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Seven countries now generate nearly all their electricity from renewables (2024)

the-independent.com

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Re: Seven countries now generate nearly all their electricity from renewables (2024)

#481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not going to read them, so why bother since you live in a parallel universe. But if you wanted, you could ask your chatbot so you don't have to put the efforts to read anything.

You do realize that it’s quite telling that you still haven’t been able to point out a single of these ”falsehoods” nor been able to provide any factual information of your own? Why are you so afraid of renewables and storage?

> You do realize that it’s quite telling that you still haven’t been able to point out a single of these ”falsehoods” nor been able to provide any factual information of your own?

Brandolini's law. And I'm not going to spend any effort with someone who use "sources" they haven't even read…

> Why are you so afraid of renewables and storage?

I'm not afraid of them. I'm afraid of people making wrong decisions based on idealistic views of technologies.

Renewable (outside of hydro) are a very good complement to fossil fuels. And they are a key tool to half emissions from electricity production in most of the world where electricity production is mostly done through fossil fuels. And that's great.

But also that's it. They aren't going to carry the grid on their own, they aren't going to cure cancer or bring world peace.

Re: Seven countries now generate nearly all their electricity from renewables (2024)

#482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like I told you. A culture war issue without broader political backing, with the company putting final investment decision at such a timing in terms of election cycles as to ensure that broad political backing is there, or it won’t happen. The social democrats opened up to negotiate a broader energy agreement covering both nuclear power and off-shore wind. The right and hard right shut down that effort because only t…

[flagged]

These are all facts. Why are you so afraid of renewables and storage?

Translate with your favorite tool:

https://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/m-och-sd-gjorde-karnkraft...

Re: Seven countries now generate nearly all their electricity from renewables (2024)

#483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% Writing such an article without mentioning nuclear power is a sign of dishonesty. Wind and solar can't live alone, since they only operate when nature wants it. Perfect match for hydro, but we don't all live in the Hymalaya. Most (e.g. Germany) burn gas and coal to supplement. Nuclear is the only tech suited for decarbonation, and once you have it, you don't need solar and power because 95% of the cost is in the…

I'm with you... beyond that, there's a lot of other costs involved with solar and in particular wind. Least of which is disposal/recycling on top of the materials and transport for assembly. I think that especially in areas that don't have extreme storms or earthquakes, that nuclear is the most sane answer for electricity generation. I think another pressing issue would be a resurgence of natural airflow usage from u…

Totally agreed.

The fallacy comes from the fact that few people know how to dimension an infrastructure. When you want electricity 24x7, you have to engineer the infra for peak demand. In Europe where I live, it is during winter around 6pm. It's night, and many times we have high pressure with no wind (inland).

Since hydro is reserved to particular land topologies, most countries have coal and gas ready to kick-in. France chose nuclear, which has proved to be a clear winner. Meanwhile Germany spent €500B (read it twice: €500B) and has got one of the most carbonated electricity generation -- at a high cost.

Re: Seven countries now generate nearly all their electricity from renewables (2024)

#484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do realize that it’s quite telling that you still haven’t been able to point out a single of these ”falsehoods” nor been able to provide any factual information of your own? Why are you so afraid of renewables and storage?

> You do realize that it’s quite telling that you still haven’t been able to point out a single of these ”falsehoods” nor been able to provide any factual information of your own? Brandolini's law. And I'm not going to spend any effort with someone who use "sources" they haven't even read… > Why are you so afraid of renewables and storage? I'm not afraid of them. I'm afraid of people making wrong decisions based on i…

I have read all the sources I linked. Well, to be perfectly honest, for the ENTSO-E final report I read the summary and the relevant sections and for the actual FERC regulation, rather than the news posts I used to find the true root source, I left it at the introduction which says "non-synchronous sources must provide reactive power as per this technical specification from Y date".

But that's of course not good enough.

But you know that I am right, which is why you're trying to avoid facing reality and pretending everything I say is false, rather than dare to face it.

The consensus among grid operators and researchers is that renewable grids are a solved problem. They’ve moved on to the implementation details instead. Reddit is firmly stuck in the past though.

But, if you are curious, the modeling lands on a combination of this depending on local circumstances:

- Wind, overbuilt

- Solar, overbuilt

- Demand response

- Long range transmission to smooth out variability

- Existing nuclear power (for the grids that have them)

- Exising hydro

- Storage

- In places with district heating: CHP plants running on carbon neutral fuels.

- An emergency reserve of gas turbines. Run them on carbon neutral fuel if their emissions matter.

Why do you want to waste tens of billions of euros on handouts per new built large scale reactor?

Re: Seven countries now generate nearly all their electricity from renewables (2024)

#485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the fatality rate per GWh of civilian nuclear power in the US vs. other forms of power generation?

Nuclear and renewables are far, far safer than fossil fuels. Fossil fuels and biomass kill many more people than nuclear and modern renewables per unit of electricity. Coal is, by far, the dirtiest. https://ourworldindata.org/nuclear-energy#safety-of-nuclear-...

There's not just deaths and malformations. There's also a cost of contaminated food and unlivable areas.

Re: Seven countries now generate nearly all their electricity from renewables (2024)

#486
post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you rhetorically or actually asking? I'd guess significantly lower than coal and gas, and in the ballpark of (but still higher than) solar and wind combined (in the expected value, i.e. probability of a Chernobyl-like disaster times the death toll of that).

No member of the public has died from civilian nuclear power in the US. Significantly more people have died installing solar panels by falling off of roofs.

Just because you can't prove that a cancer was caused by a nuclear plant doesn't mean it wasn't the cause.

Just from statistics, it's certain that some of the unaccounted deaths were caused by radiation.

Re: Seven countries now generate nearly all their electricity from renewables (2024)

#487
post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it unnecessary burden? We've had major nuclear accidents despite regulations and that was before 9/11 and dron wars.

The definition of “major accident” used in nuclear is orders of magnitude more strict than in any other industries though, which distort the picture. The worst nuclear accident involving a nuclear plant (Chernobyl, which occurred in a country without regulation for all intent and purpose) killed less people than the food processing industry cause every year (and I'm not counting long term health effect of junk food,…

> The definition of “major accident” used in nuclear is orders of magnitude more strict than in any other industries though, which distort the picture.

What would your definition of a "major incident" be for photovoltaics?

Re: Seven countries now generate nearly all their electricity from renewables (2024)

#488
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear seems to be the worst option: You can't quickly change the amount of power it generates. Which is what you need if you want to use it together with dirt cheap solar. It's very expensive. In fact, noone knows how expensive it will end up being after a couple thousand of years. It's dangerous. For millenia. Vulnerable to terrorism. Enabler of nuclear weapons. It takes a long time to build and bring online. It d…

> You can't quickly change the amount of power it generates. Which is what you need if you want to use it together with dirt cheap solar. You always need something in the grid that can change the amount of power it generates regardless of what you use in combination with it, because the demand from the grid isn't fixed. All grids need something in the nature of storage/hydro or peaker plants. The advantage of combini…

> The advantage of combining solar with nuclear is that their generation profiles are different.

Nuclear generates a constant amount of power 24/7. If in the near future we generate a lot of power from photovoltaics during the day, we won't need the nuclear base load. We should switch to something that's a better fit: Batteries or perhaps gas turbines.

> > It's very expensive. In fact, noone knows how expensive it will end up being after a couple thousand of years.

> If you actually reprocess the fuel there is no "couple thousand of years".

We've had nuclear power for many decades. Ask yourself: Why isn't reprocessing being done at a scale that's sufficient to get rid of the most problematic waste?

> If you instead put it in a dry hole in the desert, you have a desert where nobody wanted to live to begin with that now has a box of hot rocks sealed in it. It's not clear how this is supposed to cost an unforeseeable amount of money.

Again, it's harder than it looks because despite billions of dollars spent all over the world, noone has managed to create a final disposal site yet.

Re: Seven countries now generate nearly all their electricity from renewables (2024)

#489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

These are all facts. Why are you so afraid of renewables and storage? Translate with your favorite tool: https://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/m-och-sd-gjorde-karnkraft...

None of the things you claimed are facts.

None.

Re: Seven countries now generate nearly all their electricity from renewables (2024)

#490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You do realize that it’s quite telling that you still haven’t been able to point out a single of these ”falsehoods” nor been able to provide any factual information of your own? Brandolini's law. And I'm not going to spend any effort with someone who use "sources" they haven't even read… > Why are you so afraid of renewables and storage? I'm not afraid of them. I'm afraid of people making wrong decisions based on i…

I have read all the sources I linked. Well, to be perfectly honest, for the ENTSO-E final report I read the summary and the relevant sections and for the actual FERC regulation, rather than the news posts I used to find the true root source, I left it at the introduction which says "non-synchronous sources must provide reactive power as per this technical specification from Y date". But that's of course not good enou…

> I have read all the sources I linked.

“I've spent 5 hours reading official materials before responding to a comment on HN”, yeah, sure.

> The consensus among grid operators and researchers is that renewable grids are a solved problem.

The consensus is that you have no understanding of the topic.

I recently followed this [cycle of conferences on the future of electricity grids]( https://www.college-de-france.fr/fr/agenda/seminaire/la-tran...) and the researchers's opinion is the litteral opposite of what you've just said.

Who should I believe, the professional or the HN crank using perplexity. Though question …

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