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German Chancellor Scholz speaks out against new nuclear power
(www.reuters.com)
Growth in german wind capacity is slowing. Soo... then the plan is to keep on with lignite and gas? Am I missing something?
Installed Wind Capacty - Germany
I agree with you on nuclear being more expensive as all facts point that way and future nuclear technology, but i dont understand how we could transition to a 100% renewable energy sector, It would be good if you could give a citation or explanation for that. Diverse and distributed source is how we get an energy secure grid, renewables could help with the distributed source part, but when it comes to diversity the popular renewable technologies wind and solar are very limited, both of these source cant power a base load without batteries (this applies mostly to solar, but wind too has low output at night). Also there is this issue witj managing generation and demand (Nuclear too have issue with this as its not possible to quickly adjust nuclear power generation like other conventional spurce). A full renewable energy grid would depend on batteries, currently we have much limitation with batteries. Mature technologists of acid based batteries require huge areas, and lithium based ones would require rare lithium which its mining alone would cause alot of pollution, and relying on other alt battery technology itself would be a long stretch as its development and commercialisation to usable form would take years to achieve as the same case afforable future nuclear technology.
Other alt renewable energy like geothermal could help with base load (not sure, someone could correct me if this is not the case), but itsnt possible everywhere. The same goes for tidal plant as it depends on geography and specific time of day. With this scenarios if we were to move to a 100% renewable grid then, the price for energy will increase at night time in a way that i think could reach nuclear energy rate.
A 100% renewable grid would need a lot of batteries and that too could drive the price up and possibly contribute to climate change. Also solar panel manufacturing is a very intense process with a lot of carbon impact, i read this on a text during my academics (havent checked the source for this other than that).
The carbon impact mostly is energy used in production. So it's high when you produce solar panels powered by shitty coal plants and basically non-existent when you have build them once and are constructing replacements with solar energy. (The same is true for nuclear btw and also often completely misrepresented in discussion. Nuclear plants in a country full of nuclear plants have a much lower carbon footprint. That's not some technological or scaling effect as often claimed but the simple fact of building the reactor and enriching the fuel with energy already green)
Actually no. The grid would need batteries (but also alternatives like capacitors or fly-wheels) for short-term stabilisation, but the amount is limited. The grid also need long-term storage but here batteries are completely inadequate. Also the requirements for batteries are usually misrepresented. No, we don't neen some bullshit Lithium-ion batteries or similar stuff requiring rare earths and other rare ressources. Those are used in handhelds where energy density is the main concern. I can perfectly build a stationary grid battery cheaply and without rare ressources as nobody cares if that building-sized installation is 5% bigger and 30% heavier than a build with lithium-ion batteries and also gets 20° hotter in operation... because it's not a handheld.
Case in point: One of the very first things that happened in Germany the moment the new government was sworn in and long before they could actually do anything: energy companies started installing the first battery-based storage units as they now were no longer intentionally sabotaged in creating storage infrastructure for renewables. What did they use? Car battereis. Used ones that were already deposed. Dirt cheap for costs barely above the recycling value. Because the requirements in grid stabilisation and short-term storage are indeed completely different that in cars (again: energy densitiy vs. low price and car batteries with only 60% of their capacity left were completely okay for that job).
Thanks for the comment, you make some great points :) by the way, you should look into non-electrical power storage - pumped storage is the most common, 99% of electrical storage is pumped storage. Essentially, a volume of water is pumped from a low basin to a high basin, converting electrical energy into gravitational potential energy. Then when energy demands exceed supply, the water is allowed to flow back down, and the flow is used to turn a generator, converting the kinetic energy into electrical energy. It’s approximately 80% efficient. It’s less responsive than on-grid electrolytic batteries but all you need is water and simple materials, it’s easy to maintain and has a much longer duty cycle than lithium ion or sealed lead electrolytic batteries and even capacitors - which are too expensive for real on-grid storage solutions, and the benefits of capacitors (high current) aren’t really needed or even desirable for the grid.
Let's not forget distributed grids reliant on wind can't tolerate local drops in energy output so you need to set up a zillion little LNG plants that are even less efficient than big ones
Edit: or I guess batteries that haven't been invented yet but that's sure not how the problem is solved most places these days
Demand sheduling.
The current grid is run on the idea that we ramp up power plants until the current demand is met.
The future will be to make the demand flexible and follow the availability. Typical example is when to charge a car battery, but it also goes for heating and cooling applications, using power to x converters, like hydrogen production, sheduling household appliances like washing machines and industrial processes.
Doing so we can close the gap between real baseload and available renewable supply, which in turns reduces the amount of storage needed.
Here a paper on the base load.
Also solar panels power amortization time is around a year, depending on cell chemistry, production and installation location.
Wind tends to be higher at night (at least here in Texas), so solar and wind are good complements. The biggest issue here is in the summer right after the sun sets, but that just means having enough battery storage for a couple hours for temps to start dropping. But wind/solar are still cheaper after including storage for that amount of time by far compared to new nuclear or new fossil fuels. Only existing facilities have a comparable per kWh cost when compared to new solar/wind + storage. Even if you quadrupled the storage, it would still be cheaper than new nuclear and comparable to existing nuclear iirc. Granted cost of storage partly depends on what storage options are viable locally for small grids.
Is PV common at commercial scale solar?
I wrote a larger comment addressing this, but honestly, you’d be better just googling it. It’s eminently plausible, it’s the industry consensus. Here’s a Wikipedia link for you: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/100%25_renewable_energy
Thanks for your sources which support my claims.
So, what we have here, is two opinion pieces from business-focused news websites, vs the scientific consensus of domain experts in the field of energy production, the IEC, IEEE and countless others. Very cool, very good proof of your claims.
“Germany has committed to source 80% of its electricity from renewables by 2030”
This article contains no arguments whatsoever that nuclear is better than renewables.
“Nuclear power has a lot of drawbacks. Its large, slowly built plants are expensive both in absolute terms and in terms of the electricity they produce. Its very small but real risk of catastrophic failure requires a high level of regulation, and it has a disturbing history of regulatory capture, amply demonstrated in Japan. It produces extremely long-lived and toxic waste. And it is associated with the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Most of the countries outside Europe that use nuclear power have some history of attempting to develop a bomb. All these factors contribute to an unease with the technology felt, to greater or lesser extent, by people all around the world.”
This isn’t even all of the drawbacks. The advantages of nuclear power, according to that article? It’s safe (but still not as safe as renewables”, and “hey, at least it’s better than fossil fuels”. That’s not the argument. The argument has to be how nuclear is better than renewables.
We’re done here.
I made no claims, I quoted from the wikipedia link you posted for us, which you may have not read yourself. You're clearly a bigger expert than the IPCC though, so I wouldn't even dare to make claims in your presence.
I wrote a larger comment addressing this, but honestly, you’d be better just googling it. It’s eminently plausible, it’s the industry consensus. Here’s a Wikipedia link for you: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/100%25_renewable_energy