‘Natural’ gas is just gas. It’s not a clean emission free fuel. It’s better than coal but by no means a clean fuel.
Comment on 40% of US electricity is now emissions-free
CrimeDad@lemmy.crimedad.work 10 months ago
Image Hmmm… This pie needs more nuclear.
clayj9@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world 10 months ago
It has about half the carbon emissions of coal. Much much better, but no where close to clean.
kent_eh@lemmy.ca 10 months ago
Better than coal is its main selling point.
And converting coal power plants to natural gas can be a partial interim solution on the way towards larger amounts of non-polluting generation.
frezik@midwest.social 10 months ago
I, too, want the one that will take longer and cost more than alternatives.
pizzazz@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I don’t think you understand what the alternatives are
frezik@midwest.social 10 months ago
Yeah, no. I used to be pro-nuclear. Then I looked at how the economics have changed over the last 10 years, and I changed my mind like you’re supposed to when presented with new information.
pizzazz@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I like how governments were supposed to shit their money out of the window to support renewables with billions in incentives but when the matter is investment in nuclear power suddenly it’s unsustainable economics. Let’s ask Germany how their 600+ billion euro “energiewende” is going shall we?
kent_eh@lemmy.ca 10 months ago
Also needs less coal.
And after that less natural gas, but getting rid of coal should be the higher priority as it is the greater polluting fuel.
CrimeDad@lemmy.crimedad.work 10 months ago
I wonder if the chart includes the coal typically needed to make steel.
KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 months ago
unless that coal is somehow also generating power, i doubt it, electricity production including a source that isn’t electricity production is… weird.
CrimeDad@lemmy.crimedad.work 10 months ago
Okay I guess it should have been obvious to me.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 10 months ago
wikibot@lemmy.world [bot] 10 months ago
Here’s the summary for the wikipedia article you mentioned in your comment:
China is one of the world’s largest producers of nuclear power. The country ranks third in the world both in total nuclear power capacity installed and electricity generated, accounting for around one tenth of global nuclear power generated. As of February 2023, China has 55 plants with 57GW in operation, 22 under construction with 24 GW and more than 70 planned with 88GW. About 5% of electricity in the country is due to nuclear energy. These plants generated 417 TWh of electricity in 2022 This is versus the September 2022 numbers of 53 nuclear reactors, with a total capacity of 55.6 gigawatt (GW). In 2019, nuclear power had contributed 4.9% of the total Chinese electricity production, with 348.1 TWh.Nuclear power has been looked into as an alternative to coal due to increasing concerns about air quality, climate change and fossil fuel shortages. The China General Nuclear Power Group has articulated the goal of 200 GW by 2035, produced by 150 additional reactors.China has two major nuclear power companies, the China National Nuclear Corporation operating mainly in north-east China, and the China General Nuclear Power Group (formerly known as China Guangdong Nuclear Power Group) operating mainly in south-east China.China aims to maximize self-reliance on nuclear reactor technology manufacturing and design, although international cooperation and technology transfer are also encouraged. Advanced pressurized water reactors such as the Hualong One are the mainstream technology in the near future, and the Hualong One is also planned to be exported. China plans to build as many as thirty nuclear power reactors in countries involved in the Belt and Road Initiative by 2030. By mid-century fast neutron reactors are seen as the main technology, with a planned 1400 GW capacity by 2100. China is also involved in the development of nuclear fusion reactors through its participation in the ITER project, having constructed an experimental nuclear fusion reactor known as EAST located in Hefei, as well as research and development into the thorium fuel cycle as a potential alternative means of nuclear fission.
GooseFinger@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Why? Nuclear power is the most complex and expensive option of any clean energy source from what I know.
FireTower@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Nuclear power is good for its consistent output that’s independent of outside factors like wind, clouds, or drought. Plus much of the cost of nuclear is tied with the construction of the plant not the operating costs, so a paid off plant isn’t particularly expensive.
partial_accumen@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I wish that were true. Nuclear plants built in the 60s and 70s (but still operating today) was losing money in Ohio. So the power companies bribed the Republican Ohio Speaker of the House $60 million dollars to pass a law that citizens have to pay extra fees totally over $1 billion dollars to power plants so that power companies can make a profit on nuclear. The bill was passed, and signed into law by the governor of Ohio, and years passed before the investigation found the bribery scandal.
That former Ohio Speaker of the House was sentenced to 20 years in prison finally.
The bad bribed-passed law is still on the books in Ohio and citizens are still paying extra to artificially make nuclear profitable for the power company. Here’s just a small source for the whole sorted story..
So no, even old built nuclear power plants are still more expensive that nearly all other electricity sources in the USA.
ironeagl@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
They’ve had to keep upgrading them - the percentage of nuclear is the same, but no new plants have been built, so that extra power has come from research on how close to the red line they can actually run.
DanglingFury@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Besides maybe coal
frezik@midwest.social 10 months ago
That consistent output isn’t as useful as you think. Solar and wind are ridiculously cheap, so we would want to use them when they’re available. That means winding down nuclear plants when those two spin up. I’m turn, that means those initial construction costs you mentioned aren’t being efficiently ammortized over the entire life of the plant.
What we can do instead is take historical sun and wind data for a given region, calculate where the biggest trough will be, and then build enough storage capacity to cover it. Even better, aim for 95% coverage in the next few years, with the rest taken up by existing natural gas. There’s some non-linear factors involved where getting to 100% is a lot harder than 95%.
CrimeDad@lemmy.crimedad.work 10 months ago
This is the trap. The fossil fuel industry has co-opted wind and PV solar by way of filling in the gaps and transitioning to net zero emissions. Of course, the gaps will always be there and the transition will never complete and “net zero” seems to just leave the door open on fossil fuels forever.
Nuclear power, on the other hand, has the reliability that @FireTower@lemmy.world mentioned and it closes any of the gaps from wind and solar right up. You don’t have to quickly cut the power on a reactor if it’s sunny or windy, just divert it to hydrogen and ammonia production. Even if the efficient high temperature electrolysis tech isn’t ready yet, it doesn’t really matter since it’s emissions free. Furthermore, nuclear power produces good heat/steam to support cogeneration and various industrial processes.
GabberPiet@lemmy.world 10 months ago
The problem is that there are currently no good (cheap, scalable) technologies to store these large amounts of electrical energy.
iknowitwheniseeit@lemmynsfw.com 10 months ago
I totally agree with this. A lot of places have cheap electricity in off-peak hours, as a workaround to this limitation (steady output).
I think that this obsession about intermittent power comes partially from the idea that any new sources of power must be drop-in replacements for the systems that we’ve had for so many decades. However those systems run the way they do as an accident of technology, not because of a careful analysis and design to match optimal usage patterns.
KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 months ago
im assuming by “winding down” you mean production of power? Not shutting down the plants, nuclear plants operate the most efficiently at high capacity factor, when they aren’t producing power the fuel is still decaying, thus you should be producing power for AS LONG as possible. This is why if you ever look at capacity factor >80% is really common, i’ve even seen >100% a couple of times, as well as the term “baseload plant” being used almost always in reference to nuclear.
That wouldn’t make sense for an existing nuclear plant, the nuclear plant should stay running in place of solar/wind. As you would be burning money actively otherwise, or you could just shut it down permanently, thats the other option.
IamtheMorgz@lemmy.world 10 months ago
The storage capacity is the hard part. Batteries aren’t really a viable option (we don’t really have good enough batteries, limits on how many can be made with current resources, etc).
Dams would be good (pump water uphill when electricity is cheap and release when you need the energy back), but dams are not a viable option everywhere and also have a high environmental impact and are arguably not the safest thing for a community.
I read somewhere recently about the idea of putting smaller batteries in individual homes, basically distributing the power ahead of time to a certain number of places so they are not taking from the grid in peak times, but it would be hugely expensive still, and I also question if we have the ability to make so many batteries, much less get enough people to install them.
assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Consistent output is certainly useful when you break down demand into a constant demand + variable demand. For instance, if demand is typically 200-350 kWh, you could build a nuclear plant to generate 200 kWh and constantly run while you meet the varying 0-150 kWh demand with wind and solar.
I will agree though that we need to run numbers on this to determine the best approach. I don’t have a feel for what wins out if we make larger solar and wind farms – increased cost for the additional capacity, or increased efficiency from economies of scale.
Halcyon@discuss.tchncs.de 10 months ago
Don’t leave out the deconstruction of old nuclear plants after their operational time and the storage of radioactive waste. It’s very laborious and expensive.
leds@feddit.dk 10 months ago
Nuclear power is bad for its consistent output because demand is not constant. You could of course run some energy hungry chemical reaction when there is more power than demand, make hydrogen to use for synthetic fuels for example or build a battery to store the excess power for when the demand is high. But is is of course much cheaper with renewables.
assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Total demand is not constant, but you can represent total demand as a sum of a given constant demand plus variable demand. Say for instance the average demand varies from 200-350 kWh a year. You could run nuclear power plants to generate 200 kWh worth of electricity, and use solar/wind for the remaining 0-150 kWh demand. It would be fairly efficient to have nuclear provide a base load of some kind while solar and wind vary to meet the full demand.
ironeagl@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
Hydro is best as a giant battery bank, and pairs quite well with nuclear.
Poutinetown@lemmy.ca 10 months ago
Hydro is also quite independent but it’s heavily dependent on geography. That’s how Canada is able to be much ahead in renewable energy.
BastingChemina@slrpnk.net 10 months ago
Also, having nuclear in a 100% low carbon grid is great to stabilize the grid.
A French study showed that having around 13% of nuclear in the grid reduce the solar and battery capacity needed by a factor of two compared to no nuclear.
Eximius@lemmy.world 10 months ago
And yet, after many decades of solar, wind construction. It is the energy source in that pie chart that is sizeable (just as much as all wind and solar) and extremely stable (probably for the last 50 years), without any major construction in the past 30 years minimum.
frezik@midwest.social 10 months ago
Wind/solar only ramped up in the last 10 years, not decades. That’s when they got cheap. Really cheap. It’s nuclear that had a huge head start.
IamtheMorgz@lemmy.world 10 months ago
To be fair, Plant Vogtle just turned on Unit 3 earlier this year and Unit 4 should be coming soon.
CrimeDad@lemmy.crimedad.work 10 months ago
That’s a good thing. It means lots of hours of well paying engineering and construction work.
partial_accumen@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Nearly all of nuclear in the USA was built decades ago. Instead of being “paid off” and being cheaper, its still more expensive to generate electricity with nuclear than nearly all other electricity sources in the USA.
CrimeDad@lemmy.crimedad.work 10 months ago
I’m not sure what you are referencing, but there are good reasons why nuclear power is expensive: lots of engineering and construction hours, strick safety and quality standards for design and materials, and no externalities, since decommissioning and waste handling have to be accounted and baked into the final utility cost to consumers. In other words, even if it’s difficult to pay off a nuclear power plant (in a liberalized energy market of course) it’s still money well spent. The same requirements and expectations should have to apply to other industries as well.
ironeagl@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
Nuclear is the most regulated one. Start requiring full recycling / disposal of solar or wind and how expensive do they get?
JamesFire@lemmy.world 10 months ago
It’s not significantly more expensive though. en.wikipedia.org/…/Cost_of_electricity_by_source
And even if it was, it has other benefits.
Like using significantly less land, and being safer.
It can also work as a source of heat for district heating or various industrial processes, and since the plants themselves have no emissions, they can be reasonably placed in cities for this purpose without harming people. Using heat directly is more efficient than converting it to and from electricity.
Nuclear has it’s place.
KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 months ago
modern gen 4 plants are MUCH simpler, foregoing PWR loop entirely in favor of liquid metal/salt type reactors, with various different design choices that are all much simpler, and cheaper to build/maintain.
If we see actual development in that field it’s not hard to imagine them playing with the fossil fuels, possibly renewables as well given the base load productivity, and relative lack of waste.