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Being logical and telling people nuclear power isn't a good option when we have such cheap renewables and storage.
It wouldn't be my first choice, but it is surprisingly safe compared to other non renewable fuels, and quite efficient.
I am NOT advocating for building non-renewables.
I'm not sure you fully understand the amount of energy storage a country would need in order to run for days on just that while then also being able to recharge the storage while also powering itself when the wind does start blowing again.
One of us definitely doesn't understand utility scale storage very much, that seems true.
Well no wonder you get downvoted if this is how you deal with the subject.
One of us presented their argument couched in an ad-hominem then claimed the other person was behaving badly after the response.
I personally feel like I am understanding this situation, but I could be wrong.
Ad hominem? I simply expressed my doubt about your claim and even specified what I think the flaw in your argument to be. If I believe you to be wrong then by definition it means that you don't fully understand what you're talking about. I apologize if that came thru as an insult but that wasn't my intention.
You presented a highly unlikely scenario where there is no renewables generation "for days" with no explanation or caveats and intimated I didn't understand something about it. I believe I understand your scenario and I don't believe it's likely or should be heavily weighted when trying to plan and deploy utility scale storage.
Did I outline things clearly or do you want to clarify anything?
Hi different guy here. If it's at all likely to happen more than ~once a year it should be taken into account as a vulnerability of the system
I live in Finland. At winter time there's effectively zero solar energy production and more often than not the coldest days are also the calmest. On days like this the price of electricity skyrockets because closer to half of the energy production is down and we're entirely dependent on nuclear and hydro power. It's also when the need for heating is the highest. Conversely on a warm windy days the price of electricity sometimes falls to negative because of the massive amount of wind farms generating at full power.
It's not in any way unlikely scenario. It happens every single time the wind stops blowing at winter. For example literally at the moment of me writing this. Wind energy production is 57MW and Solar 2MW (granted that it's dark outside). Hydro 2000MW and nuclear 3000MW
Ok, now how much of each do you have and how long have they been making that type of power generation?
My guess is that your renewable (solar, wind, wave, geothermal, etc.) is both much newer and much less prevalent.
Every place on earth is going to have a different mix of requirements and available renewable energy. It will take different ways to fully transition to them.
If it is cheaper to build nuclear in your area than it is to build renewables and storage then I guess you should maybe consider that, even though I personally wouldn't given its risks, you might make a different decision. My guess, however, is that you will find that renewables and storage are actually cheaper even in your area of the world. Maybe not, though.
If I remember correctly the total wind power capacity is around 5000MW but solar is much lower even though it is a viable option here as well excluding the darkest winter months. Even if we had the capacity to store infinite amount of energy there still would need to be an extremely high and diverse amount of production if we were to go 100% to renewables. Even with a million windmills you still couldn't match demand on calm days and alternatively when it's windy there would be an insane amount of excess production.
I'm not against energy storage in any way. The technology is fascinating. It's just that I don't see what you're suggesting as an viable near term solution to the energy needs in my country. We need more nuclear. I don't agree with the claim that it's somehow particularly risky. Even less so the more modern plant we're talking about.
One of the hallmarks of renewables has been that they are more easily distributed, so you don't necessarily need big power plants. I think you may also be discounting the fact that renewables are far more distributed than previous forms of power generation. It doesn't all have to be solved with giant installations and giant energy storage.
But again, if nuclear is honestly the cheapest option there, it would really surprise me. I just don't get why so many people argue for this tech they couldn't possibly use themselves that costs so much money when there are modern options that offer so many compelling benefits that you can distribute throughout the grid (or in big installations, either way!).
In any case, I catch a lot of downvotes.
You deserve those downvotes, it's much better than coal
I don't want any new coal plants ever. Not sure why you would think I did.
Because most people who don't like nuclear energy think we can all change everything to renewables right away. This is obviously not possible (otherwise countries not bound by the financial interests of oil companies etc. would have already done it); the real options to cover the gaps in renewables (until their tech develops) are nuclear or fossil fuels. Nuclear is significantly safer and less polluting than coal.
Renewable installations are growing at an incredible rate, a rate much much higher than older forms of generation.
Nuclear takes forever to build. I get the argument: it's all the regulations. Ok, but when your plant can potentially cause centuries of problems if stuff goes wrong, it needs regulation. We know we can't trust capitalism to make it safe.
It just makes sense based on their prices that renewables and storage are winning.
More likely you're getting downvotes for the fallacious "I'm obviously being the logical one, everyone disagreeing with me must be illogical" form your comment takes.
And deservedly so.
We are in a thread about down votes, friend.