Nuclear power is too slow

Re:Nuclear power is too slow by fulafel on Monday December 19, 2022 @03:41AM (#34049862)

Lithium batteries are attractive because for mobile applications, there are lots of overlapping options for running the grid with renewables from other battery chemistries to hydrogen, pumped hydro storage, long distance hvdc, hourly pricing to cut demand peaks, etc.

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Re:Nuclear power is too slow by evilos on Monday December 19, 2022 @04:54AM (#34050307)

Yes there are many competing battery technologies in the works right now and I sincerely hope that one of them turns out to be manufacturable/scalable. Or any kind of energy storage becomes cheap at Terra-watt hour capacities.

But right now, it's just a bunch of 'maybes'. The fact that we don't have a solid plan RIGHT NOW for something so important is alarming. Everyone is just hoping it will work out. Maybe we'll find a good cheap battery. Maybe we can unify our grid and build thousands of miles of HVDC interconnects. Maybe we can find more pumped hydro sites.

In the absence of a buildable storage solution for renewables today, we should be building the only other scalable clean energy technology we have: Nuclear energy. No energy storage. No brand new grid. No massive expansion in mining. Thankfully, more people are coming around to this. No it won't cover 100% of our energy. But it is an incredibly underutilized tool. We should at a minimum, replace all coal power plants with nuclear.

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Re:Nuclear power is too slow by fulafel on Monday December 19, 2022 @07:11AM (#34051179)

The predicted lithium shortage would happen gradually over O(100 years), leading to rising cost of lithium batteries which should give lots of lead time for investment in alternatives, of which we have many.

IMO the more alarming problems currently in climate change are the missing plan for global fossils rampdwn and the required energy saving measures.

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