German aluminum smelters for instance are already building their plants to be able to scale electricity with supply. They've seen these periods where electricity prices dropped almost to zero and they want in.
As always, markets often take time to adjust to new realities, so this shift won't be instantaneous.
http://www.ulcos.org/en/docs/Ref03%20-%20Electrowinning%20-%...
'High purity iron was produced, with a current yield of 85% and a power consumption of 4.25 kWh/kg iron'
Far as I can tell, 1 GW for an hour would produce ~250 tons of iron.
In most of Europe clothes dryers are relatively uncommon (people use clothes lines or for inside use you have drying stands ).
So with the Danish emphasis on energy conservation one would think clothes dryers in Denmark would be an expensive luxury.
As for the cost, well, many Danes have money to spare.
good points otherwise!
The varying monetary cost of fossil fuels also causes huge destabilization of the world economy (See 1973 OPEC crisis etc). It would make the global economy much more stable if we could eliminate such an unpredictable variable.
Also, mathematically, something that is "renewable" will, given time, obviously provide a better ROI than something that isn't. The figure of 20 years may not be accurate, but fossil fuels will never pay back. Once used, they're practically gone for good.
Only on a global scale, but people don't act globally. The ROI for the actual entity buying the windmills will be worse if natural gas prices are almost nothing.
Oil might stay cheap, or it might not, depending on supply. That should have little impact on a shift to sustainable energy.
You are correct that new renewable plants never have to pay to export excess power, but conventional generation such as old-hydro, gas, nuclear, coal, etc that don't have sweetheart contracts with the government do have to contend with negative prices, and the system does have to pay someone to take that power. Then the local rate payers through some non obvious lumped in "market operating charge" or other mechanism end up paying for that power they didn't use.
You could feather the blades, but at least in the markets I've worked in they never would.
edit: Actually, the ratepayers don't pay to get rid of the energy they didn't use, the generators that generated it at a negative price have to pay for not being able to shut down.
With efficient batteries, the entire concept of "the grid" changes. You have distributed energy buffers everywhere, so you don't need to worry so much about high / low loads, brownouts, high voltage line requirements, power losses over distance etc.
People are very aware of the problems with wind/solar but that doesn't mean that we should continue to use fossil fuels or blindly pursue unpopular, problematic technologies like nuclear. The status quo is simply not an option.
Chernobyl was an onion of layered stupidity and incompetence. (Fun fact: eleven reactors of the same core design as Chernobyl are still operational today. Eleven. Today.)
In the case of Fukushima, it took a one-two punch of the largest earthquake in Japan's recorded history and an absolutely catastrophic tsunami in order for TEPCO's incompetence to become a problem.
Though it may not seem it, you can make a statistical case for nuclear power being among the safest forms of electricity production per unit of energy. Burning fuels for power kills tens of thousands of people every year. Hydro dam failure has the blood of hundreds of thousands on its hands. Workers fall off wind turbines and rooftops -- rarely, but it's statistically significant compared to the unit output.
Going further, they are designed to fail in the face of "normal accidents"[1] which we can expect to happen. Every single one of the failures will have some kind of unique dramatic human-discerned narrative, just like the two you narrated above, but they will all have their failure in common.
I think we should be in favor of nuclear power in general. I think we should be marching in the streets in protest of the standard model of nuclear plant currently deployed around the world. Like you said, there's 11 more chernobyls out there just waiting for their own "normal accident".
[1] Normal Accidents, Charles Perrow, 1984 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_Accidents
That is a statistically impossible assertion. Plenty of these shitty designs managed to endure normal levels of competence and systemic corruption for the entirety of their planned life span and have been decommissioned without catastrophe.
How is this a one-two punch? It sounds like a one-punch to me; the tsunami wasn't visited upon Japan by a vengeful god. You might as well complain about the "one-two punch" of getting hit by both fingers when a guy with three missing fingers punches you.
I read somewhere their tsunami barriers where just high enough to stop the tsunami but the coastline sinked. No engineer could have predicted that.
But that's what I'm saying! Tsunamis can't happen by themselves. They're caused by earthquakes (or volcanic eruptions, nuclear explosions, or other literally earth-shaking events). The odds of a record-breaking earthquake co-occurring with an extreme tsunami approach 100%. Similarly, it's not at all surprising for the coastline to sink in an earthquake.
You do realise that two fists tend to be attached to one person, right? A one-two punch can (and often does) represent two attack vectors in quick succession originating from the same cause.
And while a boxer may want to hit his opponent with both hands, hitting with the left definitely doesn't cause hitting with the right. Most punches are not one-two punches. Tsunamis (or, as wikipedia would have it, "seismic sea waves") are generated by earthquakes, not by some mysterious root cause that might or might not also put off earthquakes.
The objection was that this was actually a single unlikely event, because one was very likely to follow from the other i.e. describing someone squeezing a trigger as an independent event to the bullet leaving the barrel is incorrect.
Two independent unlikely events occurring at the same time is extremely unlikely. Unlikely events themselves are common.
Not all catastrophic earthquakes are followed by catastrophic tsunamis in the same area. Not all catastrophic tsunamis are preceded by catastrophic earthquakes in the same area.
Why is it blind problematic pursuit? Because it's unpopular?
If it were so incredibly safe, there wouldn't be a need to give taxpayer support.
The real reason, of course, is that it isn't actually that safe, and private insurers aren't willing to take the risk without a liability cap that is pathetically low (a few hundred million).
And, if you got rid of this subsidy: no more nuclear plants.
But when a nuke plant goes belly up, you know it ruins the small town it is in.
But the liability cap is part of a government enforced insurance scheme. It's a super highly regulated industry. It's not like they can ruin your house and stiff you.
The law is set up so nuke plants don't abuse corporate liability shields and then go bankrupt in an accident without paying for it.
Some claim it is a form of subsidy, but the government is allowed to retroactively raise rates if it turns out the risk profile wasn't accurately measured. It's really not that different from unemployment insurance companies have to pay for.
The reason it isn't just covered by private insurance is because when plants were first built, it was just impossible to underwrite. It still maybe hard to underwrite.
Insurance works on the law of large numbers. But with a low probability, catastrophically highly loss, it's impossible to insure.
If you exclude Chernobyl (and you should since modern nuke plants can't have a core explosion) there aren't any confirmed or even estimated deaths in the commercial nuclear power field. Even a super conservative estimate (no threshold radiation) would yield under 200 people world wide.
Shit, iPhones kill people than that a year (texting while driving)
Sure. They get this type of massive subsidy too.
They can both be consigned to the scrapheap of history if it were mandated that all new generation capacity had to come from renewable sources. This is, by the way, a very easily achievable goal given the last few years' plunge in the price of renewable energy.
>it was just impossible to underwrite. It still maybe hard to underwrite.
Which is why I'm still unconvinced about their relative safety.
As far as I'm concerned Merkel was right to adjust Germany's energy policy to favor renewables after Fukushima. There's just no point in taking the risk when the alternatives are there.
Perhaps you'd like to go into detail on why you think it isn't actually that safe, especially when compared with the fossil fuel energy generation ecosystem it would be replacing.
Their point is very good - as soon as private insurers feel comfortable insuring nuclear power plants, then we have some evidence that nuclear energy is becoming more safe.
And, like I said, I'll be convinced of nuclear power's true safety as soon as the industry puts its money where its mouth is and the liability cap becomes history.
After all, if it were as riskless as they tell us it is, they would be happy to see it go. Right?
The article makes the point that one small country which has invested extensively in the technology was able to fill its electricity generation needs on one specific day. Now, I'm not going to minimize that -- it's an impressive demonstration of what wind power can do under optimum conditions. But it says absolutely nothing about the practical replacement of fossil fuels and nuclear worldwide, including in nations that aren't nearly as well situated to take advantage of wind energy as Denmark, or which aren't wealthy enough to build and subsidize expensive wind infrastructure.
"And, like I said, I'll be convinced of nuclear power's true safety as soon as the industry puts its money where its mouth is and the liability cap becomes history. After all, if it were as riskless as they tell us it is, they would be happy to see it go. Right?"
Why would any industry, no matter how safe, turn down a government-provided liability cap? If the government was willing to put a liability cap on Nerf guns, I guarantee you that Hasbro would happily go along with it, and most likely fight to keep it once in place.
Wind energy is the cheapest form of energy:
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/oct/13/wind-powe...
If you think poorer countries that are too poor to build wind turbines or put up solar panels are instead going to take advantage of nuclear power you are smoking some pretty radioactive shit. The CapEx on a nuclear plant is staggering.
Cheap Chinese solar panels are getting extremely popular in the 3rd world as of the last 18 months, incidentally. Because the capex on a solar panel starts at around $200.
>Why would any industry, no matter how safe, turn down a government-provided liability cap?
They just have to say that it isn't necessary and that it can be taken away. I'm sure the environmental lobby and a few senators looking to score some points with their constituents can take care of the rest.
They are not willing to put their money where their mouth is but you are still willing to believe their protests at how safe their plants are, though. What does that say?
>If the government was willing to put a liability cap on Nerf guns
Except the government didn't put a liability cap on Nerf Guns and Hasbro didn't ask for one.
May I suggest if you want to convince a group of grounded, knowledgeable, and technically minded people that nuclear power is unsafe, you're going to have to go with facts and figures, not "put your money where your mouth is."
Right, because if it's as safe as they and you say it is then it is absolutely not needed.
This would be a very clear signal of the faith that they have in the safety of their own investments.
> the nuclear industry is made up of modern twenty-first century human beings who will happily rake in whatever government benefits
According to you it is not a benefit, so they really shouldn't be all that concerned about keeping it.
But they are.
>May I suggest if you want to convince a group of grounded, knowledgeable, and technically minded people
In other words you think I should believe you, random internet stranger, over the nuclear industry's own self assessments of the danger posed by their plants.
> Right, because if it's as safe as they and you say it
> is then it is absolutely not needed.
What are you talking about? Of course it's a benefit. I just said that in the exact line you quoted.
"In other words you think I should believe you, random internet stranger, over the nuclear industry's own self assessments of the danger posed by their plants."
No, I think that if you're going to assert that nuclear power is not safe you should back it up directly with information about... oh, say... how many fatalities it causes in comparison to other generation methods, instead of convoluted backwards arguments about liability caps. Since you seem disinclined to do that, I think we're done here.
The fossil fuel energy system is huge. I don't have the numbers to hand, but AFAIK to stop pumping out carbon we're going to need nuclear as well, ASAP. That all present nuclear is problematic (e.g. insurance, as noted) doesn't change this.
It's completely feasible these days to mandate that all new generation capacity comes from renewable energy.
The fossil fuel energy system is huge, but as plants are decommissioned they don't have to be replaced by other fossil fuel plants.
What Denmark and Germany have achieved ought to be proof positive of this.
The airline industry doesn't have a habit of trying to convince you that flying is 100% safe though.
Unlike all of those renewables subsidies. They get a disproportionate amount of attention.