[HN Gopher] Sweden's incoming cabinet says new nuclear reactors ...
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Sweden's incoming cabinet says new nuclear reactors will be built
Author : tpmx
Score : 179 points
Date : 2022-10-14 19:58 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bloomberg.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bloomberg.com)
| fspacek wrote:
| tpmx wrote:
| The new coalition government has pledged $40B (approximately the
| market cap of Twitter, heh) in loan guarantees for nuclear power
| construction.
|
| They have also pledged to create legal guarantees that future
| politicians will not be able to shut down functioning nuclear
| power reactors without suitable monetary compensation to the
| owners/operators of these reactors.
|
| In addition to this, they are commissioning an urgent study on
| how to rebuild Ringhals 1 and 2
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ringhals_Nuclear_Power_Plant,
| about 1 GW each), two nuclear reactors that were prematurely
| decommissioned by the previous social-democratic government and
| shut down about 20 months ago.
|
| Personally I'm really happy; I think massive expansion of nuclear
| power is the only realistic way to fix climate change.
|
| The first reactors built will be modern but traditionally large.
| From then on: There has been a lot of interest in small modular
| reactors (SMR) from the political party that is driving all of
| this, and they actually got the nationally owned energy company
| Vattenfall to begin building prototypes at Ringhals a few months
| ago.
|
| In summary: Lots of champagne bottles popping tonight in Sweden
| in the homes of clean nuclear power proponents. We have been
| waiting for this for a very long time. Cheers!
| traceelement wrote:
| so they get compensated if they have to close it even so the
| government payed them to build it. this sound like a bad deal.
| Tax payers pay for the whole thing and the owner gets even more
| money if they have to close it for whatever reason.
|
| I don't think coal is the answer but germany didn't do enough
| for renewables during the last 10 years when we knew we would
| shut down the nuclear plants. So now evrybody uses bad
| management as pro for nuclear reactors.
|
| I think the reasons to shut it down are always overlooked and
| only the pros of nuclear energy are considered in those
| arguments.
| [deleted]
| quelsolaar wrote:
| Its all built on very old thinking. Nuclear may have been a
| good idea in the past, but with the rapid reduction of cost
| of renewable, especially solar, its no longer worth
| considering. Building a plant takes a decade, and a decade
| from now the difference in cost will be even greater. Nuclear
| will look like huge waste of money then.
| Roark66 wrote:
| You realise we are talking about Sweden here, not a
| subsaharan country by any stretch. In general in Europe
| (especially in Northern Europe) all solar and wind capacity
| has to backed up by at least the same amount of quickly
| available online dependable capacity. In practice this
| means natural gas and diesel plants that are off, or
| coal/nuclear that is being diverted elsewhere when the sun
| shines/wind blows. The EU grid is pretty well
| interconnected so excess capacity is pretty easy to sell
| (up to a point). This is one of the reasons why renewables
| can be used as a large piece of the total supply.
|
| However, unless time comes when we can deploy multi TWh
| lithium energy storage (highly unlikely - just look at
| shortages required for electric cars) or we have grids that
| can send let's say entire country's worth of capacity from
| the coast of Norway to Greece on a moment's notice there is
| no way renewables will ever go beyond few tens of % at the
| extreme best as measured in proportion of energy actually
| delivered.
|
| The misinformation on the subject has been pushed very hard
| in recent years as it benefits many special interest
| groups. For example those articles we see sometimes about
| "German's entire electricity supply coming from renewables
| on a given day" or "40% of all electricity produced came
| from renewables in first half of a year" fail to mention
| Germany has Frances heavily nuclear backed supply on one
| side, its other neighbor's conventional (coal) supplies to
| lean on so we should really consider the entire system not
| cherry pick parts that fit our narrative.
|
| Am I against renewables? No, I've invested my own money
| this year into solar (before the war started so I didn't
| even know how electricity prices will spike) and I am a big
| proponent of its use where possible. Unfortunately our grid
| is not built in a way that allows everyone to have solar.
| At the same time we don't have enough lithium batteries to
| meet our transportation needs, so thinking we'll have
| enough for grid level storage is a pipe dream.
|
| People that are for off lining existing nuclear capacity
| really achieve only increased use of gas/diesel for energy
| production as well as diminish our industry's
| competitiveness in the world through extremely high energy
| costs. This will have zero impact on climate as China will
| pick up all the slack we leave regarding co2 emissions and
| some. In fact it may even be worse, because we could've
| built same products(steel concrete etc) with a mix of
| nuclear/renewables/small chunk of conventional generation
| while they mostly use dirty coal.
|
| All we'll achieve by this self industrial devolution is
| furthering our dependence on countries like China and
| Russia.
| quelsolaar wrote:
| Who said we need to put the solar cells in Sweden? We
| could put them anywhere. Sweden is already producing
| enough low cost energy to meet its needs, only prices are
| high because we are exporting it to other countries
| willing to pay. If Sweden wants to invest in power for
| export, we could make that investment anywhere.
| nathanaldensr wrote:
| The sun doesn't shine, especially at useful angles, enough
| and battery technology at scale isn't there. We absolutely
| need nuclear, essentially no matter the cost, assuming
| populations of certain countries don't want to use coal.
| ncmncm wrote:
| The overwhelming majority of utility scale storage will
| not be in batteries, so battery technology does not
| matter.
|
| The sun does, in fact, shine far, far more than enough.
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| Ok, I'll bite.
|
| What type of utility scale storage isn't _a battery_? The
| answer is, of course: any energy storage setup is a
| battery[1].
|
| A more generous interpretation of your comment is that
| you meant _won 't be chemical batteries_.
|
| In which case, I'll bite: what then?
|
| 1. _Energy storage is the capture of energy produced at
| one time for use at a later time[1] to reduce imbalances
| between energy demand and energy production. A device
| that stores energy is generally called an accumulator or
| battery._
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_storage
| Gwypaas wrote:
| Sweden generates 40% of the current power generation from
| hydro. Adapt that to be more flexible than baseload and
| Sweden has amazing capabilities to run an entire
| renewable grid mainly based on wind with a minimal amount
| of chemical short-term storage.
|
| There are few countries with better opportunities for
| renewables than Sweden.
| r00fus wrote:
| Renewables don't give you baseload power. So renewables +
| nuclear is a good balance.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Renewables + storage will provide massively cheaper
| baseload power.
| zkomp wrote:
| Will not happen. "green" energy is not green- it consume
| massive amount of resources, it is expensive, short
| lived, destabilize the grid. I'm super happy my country
| is finally waking up from the horrible green hypnosis.
| anonym29 wrote:
| Enjoy paying for storage. At least in the US, even if we
| get storage down from $438/kWh (Jan 2022 grid-scale
| storage costs) to $200/kWh, consumer electricity prices
| are expected to rise somewhere between 1400% and 2200%
| per kWh, and total cost estimates to switch the entire
| US's power generation + distribution to pure renewables +
| storage, while maintaining current production and
| availability levels, are over $430tn, which is >20x the
| US GDP, according to:
| https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/01/12/the-cost-of-net-
| zero-...
| ncmncm wrote:
| No civil nuke plant has ever been operated, anywhere in the
| world, without massive government subsidies, or by coercing
| ratepayers to pay well above market rates.
|
| Looks like the Swedish public will be on the hook for
| subsidies for decades more while the rest of Europe (France
| and Romania perhaps excepted) coasts on renewables at ever
| plunging prices.
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| Show me one place anywhere in the entire history of grid-
| scale renewables where _the consumer 's_ costs _went down_.
|
| The cost to the developer of deploying new solar / wind to
| a grid may become more favourable, but they're selling in
| to a market that reselles to retail / commercial clients,
| who will, inevitably, pay more over time.
|
| I think what you're argument should be is that new nuclear
| would result in end-users paying more than they would for
| new renewables.
|
| I'm mostly convinced where you, or anyone else, lands on
| the matter, is heavily biased by preconceptions...
|
| and generally tend to think we have the resources to do a
| many-pronged approach, and that success is less technology
| dependant and more dependant on the competence of
| governments and bureaucracies, and the people who
| constitute them.
| belorn wrote:
| EU has a yearly public report on energy subsidies that
| demonstrate factually where subsidies goes, how much, and
| for what purpose. Nuclear subsidies are a proportional
| small part of the subsidies, and the public get more energy
| per $subsidies in nuclear than from other energy sources.
| Some key findings from 2021 report:
|
| _" Subsidies to nuclear had varied between EUR3.2bn and
| EUR 4bn between 2008 and 2019 but surged to (EUR6.3bn) in
| 2020 due to payments for early closures of nuclear power
| plants."_
|
| "In line with anticipations in the Commission Study, the
| financial aid to renewables in the EU27 is increasing at a
| low pace since 2015 to reach EUR78bn in 2019. Our
| preliminary estimations show a slight reduction in 2020 to
| around EUR77bn. Among the 14 identified subsidy
| instruments, the feed-in-tariff and feed-in premium schemes
| remain by far the MS preferred tools to promote RES
| technologies. They represented 79% of the total RES
| subsidies, i.e. EUR61bn in 2019"*
| klabb3 wrote:
| Energy use in Sweden peaks in the winter, and especially a
| few extremely cold days. The sun literally doesn't rise in
| the northern parts, and the coldest days have almost no
| wind (and frankly it's not very strong overall either).
| This and last year, Swedes are stocking up on firewood, and
| it's not for cosplaying reason. Several knowledgeable
| people predict rolling blackouts this winter.
|
| I would love renewables as much as the next guy but there's
| simply not a chance that Sweden could sustain a winter with
| the current supply. Importing helps with survival but the
| prices are insane, since their neighbors are cold as well.
| Dispatchable or baseload energy is necessary, and thus
| nuclear is the only carbon neutral option. Sure, it's more
| expensive than solar panels midday in the desert, but the
| comparison is irrelevant.
| MisterTea wrote:
| > coasts on renewables at ever plunging prices.
|
| I hope they can coast through the winter using those
| renewables.
| peyton wrote:
| Source? Everything I can find counts PPAs which is... kind
| of a stretch.
| ncmncm wrote:
| PPAs at inflated prices are absolutely subsidies. They
| impose inflated costs on users of the power, which is
| only marginally better than on the body politic at large.
| Or marginally worse, maybe.
|
| Much of the subsidies are the public picking up the tab
| for disaster insurance the operator is protected against
| needing to pay for. Of course no actual insurance company
| could afford to underwrite such a policy.
| _Microft wrote:
| Are the economics of nuclear power somehow more favorable in
| Sweden? That seems to be the major issue elsewhere from what I
| understand.
| tpmx wrote:
| No, not really. It makes a lot of sense in all stable
| countries.
| TazeTSchnitzel wrote:
| They aren't better in Sweden. The right's support for it is
| not really related to the costs. I'm personally curious how
| it's going to pan out considering the right-wing parties
| claimed they'd be against state subsidies.
| ncmncm wrote:
| The single most reliable feature of all right-wing parties
| is that they are against state subsidies _unless_ the
| subsidies are directed into their own pockets.
|
| They are singularly skilled at directing subsidies reliably
| into their own pockets. Nukes and military procurement have
| worked well for that in past decades.
| otikik wrote:
| Look at it this way: The army is publicly supported. Do you
| think they are against the army?
|
| Problem is not public support, it's public support of the
| things they don't like.
| aPoCoMiLogin wrote:
| the mayor issue is the coal/gas lobby, just look how europe
| was lobbed to the point that natural gas is somewhat "green",
| but nuclear is bad to the point some countries don't even
| have one nuclear power plant.
| ncmncm wrote:
| The oil/gas/coal lobby is all in on nukes, because each
| nuke started means at least a decade of continued fossil
| fuel burning while it is built.
|
| Renewable energy projects always start producing power and
| revenue almost immediately, displacing fossil fuel
| consumption at an ever increasing rate.
| Zigurd wrote:
| The idea of nuclear power is good. The facts of nuclear power
| are much less good. It is not too much to ask that lifecycle
| costs and safety get addressed. For example, the French success
| with nuclear power looks much less successful due to
| decommissioning costs coming in at a multiple of estimated
| costs. The French low-balled their estimates, to be a fraction
| of estimates by Germany and UK. Which estimates do you believe?
| DisjointedHunt wrote:
| French politicians voted in 2015 to shut off all planned new
| nuclear investment in favor of transitioning to "renewables"
|
| It was political incompetence that led to the French plants
| needing to have their lives extended MUCH BEYOND their
| expected lifetimes.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Power generation should be publicly owned, private ownership of
| such critical resources inevitably creates moral hazard.
| elihu wrote:
| I think it's fine if governments pay for and operate power
| generation facilities, but at the same time I don't think
| private companies should be prohibited from building power
| generation facilities if they want to and they think they can
| do it better (provided they have to pay for externalities).
| the-smug-one wrote:
| If anything's good about renewables is that they can be
| quite small scaled. I think it's cool that I can be an
| energy producer just with my roof, plus decentralized
| generation = better security.
| ncmncm wrote:
| There is plenty more good about renewables. Being the
| cheapest source of power that has ever existed is good,
| too.
| gtvwill wrote:
| Speed of deployment + complexity (bugger all) + safety of
| deployment (passive product v product that can root
| entire ecosystems) + ongoing maintenance means
| solar>nuclear any day.
|
| Nuclear is over priced, high risk centralised power.
| Yuck.
| belorn wrote:
| Define externalities. Is a balanced grid part of the
| externalities, ie the work needed to make sure that supply
| can always match that of demand?
| r00fus wrote:
| Is there any nuclear facility that's privately owned that
| didn't get massive subsidies/loan guarantees from a
| government?
|
| At the size of a 100MW+ generation facility, you need
| government sized budgets and timelines.
| ncmncm wrote:
| There has never been any civil nuke, anywhere in the
| world, not massively subsidized.
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| Has there been, in recent memory, _any_ grid scale
| generator, or roof-top solar for that matter, that didn
| 't get significant subsidies?
|
| The argument should be about whether or not those
| subsidies would have been better spend elsewhere.
|
| I'd probably argue subsidising local wind / solar (plus
| storage), and local manufacturing of same, would be
| better, even though I tend to argue nuclear is a reason
| option some of the time.
| cjblomqvist wrote:
| The previous government didn't stop the shutdown planned 40+
| years ago (due to a national referendum), in part because the
| owners (Vattenfall) said it's not economically feasible to run
| them anymore without subsidies. It's complex.
| queuep wrote:
| For anyone interested in this national referendum, it's peak
| bull crap.
|
| No option available to continue with nuclear power
|
| https://sv.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karnkraftsfragan_i_Sverige
| Gwypaas wrote:
| You have to bear in mind that the public was hugely against
| it. No political party dared to push for it, although
| negotiations were held.
|
| > The Moderates, the People's Party and the Social
| Democrats held separate negotiations to formulate a joint
| yes option with the implication that the reactors would be
| allowed to be used during their technical lifespan, which
| was estimated at 25 years. These negotiations finally broke
| down mainly because the Moderates could not accept the
| additional proposals: that the state or the municipalities
| would own the nuclear power plants and that so-called
| surplus profits from private production of hydropower would
| be withdrawn through taxation.
|
| Translated from:
|
| https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folkomr%C3%B6stningen_om_k%C3
| %...
| belorn wrote:
| To be fair to both sides, the electricity prices at the time
| when the decision was made was very different from today. We
| had prices in the south of sweden 2020 that was as low as
| around EUR0.02 per kw/h, compared to over EUR0.3 in 2022, and
| in 2020 the price trend was looking to be going downwards.
|
| If prices had continue to go down and let say had landed at
| EUR0.01 per kw/h this year than we would not be discussing
| nuclear power as much. It will be a gamble to say what prices
| will be in 1, 5, 10 and 20 years into the future, and any
| gamble involve a cost in one way or an other. The previous
| government made one bet, this government is doing an other.
| DisjointedHunt wrote:
| It's probably fair to say that energy demand over the next
| ten years will increase significantly.
|
| The anecdotes of the end of Moores law that signifies the
| end of electronic efficiency through miniaturization alone
| and the increasing adoption of energy hungry devices for
| personal compute or lifestyle will certainly have a
| multiplicative effect over time as these trends make their
| way through society.
|
| In such a scenario, it's hard to imagine prices being the
| same if demand increases by even a single digit multiple of
| the present.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Energy demand will not increase in the next decade. It
| will, instead, fall, as it has in recent years.
|
| Electricity demand will increase as that takes over for
| other energy uses that will be collapsing.
| dekken_ wrote:
| You appear to be contradicting yourself, but I imagine
| you don't think you are, so you might want to elaborate.
| Gwypaas wrote:
| He is not contradicting himself. You have to remember the
| awful efficiency of thermal engines.
|
| Primary energy demand will decrease because you do not
| lose 70% of the energy by simply cooling it like in steam
| turbine used by nuclear power plants or car engines.
|
| On the other hand, electricity usage will increase
| because you have now replaced your 30-40% efficient
| engines with 90+% efficient engines, but from a different
| source. That barely have any losses from the primary
| energy input.
| dekken_ wrote:
| Thanks for that
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Petrol burned in a car is energy, not electricity.
| dekken_ wrote:
| The fact that you can use combustion to generate
| electricity, means they are interchangeable. The other
| comment is probably more on point about conversion
| effeciency.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _that you can use combustion to generate electricity,
| means they are interchangeable_
|
| This is an accounting issue, not a question of
| thermodynamics. Electricity typically refers to grid
| electric. We don't count non plug-in hybrid electrical
| output as "electricity." That's how energy use can be
| stable while electrification increases.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Energy security has a price.
| tpmx wrote:
| The previous anti-nuclear social-democratic government
| together with the demonstrably insane "green" party installed
| a board in the state owned power company Vattenfall that
| after a while managed to sort of claim that it wasn't
| economically feasible to run the nuclear plants, with the new
| heavy taxes the social democrats had put in place on nuclear
| power production.
|
| Yay?
|
| Anyway, all of that insanity is thankfully history now.
| cjblomqvist wrote:
| No need for personal attacks. I'm not a sore loser.
|
| I think it's a waste that we've not maintained the reactors
| well enough to still have them able to run at a profit.
|
| And generally that we've (the government, both sides)
| haven't done anything about it in the last 10-20 years when
| they had a chance to invest in alternatives (whether
| building new nuclear or other types of energy sources).
|
| If it's just a matter of taxes then I'm sure it would be
| easy for the new government to remove them and start back
| up the old reactors - but obviously that's not the plan.
| Most likely it's all quite complex and lots of factors
| leading to this outcome.
| pokepim wrote:
| otikik wrote:
| Congratulations, I hope you guys are able to build them
| quickly.
|
| > I think massive expansion of nuclear power is the only
| realistic way to fix climate change.
|
| While I agree on the overall direction of this sentiment I
| think nuclear cannot be "the" only way but "one amongst many"
| ways.
| hello1234567 wrote:
| well nuclear is the current cheapest way of producing
| electricity. doesn't stop from funding other cheaper and
| future safe options.
|
| mantra is cheaper.
| Gwypaas wrote:
| It is by far the most expensive method.
|
| https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-
| energy-...
| ncmncm wrote:
| Always was. The most reliable product of the nuke
| industry has always been dishonesty. "Too cheap to
| meter..." No nuke has ever been operated anywhere in the
| world without massive subsidy.
| tpmx wrote:
| While wind and solar will help, nuclear is really the
| dominant part of the solution, because of it's ability to
| work independent of local weather.
| sangnoir wrote:
| Sounds like the ideal backup to me.
| Retric wrote:
| Nuclear has always had massive scaling issues because
| leaving base load power generation means ever lower
| capacity factors. Running a nuclear power plant with a 40%
| capacity factor more than doubles the cost per kWh.
|
| You can look at Frances ~70% average Capacity factor in 2
| ways either it's a ~30% cost premium over most of the rest
| of the world on every power plant. Or more realistically
| ~40% of generation was at the normal ~92% CF, and every
| plant after that was at lower capacity factors until the
| final power plant was costing ~3X as much per kWh.
|
| And that's with them having largely non nuclear countries
| to export power to on nights and weekends. The economics
| look even worse if every country try's to scale nuclear
| power.
|
| PS: I respect Frances investment in subsidizing nuclear
| power, but it's important to understand the underlying
| economics if you want to scale nuclear power. The best
| option for a cheap nuclear grid is massive amounts of cheap
| storage.
| tpmx wrote:
| Hello.
|
| "Nuclear has always had massive scaling issues because
| leaving base load power generation means ever lower
| capacity factors."
|
| So Swedish electricity generation used to be about 50%
| hydro and 50% nuclear. It worked really well for decades
| and made/kept us rich, despite our high salary costs due
| to the welfare state. Our industries had the benefits of
| cheap and clean energy!
|
| Then we shut down half of the nuclear capacity and tried
| to replace with wind. It didn't really work.
| Retric wrote:
| I agree. Sweden is close to a best case for nuclear as
| hydroelectric power can easily solve the dispatchable
| generation and solar isn't viable. It's still going to
| need significant subsides to got 50%, but nowhere near
| what counties with less Hydro would need.
|
| They even have cold temperatures to boost power plant
| efficiency and make district heating very useful.
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| > You can look at Frances ~70% average Capacity factor in
| 2 ways either it's a ~30% cost premium over most of the
| rest of the world on every power plant.
|
| Insufficient detail.
|
| You'd need to compare levelised costs, and work out
| whether government subsidies for this-or-that technology
| resulted in gains and loses that were better or worse
| than whatever else governments might have spent money on.
|
| There's a good argument to be made that cheap-to-the-end-
| user electricity is a net good for society, because they
| can then spend that money elsewhere rather than on boring
| old electricity.
|
| Besides all that, nuclear needs a lot of cooling
| capacity, and that's typically come from rivers / oceans,
| which, if I recall correctly, some rivers in France where
| recently too warm / insufficient flow to meet nuclear
| cooling demands.
|
| So nuclear isn't always a good fit for many reasons, but
| may be a good fit for many other reasons.
| Retric wrote:
| A county can't subsidize it's own power, it's got to pay
| what it costs. Producers, distributors, and consumers of
| electricity within a county can receive subsides, but
| that runs into all the usual issues with planned
| economies.
| Melatonic wrote:
| Honestly what we really need is something that we can
| pump that power into (not a battery - something
| productive I mean) so we can keep those reactors at
| higher efficiency levels. I do not know what that is but
| surely vast amounts of extra power could be used for
| something useful no? Research? Cleaning the air? Hot tubs
| for Walruses?
| ncmncm wrote:
| Reactors will not be forced to shut down, in the future.
| Instead, they will be shut down as unable to produce power at a
| competitive price. Those that continue operating will depend
| _even more_ on taxpayer subsidies than they do now.
|
| The money that will be spent on these new reactors would buy a
| hell of a lot more wind power than these nukes could produce.
| But money for renewables would not go into the pockets of
| right-wing blueblood Swedes, which seems to be what matters to
| the incoming government.
|
| When the nukes are mothballed early, every kWh they ever
| produced will, instantly, have actually cost much more than had
| been reckoned, as the fixed costs are amortized over fewer
| total.
| nathanaldensr wrote:
| Pure FUD. The wind doesn't blow all the time and battery
| technology at scale isn't there.
| jules wrote:
| Yes, this argument gets repeated again and again and again,
| and when you ask about storage you never get a decent
| answer. And yet, the argument keeps getting repeated even
| by people who matter and make the decisions. When I started
| watching debates in the Dutch house of representatives I
| pretty much lost all hope. Of the 150 members, I'd say 145
| are either unable or unwilling to think quantitatively and
| do simple napkin math. Yet they are verbally very strong,
| which makes the problem even worse. I suspect it's the same
| in most western countries.
|
| If you think I'm exaggerating, remember when the Royal
| Statistical Society asked "if you spin a coin twice, what
| is the probability of getting two heads?" and 47% of
| Conservative MPs and 77% Labour MPs got the answer wrong.
| ncmncm wrote:
| The decent answer is, simply, that storage will be built
| when there is enough renewable capacity to charge it
| from.
|
| Storage is technically trivial. Building it all will be a
| big civil engineering job, but we have plenty of civil
| engineers.
| jules wrote:
| That's magical thinking. Let's start with the obvious
| question: what kind of storage would that be?
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Yes, why not both?
| ncmncm wrote:
| Money is fungible. Each dollar spent on nuke generating
| capacity is that dollar _not_ spent on several times as
| much renewable generating capacity.
| alkonaut wrote:
| Now find out how to not just do it but do it quickly. The last
| time (two additional reactors in an existing plant) was built in
| 24 months and on budget.
| LightG wrote:
| One question for nuclear advocates, as I know it's full on-trend
| at the moment:
|
| What's to stop adversaries holding countries to ransom using
| their nucealer facilities?
|
| Just like Russia is playing "games" around the Ukranian nuclear
| plant? What's to stop that being used as the new threat? We won't
| turn your gas off, we'll threaten your nuclear plants?
|
| Genuine question.
| weberer wrote:
| I'd imagine it would receive the same response as if Russia
| launched a nuclear missile directly. In other words, WWIII.
| orthecreedence wrote:
| > What's to stop adversaries holding countries to ransom using
| their nucealer facilities?
|
| Nothing, unless you yourself have leverage. Every resource or
| dependency is a potential weakness. The idea is to be able to
| say "ok, if you bomb our fission plant, we'll shut off your
| fresh water supply."
|
| It's all a huge game of chess.
| LightG wrote:
| But doesn't chess rely on two half-decent actors sitting down
| across a table from each other?
|
| Clearly some actors are willing to throw the board across the
| room
|
| In which case, why are 'we' considering creating that
| weakness?
|
| I understand there is a strong wave behind nuclear right now,
| but it does feel like we're just creating the instruments of
| another, different, mess.
| endisneigh wrote:
| this is great, but couldn't a future cabinet undo this? best to
| save the applause for when it's built and operational
| ncmncm wrote:
| Or, hold it until they come to their senses and build out
| massively more productive renewables.
| frostburg wrote:
| "What is base load?"
| ncmncm wrote:
| yrgulation wrote:
| Electricity should cost peanuts and that should the goal of every
| sane government.
| locallost wrote:
| It's only a shame there won't be a planet left after 20 years it
| will take to finish these.
| jansan wrote:
| What do you mean by this? Are they actually building the
| intergalactical highway? If not, there will eb a planet. And
| there will be people. And they will enjoy life.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| If you believe that, you're probably in a cult. The most
| extreme climate models don't predict anything you could
| reasonably characterize as _" won't be a planet left."_
| naillo wrote:
| Not to start this whole flamewar but I was totally in the
| other camp (not yours) and then covid hit and now my trust in
| consensus science is super worn out and have basically
| started to believe it might be fine.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| The "consensus science" doesn't say anything about the "end
| of the world" or societal collapse in 20 years.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Social science is far from exact enough to predict either
| eventuality with any confidence.
|
| If waves of tens or hundreds of millions of refugees
| leaving places they cannot live in any longer begin
| sweeping across borders, how long will it be before
| fascist governments, already threatening, and already
| winning in Turkey, Poland, Russia, Belarus, the
| Philippines, Brazil, Hungary, Italy, and India take over
| generally and initiate wars, as they do? Such wars
| _might_ not go thermonuclear, but they would certainly
| disrupt fragile global trade networks.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| People have had terrible governments before, for most of
| human history in fact. I do expect global social
| conditions to deteriorate as climate change strains
| countries, but that's a far cry from the end of the
| planet.
|
| As for global thermonuclear war, we could wargame likely
| scenarios and potential outcomes endlessly until the day
| it might actually happen. But anybody who tells you with
| certainty that one will happen in the next 20 years so
| there's no sense planning for the future (e.g. no sense
| building a power plant that will be used 20 years from
| now) is trying to indoctrinate you into a doomsday cult.
| locallost wrote:
| I am in the cult of "living in the present, where one part of
| the world has experienced one of the severest droughts in the
| history of mankind, and the other the worst floods". Recently
| I joined a second cult called "it's only going to get worse".
| So what the heck, we've got money and time for expensive
| solutions that take forever to finish.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| > _where one part of the world has experienced one of the
| severest droughts in the history of mankind, and the other
| the worst floods "._
|
| Nothing happening today, extrapolated out to 20 years with
| the most severe climate models, will be severe enough to
| cause the "end of the world". Anybody who's telling you
| we'll have total societal collapse by 2042 is out of touch
| with reality. The only way for things to go that badly that
| fast is for Earth to be hit by something big from space,
| but that is very unlikely to happen in any given 20 year
| period.
| ncmncm wrote:
| You seem very certain of your facts.
|
| I can only say that you are _probably_ right. But we don
| 't know if the ocean ecosystem will collapse in that
| time, bringing down civilization.
|
| The thing about collapse is that it happens terrifyingly
| fast, and is only sometimes predicted accurately.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| Even if the oceans were utterly sterilized _today_ , with
| all the atmospheric implications that go with that, it
| would take longer than 20 years for Sweden to no longer
| exist.
|
| I'm not saying that climate change won't cause huge
| environmental disasters and social unrest, _because it
| will_. I 'm saying that _" there won't be a planet left
| after 20 years"_ is extreme pessimism and unsupported by
| any model backed by science, even if you read that claim
| generously and assume "won't be a planet left" is merely
| hyperbole for the collapse of Swedish society.
| ncmncm wrote:
| The planet will be fine. Civilization will be likely to have
| collapsed, but that is our problem.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| > _Civilization will be likely to have collapsed,_
|
| Some in the short term, more in the long term. But I
| challenge you to find any sane climate model that says Sweden
| won't be around in 20 years to use any infrastructure built
| today.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Sweden is not less dependent on global civilization than
| other countries. Is Sweden a net food importer?
| kramerger wrote:
| George Carlin once said
|
| "The planet is fine... the people are fucked"
| AtNightWeCode wrote:
| The funny thing about a country like Sweden is that their energy
| problem is 100% based on energy exports to the EU market. Sweden
| produces way more electricity than it needs at any given time.
| During one of the latest "crises" a single company exported
| energy worth several hundreds of millions Euros to other
| countries.
| tpmx wrote:
| https://archive.ph/AWEHq
| sergiotapia wrote:
| How do I vote for similar politicians in the USA? We need
| nuclear, and we need it yesterday.
| aliswe wrote:
| More or less these are the republicans of Sweden
| tpmx wrote:
| Mostly less.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Look at the most recently constructed nuclear plants in the
| USA, figure out who allowed that to happen, and and
| conspicuously give them public credit for their decisions.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Look at the recent fiascos where $15B has already been spent
| and they say giving them another $10B will _surely_ provide
| you with a 2GW plant, if you just wait enough years more. Or
| might not.
|
| "Public credit" for these massive corruption festivals does
| not lead to good results.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Then your argument is with the GP about whether we need
| nuclear power plants.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Exactly. We do not need nukes, and we _especially_ do not
| need institutionally corrupt nuke projects.
| Tagbert wrote:
| I think the point is that it has been decades since a new
| nuclear facility was built in the US so there really isn't
| any around to promote.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| We just finished building one and are loading fuel into it
| as I write these words.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33205813
| boc wrote:
| From today's front page:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33205813
|
| > Georgia Power announced tonight that fuel load into the
| Vogtle Unit 3 reactor core has begun at Plant Vogtle near
| Waynesboro, Ga. The fuel load process marks a historic and
| pivotal milestone toward startup and commercial operation
| of the first new nuclear units to be built in the U.S. in
| more than three decades.
| mkl95 wrote:
| Sweden is a small player in the EU but hopefully this will drive
| more countries away from Germany's dystopian madness
| ncmncm wrote:
| Is Sweden in the EU?
| [deleted]
| mkl95 wrote:
| It is. You are probably thinking about Norway
| lampshades wrote:
| What is Germanys dystopian madness?
| streblo wrote:
| Something like 40% of the "renewable" energy being generated
| in the EU/Britain comes from burning wood, a lot of which was
| shipped from the US.
| nicoburns wrote:
| I don't think most reasonable people count biomass in with
| renewable (at least not large scale biomass). e.g. this
| website https://grid.iamkate.com/ has biomass in "other"
| along with nuclear and pumped hydro storage.
| Georgelemental wrote:
| The people setting Germany's energy policy are not
| reasonable, unfortunately.
| mkl95 wrote:
| Relying on coal on for 30%+ of their electricity
| cjblomqvist wrote:
| According to Wikipedia (quoting a source from jan 2021) 24%
| of energy production comes from coal.
| mkl95 wrote:
| According to the German Federal Statistical Office
| (report released a few weeks ago) it was 31.4% on the
| first half of the year up from 17.2% on the same period a
| year earlier. https://www.destatis.de/EN/Themes/Economic-
| Sectors-Enterpris...
| ncmncm wrote:
| It is dishonest to conflate emergency war measures as
| policy.
| est31 wrote:
| Yeah the plan was to buy methane gas from Russia instead.
| Still a non renewable source, but the gas would have
| caused less CO2 emissions and less pollution (gas causes
| less CO2 per kilowatt hour). Of course, the war and the
| bombings of NordStream have put an end to that.
| ncmncm wrote:
| The gas would have been used to fill in while renewables
| were being built out. Now coal is filling in while
| renewables are being built out even faster.
|
| Without the investment to date in wind, coal dependency
| would have been massively greater.
| est31 wrote:
| Yeah, note that a lot of those renewables won't be built
| in Germany but outside of it, as there is simply no
| capacity for this in Germany.
|
| Germany imports a large chunk of its energy usage
| (electricity plus stuff like fuel for cars, heating, et).
| In 2017, it was from 70% of imports and 30% from energy
| harvested locally [0]. It's quite impossible that this
| can all be converted to power sources originating in
| Germany.
|
| So what will likely/hopefully happen is that some
| countries will supply electricity to Germany via cables,
| while others from further away will send Hydrogen
| generated from renewable sources, that will then be
| burned in the already existing gas plants.
|
| [0]: https://www.weltenergierat.de/wp-
| content/uploads/2018/05/810...
| mkl95 wrote:
| War is just the straw that broke the camel's back.
| Shutting down nuclear energy while depending on a
| dictator's gas set them to fail.
| Georgelemental wrote:
| The emergency measures are needed because the peacetime
| policy was not designed to be resilient. A better
| peacetime policy would have obviated the need for
| destructive emergency measures.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| If only they'd listened to someone who warned them four
| years ago while possessed by a rare display of
| competence:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaBUNqVTkCs
| tpmx wrote:
| That's a small part of their sins. The big part is relying
| on gas for heating. When speaking with germans I've found
| that they think of gas as "clean" which sounds insane to
| me. Yeah, maybe locally, compared to coal, but it's their
| largest co2 emission source nevertheless.
| Isolus wrote:
| I don't know anyone in germany who thinks gas is "clean".
| New buildings are built with heat pumps. They are
| considered clean if used with renewable energy.
|
| But it's difficult to use them in old buildings and gas
| is said to be to most cleanest heating technology based
| on fossil fuels.
| kieranmaine wrote:
| In order to inform the conversations in these comments here are
| some predictions on Nuclear vs Renewable usage in the UK grid
| from the National Grid's (UK energy grid transmission network
| owner + operator) Future Energy Scenarios report -
| https://www.nationalgrideso.com/document/263951/download
|
| Short Version is here -
| https://www.nationalgrideso.com/document/263861/download
| Gwypaas wrote:
| Typical right-wing reactionary environmental policy. When you do
| not have any climate-related politics to bring to the table, all
| you do is shout "nuclear" at the top of your lungs and tote it as
| the solution to everything climate.
|
| > Much of the resistance towards 100% Renewable Energy (RE)
| systems in the literature seems to come from the a-priori
| assumption that an energy system based on solar and wind is
| impossible since these energy sources are variable. Critics of
| 100% RE systems like to contrast solar and wind with 'firm'
| energy sources like nuclear and fossil fuels (often combined with
| CCS) that bring their own storage. This is the key point made in
| some already mentioned reactions, such as those by Clack et al.
| [225], Trainer [226], Heard et al. [227] Jenkins et al. [228],
| and Caldeira et al. [275], [276].
|
| > However, while it is true that keeping a system with variable
| sources stable is more complex, a range of strategies can be
| employed that are often ignored or underutilized in critical
| studies: oversizing solar and wind capacities; strengthening
| interconnections [68], [82], [132], [143], [277], [278]; demand
| response [279], [172], e.g. smart electric vehicles charging
| using delayed charging or delivering energy back to the
| electricity grid via vehicle-to-grid [181], [280]-[282]; storage
| (battery, compressed air, pumped hydro)[40]-[43], [46], [83],
| [140], [142], such as stationary batteries; sector coupling [16],
| [39], [90]-[92], [97], [132], [216], e.g. optimizing the
| interaction between electricity, heat, transport, and industry;
| power-to-X [39], [106], [134], [176], e.g. producing hydrogen at
| moments when there is abundant energy; et cetera. Using all these
| strategies effectively to mitigate variability is where much of
| the cutting-edge development of 100% RE scenarios takes place.
|
| > With every iteration in the research and with every
| technological breakthrough in these areas, 100% RE systems become
| increasingly viable. Even former critics must admit that adding
| e-fuels through PtX makes 100% RE possible at costs similar to
| fossil fuels. These critics are still questioning whether 100% RE
| is the cheapest solution but no longer claim it would be
| unfeasible or prohibitively expensive. Variability, especially
| short term, has many mitigation options, and energy system
| studies are increasingly capturing these in their 100% RE
| scenarios.
|
| https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9837910
| kramerger wrote:
| Note that according to the press conference they want to start
| investigating the possibility of it.
|
| The previous government had basically said the same thing.
| Neither will actually built anything in the near future.
| badwolf wrote:
| Outstanding! More, more, more!
| AustinDev wrote:
| Good for them. I wish the rest of Europe would embrace this
| strategy.
| belorn wrote:
| A bit of context, the south area which this reactor is suggested
| to be built in has occasionally a 1000% electricity higher price
| from the northern regions. A big reason for this is that prices
| in the south is highly connected to markets that the south region
| is connected to, and those region are heavily importers of
| electricity creating a higher demand than there is available of
| cheap energy. For example, in order to address this there is a
| oil power plant operating basically 24/7 and does so very
| profitably even with high oil prices.
| cjblomqvist wrote:
| From what I understand it's also (mainly?) because the southern
| areas pricing is very connected to Danish and German markets.
| alkonaut wrote:
| Maybe someone should sabotage some energy infrastructure on
| the Baltic seabed to ensure better prices in Sweden...
| TazeTSchnitzel wrote:
| Another factor affecting the price is that, while there's a lot
| of hydropower generated in northern Sweden, there's not enough
| capacity for transferring energy to the south where most
| consumption is. The investors building industry in the north
| that can use cheap renewable energy don't seem to mind though.
| :)
| ncmncm wrote:
| That is, surely, fixable by constructing transmission lines
| massively cheaper than nukes.
| rags2riches wrote:
| Transmission capacity from the northern hydro to the
| southern nuclear regions has decreased due to the closing
| of reactors in the south. Power transmission is more
| complex than just building a fatter pipe to pour more water
| through. Having stable power in the south is a prerequisite
| to transfer hydro power from the north.
| Gwypaas wrote:
| New export cables will be ready the day these would come
| online, if the ever come online. Decoupling the SE4 and SE3
| regions from the European energy market will never be a
| sustainable solution due to the possible arbitrage.
| NKosmatos wrote:
| The only green solution to our current energy problem is more
| nuclear power plants. We have to stop relying on coal, wood, oil,
| gas and the rest of the "dirty" materials.
| [deleted]
| f_allwein wrote:
| Except nuclear is expensive and takes decades to build, runs on
| non renewable materials (a good percentage of which come from
| Russia), leaves waste that is deadly for 100.000s of years, and
| promising new technologies will need decades to reach maturity.
|
| Now why is it so great compared to, say, solar or geothermal?
| NKosmatos wrote:
| Well, I agree with you that they're expensive and take time
| to build, but they don't leave that much waste compared to
| what we've been told and their materials have more or less
| the same problems as the ones from renewable ones (batteries,
| non recyclable blades, exotic materials for solar...).
|
| I fully support solar, hydro, geo, wind and any other more
| eco friendly ways, but they don't generate stable electricity
| and with the needed capacities our modern society needs. I've
| read articles about different ways to store clean electricity
| and ways to convert coal burning plants with geothermal ones,
| but I feel that these are not enough.
|
| We (as a planet) need a lot of clean electricity as soon as
| possible or we're screwed :-)
| f_allwein wrote:
| Oh wait! And will stop working if your rivers should run dry,
| as happened in France this summer.
|
| Oh and! May not be so easy to build, supposing not everyone
| loves the technology as much as you do. Google Wackersdorf.
|
| Edit: of course, you assume you'd be able to run your power
| plants safely throughout their life span, even if _cough_ a
| natural disaster were to occur nearby.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Wind and hydro are probably more practical in Sweden.
|
| Geothermal is not having a heyday because it depends on the
| same sort of expensive-to-operate steam turbines as nukes do,
| so is uncompetitive.
|
| Anytime steam turbines have to compete with no steam
| turbines, the steam turbines tend to lose.
| f_allwein wrote:
| Maybe so, but that doesn't mean anyone should use nuclear.
| Perhaps we could come up with ways to distribute renewable
| energy globally?
| ncmncm wrote:
| Right, there is never any legitimate justification to
| build new nukes.
|
| At the moment, existing nukes can still be operated at
| competitive marginal cost, neglecting original capital
| cost, and _carefully_ not counting continuing subsidies
| in opex. As renewables costs continues on down, even just
| nukes ' subsidized opex will be unsustainable.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Geothermal doesn't really work for most places, since you'd
| have to drill down for tens of kilometres to get the required
| temperature. If you can use it then great, but it's a rarity.
|
| > Now why is it so great compared to, say, solar
|
| Works at night, works in winter, doesn't take up half the
| country in surface area, has a constant output throughout the
| day, costs slightly less per kWh (may vary), provides waste
| heat that can be used for central heating, etc.
| lnsru wrote:
| Meanwhile in Germany: https://switzerlandtimes.ch/world/german-
| greens-remain-firm-...
|
| Welcome to The new dark ages in Germany. Leading politicians even
| do not have any higher education:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricarda_Lang It's scary how these
| people decide about topics they have no idea about.
| froh wrote:
| Dr Angela Merkel holds a PhD in quantum physics. she stands by
| her cabinets decision to leave nuclear energy in densely
| populated Germany, as per a recent interview.
|
| renewables will provide for 80% of Germanies energy needs by
| 2030, and close enough to 100% in 2050.
| oifjsidjf wrote:
| How exactly will you be 100% renewable during a cloudy and
| windless period with solar and wind?
| froh wrote:
| Dunkelflaute is 0.5% - 1.5% of the year and most of the
| events last shorter than 24h
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunkelflaute
|
| in my book 98.5% easily fits the bill of "close to 100%"
|
| so the answer is exactly what we do today: have a reserve
| capacity. part of that may even be traditional peaker power
| plants that remain turned off most of the year just like
| today.
|
| I'd be curious about climate data on the distribution of
| Dunkelflaute duration, by region.
| elihu wrote:
| Pumped hydro storage, batteries, and/or long-distance grid
| interconnection. It's not often overcast in the Sahara, as
| far as I know, and solar power imported from far to the
| east and west can mitigate the day/night cycle problem.
|
| It's reasonable to keep ICE power plants around as an
| emergency backup; if you have to use them for a week in
| January or when infrastructure breaks for whatever reason
| it's not the end of the world. Ideally things would run
| smoothly enough that they'd never be used.
| nathanaldensr wrote:
| You are assuming geopolitical realities that will...
| never be reality. The entire issue of Germany's
| dependence on energy from another country makes this
| obvious.
|
| You also assume that power plants can just be flipped on
| and off like a light switch. They can't.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Transmitting energy over long distances is way more
| difficult than you make it out to be:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OpM_zKGE4o
| ncmncm wrote:
| Trolling is unwelcome here, thank you.
| Georgelemental wrote:
| The comment you are replying to was not "trolling"; it
| raised a legitimate, technical objection to a policy in a
| manner that invites constructive responses (for example,
| "with storage technology" is a common response I see).
| ncmncm wrote:
| It is trolling because the answer --storage -- is well
| known to anybody who cares enough to do the most shallow
| of research. So, everyone left is a troll.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Then it'd be good to mention what this storage mechanism
| is, and examples of existing commercial deployments said
| storage mechanism and their cost history. It's odd to see
| someone insist that the solution is _so_ obvious that
| anyone who doesn 't recognize it is trolling, yet they
| neglect to mention what that solution is.
| Georgelemental wrote:
| Storage is a common answer, but it has problems of its
| own. Presumably the OP considers these problems fatal; if
| you disagree, say so and explain why.
| [deleted]
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Intermittency is one of the most difficult parts of
| building a majority renewable grid. Dismissing the
| biggest challenge in building a renewable grid as
| trolling is not a good look.
| [deleted]
| capitainenemo wrote:
| The last I read into Germany's plan to be "100%" renewable,
| it was using other countries in Europe to provide the base
| load using their hydro and nuclear. Which is great so long as
| they have excess to provide Germany I suppose.
|
| There does not seem to be nearly enough construction of
| pumped storage or battery to cover the unevenness of German
| wind power. In fact, their prices have gone negative
| repeatedly in the past, which is not in fact a good thing.
| (OMG help, we'll pay anyone to take this power before the
| grid blows up!)
| ncmncm wrote:
| It would be stupid to spend on storage before there is
| enough renewable generating capacity to charge it from. In
| the meantime they spend, sensibly, on renewable generating
| capacity.
|
| By the time there is enough, storage will be massively
| cheaper. In the meantime, charging storage from gas or coal
| and then drawing it down is the same as burning gas or coal
| for immediate use, just with losses.
| capitainenemo wrote:
| The storage should be built in conjunction with the
| renewable generation to avoid those excess grid damaging
| events which is just wasteful. Similar issue to US where
| constructing generation is being subsidised but not
| constructing storage along with it.
| ncmncm wrote:
| There are no "grid damaging events".
| capitainenemo wrote:
| Correct, because they price it negatively to avoid that
| happening. It's still indicative of a problem.
| elihu wrote:
| Batteries will probably be cheaper, but pumped hydro
| storage will probably cost about the same since it's a
| mature technology.
|
| I could see Norway or Switzerland being major players in
| pumped hydro storage, given their geography.
|
| Awhile back I did a bunch of math to try to figure out
| how much stored gravitational energy is in Lake Mead, and
| if I didn't make any major mistakes it came out to be
| about as much energy as the U.S. uses (as electrical
| energy) in 24 hours. The idea of moving that amount of
| water around on short time scales is hard to fathom.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| The cost of batteries is actually rising, now that
| manufacturing costs only make up ~25% of a battery's cost
| [1]. The remaining 75% is raw materials, dominated by the
| cathode and anode, which are having trouble keeping up
| with demand [2].
|
| 1. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/breaking-down-the-
| cost-of-a...
|
| 2. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/18/ev-battery-costs-set-
| to-spik...
| ncmncm wrote:
| The cost of batteries is immaterial to anything being
| discussed here.
|
| As you already knew l.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| From the previous comment:
|
| > Batteries will probably be cheaper,
|
| The above commenter clearly thinks that batteries are
| going to provide cheap storage.
|
| If you have some alternative plan for storage at the
| scale of tens of terawatt hours, please do tell.
| ncmncm wrote:
| The overwhelming majority of storage will not be
| batteries, unless a massively cheaper battery chemistry
| takes over.
|
| Lake Mead stores (well, stored) radically less energy
| than mountaintop reservoirs with thousands of feet of
| "head" can hold behind cheap earthen dikes. Look up
| "penstock".
| froh wrote:
| > we'll pay anyone to take this power before the grid blows
| up
|
| that's not how that works.
|
| also:
|
| Dunkelflaute is 0.5% - 1.5% per year and only very rarely
| for longer than 24h. peaker power plants are turned off
| most of the time today and a combination of those and
| decentralized battery storage will easily buffer
| Dunkelflaute in Germany.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunkelflaute
| Isolus wrote:
| In fact, many believe that storage as hydrogen shows
| promise. There are many test plants for this right now in
| areas with a lot of wind and connection to the national gas
| grid.
|
| The idea is that the hydrogen can then be used in existing
| gas power plants.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Hydrogen is one of many practical storage media. Many
| will be used, different ones favored in different places.
| Hydrogen is particularly suited for places with large,
| stable underground cavities.
| noja wrote:
| You're likely in the giant country that is the USA, with large
| swathes of lightly populated land. Germany isn't that.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Without endorsing her political positions, it's false to assert
| that Lang does 'not have any higher education'; your own link
| states 'After graduating from the Holderlin-Gymnasium Nurtingen
| in 2012, Lang began studying law, first at the Heidelberg
| University and later at the Humboldt University of Berlin,
| eventually dropping out in 2019 without graduating.'
|
| Relying on hyperbole like this undermines your own argument.
| Isolus wrote:
| Germany is a densely populated country. We already don't know
| where to put the nuclear waste. No one wants it on his or her
| doorstep. The cost of storage alone is a nightmare.
|
| The nuclear exit was supported by the population and not
| decided against them by politicians.
|
| And to your criticism: A lot of politicians in germany are
| lawyers. Are they allowed do decide for the country? Do they
| have an idea about nuclear topics?
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