171–180 of 252 posts
Where have all the "what do you do when the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine" commenters gone?
Where are the comments about „molten-salt reactors dont need any of that”. And a closed water loop. China builds them on a desert and we cannot build them anywere in Europe due to plain stupidity.
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It's not matter of "can", it's a matter of "how much does it cost?" and "who pays for that?".
Precisely why the Netherlands does not have nuclear power plants. Cheap coal. Cheap oil. Cheap gas. And now cheap wind and solar. They just absolutely cannot math the math which leaves ideology and this ain't France.
Beyond that, those resources are also the lifeline for a dictatorship in the east causing increase defense spending.
There definitely is no such thing as cheap gas, oil or coal for Europeans, all things considered
Where have all the "what do you do when the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine" commenters gone?
Don't solar panels have the same problem with heat?
When your solar panels are hot is noon in the summertime which is when you have way more solar power than you need anyway. Most grids that have substantial solar power are getting saturated with solar power at that time and running everything else at minimum capacity.
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>we cannot build them anywere in Europe due to plain stupidity. Economics I think. Nuclear power has gone bankrupt in France already (arguably more than once) and gotten bailed out. Now they produce electricity at a price that's often above market price, with losses covered by the taxpayers. This despite relying on cheap cooling from rivers. Adding more expensive cooling won't help. We've quite recently reached mass…
Solar panels keep getting better and cheaper every year. Can't say the same for nuclear.
(Do you know what else reduces costs? Apparently, putting a foot of graphite at the bottom of your control rods and not paying close attention to a dangerously unstable reactor during an unusual experiment. These aren't official American policy yet.)
Also, the USA's recent ban on solar electricity equipment should help make other forms more competitive.
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>we cannot build them anywere in Europe due to plain stupidity. Economics I think. Nuclear power has gone bankrupt in France already (arguably more than once) and gotten bailed out. Now they produce electricity at a price that's often above market price, with losses covered by the taxpayers. This despite relying on cheap cooling from rivers. Adding more expensive cooling won't help. We've quite recently reached mass…
> Now they produce electricity at a price that's often above market price Do you have any source? I'm not french and all I can hear from the news is that France's nuclear electricity is cheap, for example: https://thenextweb.com/news/france-energy-advantage-ai-data-... Now I'm curious what the truth is. Are these articles just fake-news trying to ride the AI wave? (not suggesting, just asking)
French nuclear electricity is cheap because the government subsidizes it to keep it afloat. And because continental European electricity is generally expensive. It probably wouldn't survive in a free market.
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Hungary is flat as hell, there's nowhere to build enough hydro storage. But yeah batteries would be nice.
You can do low(er) head pumped hydro storage [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludington_Pumped_Storage_Power...
Large lake means more losses, mainly due to evaporation, but seepage is also to be expected. Now put this fact in the thread's context: water shortage/stress...
So nuclear isn't the solution after all.
Nuclear without greed is fine. Its only where shortcuts have been taken with cooling that there will be issues.
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> sometimes fossil fuels are a good fit There is simply NO safe level of fossil fuel use.
There’s applications that we still have no alternative for though - e.g. aviation - so we’ll have to accept the burning of hydrocarbons there. Not fossil hydrocarbons forever, of course, but synthetic kerosene might be a thing soon enough.
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i thought it was pretty clear, personally.
It's unsafe so it's never a good fit? That kind of reasoning is just noise. Unsafe for what? Compared to what? What alternatives, given the constraints, exist?
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You can do low(er) head pumped hydro storage [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludington_Pumped_Storage_Power...
Can't speak for Hungary specifically, but the problem with flat terrain wrt hydro storage isn't just elevation difference - which can be offset with flowrate - it's the large surface area to storage and to depth ratios. Large lake means more losses, mainly due to evaporation, but seepage is also to be expected. Now put this fact in the thread's context: water shortage/stress...
But doesn't adding a large reservoir mitigate both? You're not pumping the entire reservoir up and down hill every day.