German Chancellor Scholz speaks out against new nuclear power
Growth in german wind capacity is slowing. Soo… then the plan is to keep on with lignite and gas? Am I missing something? Installed Wind Capacty - Germany German Wind Capacity [https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/08ff4e67-7e8c-414e-80e1-08d3fb9bffb4.png]
Yes, basically. Germany completely folded on nuclear to appease pretend environmental groups that actually know nothing about the environment and then went all in on coal again while pretending they were going all in on renewables. But now that even the renewables numbers are flat-lining, they have to keep up the charade by continuing to make negative comments about nuclear.
They're helped along by idiots like Blake elsewhere in this comment section. Because, sure, new nuclear is expensive, but that's not the problem here. The problem was shutting down all the nuclear they already had.
Compared to nuclear, renewables are:
Why would anyone waste money on the worse option? An analogy: you need lunch and you can choose between a nutritious and tasty $5 sandwich from an independent deli or a $10 expensive mass-produced sandwich from a chain. The independent deli is tastier, cheaper, more filling, and healthier, and it’s easier for you to get since it’s on your way to work. Why would you ever get the $10 sandwich?
According to you, I’m an idiot, and yet no one has debunked a single one of my arguments. No one has even tried to, they immediately crumple like a tissue as soon as they’re asked directly to disprove the FACT that nuclear is more expensive, slower to provision and more environmentally damaging than renewables. If I’m so stupid it should be pretty easy to correct my errors?
Either that or you can loftily declare yourself above this argument, state that I am somehow moving the goalposts, say that “there’s no point, I’ll never change your mind” or just somehow express some amount of increduiity at my absolutely abhorrent behaviour by asking you such a straightforward question? You may also choose “that’s not the question I want to talk about, we should answer MY questions instead!”
Silverseren: Germany made a foolish choice shutting down their nukes
Blake: Renewables are a deli sandwich
The room: …?
I have read absolutely every single word you have written and responded to them in kind. After your last comment, I went back over the thread from beginning to end and my conversation with you was lucid and coherent the entire way through.
I do appreciate the attempt at gaslighting, though. It’s a good feeling knowing that I’m having such a strong impact that you’re willing to try and psychologically manipulate someone.
Anyways, look, drop me a line, if you’ll send some of that sweet sweet nuclear lobby money my way I’m sure it would be a very worthwhile investment for your company or think tank or what-not. I have reasonable rates and give good results!
Are you hallucinating? What part of your comments do you think was ignored?
Because it certainly seems like you got your ass handed to you in this thread by someone who had the knowledge and could back it up with sources.
And your general framing of the issue, ommitance of the stong uptick in new renewables after the new government took power pisses me off as a german.
Coal plant produces more radioactive waste than nuclear power plant.
Tell me you are totally brain-washed without telling me you are totally brain-washed.
The correct take: Coal plants without any environmental requirements 50-60 years ago release more radiation into the area in the form of fly ash (containing natural amounts of radiation like all earth around you) than the radiation excaping from a modern nuclear power plant through it's massive concrete hull. And only if we ignore any actual nuclear waste (of which coal plant obviosuly produce zero) pretend that the radiation leaking through is not actually a miniscule share.
Just the fact that this fairy tale about coal power producing radio activity based on some (already then criticised and flawed) study from the 1970s (and based on even older numbers) is still going around shows how lobbyists have damaged your brains.
The criticism is extraordinarily simple and justified.
Which is better, Renewables and Nuclear or Renewables and Fossil Fuels?
Germany could have had an almost entirely fossil free grid by now, but instead they chose renewables & fossil fuels.
Please provide a source for your claim that 100% renewable energy is not possible.
Actually you can save yourself the time, because here’s two sources which show it is possible.
Or (as this is in the context of Germany) one of the studies even modeling different acceptance levels of renewable energy in the transitioning until 2050:
https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/publications/studies/paths-to-a-climate-neutral-energy-system.html
I am asking you to prove your claim that renewables are not a stand-alone option.
I did not claim that, I suspect that misunderstood something.
I’ll clarify what I meant for your benefit. Germany has constructed a lot of new renewable power in tge past two decades, which is great, but they prioritized shutting down nuclear power plants instead of fossil fuelled power. Because of this, they still get ~50% of their electricity from fossil fuels.
If they instead had prioritized phasing out fossil fuelled power plants, that number would’ve been more like 20-30, and more crucially, they’d could’ve phased out their fleet of coal power plants. Ergo, criticism of German energy policy is entirely justified.
…and your comment replied to one criticising German energy policy, hence the context of “the criticism being justified”. The bad policy decisions have already been made, and it does seem like Germany will be stuck with coal power for quite some time because of this.
The question was not about the price of building new nuclear power, but of maintaining old plants, and existing nuclear) power provides incredibly cheap, green energy.
In hindsight, the OC was somewhat rude towards you in particular, which I don’t agree with, but alas.
Anyway, you seem to want to discuss future electricity solutions rather than the existing one, and I’d happily have a separate discussion on what mix of green energy sources ought to be used, if you’d like.
IMO based on what I have read over the years, optimal green energy mixes land on 40-70% VRE depending on regional climate factors, with the rest filled out by dispatchable sources such as hydropower, geothermal, biomass and nuclear power plants.
My comment was a response to someone calling me stupid for saying that nuclear power spending was a waste of money. Because it is a waste of money.
What you’ve read over the years is almost right, if you take “nuclear” out of the sentence you’ve pretty much got it.
The reason they were annoyed is that they were referring to keeping old nuclear plants running, and you are pointing to the costs of new nuclear.
-and the reason that nuclear is in the sentence is that access to the energy sources within it depends on geography. Filling up those last 30-60% of the energy mix with hydropower, geothermal and biomass is simply not possible in some areas, which is where nuclear comes in, regardless of whether we look at the most pessimistic cost estimates (which you are doing).
The article is called “German Chancellor Scholz speaks out against new nuclear power“, not “ German Chancellor Scholz speaks out against keeping old nuclear plants running”, so no, this is just shifting the goalposts.
And nope, you’re wrong, 100% renewable power across the entire planet is absolutely viable and would be much cheaper than involving nuclear. I have proven this again and again and again in this thread, but here’s a starting point for you:
The majority of studies show that a global transition to 100% renewable energy across all sectors – power, heat, transport and industry – is feasible and economically viable.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/100%25_renewable_energy
There are other sources all throughout this thread to back up this claim, and no one has posted any sources to dispute it.
We’re done here. Have a pleasant evening.
The article is called “German Chancellor Scholz speaks out against new nuclear power“, not “ German Chancellor Scholz speaks out against keeping old nuclear plants running”, so no, this is just shifting the goalposts.
It is not, the past and current failures of German energy policy is a very good basis for criticism, especially when they seem to have a continued reliance on fossil fuel power. But, as I said, we seem to have starkly different opinions on German electricity policy, and you seem to have a specific idea of the existence of “goal posts” in that particular discussion, and what they are, which many of us disagree with. Let us put that discussion to rest. It is clear to me that it will go nowhere.
–
Now, on the topic of new power, I fully understand where you’re coming from with your frustration, because I’ve been there, many many times, discussing with folks who refuse to give any background to their claims. So, I’ve called upon a post from past me (ca. 2021) for some reliable sources and updated the meat of the text a little to be more suitable to you.
So, where to start? Perhaps the costs of 100% renewable systems in practice, as the portion of electricity sourced from variable renewable energy (henceforth VRE) approaches 100%. I’ll start by addressing your wikipedia source, all of the examples of “near 100% renewable” there rely almost entirely on hydropower (which is highly geography dependent) or are very small grids (thousands or tens of thousands of people). This makes their significance for this discussion debatable, as our scope is rather in the size of millions or tens of millions of people.
A key problem with examining these scenarios is that the number of data points where VRE exceed ~45% are incredibly few, and additionally these few systems still have significant portions of electricity generated by cheap, dispatchable fossil fuelled power plants. This means their statements regarding cost are a lot less relevant for a scenario where we want a clean energy grid and VRE portions start approaching higher levels. I’d really love to see if you can refer me some sources which examine such grids.
Following along this path, comparing the LCOE of VRE to other dispatchable plants is not particularly straightforward. Here is some critique towards a study made by Lazard, which highlights the fact that renewables can effectively outsource their system costs in grids with a high degree of dispatchable power generators (hence creating hidden costs for the systems). This method of using only LCOE without accounting for system costs is prevalent in many studies on the costs of new electricity production, and thus skews the available data. This skewing is not necessarily a problem when adding a small amount of VRE to a system, but becomes a severe issue when they start representing a plurality of electricity produced.
We can follow up by examining this study by the oecd which calculates estimations on grid level system costs comparing VRE and nuclear. It’s very interesting, but also like… 200 pages, so I haven’t read the entire thing, but below you’ll find a few very short take-homes from what I did have time to read.
The integration of large shares of intermittent renewable electricity is a major challenge for the electricity systems of OECD countries and for dispatchable generators such as nuclear. Grid-level system costs for intermittent renewables are large ($8-$50/MWh) but depend on country, context and technology (onshore wind < offshore wind < solar PV). Nuclear related system costs are $1-3/MWh.
They make several very interesting observations regarding how improper implementation of VRE in a system leads to an economic environment that favors fossil fuel peaker plants to solve intermittency problems, due to their low capital costs and ability to ramp up and down with relative ease. Unlike green solutions such as pumped hydro storage, other energy storage solutions and nuclear power. The closer our goal approaches 0% fossil fuel energy production, the more nuclear power makes sense.
Now, based on the above and a few other sources, I will deconstruct the arguments you made in your original comment. I’ll use hydropower as comparison for a lot of these points. It is often considered the holy grail of renewable energy.
Cheaper - See above. A system which uses some mix of nuclear power and renewables is often a cheaper system than one that demands 100% renewables.
Lower emissions - Nuclear emissions are comparable to hydropower, and entirely from infrastructure & supply chain emissions, something expected to disappear in a 0% fossil fuel economy.
Faster to provision - Individually, yes, but a construction time of 5-15 years is still reasonably fast for the huge amount of power that a single NPP adds to the grid (consider constructed MW/time). Additionally, construction times are expected to go down if the nuclear industry is revitalized.
Less environmentally damaging - Debatable, renewables in general have huge land usage, and affect the ecosystems in which they are built to a significant degree.
Not reliant on continuous consumption of fuel - Yeah, a benefit, but also not problem for nuclear. Known supplies of Uranium can supply the entire world for some 70 years, which is longer than known oil supplies will last us. That’s not accounting for improvements in utilization, newly discovered resources or other nuclear fuels. Besides, renewables use lots of other resources such as copper. Our limited supplies of these are a far more pressing problem in our clean energy efforts.
Decentralised - I don’t see how this is relevant. The benefits and costs of decentralized power are situational. It is useful in areas with spotty infrastructure (large parts of Africa and Asia), but creates system level costs in developed countries, where most of our electricity consumption is centralized.
Much, much safer - Not really. Casualties and damages from nuclear power are far lower than those from hydropower, and depending on your data source and opinions, even on par with wind power.
Much easier to maintain - I don’t have any good sources of the top of my head here, but many of the nuclear power plants running today are pushing past their designed life spans due to the maintenance being worth it. Closures are more often related to political decisions than actual end-of-life status.
More reliable - not really
Much more responsive to changes in energy demands - not really
Hope this is more to your liking :)
Decentralised
I was rummaging this is probably the main reason for which they are pushed back in an excessively popular narrative in favour of nuclear: of course it is way harder to exercise capitalism when you can’t centralize power and control, with renewables instead it could probably only exist a form of cooperative enterprise with the business of managing the energy production, immagine the loath of some individuals even acknowledging some utterly leftist term such as “cooperative” even exists, let alone even works. Better.
(I am German, so please excuse my grammar mistakes. If you are a German, too, the humanist party has a great position paper on nuclear energy: www.pdh.eu/programmatik/kernenergie/)
While reading your list, several points stood out for me.
I assume you are talking about the inherent costs of the technology, but that is not where the costs come from. Nuclear power plants are not mass produced and there is constantly changing regulation. The petrol lobby is partly to blame for that, as they have a strong interest in making building nuclear power plants difficult and expensive. thebulletin.org/…/why-nuclear-power-plants-cost-s… progress.institute/nuclear-power-plant-constructi…
…com.au/…/nuclear-may-or-may-not-be-expensive-but…
Additionally, the low hanging fruits (the places that can easily be used for windparks) were already picked in Germany. It’s becoming more and more difficult to find more places where windparks can be built.
That stood out as especially weird. How did you come to that conclusion? If you are referring to nuclear waste: “Nuclear power causes least damage to the environment, finds systematic survey” techxplore.com/…/2023-04-nuclear-power-environmen…
“Why I Don’t Worry About Nuclear Waste” archive.ph/ZJQCj or, if you prefer some informational tweets by the same author: twitter.com/MadiHilly/status/1550148385931513856.
Last but not least, I highly recommend this book (I’ve read it, but it’s German): “Atommüll - Ungelöstes, unlösbares Problem ?: Technisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Aspekte der Endlagerung hochaktiven Atommülls. Ein Versuch zur Versachlichung der Debatte.” www.amazon.com/-/de/dp/B09JX2ZRB3/
Also, take into account the land usage.
Non-issue. Nuclear fuel is virtually inexhaustible and will last us literally until the sun explodes. scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/…/1257
whatisnuclear.com/nuclear-sustainability.html
You might also be interested in the discussion on Hacker News: news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36744699
Nuclear engineer here. I did a similar write-up (gratuitously leveraging GNU Units) since most people don’t seem to know this fact about fission breeder reactors. I added some other references at the bottom of people pointing this out throughout nuclear fission’s history. whatisnuclear.com/nuclear-sustainability.html In addition to the OP, it’s also worth mentioning that you can breed with slow (aka ‘thermal’) neutrons as well as fast ones, you just have to use the Thorium-Uranium fuel cycle to do so.
Haven’t you heard about small modular reactors (SMR)? One prominent company is Oklo (named after the natural nuclear reactor), another is Nuscale www.nuscalepower.com.
Also, we have vessels that are powered by nuclear reactors since several decades.
I assumed the data was well known: ourworldindata.org/…/death-rates-from-energy-prod… With newer designs (“walk-away safety”) the nuclear death rate will likely continue to fall.
I tend to agree here. My main argument against nuclear power is the ongoing competence crisis. We need people that can maintain these plants for decades, but education and scientific literacy are in decline, while ideologies and social conflicts are on the rise. That is not a good environment for radioactive material with malicious use cases.
Could you elaborate?
How? Solar and wind have fluctuating production. One main challenge with solar is to get rid of excess electricity quickly, before it damages the grid. Germany already PAYS other countries to use their electric power on sunny days (i. e. the electricity cost becomes negative). That problem will become much worse. Plus, when it is sunny in Germany, it is likely sunny in surrounding countries, too, so they will have the same problem. There is a great talk by Hans-Werner Sinn touching this topic (www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5trsBP9Cn4, see 23:04).
I am not favoring nuclear energy, btw.
Über die Jahre hat sich ein negatives Bild der Kernenergie festgesetzt. Es herrscht eine nebulöse Angst vor Strahlung durch Kernkraftwerke. Jedoch wissen wir heute nicht nur, dass die in Deutschland bestehenden Kernkraftwerke der Generation II zu den sichersten und klimafreundlichsten Energieerzeugungssystemen zählen, sondern auch, dass sie Leben durch Vermeidung von Luftverschmutzung retten können.
Thanks for the reply, it means a lot that you’re willing to engage with my actual arguments.
When I say cheaper, I refer to a metric known as TCOE - total cost of electricity. It represents all of the various costs required to put a kWh of electrical energy onto the grid.
Regulatory controls obviously are a major factor to the cost of nuclear, but we can’t just waive all regulation to get cheaper electricity, that would be incredibly dangerous.
The thing is, with renewables, once they’re built, they continue to generate electricity for many, many years and require no fuel. Whereas nuclear power requires that a material be extracted from the ground, refined, handled and stored to very precise specifications, and then the waste products from that also have to be managed in a very particular (and expensive) way. You’re essentially arguing that nuclear could be cheaper than renewables if we removed ideological barriers to nuclear, but that’s just not true. Nuclear has very expensive costs associated with it that will mean it’s always more expensive than renewables. The gap will only widen with time as we get better at producing the renewables, too.
For your faster to provision article, it’s truly mind-boggling what the author writes. Did you actually read it or did you just copy-paste links)? Do you actually agree with everything written in that article?
The author has many cherry-picked examples, such as comparing how much electricity supply was added in a single year for various countries. That comparison obviously favours nuclear, because a nuclear power plant takes decades to build, but the year it comes online it provides a huge glut of (expensive) electrical supply. The obvious response to that graph is to divide each installation by the number of years needed to provision it. I checked that out manually for a few of the nuclear plants mentioned in the article and the energy gains essentially vanish into meaninglessness.
Also, maybe it’s a bit of an unfair criticism but the line where he wrote “Why does a nuclear power plant need multiple coolers for the reactor? An aeroplane only has one!” was one of the dumbest things I have ever read in my life.
it’s becoming more difficult to find places to build turbines
No it isn’t. At present, 0.8% of German land area is used by wind farms and there are plans to increase that to 2%. For comparison, agricultural land uses over 50% of the land. Feel free to provide a source for your claim though.
For less environmentally damaging - there are a lot of factors. The us bconcrete, the use of water, extraction of uranium, the biodiversity loss of clearing land for a power plant, the large amount of industrial processes and traffic to commission. Same to operate. Same to decommission. The handling of waste products. The irradiation of water. The co2e emissions of nuclear. I could go on and on.
Your archive link didn’t work and I don’t use Twitter. But I’m not particularly interested in the biased opinion of individuals either way. The environmental impact of nuclear is a well known issue. If you want more information you can just look it up.
I don’t speak German but I did Google around and found this, translated from the German wiki:
The memorandum was partly criticized. According to the Green Party politician Hans-Josef Fell , the CO 2 savings potential is massively overestimated [26] , as the journalist Wolfgang Pomrehn calculates at Telepolis [27] , he only states a maximum initial savings potential of 4% of annual emissions . A publication by the IPPNW also accuses the authors of ignoring the study situation and market developments by claiming that there is only one alternative between fossil and nuclear power generation
Your book is written by a guy employed by the nuclear industry. That isn’t going to be an unbiased view exactly, is it?
nuclear matter is inexhaustible
Nothing is infinite, so that’s a dumb claim right out the gate.
“identified uranium resources [would last] roughly 230-year supply at today’s consumption rate in total”. Including undiscovered sources. I don’t need to tell you that todays current consumption of nuclear power is really, really low in comparison to other forms of energy, approximately 10%. If we used even 30%, that 240 years becomes 80 years.
scientificamerican.com/…/how-long-will-global-ura…
Breeder reactors aren’t available and can be dismissed the same way cold fusion is. Worth investing in research in case it’s useful in the future but for now it is not viable.
For decentralisation - smaller reactors is more decentralised but even more expensive and higher environmental impact per kWh. And it’s still less decentralised than renewables.
Even your own link shows that renewables are as safe or safer than nuclear, dude, what the fuck are you thinking about. Additionally, the sources of the data on fatalities caused by renewables are the most ridiculously cherry picked examples I have ever seen, you should look up the paper as it’s genuinely hilarious. And looking exclusively at death rates per kWh is not exactly the whole picture. When it comes to accidents, according to Benjamin Sovacool, nuclear power plants rank first in terms of their economic cost, accounting for 41 percent of all property damage, more than even fossil fuel plants. I couldn’t find information on the number of injuries but I’d bet any amount of money that nuclear causes more injuries than renewables.
More reliable - it’s kind of a “sum of its parts” thing. The sun is always there, so is the wind and the waves and the oceans and geothermal energy. If we don’t have one of those then we’re all fucked anyways. Uranium is a resource which can run out, have shortages, have breakages in the supply chain, and so on. Fewer accidents, less of a target for people who want to disrupt it, if a bunch of them are destroyed in an earthquake then it wouldn’t cause huge disruption, and so on.
And finally, responsiveness. It’s very easy to turn on and off wind and hydro generators on demand, for example. You can look up “smart grid” if you want to learn more. Nuclear is much, much slower than Solar to turn off and on, so Solar can be though of as baseline power and wind/hydro provide conditioning.
…ieee.org/…/maintaining-power-quality-in-smart-gr…
Final question: If you had the choice between buying magic power banks that fully charged your phone once a day for free, no questions asked, for $50 each, and you can buy one a day, or a regular one you have to buy uranium for to fill your phone with, which costs $150 and you can buy one every 10 years, which would you choose?
How are renewables more responsive to changes in demand? I don’t know how to make the sun shine brighter or the wind blow harder. That seems like one of the weakest points for the case. And how much much safer are they as a function of unit of power generated?
In any case the argument between renewables or nuclear baffles me. Both are, in my view at least, an improvement over our current primary fissile fuel power generation systems.
By angling the wind turbine blades, rotating the turbines, pitching the rotors, using breaks, gearboxes, etc.
It doesn’t really matter how weak this point is, to be honest. It’s just a bonus. The ultimate trifecta of “renewables are cheaper, better for the environment and faster to build” mean that renewables always win.
They’re both an improvement over fossil fuels, sure, but one is clearly the superior choice and resources are limited. It’s very important that we push for the right choices to be made to reduce the impact of climate change as quickly and effectively as possible. It’s literally one of the most important issues facing our species.
Every $1 spent on nuclear power is basically stolen from renewables. $1 spent on renewables generates 150%-200% more power than nuclear and it does it safer and cheaper. Why invest in nuclear at all.
Well I suppose there is a lot to unpack there but I want to hold to the one point. Renewables are absolutely in no way more responsive to demand. I’m not sure where you got that, but it seems clear you don’t even want to defend it when challenged.
It is in fact their Achilles heel, and regularly pointed out as the one reason why they are an incomplete solution requiring other solutions like batteries, or other storage and distribution.
Simply pitching blades cannot increase power in accordance with demand spikes. One would expect the current brake, blade pitch, and other controls to be set for current maximum generation capability given the current wind.
I’d also love for you to address in empirical terms both safety and cost but in terms of per unit power generated. I see so often people forgetting that nuclear power generates orders of magnitude more power per unit money invested.
Without disputing any of your other points, you’re just dead wrong about this one. Look up dispatchability. Turbine driven power can go from zero to full multimegawatt power and back in very little time since we control the fuel. You cannot turn up the wind, nor the sun at night.
Nuclear power can be shut down very quickly, even more quickly in gen4. You have good points and you need not disrupt them by claiming renewables are good for demand response.
Again, I am talking about NUCLEAR VS. RENEWABLES. If you bring up fossil fuels once more I will just block you.
Nuclear power can be shut down very quickly
Provide a source of a nuclear power plant in operation which is capable of going from 100% to 0% in seconds.
Threatening to block somebody for challenging your statement? Okay. I didn’t bring up fossil fuel there. Nuclear power requires fuel too. And I didn’t claim a reactor could be powered down in seconds, but quickly. In any case, generation can go to zero even more quickly as just like a wind turbine a steam turbine can be disconnected from the generator.
The point is very simple though, nuclear can increase to full power when decided upon by plant operators. Renewable energy cannot; it can only increase to current maximum potential given natural conditions. I’m still pro renewable energy, I just don’t like misinformation.
No, a nuclear power plant turbine can’t just get disconnected and reconnected in seconds. Provide proof of your claim. The turbines are fucking huge and disengaging them is an extremely complex process that takes a lot of human intervention and a long time to do safely.
I assumed you were talking about combined cycle turbines because I hadn’t considered that someone would make such a wild claim about nuclear power, so I apologise for overestimating you.
Nuclear power plant energy output is controlled in a few ways - varying the amount of fissile material, varying the amount of control rods, adjusting coolant flow, and adjusting leakage. None of these processes can be safely performed quickly. Going by the most favourable estimates, modern reactors are able to respond at rates of around 0.3% to 2% per minute. So to go from 30% to 100% would take at least 45 minutes. Which is about 45 minutes slower than wind turbines.
I remind you that my original claim was that wind power output can be lowered faster than nuclear power plant’s output is. That was my claim. You have completely misinterpreted what I wrote, wilfully or ignorantly, and you accuse me of spreading misinformation. Yet you continue to post falsehood after falsehood, just a bunch of absolute propaganda. I see right through the bullshit astroturfing.
Again, I have not made any claim about seconds. I have nevertheless almost certainly misunderstood, and likely as a result of ignorance. I apologize; I’ve been to hasty. You’re clearly well spoken on the topic, and I appreciate your sentiments. I found it a bit surprising that one of you primary claims was typically the only significant downside presented about renewable sources. In that way, I happen to think your stated value of 45 minute transition is still faster than we can make the wind blow harder.
However, with further thought I suppose if you have enough renewable generation equipment to generate 100% demanded loaded even at minimum natural capacity, then you would indeed have a much better response to demand. I hadn’t thought of that before, but that is the dream and something for which we should strive.
I’m not actually sure the specific numbers for gen4 reactors, but I feel until none of the pie graph is fossil fuel, all research for improved generation methods is a worthy endeavor. I was a bit accusatory, but I don’t think I’m alone there. I didn’t mean to spread propaganda, and I don’t think you have either. What I meant was strictly that the information seemed incorrect. I’m probably wrong; I often am.
I appreciate the apology but you’re still getting mixed up - I think we have a differing definitions of the word “responsive to demand”. You seem to have taken it as meaning, “we can scale up power generation when demand increases, and it’s dispatchable” which wasn’t what I meant - although I probably added to the confusion by improperly using the words “flexible”. I know that wind and solar PV aren’t dispatchable - solar thermal can be, same for solar electrochemical, but those are a bit oddball. For dispatchability, pumped storage really needs to be brought in to the picture, though I think hydrogen should be used much more for transport.
All I meant was that wind turbines are better at reducing electrical output and managing power grid frequency response than nuclear is, not that a given wind turbine is better at producing electricity at any given moment that we need more of it. I think that with scale and distributed power grids, the disadvantage of the variability of renewables becomes less of an issue anyways, but yeah, with all of the options available, there’s really no reason at the moment to increase the installed base of commercial nuclear power plants, and that’s all I really care about - reducing co2eq emissions as quickly and cheaply as possible. Whichever technology achieves that has my full throated support.
Not a single one of them has addressed my claims in any way whatsoever.
All you have to do to prove me wrong is show that nuclear is cheaper or better for the environment than renewables. It should be easy to do if I’m spreading propaganda.
If you can’t or won’t do that, then your arguments can be dismissed. I have provided plentiful sources for my claims.
You forgot:
Renewables have their place, but they cannot sustain the entire grid. At this point, going all in on renewables means either prolonging fossil fuel usage, or condemning vast swaths of the population to brownouts and energy poverty.
Look at all of these wrong arguments. It’s so thoughtful of you to bring them all together like this.
You’re wrong. There are numerous studies which say a 100% renewable future is entirely possible with current technology. Since you’re incapable of googling this basic fact here’s a link for you. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/100%25_renewable_energy
For #2 to add: you can just install them over a parking lot, too
Makes people happy that their car isn’t exposed to the sun/rain anymore and not removing anything from NIMBYs that fear for their car-privileges
It’s always day somewhere
Pretty obvious you have no idea what you are talking about. You can’t transfer power from the other side of the planet.
Not a strawman when you respond to “sometimes it’s night and solar doesn’t work” with “it’s daytime somewhere”. The natural assumption is that your intention was that day side power could be used on the night side.
Do you have anything to back up your idea that the US grid can or does actually supply power across the entire nation?
Your assumption is mostly correct - “day side power can be used on the night side”. Say that you live in a city where the sun sets at 7pm. The largest synchronous power grid in the world is in Continental Europe - from east to west, it’s approximately 5600 km, and connects Portugal (UTC 0) all the way to Turkey (UTC +3), covering three time zones. That means when the sun sets in Portugal, solar panels in Turkey are still generating power at 75% efficiency.
As you can understand, this is an entirely different claim from “we would get power from the other side of the world”. It’s a strawman because that’s the weakest possible version of the argument I made.
As for the US power grid, no, you’re right, I was totally wrong about that. I had thought that the east and west power grids were connected, but it seems that they still haven’t sorted that out yet. Thanks for correcting me. It looks like they have a project in the planning stage to make it happen (Tres Amigas SuperStation) but it probably won’t be for a while. It’s absolutely achievable, though, and pretty easily.
It would also be achievable to get a single planetary power grid, theoretically, but I think it’s practically impossible to achieve that at the moment. It would need a level of global cooperation far beyond what we have ever accomplished. Definitely a future goal for our species!
Transmission losses prevent most of what you are suggesting. Across a continent, even with high voltage low loss power lines, you lose 35% to resistance. This doesn’t count the added loss from stepping down the voltage at various substations and transformers along the way. You can expect another 8-15% more reduction from that.
You’re suggesting that the amount of excess power from one side of the country could be enough to power the other side (while still meeting the demands locally) with 40-55% losses. Come on.
Absolute bullshit. HVDC cable power loss is between 0.3% and 1% per 100km. And when it comes to UHVDC, a typical loss for 800 kV lines is 2.6% over 800 km. Transformers and substations cause a power loss of around 0.5% to 2%.
nationalgrid.com/…/13784-High Voltage Direct Curr…
ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/6761670
By the way, even with your completely wrong, off by a factor of ten numbers, renewables with that transmission loss would still still cheaper than nuclear, safer than nuclear, and quicker to provision than nuclear. Sucks to suck.
It bothers me that you want to educate people but you are being so combative and smug. This isn’t the way to change people’s minds. All you are doing is making people feel personally attacked and driving them further away from having an open mind.
This is the first I’ve heard of HVDC, my experience is with typical AC transmission that makes up most of the current grid. Not a lot of experience, but college physics level.
US high voltage transmission is usually AC in one of the following voltages: 345 kV, 500 kV, or 765 kV. I used the 765 kV worst case losses of 1.1% per 100 miles (according to American Electric Power Transmission Facts Q12) which is over generous since most transmission would likely not be using only the high efficiency lines.
Also, transmission range is affected by load and high load reduces line capability.
We’re talking about moving a huge amount of power across 3000 miles. In my experience transmitting power across a nation as large as the US is unheard of.
You also seemed to have missed my point about how much excess power would be required to power the opposite side of the country (in the dark) basically at dusk. Let’s say 30% of the east coast’s power comes from solar. That would mean that the West Coast would need to provide that 30% excess on top of their current energy demands during a relatively high demand time period. It would also be a bit unfair for the West Coast to be the ones responsible for over-provisioning to accommodate the east coast.
Is HVDC even installed and able to transmit across the US now?
Judging by your sneering tone, I doubt you’re going to be receptive to any further points.
You didn’t provide any sources.
If you’re trying to wave your dick around you better provide more sources than Blake did above. Moving electricity long distances isn’t really losing much anyway.
Why would anyone waste money on the worse option?
Why do people have diverse stock portfolios?
Hedging and diversification is important. Unforseen consequences and unknown future conditions can screw up your long term plans for 100% renewables. The more diverse our energy portfolio is, the unknowns become easier to weather.
That is the answer for why we build and research something that is more expensive and may divert resources away from better options. To argue that there is literally no place for energy development other than purely renewable is a difficult position to defend.
Your sandwich analogy is lacking because we’re talking about far future consequences of our decision. Maybe you plan to eat the sandwich a week from today. Which do you buy? You don’t have enough information to determine which will be better in a week. Do you pick the chain store’s because it’s full of preservatives? Do you decide to buy both in case one of them gets moldy just to make sure you have anything to eat?
The consequences of developing or not developing potential viable solutions to energy requirements can be far reaching. Completely dismissing alternative options is just not rational.
I support continued research and development into nuclear power, but I oppose the construction of nuclear power plants for reasons beyond scientific research. My very first comment in my thread said as much. Perhaps you should read more closely?
I agree that diversification is important. Luckily, when it comes to renewables, we have an absolute feast of options:
You say that we should consider the long term implications of our decisions, and I wholeheartedly agree with you. That is another reason to favour renewable sources. The sun is the only thing we can be 100% sure that will always be there for humanity. If it’s gone, then so are we. Likewise for the wind - it’s guaranteed as long as the sun shines and that physics continues to work as expected.
Meanwhile, nuclear fissile material is a limited resource with extremely complex supply chains involved, with huge disruptions potential at any point in the extraction, refinement, handling, shipping, use and disposal of the material. Not to mention all of the things that can go wrong with a nuclear power plant - mistakes in maintenance or operation can leave it inoperable in a way which is extremely expensive and complex to fix.
Solar panels and wind turbines are so easy to install, maintain and repair that you could do it safely by having a high school level understanding of electronics and following a 20-minute YouTube tutorial.
A thought experiment for you: Can you describe a scenario where either solar power or wind power are no longer viable sources of electrical supply, without a mass extinction event also occurring?
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