161–170 of 205 posts
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Compared to heat pumps and renewables? I see it as very unlikely.
Heat pumps aren't great above 80°C more-or-less.
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The problem with nuclear is that every dollar spent on nuclear could have displaced more fossil energy if invested in renewables. Any investment in nuclear prolongs the climate crisis. The next problem nuclear faces is that the CAPEX heavy economic model requires them to run at 100% all the time, they used to be able to do that but renewables undercut them wildly. Now you start to lower the capacity factor of the nuc…
> The problem with nuclear is that every dollar spent on nuclear could have displaced more fossil energy if invested in renewables. Any investment in nuclear prolongs the climate crisis. Every dollar spent on nuclear, or every dollar spent on gratuitous nuclear regulation? Renewables kill many more people and render far more land uninhabitable per kWh generated; if we normalized our safety requirements then we'd turn…
Ehh what. None of this is true.
> Germany switched their policy away from nuclear and the result is they've spent more money (just look at the cost of the required grid upgrades alone from their renewable programme) and generated more CO2 (with coal plants being kept open past planned shutdowns, and in some cases even restarted).
The great thing is that we are in 2023 and not 15 years ago. Germany spearheaded the renewable transition with the subsidies and huge buildout they enabled. Today we can utilize the fruits of that.
We make choices based on the options today, not past results.
> There's plenty of space for renewables in the mix, but opposing nuclear doesn't mean more money gets spent on renewables and certainly doesn't mean more emission reduction; quite the opposite.
Then the money gets spent on other economic activity, rather than siphoning state subsidies to a pet nuclear project.
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The problem with nuclear is that every dollar spent on nuclear could have displaced more fossil energy if invested in renewables. Any investment in nuclear prolongs the climate crisis. The next problem nuclear faces is that the CAPEX heavy economic model requires them to run at 100% all the time, they used to be able to do that but renewables undercut them wildly. Now you start to lower the capacity factor of the nuc…
The market should deploy the cheapest grid possible that can produce emission free energy. We should be using those market forces. The problem that we have is that governments steps in to subsidize grid stability. Industries and citizens in general do no accept a government that allows for black outs, and they also do not accept a government that allow the energy price to reach the natural market price when supply is…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_Emissions_Tradi...
You are missing the time factor. Supplying 90% means that a vast majority of time they fulfill 100% and the expensive storage is not required. All based on the marginal price market Europe employs.
The storage would still be needed, but it is not the marginal cost and maybe storage is not the right path? Maybe it is sector coupling? Maybe it is demand response from hydrogen production for industrial use? Maybe it is not charging most cars for a couple of days?
As with all capitalistic systems a holistic organic approach will emerge. If it is not good enough adjust the market conditions. Sweden is already putting most stabilization services on an open market, with the goal to trade all day-ahead like power.
Pulling out a five-year plan of having nuclear solve it in 20 years will only lead to pain.
So glad we finally designated the permanent repository for nuclear waste in the United State. /s Since the waste will almost certainly not be accepted by another state, I would like to know where it will be stored in Georgia. I have some guesses, based on the demographics of adjacent populations, but perhaps the many HN nuclear boosters have some specifics?
Step 1. Build a swimming pool somewhere in the US Step... There is no other steps. Don't overthink it. A couple of hot bricks every 5 years isn't something to freak out about.
Fission is not a clean chemical reaction, this is the spread of the atomic masses for different kinds of fission processes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fission#/media/File:Th...
This is great news. Although disappointing how long it took. Still hoping for a nuclear resurgence. Between this and all the EV factories coming online in GA, GA will have quite the impact on climate goals.
We will literally have a very minor impact even if the entire globe goes 100% renewable for everything from home heating, lighting, aircraft, cars, trucks, maritime transport and rail. And in order to do a fraction of that (say only USA goes 100% electric) we would need to significantly scale up strip mining and dig deep into the earth. All of that industrial activity takes more energy than wind and solar can provide…
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So you propose having nuclear plants in standby? Then I have a bridge to sell you.
No, decarbonize the grid the way France did it. Don’t follow Germany’s example. It’s that simple.
Have a look at this crudely drawn graph to see the nuclear French cost over time with Flamanville 3 added as a cherry on top:
On the other hand Germany has gone from about zero to 50% renewables while spearheading the renewable market. Sure, personally I would prefer if they had closed fossil generation before nuclear, but Fukushima threw a wrench in that plan.
To not utilize the fruits of Germany's efforts today would be insane. We are making decisions 2023, not 2005.
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Does that price include enough storage to heat the entire Twin Cities area (~4M people) for six continuous weeks of average -20C weather with overcast skies, where power failure means widespread death and property damage (broken pipes)? It might do, I don't know, but I'm skeptical. That's a lot of power! My gut feeling is a baseload solution is better for that kind of situation, though what I'm really advocating for…
Nope. The only "cost-competitive" solar+storage installations I've seen lack sufficient storage to maintain their advertised overnight--even after a perfect, sunny day! For solar with sufficient storage to handle consecutive cloudy days (when panel production is can't handle consecutive cloudy days requires redundant backup capacity... which, oddly, is never priced in! In 20 years I think we'll look back on this idea…
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Nope. The only "cost-competitive" solar+storage installations I've seen lack sufficient storage to maintain their advertised overnight--even after a perfect, sunny day! For solar with sufficient storage to handle consecutive cloudy days (when panel production is can't handle consecutive cloudy days requires redundant backup capacity... which, oddly, is never priced in! In 20 years I think we'll look back on this idea…
But at a grid scale we don't need a single installation to provide continuous power and it wouldn't necessarily make sense for it to do so. Load is not uniform across the day and other sources may be cheaper at any particular moment.
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You have fallen into a trap. You are informed enough to be concern-trolled by fossil fuel propaganda, but not well-enough informed to realize it. Many battery technologies need no fancy metals. Even lithium is optional. But lithium, even if we have to get it, has an environmental footprint far smaller than fossil fuels production. Other things that have dramatically larger environmental footprints than lithium includ…
Oh stop with the strawman attacks and wake up. You're being fed bs by your side just as much as the oil industry feeds their "constituents" lies. Big Green energy is backed by massive amounts of money and political interests just like big oil and it's not even close to replacing fossil fuels as a main energy source. All you need to do is ask Europe how things are going now that they don't have natural gas coming in f…
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If solar and wind are better then thats what we should do. I wish though that even 1 of the many many trillions in debt we racked up went to nuclear plants. we could have had dozens of plants. prices would probably have gone done if there was a large supply chain and workforce after the first few plants
France had negative learning when attempting to scale up their nuclear industry. Assuming strong learning effects is not given. Nuclear has had 70 years of intense subsidies, and are still far from competing on the open market. > The French nuclear case illustrates the perils of the assumption of robust learning effects resulting in lowered costs over time in the scale-up of large-scale, complex new energy supply tec…
