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
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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
Don’t import Reddit’s extremely ignorant takes on nuclear power here, please. Nuclear power is a huge waste of money.
If you’re about to angrily downvote me (or you already did), or write an angry reply, please read the rest of my comment before you do. This is not my individual opinion, this is the scientific consensus on the issue.
When it comes to generating electricity, nuclear is hugely more expensive than renewables. Every 1000Wh of nuclear power could be 2000-3000 Wh solar or wind.
If you’re about to lecture about “it’s not possible to have all power from renewable sources”, save your keystrokes - 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. Again, this isn’t my opinion, you can look it up and find a dozen sources to back up what I am writing here.
This is all with current, modern day technology, not with some far-off dream of thorium fusion breeding or whatever other potential future tech someone will probably comment about without reading this paragraph.
Again, compared to nuclear, renewables are:
Nuclear power has promise as a future technology. It is 100% worth researching for future breakthroughs. But at present it is a massive waste of money, resources, effort and political capital.
Nuclear energy should be funded only to conduct new research into potential future improvements and to construct experimental power stations. Any money that would be spent on nuclear power should be spent on renewables instead.
You can have this copy/paste from like 5 minutes of googling. You can also run your own study yourself by just googling "average kwh price nuclear" and "average kwh price wind" and see how it looks. You can also google "average co2 eq emissions total lifetime nuclear" and likewise for wind/solar PV. This is extremely simple stuff, guys. I am basically saying, "lentils are cheaper than steak" and you're asking for citations.
2022 Electricity ATB Technologies and Data Overview, annual technology baseline: *removed externally hosted image*
https://www.dw.com/en/fact-check-is-nuclear-energy-good-for-the-climate/a-59853315 *removed externally hosted image*
Wow look isn't it crazy how nuclear is the most expensive one?
Mycle Schneider, author of the World Nuclear Industry Status Report: "Nuclear power plants are about four times as expensive as wind or solar, and take five times as long to build. When you factor it all in, you're looking at 15-to-20 years of lead time for a new nuclear plant."
Differences in carbon emissions reduction between countries pursuing renewable electricity versus nuclear power, published in nature energy: "We find that larger-scale national nuclear attachments do not tend to associate with significantly lower carbon emissions while renewables do. "
and this is a short intro to why a (60%/40%) split between renewables and nuclear may be the most accessible fossil free solution, and why the value of adding more variable renewables to a grid falls sharply the closer you get to 100%.
Also, the last article you posted is paywalled.
Although I agree with this comment, this is exactly what the covidiots said. "Just google it". If you want us to believe your controversial opinion, you're going to want to take the time to add the most credible sources you can find to back you up.
The difference between my comment and a COVID denial comment is that if you googled covid denial arguments you’d find that 99.999% of results refute their claims. If you do the same for my claims, you’ll find the exact same sources that I used to make my arguments on the top page of the search results. It’s not the same.
A battery of tests were performed on the economics of mitigating the impending climate disater. These tests indicated that nuclear is a huge waste of money (p<0.05) (Blake, 2023)
Hahaha :)
I’m on my phone, dude, I’m not gonna juggle a dozen sources on this tiny screen and crappy keyboard just to prove you wrong, you’re more than capable of using Google to find the facts yourself. I challenge you to prove me wrong. You can even cite some hilariously biased source like World Forum of Nuclear Investor Funds or something, those ones are always fun because they’re like “oh with our super cool advanced new nuclear reactor that doesn’t exist, it’s as good as solar or wind for almost 150% of the cost!! :)”
And the argument vanishes into thin air...
2022 Electricity ATB Technologies and Data Overview, annual technology baseline: *removed externally hosted image*
https://www.dw.com/en/fact-check-is-nuclear-energy-good-for-the-climate/a-59853315 *removed externally hosted image*
Wow look isn't it crazy how nuclear is the most expensive one?
Mycle Schneider, author of the World Nuclear Industry Status Report: "Nuclear power plants are about four times as expensive as wind or solar, and take five times as long to build. When you factor it all in, you're looking at 15-to-20 years of lead time for a new nuclear plant."
Differences in carbon emissions reduction between countries pursuing renewable electricity versus nuclear power, published in nature energy: "We find that larger-scale national nuclear attachments do not tend to associate with significantly lower carbon emissions while renewables do. "
I agree with you on nuclear being more expensive as all facts point that way and future nuclear technology, but i dont understand how we could transition to a 100% renewable energy sector, It would be good if you could give a citation or explanation for that. Diverse and distributed source is how we get an energy secure grid, renewables could help with the distributed source part, but when it comes to diversity the popular renewable technologies wind and solar are very limited, both of these source cant power a base load without batteries (this applies mostly to solar, but wind too has low output at night). Also there is this issue witj managing generation and demand (Nuclear too have issue with this as its not possible to quickly adjust nuclear power generation like other conventional spurce). A full renewable energy grid would depend on batteries, currently we have much limitation with batteries. Mature technologists of acid based batteries require huge areas, and lithium based ones would require rare lithium which its mining alone would cause alot of pollution, and relying on other alt battery technology itself would be a long stretch as its development and commercialisation to usable form would take years to achieve as the same case afforable future nuclear technology.
Other alt renewable energy like geothermal could help with base load (not sure, someone could correct me if this is not the case), but itsnt possible everywhere. The same goes for tidal plant as it depends on geography and specific time of day. With this scenarios if we were to move to a 100% renewable grid then, the price for energy will increase at night time in a way that i think could reach nuclear energy rate.
A 100% renewable grid would need a lot of batteries and that too could drive the price up and possibly contribute to climate change. Also solar panel manufacturing is a very intense process with a lot of carbon impact, i read this on a text during my academics (havent checked the source for this other than that).
Let's not forget distributed grids reliant on wind can't tolerate local drops in energy output so you need to set up a zillion little LNG plants that are even less efficient than big ones
Edit: or I guess batteries that haven't been invented yet but that's sure not how the problem is solved most places these days
I wrote a larger comment addressing this, but honestly, you’d be better just googling it. It’s eminently plausible, it’s the industry consensus. Here’s a Wikipedia link for you: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/100%25_renewable_energy
I wrote a larger comment addressing this, but honestly, you’d be better just googling it. It’s eminently plausible, it’s the industry consensus. Here’s a Wikipedia link for you: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/100%25_renewable_energy
How do we deal with balancing the uneven load renewables produce in places where pumped hydro isn't an option for power storage? I.e. lowland areas. Here in the southeastern US, night almost always means no wind as well as the obvious no sun. Chemical batteries, afaik, aren't a sustainable solution ATM.
Thanks for the question. Firstly, most places have a power grid which is far larger than their locality. For example, the southeastern United States is connected to a single big grid which connects every smaller sub-grid east of the Rocky Mountains. This means that a home in Florida can be powered all the way from the Bath County pumped-storage facility in Virginia, the second largest such facility in the US.
Hydroelectricity can also be generated by rivers, which are commonly used in lowland areas, and geothermal is also viable at any time of the day. Biomass is also an option, though it’s the last resort really, although as long as it’s responsibly managed, it can be nearly carbon neutral.
There are also alternatives to pumped storage, lots of them. Compressed air, thermal storage, and hydrogen are a few examples just off the top of my head, though I’m sure there are many more. Pumped storage is just very efficient and cheap, so if we can plausibly do it, it should be the first choice. And if it can’t be done somewhere, then we should connect that place to somewhere which can!
Destroys aquaculture. TVA has absolutely killed those rivers, and there is no way to sugar coat that.
Geothermal can't be used in most places (but should absolutely be used where it can be)
Biomass is just burning shit all over again (thought that was the point of not burning coal).
I'm also skeptical of the pivot from using renewables as a decentralized solution and then touting a massive grid which requires lots of infrastructure. Unless your problem with centralization is targetability by bombing.
I've not heard much about compressed air as an energy storage medium, or thermal storage besides from using solar arrays to reflect light and melt a metal core (like Gemasolar which is another centralized solution), but I've heard nothing good about hydrogen except from breathless techbro types.
Meanwhile Nuclear is a mature technology now, absolutely a less dangerous solution than coal (even without looking a climate change knock-on effects, just looking at the effects coal dust has on populations near coal-fired plants), and can be used to meet the base-load of a local grid with various renewable solutions used to meet peak load demands.
If I knew you were just gonna try to pick holes I wouldn’t have been so nice to you. Ah well, we live and learn!
I don’t believe you and couldn’t find anything online. Post a source for your claim that run-of-the-river hydroelectric power plants operated by TVA have reduced aquatic life.
No, wrong. Geothermal can be built pretty much anywhere with the use of EGS.
Burning shit grown exclusively for the purpose of doing so. Plants breathe carbon dioxide in and breathe out oxygen. When we burn them, some of the carbon they breathed in is released. Properly managed biomass is essentially carbon neutral.
Coal is completely different - it’s carbon that has been sequestered for a really long time that we’re extracting. Biomass is recently captured carbon being re-released. I agree it’s not the ideal solution though. Good thing my comment contained about a dozen other ideas huh?
Decentralised doesn’t mean disparate. The internet is a decentralised network of computers. It also connects fucking billions of them all together into one big grid. The more interconnected the grid is, the more resilient it becomes. I have explained before the benefits of decentralisation: less risk from natural disaster, accidents, intentional acts of sabotage or manipulation, etc.
Clearly if YOU, the internet’s most informed commenter, haven’t heard of it, then it must be worthless. Completely glossing over the fact that you probably have thermal power storage in your home right now in the form of a hot water tank, yes, molten salt solar is one form of thermal storage. Again, something like 98% of all electrical storage is pumped storage. I just shared some other options with you because I thought you were a cool guy. Wont make that mistake again don’t worry!
And what do you mean that you “haven’t heard anything good about hydrogen”? What an absolutely absurd statement. Hydrogen is an element. It has a very high energy density per kg. It can be used to store energy. Electrolysis of water produces hydrogen gas and oxygen gas. Then the hydrogen gas is captured, compressed and stored. Later, the hydrogen can be oxidised to produce energy and water. It’s an entirely clean cycle, as long as the electricity used to generate hydrogen is also clean. It’s nowhere near as efficient as pumped storage but it’s another option. We should 100% be transitioning to using hydrogen for cars instead of lithium ion batteries, it’s going to be much much more environmentally friendly, long term.
If you are worried about the cost of nuclear energy, you don't give a shit about the environment.
That's a really bad take. Funds should be focused where they're most effective at transitioning to clean energy.
Would you like to elaborate? Renewables are a much better power source than nuclear in every single way that matters. They’re better for the environment, cheaper, lower emissions and are faster to commission. Every $1 spent on nuclear power is $1 stolen from renewables.
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You've converted me :)
I’m really glad to hear it, thanks for being open to changing your perspective when you are presented with new information. It’s a quality which is sadly rare these days it seems!