But I thought nuclear was supposed to be 100% reliable baseload that wasn’t affected by seasons in any way /s
I don’t mean to be negative about nuclear power, I just feel that in recent years in online discussions nuclear power has become this mythological source of power. We’re discussing all the challenges and issue with renewables in such detail. But the discussion of nuclear is so surface level, focusing mainly on public fear and regulations.
hshdhdhj4444•7mo ago
The problem is that the fossil industries (pun intended) recognize pitting 2 future industries against each other is a winning ploy.
This isn’t new. When nuclear was more cost effective than solar/wind they turned the “environmental” lobby against nuclear.
Now that wind/solar is more cost effective they’re turning the nuclear crowd against solar/wind.
gregbot•7mo ago
The total system cost of meeting electrical demand using 100% wind and solar is many times higher than the total system cost of meeting that demand with nuclear. The fact that you can produce lots of electricity cheaply using wind and solar is not that useful because it’s not generated when and where the demand is. Basically, storage and transmission are expensive and you need more and more of it as you add wind and solar to the grid. Do you have any evidence that oil and gas companies are deliberately spreading false information? Blaming oil companies for everything is a hallmark of anti-nuclear degrowthers.
audunw•7mo ago
You don’t know that. There have been studies that have founder lower total system costs with renewables. See studies by Marc Z Jacobsen et. al. for instance.
I know of one study that found fairly low costs with lots of nuclear. But it also assumed continued fossil fuel extraction and a whole lot of CCS, which is not a sustainable solution.
The problem with many analysis that show favourable outcome with nuclear is that they only look at decarbonising electricity. If we look at the big picture, and what’s required to decarbonise everything, you find that we gain a huge amount of flexible load. EVs can charge when electricity is cheap, or even feed energy back into the grid. Switching industry to electricity for heat lets us make heat batteries which can store enormous amount of energy for a very long time. In fact, it may be the only economical way to do it, since they’d end up using a lot of free excess energy from renewables. If they had to use nuclear they’d have to pay the full price of electricity. There’s some proposals to use the heat from nuclear power plants but that has limited applications. You can’t collocate all industry next to nuclear power plants.
There’s a company working on an induction cooktop with integrated batteries, because it may be the only way to replace gas cooktops in some places, as induction ones require a lot of peak power. It’s expensive to upgrade capacity. But if the batteries charge when electricity comes a cheap it’s not an issue. And an induction cooktop has all the components needed for an inverter so it can double as battery backup and save power on your electricity bill.
There are a million solutions like this already in the market or in late stage development. A future where we solve carbon emissions is necessarily a future where the load balancing problem of renewables is solved. Betting that we’ll need nuclear is equivalent with betting that we can’t sustainably solve global climate change (CCS is not a real solution in my book)
This paper doesn’t really attempt to compare a 100% nuclear grid to a 100% renewable grid. It defines a Business as Usual (BAU) energy mix and compares 100% renewable to that. It largely relies on large estimates of the social cost of carbon to conclude that renewables are cheaper than BAU but nuclear is also carbon free so that analysis doesnt apply
s1mplicissimus•7mo ago
I wonder how you calculate the system cost for nuclear?
Seems to me that dealing with the waste products is still an unsolved problem. Making whole areas of the globe uninhabitable by most biology for thousands of years seems like a pretty big cost .
Instability and dependence due to centralized power generation also does cause lots of missed economic potential.
> Do you have any evidence that oil and gas companies are deliberately spreading false information?
Not original parent, but: well, it's in their economic interest, and there are lobbyists and PACs denying CO2 caused climate change. I wonder who's financing them to do that if not the oil and gas industry? Who else would have such an incentive?
edhelas•7mo ago
We are talking about 1-2% of annual production during strong heatwaves and 0.3% of the annual production since 2000 in average until now.
Also its only specific to some reactors that are on the rivers, the ones that are next to the sea doesn't have this limitation.
Meanwhile heat on solar panels can reduce their efficiency by several percents per °C added. And heat also affect wind turbine (less wind) by several percents as well when the T° is going up.
Annnddd there's exactly the same limitations for all the other plants (coal and gas) that are built next to a river.
So yes the plants will have to limit their power more and more in the future due to global warming and water limitation (if they are on rivers), but it was already anticipated and doesn't have that big of a impact for now.
audunw•7mo ago
> Also its only specific to some reactors that are on the rivers, the ones that are next to the sea doesn't have this limitation.
Not true, I can find instances of similar issues for nuclear reactors by the sea.
I acknowledge that newer or different types of power plants can find ways around it. You can always find ways to get additional cooling. But additional engineering adds additional costs, and cost is already a huge challenge with nuclear.
> Meanwhile heat on solar panels …
Like I said, most of these issues are frequently discussed and well understood.
I think everyone now understands that renewables needs energy balancing. How many people know that the first pumped hydro plant was built to help with load balancing for a nuclear power plant?
> Annnddd there's exactly the same limitations for all the other plants (coal and gas)
Coal yes, those are thermal power plants. Gas power use gas turbines. As far as I understand the cooling requirements are lower.
It should also be said that thermal power plants contribute directly to global warming through thermal forcing. Not the biggest contributor. But enough that it’s worth thinking about considering that we’re already on the tipping point. (Replacing an existing fossil fuel thermal power plant with nuclear is a no-brainer of course)
pvtmert•7mo ago
I am still amazed that humanity continues to depend on steam (water vapor) for majority of our energy production.
Essentially, everything boils down to (pun-intended): Heat + Water = Steam + Turbine.
Still, waiting for the day when we will get rid of the rotating elements, directly using charged or magnetic fields, harnessing the energy...
audunw•7mo ago
I don’t mean to be negative about nuclear power, I just feel that in recent years in online discussions nuclear power has become this mythological source of power. We’re discussing all the challenges and issue with renewables in such detail. But the discussion of nuclear is so surface level, focusing mainly on public fear and regulations.
hshdhdhj4444•7mo ago
This isn’t new. When nuclear was more cost effective than solar/wind they turned the “environmental” lobby against nuclear.
Now that wind/solar is more cost effective they’re turning the nuclear crowd against solar/wind.
gregbot•7mo ago
audunw•7mo ago
I know of one study that found fairly low costs with lots of nuclear. But it also assumed continued fossil fuel extraction and a whole lot of CCS, which is not a sustainable solution.
The problem with many analysis that show favourable outcome with nuclear is that they only look at decarbonising electricity. If we look at the big picture, and what’s required to decarbonise everything, you find that we gain a huge amount of flexible load. EVs can charge when electricity is cheap, or even feed energy back into the grid. Switching industry to electricity for heat lets us make heat batteries which can store enormous amount of energy for a very long time. In fact, it may be the only economical way to do it, since they’d end up using a lot of free excess energy from renewables. If they had to use nuclear they’d have to pay the full price of electricity. There’s some proposals to use the heat from nuclear power plants but that has limited applications. You can’t collocate all industry next to nuclear power plants.
There’s a company working on an induction cooktop with integrated batteries, because it may be the only way to replace gas cooktops in some places, as induction ones require a lot of peak power. It’s expensive to upgrade capacity. But if the batteries charge when electricity comes a cheap it’s not an issue. And an induction cooktop has all the components needed for an inverter so it can double as battery backup and save power on your electricity bill.
There are a million solutions like this already in the market or in late stage development. A future where we solve carbon emissions is necessarily a future where the load balancing problem of renewables is solved. Betting that we’ll need nuclear is equivalent with betting that we can’t sustainably solve global climate change (CCS is not a real solution in my book)
gregbot•7mo ago
This paper doesn’t really attempt to compare a 100% nuclear grid to a 100% renewable grid. It defines a Business as Usual (BAU) energy mix and compares 100% renewable to that. It largely relies on large estimates of the social cost of carbon to conclude that renewables are cheaper than BAU but nuclear is also carbon free so that analysis doesnt apply
s1mplicissimus•7mo ago
> Do you have any evidence that oil and gas companies are deliberately spreading false information?
Not original parent, but: well, it's in their economic interest, and there are lobbyists and PACs denying CO2 caused climate change. I wonder who's financing them to do that if not the oil and gas industry? Who else would have such an incentive?
edhelas•7mo ago
Also its only specific to some reactors that are on the rivers, the ones that are next to the sea doesn't have this limitation.
Meanwhile heat on solar panels can reduce their efficiency by several percents per °C added. And heat also affect wind turbine (less wind) by several percents as well when the T° is going up.
Annnddd there's exactly the same limitations for all the other plants (coal and gas) that are built next to a river.
So yes the plants will have to limit their power more and more in the future due to global warming and water limitation (if they are on rivers), but it was already anticipated and doesn't have that big of a impact for now.
audunw•7mo ago
Not true, I can find instances of similar issues for nuclear reactors by the sea.
I acknowledge that newer or different types of power plants can find ways around it. You can always find ways to get additional cooling. But additional engineering adds additional costs, and cost is already a huge challenge with nuclear.
> Meanwhile heat on solar panels …
Like I said, most of these issues are frequently discussed and well understood.
I think everyone now understands that renewables needs energy balancing. How many people know that the first pumped hydro plant was built to help with load balancing for a nuclear power plant?
> Annnddd there's exactly the same limitations for all the other plants (coal and gas)
Coal yes, those are thermal power plants. Gas power use gas turbines. As far as I understand the cooling requirements are lower.
It should also be said that thermal power plants contribute directly to global warming through thermal forcing. Not the biggest contributor. But enough that it’s worth thinking about considering that we’re already on the tipping point. (Replacing an existing fossil fuel thermal power plant with nuclear is a no-brainer of course)