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This could just be people using out of date information, but I suspect this is anti-renewables propaganda.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.

@notjustbikes

It took 4.5 years to build one of the recent nuclear power plants in China and if we buy all our PV & inverters from them they clearly must know what they’re doing, don’t they?
@kravietz @notjustbikes
China can, but nobody else. They have teams of people who know how. Nobody else does. In order to get where china is right now, it took approximately last two decades.
Despite all this, they were connecting 2 or 3 reactors per year. Only now aiming at 10.
https://www.osel.cz/14443-jaderna-energetika-v-roce-2025-jaderna-renesance.html
Jaderná energetika v roce 2025 – jaderná renesance

V letošním roce nastala řada klíčových průlomů. V Číně se dokončuje první klasický malý modulární reaktor ACP100 a testovací reaktor s kapalným palivem poprvé realizoval thorium uranový cyklus. V Kanadě se začal budovat první západní malý modulární reaktor BWRX300. Tempo rozvoje jaderné energetiky se zrychluje po celém světě. V Evropě je to zatím dominantně v oblasti přípravných prací, ale v Asii se jaderné bloky intenzivně budují. Roční výroba elektřiny z jádra v roce 2024 překonala stávající rekordní úroveň z roku 2006.

@martincigan

It took France around a decade to complete their Mesmer plan. China made a decision and executed it, their nuclear industry did not appear magically out of thin air. But if we in the EU only want to seek reasons “why we can’t do shit” then it will apply to renewables just as well to nuclear 🤷
@kravietz
You are only reinforcing the point. It took France 10 years to scale up and then some more years to build up the fleet. First CP0 construction started in 1971. It took China longer to accomplish similar in ability to build and they did not yet complete the buildup.
And still they aim at 15% of the electricity mix in long term.
https://world-nuclear-news.org/articles/podcast-chinas-plans-for-new-nuclear-capacity
How long would it take to scale up in Europe or usa?
Podcast: China's ambitious plans for new nuclear capacity

China is leading the way in building new nuclear energy capacity but what are the plans for the future? François Morin, China Director at World Nuclear Association, sets out the scale of the country's ambitions.  ;

World Nuclear News
@martincigan

US and EU always have and had the competences, all nuclear project delays were result of hostile business and regulatory enrichment, as documented in this Hinkley Point C analysis:

https://medium.com/generation-atomic/the-hi...

Just to be clear, the same problem applies to large renewable projects such as Dutch Energy Island or many Polish on-shore wind farms.
The Hinkley Point C case: is nuclear energy expensive?

Discussions about the application of nuclear energy as part of the solution to the climate/energy challenge often falter on the perceived…

Medium
@kravietz
I personally know a few people working on one particular project. The know-how was gone. Dead or retired.

@martincigan

Somehow they managed to complete Olkiluoto 3 and Flamanville, which are now long operational, and Hinkley Point C construction continues.

@kravietz
For twice the budget and thrice the time.

@martincigan

As explained in the article I linked, there were very specific reasons for these delays - and they were unrelated to the technology. The same reasons are now plaguing Denmark Energy Hub off-shore wind farm and Polish on-shore farms, but this detail somehow skips the attention of the renewables audience 😉

@kravietz Large project are plagued by the same issues. There are only large projects with nuclear energy. With renewables, there can be large as well as small.

@martincigan

Small renewable projects can’t power industry, hospitals, trains etc. That’s why the large projects are started in the first place.

Small renewables can of course significantly reduce before-the-meter use of electricity, which is great.

@kravietz Wind and solar are much more repetitive than anything else. So is drilling in shale, perhaps once geothermal.
But once you come up with artificial islands, well, not so much.
Repetitio mater studiorum.