That is completely wrong, and only shows you haven’t kept up with developments in storage.
PowerCrazy@lemmy.ml 5 weeks ago
Something very important that anti-nuclear but otherwise environmental minded people should realize is this sentence: " There’s no practical way to build domestic batteries with this capacity using the technology of 2025." Also applies to grid storage. There does not exist a chemical energy storage solution that can substitute for “baseload” power. It’s purely theoretical much like fusion power. Sure maybe in 50 years, but right now IT DOESN’T EXIST. Economically, practically, or even theoretically.
frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 weeks ago
PowerCrazy@lemmy.ml 5 weeks ago
Show it. Tell me where the grid-level storage exists for a city like Tokyo, or NYC, or Chicago, or Mexico City. Where is it?
frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 weeks ago
See, that’s a trap that keeps the argument within a frame where you can win. That’s not how it works.
What you’re doing is focusing on a singular solution, and then showing why it can’t solve all the problems. Each individual solution is attacked on its own, and then nuclear ends up being the only option.
Except that’s a dumb way of going about it.
Each of these solutions has pros and cons. You use the pros of ones to cover the cons of another.
As one example I mentioned elsewhere in the thread, Brazil has an HDVC line 2400km long. With that kind of reach, solar in Arizona can power Chicago, wind in Nebraska can power New York, and every single existing hydro dam along the way can provide storage. What you end up with is the possibility of not needing to build a single MWh of new storage or hydro dams. If nothing else, you don’t need very much.
I’ll leave you with an excerpt from “No Miracles Needed”, written by Mark Z Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering:
On July 11, 2011, I was invited to a dinner at the Axis Café and Gallery in San Francisco to discuss the potential of renewable energy as an alternative to natural gas hydrofracking in New York State. Little did I know it at the time, but that dinner would set off a chain reaction of events that turned a scientific theory, that the world has the technical and economic ability to run on 100 percent clean, renewable energy and storage for all purposes, into a mass popular movement to do just that. The movement catalyzed an explosion of worldwide country, state, and city laws and proposed laws, including the Green New Deal, and business commitments. Ten years after that meeting, critics were no longer mocking our ideas as pie-in-the-sky and tooth-fairy-esque. They were no longer claiming that transitioning to more than 20 percent renewables would cripple power grids. Instead, the discussion had changed to what is the cost of 100 percent renewables, how fast can we get there, and should we leave a few percent for non-renewables?
This was from the first edition of the book published in 2023. So quite contrary to your claim that “there’s no practical way to build domestic batteries with this capacity using the technology of 2025”, the technology has existed for over a decade. We just need to build it. And we are building it, just not as fast as we need to.
Meanwhile, the NRC continues to stamp permits for new nuclear, but nobody is building. There’s a reason for that, too.
PowerCrazy@lemmy.ml 5 weeks ago
I can dismiss the the other solutions that are worse then pumped hydro because pumped hydro is actually the best case scenario for grid-level storage and it requires A LOT of space. Anything else, batteries, pneumatic mines etc etc are going to be worse in terms of space by orders of magnitude, not to mention the actual costs. Hand waving the need for grid-level storage by saying we would us hydro shows you don’t understand the scale of the problem.
That excerpt from that engineer is great, but WHERE IS THE STORAGE? Show it to me on a map. You can’t because it does not exist. New Nuclear plants are being built, finally, but there is a reason that no grid-level storage exists. It’s literally not possible today. There exists a pilot battery plant in Australia, and there exists a few megawatts of storage in Scotland, but these are few and far between and none of them are suitable for massive deployment.
Baggie@lemmy.zip 5 weeks ago
I agree with this assessment of battery technology, I’m curious what your thoughts on storage through other means, such as dams, kinetic batteries, heat batteries, that style of thing? I understand that it’d be a massive undertaking, but if we really put our nose to the grindstone we might be able to pull off a good amount of power storage through methods that already exist.
PowerCrazy@lemmy.ml 5 weeks ago
Another myth is that hydroelectric is “green.” It’s absolutely not. The huge amount of land required to build something like the hoover dam or the three-gorges dam is massively destructive to the existing ecology. It’s often overlooked, but land use has to be part of any environmentally sound analysis.
I would say that while the Hoover Dam, or the Three-gorges dam by themselves are acceptable, they are wholly impossible solutions for grid level storage for the entire united states/China. How practical do you think it would be to build thousands of hoover dams?
Other options like kinetic batteries etc, all come down to energy density. The highest energy density options that humans can harness are nuclear Isotopes like Uranium 238, or Plutonium 239 (what powers the voyager probes) After that is lithium batteries at ~<1% density of a nuclear battery. Everything else is fractions of a percent as efficient. Sure there are some specific use cases where a huge fly-wheel makes sense to build (data centers for example) but those cases are highly specific, and cannot be scaled out to “grid-level.” The amount of resources required per kilowatt is way too high, and you’d be better off just building some more power-plants.
trailee@sh.itjust.works 5 weeks ago
Unclear if you’re misinformed or disingenuous.
Hoover Dam does generate power, but it’s not an energy storage project to time-shift intermittent clean energy generation to match grid consumption. That’s known as pumped hydroelectric energy storage, and it requires having paired reservoirs in close geographic proximity with a substantial elevation difference. It’s not an ideal technology for several reasons, but it’s the largest type of grid-scale storage currently deployed. Fundamentally it’s gravitational potential energy storage using water as the transport medium.
A higher-efficiency but not yet fully proven technology also uses gravity and elevation differences, but relies on train rails and massive cars. Here’s one company leading the charge, as it were.
Nuclear isn’t a good option to balance out the variability of wind and solar because it’s slow to ramp up and down. Nuclear is much better suited to baseline generation.
There are plenty of other wacky energy suave ideas out there, such as pumping compressed air into depleted natural gas mines, and letting it drive turbines on its way back out. That might also be riddled with problems, but it’s disingenuous to claim that chemical energy storage is the only (non-) option and therefore increasing wind and solar necessarily also increase fossil fuel scaling.
PowerCrazy@lemmy.ml 5 weeks ago
Again, i’m talking energy density. All those other wacky ideas aren’t viable at all. Yes I know that the hoover dam is for generation, but the idea of pumped reserve power is literally identical to hydroelectric generation. The only difference is we would have a man-made solar/wind powered pump fill the resevoir, instead a natural source of solar power fill the resevoir. Either way, it’s a huge amount of land use for it to be considered “green.”
Additionally I never claimed nuclear power should be used as a peak generation, it should 100% used for baseload replacing all of our fossil fuel reactors, with huge taxes being applied to carbon generators.
As an aside:
A higher-efficiency but not yet fully proven technology also uses gravity and elevation differences, but relies on train rails and massive cars. Here’s one company leading the charge, as it were.
This idea is trash and as far as I can tell the hypothetical existence of this is an oil industry fud campaign. The only viable version of this is pumped hydro, which has the land use problem I’ve already described.
humanspiral@lemmy.ca 5 weeks ago
Hoover Dam does generate power, but it’s not an energy storage project to time-shift intermittent clean energy generation to match grid consumption
All hydro is automatically “time shifting storage” when new solar is added to power the daytime. Just turn on the turbines at evening peak full blast, and at night. Average global capacity factor of hydro is 45% because the water reservoir is not sufficient to go full blast 24/7/365. Obviously, hydro time shifting is also highly complementary to wind.
frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 weeks ago
This is why you have HVDC lines.
The longest one is in Brazil, and is about 2400km long. With that kind of reach, solar in Arizona can power Chicago, wind in Nebraska can power New York, and every single existing hydro dam along the way can provide storage.
These problems are solved. We do not need new nuclear.
Waryle@jlai.lu 5 weeks ago
A country like France would need ~20 STEPs like Grand’Maison to provide for a single winter night (~60GW for ~14h). That’s 100-200km² to put under water, a massive ecological disaster, and a massive hazard.
And you must find a way to produce enough energy and find enough water to recharge your STEPs in the next 10h before the next night.
And that’s with the current France needs, with only 25-30% of its energy being decarbonized electricity.
Powering an entire country without hydro, geo, nuclear or fossils is just plain science fiction. And hydro and geo cannot be built everywhere, so realistically, you either go fossils, or nuclear to have clean electricity.
And you can verify it empirically: even with trillion invested in solar and wind, the only countries which have decarbonized their electricity have massive hydro/geo/nuclear.
echodot@feddit.uk 5 weeks ago
Building a dam causes massive amounts of ecological damage, plus unless you’re building it in the middle of nowhere you’re probably going to be turning people out of their homes, out of their entire towns. We could never build enough dams to be able to meet demand so even trying would be pointless. You would be destroying huge amounts of landscape for no reason.
Kinetic batteries can only store power up to a point, the more power you want them to store the larger they need to be. Again to compensate for base load you would have to have a either a lot of kinetic batteries or a few enormous ones. Plus they are maintenance intensive since they are giant spinning things, or great big heavy falling things.
Heat batteries are a good idea and have relatively little in the way of downsides, but they only work where it’s hot, not just sunny but hot. So the number of places you can build them is limited.
If only we could get hold of some astrophage or something.
Korhaka@sopuli.xyz 5 weeks ago
Pumped hydro exists.
PowerCrazy@lemmy.ml 5 weeks ago
Do some quick math. How much pumped hydro in terms of acre-feet would be required to power a hypothetical city like Chicago at night? Where would this theoretical reservoir be built?
Korhaka@sopuli.xyz 5 weeks ago
acre-feet
I can’t stop laughing at this as a unit of measurement
MagicShel@lemmy.zip 5 weeks ago
It’s easier to visualize than kilo-gallons.
PowerCrazy@lemmy.ml 5 weeks ago
I guess if you don’t understand units of water per area, then there is no reason to expect you to be able to do any kind of critical analysis about why “pumped hydro” is a problem.
frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 weeks ago
That’s a completely unnecessary way to do things. The mistake you’re making is that this specific way must provide all power.
It doesn’t. You combine methods for a reason. The wind blows at times when the sun isn’t shining, and vice versa. We have weather data stretching back many decades to tell us how much a given region will give us of each. From there, you can calculate the maximum lull where neither is providing enough. Have enough storage to cover that lull, and double it as a safety factor.
Getting to 95% water/wind/solar with this method is relatively easy and would be an extraordinary change. Getting all the way to 100% is possible, just more difficult.
PowerCrazy@lemmy.ml 5 weeks ago
Do the math, how much grid-level storage do you need to power a city like chicago assuming zero baseload generation.
snoons@lemmy.ca 5 weeks ago
Bet is extremely limited to specific areas with the right geography that are also relatively close to a population centre.
Korhaka@sopuli.xyz 5 weeks ago
It isn’t so much limited by the geography but is made far more cost effective because of it. A long valley with a narrow exit means you don’t need to build much dam and store a vast amount of water.
As far as distance from populated areas, I dunno, I live in the UK so its kinda close enough not to matter too much.
frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 weeks ago
Not if you do HVDC lines. Which are a good idea, anyway.
SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org 5 weeks ago
First of all nuclear energy is a fossil fuel.
PowerCrazy@lemmy.ml 5 weeks ago
Yikes. If words have no meaning, then sure. But there is no world where radioactive elements that come from stars have anything to do with fossil fuels that come from decayed biomass.
edent@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
I’m pro-nuclear energy in theory. But I’ve got to ask - where do you get them spicy rocks from? Do you have to dig them up from a mine? Do they regularly replenish themselves? Does the energy generation have to be constantly checked for pollution leaks?
OK, they may not literally be fossilised bio-matter - but the end result is pretty much the same. Scar the landscape as you dig, release pollutants as you refine, hope you don’t run out of material, make sure someone else pays to clean up the mess.
PowerCrazy@lemmy.ml 5 weeks ago
Yes mining still exists. Unlike how Solar Panels and Wind Turbines grow like plants and replenish year over year with no other industrial process required right?
But again, you don’t appreciate the energy density that is contained in a reactor fuel. The volume of material is minuscule compared to coal. While oil/gas are a lot better then coal energy density-wise, they have the significant downside of greenhouse gases and causing global warming.
echodot@feddit.uk 5 weeks ago
It’s very infuriating talking to people about this because they never really accept that nuclear power is necessary. They spend all their time complaining about how it’s dangerous (it isn’t) and how it’s very expensive, and how you don’t have a lot of control over its output capacity. And yeah, all of those are true, but so what, the only other option is to burn some dead trees which obviously we don’t want to do.
Just because nuclear has downsides doesn’t mean you can ignore it, unless of course you want to invent fusion just to spite me, in which case I’ll be fine with that.
PowerCrazy@lemmy.ml 5 weeks ago
The new tack is to conflate nuclear energy with fossil fuels. As in assuming that nuclear energy is “legacy” power generation, and that obviously we need to use modern gernation like solar and wind, and magical grid-level storage technologies that don’t exist. Also ignore that baseload power is still required, and is currently fulfilled with Natural Gas and Coal.
frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 weeks ago
There is absolutely nothing required about baseload power. It’s there because the economics of generating power favored it in the past. You could build a baseload plant that spits out a GW or so all day, everyday for relatively cheap.
That economic advantage is no longer there, and no longer relevant.
echodot@feddit.uk 5 weeks ago
Well you still need baseload. You can’t forget about it just because it’s inconvenient.
BombOmOm@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
What makes power when the sun isn’t out and the wind isn’t blowing? Nuclear, gas, or coal.
By being anti-nuclear, you force it to be gas or coal.
frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 weeks ago
This has been studied, and we don’t need nuclear. All the solutions are sitting right there.
www.amazon.com/…/1009249541
echodot@feddit.uk 5 weeks ago
Well I’m not going to buy the book to find out what they are so all I’m going to go ahead and say is this. Yes there are solutions such as battery storage (although they do tend to be extremely explodey) and using the power to pump water around, or using mirrors to heat up salt in insulated containers, but they are all very specific solutions that will only work in very particular situations, which we don’t always have.
frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 weeks ago
Almost like we can have many solutions where one of them is workable in any given situation.
Waryle@jlai.lu 5 weeks ago
Jacobson is a moron who’s work has been criticized by dozens of other scientists, that he kept suing because he does not like being contradicted.
humanspiral@lemmy.ca 5 weeks ago
In US, and EU is having similar nightmare, nuclear was last built at $15/watt. Installing solar is under $1/watt, and for 20 equivalent hours of nuclear per day (less demand at night means not full production even if available) equivalent to $5/watt-day. $1/watt capital costs is 2c/kwh for solar, and for full day production needs 10c/kwh. All before financing. Nuclear is 30c/kwh. It adds 10 extra years of construction financing, requires political bribes to suppress alternative supply whenever they decide to begin operations, uranium purchases/disposal, expensive skilled operations staff, security, disaster insurance.
Solar does need batteries for time shifting its daily supply. At current LFP prices of $100/kwh, 1c/kwh full cycle is prefinancing cost. and so 3c/kwh if triple the charging/discharging daily capacity. 6 hours of storage is a very high number in power systems. It will capture all energy from a northern summer. It will rarely fully discharge with any time shifting incentives to daytime (much higher convenience to consumers and industry) providing resilience to rainy days. A 2c/kwh value (before financing which is apples to apples comparison to nucclear) means a 5gw solar + 30gwh battery costs 12c/wh or $8B vs a $15B equivalent 1GW nuclear solution. Both last 60 years due to low battery charge/discharge rates and capacity cycle use, with much lower maintenance costs/downtime for life extension costs for solar/battery system vs keeping a nuclear reactor operational. No/minimal operations costs.
Yes. Nuclear shills are frauds who should be frustrated in their theft of the commons.
echodot@feddit.uk 5 weeks ago
What conspiracy do you think is happening here? You think I’m being paid by big nuclear power to try to convince everyone that it’s necessary when it isn’t.
JcbAzPx@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Well, unfortunately some people are using nuclear as an excuse to argue that we don’t need any renewables at all and that they should be banned entirely. They do this because they know that nuclear faces extreme regulatory and societal challenges and it would allow coal, diesel and gas to continue unabated.
So it creates a backlash where renewable advocates feel they have to fight nuclear to survive.