Gas Plants Will Get Crushed By Wind, Solar By 2035, Study Says (bloomberg.com) 261
According to a new study from the Rocky Mountain Institute, natural gas-fired power plants are on the path to being undercut themselves by renewable power and big batteries. Bloomberg reports: By 2035, it will be more expensive to run 90% of gas plants being proposed in the U.S. than it will be to build new wind and solar farms equipped with storage systems, according to the report. It will happen so quickly that gas plants now on the drawing boards will become uneconomical before their owners finish paying for them, the study said. The development would be a dramatic reversal of fortune for gas plants, which 20 years ago supplied less than 20% of electricity in the U.S. Today that share has jumped to 35% as hydraulic fracturing has made natural gas cheap and plentiful, forcing scores of coal plants to close nationwide.
The authors of the study say they analyzed the costs of construction, fuel and anticipated operations for 68 gigawatts of gas plants proposed across the U.S. They compared those costs to building a combination of solar farms, wind plants and battery systems that, together with conservation efforts, could supply the same amount of electricity and keep the grid stable. As gas plants lose their edge in power markets, the economics of pipelines will suffer, too, RMI said in a separate study Monday. Even lines now in the planning stages could soon be out of the money, the report found.
The authors of the study say they analyzed the costs of construction, fuel and anticipated operations for 68 gigawatts of gas plants proposed across the U.S. They compared those costs to building a combination of solar farms, wind plants and battery systems that, together with conservation efforts, could supply the same amount of electricity and keep the grid stable. As gas plants lose their edge in power markets, the economics of pipelines will suffer, too, RMI said in a separate study Monday. Even lines now in the planning stages could soon be out of the money, the report found.
Who would expect... (Score:5, Insightful)
Who would expect that an organization that promises that it "transforms global energy use to create a clean, prosperous, and secure low-carbon future" would issue such a report. I'm sure they are completely without bias.
Re: right now price is not the issue (Score:5, Informative)
Re: right now price is not the issue (Score:4, Insightful)
A cheap battery is all that's needed.
What happens if we don't get a cheap battery by 2035? Just how cheap do they have to get? Do you have a number?
Re: right now price is not the issue (Score:2, Insightful)
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4x the capacity, half the cost, no dendrite formation, and its 100% recyclable.
And ........its already here.
It's not "here". That company has never shipped any hardware. When they do, if they do, then we'll believe them. Not until.
Re: right now price is not the issue (Score:4, Insightful)
A cheaper battery with current technologies would likely only handle part of the problem. The other part is long term storage (6-12 months). Renewable energy production almost halves from the peak (summer) to its low (winter). So you either have to build A LOT more capacity or store that energy from the summer months for the winter lull. Building out all that capacity would drastically increase the costs, but storage would also be problematic as most battery designs have pretty significant self-discharge rates which make such long term storage inefficient.
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power companies already "build a LOT more capacity" for those peak times and also outages for plant maintenance. Not really seeing the problem if we have to do that for solar and wind
Re: right now price is not the issue (Score:5, Informative)
Not really. Solar will lose like 30-40% between summer and winter. But most likely your panels are optimized for spring and fall which is the best time for generation. Industrial buildouts will align year around so will see a good peak in summer. Cooler panels are more efficient.
Wind on the other hand is the opposite (for the US at least). It produces more in the winter than summer. This offsets a good bit of solar's fluctuation.
But the bigger offset is that we generally consume less in winter than summer. So the rise and fall of the demand will destructively reduce the wave of the supply. If anything, I think we got more problems covering summer's demand rather than storage of the excess in winter.
Re: right now price is not the issue (Score:5, Interesting)
But the bigger offset is that we generally consume less in winter than summer. So the rise and fall of the demand will destructively reduce the wave of the supply. If anything, I think we got more problems covering summer's demand rather than storage of the excess in winter.
Maybe. The structure of the demand side is going to change, too. The growth of electric vehicles will generate more demand year-round, with less seasonal variation. And then there's heating, which is currently nearly all fossil-fueled, with fuel oil in some regions and natural gas / propane elsewhere. If that goes electric, even if it's based on heat pumps (perhaps with ground loops), then winter demand is going to be high. I expect that heating and air travel will be the last sectors to de-carbonize, and maybe the answer will be to use biofuels to achieve carbon neutrality there, rather than move all of that infrastructure to electricity.
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"The growth of electric vehicles will generate more demand year-round"
It takes a lot of energy to make fuel, it takes about a sixth as much energy to produce gasoline as you get for burning it. And then the ICE is like 25% efficient. But an electric motor is 95% efficient or better these days. Just putting the energy into the car instead of into the distillation column is a massive win. And then there's the ethanol that doesn't have to be produced - typical pump gas is now up to 10% ethanol, and almost 100%
Re: right now price is not the issue (Score:4, Interesting)
We also experience a phenomenon called 'Dunkelflaute' during winter, whereby there's negligible solar production due to severely overcast weather and short days and no wind. This can last for weeks on end.
You need storage to bridge this. Storage which can bridge the entire electricity needs of Europe for a month at the very least.
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Of course, a big chunk of why we consume less in winter is that you don't run the A/C in winter. Instead, you use (are you ready for this?)...natural gas heat....
When you start adding the cost of heating to the electric system, yeah, you're going to need a lot more capacity than one might think....
Not true at all. (Score:3)
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Renewable energy production almost halves from the peak (summer) to its low (winter).
You have an absurd idea how renewables work, hint: while the season influences them, there is no high in summer or low in winter, at least not on the northern hemisphere. And no idea which moron even modded you up for that nonsense.
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No. Not really. Most of these "renewables" plants would STILL be hybrid Gas/Renewables for days when there's a shortfall.
Mainly because all they have are EXPENSIVE batteries now.
As soon as they get a battery system as cheap as natural gas...then come talk.
So yeah...price IS the issue.
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Yes, really. The people who poo poo wind and solar tend to be nuke fanboys. But if pumped storage is good enough [wikipedia.org] to back up nuclear, it's good enough to back up wind and and solar. Also, nuclear power plants go down for months at a time for maintenance, meaning a grid based on nuclear power will need at least one extra plant to pick up the slack. But for the $20 billion you just spent on that backup nuclear plant, you could build hundreds of Tesla Powerpacks to back up wind and solar.
Bit of a nuclear fanboy here... (Score:4, Insightful)
But, first up, I don't "poo poo wind and solar". My "Ideal" mix for a non-carbon electric grid, for decades, has been about 40-20-20. 40% Nuclear, 20% wind, 20% solar, with the remaining 20% being a mix of hydro, geothermal, tidal, biomass, etc... Note: All of these are intentially SINGLE digit accuracy.
My reasoning was that 20% solar is about the extra power used during the day over that of night. We use about 40% more electricity during the day, so a source that produces only during the day providing 20% of our juice fits right in. It's also around the point that we don't have to do massive reworking of our electrical grid because of the potential for total energy supply/demand to reverse like what Hawaii has experienced(holiday, ideally sunny, several residential areas were producing so much power from solar that the area was a net power producers - and the switching station wasn't designed to handle that. Might need to handle that anyways, but....
I remember reading somewhere that 20% for wind is about the best we can do without massive amounts of energy storage/backup.
Hydro makes up most of the last, unstated 20%. It used to be around 20%, but has been dropping for decades because we've mostly maximized our production from it in the USA, we can't install significantly more. Also, water demands for other uses competes. Our production has actually dropped. So make up the rest with other sources. This is where most of your peaking power would be.
The important point to note above is that I want a MIX of power supplies, such that something that takes down one won't take down the others, a healthy mix. No one true power source solution. We don't NEED to be 100% electric, hydrogen, or whatever.
However, back on topic. Nuclear power plants going down for maintenance is a known thing, it can be scheduled(most of the time). So what you do is the same as with any fleet. You don't pull EVERY vehicle or plant in for maintenance at the same time. Also, there's often a difference between nuclear PLANTS and REACTORS. Most nuclear sites/plants have multiple reactors. Reactors go down for maintenance, the plant keeps running off of the others.
So, as a nuclear fanboy, the solution is actually pretty obvious. If you know that your reactors are going to be down, say, 6 months every 10 years, you build 5% more reactors. Rather than building 100 reactors, you build 105, and recognize that 5 will be down at any moment. If one goes down unexpectedly, you delay maintenance on whatever plant needs it the least, until you get the failed one back up.
But for the $20 billion you just spent on that backup nuclear plant, you could build hundreds of Tesla Powerpacks to back up wind and solar.
Problem being, an extra nuclear plant can provide power for decades if necessary, an equal value in battery backup will give you like a couple days to weeks.
Also, the nuclear plant could still be chugging along 60+ years later after the batteries have had to be replaced 1-3 times.
Plenty of other ways to store energy (Score:2)
Right now we face two major challenges:
1. Getting people to pay for infrastructure development. Bernie Sander's Green New Deal does it (and make 20 million new jobs as part of the the "New Deal") but the initial capital has to come from somewhere and the
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Pumped hydro energy has been used for decades. [wikipedia.org]
There are proposals to store energy by lifting concrete blocks. [qz.com]
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Do you have any pictures of the money vaults? I'm curious where they are located.
Pretty sure rich people tend to have their money in investments be they bank accounts (which make the money available to lend to other people), stocks (which provide capital to businesses to operate and expand), bonds (which make money available to governments to keep spending money they don't have) or other investments. I guess they do probably have a decent store of value in real-estate, property, and otherwise, but they prob
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: right now price is not the issue (Score:4, Insightful)
I guess, but you're not really saying much.
That's because you're missing the point. The point is that, the primary problem with solar/wind is intermittency. It's cheap enough now, if you don't have that problem. That is where the focus of research should be.
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If cheap is the only factor, then oil and natural gas are doomed precisely because of geography. Your magic batteries, as you propose, are not free. While the energy to move them around the nation would be free, the COST of moving them wouldn't. Renewables can literally be made at the point of consumption. Solar on your roof, wind in your county.
Whereas oil has a lot more costs than just the land it is pulled out of. Firstly, I own land in a state that still lets the property owner retain mineral right
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Cheap enough would be that the cost of the battery is cheaper than keeping and fueling fossil fuel generation for those times when the intermittency of wind and solar becomes an issue. This cost is about $100/MW of battery storage. Last year (when I last looked) we were at $125/MW and I'm willing to bet we've crossed that 100/MW threshold, but battery production lines don't have enough capacity to supply grid storage and all the commercial uses.
Right now they can only effectively produce a small supply of b
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What if we had a (magical) battery that had zero cost, an infinite capacity and zero mass and zero volume? You'd just build massive solar plants in the desert, away from everything, and fill up your batteries with energy and ship them all over the world. Desert land is pretty cheap all over the world, and without the need to build massive distribution networks, it suddenly becomes viable to just do it. There's be no need for power distribution since people would just buy a power fill-up at the store, and dump it in your local energy storage bin. Of course you'd be right since suddenly power just means the cost of land, and all that nasty transportation and distribution stuff.
You are thinking of Robert Heinlein's Shipstones, from his 1982 story "Friday".
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Price is not the issue. Solar and wind could replace gas and coal right now if they could solve the intermittence problem. A cheap battery is all that's needed.
Since the study apparently completely ignored the large transmission infrastructure costs required to make wind and solar work at high penetration, its clearly not done by informed people.
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No it didn't because so far that hasn't been happening. Solar being installed in NY and New England goes where the transmission and distribution assets are. For distribution systems, you get a lot of smaller farms at say 6MW (small generator interconnection) on taps on 13.8kV or other low/medium voltage lines. Lower voltage tends to imply where customers are close, so those builds are in denser areas and land is more expensive. For subtransmission (115kV), say in the north country of New York, there is som
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Wind plants literally take up no space.
They are put on farmland or into the sea or on hills no one uses. Never have seen a wind plant?
https://www.google.com/maps/pl... [google.com]
You might to zoom out or zoom in a little bit or scroll around. There are hundreds ... everyone takes a 5x5 or 10x10 yards square ... so the farmer looses a bit of yield ... otherwise they don't use land ... why would they?
Re: Oh price will totally be an issue. (Score:2, Informative)
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A cheap battery that does not cause huge environmental problems of it's own 20 years later when we need to disposal of millions of tonnes of them.
Or a lot more pumped hydro, but not always an option!
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Re: Oh price will totally be an issue. (Score:3)
Re: Oh price will totally be an issue. (Score:3)
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Re: Oh price will totally be an issue. (Score:2)
The $/kWh is a singular metric that applies to a lot of general cases but not to batteries overall. It doesn't take into consideration the supply of raw materials to scale with demand, the lifetime of a battery, capacity, charge cycles, safety, if it scales, charge dissipation, load capability, etc. It is a fairly good metric to give you a general idea and an easy one for comparisons but it starts breaking down once you look at a specific use scenario.
I don't even like Tesla's usage because it is a little
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Speaking as the project engineer for a large battery project, we're already able to run batteries profitably on frequency generation and arbitrage in many grid locations. $/Wh installed (building a substation) to connect to 115kV is about $1 now, but these are the pilot projects, if we scaled the ones I'm working on to 3 or 4 times it would go to $0.50. This is also now typically happening at the inverter for solar installs less than 6MW. The lifetime of one of these batteries assumes a fade curve, with ext
Re:Oh price will totally be an issue. (Score:5, Insightful)
And of course obtaining oil and maintaining access to oil supplies is completely free.
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No. Of course it isn't. But it's an extant market and well-entrenched.
Invent a flying car tomorrow.
Then get it past all state and federal DOTs.
Then get it past the FAA.
NOW talk to airports and private carriers.
The amount of money you'd spend on cutting in a new market would be colossal compared to what's spent on the entrenched motor vehicle and commercial airline industries.
And, if threatened, they'll throw lobbying and advertising money at you.
"You want some drunk crashing a private plane into your hous
Re:Oh price will totally be an issue. (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with the flying car isn't government regulation. The problem is that nobody has ever managed to make one comes close to living up to your imagination. Now *electricity* is a well-entrenched and in fact growing market, and unlike every other way of using energy nobody cares what form that energy originally took; all they care is what they pay. This means we aren't dependent upon any single provider, which promotes competition.
We spend a lot of money on fossil fuels, both to obtain them and secure our supply of them. We take mountains and grind them to rubble to get at coal and shale; we shatter the crust of the Earth to get at gas and oil. We build millions of miles of pipeline across inhospitable land, expropriating the property of the people along the way. And we spend the lives of our children to secure our supply of fossil fuels from short-term price fluctuations. We don't have to kiss the Saudi's ass to get their oil. It does them no good in the ground so in the end they're going to sell it. Yet they've got us by the short and curlies because we can't tolerate a short-term rise in oil prices.
The only reason these things don't seem ridiculous to us is that it's the status quo. But that doesn't mean it's cheap; it has cost us and continues to cost us just to keep running in place. A future with millions of acres of windmills,and vast photovoltaic, geothermal, and hydropower installations will cost us dearly too, but if it happens that won't seem any stranger to us than what we are doing now.
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"Your problem with the flying car isn't government regulation."
Arnold: BOOLSHEET! Ask anyone who's ever had to deal with government regulation of technology.
"Which promotes competition..."
Yep. Sure.Then why is most of the "competition" in the energy industry consisting of resellers (basically buying large blocks of power at a discount and passing a portion of said discount to you), rather than competitive power provisioning (parallel generation utilities)?
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...and by cheap battery, you mean something that would more than double the already astronomical cost of buying enough land, wind turbines, and solar panels to provide the average power demand? Covering the average power demand will require a nameplate capacity that's more than triple the average amount of energy needed.
High penetration wind output doesn't just hurt gas capacity factors, it results in curtailment of wind and solar at times which increases their cost. Another very simple a basic concept the study doesn't seem to grasp.
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Considering that a lot of these "Wind and Solar" plants are ALSO NG PLANTS for off-peak times and days, I find this claim to be...dubious... at best.
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Similar Headlines (Score:4, Insightful)
Who would expect that an organization that promises that it "transforms global energy use to create a clean, prosperous, and secure low-carbon future" would issue such a report. I'm sure they are completely without bias.
"NRA projects record demand for black rifles"
"Planned Parenthood projects record demand for abortions"
"Phillip Morris projects record demand for cigarettes".
"... together with conservation efforts..." (Score:4, Insightful)
From the fine article:
The authors of the study say they analyzed the costs of construction, fuel and anticipated operations for 68 gigawatts of gas plants proposed across the U.S. They compared those costs to building a combination of solar farms, wind plants and battery systems that, together with conservation efforts, could supply the same amount of electricity and keep the grid stable.
In other words this will happen if energy demand shrinks. I find that unlikely. My question is, what happens then if demand for energy does not shrink? The answer should be obvious, natural gas demand will grow to keep the lights on.
Let's assume conservation efforts are successful. Isn't demand for electric cars supposed to grow? Will conservation efforts offset this? I have my doubts.
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The authors of the "study" are just a lobbyist group. They write whatever they are paid to write. Don't think the study is actually rooted in reality or an actual rigorous study.
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They wouldn't call it "conservation efforts" if it was organically declining demand.
What they're really proposing here is imposing sacrifices on people (the "effort") to achieve this conservation. Some if it is benign, like encouraging LED light bulbs, but some of it will wind up being coercive like significant electrical price increases.
Nearly every pro-renewable article always bakes in some kind of conservation "asterisk" to their claims.
Gas plants will be killed by new nuclear! (Score:5, Interesting)
Remember economics of scale apply to nuclear as well. Being able to produce 4th generation reactors on an assembly line will greatly reduce costs and construction time. NuScale [nuscalepower.com] will be building their first 12 reactors in Idaho for a Utah manipulates. Once their factory is up and running they will be able to produce 1000's of Small Modular Reactors a year. And best of all NuScale is not the only company doing this.
Fossil fuel loving trolls will respond with their usual nonsense.
Didn't you hear? Elizabeth Warren hates nuclear (Score:2)
"Elizabeth Warren said Wednesday she would oppose the building of new nuclear plants in America [washingtonexaminer.com] and work to phase out existing nuclear power from the energy mix."
Most of her fellow Democratic presidential candidates also oppose nuclear power, with the exception of Andrew Yang, who's currently polling around 3% [battleswarmblog.com].
The Trump Administration supports nuclear power [forbes.com].
Re:Didn't you hear? Elizabeth Warren hates nuclear (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, that's a shame.
I am disappointed to see otherwise intelligent and knowledgeable people fail to grasp just how different nuclear power is. The potential energy in nuclear materials is (often literally) astonomically greater than that contained in far more polluting fuel sources--that pollute by inefficiency in raw materials use, requiring strip mining, or by directly releasing carbon.
Frankly, I like the Earth. I'd really like to use the super dense, ultra clean fuel we have in a modern, sanely designed reactor (that, yanno, doesn't use an explosive as its coolant when things go poorly), so we can damage as little of it--atmosphere, land, and ocean--as possible.
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Different as in insanely risky - no other power generator has 20 mile evacuation zones if something goes wrong. And insanely costly both to construct, operate and decommission. And that's before dealign with the the waste for a hundred thousand years. Wanting to build new nuclear power plants is like wanting to build 6,000 square foot mansions for the homeless to solve the homeless pro
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Re:Didn't you hear? Elizabeth Warren hates nuclear (Score:4, Insightful)
No other power generator has as high of safety standards as nuclear either. All of the nuclear limits are set extremely conservatively compared to the safety requirements for other power generators.
Also if we are looking at risk to the public, hydro is by far the most dangerous power source. Your 20 mile evacuation zone is nothing compared to the hundreds of miles of floodplains downstream from some of the bigger dams in operation. And a dam failure can cause a lot of deaths very quickly vs that nuclear exclusion zone with mildly increases the risk of some cancers. Yet we have dams everywhere...
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no other power generator has 20 mile evacuation zones if something goes wrong.
Hydro does. Some of the largest man-made disasters were dam failures, including one where 170,000 people died.
Re: Didn't you hear? Elizabeth Warren hates nuclea (Score:2)
Again, you refer to PBWR-style plants, when I specifically did NOT include those.
This is why it's expensive. Because shills like you play disingenuous games to prevent us from using safer technologies like MSRs by trying to equate *all* nuclear power with PBWRs in the public's mind.
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Except for hydro, where a dam bust could flood a region five times that size. But it would not necessarily leave a city drenched in eternity, no. Nuclear is risky but holds the least amount of direct and indirect deaths of any power source. This is fact.
It is also fact that Nuclear Power Plants take 10-15 years to build. By the time any nuclear power plant build stands finished, solar and wind will produce cheaper electricity and have more or less solved the big problem. So, Nuclear Fission is by and large
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No, gas won't be killed by Nuclear.
Not unless we SEVERELY over-build the nuclear infrastructure.
They're essentially two different classes of carrier-grade power.
Nuclear is "baseline" power. Because it's essentially stead-state output without much variance, and playing around with a nuke to increase and decrease power output can be...dangerous.
Natural gas is used in "peaking plants". It's easy to spin up (literally since it's burned in turbine engines). And it's used to cover peaks in demand. It's not me
Re:Gas plants will be killed by new nuclear! (Score:4, Interesting)
No, gas won't be killed by Nuclear.
Nothing is going to "kill" anything else. What we need is a mix of energy sources that are low in CO2, low in pollution, low in raw resources, low in cost, high on energy return, reliable, plentiful, safe, and isn't some untested technology. Wind, solar, and batteries, are not going to "crush" anything any time soon because they still have a lot of unknowns.
What does fit the requirements listed is onshore wind, hydroelectric, and nuclear fission. Oh, and we likely won't get rid of natural gas too quick, we'll need that for a while. I don't mean 4th generation nuclear either, that's as much an untested technology as some of these new solar cells and batteries. I mean 3rd generation nuclear, because it's safe and tested.
If these new battery technologies pan out in the future then I expect them to fit in well with onshore wind, hydro, and nuclear. I've seen what solar power can do and that's best left for communication satellites and pocket calculators, not for grid power. In time I expect 4th generation nuclear to replace 3rd generation nuclear.
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Exactly.
And while NG still produces CO2, it's still HALF the amount of conventional coal.
If they can figure out how to do carbon capture right with Advanced NG, that rate could be 1/10th conventional coal.
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Sorry, your attempt to slur shows that you don't actually have an argument.
Discussion ceded.
Thanks for playing.
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Until the nuclear power plant is shut down for months, for maintenance. Meaning the baseload FUD that always gets thrown at nuclear applies much moreso to radioactive water heaters.
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Until the nuclear power plant is shut down for months, for maintenance. Meaning the baseload FUD that always gets thrown at nuclear applies much moreso to radioactive water heaters.
Wrong.
A refueling cycle for a reactor is 2 months (about 60 days).
The time to replace a fuel assembly is about 10 days.
The rest of the time (about 50 days), the reactor IS STILL GENERATING POWER. Simply not at peak capacity as it's ramping down, and then back up.
Also, many nuclear facilities have more than one reactor, so they're in a constant cycling state.
So, a plant with a 6GW nameplate on it is generally 6 x 1.1GW Reactors.
You'll have 4 going full-bore, one on ramp-down mirroring one on ramp-up.
As oppo
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Okay I'm a big proponent of nuclear.
But until we have some actual 4th Gen plants in place, I'm not going to comment on "pie in the sky" points.
you mean Vaporware? (Score:2)
As much as a Bigfoot powered treadmill hooked up to a generator, sure. But even if you build a functioning network of molten salt/thorium/Bigfoot reactors (at massive cost to taxpayers) it will never be cost-effective, so what's the point?
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What would you RATHER have in an emergent situation?
A safe shutdown?
Or a STEAM EXPLOSION?
And no, solar and wind at a carrier scale are more expensive.
The whole "it's cheaper" only applies to home-scale arrays
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"And no, solar and wind at a carrier scale are more expensive.
The whole "it's cheaper" only applies to home-scale arrays"
Yes of course it's cheaper to do solar at home than nuclear.
It's cheaper to install in the desert somewhere than onto roofs, because of all the installers you won't kill, and the lack of overhead visiting all those customer sites. Then the maintenance costs are lower as well, since you don't have to do it in people's homes. How can residential be cheaper? I don't buy that at all.
Re:Gas plants will be killed by new nuclear! (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember economics of scale apply to nuclear as well.
How so?
The base of a wind turbine can be used over and over through multiple successive improvements in the technology. The same applies to solar.
Being able to produce 4th generation reactors on an assembly line will greatly reduce costs and construction time.
Construction time isn't the only issue. Deconstruction of any nuclear reactor is a time consuming and expensive task that leaves very little options for re-using anything. Upgrades to the technology can only be implemented at design and build time. To accept that improvements need to be made to nuclear technology means acknowledging that it has issues that need to be improved upon. So far an assembly line looks like a way to create a whole lot of new issues.
Once their factory is up and running they will be able to produce 1000's of Small Modular Reactors a year.
Small modular reactors aren't a solution to the nuclear industry's problems. Large modular reactors that can be disposed of in-situ offer a much greater EROEI than small reactors and investors doing their due diligence will see that. Nuscale's activities are being funded from SEC 645 of the US energy policy act which provides $1.25Bn for High temperature hydrogen production reactor research.
And best of all NuScale is not the only company doing this.
Can you provide links to which ones? It looks as though Nuscale has been attempting the approval process [nrc.gov] for about 20 years and is still yet to be approved. Nuclear reactors can only be proposed for construction once they pass the approval process [nrc.gov].
conservation efforts? (Score:2)
They compared those costs to building a combination of solar farms, wind plants and battery systems that, together with conservation efforts, could supply the same amount of electricity and keep the grid stable.
Sounds like they are not actually comparing proverbial apples to apples.
The story seemed more interesting... (Score:3)
...when I first read the title as "Gas Planets Will Get Crushed By Solar Wind By 2035, Study Says."
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That would take a supernova, in which case there are more important things to worry about than the gas giants.
According to... (Score:5, Informative)
...the Rocky Mountain Institute. This is their "About Us" page: "RMI is helping cities, communities, states, and regions to meet their energy and climate goals, boost economic growth, and achieve the goals set out in the Paris Accord. We are advising the people of emerging economies to leapfrog straight to the clean energy revolution; changing the way we move people and goods to save money and the environment; creating a clean, resilient, and affordable electricity system that produces less pollution and climate-altering CO2; and driving massive market growth for healthy and efficient homes, offices, schools, and gathering places."
So basically a lobbying group for renewables says that renewables are the future. Big shocker. Why do people report these "studies"? They aren't studies at all. They are just paid for results.
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Ad hominem. If you have a problem with the study then state your objection. Otherwise you're just whinging.
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You probably are forgetting the difference between Goodthink(tm) and Badthink(tm), citizen.
Anything even vaguely "not completely histrionic about how bad fossil fuels are and probably nuclear for (hand waving) reasons" is obviously produced by shills for the Big Petro, apologists for nuclear, and probably people that voted for Trump.
Anything slightly positive about solar/wind regardless of how fluffy, unsourced, or even fundamentally wrong is Goodthink, and should be promoted.
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You talk propaganda and then link to a far-right wingnut think tank? From their "about" page:
Ten pounds of fascist BS crammed into a five pound sack.
regulation? (Score:2)
If this article is true, then why the whining about regulations and regulations getting repealed? We all know corporations will always pick the cheapest cost regardless of the other issues. Profits always reign supreme. So if clean energy becomes super cheap, then the problem is solved without having all the red tape. sounds win-win to me.
it's the climate change, stupid (Score:2)
Because the best time to address climate change was 40 years ago. Not fart around for another 40 as industries move away from coal power as old plants are phased out.
Building a new solar or wind farm wont be cheaper than a coal plant built in the Reagan Administration that has been paid off and has years of service in it
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So if clean energy becomes super cheap, then the problem is solved without having all the red tape. sounds win-win to me.
Yep, problem solved. Cheap energy and no more global warming. Do you hear that everyone?
NO MORE GLOBAL WARMING!
We've solved that problem now. Please stop screaming about it.
I think it's more accurate to say that we see some potential, perhaps likely, solutions on the horizon. But things could change, or could just fail to change in the expected direction. IMO it makes more sense to internalize the externalities [wikipedia.org], to impose carbon taxes on all emissions of fossil carbons so that market forces will drive energy production in carbon-neutral (or even carbon-negative) directions.
Specifically, we should make our best attempt to estimate the cost of adapting to climate change and
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IMO it makes more sense to internalize the externalities, to impose carbon taxes on all emissions of fossil carbons so that market forces will drive energy production in carbon-neutral (or even carbon-negative) directions.
I see two problems with this. First is that it appears to be unnecessary. If this prediction is correct that wind and solar power will drive natural gas out of the market then more expensive fossil fuels in coal and petroleum are certain to follow. Second, people don't like taxes and in any democracy getting a new tax will be difficult to get into law. If people are that concerned about fossil fuels that they would vote a tax on themselves then they've already made the choice to use electric vehicles, p
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A carbon tax is a very heavy handed manipulation of the economy.
It's not, it's appropriate feedback to enable the market to account for a real but currently-unaccounted cost. Educate yourself about externalities and tragedies of the commons. Markets are fantastically effective at optimization, but they only optimize for costs that are included.
Externalities are market distortions, and must be internalized to remove the distortion and allow the markets to operate correctly. This is only difficult in democratic governments because not enough people understand economi
Don't trust anyone that ignores nuclear power. (Score:2, Insightful)
From the Washington post.
https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
Nuclear power is certainly not risk-free. While anti-nuclear activists often exaggerate the extent of the risks, there are small chances that nuclear plants can release radioactive gas into the air. Nuclear waste disposal also poses health and safety threats, as the half-life of spent nuclear fuel can last decades or even millennia. These are not trivial risks.
They pale, however, in comparison with the projected risks posed by climate change. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a report last fall saying climate change will be irreversible unless immediate action is taken to reduce carbon emissions by 2030. Candidates have taken this to heart: Warren says climate change is an âoeexistential challenge,â and Sanders says âoewe have less than 11 years left to transform our energy system away from fossil fuels ... if we are going to leave our planet healthy and habitable.â Given this rhetoric, arenâ(TM)t the risks from nuclear power well worth taking?
This prediction of wind and solar power "crushing" natural gas in the near future is based on assumptions that may not come true. We will need a "Plan B" because we don't have a "Planet B".
If these politicians believe nuclear power to be a greater risk than global warming then I believe them to be exceedingly ignorant on the topic.
There you go again (Score:2)
No part of the life cycle of a nuclear power plant is justifiable. Not the cost to taxpayers, not the risk, and not saddling humans born 100,000 years from now with your waste problem. And after getting smacked down so many times on this, you'd think you'd have gotten a new hobby horse to ride, like essential oils or anti-vaxxing.
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I think Elon would disagree with you...
Oblig xkcd quote (Score:2)
Fuck any other solution (Score:2)
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Depends what you call a "gas plant" (Score:2)
I doubt we get rid of gas plants soon.
While they replaced coal "somewhat" in america, they usually are either gas turbines or combined cycle gas plants where a gas turbine is basically used to heat a boiler and run a conventional steam turbine.
Gas turbines are needed at the moment for grid balancing and reserve power. As long as a grid has not enough pumped storage to replace that, it needs gas turbines.
So perhaps no one will build new ones, but no one is going to retire them that soon.
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The point being, the track record for predicting what's going to be a popular energy source for electric generation is completely terrible.
No kidding. [wordpress.com]
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That's an excellent link, thanks!
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15 years ago many people were predicting a "nuclear renaissance" in the United States. Nobody says that anymore,
Maybe the words "nuclear renaissance" aren't being used but that doesn't mean we aren't going to see new nuclear power plants.
The point being, the track record for predicting what's going to be a popular energy source for electric generation is completely terrible.
And yet you predict nuclear power to be dead.
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Then you guess poorly. The United States doesn't give the tiniest, greenest little shit about the health or safety of its own citizens when corporate profits stand to be made. And it thinks nothing of tossing a trillion dollars into a dumpster with F-35 painted on the side and setting it on fire. And even then nuclear power is too much of a boondoggle for cons
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Funny how no one in the renewables crowd ever talks about the mountain of solar panel e-waste just around the corner. They're just trading one problem for another.
There's lots they are not talking about.
They are not talking about the high raw material cost for solar power. They are not talking about the low EROI from solar power. They are not talking about the large amounts of land area required. They make grand claims of future gains in solar technology while assuming everything else stands still.
Solar power is shit for grid power. There are far better options available right now, and they are improving far faster than solar.
Here's an idea on how much e-waste wo
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Anything mass produced will require "high raw materials".
Lolz. You're a fan of nuke power. ROI is the very last subject you want under discussion, because that's like an American complaining that the Vatican spends way too much [motherjones.com] on its military. Solar panels will pay for themselves between seven to twenty years - whereas nuclear is the loss that will keep on losing for millennia.
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