UK government planning nuclear site in Scotland
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c9eze1dzy5no
This is pointless: Scotland is already self-sufficient on renewables. What we need is a new grid interconnect between Scotland and England so we can export our surplus energy to the south!
It's all about the lobbyists, of course:
"Its ambitions for up to a quarter of all electricity to come from nuclear power by 2050 are being led by government-backed body Great British Nuclear." (Who?)
@cstross Nobody is self-sufficient on »renewables« (if by that you mean solar+wind). When the peak of solar+wind generation hits the demand line, the downs and ups mean that they meet only about 40% of live demand. Everything else must come from storage or other »backup«.
And nuclear energy is one of the best backup solutions there is. (So much so that it begs the question why only backup, but that's the fear of the renewables-only lobby.)
@Ardubal @cstross only an idiot would design a renewables-powered network where demand was only just met by nameplate capacity.
Surplus energy is the name of the game. Dump it into batteries, thermal storage, hydrogen electrolysis, or other industrial processes that are flexible in output, and could really benefit from some free (or almost free) electricity.
Nobody serious expects a renewables system to not have periods of surplus generation.
That point of just-met-demand is not an ideal or proposal, but a plausibilization case. It is the point up to which solar+wind scale roughly linear.
Yes, after that point comes overbuild plus storage. Every MW of that overbuild must be matched by storage with the same power output and hours or days of energy capacity. And every MW of that overbuild is diminished by storage and transmission losses. So, this point is like a sound barrier for ROI.
@Ardubal @Bern The ROI on renewables/gridscale storage looks a whole lot better, though, if you first cancel all the subsidies (visible and hidden) for fossil fuels. And better still if you bear in mind that PV prices per kWh are still dropping and battery prices are *also* falling.
Whereas nuclear reactor prices only ever seem to increase (unless like France in the 1970s you build them on a conveyor belt—politically non-feasible today).
@bjn @cstross @Bern It is known how much the Messmer plan cost overall. It is less than half of what the german »Energiewende« cost /so far/, and the difference is that the Messmer plan actually had an effect. That is the main point.
The side show of individual cost points: I distinctly remember a graph showing how each series was more expensive than the one before, but each reactor within the series got progressively cheaper, but I'll have to re-find it. Either way no argument for/against.
@bjn @cstross @Bern You can't extrapolate what solar and wind cost now, at low grid penetration, to what it costs to build a complete grid on it. And no one has ever done that.
China builds nuclear in 5 years and 5 G$ per large reactor on time, on budget. I refuse to believe that we are worse at engineering. The question is how to create the political and financial environment that makes it possible, not how to find excuses not to do it.
Do it on top of solar+wind, no reason to stop that.
Charlie Stross
Svante
Bern
Bruno Nicoletti