Aceris
5396
On a more constructive note on the “how can we do nuclear power without massive complexity, cost overruns, and complex systems that are supposed to be failsafe but are they really”, the Moltex technology looks very promising:
If there’s anyone here who is actually expert in this stuff, I’d be interested in your analysis, since all I have to look at is their own technical advertising.
Is it the case that no one can engage with you unless they recapitulate verbatim every single word you write? That seems extreme.
In this passage:
…I read you as saying that politicians are making a mistake; that instead of pretending everything can be solved with more renewables, they ought to be pressing the public to accept / embrace nuclear, because there isn’t much more room for improvement with renewables.
If that isn’t what you meant, then explain what you did mean.
If it is what you meant, I’m not at all sure it is correct. That’s because 1) there is still lots of upside for renewables in almost every country in the world, and 2) expanding renewables is an easier get if the public is for it, and 3) there is no reason to believe that politicians will get anywhere at the moment by trying to press nuclear on an unwilling public, especially if there is still a lot to be gained with renewables. It’s a question of pressing the advantage for the most gain.
Now, if you think that’s an exercise in bad faith on my part, I really don’t know what to say.
Very true, but I seem to remember that the european smart power grid was moving along nicely and that dams as batteries worked much better than I thought.
Does anyone have any data on how much that helps?
Coal is a terrible emitter and the US should be ashamed that it still uses so much coal-based electricity.
My province of Ontario, Canada has phased it out completely despite having a significant share of power by coal less than 15 years ago. But, it’s fair to point out that the phase-out of coal was ‘helped’ by the decline of manufacturing which kept electricity demand in check while hydro and renewables have replaced coal.
Other provinces in Canada do still use coal.
Gas is about 50% lower GHG than coal so is a viable strategy. It is also quick to deploy so it works in a renewable environment. It’s not great though as 50% better is still not something like 99% better, which nuclear obviously is.
MikeJ
5400
Also fair to point out that Ontario retains a pretty significant baseline nuclear power supply. The coal plants were used to handle peaks. Also I think we are still using gas plants to handle peaks when wind and solar aren’t available. And we gave pretty generous contracts to get the gas plants built.
Of course, crap like this tends to also make people more concerned about nuclear fission reactors:
Thanks for the Moltex link @Aceris, I’m reading that next.
For Germany’s slowing renewable energy uptake, my understanding is that it this is not because Germany is running out of potential renewable energy capacity. Rather it’s because they went on a big renewable kick early in the century, spent a ton of money and political capital, and since then that surge has subsided (partly due to it being really expensive, partly because of political uncertainty and refocusing of attention). But there is plenty more renewable capacity in the country and in the region, so it is not some fundamental limit that Germany is running into. I’m happy to be corrected by someone with first hand knowledge of their situation, but that is the report that I’m getting from the 6-8 articles about the situation that I’ve read so far. So I don’t think Aceris and Gibson have a fundamental argument, rather it’s just that Timex threw his golden apple of “not enough capacity” out between them. :D
Aceris does raise a good point, and one that I came across for the first time in reading about France’s nuclear situation. Which is that nuclear power as it exists is actually a really poor match for the base load needs of renewables. It’s very difficult to spool up or spool down a nuclear plant, which means that it does a terrible job in evening out the peaks and troughs of renewable supply. This is a problem that is staring France in the face, since their current energy mix is tons of nuclear + a little renewables, and their politically mandated future energy mix is half nuclear and half renewables. So far their solution to the contradiction is to le shrug.
I’d also like to correct an earlier correction:
Yes, 16% of our electricity came from wind in 2017 (per the Wiki article), but we’re up to 23.4% from wind in 2019 (per the GreenTech article). Which isn’t a bad rate of improvement given the relatively minor amount of minor subsidies and political will in our state.
Timex
5403
It is a healthy increase. As i said, Texas is almost ideally suited to wind generation. It’s super flat, with huge amounts of open space.
Wind power is grossly oversold in its output to the public. It is very irregular and unpredictable. It’s true that Texas has a lot of wind capacity, but that capacity that is often quoted (like 30%) was on very peculiar days where it was very windy but not so windy as to actually shut the wind farms down.
Just for fun here are the current load and output of wind and power over the Texas grid as per ERCOT:
Not only is the daily delta for wind generation severe, and not only is that number much lower than installed capacity, but it also occurs at almost the inverse of peak demand.
In places like Texas solar generation make some sense - the big appeal for solar is that its peak output corresponds with peak demand. But at night solar output is, you know, 0, and solar output in general is a bell curve around noon where about half the sunlit day is < 50% of the peak production.
But a peak demand, where Texas needs 55,000 MW, wind is only producing 500 MW. As the day goes on into night, wind output goes up to 10%. And the delta between peak output and minimum production is about a factor of 20.
KevinC
5405
I have a solution to that. Why don’t we have crews that load up all the solar panels onto a giant fleet of C-17s and fly them to the other side of the world when night falls? Then we can fly them back before morning!
You rang?
Basically the only other near term option is space based solar + microwave transmission if you don’t want nuclear.
KevinC
5407
Hmmm. Is there any way we can do this with steam?
(seriously, though, if it were ever feasible, a space-based solar farms beaming energy back to earth makes my inner nerd get all tingly)
Timex
5408
Shoot the microwaves from the solar orbital solar array directly into the ocean and boil it.
My plan - and this is a faultless plan - is to really unite the earth in one of those green-and-blue planet montages they sell to school kids with a collective project.
When the sun passes overhead wherever you are on earth, a horn sounds, and we jump up and down.
Collectively, over time, we’ll push the earth away from the sun just a little bit. Think of the generations of children from around the world happily hopping to move the earth a fraction of a fraction of a speck so that their children’s children don’t fry. Better get hopping!
I mean, we can’t look at things scientifically, so we might as well try hopping. Of course you’ll have the same dudes who have stack piped trucks hopping at night to move the earth toward the sun to cuck the libs on Youtube, but what can you do?
The real problem with global warming is it will bring more Predators. Remember,
When I was little, we found a man. He looked like… like, butchered. The old women in the village crossed themselves… and whispered crazy things- strange things. “El Diablo cazador de hombres.” Only in the hottest years this happens- and this year, it grows hot. We begin finding our men. We found them sometimes without their skins… and sometimes much, much worse. …“El cazador trofeo de los hombres” means “the demon who makes trophies of men”.
Maybe it will bring the Dinosaurs back, and the New Earth Christians will just have been wrong about people hunting dinosaurs in the past, it actually happens in the future!
My favorite quote from that movie is, “Do you have time for ducks?” Which totally relates to climate issues.
-xtien
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