Comment on Nuclear energy is more expensive than renewables, CSIRO report finds
Tibert@jlai.lu 6 months agoWell the issue with renewable power like wind and solar, is that they are not stable.
Having a battery in order to store the energy and release it when the demand is higher than production is one part of the solution.
But what happens when there wasn’t enough solar and wind to replenish the batteries if those batteries aren’t enough for the demand? Power shortages, which are pretty bad to get.
One of the solutions to this is natural gas for a simple reason : it’s very fast to start generating power or to stop. It’s also not very expensive, at least when there isn’t a war… The co2 equivalent emissions aren’t as high as coal either.
Nuclear power on the other hand is very hard to stop. Having a surplus of power on the grid is also very bad. Some of it could be used to recharge the batteries, but there would be some loss at some point.
Wilzax@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Except that H2 can be electrolyzed from water and is an emerging carbon-free fuel source. The nuclear power can just stay on all the time and we let H2 production drop a little when the wind is low and the sky is dark.
Tibert@jlai.lu 6 months ago
It’s another solution, now there is also issues with costs. However with time the costs can be reduced.
For hydrogen based on this video : youtu.be/M0fnEsz4Ks0 there could be some hope for large hydrogen storage for a smaller cost (not used in cars tho, due to the weight).
Hydrogen production however is/was very ineficient. However there is also some hope for this youtu.be/m0d6iljzzEI
So with this, maybe it could be an interesting solution to store energy.
Tho I’m not sure how efficient it would be to produce energy from that stored hydrogen, and how efficient it could be for the entire hydrogen production/storing/electricity production chain.
CrimeDad@lemmy.crimedad.work 6 months ago
Even if the current technology for producing zero-emission hydrogen is relatively inefficient, that’s not really such a problem since it’s a zero-emission process.
Tibert@jlai.lu 6 months ago
The issue isn’t emissions, it’s costs. Sadly we don’t live in a dream world, and everything has a cost.
Even running excess production into hydrogen production has costs (transport, storage, infrastructure…).
The current (not taking in consideration the new tech currently in testing) beeing highly ineficient creates many cost issues.
Less effieicnt means that more power needs to be used to get that amount of hydrogen, reducing the gains on electricity surplus.
The storage beeing ineficient means a higher running cost, more space used, less of that space…
The transport beeing ineficient also increases the running costs, but also the emissions if the transport uses fossil fuel. Of it uses hydrogen, well it increases the running cost even more. That expensive produced hydrogen is used for transport…
The electricity production from hydrogen being ineficient increases the used hydrogen to get the same energy amount, which then increases the costs because more of that expensive hydrogen has to be used.
So taking all this into account, being “clean” doesn’t mean it is viable.
The costs have to be taken in account because resources don’t appear magically.
Mining Uranium has a cost. Buying it from abroad has a cost, paying people to maintain all that has a cost…
Wilzax@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Especially when the bulk of your hydrogen production comes from excess energy generation