Data is Beautiful

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How safe and clean are each sources of energy (in the EU)? (i.imgur.com)

submitted 3 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 days ago (1 children)

As far as I know nuclear is not scalable at all. Once you start the reaction, you have a more or less constant output. No chance to dynamically increase or decrease according to the highly volatile demand.

Gas, hydropower etc. can be controlled to the second. Even wind and solar allow you at least in one direction to lower the output if there is an oversupply in the grid.

Nuclear is the worst type of energy to be combined with renewables.

[–] stormdelay 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

It is absolutely pilotable, but it generally doesn't make sense economically to do so: most of the cost of electricity production is fixed regardless of the output.

EDF says they are able to make their reactors go up or down by 80% in 30 minutes, it's not as good as hydro or gas but it's certainly something

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Indeed my previous statement seems to be a bit outdated. Modern nuclear plants seem to be more flexible than those in the past.

Historically, nuclear power plants were built as baseload plants, without load following capability to keep the design simple. Their startup or shutdown took many hours as they were designed to operate at maximum power, and heating up steam generators to the desired temperature took time.[2] Nuclear power generation has been also portrayed as inflexible by anti-nuclear activists and the German Federal Environment Ministry, while others claimed "that the plants might clog the power grid".[7] Modern nuclear plants with light water reactors are designed to have maneuvering capabilities in the 30-100% range with 5%/minute slope, up to 140 MW/minute.[7] Nuclear power plants in France operate in load-following mode and so participate in the primary and secondary frequency control. Some units follow a variable load program with one or two large power changes per day. Some designs allow for rapid changes of power level around rated power, a capability that is usable for frequency regulation.[8] A more efficient solution is to maintain the primary circuit at full power and to use the excess power for cogeneration.[9]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Load-following_power_plant

Nevertheless, I am very sceptical regarding the technology. I think our primary target should be to lower the overall energy consumption. And then we should try to reverse the logic and instead of production following consumption, to have consumption follow production. With smart grids, heat pumps, electric cars, thermal storage systems etc. we have many instruments to flatten out peaks in demand.