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Bill Gates promises to add his own billions if Congress does nuclear power push

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Re: Bill Gates promises to add his own billions if Congress does nuclear power push

#191

Post by justatdotin »

javagram wrote: post #108
learnstats2 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear power is way slower than current generation renewables.

The energy storage problem isn’t solved for current generation renewables as far as I know. Laying out a ton of solar panels everywhere is great but if we have rolling blackouts when it’s too cloudy for a while people will be very upset.

At home, some of my excess power is syphoned off to neighbours, but I'm also using an amazing energy storage technology called batteries. Our government has just announced a number of new large-scale battery farms, as already deployed in neighbouring states.

Re: Bill Gates promises to add his own billions if Congress does nuclear power push

#192

Post by eigenvector »

antt wrote: post #183
eigenvector wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of all, a high spot price is not in itself a problem as long as the high price lasts only for a short time and effectively brings needed capacity online. Where you have a serious problem is when spot prices spike, no one responds and load-shedding starts. I appreciate that SA has actually got to the point of load-shedding several times now, which is indicative of a severe problem. However, saying that renewable…

>First of all, a high spot price is not in itself a problem as long as the high price lasts only for a short time and effectively brings needed capacity online. Where you have a serious problem is when spot prices spike, no one responds and load-shedding starts. I appreciate that SA has actually got to the point of load-shedding several times now, which is indicative of a severe problem. As you should well know being…

I agree that a 100% renewable grid is not economical at this time. Nor is 90%, nor 80%. The question is where the threshold lies for the maximum amount of renewable generation we can accommodate while maintaining reliability and delivering power at an economical price for consumers.

That number is going to vary in different grid systems based on the size of the balancing area, the strength and resiliency of the transmission system and amount of storage available. Balancing areas with large amounts of hydro-storage will be able to accommodate more renewables, as will those that connect 10s of thousands of MW or more.

This isn't about physics and math. It's about SA being a very small grid where contingencies (both transmission and unit trip) dominate reliability planning. There are grids operating with the same level of renewable penetration as SA or more that have never experienced load shedding.

SA could accommodate perhaps one large nuclear power plant. And then the entire system design would be dictated by unit tripping contingencies. The cost of planning the system to prevent load-shedding when a 500+ MW unit trips at that plant would be massive. Nuclear is not a panacea for system security.

Please don't generalize the problems of a very unique and small system to the rest of the world. SA has unique challenges as a vast and sparsely populated region that don't exist in Europe, Asia or even most of North America. ERCOT has run with 40% wind penetration on a 44 GW system, and they've done it cheaper than anyone can build nuclear today.

Re: Bill Gates promises to add his own billions if Congress does nuclear power push

#193

Post by arduanika »

philsnow wrote: post #89
simplecomplex wrote: post #75

We already have enough land to power the entire US with solar. The future is renewables not pushing the can down the road with Nuclear, ignoring all of its negative externalities. Bill Gates doesn’t need government to build solar either.

Can the united states procure enough gallium, cadmium, selenium, indium, and whatever else to build enough solar panels ?

A Tom Lehrer fan, I see

Re: Bill Gates promises to add his own billions if Congress does nuclear power push

#194

Post by 666lumberjack »

justatdotin wrote: post #180
javagram wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the article, Bill Gates’ company is using a technology called TWR which is different from the fission reactors you mention. According to Wikipedia, “TWRs could theoretically run, self-sustained, for decades without refueling or removing spent fuel.” Agreed that the failure to finish and activate Yucca Mountain is ridiculous. Alternatively, we could be using that spent fuel in other reactors as I believe…

ah yes, those theoretical reactors are so much better than real ones.

Like the theoretical super-cheap batteries needed to make renewables actually practical as a comprehensive replacement for fossil fuel energy?

Re: Bill Gates promises to add his own billions if Congress does nuclear power push

#195

Post by darkerside »

marcosdumay wrote: post #161
darkerside wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Perhaps we're trading one devil for another, but the devil we know is not sustainable Trading the devil you know for the one you don't is wisely considered a bad idea

That certainly depends on how devilish are the one you know and a random one. Any advice on that level of generality is useless and better trashed.

The whole point is, you don't know how devilish the random one is. As bad as global warming will be, we know the risks and we can prepare for them. Whether we'll actually do that is another matter..

Re: Bill Gates promises to add his own billions if Congress does nuclear power push

#196

Post by eigenvector »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #179
eigenvector wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of all, a high spot price is not in itself a problem as long as the high price lasts only for a short time and effectively brings needed capacity online. Where you have a serious problem is when spot prices spike, no one responds and load-shedding starts. I appreciate that SA has actually got to the point of load-shedding several times now, which is indicative of a severe problem. However, saying that renewable…

> It seems the system operator has been relying on reliability services provided by large synchronous generators without actually pricing and creating a market for those services, which has caused them to disappear with coal retirements and leave the power system in a chronically insecure state. In order for the market to ensure both day-ahead generation adequacy and as well as real-time operating reserve margin for…

It's more than just frequency response, though. After reading some of the event reports from South Australia, some of them are caused by a simple lack of generation adequacy (demand exceeded capacity for a sustained period due to generation unplanned outages) and others by transmission contingencies (cascading failure caused by a transmission line going out of service). These aren't problems that batteries solve per se but yes, the future definitely has more batteries in it.

Re: Bill Gates promises to add his own billions if Congress does nuclear power push

#197

Post by [deleted] »

eigenvector wrote: post #196
toomuchtodo wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It seems the system operator has been relying on reliability services provided by large synchronous generators without actually pricing and creating a market for those services, which has caused them to disappear with coal retirements and leave the power system in a chronically insecure state. In order for the market to ensure both day-ahead generation adequacy and as well as real-time operating reserve margin for…

It's more than just frequency response, though. After reading some of the event reports from South Australia, some of them are caused by a simple lack of generation adequacy (demand exceeded capacity for a sustained period due to generation unplanned outages) and others by transmission contingencies (cascading failure caused by a transmission line going out of service). These aren't problems that batteries solve per…

[deleted]

Re: Bill Gates promises to add his own billions if Congress does nuclear power push

#198

Post by arduanika »

philipkglass wrote: post #126
arduanika wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Utility scale renewables are less labor-intensive than coal or nuclear over the full life cycle It's hard to marshal evidence for or against this claim, since as you say, the newest renewable technologies are in the earliest stages of their life cycles. It's also hard to defend or refute claims about the cost of renewables at scale, since they're currently such a small fraction of energy production. Are we looking…

Or, how quickly will we exhaust the geothermal sites, the dam-able rivers, and the rare minerals that go into batteries and solar panels? With present technology geothermal is going to be a niche source. Hydroelectric generation is not, but most of its potential in developed countries is already tapped. When I speak of large scale renewable growth I mean utility-scale photovoltaics and wind. Neither solar panels nor…

Very interesting, thanks. I too would like to see "utility-scale photovoltaics". So...what is the limiting factor in producing new solar panels? A raw material, or well-lit land near population centers, or political will, or what?

Re: Bill Gates promises to add his own billions if Congress does nuclear power push

#199

Post by gdubs »

tomcam wrote: post #149

Nuclear energy sounds great to me except for the disposal of nuclear waste. I cannot seem to find any convincing references that we can do it safely over the long-term. Can someone help me with that?

In Stewart Brand’s book “Whole Earth Discipline” he says that a person’s entire lifetime worth of nuclear waste would fit in a can of soda.

And from my understanding, that spent fuel can be reused after a certain amount of time.

Yucca Mountain is a good solution if they can ever figure out the local politics.

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