The military coup in Niger has raised concerns about uranium mining in the country by the French group Orano, and the consequences for France's energy independence.
@Ardubal@MattMastodon@BrianSmith950@Pampa@AlexisFR@Wirrvogel@Sodis Short term storage already exists. So does wind, solar, at considerable (though inadequate) scale, and cheap (bottlenecked mainly by grid connection). Dynamic demand exists to some degree and so do interconnectors.
Lithium batteries exist at reasonable scale in other countries, notably 2.5GW on California’s grid. There are active trials of V2G but IMHO reasons to doubt how big a contribution it will be. Reusing EV batteries as grid storage exists at a small scale.
Nuclear power plants take forever to build, in recent experience in the UK. Even National Grid doesn’t believe the government’s promised 24GW of nuclear will be done for 2050.
There are uncertainties whichever way you go. So we need several strategies. However, it’s worth pursuing iron-air batteries and possibly hydrogen as well as nuclear. But arguably they are only needed for the last few percent anyway. And I will *not* accept any attempt to slow down installation of renewables in favour of nuclear.
Decarbonisation, in terms of electricity in the UK, has been achieved through both nuclear and renewables. Fossil fuels are down to 40% of total units generated.
Figures for the last year in the UK:
Source GW Percent
Coal 0.32 1.1
Gas 11.30 38.3
Solar 1.38 4.7
Wind 8.82 29.9
Hydroelectric 0.34 1.2
Nuclear 4.44 15.0
Biomass 1.49 5.0
Unfortunately nuclear plants are closing rather rapidly, and it will be some time before replacements are online.
PS IIRC there are plausible sources saying that you only need renewables equal to ~3x plus short term storage. Both aspects of this are technically feasible and proven today. But obviously it means more rare earths etc. More nuclear, or more long term storage, or more interconnectors etc, reduce the cost.
@Ardubal@MattMastodon@BrianSmith950@Pampa@AlexisFR@Wirrvogel@Sodis So no, nuclear is not the only proven option by a long way. Nor is it a feasible option on its own IMHO. And new designs increase risk and time. Building multiple reactors to the same design saves time and money, of course.
Nuclear is an option. It probably isn’t enough on its own any more than any of the other options are. There is absolutely no reason to stop building renewables, and slowly scaling up various storage options, today.
@Ardubal@MattMastodon@BrianSmith950@Pampa@AlexisFR@Wirrvogel@Sodis Also on the timescale: Labour have officially said they would reach 100% clean electricity by 2030, starting in 2025. That’s generally seen as challenging, but it may well be possible (albeit at a high cost in lithium and rare earths). There’s no way it can be done with nuclear. In any case we need to move fast; most of the rest of the transition depends on clean electricity. My main objection to nuclear is simply that it will take another 20 years to get maybe 3 more reactors if we’re very lucky.
I’m not saying 100% nuclear would be best, but I /know/ that 100% volatiles + storage + transmission are practically impossible.
Up to around 40% volatiles can be compensated by a large grid. The rest can, with current or near-future technology, be nuclear and/or hydro. With middle-future technology, this /might/ be gradually replaced by more volatiles+storage+transmission.
This is just the fact: there are, at the current state, only two energy sources that can form the backbone of a decarbonized grid, and they have proved it, hydro and nuclear.
Hydro is not available everywhere, however, as it has really large area demand, and geological requirements.
And I repeat: nuclear /is/ very capable of load following.
And I repeat: batteries at the needed scalability don’t exist (yet?).
There are lots of ways to solve intermittency. Nuclear is one strategy that potentially works, but still needs short term storage - modern designs can vary load, but not quickly.
3x renewables plus a few hours storage is likely fine. So is a lot of nuclear. Hydrogen or iron-air *might* make the whole thing much cheaper, but indeed are immature technologies. More interconnectors are mature technology that always makes it easier, but are not enough on their own; dynamic demand is helpful and semi-proven.
But building “too much” renewables while we wait for nuclear is fine. Because most likely that nuclear will never be delivered. At least not in the UK. And as I understand it the supply chains don’t really overlap. But above all because *it’s the total carbon emitted that matters*. We’re on a deadline.
I see no obvious reason to expect that the UK can build large amounts of nuclear quickly, even if there was the political will to do so. Successive governments have tried and failed. On recent progress, by 2050, if we’re lucky, we might have 3 more 3GW plants running, which is nowhere near current demand, let alone future demand with electrification.
Even if the government meets its own target of 24GW by 2050, which seems extraordinarily unlikely given the slow progress so far, that will be a lot less than the total peak demand given electrification. So you still need storage.
So I’m not going to campaign to stop building renewables on the basis that one day we *might* build more nuclear.
Having too much renewables is *NOT* a problem, especially when compared to nuclear that will probably never materialise. Worst case, switching off wind and solar farms is much easier than switching off nuclear reactors. Best case, we can export that energy, use it for intermittent energy intensive industrial processes, or store it.
Currently we (UK) always run at least ~3GW of fossil fuels, as well as a surprisingly variable amount of nuclear, because of the inertia problem. That will be solved by 2025.
Britain is up to 36% renewables *on average* over the last year, and still building fairly quickly. Plenty of countries have much higher proportions of renewables. But they also have other ways of dealing with it, e.g. Denmark’s trick was always much more energy trading.
Iceland is 86%, Norway is 76%. It can be done, though these figures are inflated by geothermal and hydro, which may not be viable for the UK. Sweden is 63%, but that includes a fair bit of biofuels. California is already up to 59%.
Intermittency is a problem, there are lots of ways to manage it. Nuclear is one of several options.
The amount of lithium batteries needed to reach 100% is probably ecologically unreasonable, although several academic studies do talk about this. So we probably do need some nuclear, unless iron-air batteries or hydrogen pan out rapidly. Nonetheless, the idea that there’s a ceiling of 40% is way out of date.
There are already single events of more than a few hours where sunshine and wind are lacking. But that is only the immediate perspective; you need to integrate over at least several years to see the longer-term shortages that need to be handled as well. And that is quite obviously much more than a few hours. Therefore, I have some problems regarding such studies as credible.
@Ardubal@MattMastodon@BrianSmith950@Pampa@AlexisFR@Wirrvogel@Sodis Interconnectors make the “long term no wind in winter” scenario much less likely, though obviously this varies depending on the country; there’s less opportunity for it in Australia, but on the other hand it’s just much bigger - “long range” may be within the country.
As I understand it the Australian study was based on real world data.
But let’s say you’re right. After all the study accepted that 2% of the time it’s not sufficient. You have a few options for that last 2%. One is more nuclear - not necessarily 100% nuclear, or even 40% nuclear, but enough to prevent any freak weather events from causing serious harm. Another is hydrogen - an immature technology that is nonetheless 50+ years old.
There was a European study … I think I lost it on X though. That specifically made the case for hours not days. But to achieve that you have to over-build.
Really one of the biggest arguments for nuclear is that over-building renewables makes a minor problem with rare earths into something much more serious.
Most likely we need either some nuclear or some long-term storage. Long term storage means immature but clearly technically feasible technologies: hydrogen or iron-air, maybe a few other candidates. Against that you have the fact that with the exception of France in the 1980s, building large amounts of nuclear power quickly has almost never happened.
Nuclear just takes too long. So use it for what it is - a modest amount of baseload power at roughly twice the cost of renewables.
Let me see if I can find some of the sources … I already posted the study on Australia.
Here’s a Scottish one, they concluded that over-building renewables is feasible. Also arguing for some more hydro. Unfortunately hydro is generally considerably dirtier than nuclear.
Here’s the National Grid’s view; IIRC they are skeptical about the claim of 24GW of nuclear by 2050, but their models say it won’t be enough on its own anyway and bet on hydrogen.
Here are some of the numerous academic-ish sources, probably out of date. As I said, system models often assume there is infinite lithium, so doubtful IMHO.
You seem to assume that only one reactor will be built at a time, and nothing learned. But that’s not how you do it, and not how France already did it, obviously.
I have a little problem understanding how one can acknowledge the success of the Messmer plan and at the same time claim it unrepeatable.
Right now, renewables essentially build themselves. They do not require a state subsidy - the “contract for difference” level is set at roughly the wholesale price of electricity.
Whereas no nuclear is ever built without massive state involvement.
Not that that’s bad. We need more state intervention in e.g. insulation. But it’s slow. We can’t afford to stop installing renewables now on the basis of a few reactors that may well be cancelled by a future government.
@Ardubal @MattMastodon @BrianSmith950 @Pampa @AlexisFR @Wirrvogel @Sodis Short term storage already exists. So does wind, solar, at considerable (though inadequate) scale, and cheap (bottlenecked mainly by grid connection). Dynamic demand exists to some degree and so do interconnectors.
Lithium batteries exist at reasonable scale in other countries, notably 2.5GW on California’s grid. There are active trials of V2G but IMHO reasons to doubt how big a contribution it will be. Reusing EV batteries as grid storage exists at a small scale.
Nuclear power plants take forever to build, in recent experience in the UK. Even National Grid doesn’t believe the government’s promised 24GW of nuclear will be done for 2050.
There are uncertainties whichever way you go. So we need several strategies. However, it’s worth pursuing iron-air batteries and possibly hydrogen as well as nuclear. But arguably they are only needed for the last few percent anyway. And I will *not* accept any attempt to slow down installation of renewables in favour of nuclear.
Decarbonisation, in terms of electricity in the UK, has been achieved through both nuclear and renewables. Fossil fuels are down to 40% of total units generated.
Figures for the last year in the UK:
Source GW Percent
Coal 0.32 1.1
Gas 11.30 38.3
Solar 1.38 4.7
Wind 8.82 29.9
Hydroelectric 0.34 1.2
Nuclear 4.44 15.0
Biomass 1.49 5.0
Unfortunately nuclear plants are closing rather rapidly, and it will be some time before replacements are online.
PS IIRC there are plausible sources saying that you only need renewables equal to ~3x plus short term storage. Both aspects of this are technically feasible and proven today. But obviously it means more rare earths etc. More nuclear, or more long term storage, or more interconnectors etc, reduce the cost.
@Ardubal @MattMastodon @BrianSmith950 @Pampa @AlexisFR @Wirrvogel @Sodis So no, nuclear is not the only proven option by a long way. Nor is it a feasible option on its own IMHO. And new designs increase risk and time. Building multiple reactors to the same design saves time and money, of course.
Nuclear is an option. It probably isn’t enough on its own any more than any of the other options are. There is absolutely no reason to stop building renewables, and slowly scaling up various storage options, today.
@Ardubal @MattMastodon @BrianSmith950 @Pampa @AlexisFR @Wirrvogel @Sodis Also on the timescale: Labour have officially said they would reach 100% clean electricity by 2030, starting in 2025. That’s generally seen as challenging, but it may well be possible (albeit at a high cost in lithium and rare earths). There’s no way it can be done with nuclear. In any case we need to move fast; most of the rest of the transition depends on clean electricity. My main objection to nuclear is simply that it will take another 20 years to get maybe 3 more reactors if we’re very lucky.
@matthewtoad43 @MattMastodon @BrianSmith950 @Pampa @AlexisFR @Wirrvogel @Sodis
I’m not saying 100% nuclear would be best, but I /know/ that 100% volatiles + storage + transmission are practically impossible.
Up to around 40% volatiles can be compensated by a large grid. The rest can, with current or near-future technology, be nuclear and/or hydro. With middle-future technology, this /might/ be gradually replaced by more volatiles+storage+transmission.
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@MattMastodon @matthewtoad43 @BrianSmith950 @Pampa @AlexisFR @Wirrvogel @Sodis
This is just the fact: there are, at the current state, only two energy sources that can form the backbone of a decarbonized grid, and they have proved it, hydro and nuclear.
Hydro is not available everywhere, however, as it has really large area demand, and geological requirements.
And I repeat: nuclear /is/ very capable of load following.
And I repeat: batteries at the needed scalability don’t exist (yet?).
@Ardubal @MattMastodon @BrianSmith950 @Pampa @AlexisFR @Wirrvogel @Sodis As I already mentioned, California has 2.5GW of batteries today. And credible half hourly models suggest that you only need hours of storage to get up to approximately 98%.
There are lots of ways to solve intermittency. Nuclear is one strategy that potentially works, but still needs short term storage - modern designs can vary load, but not quickly.
3x renewables plus a few hours storage is likely fine. So is a lot of nuclear. Hydrogen or iron-air *might* make the whole thing much cheaper, but indeed are immature technologies. More interconnectors are mature technology that always makes it easier, but are not enough on their own; dynamic demand is helpful and semi-proven.
But building “too much” renewables while we wait for nuclear is fine. Because most likely that nuclear will never be delivered. At least not in the UK. And as I understand it the supply chains don’t really overlap. But above all because *it’s the total carbon emitted that matters*. We’re on a deadline.
I see no obvious reason to expect that the UK can build large amounts of nuclear quickly, even if there was the political will to do so. Successive governments have tried and failed. On recent progress, by 2050, if we’re lucky, we might have 3 more 3GW plants running, which is nowhere near current demand, let alone future demand with electrification.
Even if the government meets its own target of 24GW by 2050, which seems extraordinarily unlikely given the slow progress so far, that will be a lot less than the total peak demand given electrification. So you still need storage.
So I’m not going to campaign to stop building renewables on the basis that one day we *might* build more nuclear.
Having too much renewables is *NOT* a problem, especially when compared to nuclear that will probably never materialise. Worst case, switching off wind and solar farms is much easier than switching off nuclear reactors. Best case, we can export that energy, use it for intermittent energy intensive industrial processes, or store it.
@Ardubal @MattMastodon @BrianSmith950 @Pampa @AlexisFR @Wirrvogel @Sodis What you say about “40% volatiles” is a myth.
Currently we (UK) always run at least ~3GW of fossil fuels, as well as a surprisingly variable amount of nuclear, because of the inertia problem. That will be solved by 2025.
https://www.nationalgrideso.com/electricity-explained/how-do-we-balance-grid/what-inertia
Britain is up to 36% renewables *on average* over the last year, and still building fairly quickly. Plenty of countries have much higher proportions of renewables. But they also have other ways of dealing with it, e.g. Denmark’s trick was always much more energy trading.
Iceland is 86%, Norway is 76%. It can be done, though these figures are inflated by geothermal and hydro, which may not be viable for the UK. Sweden is 63%, but that includes a fair bit of biofuels. California is already up to 59%.
Intermittency is a problem, there are lots of ways to manage it. Nuclear is one of several options.
The amount of lithium batteries needed to reach 100% is probably ecologically unreasonable, although several academic studies do talk about this. So we probably do need some nuclear, unless iron-air batteries or hydrogen pan out rapidly. Nonetheless, the idea that there’s a ceiling of 40% is way out of date.
https://www.euronews.com/green/2023/01/20/which-european-countries-use-the-most-renewable-energy
https://www.govtech.com/smart-cities/california-hits-new-record-for-renewable-energy-generation
@matthewtoad43 @MattMastodon @BrianSmith950 @Pampa @AlexisFR @Wirrvogel @Sodis
There are already single events of more than a few hours where sunshine and wind are lacking. But that is only the immediate perspective; you need to integrate over at least several years to see the longer-term shortages that need to be handled as well. And that is quite obviously much more than a few hours. Therefore, I have some problems regarding such studies as credible.
@Ardubal @MattMastodon @BrianSmith950 @Pampa @AlexisFR @Wirrvogel @Sodis Interconnectors make the “long term no wind in winter” scenario much less likely, though obviously this varies depending on the country; there’s less opportunity for it in Australia, but on the other hand it’s just much bigger - “long range” may be within the country.
As I understand it the Australian study was based on real world data.
But let’s say you’re right. After all the study accepted that 2% of the time it’s not sufficient. You have a few options for that last 2%. One is more nuclear - not necessarily 100% nuclear, or even 40% nuclear, but enough to prevent any freak weather events from causing serious harm. Another is hydrogen - an immature technology that is nonetheless 50+ years old.
There was a European study … I think I lost it on X though. That specifically made the case for hours not days. But to achieve that you have to over-build.
Really one of the biggest arguments for nuclear is that over-building renewables makes a minor problem with rare earths into something much more serious.
Most likely we need either some nuclear or some long-term storage. Long term storage means immature but clearly technically feasible technologies: hydrogen or iron-air, maybe a few other candidates. Against that you have the fact that with the exception of France in the 1980s, building large amounts of nuclear power quickly has almost never happened.
Nuclear just takes too long. So use it for what it is - a modest amount of baseload power at roughly twice the cost of renewables.
Let me see if I can find some of the sources … I already posted the study on Australia.
Here’s a Scottish one, they concluded that over-building renewables is feasible. Also arguing for some more hydro. Unfortunately hydro is generally considerably dirtier than nuclear.
https://scottishscientist.wordpress.com/2015/04/03/scientific-computer-modelling-of-wind-pumped-storage-hydro/
http://re100.scienceontheweb.net/
https://scottishscientist.wordpress.com/2017/07/14/wind-storage-and-back-up-system-designer/
Here’s the National Grid’s view; IIRC they are skeptical about the claim of 24GW of nuclear by 2050, but their models say it won’t be enough on its own anyway and bet on hydrogen.
https://www.nationalgrideso.com/document/263951/download
Here are some of the numerous academic-ish sources, probably out of date. As I said, system models often assume there is infinite lithium, so doubtful IMHO.
https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/145Country/22-145Countries.pdf
https://twitter.com/AukeHoekstra/status/1557466581185224704
https://www.helsinkitimes.fi/themes/themes/science-and-technology/22012-researchers-agree-the-world-can-reach-a-100-renewable-energy-system-by-or-before-2050.html#.YvPUxCrrWdI.twitter
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9837910
@matthewtoad43 @MattMastodon @BrianSmith950 @Pampa @AlexisFR @Wirrvogel @Sodis
And again, nuclear can load follow /just fine/.
@Ardubal @MattMastodon @BrianSmith950 @Pampa @AlexisFR @Wirrvogel @Sodis Sure, 80s French reactors can. As I understand it, modern PWRs can vary load but relatively slowly.
And in any case it is highly unlikely that we will be able to match *peak* demand with nuclear capacity.
You at least need significant intra-day storage.
@matthewtoad43 @MattMastodon @BrianSmith950 @Pampa @AlexisFR @Wirrvogel @Sodis
You seem to assume that only one reactor will be built at a time, and nothing learned. But that’s not how you do it, and not how France already did it, obviously.
I have a little problem understanding how one can acknowledge the success of the Messmer plan and at the same time claim it unrepeatable.
@Ardubal @MattMastodon @BrianSmith950 @Pampa @AlexisFR @Wirrvogel @Sodis Second generation reactor designs that would never be built today. Vulnerable to climate change because they were built on rivers. Also, Britain is not France.
Right now, renewables essentially build themselves. They do not require a state subsidy - the “contract for difference” level is set at roughly the wholesale price of electricity.
Whereas no nuclear is ever built without massive state involvement.
Not that that’s bad. We need more state intervention in e.g. insulation. But it’s slow. We can’t afford to stop installing renewables now on the basis of a few reactors that may well be cancelled by a future government.
@matthewtoad43 @MattMastodon @BrianSmith950 @Pampa @AlexisFR @Wirrvogel @Sodis
Anyway, I don’t want anyone to stop building renewables, but I don’t want anyone to stop building nuclear either. We need every option.
(Even if nuclear is a safer bet.)
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