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A comment on The Necessity of Nuclear. Parent comment

Re:The Necessity of Nuclear by jacquesm on Sunday October 13, 2019 @06:32PM (#21243636)
> so when the sun goes down or the wind dies down, the power goes out unless you rely on some other source.

Power can be transmitted reasonably efficiently over very long distances. Long enough that this need not be a problem.

Solar is more predictable than wind in this respect but the combination is more reliable than either alone.

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Re:The Necessity of Nuclear by westwooded on Sunday October 13, 2019 @06:49PM (#21243783)
Transmission is actually one of the biggest problems identified by US ISOs. Not easy to get the power where it is needed bc big transmission lines are costly.
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Re:The Necessity of Nuclear by jacquesm on Sunday October 13, 2019 @07:12PM (#21243905)
There is a whole revolution happening in grid transmission right now. High voltage DC lines that were considered impossible not all that long ago now span 1000's of KM between unsynchronized grids and with reduced transmission losses to boot.
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Re:The Necessity of Nuclear by 8bitsrule on Sunday October 13, 2019 @08:19PM (#21244263)
China has spent the last 10 years building out a $90B UHV transmission system. They're nearly done. We're still thinking.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-high-voltage_electricity...

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Re:The Necessity of Nuclear by x220 on Sunday October 13, 2019 @06:38PM (#21243695)
If the transmission and storage isn't a problem, why hasn't Germany's carbon emissions from energy stayed roughly the same? Since 2000 they've invested a lot into solar and wind, and yet they still produce roughly the same amount of energy from coal and gas.
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Re:The Necessity of Nuclear by jacquesm on Sunday October 13, 2019 @07:09PM (#21243895)
Increased consumption, for the most part.
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Re:The Necessity of Nuclear by roenxi on Sunday October 13, 2019 @08:21PM (#21244273)
Are you sure about that? I've been keeping an eye on the German numbers because it is the fairest experiment and it looks to me like they've failed to have any sort of environmentally positive outcome. Their energy use is flat, and they've swapped nuclear for renewables, with a little reduction in hard-coal [0].

If the goal of Germany's Energiewende was cleaner energy, France is thrashing them without even trying. That is really a stunning endorsement of just how technically excellent nuclear power is.

[0] https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-c...

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