your rivers should run dry, as happened in France this summer.
Oh and! May not be so easy to build, supposing not everyone loves the technology as much as you do. Google Wackersdorf.
Edit: of course, you assume you’d be able to run your power plants safely throughout their life span, even if cough a natural disaster were to occur nearby.
Re: Sweden’s incoming cabinet says new nuclear reactors will be built
#85The only green solution to our current energy problem is more nuclear power plants. We have to stop relying on coal, wood, oil, gas and the rest of the “dirty” materials.
Except nuclear is expensive and takes decades to build, runs on non renewable materials (a good percentage of which come from Russia), leaves waste that is deadly for 100.000s of years, and promising new technologies will need decades to reach maturity. Now why is it so great compared to, say, solar or geothermal?
Wind and hydro are probably more practical in Sweden.
Geothermal is not having a heyday because it depends on the same sort of expensive-to-operate steam turbines as nukes do, so is uncompetitive.
Anytime steam turbines have to compete with no steam turbines, the steam turbines tend to lose.
Re: Sweden’s incoming cabinet says new nuclear reactors will be built
#86Typical right-wing reactionary environmental policy. When you do not have any climate-related politics to bring to the table, all you do is shout "nuclear" at the top of your lungs and tote it as the solution to everything climate.
> Much of the resistance towards 100% Renewable Energy (RE) systems in the literature seems to come from the a-priori assumption that an energy system based on solar and wind is impossible since these energy sources are variable. Critics of 100% RE systems like to contrast solar and wind with ’firm’ energy sources like nuclear and fossil fuels (often combined with CCS) that bring their own storage. This is the key point made in some already mentioned reactions, such as those by Clack et al. [225], Trainer [226], Heard et al. [227] Jenkins et al. [228], and Caldeira et al. [275], [276].
> However, while it is true that keeping a system with variable sources stable is more complex, a range of strategies can be employed that are often ignored or underutilized in critical studies: oversizing solar and wind capacities; strengthening interconnections [68], [82], [132], [143], [277], [278]; demand response [279], [172], e.g. smart electric vehicles charging using delayed charging or delivering energy back to the electricity grid via vehicle-to-grid [181], [280]–[282]; storage (battery, compressed air, pumped hydro)[40]–[43], [46], [83], [140], [142], such as stationary batteries; sector coupling [16], [39], [90]–[92], [97], [132], [216], e.g. optimizing the interaction between electricity, heat, transport, and industry; power-to-X [39], [106], [134], [176], e.g. producing hydrogen at moments when there is abundant energy; et cetera. Using all these strategies effectively to mitigate variability is where much of the cutting-edge development of 100% RE scenarios takes place.
> With every iteration in the research and with every technological breakthrough in these areas, 100% RE systems become increasingly viable. Even former critics must admit that adding e-fuels through PtX makes 100% RE possible at costs similar to fossil fuels. These critics are still questioning whether 100% RE is the cheapest solution but no longer claim it would be unfeasible or prohibitively expensive. Variability, especially short term, has many mitigation options, and energy system studies are increasingly capturing these in their 100% RE scenarios.
Re: Sweden’s incoming cabinet says new nuclear reactors will be built
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
Dr Angela Merkel holds a PhD in quantum physics. she stands by her cabinets decision to leave nuclear energy in densely populated Germany, as per a recent interview. renewables will provide for 80% of Germanies energy needs by 2030, and close enough to 100% in 2050.
How exactly will you be 100% renewable during a cloudy and windless period with solar and wind?
Pumped hydro storage, batteries, and/or long-distance grid interconnection. It's not often overcast in the Sahara, as far as I know, and solar power imported from far to the east and west can mitigate the day/night cycle problem.
It's reasonable to keep ICE power plants around as an emergency backup; if you have to use them for a week in January or when infrastructure breaks for whatever reason it's not the end of the world. Ideally things would run smoothly enough that they'd never be used.
Re: Sweden’s incoming cabinet says new nuclear reactors will be built
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
Something like 40% of the "renewable" energy being generated in the EU/Britain comes from burning wood, a lot of which was shipped from the US.
I don't think most reasonable people count biomass in with renewable (at least not large scale biomass). e.g. this website https://grid.iamkate.com/ has biomass in "other" along with nuclear and pumped hydro storage.
The people setting Germany's energy policy are not reasonable, unfortunately.
Re: Sweden’s incoming cabinet says new nuclear reactors will be built
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
so they get compensated if they have to close it even so the government payed them to build it. this sound like a bad deal. Tax payers pay for the whole thing and the owner gets even more money if they have to close it for whatever reason. I don't think coal is the answer but germany didn't do enough for renewables during the last 10 years when we knew we would shut down the nuclear plants. So now evrybody uses bad m…
No civil nuke plant has ever been operated, anywhere in the world, without massive government subsidies, or by coercing ratepayers to pay well above market rates. Looks like the Swedish public will be on the hook for subsidies for decades more while the rest of Europe (France and Romania perhaps excepted) coasts on renewables at ever plunging prices.
> coasts on renewables at ever plunging prices.
I hope they can coast through the winter using those renewables.
Re: Sweden’s incoming cabinet says new nuclear reactors will be built
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
Except nuclear is expensive and takes decades to build, runs on non renewable materials (a good percentage of which come from Russia), leaves waste that is deadly for 100.000s of years, and promising new technologies will need decades to reach maturity. Now why is it so great compared to, say, solar or geothermal?
Wind and hydro are probably more practical in Sweden. Geothermal is not having a heyday because it depends on the same sort of expensive-to-operate steam turbines as nukes do, so is uncompetitive. Anytime steam turbines have to compete with no steam turbines, the steam turbines tend to lose.
Maybe so, but that doesn’t mean anyone should use nuclear. Perhaps we could come up with ways to distribute renewable energy globally?