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Safe, sure. Efficient? Not even close.
It's far, far more expensive than renewable energy. It also takes far, far longer to build a plant. Too long to meet 2030 targets even if you started building today. And in most western democracies you wouldn't even be able to get anything done by 2040 if you also add in political processes, consultation, and design of the plant.
There's a reason the current biggest proponents of nuclear energy are people and parties who previously were open climate change deniers. Deciding to go to nuclear will give fossil fuel companies maximum time to keep doing their thing. Companies which made their existence on the back of fossil fuels, like mining companies and plant operators also love it, because it doesn't require much of a change from their current business model.
Australian politicians have been arguing about nuclear energy for decades, and with whats going on now, petty distracting squabbling while state governments are gutting public infrastructure
The most frustrating thing is the antinuclear party is obviously fine with nuclear power, and nuclear armaments, just look at the aukus submarines
labors cries about the dangers to our communities and the environment are obviously disingenuous, or they wouldnt be setting a green light for the billionaire robber barons to continue tearing oil and minerals out of the ground (they promise to restore the land for real-sies this time)
Anyway, a nuclear power plant runs a steam turbine and will never be more than what, 30% efficient?
Photovoltaic cells are even less efficient, I think they're somewhere between 10-20% efficient. I think the way to go would be a solar collector, like the Archimedes death ray, but much much bigger.
That is already a thing and it's called concentrated solar power. Basically aim a shit load of mirrors at a target to heat it, run some working fluid through the target and use that to make steam to turn a turbine. There are a few power plants that use it but in general it has been more finicky and disruptive to the local environment than traditional PV panels would be.
The fantastic thing about renewables is how much they lend themselves to a less centralised model. Solar collector? Sure, why not‽ Rooftop solar on people's houses? You bet! Geothermal? If local conditions are favourable to it, absolutely!
Instead of a small number of massive power plants that only governments or really large corporations can operate individuals can generate the power for themselves, or companies can offset their costs by generating a little power, or cities can operate a smaller plant to power what operations in their city aren't handled by other means. It's not a one-size-fits-all approach.
This contrasts with nuclear. SMRs could theoretically do the same thing, but haven't yet proven viable. And traditional plants just put out way too much power. They're one-size-fits-all by definition, and only have the ability to operate alongside other modes with the other modes filling in a small amount around the edges.
There are designs for a giant glass cone put in the middle of the desert. Air under the cone gets warmed and it rises up through a couple turbines on its way out of the device.
I would remind you that Aukus is a mess of the Coalition's making - after they made a mess of the original submarine replacement project under Abbott and Turnbull, insisting on Diesel.
But for Labor to withdraw from Aukus would cause a shitstorm of unseen proportions.
But how do we produce enough batteries for renewable energy?
Price driven consumption has been done by industrial users for decades. And countries like UK has been storing energy in storage heaters at home for decades as well. EVs can do wonders here.
Pumped hydro? Or one of the many other non battery storage options, or just over production
How viable is pumped hydro? It would be good if feasible, but last I checked, there were not enough places where you can install them.
No, you're right. It's not an option for everyone. Which is why I mentioned that there are many other solutions which are similar and over production which is simpler and cheaper
Which options, can you specify?
What? You don't have Google? Options I know of (other than batteries and pumped hydro) : Compressed Air Energy Storage, Thermal Energy Storage,, Fly wheels, Hydrogen, Supercapacitors, Gravitational Storage
- It's not easy to go over all options.
- Many of these are largely theoretical, or for temporary storage. For instance, I don't think fluwheels can store energy for months.
Are you proposing that the sun may not shine and the wind not blow anywhere at all for months?
Yeah, it is like that in some places. Also solar flux vary a lot by seasons as well. Dunno if wind has as much of an issue, but surely not great.
Nobody wants energy stored for months. Whatever storage is used needs to get through temporary decreases in efficiency. In places that use solar, that means from one afternoon to the next morning. In places that use wind, it means until the wind picks up. We're talking storage on the order of tens of hours at the most.
The fact that you descend into complete science fiction should give you pause for thought. I doubt it will, but please think about how fantastical your proposed solutions are - "a massive lake of molten salt under every city" (I actually like that one!)...
Given you're making up things I never said I can only imagine what you're respinding to? Where did a massive lake of molten salt under every city come from?
Sorry this is a late reply. I can see that mentioning molten salt was a bit left-field, However, it is one of the more realistic ways to store the huge amounts of power needed to fuel an economy for a couple of weeks (which you need in northern europe if you want to use solar/wind). Here's a link about it:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cite.202000137
I am pro nuclear, but if we are going to descend into this renewable hell, then we need to actually think about how you store terawatt-hours of power. I really think that this kind of storage might be the nearest we have to a solution. we'll only need it once we try to turn off the gas turbines, of course. It is fascinating that so many smart people don't see that the whole jigsaw is missing vital pieces.
Pumped hydro requires a specific sort of place and not sure there's enough of them for most countries to rely on.
Correct. That's why I enumerate a bunch itf other options for the other guy who said the same thing.
Redox flow, sodium ion, iron air, etc.
There are some 600+ current chemical-based battery technologies out there.
Hell for me, once sodium is cracked, that shit is so abundant that production wouldn't have many bottlenecks to get started.
Will Li-ion battery companies let that happen? They want profit, which means they want to keep the high battery cost.
Oil & Gas companies didn't want Solar, Wind, and Storage to proliferate, yet they did because of cost savings.
I think we could start to see that for these alternative-ion batteries if lithium supply ever becomes an issue. There will always be a niche that has the opportunity to grow in the economy. Just takes the right circumstances and preparation
True, but gotta see. Currently these companies are so minor.
Fuck I wish the politicians would give this to us straight like that.
Why is Albo's party spreading memes about three eyed fish instead of saying "yeah Dutton's nuclear plan is safe, but it maximises fossil fuel use in the short term and we'd prefer to focus on renewables"
Agreed. It's hard, so let's give up now ok guys. Way cheaper to just pump pollution into the air. Oh well we tried.
Blah blah blah nobody wants to hear actual evidence and suggestions that solar and wind might be better. We're on a mission for Nuclear power damn the Fukushima refugees and who cares if we store the waste encased in concrete at the bottom of the ocean which we know will eventually leak into the food stream
Noo kyaa larr is the fyuuu charrr
Good luck in the winter. 😉
Agreed, building a nuclear facility takes a lot of time and costs a lot of money. However... This doesn't need to be the case at all.
A lot of the costs go into design, planning and legal work. The amount of red tape to build a nuclear plant is huge. Plus all of the parties that fight any plans to build, with a heavy not in my backyard component.
If however a country would be prepared to cut through the red tape and have a standard design developed for say 10 plants at the same time, the price and construction time would be decreased greatly. Back in the day we could build them faster and cheaper. And these days we build far more complex installations quicker and cheaper than nuclear power plants.
The anti-nuclear movement has done so much to hold humanity back on this front. And the weird part is most people do think nuclear fusion plants are a good thing and can solve stuff. But they have almost all of the downsides nuclear fission plants have in terms of red tape, complexity and cost.
You can't cut the red tape. The red tape is why we're able to say nuclear is safe.
the weird part is most people do think nuclear fusion plants are a good thing and can solve stuff. But they have almost all of the downsides nuclear fission plants have in terms of red tape, complexity and cost
Huh? Nuclear fusion doesn't have any downsides or upsides. Because it doesn't exist. We've never been able to generate net power with fusion. (No, not even that story from a couple of years ago, which only counted as 'input' a small fraction of the total energy used overall. It was a good development, but just one small step on the long journey to it being practical.)
Being anti-nuclear was a poor stance to have 20, 30 years ago. At that time, renewables weren't cost effective enough to be a big portion of our energy generation mix, and we should have been building alternatives to fossil fuels since back then if not earlier. But today, all the analysis tells us that renewables are far cheaper and more effective than nuclear. Today, being pro-nuclear is the wrong stance to take. It's the anti-science stance, which is why it has seen a recent rise among right-wing political parties and media organisations.
I have never heard being pro-nuclear is the anti science stance and it being on the rise among right wing political parties. All the right wing is talking about it more coal and less things to be done about the climate.
The people who I talk to who are pro nuclear seem very well informed and not anti science at all.
I believe nuclear can help us get to the future we want and we should have done it a lot sooner. Nuclear doesn't mean anti-renewable, both can exist.
Atkeast in my country, the only two pro-nuclear parties are fsr-right climate change deniers and the same old fucks who're only pro-nuclear because the green party isnt.
What country is that?
Germany.
Judging by the statement and username, Germany. And I agree
Nuclear doesn’t mean anti-renewable, both can exist.
Not easily, for the reasons explained in my reply to @Frokke@lemmings.world.
The people who I talk to who are pro nuclear seem very well informed
I doubt it, because the science itself is against nuclear. Evidence says it would be too expensive and take too long to deliver compared to renewables.
Very well, let's agree to disagree. Perhaps I am wrong. But I am in no way right wing or spreading misinformation.
The people I've spoken who work in the nuclear field bitch about unneeded red tape all the time. Some of it is important for sure, but a lot of it can be cut if we wanted to without safety becoming an issue. The price of nuclear has gone way up the past 20 years, whilst the knowledge and tools have become better. This makes no sense to me. We should be able to build them cheaper and faster, not slower and more expensive. And there are countries in the world, that can get it done cheaper, so why can't we?
I'm all for renewables, I have solar panels. But I'm not 100% convinced we have grid storage figured out. And in the meanwhile we keep burning fossils in huge amounts. If we can have something that produces energy, without fucking up the atmosphere, even at a price that's more expensive than other sources (within reason) I'm all for that. Because with the price of energy from coal, the money for fixing the atmosphere isn't included.
Thank you for answering in a respectful manner.
We should be able to build them cheaper and faster, not slower and more expensive. And there are countries in the world, that can get it done cheaper, so why can't we?
It's because we stopped building them. We have academic knowledge on how to do it but not the practical/technical know-how. A few countries do it because they're doing a ton of reactors, but those don't come cheap either.
Idk, maybe SMR or sth improve the red tape thing
So THE worst case scenario for nuclear only puts it at 6× the cost of renewables? That's not really the argument you think it is.....
If however a country would be prepared to cut through the red tape and have a standard design developed for say 10 plants at the same time, the price and construction time would be decreased greatly.
That's a pretty big ask for a democratic government where half of the politicians are actively sabotaging climate initiatives....
The only countries where this is really feasible are places where federal powers can supersede the authority of local governments. A nuclear based power grid in America would require a complete reorganization of state and federal authority.
The only way anyone thinks nuclear energy is a viable option in the states is if they completely ignore the political realities of American government.
For example, is it physically possible for us to build a proper deep storage facility for nuclear waste? Yes, of course. Have we attempted to build said deep storage facility? Yes, since 1987. Are we any closer to finishing the site after +30 years.......no.
It's possible to do nuclear in cheaper sense, just do not ask for US ones
A very uninformed take
Please share oh enlightened one
Other people have already corrected your misinformation
Huh. So those of us that have always advocated for a nuclear baseline with wind/solar topping off until we have adequate storage solutions are climate change deniers? That's new.
First, no, that's not what I said. If you're only going to be arguing in bad faith like that this will be the last time I engage with you.
Second, baseload power is in fact a myth. And it becomes even worse when you consider the fact that nuclear doesn't scale up and down in response to demand very well. In places with large amounts of rooftop solar and other distributed renewables, nuclear is especially bad, because you can't just tell everyone who has their own generation to stop doing that, but you also don't want to be generating more than is used.
Third, even if you did consider it necessary to have baseload "until we have adequate storage", the extremely long timelines it takes to get from today to using renewables in places that don't already have it, spending money designing and building nuclear would just delay the building of that storage, and it would still end up coming online too late.
I used to be a fan of nuclear. In 2010 I'd have said yeah, we should do it. But every time I've looked into it over the last 10 years especially, I've had to reckon with the simple fact that all the data tells us we shouldn't be building nuclear; it's just an inferior option to renewables.
Aaaw, someone doesn't like the tone used? Well that's unfortunate. How about you start with leaving dem bad faith arguments?
Renewables will not cover your usage. Period. You will need something to cover what renewables won't be able to deliver. Your options are limited. Nuclear is the only sustainable option for many places. Sure you got hydro (ecological disasters) or geothermal in some places, but most do not have those options.
It's not an XOR problem.
Renewables will not cover your usage.
False. Multiple countries are already able to run on 100% renewables for prolonged periods of time. The bigger issue is what to do with excess power. Battery solutions can cover moments where renewables produce a bit less power.
100% renew
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_renewable_electricity_production
All the countries that manage 100% renewable power use high levels of hydropower. Which is not an option for many countries and has it's own ecological problems associated with it.
Also, these 100% renewable countries have very little electricity requirements.
The United States produces at least produces four million Gigawatt hours of electricity per year. Compare that to some of these "100% renewable" countries.
Sure, most countries that already made it use hydro. But Denmark is already up tp 80% without hydro, and the UK and Germany are already nearly halfway there without any meaningful hydro. And there's still so much solar and wind that can still be installed. They're nowhere near their maximum production capacity yet.
100% from renewables is clearly feasible and achievable. Of course it takes time and investments, but nuclear energy will takre more time and investments to get going again.
Oh noes, facts. The bane of all renewables evangelicals.....
Just wait till you have to tell them they're looking at irrelevant data. Not only are they using specific usecases that are not applicable to a large majority of countries, but they're also using data that doesn't support the long term fossil fuel goals.
Just wait till you tell them how much the electricity requirements will skyrocket once we're transitioning to EV, dropping fossil fuel heating, cooking, cargo trucks switch to EV, etc etc.
Really hope green hydrogen kicks off. Could begin society's efuel saga
Sorry to report, hydrogen is also hopeless. It’s cool tech, but making it work in practice is hopeless because it diffuses straight through every container you try and keep it in, and achieving reasonable energy densities requires cryogenic storage.
Also, developments have been stalling out relative to electrical solutions because of this and because of the heavy investment in electrics.
I can only see it really working in practice in niche applications where you will be close to cryogenic facilities.
Locking hydrogen up in ammonia is what the industry looks to be moving to to avoid the problem you describe.
Also, look up the 7 Hydrogen Hubs in the US as an example of this market getting started. There are no downsides to developing a hydrogen market if we're going to have oodles of excess renewable energy.
Locking hydrogen up in ammonia is what the industry looks to be moving to to avoid the problem you describe.
I believe we’re still using more hydrogen to make industrial ammonia than that we produce from green sources, so I guess even if we only switch over ammonia production without worrying about fuel cells or hydrogen vehicles or power generation, we still come out ahead.
Then there’s the hydrogen used in oil refining that, iirc, is still mostly sourced from methane, but I’m hesitant to suggest we replace that with green hydrogen since if you want to be carbon-negative the oil refining will have to go down A LOT anyway.
Anyway, I guess my point is that hydrogen is an important commodity for all sorts of things. Before we start burning it for energy it’s easier to use it as is in industrial processes. The methane we save that way (that would be used to produce industrial hydrogen) we can burn as is in existing gas power plants.
But this is the kind of pragmatic common sense thing that gets no one excited.
I mean, if anything, the fact that the Oil & Gas industry uses hydrogen for refining means that there is a possible, robust market for green hydrogen to get into (don't like this because it means oil is still the focus, when we need to consider green chemistry and stop with oil).
The O&G industry also helped usher in solar PV at an early stage because of the needs of remote power in hazardous environments such as offshore rigs and near potential sources of release like oil tanks (I used to work as an engineer in O&G myself).
There's actually a lot of work by GE and Mitsubishi to start shipping new gas turbines to be capable of firing a non-zero amount of hydrogen in addition to natural gas. I think some plants are even capable of doing 50/50 hydrogen/natural gas, with that former number increasing year over year.
Hydrogen could outstrip conventional fuels someday. The bottleneck has always been supply though.
If renewables are so abundant and cheap, then we'll finally have a reason to deploy hydrogen infrastructure on a massive scale (at least in the US). Hell, you look at the major inverter manufacturers for utility PV like Sungrow, and they have containerized electrolyzers ready for implementation. I haven't done a market survey, but if they're in the game, then so are other players.
If you want to be convinced of the progress of hydrogen, I would look into the project that Sargent & Lundy is working on in Utah. They're planning on using a salt cavern for hydrogen storage, and I believe there is a CCGT onsite as well to make use of the generation.
Hydrogen is even on the minds of offshore wind developers like Siemens.
The substance isn't doomed like others in this thread make it out. There is active interest in the market to develop a supply chain and economy.
Edit: The one thing I don't see a lot of people talk about though is where the raw materials for this hydrogen will come from... Likely groundwater unfortunately. Since groundwater is already a highly sought after resource for consumption and agriculture, I'm not sure if hydrogen in this way will take off. This is why offshore hydrogen seems to be more promising, but as we see with wave and tidal power, the ocean environment just sucks for any commercialization.
It's an uphill battle, but the same can be said for the climate crisis in general. Hope we make enough progress before it's too late.
In the summer. In ideal conditions. Lets talk again once you've tried 12 continuous months in the heavily populated northern hemisphere. 😉
We're nowhere near the potential capacity for energy production from renewables, and already we're capable of doing 100% renewable power production.
Potential capacity is really not the issue.
As I said, lets talk once you've managed a full winter. 😉
Biggest, not all.
Wasn't one of these built and ended up being a huge failure?
Solar plants, windmills or nuclear plant? You gotta be more specific.
Concentrated solar plants that heat using a bunch of focused light
There are a bunch. But solar panels have gotten a lot better in the last decades, whereas thermodynamics has remained the same. They are not worth the investment anymore.