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Portugal just ran on 100% renewables for six days in a row

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Re: Portugal just ran on 100% renewables for six days in a row

#241

Post by realusername »

hef19898 wrote: post #168
realusername wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm the kind of "I'll believe it when I see it" type of person. The transition is clearly not going well and they even wanted to build more gas pipes, the russian war lessons have not been learned. Renewables in the EU overpromissed and underdelivered for a long time.

Timeline, again... The additional gas pipes, used for heating and industrial use primarily and not electricity (no idea why people fail to understand the difference) have been built before (!) the war in Ukraine. And never been used. To the point Germany increased coal consumption. So, when those pipelines, Nordstream 2 I assume you mean, was built, there was no war in Ukriane or elsewhere involving Russia, and hence…

People don't make the difference because it's exactly the same thing. Neighbouring France has 40% electric heating whereas it's something like 5% in Germany.

> assume you mean, was built, there was no war in Ukriane or elsewhere involving Russia, and hence no lessons to be drwan from it!

And what about the talks with Azerbaijan and the increase imports from Algeria then? (both great countries aligned with the EU I'm sure). More pipelines are planning to be built following the war.

Re: Portugal just ran on 100% renewables for six days in a row

#242

Post by natmaka »

Moldoteck wrote: post #234
natmaka wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please name a single model of breeder reactor ready for industrial deployment. There is none, therefore this is not a solution.

I fail to grasp what you want. We already have such reactors and these are functional, some are no longer functional but were built in the past. There are also plans to build more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor

This seems pretty simple to me: please name a single model of breeder reactor ready for industrial deployment.

It is not about failed attempts (there were numerous, for sure) not vague plans. This is about an existing solution, and therefore an existing model of breeder reactor ready for deployment. If you cannot name one, well, there is no solution here.

Re: Portugal just ran on 100% renewables for six days in a row

#243

Post by adev_ »

natmaka wrote: post #231
adev_ wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just how you can jump from that to opposing renewables build outs is beyond me. No you do not get it I think. The world need Nuclear AND Renewable energy. Working hand to hand to accelerate decarbonization, as fast as you can. We need low carbon electricity production. And try to achieve that exclusively with renewable due to (close to) religious beliefs is an extremely dangerous bet on humankind. I am not aware of…

> Nuclear AND Renewable energy It cannot be done because it financially condemns new nuclear plants. "The rates at which conventional power plants are utilized will continue to decrease as competitive pressure from near-zero marginal cost solar photovoltaic and onshore wind power, and battery energy storage continue to grow exponentially worldwide." Eye-opening video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udJJ7n_Ryjg

It is does not. LCOE is a metric from the Lazard institute has been debunked many time alreayd because it does not take into consideration the cost of the capacity guarantee of the grid.

If you had that, Nuclear become competitive.

If you had that and tax properly coal and Gas plant proportionally to the emission they really do.

Nuclear become even incredibly cheap, specially if we consider its hydrogen co-generation capabilities.

Re: Portugal just ran on 100% renewables for six days in a row

#244

Post by natmaka »

kawhah wrote: post #237
Moldoteck wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fail to grasp what you want. We already have such reactors and these are functional, some are no longer functional but were built in the past. There are also plans to build more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor

They were built in the past as part of nuclear-weapons-oriented industry of the Cold War. Like many things about nuclear, taking away the need to build weapons changes a lot of the economics around them.

This (need for military-grade plutonium) is only part of the benefits of breeder reactors.

They lift most of the dependency towards uranium providers (needing way less of it), and considerably helps tackling the nuclear waste challenge (producing way less of waste, and less hot).

The challenge is technical: obtaining a satisfying industrial (big, predictable, not too expensive...) breeder isn't a solved problem.

Re: Portugal just ran on 100% renewables for six days in a row

#245

Post by hef19898 »

Moldoteck wrote: post #234
natmaka wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please name a single model of breeder reactor ready for industrial deployment. There is none, therefore this is not a solution.

I fail to grasp what you want. We already have such reactors and these are functional, some are no longer functional but were built in the past. There are also plans to build more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor

You know what also have, a proven technology that gets cheaper every year? That is easy and fast to deploy, in massive volume? One that actually is deployed, as we speak, in GW scale month after month after month? Solar.

Instead of building new nuclear reactorsy taking decades, we couod use the same money and research better storage tech, better gris tech, make industrail demand more flexible and sponsor heat pumps for domestic heating. Just a thought.

Re: Portugal just ran on 100% renewables for six days in a row

#246

Post by anonyfox »

This is good news. And while there are problems with achieving 100% renewables year round, from energy storage to geographic country conditions, the world would be much better off when the fossils only are used on these days where there isn't enough renewable energy. No need to go overzealous here for the last few %, I'd be very happy if we manage to globally run the vast majority of the time clean.

Re: Portugal just ran on 100% renewables for six days in a row

#247

Post by mcjiggerlog »

jacquesm wrote: post #208
mcjiggerlog wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who do you think is using renewable power that is not connected to a grid? Poor off-grid communities are pretty much exclusively burning fossil fuels or biomass for primary energy, which are most certainly not carbon-neutral or good for the environment.

Biomass is carbon neutral.

There's nothing green about chopping down forests for energy - biomass being called carbon neutral is one of the greenwashing scams of the century.

Whether burned forests are ever regenerated at all is something that I'm incredible sceptical about - there's very little oversight into companies' claims. Even if they are being replanted, you are tearing down potentially primary forest and important habitat and replacing it with tree farms.

Finally, burning wood is incredibly polluting and awful for anyone in the region of said power plants.

Re: Portugal just ran on 100% renewables for six days in a row

#248

Post by Lutger »

adev_ wrote: post #75

Meaningwhile, today 17/11/2023 the same Portugal is back to the normal and emitting 170g CO2/kwh [1][2] - This is 6.8x the emissions of Sweden (25g) running on Nuclear and Hydro - This is 4.1x the emissions of France (41g) running on Nuclear, Hydro and Gas - This is 2.8x the emissions of Switzerland (59g) running on Nuclear and Hydro But still much better than "Green" Germany that reaches 647g CO2/kwh.... with 22GW o…

Much better than most of the world actually, certainly 2x to 4x better than most US states. Your references are outliers, making it seem that Portugal is a high emitter which is false, relatively speaking. Even without looking at your source its clear that the 3 countries you selected have access to huge amounts of hydro and/or nuclear.

Just look at the map, Portugal is still ranking pretty good globally.

Re: Portugal just ran on 100% renewables for six days in a row

#249

Post by m2fkxy »

achenet wrote: post #170
m2fkxy wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is a visualisation of of all the high-level nuclear waste produced in France over the last 60 years, superimposed over the port of Marseille. https://twitter.com/laydgeur/status/1433463215321669633?lang...

What about the not so high level nuclear waste? Is that not also dangerous? How much of that is there?

- Very-low activity (TFA): 30% of total volume, negligible activity, they are stored in soft containers.

- Low- and medium-activity, short-life (FMA-VC): 60% of total volume. They are compacted and poured in concrete, then stored.

- Low-actiity, long-life (FA-VL): 6% of total volume, disposal method is under study.

The two categories below represent >99% of total radioactivity:

- Medium-activity, long-life (MA-VL) 3% of total volume, they are compacted.

- High-activity, long-life (HA-VL): 0.2% of total volume, they are vitrified.

MA-VL and HA-VL are then stored in stainless steel caskets, to be disposed in deep, geologically stable repositories (Cigéo in France, Onkalo in Finland, ...).

Re: Portugal just ran on 100% renewables for six days in a row

#250

Post by natmaka »

vasco wrote: post #153
natmaka wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a work in progress, their transition isn't done yet. Without nuclear no risks tied to a major accident, dependancy towards uranium providers, hot waste disposal, overcentralization, overcentralization, proliferation, daunting building and decommission projects... ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38288706 ) Not a bad deal.

We have all the risks and none of the benefits of nuclear since Spain has a couple surrounding us.

This is a work in progress. The growing fleet of renewable units will enable Spain to shut reactors down without building other ones.

This is heavy industry, nothing can be done in a jiffy.

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