There's a need for "base load". I hesitate to use that term because people get carried away with weird notions of it. If you slap a percentage on it, it's probably closer to 5% than to 50% of overall capacity if you look at it at a European level. We're talking a cloudy, wind free day across the entirety of the continent. A day would be tolerable. A few weeks highly unusual.
The thing is, that base load is much smaller than the current base load provided by nuclear + legacy fossil fuel plants. Germany has been shutting them down by the GW. Nuclear is nearly done. Coal is next unless they have to get out of Russian gas first. They're putting 200 billion into fixing their grid in the next few years. Something, tells me that they'll manage without blackouts. Blackouts have not been a problem so far when they grew renewables from next to nothing to the majority of their supply. Same for other countries across Europe.
A little bit of nuclear on the side will help. But it will mainly keep energy cost high because all that stuff has to be subsidized. Maybe these smaller reactors will reduce prices to be a bit less problematic. Otherwise, expect renewables to outgrow this stuff by orders of magnitude like it has for this exact reason. Add a few GW of nuclear over ten years or so. Add a few hundred GW of wind. Just wind. It might add up to 5%. That might be enough. I'm not against it. Just realistic about prices and amounts.
It also tends to line up with sunny weather when solar is pumping out energy. Today is very much one of those days. Solar is producing as much as nuclear in the UK right now for a fraction of the cost.
Every winter I see the same post about how little energy solar panels are producing today and why this means we need more nuclear plants.
Today the sun is out so it's all about how little the wind is blowing.
That's why interconnecting grids is so important. We can have Norwegian hydro and Moroccan solar picking up the slack. Plugin all those nice new EVs with vehicle to grid capability built in (Ford, Kia, and a few other manufacturers produce these already) and we're talking a few GWH of standby battery capacity ready to balance the grids as well.
That 5% base load is what we need to secure long term. But given that we essentially have that right now, there's no urgency for that. Maybe it's 10%.
Before anyone asks, I'm basing my numbers on what Michael Liebreich cited in his podcast a while back. Interesting person. He's a british conservative with a technical and economic background. Not your usually hippy environmentalist. Founder of Bloomberg New Energy Finance; generally seems to be extremely solid on his numbers. The economics in this area are quite fascinating. If you have better numbers and sources, please share. Base load without numbers is just people waffling.
There's a lot of very shallow analysis out there though that cheerleads some approach with some very trivially refuted assumptions.
My sense is that the price of all of those things combined is currently about 90% of the cost of nuclear power official and about 60-75% of the cost of nuclear power that pays for its own disaster insurance.
While my own model is most assuredly flawed, I havent really seen a good alternative.
The low-wind periods last December had a peak of 1.2 GW solar.
Combined wind and solar right now are producing only very slightly more than a tech that has had zero real investment in thirty years. I wouldn't brag about that.
Unlike wind, solar and pumped storage.
Nevertheless, the >30-year old nukes still delivered what every single technology you have listed categorically failed to deliver. I have provided ample, repeated evidence of that. They failed and fossils came to the rescue. Repeatedly.
Why should they get even half the subsidy nukes get (which is what they do get), when their output is simply useless.
I've posted numbers. Please, you want to show me storage can be economically done, today, do so. Or admit you can't because it can't. We no longer have time for utopianism.
This is simply, provably false. They have delivered cheap and green electricity and weaned us off fossil fuels gradually.
Theyre growing very very fast because theyre economic and a good investment. Nuclear is not because it is not.
Throw $4 billion of subsidies at solar, wind and pumped storage and youll get more power when you need it than if you did the same for a nuclear power station.
I'm sorry we're just living in fantasy land now.
We're not weaned off fossils. Not even close. That's just a lie.
150 MW currently.
--
currently 0.63 GW.
That's interesting that they disagree. Gridwatch has been around a while but I'll have a look.
edit: yep, electricitymap's free figures are not even close to live.
When values are non-estimated, they are about 2 hours behind in the free version.
The common and legal definition of "fraud".
I like nuclear. I have always liked nuclear. However: it's always sunny somewhere on Earth, and the total amount of solar energy delivered to us by nature's finest fusion reactor is something like 170TW.
If you will indulge me the geopolitical fantasy of putting a suitable planetary-scale transmission system in place, is there any particular reason we couldn't switch to all-solar?
You also are unlikely to have enough space and enough raw materials to construct solar panels that can provide the entire earth's energy needs all-day round, given the huge transmission losses.
Furthermore, solar panels have a very short life span - barely 10 years for a decent yield - which means that you would have to constantly mine hevay metals to build new solar panels at a rapid pace just to maintain this setup.
It's perhaps a possibility for a distant future, but definitely not something that can be contemplated as a serious solution to the 0-emissions world that we need to hit in the next 30 years.
Losses for 800kV HVDC systems are typically documented at ~3.5%/1000km or ~5%/2000km[0], and state-of-the-art 1.1MV systems have losses of ~1.5%/1000km[1][2]. Lower voltage systems have higher losses but I’m not sure why a lower-voltage system or AC system would be used in a project like this.
I can’t find any information about increased losses in submarine cables at all; where is that information from, and what is the mechanism that causes that added loss?
For solar panels, as far as I can tell, capacity loss occurs at a rate of ~0.3-1% per year depending upon the type of panel, with a median of 0.5%[3]. More modern panels have lower losses than older panels, presumably due to manufacturing improvements. So, after 10 years, you’re talking about something that will produce—on average—5% less power than it did when it was brand new. That’s not something that is broken and needs to be replaced the way you seem to be suggesting.
[0] https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/bitstream/J...
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29232512
Actual deaths from solar power are higher than actual deaths from nuclear energy, per GW delivered. Solar death is mostly from falling from high places, but so what? Death is death.
There's a conversation to have about the long tail but I'll probably start calling people cowards at some point so lets not.
This is not a serious argument. Large scale solar farms are hardly more than 6 feet off the ground and would essentially eliminate this risk. I expect the number of deaths and decrease in quality of life attributable to fossil fuels is far far higher to speak nothing of Climate risks in general.
I am personally doubtful of your comments around deaths being more frequent. Statistics around the specific cause of death would also be appreciated.
Im not sure if conspiracy is the right word. The special interest groups bullshitting everyone are not necessarily coordinating. Is religion also a conspiracy?
Never mind.
I believe that I'd feel safer with nuclear if they paid for their own damn insurance and raised the liability cap to "unlimited" but apparently they dont feel its safe enough just yet to raise their financial exposure. What if fukushima happened again? Dealing with that was expensive!
Perhaps you could explain why they cant volunteer to shoulder their own risks if theyre so safe?
In SPITE of free insurance they still need lavish taxpayer subsidies to be financially viable while wind and solar dont.
...including a policy to pay the cost of decommissioning.
There isn't a production nuclear power plant in the world that has ever been fully decommissioned. The earliest production plants in the UK have been taken out of service, but decommissioning (so the land they were built on can be re-used) is expected to take the rest of this century.
In Chernobyl around 50 people died as direct consequence of the disaster. As far as I know there's no studies showing increased risk of cancer in the population that lived in and around Chernobyl at the time. If Chernobyl showed us one thing it is that radiation is not as dangerous as we believed.
I think it's worth assuming some reduction in life expectancy for some people, but notably the estimates of lost years of life have dropped year by year, and will likely end up being negligible.
I've said it before: we could have a Chernobyl every year, and it'd still be worth it (reducing deaths) if it got us off coal sooner...
However, all that was completely drowned by a collapse of life expectancy resulting from the chaos of the 90s. We're horrified at a few tens of extra cancers, but 100M men losing 10-15 years of their life due to socio-economic circumstances doesn't raise anyone's eyebrow
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_due_to_the_Chernobyl_di...
Indulging such imagination, which is valuable, one particular reason, as you probably realize, could be resource limits when it comes to actually scaling up solar generation and transmission facilities.
Plus, electrification of transportation, if beyond electrified rail, still calls for storage. Here's an analysis of material inputs, focussing on vehicle electrification:
https://www.minersoc.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/3ICM-Mic...
Just how much would such infrastructure cost? How much resources would we have to mine to facilitate such a massive overhaul to a non-centralized grid?
I think when renewables are presented as the only answer it is underestimated how much it would cost in investment in storage and the grid, to a point that I feel nuclear is a fine solution for base-load.
I have no numbers though so I cannot back this up or anything.
As if the idea of getting all our energy from the Sun is an original thought.
How do we accomplish this?
"I don't know, I am just the idea man. You do all the engineering for my idea and we will split the profit 50/50!"
We could, maybe, import all that energy from solar farms in North Africa, but (a) that requires a willing counterparty, and (b) is that actually technically feasible? As in, sign here and pay, we build it for you.
It is, see the Desertec initiative.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desertec
It would be just a huge investment, which is why it did not get very far, so far.
Also there is indeed the political factor. North africa is not so stable, but of course willing for investment.
But even with solar in southern europe alone, you would get quite far, combined with wind and hydro. And if you have excess in summer, you could store that in various ways for the winter.
In other words, I believe we do need huge investments into the grid now, connecting europes south and north. And then companys can build more of all kinds of solar and wind farms.
The link you provided seems to just mention plans and studies, not building subsea electricity cables. Also says
> The project failed twice due to the problem of transportation and cost-inefficiency.
And if you have a european wide grid (high voltage, direct current) you would not need to store for months, because the sun is still shining in the south and wind is blowing somewhere. You only would need to store for the rare situations of little wind and little sun.
It will be a mix either way, I am not against nuclear as base load, or backup. But they are expensive, too.
Well then, when you have lots of solar and wind fields, then it doesn't matter too much, if one gets destroyed. But even those you can defend, even with your own troops, by making adequate contracts.
On the other hand, if you have to rely on nuclear - then a potentiell enemy only needs to target those and you are screwed in many ways. It would be not too hard, for a dedicated commando to blow up, or at least render useless, a nuclear reactor with enough preparation.
But when you are only thinking in military terms: the hard parts to defend with dessert power are the power cabels. But they are also an essential part of nuclear plants and you cannot defend the whole grid.
Your point about cabling is equally valid.
Your point about nuclear less so. I'm more comparing locally generated power, where your power generation can be covered by your own defences, with remotely generated power, which can't.
Making a deal with the moroccean government, would include their troops defending the investment, or could be modified to include own troops.
But like I also said above, the south of europe has plenty of sun, too.
Storage only for nights, is very managable.
>geopolitical fantasy of putting a suitable planetary-scale transmission system in place
That combined with geo-politics, war, big oil etc.
Solar generation of power across countries will pretty much go one way. The most obvious and likely one is from North Africa to Europe. If the North African states decide to turn off the power to Europe they can. This is why geo-politically you cannot rely on this as a 100% solution. It can add to a solution, but it is not a good idea to let another country hang a sword over your head like that. (Or more precisely to hang the sword there yourself)
Besides the fact that you can't just "make" internet from a coal/petrol/etc generator somewhere nearby.
Imagine a ship's anchor damaging a cable carrying a couple megawatts of power (this happens frequently to the undersea fibre optic cables, and even those are a nightmare to repair).
Currently it's much cheaper to just burn fossil fuels or import power from your neighbors than to build hydrolyzers, which is why you don't see many, but pilot facilities in the multiple-MW range exist, so the technology is available.
Just because a tech is available doesn't mean it's practical for every day use.
And as I said above, people _have_ implemented it already. There are dozens of MW of hydrolyzers installed in Germany alone.
At a much much lower cost.
Those wind shortfalls have a strong tendency to line up with good weather when solar produces more and heating is less needed.
The UK also has more pumped storage coming online and octopus even has home electricity tarriffs that promote time shifting demand.
There's also batteries: virtual power plants that give us the ability to arbitrage between when power is cheap and when power is needed. These can be rolled out in conjunction with residential PV systems and eventually pay for themselves. A similar approach can be used to store hot water produced during the day by PVT (photovoltaic-thermal) cells.
See:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_energy_storage
https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2014/01/f7/csp_revie...
Batteries, in their current form, have all sorts of issues that haven't made them economically viable either. Liquid electrolytes (liquid batteries) do show promise for grid level storage, and I am pleased to see lots of activity around them but we are still probably 5-10 years away from anything worth scaling up around.
Hot water is fine for extreme micro uses - individual buildings - but again not even remotely viable for something at scale, let alone replacing base load generation for the grid.
Base load is the real nut to crack - and so far solar is no where near being anything but a nice supplement for base load.
Last calendar, it produced > 1 GW for 784 hours.
In the last four months, assuming a 40% capacity factor and therefore an expected capacity of 10 GW, there have been at least three periods with > 100 GWh shortfall.
The UK does not yet, but plans to, shift heating loads onto the electrical grid, meaning that is likely to become a 100 GWh shortfall in heating.
Please, show me an estimate for an alternative fossil-fuel system that can guarantee that shortfall.
edit: more specific to SMRs, and I have ranted on this before: they've been given ~ £ 500 M, which does... just feel like the right amount. We're all aware how 100 times that can be disappear into consultants, and much less simply wouldn't get you a complete product. £500 M I can see engineers spending.