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VictualSquid posted:Yes, that is a very good study. IIrc it also implies 35% nuclear power as ideal powermix with 65% renewables. Almost -- those numbers in the chart aren't % of total generation, but rather installed capacity. For example, lazily eyeballing the ReBN scenario, the nuclear installed capacity is only 35 of 150 total, so ~23% rather than 35% having sent through quite a few presentations that look like this for a number of years, the general impression I get is that somewhere around a quarter of the portfolio as baseload provides a fairly healthy space for renewables to thrive on top. To acknowledge and reinforce your point, this is a situation analyzing California's commitments to grow their installed capacity, so it's worth mentioning that the current baseload fraction would represent a much smaller percentage in the future if the renewables fraction increases without correlating base load growth and particularly fossil baseload replacement. In short, we need to be expanding both baseload and renewables/storage such that we don't end up needing to dramatically and disproportionately overbuild the latter.
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Nov 28, 2022 01:17
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VictualSquid posted:Yes, that is a very good study. IIrc it also implies 35% nuclear power as ideal powermix with 65% renewables. Likewise, there are very few places that can claim to have 35% nuclear power. That's why you'll discover that nuclear power proponents itt are also all renewable energy proponents, and the mantra is always that we need to be building both as rapidly as possible.
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Nov 28, 2022 01:17
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QuarkJets posted:I don't think that post is advocating for no/low renewable mixtures; I read it as addressing the "all renewables" proposal, which is a common plan that lobbying groups like to put forward. Under such a plan, if your wind power turbines are only generating 1 GW right now, but you need 10 GW, how do you make up that difference of 9 GW? Ok, let me turn your initial question around. Please quote the post that argues for 100% renewables. I haven't personally encountered anybody arguing for 100% renewables outside of the serious degrowth movement in years. And the degrowth solution to the power shortfall is that everybody non-essential takes a day off from work to save power on those days similar to the rona lockdowns. Which is a coherent approach, though I personally am not in favour of the idea. And again, while nobody has said that transmission will be free for less renewable grids, I felt it as an implication. I certainly understand that you don't. And I keep using this comparision: As you don't accept the implication you also wouldn't for nuclear waste, I assume? That is if someone argues that handling nuclear waste is prohibitly expensive, you would not interpret it as implying that other power generation methods have no waste problems.
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Nov 28, 2022 01:26
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QuarkJets posted:Likewise, there are very few places that can claim to have 35% nuclear power. That's why you'll discover that nuclear power proponents itt are also all renewable energy proponents, and the mantra is always that we need to be building both as rapidly as possible. Likewise I think you will find the other direction to be also true. All renewable energy proponents itt are also pro nuclear as far as I can see. This is not true irl, on the other hand. I personally see more energy political goal in common with the local anti-nuclear green then with the pro-nuclear politicians. Because I favour investments into renewables, infrastructure, resilience and nuclear power. Getting 3 of 4 points of agreement. While the "pro-nuclear" people favour cutting all investments and letting the market solve climate change.
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Nov 28, 2022 01:34
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Ok. Good luck!
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Nov 28, 2022 01:39
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VictualSquid posted:Likewise I think you will find the other direction to be also true. All renewable energy proponents itt are also pro nuclear as far as I can see. Can you provide an example, perhaps a link to public statements of a "pro-nuclear" politician who is in favour for increased funding for nuclear power, but not renewables?
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Nov 28, 2022 01:46
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Raenir Salazar posted:Can you provide an example, perhaps a link to public statements of a "pro-nuclear" politician who is in favour for increased funding for nuclear power, but not renewables? They weren't in favour of increasing funding for nuclear power. They were the face of the "pro-nuclear" wave after the invasion of Ukraine. And like all self identified "pro-nuclear" politicians in the last 20 years he favoured decreasing all state funding including for nuclear.
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Nov 28, 2022 01:59
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Are those itty bitty intrinsically safe nuclear power plants getting any traction? I saw a lot of hype but I'm not sure if it's real or just hype. I looked them up - SMRs These seem pretty cute, could you build lots of them more quickly than the equivalent (in terms of energy production) Big Nuclear Plant?
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Nov 28, 2022 02:56
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Potato Salad posted:I don't have any issues with most of your post, but I'm dismayed that this incorrect conventional wisdom keeps popping up. The opposite is true: as baseload generation is capable of running much higher duty cycle than solar and wind, transmission infrastructure need only be as large as is necessary to transmit that very baseload. As the fraction wind and solar increases - solar in particular - higher capacity transmission and storage infrastructure becomes necessary to provide higher peak transmission load and storage arbitrage. Your understanding of generation and transmission system design and dispatch is largely based on a fossil fuel grid and understanding, which is why you are being confused by the use of baseload and misusing the term. Baseload isn't a generation source or type, it is the minimum load on a transmission system that needs to be served. Fully dispatchable energy sources can reduce the transmission system costs and fossil fuel infrastructure can take advantage of this by building a power plant with capital expenditure that matches the expected capacity factor of the plant. A plant that will be dispatched most of the time can be designed for maximum efficiency with multiple thermal cycles at extra cost (referred to as baseload because that is the type of load it serves), a plant that only runs a few hours a year can be a simple combustion turbine (peaker). This system has cheaper transmission costs at the expense of more idle power plant capacity. This is not the same scenario as a power system with a nuclear heavy fleet or renewables so the terms are no longer really all that useful and confuses the waters a bit as the real issue facing today's grids for stability is maintaining enough grid control through dispatchable resources to handle variations in renewable energy supply and load (and thanks to behind the meter generation, load can even be negative now!). Since nuclear energy always has a high capital cost and rather low marginal cost its going to be more cost effective to build out a transmission grid that takes a nuclear power plant from 50% CF to 80% than it would be to build out more nuclear power plants to reduce transmission system congestion. While nuclear energy is technically dispatachable, it is not an economical plant to dispatch, and so you would not design your grid around baseload/peaker system with nuclear energy but would design a transmission grid that can provide the maximum continuous load to match your nuclear power plant installation (including the addition of BESS to the transmission system). I do think an all renewable grid would require more power transmission capability to be built than an all nuclear grid, but transmission infrastructure scales incredibly well since power scales transmission scales quadratically with voltage while costs scale linearly with voltage, so the overall cost isn't that important and is less than the error margin on project nuclear energy or renewable energy costs. I also find it strange to propose baseload generation is needed in a state that famously has the duck curve due to installed solar capacity that could push the California baseload down to 0 (although I would hope they stop subsidizing behind the meter / net metered solar before then), assuming solar installation trends continue. The conclusions from your reference might be true, if CAISO had 35GW of nuclear energy the renewable energy requirements would be reduced, I don't think it is at all relevant as the united states as an entire country currently only has plans to build 10GW of additional nuclear power this decade. I do not see how nuclear power will surpass supplying more than 10-15% of the US energy needs, unless we significantly reduce energy use. I also think that the investment required to build those 35GW (at least $250 billion) would be better spent on renewable energy and transmission infrastructure that will be installed in a matter of years and the electrification of heating and transportation. This would reduce emission now rather than reducing emissions in a decade. If this was the year 2000, I would agree that nuclear power is the best option, but we are currently 20 years too late to start construction, and probably 40 years too late to maintain and keep the required industrial capability to build that much nuclear power that quickly. I believe we can't even build the reactor pressure vessels domestically, and looking at other options there simply isn't enough world wide pressure vessel construction capability to meet the California nuclear power plant needs, let alone the united states. Splode posted:I think it's disingenuous to frame "nuclear power plants don't make up their costs as fast if they're not being used at 100%" as the same problem as "renewables don't output a predictable fixed amount of power". One is a financial problem and one is an engineering problem. I never said they are the same problem (in fact I believe I was clear when I stated one is a diversity of load and the other generation, literal opposites) but the solutions (storage, large grids) are the same. I also disagree that they aren't both engineering problems. Engineering a design without consideration of the costs or optimizing a problem isn't engineering. It also misses the point that you can build less nuclear power plants and more transmission infrastructure to produce the same amount of electrical energy as more nuclear plants and less infrastructure (which is way more expense to do).
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Nov 28, 2022 03:15
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VictualSquid posted:While the "pro-nuclear" people favour cutting all investments and letting the market solve climate change. I am struggling to think of a single interest group that resembles this strawman. Edit: Am I reading correctly that this was a reference to a German political party? freezepops posted:Your understanding of generation and transmission system design and dispatch is largely based on a fossil fuel grid and understanding, which is why you are being confused by the use of baseload and misusing the term. The benefits of various blended portfolios as compared to present fossil-heavy generation is .... the entire point of the cited study and presentation, where are we disagreeing here 
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Nov 28, 2022 07:33
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freezepops posted:It also misses the point that you can build less nuclear power plants and more transmission infrastructure to produce the same amount of electrical energy as more nuclear plants and less infrastructure (which is way more expense to do). This is completely controverted by the cited study and any similar presentation I've sat through. Where is this coming from? I'm struggling to see how you appear to have the fundamentals right but end up with a conclusion that sits opposite of (1) any citable findings and (2) the fundamentally and frankly obvious notion that excess transmission and storage infrastructure costs would follow lopsided overinvestment in wind and solar rather than investment in nonvariable generation industries. Put extremely simply, overinvestment in solar places pressure on transmission and storage infrastructure to capture and shift peak generation periods that, as non-storage baseload shrinks, must fill in deeper and wider chasms of demand windows, as demonstrated in the second screenshot I am citing. I'm trying to see where we're each misreading the other. Potato Salad fucked around with this message at 08:35 on Nov 28, 2022 |
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Nov 28, 2022 07:57
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freezepops posted:Engineering a design without consideration of the costs or optimizing a problem isn't engineering. First off, this last sentence is entirely undeserved. We're literally talking about cost optimization. It would be weird to walk in here and attempt to imply that either other posters or a study on cost optimizing energy portfolios are trying to conveniently dodge the cost question. Allow me to direct you to the charts indicating additional price of power across various prospective energy portfolios, wherein overbuilt solar generation drives cost far higher than any other blended portfolio--even the absolute insanity of a CCS blend. If you want to ignore the cost saving effect of a minority of nuclear generation underpinning a heavy majority of renewables, at least be upfront about the fact that you're going to forcibly overlook cost optimization figures from reliable, serious sources. Stanford/Cali propose other baseload blends--pick one. Between you and me, on a completely off-the-cuff basis, stuff like CCS and  biogas are either greenwashed attempts to continue burning fossil fuel or further deplete already-strained arable land. It's often joked that email is a terrible digital communication tool, except when compared to everything else. I see the nuclear baseload blend option in a similar light. Also, stop trying to "but actually" about the definition of baseload, we know what it is and we're using it correctly. freezepops posted:i also think that the investment required to build those 35GW (at least $250 billion) would be better spent on renewable energy and transmission infrastructure that will be installed in a matter of years and the electrification of heating and transportation. This would reduce emission now rather than reducing emissions in a decade. We do need to be immensely increasing investment in wind and solar to try to make any of those portfolios work. We do also need to avoid pushing the portfolio into a regime where it becomes incapable of providing power to customers at the end of demand windows without dramatic overinvestment in farms and batteries. That big honkin' chunk of current fossil baseload is a massive problem, and addressing it purely with that hypothetical renewables/storage-onlynbuildout blend is the most expensive explored option, by far. Potato Salad fucked around with this message at 08:36 on Nov 28, 2022 |
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Nov 28, 2022 08:20
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The part where you claim that nuclear power would significantly reduce transmission infrastructure upgrade requirements when compared to renewable energy, something that as far I could tell was largely outside the scope of the study which was frankly not a great study if you are wanting details on what that grid would look like, the study by scope was limited to only really looking at local CAISO only generation and does not consider transmission limits, or even economic limits (such as the fact that 35GW of nuclear by 2045 is impossible, and honestly 100GW of storage is probably too). Which is the opposite of the claim: Potato Salad posted:I don't have any issues with most of your post, but I'm dismayed that this incorrect conventional wisdom keeps popping up. The opposite is true: as baseload generation is capable of running much higher duty cycle than solar and wind, transmission infrastructure need only be as large as is necessary to transmit that very baseload. As the fraction wind and solar increases - solar in particular - higher capacity transmission and storage infrastructure becomes necessary to provide higher peak transmission load and storage arbitrage. Which is incorrect as it confuses the idea of what baseload generation is and fails to understand how exactly a power grid with renewable and nuclear energy would operate. Replacing fossil fuels with nuclear and renewables will require significant transmission infrastructure expansion over the current system to maintain reliability (for renewables) and economical dispatch (for nuclear). Storage requirements do reduce significantly with nuclear, but they also reduce with larger grid inter-connectivity. Something that is outside that studies scope.
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Nov 28, 2022 08:36
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Grid interconnectivity doesn't really have too much to do with the need to provide solar arbitrage though? Storage dispatches well, but that's kinda...not the illustrated achilles heel of overbuilt renewables+battery generation that lacks some other significant source capable of cheaply servicing baseload demand. The studied service regions extending beyond California barely span two timezones. It is beside the point. Like, I take your point about nuclear plants struggling with dispatch. Isn't that kinda why it's economical to place a tall stack of renewables atop it? Potato Salad fucked around with this message at 08:52 on Nov 28, 2022 |
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Nov 28, 2022 08:40
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freezepops posted:The part where you claim that nuclear power would significantly reduce transmission infrastructure upgrade requirements when compared to renewable energy, something that as far I could tell was largely outside the scope of the study which was frankly not a great study if you are wanting details on what that grid would look like, the study by scope was limited to only really looking at local CAISO only generation and does not consider transmission limits, or even economic limits (such as the fact that 35GW of nuclear by 2045 is impossible, and honestly 100GW of storage is probably too). At the very least, replacing coal power stations with nuclear does not incur meaningful extra infrastructure costs. Source, the grids are running now with those generators generating the profiles they are generating right now which is similar to a nuclear generator profile (dispatchable large point source). To be reasonable, new nuclear will likely need new connections (because building exactly where the current coal stations are now is unlikely) but it is still just hooking up to a grid that was designed for few large producers of electricity. Renewables for Europe is/was looking at building a power line to North Africa! Bit disingenuous to say there is no baseload during the day and imply it is all from behind the meter solar. Load serviced by solar that comes from behind the grid and gets metered is now part of the measured load and I don't believe for a second that all consumers are satisfying their daytime demand themselves without using the network. Sure, nuclear wouldn't pick up that market but that's beside the point. I like how Victual Squid said no one is saying that it should only be renewables and then you literally say that it should only be a renewables only grid (that's what saying that nuclear power investment should be spent on renewables actually means). Bit weird that people are now categorizing pro-nuclear as free enterprise only when this thread talks lovingly about the French (government) nuclear build out and consistently pine for nationalization of the grids. For myself, I think it is good to try and keep organisations smaller than one single large entity responsible for everything. Private and public generators supplying a grid that is managed (but not constructed or maintained directly by) QANGOs is one possibility. Double points if it is union managed industry super funds that are the largest investors in the private components. Super funds are also one of the sources of capital of sufficient scale for a nuclear buildout (once path from decision to generation is smoothed out).
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Nov 28, 2022 09:07
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VictualSquid posted:Ok, let me turn your initial question around. Please quote the post that argues for 100% renewables. silence_kit was literally posting here just yesterday, they've been posting explicitly anti-nuclear pro-renewable arguments in this thread for close to a decade. I know you're already aware that Germany pivoted to this exact position in recent years, why are you pretending like there are no real people who feel this way? quote:And again, while nobody has said that transmission will be free for less renewable grids, I felt it as an implication. I certainly understand that you don't. The argument was not that intercontinental grid dispatch is prohibitively expensive, just that it's a cost that needs to be part of the accounting.
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Nov 28, 2022 10:32
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QuarkJets posted:silence_kit was literally posting here just yesterday, they've been posting explicitly anti-nuclear pro-renewable arguments in this thread for close to a decade. Find the post in this thread where I argue for a 100% renewable electricity grid in the US. Good luck with your search!
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Nov 28, 2022 11:26
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silence_kit posted:Find the post in this thread where I argue for a 100% renewable electricity grid in the US. Good luck with your search! silence_kit posted:The nuclear power plant HAS to run at full capacity to have a prayer of being competitive with other sources of electricity. Even when the nuclear power plant runs at full capacity, it produces 4-5x more expensive electricity than the other technologies. Not 100% opposed, just casually saying in your most recent post that nuclear is four to five times more expensive than firmed up renewables capable of replacing all gas and coal generated power in places where sufficient hydro is not available.
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Nov 28, 2022 12:31
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QuarkJets posted:silence_kit Who? (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Nov 28, 2022 14:10
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QuarkJets posted:silence_kit was literally posting here just yesterday, they've been posting explicitly anti-nuclear pro-renewable arguments in this thread for close to a decade. I know you're already aware that Germany pivoted to this exact position in recent years, why are you pretending like there are no real people who feel this way? If you interpret silence_kit's recent posts as 100% renewables then I feel justified in interpreting a lot of posts here as 100% nuclear. The german situation is more complex. I would say that in most cases groups arguing for 100% renewable mostly were composed of people who consider fossil gas to be "renewable". And the spending decisions imply that too if you look at them instead of non-binding statements of intend. . With that position becoming unpopular this year, there is a pretty massive realignment going on. And the reaction to the green party compromising on the nuclear power extensions implied to me that the pro-nuclear internal fraction is larger then anybody expected (also larger then it was before DL collapsed). And I personally think that is the most productive space for pro-nuclear activism here. That is making sure that the pro-gas inner party gets replaced by a pro-nuclear fraction instead of the degrowth fraction.
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Nov 28, 2022 15:43
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Splode posted:Are those itty bitty intrinsically safe nuclear power plants getting any traction? I saw a lot of hype but I'm not sure if it's real or just hype. Here’s a recent review: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364032119307270 There’s a lot of unknowns (no land SMRs have been built yet) but from my reading optimistic studies show the potential for a marginally faster builds, but more expensive power than large reactors.
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Nov 28, 2022 16:07
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silence_kit posted:Find the post in this thread where I argue for a 100% renewable electricity grid in the US. Good luck with your search! Ah, so your explicit anti-nuclear posts are even more lovely and disingenuous than they seem? Good to know! (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Nov 28, 2022 18:13
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QuarkJets posted:Ah, so your explicit anti-nuclear posts are even more lovely and disingenuous than they seem? Good to know! (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Nov 28, 2022 20:22
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VictualSquid posted:If you interpret silence_kit's recent posts as 100% renewables then I feel justified in interpreting a lot of posts here as 100% nuclear. After huge gas price increases and a massive campaign about possible energy shortages that could supposedly be averted through delaying the shutdown of the last three nuclear power plants, there was large support for having them not shut down yet. There was also an associated increase of support for building new ones, but still only a minority. Politically it is still impossible, and will stay so until the next federal elections in 2025. By that time all the nukes will be decommissioned and I would be very surprised if the energy situation at that point would still be in such a delicate state that the nuclear lobby will gain a lot of traction in the public sphere.
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Nov 29, 2022 01:27
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DTurtle posted:The German position is very clearly 100% renewables with power to gas as the storage solution. That is also the situation with a lot of other states in the EU. There are a few countries that also see nuclear power in the mix and some that want coal or natural gas, but otherwise the goal is clearly renewables + storage. Well the nuclear lobby got some extra spending assigned to them recently. In the form of more bailouts for court settlements for their corruption charges. Which is the actual main reason, why I don't think we will get new nuclear power built by supporting the existing nuclear lobby.
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Nov 29, 2022 04:08
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I moved an item around to try to keep points you made together, so the links will be mixed up for a couple of the quotes.Potato Salad posted:First off, this last sentence is entirely undeserved. We're literally talking about cost optimization. It would be weird to walk in here and attempt to imply that either other posters or a study on cost optimizing energy portfolios are trying to conveniently dodge the cost question. You incorrectly used baseload in that post by indicating baseload generation needed to be increased, which is not correct. Dispatchable energy sources need to be increased, and as the large storage penetration and the curtailment of the nuclear source in that study indicated, the dispatchable energy sources need to be far in excess of baseload. I'm not trying to be a dick, its just statements like "we need to increase baseload' really undersell how much additional dispatchable power needs to be added to the grid. Potato Salad posted:Grid interconnectivity doesn't really have too much to do with the need to provide solar arbitrage though? Storage dispatches well, but that's kinda...not the illustrated achilles heel of overbuilt renewables+battery generation that lacks some other significant source capable of cheaply servicing baseload demand. The studied service regions extending beyond California barely span two timezones. It is beside the point. Potato Salad posted:*unsnip* Supplying a larger grid with a more diverse load really does reduce the storage requirements per kWh delivered by the grid and increasing transmission capability does lead to large dramatic reductions in both storage and dispatch backup requirements. From Examining Supply-Side Options to Achieve 100% Clean Electricity pg72 , the study found that a sweet spot for grid storage capacity in a zero-carbon grid is around 200GW with around 150GW of nuclear power. This is because increasing transmission infrastructure and looking at the united states as a whole allows both the economical dispatch of the nuclear fleet, allowing it to achieve higher capacity factors, and reduces the variability in the renewable energy supply. This allows 2x the battery nameplate power rating to achieve a zero carbon grid that is ~10-15x larger than the CAISO study. I also believe this shows that the US has historically failed to invest in the transmission capability and, conjecture since I don't have a hard number, I think interconnecting the US would achieve a lot of cost and emission savings even without a single new powerplant. ERCOT is a good example I believe of this almost certainly being true. The issue with the study done by Stanford is that its scope really does not cover these issues and is merely a look at possible future grid mixes for just CAISO. They didn't study the US electrical grid as a whole and so the results are not really applicable, and the energy mix for the all renewable case is just not at all comparable to what a US grid solution would use, which would be more wind than solar. The NREL study even replicates the results of the Stanford study pretty well with their minimum transmission upgrade case, which shows solar and storage being more favored than wind. Of course the original point was that the decarbonization of US energy use would require significant upgrades, nuclear or not. I never said nuclear required more, but due to the way transmission infrastructure scales, the larger investment cost for an all renewable grid isn't very significant. The cost uncertainty in both an all nuclear generation fleet and all renewable fleet or mixture, is a magnitude greater than the cost differential for the transmission upgrades between nuclear or renewable cases. Additionally, I have didn't state that nuclear power couldn't have potential cost reductions and savings by reducing storage requirements. I simply stated that nuclear power cannot be scaled up fast enough to have a significant impact on decarbonizing the US energy infrastructure. A major issue of both the Stanford and NREL studies is that they do not take into account the cost or time to build the infrastructure. For example, the Stanford nuclear case has a $50/MWh average cost, but that is using the LCOE for the resources. Understandable, as this would be a major complicating factor, but we have to first build this infrastructure before any gains can be realized. For nuclear, this means committing a lot of resources for many, many years, before any reduction in emissions are made. It takes decades for a nuclear power plant to pay for itself and not just in terms of money, but also energy invested into the construction into the plant. On time scales of 50 years, nuclear is absolutely the best option. I just don't think we can wait 50 years. The papers also did not consider if it is even possible to build the required equipment in time. Stanford wants 35GW of nuclear power in California by 2045. How the hell does California add that to the grid? That is 35ish nuclear reactor vessels, and unless you want to buy from Russia, your only options are Japan, South Korea, and China, and they only produce a total of around 40 (combined) per year for the entire world's supply of nuclear energy (minus Russia, another significant source but unlikely to provide RPVs to California). So to build the required fleet as discussed by NREL, which is another 100-200 RPVs for an all renewables case and significantly more than that, we clearly will need the world output to scale up significantly unless we assume that only the US will be building nuclear power. This is even before any considerations are made for licensing and actual construction of the plant. NuScale offers a cool work around this, but they won't have a reactor online for at least another 6 years, and in a plant that will only produce 500MWe. I will say, I may be proven wrong, but I just don't see how the US gets that many plants built by 2035. Electric Wrigglies posted:At the very least, replacing coal power stations with nuclear does not incur meaningful extra infrastructure costs. Source, the grids are running now with those generators generating the profiles they are generating right now which is similar to a nuclear generator profile (dispatchable large point source). To be reasonable, new nuclear will likely need new connections (because building exactly where the current coal stations are now is unlikely) but it is still just hooking up to a grid that was designed for few large producers of electricity. Renewables for Europe is/was looking at building a power line to North Africa! This could be done for about 100 coal plants with traditional nuclear (plants >1000MW), for a total of around 200GW of nuclear power, assuming that the first assumption regarding capacity factor is true. Looking through the wikipedia numbers, this doesn't quite work out, but depending on how much fudge factor there is around 60 plants had a CF >0.6, 32 >0.7, and finally only 11 >0.8. So this could account for between 33-120GW of nuclear siting. A bit short of the required goal of around an additional 1800GW required to decarbonize the US energy supply based solely on nuclear, but could meet the NREL's paper (above) estimates of 200GW nuclear as part of a 200GW battery, 1TW solar, 1TW wind grid. The second point, regarding baseload, is why clear proper use of terms is important. Baseload is a fact of the load, the minimum point of load minus the non-dispatchable sources, is the actual point at which a fleet can be run 24/7 in a historically "baseload generation" application. Since the baseload of the grid is no longer the lowest point, it really is a misnomer to call the dispatchable fleet that can produce reliable power baseload. I will also point out that nuclear not picking up that market was entirely my point, and this fact shows that renewable energy really does not mix with nuclear power well unless there is storage to pickup the slack.
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Nov 29, 2022 07:17
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edit: I'll just say that if you want to read about nuclear power, which of course you do--despite being only generating 10% of the world's electricity, with this number continuing to slowly decline (contrast this rate with other non-fossil fuel technologies, whose adoption rates are going up, up, up!), it occupies 99% of the discussion in this thread--I recommend reading the posts by Morbus in this thread, linked below. https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3505076&userid=55074#post444609060 His theory/explanation for the recent history of nuclear power plants is way more plausible than the orthodox theory in this thread, the orthodox theory heavily relying upon a vast global environmental-government-corporate conspiracy against the technology to explain why countries all over the world are all not rapidly building out nuclear power plants to totally replace their existing power plants. silence_kit fucked around with this message at 14:39 on Nov 29, 2022 |
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Nov 29, 2022 11:56
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silence_kit posted:edit: I'll just say that if you want to read about nuclear power, which of course you do--despite being only generating 10% of the world's electricity, with this number continuing to slowly decline (contrast this with other non-fossil fuel technologies!), it occupies 99% of the discussion in this thread--I recommend reading the posts by Morbus in this thread, linked below. Speaking of previous posts, were you planning on responding to any of the rebuttals to yours, or just continue pulling numbers out of your rear end? https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3505076&userid=140830 https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3505076&userid=154631 https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3505076&userid=36932 Whenever someone points out that the cost of Nuclear power factors in its externalities up-front, while fossil fuels do not, you try and spin it as loony conspiracy mongering, despite it being a clear fact. It's getting really tiresome.
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Nov 29, 2022 14:45
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Seriously, read Morbus’ posts—there aren’t very many—and contrast them with the orthodox narrative in this thread. They are like a breath of fresh air! They provide a way more plausible explanation for recent trends in electricity generation in the US. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST) (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST) (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST) (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Nov 29, 2022 15:25
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wow if you're going to refer to people to someone else's posts from 7 years ago in defence of your shitposting, you could at least pick out a couple examples and explain how they are relevant to your own shitposting or the rebuttals to your shitposting.
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Nov 29, 2022 15:52
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silence_kit posted:Seriously, read Morbus’ posts—there aren’t very many—and contrast them with the orthodox narrative in this thread. Ooh, the "orthodox narrative of this thread". Tell us, what is the orthodox narrative? What does the thread think? What percentage of the thread thinks that?
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Nov 29, 2022 17:22
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Jaxyon posted:Ooh, the "orthodox narrative of this thread". Please, no.
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Nov 29, 2022 17:25
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silence_kit posted:edit: I'll just say that if you want to read about nuclear power, which of course you do--despite being only generating 10% of the world's electricity, with this number continuing to slowly decline (contrast this rate with other non-fossil fuel technologies, whose adoption rates are going up, up, up!), it occupies 99% of the discussion in this thread--I recommend reading the posts by Morbus in this thread, linked below. Every post that silence_kit makes should come with a big red text disclaimer "descriptions of this thread or its posters may not be realistic or may be completely made up" (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Nov 29, 2022 17:29
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silence_kit posted:One side is accurately explaining the actions of and rationale of the US energy industry in recent history. The other side has been chronically upset over the 10 year history of this thread that they do not live inside of a game of Cities: Skylines with the infinite money cheat code on, and thus cannot build out a fleet of nuclear plants with a click of the mouse, and attribute this to a grand environmental-government-corporate conspiracy against the technology. eh, if you really believe the rebuttal to nuclear support is that it has not happened the way propeller heads wished it would happen then we can give up on renewables as well. Pack it in, nothing is solvable (source - it was not solved yet the way Greenpeace wanted!). Or another way of looking at the red tape and overabundance of regulatory caution - leaded petrol in airplanes - still a thing in 2021 and on your basis efforts to remove lead from petrol should have been abandoned as a cause decades ago. We are not saying it is easy politically. We are saying there is a technical solution, evidenced by having been achieved in the '70's in France. Unlike non-hydro renewables which has not been relied upon for power in any significant grid unsupported. 20 to 30 year timescales to get nuclear cranked up as part of the solution is another reason advanced why it should not be pursued at all. "Renewables alone" is also in the same boat (another 20 years and the problems will be solved) since the 90's. In the meantime, the tech has been incremental. Things have gotten a bit cheaper here and there and windmills are a lot larger and better placed but nothing that drastically changes multi-day or seasonal storage issues or intermittency. In Australia, bigger gains have likely been achieved by getting mum and dads to install overpriced generation on rooftops out of their own pockets (sometimes subsidized by government/others) than all the advances in renewables tech advances combined. So, my read of Mordus' posts roughly says nuclear is technically very hard, it is very effective at reducing carbon emissions, that political considerations mean it's not worth pursuing. I agree with the first two but disagree with the third. Great posts by Mordus though, like you say.
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Nov 29, 2022 18:01
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I think it's loving useless to argue that a thing shouldn't be done because it is not popular, instead of working on increasing it's popularity.
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Nov 29, 2022 18:14
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Electric Wrigglies posted:"Renewables alone" is also in the same boat (another 20 years and the problems will be solved) since the 90's. In the meantime, the tech has been incremental. Things have gotten a bit cheaper here and there and windmills are a lot larger and better placed but nothing that drastically changes multi-day or seasonal storage issues or intermittency. In Australia, bigger gains have likely been achieved by getting mum and dads to install overpriced generation on rooftops out of their own pockets (sometimes subsidized by government/others) than all the advances in renewables tech advances combined.  I think that 90% and 70% cost reduction within the last 10 years alone is a bit more than just getting a bit cheaper here and there. It suggests that renewables are very definitely in an extremely different situation in comparison to 30 years ago.  In addition, the installed capacity per year of solar power is already massively increasing.  And so is wind. DTurtle fucked around with this message at 21:42 on Nov 29, 2022 |
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Nov 29, 2022 21:24
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Being inexpensive won't actually heat Toronto through winter. Renewables are amazing but there's massive gaps to fill nonetheless
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Nov 29, 2022 21:33
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I‘m simply objecting to the statement that renewable energy is in the same boat as nuclear energy with regards to addressing its problems in the last thirty years. Solar power costs, for example, are a tenth of what they were ten years ago and the yearly capacity addition are ten times what they were ten years ago. That‘s the kind of change that, for example, makes previously uneconomic storage solutions - like power to gas - a lot more viable. Which actually could make it possible to heat Toronto through the winter. DTurtle fucked around with this message at 23:40 on Nov 29, 2022 |
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Nov 29, 2022 23:37
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If we were building as much nuclear capacity as we were solar capacity, the cost per installed MW would also be low and falling. If you neglect a supply chain as soundly as we have shunned nuclear then the costs will rise. If you federally support that supply chain and prime it for large mass production then costs drop substantially as we're seeing with solar.
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Nov 30, 2022 01:13
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I would really like to see some reliable cost estimates for power to gas personally. It's just a hunch but I figure once that's factored in, nuclear won't look so bad in comparison anymore.
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Nov 30, 2022 09:28
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