Since releasing my oil video I've had so many people claiming that renewables will never work and we need nuclear power instead.
What's odd is that almost all of the messages mention that nuclear power is the only solution for the "base load".
I have a degree in Electrical Engineering and I took several nuclear science electives. I like nuclear energy. But I received so much "base load" gaslighting that I started to doubt my own understanding of the situation.
Energy consumption goes up and down throughout the day, but the "base load" is the minimum amount, even at the lowest point in the day. So nuclear power is good for providing this "base" because it's consistent and always running.
The issue is that renewables sometimes output so much electricity that, especially when it's sunny, the grid makes *way* too much electricity. The electricity consumption of the grid minus renewables is called the "residual load", and it very very often goes NEGATIVE.
This means that the concept of "base load" is not really relevant, because there is no consistent base. And when the residual load goes negative, the wholesale price of electricity goes negative as well.
Last year the Netherlands had negative wholesale electricity prices for about 7% of the year, and that amount is only going to grow.
You can't afford to run a nuclear reactor when electricity prices are negative, but you also can't shut it down every day either.
This was always my understanding of how renewables make the concept of "base load" irrelevant, again, as a person with a literal degree in Electrical Engineering.
But I was gaslit by so many people that I felt the need to research the current situation again today.
This could just be people using out of date information, but I suspect this is anti-renewables propaganda. Otherwise I don't know why so many people would even know what a "base load" is.
When I did some reading on the current situation, I found a lot of sites out of Australia that were repeating this "base load" idea, in the context of nuclear power.
I suspect that this is fossil-fuel propaganda.
Fossil fuel companies love promoting nuclear power because they know it takes decades to get a reactor built (if it gets built at all), and in the meantime, everyone keeps using fossil fuels.
It's the perfect way to cripple renewables without being obvious about it.
"The neglected factor is the military dependence on civil nuclear industries. Maintaining a nuclear armed navy or weapons programme requires constant access to generic reactor technologies, skilled workers and special materials. Without a civilian nuclear industry, military nuclear capabilities are significantly more challenging and costly to sustain. "
@notjustbikes have not seen the video yet for context
Can't it be a misunderstanding that they mean grid momentum and not baseload and get the two confused?
@IcyPalm @notjustbikes I suspect it’s far more simple than that. Your average person likely has zero knowledge of the grid frequency or why it’s important. They don’t know about the duck curve. Transmission is how the electricity gets from their local power plant to their house.
What they do know:
* Solar turns the daylight into electricity
* We need electricity 24/7
* The sun doesn’t shine 24/7
* Batteries don’t last forever (and what if there’s a cloudy week, if …, if …, etc.)
* Therefore, we need a base load that gets us through the night and cloudy days. (What’s a base load? Idk I heard it)
* Nuclear is relatively clean and the scare factor was semi-artificially created by the fossil fuel industry, therefore it must be really good because they’re really bad
It’s the liberal equivalent of “why don’t we just drill more?”
I don’t think it’s some giant conspiracy.
@IcyPalm
Could be in some cases, but I've seen the "baseload" argument on German-language social media quite a lot and I'm very sure the fraction that knows about grid-momentum is even smaller than the fraction that knows what baseload actually means.
:)
@notjustbikes say more! Smart grids and smart devices that can operate at optimal times.
Also, China had this problem with coal stations that couldn't stop despite needs being met. Is that still happening?
Talking about "China" without a year number attached to what is being said is really hard, because things change rapidly there.
In 2024, China has been deploying new coal plants at approximately the same rate as they have been decommissioning older, dirtier ones.
The new plants have very low utilization rates, and are built as swing capacity. They are also being paid as reserve, base money for the ability to jump in on demand, and then additional money if they are actually needed.
@isotopp @notjustbikes around 2015 solar peaked, but the curtailment of coal became a whole other political infighting issue. After reading some of the latest reports I see that coal curtailment became impossible and it went the other way for most of the following decade. All this despite renewables trouncing coal quite regularly.
Provinces opting for new coal beyond mere back-up were basically going rogue.
@cabbagebeets Meh, I think the storage problem is way overblown.
The really radioactive stuff decays in a fairly short period of time and it's kept on-site in water pools (and the Cherenkov radiation looks so cool).
Once it's been there for a few years the remaining material is much less radioactive and very small.
Yeah, it needs to be handled carefully, but there are way more important issues to worry about when it comes to large-scale power generation.
@cabbagebeets @notjustbikes I’d be happy to *eat* all of the nuclear fuel spent to generate the power I personally use in a year. People really have no concept of how energy-dense it is. This is an aerial photo of the storage for Maine Yankee Nuclear Power Plant, a plant which operated from 1972-1997, rated at 860 MW, with a lifetime capacity factor of 68.2% (so it generated ~586 MW on average). 25 years is 219,150 hours, so this plant generated ~128.5 TWh of power over its life. And this isn’t just spent fuel, it’s all the severely contaminated concrete and steel from the reactor, too. All in a grid about 100’ by 120’.
Last I heard, New York City’s power consumption is estimated at 60 TWh per year, so this picture represents all the waste from powering one of the biggest cities in the world for two entire years.
@cabbagebeets @notjustbikes New nuclear plants probably shouldn’t be built in most areas (people living close to or inside the arctic/antarctic circles may not have better options). Renewables are worthwhile, and should absolutely make up most new power generation. That said, all power generation has waste, and renewables have waste problems of their own which should not be ignored.
We don’t have cost-effective recycling for solar panels. When panels break today (hail, high winds, sand etching the surface over time, etc.), it’s much cheaper to dump them in e-waste landfills in Africa or Southeast Asia, where they poison the groundwater. Better recycling is on the horizon (How long have better nuclear reactors been on the horizon?), but it’s not here yet. Legal changes like making recycling mandatory could help, but most areas don’t seem to have the stomach for that.
Wind turbine blades are composite materials which probably can’t ever be recycled. The best disposal method we have for them today is grinding them up (which risks giving workers silicosis; see quartz countertop issues) and burning them for industrial process heat.
@bob_zim @cabbagebeets @notjustbikes
Online discussions tend to be a bit tough, as posters come from different regions and backgrounds.
But recycling of solar panels has been mandatory in the EU since 2012.
https://mm-markets.com/how-smart-regulation-kick-started-solar-panel-recycling-the-eu-model/
@bob_zim @cabbagebeets @notjustbikes
The electrical power you use in a year would be equicalent to around 40g of enriched uranium. This would very very likely kill you.
"generating a 1,000,000 kilowatt hours (1 GWh), about the same electricity a person uses in their lifetime, requires 6.8 pounds of enriched uranium fuel."
https://www.freeingenergy.com/math/nuclear-fuel-uranium-weight-pound-kwh-mwh-m125/
"Uranium mainly targets the kidneys: [...] intakes of more than 50 milligrams can cause renal failure and death"
https://science.howstuffworks.com/science-vs-myth/what-if/what-if-ate-uranium.htm
@billiglarper That’s talking about intake of powder or salts. Those forms can accumulate in the body, particularly in bones, where they can release energy over time. Spent fuel pellets are a refined metal, which the human body can’t really absorb at all, and the digestive tract doesn’t keep anything for long.
40g of uranium metal is a hair over two cubic centimeters. Split it in two, seal it with the ratios of lead and concrete normally used for spent fuel, and it would be two large pills, but not especially dangerous ones in any regard. Negligible risk of heavy metal accumulation. There could be an increased risk of GI cancers, depending on how active the fuel still is.
@sgued @notjustbikes it was an excellent option we should have deployed more of in the 90's.
But it isn't the 90's any more.
@LovesTha Yeah, that's the thing.
When I was studying nuclear energy in University (because I was a huge proponent of it) it was the 90s, and we should've built a shitload of nuclear reactors then. It made sense.
But now? Nuclear rectors take ages to construct and they will not be as cheap as renewables.
Nuclear reactors may still make sense for powering heavy industrial applications though.
There was and interesting conversation between Robert Scheer and Thomas Bass (who wrote a book on Fukshima)
I have not fully investigated the assertions from Thomas, but he posits that nuclear was never viable, it was only ever a subsidy to enable weapons, there are obviously other positive and negative outcomes from nuclear, but this seems credible from my cursory understanding.
If I remember the figures from Thomas, it was a while since I listened to it, the cost of nuclear excluding build, disposal, and decommissioning is about $140 /MWh where solar is about $60 /MWh inclusive. *I will probably listen to it again today and correct later.*
He describes it as "the most expensive way to boil water."
I used to be very pro-nuclear, but I am now very pro-fusion.
I have a number of remote nuclear fusion receivers on the roof of my house, and they are netting me around 7 MWh/year at zero running cost.
The remote fusion collection contraptions don't have any moving part either. I think this is important, maintenance-wise.
@sgued @notjustbikes
@spiegelmix @datenhalde @isotopp @sgued @notjustbikes
It's a fancy way of saying "solar".
The sun generates energy via nuclear fusion. And photovoltaic modules and such collect the energy.
So you want more fossil or what?
There is no basis for any geopolitical tension between the EU and China. Most of it was concocted by the US, starting with Trump, then with Biden turbocharging it.
The EU has little to lose and everything to gain by leaning more into solar weaning itself off of both Russian and US machinations.
Besides, the EU (Germany) had a world leading solar industry before either through gross mismanagement or malice it tanked its own industry.
So you want more fossil or what?
No, precisely that’s why I want more nuclear power combined with renewables in EU so we can actually finish decarbonisation rather than wholesale importing PV from China and pretend their CO2 doesn’t count.
Well, I did! And it looks much better.
One reason is that typical volume of nuclear fuel is counted in tens of tons, while typical volume of resources for PV industry is counted in millions of tons due to its significantly lower energy density. It’s therefore easy to secure fuel for a nuclear power plan - you just send one cargo aircraft or ship. For the other you need to secure the whole logistics for continuous delivery of millions of tons of the resource.
Oh you muppet.
You’re telling me because I have Korean-made solar panels installed on my house and gathering renewable energy that I currently rely on China and forced labour? Get out of here.
What are you proposing? That I get rid of my solar installation and import some diesel from Saudi Arabia and support Mohammed Bone Saw?
Goddamn stupidest thing I’ve read today. You should be ashamed.
I see you’re a supporter of nuclear energy. You might have missed the first post in this thread about how building new nuclear plants is not something that happens anymore realistically.
Also, I’m in nuclear-free Aotearoa, so that will never happen.
New power capacity for the home owner either comes from solar panels, which can be imported from Korea, or it comes from diesel generation on the other side of the globe, supporting the worst repressive regime you can imagine.
I’m supporter of decarbonisation.
Nuclear power is the only low-carbon electricity generation that is dispatchable and does not depend on geography.
Unlike the PV & wind fans, I’m not going to tell you what you should be using in Aotearoa. You should use whatever works in your geographic landscape and lattitude and delivers decarbonisation.
I’m also a supporter of decarbonisation, and despite your assurances you most definitely are telling other people what to do.
Nuclear power doesn’t work regardless of geography. Nuclear power isn’t viable here due to culture, geology, and … geography.
IF you want decarbonisation, THEN you look at IPCC & UNECE data and choose technology that works in your geography.
The part where I step in is when people deny IPCC & UNECE data, be it in causes of the climate change or the role of nuclear in decarbonisation. Funny thing the former are rare here, but frequent on Twitter, but vice versa for the latter 😄 But one can’t say “I follow science” but then cherry-pick from IPCC “because I feel so”.
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