Japan Signals Return To Nuclear Power To Stabilize Energy Supply (reuters.com) 229
Japan will restart more idled nuclear plants and look at developing next-generation reactors, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said on Wednesday, setting the stage for a major policy shift on nuclear energy a decade after the Fukushima disaster. Reuters reports: Japan has kept most of its nuclear plants idled in the decade since a massive earthquake and tsunami in 2011 triggered a nuclear meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant. Quake-prone Japan also said it would build no new reactors, so a change in that policy would be a stark turnaround. Kishida told reporters he had instructed officials to come up with concrete measures by the year end, including on "gaining the understanding of the public" on sustainable energy and nuclear power.
Government officials met on Wednesday to hammer out a plan for so-called "green transformation" aimed at retooling the world's third-largest economy to meet environmental goals. Nuclear energy, which was deeply opposed by the public after the Fukushima crisis, is now seen by some in government as a component for such green transformation. Public opinion has also shifted, as fuel prices have risen and an early and hot summer spurred calls for energy-saving.
Government officials met on Wednesday to hammer out a plan for so-called "green transformation" aimed at retooling the world's third-largest economy to meet environmental goals. Nuclear energy, which was deeply opposed by the public after the Fukushima crisis, is now seen by some in government as a component for such green transformation. Public opinion has also shifted, as fuel prices have risen and an early and hot summer spurred calls for energy-saving.
And will feed all nuclear waste to Godzilla! (Score:4, Funny)
If every other country would have a nuclear waste eating sea monster in the pool in front of their country,
we would all be relying on nuclear energy.
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If every other country would have a nuclear waste eating sea monster in the pool in front of their country, we would all be relying on nuclear energy.
Also helps with urban renewal!
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It's quite terrible we have things that make godzilla look like a quite tame beast in comparison.
Potentially significant example (Score:3, Interesting)
A welcome and potentially significant example. Its not that nuclear is necessarily always so great, its rather what is NOT being said. The recognition is dawning that wind and solar are not fit for the purpose of supplying the power demands of a modern industrial economy.
Something else has to be used. They seem to have decided nuclear, which in the light of Japan's total lack of fossil fuel sources seems quite a rational policy. They will have learned from the last disaster about how to make them safe from quakes and tidal waves.
Other countries facing the same problem may find other solutions, such as super heated coal fired stations, more appropriate to their situation. Rather than dependence on gas, and therefore on Russia.
China already knows this, and is acting accordingly. Its only a small coterie of activists, politicians and media in the US, Australia, the UK and Germany who are continuing to pretend that wind and solar and Net Zero are the answer. And Germany is wavering.
We shall see how the latest California attempt to ban ICE cars by 2035 works out. Its the apotheosis of woke: lets close our power stations to save the planet. Then lets move all vehicles to electric. And then on calm dark evenings, well, we'll take back the stored power from the cars. If they ask where the cars got charged in the first place, cancel them.
Should work out brilliantly, will stop climate change in its tracks, and will get us re-elected time after time.
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A welcome and potentially significant example. Its not that nuclear is necessarily always so great, its rather what is NOT being said. The recognition is dawning that wind and solar are not fit for the purpose of supplying the power demands of a modern industrial economy.
Absolutely the wrong argument. The problem is the recognition that (a) Russia cannot be trusted to supply your energy and (b) you really, really don't want to hand over any money to Russia if it can be avoided at all.
That's why Germany is restoring nuclear and coal power stations, to be independent of Russian energy by end of 2023, and why Germany will be doing whatever is needed to go fully renewable until the end of 2030.
And a modern industrial economy has to get used to the idea that there is no un
Re: Potentially significant example (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Potentially significant example (Score:4, Insightful)
I honestly thought it was insane to keep them running as long as they have. Most of their plants have well and truly exceeded their design life and should have been shutdown many years ago as it is.
The insane part is that we didn't build new modern ones to replace them.
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Remember that, with regular inspection, we can judge whether or not an older unit is still fit for purpose or not. Since lifespan estimates for nuclear plants tend to be EXTREMELY pessimistic.
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It's a question of what you're optimizing for. In 2014, the target was "omg nuclear is BAD because an old outdated-design nuclear power plant was hit with a once-in-1000-year tsunami and the backup power systems also failed due to the incompetent operator not doing what needed doing to prevent total disaster." It was never a good argument for Germany where the only other options were coal and energy imports from Russia.
Fast-forward to 2022 and we have a different target to optimize for, because we want to
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They're not saying Fukushima was the basis for the German decision.
Initially, the decommissioned their nuke plants and simply bought supply from FRENCH nuclear plants.
Re: Potentially significant example (Score:2)
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The plan to get rid of nukes started in the 1970ths, Schroeder, Kuenast, Tritin were voted into office to shut down nuclear power.
The plan to get out of coal and other CO2 emitters began forming around 1985.
Get a clue, idiot. We live in a democracy that half assed works. Hence we exited Nuclear power as soon as we could force the government to do so.
It is fucking depressing that you pro nuclear dumb idiots have no idea about what was/is going on in Germany.
I do not want a nuke in front of my yard that is 19
Re:Potentially significant example (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Fix the flaws
2. Abandon the technology.
Both were logically reasonable options, but option 2 does rely on the availability of other energy sources to provide power.
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Japan is literally the world's most ideal case for offshore wind. And they are already massively invested in the hydrogen fuel cell technology needed to cheaply store the excess energy produced... in the offshore wind farms themselves, where the storage presents no risks whatsoever to the populace. Restarting some currently defunct nuclear plants might well make short-term sense, but long-term, it only makes sense for Japan to invest in offshore wind.
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You forget that offshore wind is one of the most hostile environments with regards to engineering lifespans.
Not to mention the ecological damage it does.
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The Fukushima event was cost-cutting on physical plant. Not technology.
A million bucks or so (about 8000 cubic feet of concrete) would have prevented the tsunami from flooding the facility.
Or, at least, NOT PUTTING THE BACKUP GENERATORS IN THE PHYSICALLY LOWEST PORTION OF THE FACILITY.
Instead, we got a disaster and TEPCO got butt-blasted for roughly a hundred BILLION bucks instead.
Talk about tripping over a dollar to pick up a dime.
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The recognition is dawning that wind and solar are not fit for the purpose of supplying the power demands of a modern industrial economy.
That, sir, is completely false [reuters.com]. What's happening as usual is that some already rich fucks have figured out to get richer by poisoning the well.
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Unless you live on the middle of nowhere, cars and burning oil in general are slowly killing you, assuming the sugar industry don't get there first.
But you can't solve that with carbon credits, so the megacorps push to talk about the global warming instead, as they can just keep doing the shit while having good PR.
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Woke: In pursuit of feel-good ideology over reality/science/sanity.
Anything more is simply fluffing.
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A welcome and potentially significant example. Its not that nuclear is necessarily always so great, its rather what is NOT being said. The recognition is dawning that wind and solar are not fit for the purpose of supplying the power demands of a modern industrial economy.
This is a FALSE CONCLUSION and is not supported by facts.
The fact is that they have nuclear power plants already in place and ready to go. There is no evidence that other power sources aren't capable of being utilized -they just don't have them in place at present. They are not deciding to build nuclear power plants instead of building other power plants -the nuclear power plants already exist.
The decision to not utilize existing, fully functional, nuclear power plants would be the equivalent of cutting o
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The problem is, there's a supply-based HARD constraint on the availability of solar and wind.
Yet we keep getting it shoved in our face with a bunch of shiny fluff while other sources to slow down the issue are being flat out ignored and demonized.
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The problem is, there's a supply-based HARD constraint on the availability of solar and wind.
The output of Sol is beyond our scope.
Our ability to harness the energy is the only functional limit, and we can harness far more than we currently do.
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The problem isn't that SOL is constrained.
The problem is that the materials we use for creating collection equipment is FINITE. As are the lifespans of the products created from those materials.
The technology used to harvest some of it is VASTLY damaging to our biome.
And many of the products created aren't recyclable and thus contribute to landfill.
Re: Potentially significant example (Score:2)
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And yet it is still true. Think harder. I know, it is hard for idiots to comprehend the idea of thinking about it and looking for a way that it is true. But that's actually a required part of critical thinking; what would make it true?
Here, obviously, you can't start a nuclear weapons program without the media talking about nuclear power as part of the nuclear posture. And if the weapons material is coming from small, quickly built research reactors, you won't have power to share. So you have to restart the
Re:Potentially significant example (Score:5, Insightful)
You sound like a paid shill.
Well, I'm not a paid shill and I agree with the OP entirely. Sounded very sensible to me. IDK much about Japan's weather but in the UK we have many windless frosty nights in winter (anticyclone weather) when there will be no solar or wind generation but high electricity demand, to which will soon be added everyone wanting to charge their EVs at the time. There is also very little scope for hydo-power in the UK.
People claiming low costs of wind and solar power always fail to include the cost of the "conventional" backup needed. Thanks to the gutless political failure to build the needed additional nuclear power stations over the last 30 years, we are facing some serious electrical power cuts in the UK in the near future. Thankfully a new nuclear power station at Sizewell has just been approved, but it is too little too late.
Nuclear plants simply suck to build because it puts too many single points of failures on the geography.
What the heck does that mean?
Not windy [Re:Potentially significant example] (Score:2)
DK much about Japan's weather but in the UK we have many windless frosty nights in winter (anticyclone weather) when there will be no solar or wind generation
This is a flawed argument. "Wind wouldn't work in the particular place I live, so that means it wouldn't work anywhere!"
Land area of the U.K. is a quarter of a million square kilometers (not counting offshore). You've been to every part of it in winter???
Re:Not windy [Re:Potentially significant example] (Score:5, Interesting)
There's literally no time that there's no wind anywhere in the UK, but it's a dumb argument anyway; we don't have to find wind somewhere in the UK if the UK has sufficient grid interconnection, and gets favorable rates. Brexit hasn't affected the former, but certainly does affect the latter. The UK simply isn't big enough, even altogether, to be a successful modern nation (or collection thereof) without support from its neighbors. So why would you pretend that all of the UK's power has to come from inside of the UK? That would be idiotic... or deliberately misleading.
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Please feel free to ignore anything drinkpoo has to say about nuclear power.
Anonymous coward says what? Your comment is what it looks like when someone who knows they're lying attempts to avoid being punished for libel. If you had the courage of your convictions, you wouldn't post anonymously. But you deliberately checked the box that proves conclusively that you do not. Run along and let the adults have a conversation.
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Your comment is what it looks like when someone who knows they're lying attempts to avoid being punished for libel
Internet moron has power fantasy and accidentally types it out. News at 11.
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Internet moron has power fantasy and accidentally types it out.
Now that you've summarized every comment you ever left, you can leave.
Re:Potentially significant example (Score:5, Interesting)
It means nuclear plants are heavily dependent on geography because of their need for constant water as a coolant. That means you have to build them next to lakes, seas, oceans, or decent-sized rivers. This exposes them to issues like tsunamis, like with Fukushima.
Lesser known are the issues with water being too warm, like with Connecticut's Millstone Power Station [yahoo.com] in 2012, or like France is dealing with right now. [bloomberg.com] Usually plants are temporarily shut down until the heat wave passes, but if it lasts too long waivers are granted and the hot water is pumped back into the source. This can kill everything in the water -- plants, fish, etc. -- totally ruining the local ecosystem. Fisherman and people who make their living on the water hate this one trick.
This doesn't make nuclear useless, but it is a major consideration for design, and one that is growing even more important considering the way the climate is shifting.
...which will soon be added everyone wanting to charge their EVs at the time.
That isn't the issue people make it out to be. Keep in mind, the average daily driving distance is between 25 - 50 km [solaronev.com]. That means daily charge times will only be on the order of 10-20 minutes to top off a car, slightly longer on a trickle charge. There are already schemes for managing consumption surges for things like air conditioning. I'd expect them to be more prevalent for car chargers. You plug in when you get home at the end of the day and sometime between then and the morning you need to use 10-20 minutes of charge time. This is a solved problem.
Finally, Wikipedia's opening line on Wind Power in the United Kingdom [wikipedia.org] is "The United Kingdom is one of the best locations for wind power in the world and is considered to be the best in Europe", which sort of contradicts your personal evaluation of UK wind generation. However, I expect your opinion is your local experience and you don't live either in Scotland or offshore. (You're not that Sealand guy, are you?) The grid is your friend, and wind supplied electricity will be routed to your local area from the UK areas that have abundance -- and there a a lot.
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Out of interest, when was the last tsunami recorded in the UK?
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It means nuclear plants are heavily dependent on geography because of their need for constant water as a coolant. That means you have to build them next to lakes, seas, oceans, or decent-sized rivers. This exposes them to issues like tsunamis, like with Fukushima.
False. Please point out the lake / sea / ocean / decent-sized river next to the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station [goo.gl] near Phoenix, Arizona. As it turns out, clever engineering can solve those kinds of problems when you have a plentiful municipal treated sewage source from a large city nearby, which you would like to power with nuclear energy - so they have 3 reactors running and generating ~4GWe with no natural source of water to speak of.
And right next door to it is a 150MW solar array.
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On the Fukushima mention.
BZZT!
Fukushima was about cost cutting.
They didn't pay attention to the experts and cheaped out on about a million dollars (about 8000 cubic yards) in concrete.
Had they simply doubled the height of the seawall (as recommended, the facility would have been fine.
It survived the quake. The cost cutting on the sea wall (and the colossally STUPID move of putting the backup generators IN THE BASEMENT) ganged up to doom that generator.
EVs.
Not going to trust the "average". As it behooves i
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If only there were mechanical or chemical methods of storing electricity Oh wait
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Hum, you are aware that Scotland is part of the UK? That Scotland has been getting a significant portion of it's electricity from hydro since the beginning of mains electricity in the UK? Yeah thought not. You are also aware there is huge untapped potential for pumped hydro in Scotland with several schemes just waiting for finance to start. They have planning permission and everything already granted?
Perhaps you are also aware of the recently introduced interconnector with Norway? The idea behind this is No
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You sound like a paid shill.
Well, I'm not a paid shill
He sounds like an unpaid shill to me.
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As always, your perceptions mean two things.
1: Jack
2: Shit
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Some good insight here. Yes, using each energy source in the place it's best suited for is a wise strategy.
A little oversimplified. North America is nearly ten million square miles. It has a lot of places that have both reliable wind and also aren't in tornado alley.
and, a reminder that the greenhouse effect is real, and growing, but it is slow:
...Because at the rate we're going, the very same places that are sounding the climate change alarm will be underwater, which includes the entire eastern seaboard of the United States all the way to Interstate 95 if every last piece of ice melts, with Florida and Louisiana just being underwater entirely.
Do keep in mind that this takes a long time-- yes, if we keep up carbon emissions at our current rate, in a few hundred years the ice caps will all melt, but not
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Thank you for moderating the alarmist tone of the GP post. That's the kind of thing that makes it hard for skeptics to take climate change arguments seriously.
It's a big problem, and one that needs immediate sweeping action to limit the scope of, but there just isn't room for easily-discounted Chicken Little screaming that only serves to distract and discourage that action.
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My biggest beef is we keep hearing "We're all gonna die!" type crap.
Yet we keep seeing half-measures (if we're lucky) just chucked into place.
Rather than a comprehensive plan to diversify, modernize and bullet-proof our infrastructure.
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Your argument is that we shouldn't build stuff where it isn't exactly ideal?
In that case, we shouldn't build anything at all, because there will always be something that is less than ideal. For example, you claim that solar isn't suitable except in the area south of Oregon and west of Texas, yet the solar power production in Oregon [oregon.gov] that topped 776GWh in 2019 would disagree. And to leave Florida out of your boundary seems pretty ridiculous as well, as the only thing holding back Florida is the shitty gover
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Wind, WITH STORAGE, is a suitable PEAKING power supply for North America. It still can't be a baseline power. Because it isn't THAT dependable.
The same thing with solar, WITH STORAGE.
There's also the problems of the volume necessary to power the whole country. The land use. And the ecological damage they do. But the volume issue is the biggie. Quite simply we cannot get our hands on the necessary quantity of raw materials necessary to manufacture both panels and site-agnostic storage (batteries) to fu
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Now, what's the lifespan on all those wind turbines.
ESPECIALLY the offshore ones in the North Sea?
Not just reopen old plants, but build new ones (Score:5, Interesting)
The fine article mentions the reopening of existing plants, and extending their life beyond the planned 60 years of operation. What is not mentioned is the building of new plants in the future. I found an article that points to the decision including building new nuclear power plants in Japan.
https://asia.nikkei.com/Politi... [nikkei.com]
I expect to see more announcements like this as it dawns on people that the rising energy costs have more to them than just Russia invading Ukraine. Even if this was all about Russia invading Ukraine then we will have energy prices spiking every time there's a small scale war in some far off place that nobody much cared about until their energy costs went up because the place blew up. This cycle will continue until these nations become largely energy independent. For much of the world the only path to energy independence is building nuclear power plants. They lack the land for renewable energy to supply the energy they need, and shipping in renewable energy is just replacing one foreign energy source with another. If this neighboring country has some dispute then the supply of energy can be used as leverage to gain political advantage. Electrical wires over the border is not an improvement from moving away from natural gas pipelines over the border.
In the USA we saw approximately one gigawatt of new nuclear power capacity added to the grid per month at the peak of nuclear power plant construction decades ago. This means that they will be going offline at about the same rate as they reach the end of their operational life. We will have to exceed that rate of construction to make up for that loss of generating capacity, replacing old fossil fuel plants, and make up for growth in energy demand since. New wind and solar capacity isn't enough to make up for new demand, if it were then we would not be seeing any new fossil fuel plants being built. If we could just build more wind and solar faster then we'd have done so already to avoid having to build more fossil fuel plants.
Germany is likely to restart nuclear power plants that they recently closed to help make up for their lost electrical generating capacity from the natural gas shortage. More electricity from nuclear power means less natural gas burned for electricity, therefore more natural gas for heating and cooking. Some relief on natural gas burn rate means prices decline from people being less concerned about running short on supply. Because energy is traded on the international markets in various forms this means Japan building more nuclear power plants means lower energy prices nearly everywhere else.
Re: Not just reopen old plants, but build new ones (Score:2)
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It's a stalling tactic. The government is under pressure to do something about rising energy prices, so says they will start planning for maybe building more new reactors in the 2030s, possibly. Of course, Kishida is unlikely to be PM by that point anyway.
By 2030 it's likely that nuclear power will have been proven unnecessary and uncompetitive with renewables. Japan has some pretty good offshore wind energy resources, and with offshore wind now around 1/8th the price of nuclear it's pretty difficult to jus
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I say we solved global warming and you say I'm wrong because in the near future we will see offshore wind that is cheaper and more abundant than fossil fuels or nuclear power. Either way we got CO2 emissions from human activity to near zero. That still means we solved global warming. You call this a "stalling tactic" so people don't complain so loudly while they work on getting those offshore windmills built. How does promoting nuclear power in the only nation that was a victim of both getting bombed by
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You are never (NEVER, NOT EVER) going to get human CO2 production to near zero.
Take a nice deep breath.
YOU ARE THE PROBLEM,
Anyhoo, on a serious note. We do have options besides simply eliminating CO2 production entirely.
With an extensive enough investment in energy infrastructure, we can do CO2 sequestration/carbon capture.
It won't STOP the production. But it will stop production of NEW carbon inputs. And give us time to introduce the carbon back into the environment in a stable, useful form.
Nuclear electricity is economic suicide in 2022 (Score:5, Insightful)
Nuclear electricity is economic suicide.
It costs 5x more per kWh than any other method of electricity generation, renewable or fossil.
It makes absolutely zero sense to build new plants.
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One only needs to google the cost of the latest Watts Bar plant to see why nobody wants to build one.
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Unless maybe if your country is small and dense and doesn't want to fill all its remaining open space with wind and solar?
The countries that most fit that description are Luxembourg and Singapore. Importing energy is an option for them.
Fantastic! (Score:2)
Despite setbacks, nuclear energy remains the safest source of energy thus far. It's not the best energy generation technology but it's the best we have developed so far. I you are a nuclear technology fearmonger then please invest your money in companies that are developing cheap reusable batteries or new geothermal energy designs because those are the only non-emitting technologies I've seen that could displace the need for nuclear.
Gravity Batteries (Score:2)
Gravity Batteries are the only technology that can potentially allow wind and solar to service base-load needs. They are a concept simple to explain to any layman but have been hard to roll out or get funding behind, for reasons unclear.
Some projects have proven out gravity batteries up to 80MW using simple cranes.
Gravity batteries are entirely green and can be built anywhere, and don't even require a large footprint. The dangers of catastrophic failure are also very low to the public compared to other larg
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I ran across a water battery system recently. Similar idea to gravity battery, but put the water storage at ground level. Pump it up from an aquifer during the day, let it flow back down at night spinning a turbine.
Efficiency was supposed to be max 66% though I have no idea if that's workable. Seems simple enough to build though.
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They're called pumped storage hydropower [energy.gov] and have been in use since the 1890s.
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Pumped storage is one type of gravity battery. But they have limits on where they are workable due to geology. There are simpler methods where you literally just lift something and drop it. Imagine a series of cranes in a tower with large concrete blocks - that is literally how these units can be built. It is not complicated.
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Sure - but that is a lot more complicated than just lifting something heavy then dropping it.
There is nothing new to be invented or figured out with gravity batteries. There are 80MW+ prototypes that have been built, with load response times 1 second. They also are not that expensive to build.
I am actually starting to think that the reason they are not built is because there is nothing patentable.
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Sure - but that is a lot more complicated than just lifting something heavy then dropping it.
But does it scale?
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https://youtu.be/NIhCuzxNvv0 [youtu.be]
Some answers are there.
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Some projects have proven out gravity batteries up to 80MW using simple cranes.
No, no. I really can't believe anyone actually is buying this bullshit. Of all the things ever proposed for energy storage gravity batteries are amount the most stupid.
Thunderf00t has several videos on how dumb this idea is.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
The only concept of "gravity" storage that works and is viable is water based.
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95% of all storage worldwide(including every battery) is pumped-hydro which is the most common gravity battery. They cannot be built everywhere and will not be able to scale to the degree we need it. The other types of gravity battery(cranes lifting heavy blocks) are comical and are not going to solve the intermittency problem.
Gravity storage provides minutes of storage when we need days to weeks/
The reality is that we will need nuclear energy if we want to deep decarbonize.
Re: Gravity Batteries (Score:2)
I don't think an 80MWh prototype using cranes that was built using very simple methods is "comical".
Not everything needs a complex, over engineered solution.
I am convinced the reason not many companies are doing this is because it's not patentable and doesn't require anything new, so no profit opportunity. The simplicity is what is hurting its deployment. It's nuts.
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"Comical" isn't a word I would use to describe it ether. "Stupid" is probably a better word for it. Thunderfoot quickly done several videos debunking this crap, complete with math. So its do able, its just not worth doing. An that is why its not being done.
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We need to TWh's and your solution is 80 MWh. Yes comical is a good word for it. And just friction will damage those really quickly. I doubt they would have a long lifespan.
And companies are not pursuing it because it is a bad idea.
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Gravity Batteries are the only technology that can
Nothing shouts idiot more loudly than "I only know about 1 thing so it *must be* the only thing!"
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nuclear energy remains the safest source of energy thus far.
Get back to us when the waste has been processed, interred, shot into space, or otherwise dealt with and not just lying around waiting to catch fire and distribute itself throughout the atmosphere, which is literally the case for the vast majority of the nuclear waste which has ever been produced.
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Get back to us when...
We don't have the luxury of waiting for the perfect energy source. We'll have all the energy we need to dispose of the waste when fusion power is perfected but until that happens, we have to buy as much time as possible.
You can cry over nuclear waste which isn't hurting anyone OR buy enough time to halt a mass extinction event but you can't do both.
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We don't have the luxury of waiting for the perfect energy source.
That's a stupid dick's way of presenting a false dichotomy. Don't be a stupid dick. We don't have to wait for perfect, we have good already. It's called solar and wind, which even with storage is cheaper than coal, let alone nuclear. Only people who want to watch the world burn promote nuclear power, period, because it is a slower and less effective way to change our generation mix towards low emissions, and it is not renewable so it is fundamentally a failure of an idea period.
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What would cause spent fuel in dry cask storage to just spontaneously catch fire? By the time it's put in dry cask storage, it's no longer creating enough heat to be a problem - that's why it's been moved from cooling pools to the dry casks.
There are very real problems with spent nuclear fuel, but we don't need to exaggerate them. And, for what it's worth, there are people working on the issue [cnbc.com] in ways that aren't just a fig-leaf applied to technology created for making nuclear weapons. Sure, it's vaporwa
LFTR (Score:2, Interesting)
Going to be a broken record here.
We need to stop investing in building plants that are designed around technology that was state-of-the-art in the 50s and 60s that are centered around flawed thought processes that put nuclear weapons production ahead of safe power production.
We need to stop using Uranium-cycle fuel and switch to Thorium-cycle fuel.
We need to stop building/using inherently dangerous power plants that rely on high pressure containment vessels that will fail, and fuel strategies that are in
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We need to stop using Uranium-cycle fuel and switch to Thorium-cycle fuel. [...] we keep it all under wraps using bureaucratic red tape
Nobody has ever built a commercially viable thorium-cycle reactor, nor a design that would be that if scaled up. When that has happened, then you can squawk about how superior technology is being kept from us. You sound like the people who think there's a carburetor that will let ICEVs run on water and get 200mpg to boot.
Re:LFTR (Score:5, Interesting)
We need to stop using Uranium-cycle fuel and switch to Thorium-cycle fuel.
Thorium has not been proven in any commercially viable capacity. Instead of throwing the baby out with the bathwater maybe realise that the GenIV Uranium-cycle reactors look and act precisely nothing like anything we were doing in the 50s and 60s.
Your comment is like saying Tesla should stop building cars based on 4 wheels and a steering wheel from the late 1800s and should switch to using hoverboards or some other fantasy.
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GenIV Uranium-cycle reactors look and act precisely nothing like anything we were doing in the 50s and 60s.
Do any of these exist anywhere though? I thought most things that qualify are still under development. Not sure if that means they're still hypothetical or just still being built.
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We won't have clean power "now", China and then India will continue to ramp up fossil fuel use. Token green (wind and solar without storage to match) by USA and Europe won't matter.
India and China are both ramping up the use of nuclear, wind and solar. China has been installing more than Europe or USA individually. But my point still stands - what is required is action now, not something that will be ready for service in 30 years. 30 years hence is too late, and as demonstrated, Europe, USA, China, India are building low-carbon energy sources now, based on available technology. In the case of Europe, the amount of generation capacity that is not fossil fuel is now really quite signifi
Why not? (Score:2)
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No, not Japan! (Score:2)
Most of the time I think of anti-nuclear activists as the "useful idiots" of the coal and methane industries. The world would be a lot better off if most parts of it had more nuclear power plants.
But not an island nation that is prone to earthquakes and tsunami!!! Don't build nuclear plants in geologically unstable places. That should have been the lesson of Fukushima, not get rid of nuclear outright until oil gets expensive then build it back up again.
Re:More sense. Fix the planet, then whine. (Score:5, Interesting)
It's like even the anti-nuke hippies are starting to realise there are more important problems.
Demanding the closure of nuclear power plants while screaming about global warming is saying that nuclear power is a greater threat than global warming. Well, you are all going to have to pick one. Which is the greater threat? Global warming? Or nuclear power? You can't say both are equal threats because there's really no middle ground here. If there were a third option then we'd have some other threat bigger than both to worry about, like an asteroid hitting the planet or some virus killing us all. There would not be a debate about global warming vs. nuclear power because we'd have some third option and left any concern of either behind us.
Global warming is from CO2 emissions by human activity. Nuclear power is the lowest CO2 emitting energy source we have yet developed. So, we have to pick one. If there were an energy source with lower CO2 emissions, and it was available to Japan in sufficient quantity to meet their energy needs, then we'd have solved global warming and never have to fear nuclear power ever again. Since that is not the case we have to pick one.
Since we have nations choosing nuclear power over global warming, and nuclear power is the safest energy source known to humanity, we effectively solved global warming. Anyone willing to claim we haven't solved global warming from human activity? Then I guess we keep building nuclear power plants until the problem is solved. Anyone willing to claim that nuclear power is "not safe"? Well, I'd agree that nuclear power is not safe. But that's not how things work in reality. Not using nuclear power means either energy shortages which is "not safe", or using some other energy source which is "not safe". No option is "safe", we just have to do our best to pick the most safe option. If we have an obviously safer option then present that to the leadership in Japan. I'm sure they'd love to see a better option because choosing nuclear power is going to piss off a lot of people.
There are more important problems to worry about. So, how about we get to those instead of digging up nuclear power vs. global warming again?
Re:More sense. Fix the planet, then whine. (Score:4)
Yeah, it's so unsafe that, in all of history, nuclear power has killed almost as many people as will die in rush hour traffic THIS MORNING!
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Indeed, but the problem with nuclear is the way we're treating it, not its past. We haven't had an operational replacement program. Our reactors are old and decrepit and with that comes ever increasing risks for operating them. If you're interested in the theory behind end of life look at the bathtub curve. The idea that past performance is a predictor of future performance is only relevant for the flat part of the curve, a part at which very few reactors now operate.
Incidentally you know how many people di
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Hell, I don't really want to look at windmills all that much. I'd rather see trees and open fields myself. So replacing ALL baseload with nukes would be great, far as I'm concerned.
As to my quote of fatalities, nuke plants would have to be about 10000 times as deadly as they've historically been to come close to traffic fatalities.
For which you may read "a nuclear meltdown needs to happen twice a
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Global warming? Or nuclear power?
Why not take a more finessed approach? Nuclear power isn't a threat. Old nuclear powerplants which should have been shutdown decades ago and are well beyond their design life are a threat.
Also threat to whom? One threat is local, the other is global. Both of them can be a threat without you ever being in a position to compare and contrast them.
Then I guess we keep building nuclear power plants until the problem is solved.
No. We need to *start* building nuclear power plants. The reason we're in this mess is because we didn't "keep" building them. The fleet is largely old and decrepit.
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Whenever I claim we solved global warming because we are starting to build nuclear power plants again I get people replying that nuclear power is a waste of time because we will definitely have wind and solar with storage that will be cheaper and built sooner than any nuclear power plant could be built. I'm told again and again that we don't need nuclear power because we already solved global warming without it. So, which is it? Did we solve the problem or not? If we didn't solve the problem then maybe
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Whenever I claim we solved global warming because we are starting to
My goodness you're an incredible idiot. You can't even comprehend the flow of time! Your power fantasy extends beyond the constraints of space and time. Shave your neckbeard, take a bath, and visit the surface.
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Implementing and executing the solutions is the real problem.
To me, that's solving it. I can 'solve' all sorts of things like the backlog of laundry right now from my armchair. It's the implementing and executing the act of putting my jeans in the washer that results in me having clean clothes though.
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Sorry, but any idea, if not implemented, is NOT "solving" shit.
This is the problems all the renewable hippies don't get.
We're GONNA do X. We're GONNA do Y
But when asked about Q, R, S, T, U, V and W, plus Z...the people in charge suddenly fall back on "But you KNOW we're going to do X! And we're GONNA do Y!"
And on, and on goes the dance.
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How's this for a false dichotomy.
There is, logistically NO WAY to provide power for the whole planet from wind and or solar and battery-backed storage.
NONE.
Hell, just trying to do it for the US ALONE would strain planetary resources. Not to mention the cost.
And then, what do we do in 30-60 years when it comes time to replace the irreplaceable resources we ate?
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Fukushima survived the massive earthquake just fine.
The only reason the Tsunami was an issue was because TEPCO cheaped out on about a million bucks more in concrete to make the sea wall high enough to handle the tsunami.
Also, had they not built the facility with the emergency generators IN THE BASEMENT, they still would have been fine.
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Did you alert the Japanese authorities about the nuclear disaster at Fukushima? Maybe they were unaware of the danger and that's why they made this decision.
No. Wait. I'm pretty sure every adult in the nation is aware of what happened a decade ago, in their own nation, when the impact was that large. This wasn't a lost puppy, 300 years ago, halfway around the world. They know already. You can believe it unwise to restart their nuclear power plants because of risks of a repeat of what happened at Fukushima but there's risks involved in not restarting these power plants. Risks like people freezing in the dark because there's not enough power for heat and light in the winter.
There is no option that is "safe", we can only make educated calculations on what is "safer". Nuclear power is safer than running the risks of another energy shortage in the middle of winter.
This is not particularly complicated. when a nat-gas plant, wind park or a solar plant gets wiped out by a tsunami, earthquake or both the worst you are going to suffer is the noise of reconstruction. If Nuclear power plants get wiped out by natural disasters you get irradiated. I can happily live without my children's teeth being contaminated with plutonium: https://www.theguardian.com/uk... [theguardian.com] ... now tell me how nuclear is by far and away the most safe energy generation technology ever conceived by the mid
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Okay, tell us where Japan's supposed to get the natural gas for all these gas plants.
Where's the land area for all the solar panels.
And what's the lifespan of a wind park.
Now, look at the death counts for solar, wind and nuclear.
Which industry has the fewest deaths. Not "deaths per X". Deaths. PERIOD.
Solar: BZZZT! Several hundred a year.
Wind: BZZZT! Several hundred per million gigawatts.
Nuclear? DINGDINGDING! Nuclear has a grand total of about 90 (nine zero, less than one hundred) deaths. In the la
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Okay, tell us where Japan's supposed to get the natural gas for all these gas plants. Where's the land area for all the solar panels. And what's the lifespan of a wind park.
Now, look at the death counts for solar, wind and nuclear.
Which industry has the fewest deaths. Not "deaths per X". Deaths. PERIOD.
Solar: BZZZT! Several hundred a year. Wind: BZZZT! Several hundred per million gigawatts. Nuclear? DINGDINGDING! Nuclear has a grand total of about 90 (nine zero, less than one hundred) deaths. In the last 70 years.
Which industry irradiates the most people?
Solar: BZZZT! Nope.
Wind: BZZZT! Nope.
Nuclear? YAY, give the mindless nuclear simp a cigar!
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Technically?
SOLAR.
Even if you live in a lead cube and only come out at night.
Now try for a real argument.
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Cool. You know that Japan only produces 2% of it's own natgas usage right? So advocating for more natgas is advocating for more pipelines and tankers, and those have never been associated with natural disasters and pollution that affect your kids, have they?
I notice you cherry picked out the nat-gas and didn't mention wind solar nor didi you explain me why is by far and away the most safe energy generation technology ever conceived by the mid of man. Could it be that you have absolutely no answers to that?