Does Nuclear Get In the Way of Renewable? France and Germany Disagree. (energypost.eu) 236
"France and Germany lead the camps in disagreeing on the future of nuclear in Europe," write two climate policy journalists. On the Energy Post blog they explore why — citing energy experts and politicians.
Germany "ultimately completed its nuclear exit in April 2023," while France "has the highest share of nuclear in the energy mix of any country in the world." [A] major concern is that more nuclear means less renewables, at a time when wind and solar need all the scale they can get... In a joint attempt to provide greater technical clarity on the nuclear power debate, French think tank IDDRI and German Agora Energiewende set out in 2018 to understand how nuclear energy will influence the transformation of energy systems in both countries. They found that if a high share of coal or nuclear based conventional power capacity stays online in both countries, this will likely to delay the time when market prices allow renewable power operators to cover their production costs and run the operations at a profit. They also found that exporting surplus electricity with conventional plants bites into renewable power investments abroad. At the same time, the growing share of renewables would eventually render most conventional plants unprofitable. "In order to avoid stranded assets, it is essential to gradually reduce conventional capacities," the bi-national report concluded...
Xavier Moreno, president of French think tank Ecological Realities and Energy Mix Study Circle (Cereme) and former vice president of French utility company Suez, said the all-renewables approach was complicated by a lack of viable electricity storage technologies. "Technically speaking, it would be necessary to store up to 20 percent to be able to smoothen renewable power supply." Those who believe that this will be possible through a combination of different storage options are chasing "a dream," Moreno argued.
The issue comes up when trading power in Europe's integrated energy market: should gate closure times be based on a decentralised, flexible renewables-based system, or a centralised grid based on nuclear baseloads? Rainer Hinrichs-Rahlwes, European policy expert for the German Renewable Energy Federation lobby group, says "Nuclear power plants and their inflexible output can cause grid congestion, the opposite of what is needed to accommodate large shares of wind and solar in a modern and flexible grid system."
The article notes that France plans to eliminate coal use by 2038, and already has one of the lowest emissions per head of any rich country. But "In mid-2023, 800 French scientists warned against the risks of the country's new nuclear programme, pointing to unresolved questions of radioactive waste management, which remain largely unresolved in most of the EU, including in France. The scientists also warned against risks of accidental contamination or meltdown."
Thanks to Slashdot reader AleRunner for submitting the article.
Germany "ultimately completed its nuclear exit in April 2023," while France "has the highest share of nuclear in the energy mix of any country in the world." [A] major concern is that more nuclear means less renewables, at a time when wind and solar need all the scale they can get... In a joint attempt to provide greater technical clarity on the nuclear power debate, French think tank IDDRI and German Agora Energiewende set out in 2018 to understand how nuclear energy will influence the transformation of energy systems in both countries. They found that if a high share of coal or nuclear based conventional power capacity stays online in both countries, this will likely to delay the time when market prices allow renewable power operators to cover their production costs and run the operations at a profit. They also found that exporting surplus electricity with conventional plants bites into renewable power investments abroad. At the same time, the growing share of renewables would eventually render most conventional plants unprofitable. "In order to avoid stranded assets, it is essential to gradually reduce conventional capacities," the bi-national report concluded...
Xavier Moreno, president of French think tank Ecological Realities and Energy Mix Study Circle (Cereme) and former vice president of French utility company Suez, said the all-renewables approach was complicated by a lack of viable electricity storage technologies. "Technically speaking, it would be necessary to store up to 20 percent to be able to smoothen renewable power supply." Those who believe that this will be possible through a combination of different storage options are chasing "a dream," Moreno argued.
The issue comes up when trading power in Europe's integrated energy market: should gate closure times be based on a decentralised, flexible renewables-based system, or a centralised grid based on nuclear baseloads? Rainer Hinrichs-Rahlwes, European policy expert for the German Renewable Energy Federation lobby group, says "Nuclear power plants and their inflexible output can cause grid congestion, the opposite of what is needed to accommodate large shares of wind and solar in a modern and flexible grid system."
The article notes that France plans to eliminate coal use by 2038, and already has one of the lowest emissions per head of any rich country. But "In mid-2023, 800 French scientists warned against the risks of the country's new nuclear programme, pointing to unresolved questions of radioactive waste management, which remain largely unresolved in most of the EU, including in France. The scientists also warned against risks of accidental contamination or meltdown."
Thanks to Slashdot reader AleRunner for submitting the article.
both are needed today. (Score:5, Insightful)
As long as we can lower our dependency on combustible fossil fuel both are needed.
Re:both are needed today. (Score:4, Informative)
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Renewables are still using grid as storage accounting and using up surplus grid capacity which is running out.
The increased grid capacity to spread it, a month or two of hydrogen storage, the electrolyzers to fill the storage and the generators to use it (both operating at relatively low utilisation) are not cheap. The true cost of renewables at net zero is multiples of the generation.
I don't think it's unaffordable, but I don't think it's honestly accounted at the moment either.
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Re:both are needed today. (Score:4, Informative)
That is a significant problem that no one talks about and no one has solved. No one wants it in their back yard, and no one wants it to destroy their homes equity.
That is the real cost of Nuclear, and where the real lie is. Lie of omission.
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That's not the only big cost of nuclear. It just costs a lot to build - Hinkley C is up to at least £33bn and it's still going up. And that's on a site that already has reactors and a big grid tie.
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Hear ye, hear ye! Gather round, Gather round!
The Great AmiMoJo will now attempt to spin a tale of Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt about a subject that the user knows nothing about. The motto of this Troll is "if you can't dazzle them with brilliance, then baffle them with bullshit! An a tale of whoa it will be with a large helping of bullshit on the side it will be.
Speak on oh great Troll! Entertain us with your ignorance and cluelessness!
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..a tale of whoa...
So... The Matrix or Bill and Ted?
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More like a tale of misinformation, lies and other deceptions.
Re:both are needed today. (Score:5, Insightful)
Imagine what the cost-benefit would be if the coal and gas burners were forced to put the cost of environmental remediation for the next 500 years in change (the environmental lifetime of CO2) on their balance sheets.
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No they are not getting more expensive, and the research is really important to humanity to keep it advancing. If you are against nuclear at this point calling yourself an environmentalist, you are with the same group of people in Wyoming who shut down the ability of the state to harvest wind, claiming to be protecting bald eagles: Aka not the real thing.
Re:both are needed today. (Score:5, Informative)
Renewables (outside of geothermal and to a slightly lesser extent hydroelectric) are not going to be suitable for handling baseload power. Individuals should certainly encouraged to install solar on their homes where appropriate, but nuclear is far more reliable. Otherwise you need to overbuild production or have storage to take care of the situations where output is near zero for extended periods of time.
Re:both are needed today. (Score:4, Informative)
No, this is misleading The household price is capped in France , e.g. see here:
https://www.reuters.com/busine... [reuters.com]
and also generally does not really reflect the cost of production. In Germany it is kept high by adding the renewable surcharge and other taxes and fees. Also note that true cost of the nuclear in France is not really known because essentially the government has built all the plants. The court of audit looked into it much later and published some data from what it was estimated that it also wasn't cheap.
The real indication that nuclear is too expensive that even under favorable conditions no private investors invests in it. This is also why lobby efforts focus on presenting as necessity and portrait renewables as insufficient so that one could make the case the governments need to step in and the tax payer has to foot the bill.
Re: both are needed today. (Score:2)
It is entirely reasonable to subsidise energy production.
Market forces are the enemy of nuts services.
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It is reasonable to subsidize energy production. It's not reasonable to compare the costs of power sources without considering the subsidies, however.
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Just a question. Does anyone really believe anything this fucking troll says any more?
Re: both are needed today. (Score:2)
Would you like to elaborate?
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Amimojo and several others are known trolls in the anti nuclear circles. Years ago, they posted a lot of bullshit that was quicky disproven. When ever there is a nuclear thread or even nuclear mention amimojo will make a point to spread FUD in the thread.
Amimojo has made it clear the only thing that is important so her or him is a wind and solar , nuclear free future and the faster the better. When I pointed out this would kill millions of people, the user heavily implied they didn't care as long as
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Just because someone has an opinion you disagree with does not make them a troll. Frankly, your comments so far have been more trollish.
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No it doesn't but this user and several others are known trolls in this area. Doesn't matter what the discussion is about, if nuclear is even mentioned they will pop in and spread fud about the issue. It doesn't matter if they have been disproven over and over. As long as the fud get spread.
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They aren't allowed to charge French consumers market rate.
This is true, but not in the sense you mean it. EDF is not allowed to sell cheap energy to french consumers. Instead, it has to sell it cheap to european competitors, and buy it back (the same electricity) at higher rates. All that because Europe wanted to create false competitors.
In reality, French consumers do pay a lot for energy. It's just that a lot of the cost is hidden in taxation.
No, they don't pay a lot for energy. No, costs are not "hidden" in taxation. Level of taxes is about the same in Germany and France, and public services are actually slightly better in France than in Germany in general.
Re: both are needed today. (Score:2)
Renewables do not solve the exact same problem as Nuclear. They solve some of the same problems, one being power generation, but each serves two very different solution spaces.
Re: both are needed today. (Score:2)
You need something to add energy to the flywheel, i.e. base power.
Since no renewable except wave power can give that you are stuck...
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You need something to add energy to the flywheel, i.e. base power.
Since no renewable except wave power can give that you are stuck...
You realize that what you wrote there is utter nonsense, right? A flywheel is a power storage device. It's agnostic as to what source the power comes from.
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Isn't variation in power frequency an artifact of using spinning power generation in the first place? If the power is converted to DC and back to AC (or originates as DC, as with solar) doesn't it become a non-issue since frequency is the responsibility of devices like the condensers you mention?
Who gives a rodent's rear? (Score:5, Informative)
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Renewables + hydrogen is for the sake of not nuclear, whether the juice is worth the squeeze is a matter of perspective.
Re:Who gives a rodent's rear? (Score:4, Insightful)
The counterargument would be that Renewables + hydrogen has not proven it can actually work at scale, hydrogen being a pain to store and a pain to generate.
Re: Who gives a rodent's rear? (Score:2)
Renewable plus hydrogen works fine as a battery. It does not scale!
Re:Who gives a rodent's rear? (Score:5, Informative)
The goal should be reliable, low-carbon electricity, not renewables for the sake of renewables.
Cost matters and most nuclear plants are vastly expensive. You keep hearing that nuclear is now much cheaper but that's due to two slights of hand. Firstly, they make massively over-optimistic projections about running and cleanup costs, pretending that the problems that plagued previous generations of nuclear powers stations won't happen this time round. Secondly they get the state to agree to handle the costs of long term insurance, decommissioning and storage of waste, which doesn't actually end up helping electricity consumers because the money has to come from somewhere.
There's reasonably a new generation of nuclear plants coming on in large scale in China and to some extent the US. If those end up actually close to their advertised running cost then it's likely that the next generation will be worth investing in. Even now, the massive cost overruns of plants being built in many other locations such as Finland and the UK by more or less the same people show that the nuclear industry continues to lie about what the real costs are.
Re:Who gives a rodent's rear? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not The Industry(TM) causing that any more than the US Post Office is causing its budget issues. You're seeing the effects of sabotage.
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The UK government is fully behind nuclear. They pushed through two new plants, despite objections.
And yet they are still insanely expensive. Hinkley C, on an existing nuclear site so the infrastructure costs are lower and all legal issues were quickly resolved, is exceeding £33bn just to build.
The latest cost cutting measure is that Hinkley C is being allowed to skip installing a fish protection system on its water intake. The system stops fish being killed, but costs money.
There's no sabotage,
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"Wait, wait, boss, you're saying you want us to change the design we've half built again?"
"Yes."
"That's the fourth goddamn time we've taken this apart and put it back together."
"But it might po
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Cost matters and most nuclear plants are vastly expensive. You keep hearing that nuclear is now much cheaper but that's due to two slights of hand. Firstly, they make massively over-optimistic projections about running and cleanup costs, pretending that the problems that plagued previous generations of nuclear powers stations won't happen this time round. Secondly they get the state to agree to handle the costs of long term insurance, decommissioning and storage of waste, which doesn't actually end up helping electricity consumers because the money has to come from somewhere.
The reason nuclear got killed is because of opposition from the greens and fossil lobbies, not because it was expensive.
Now that the industry's been all but destroyed, the complain is that it's expensive. In comparison to what, exactly? Keep burning fossil fuels, like what everyone is doing? Suddenly these externalities aren't counted. Or renewables, which do their own slight by citing marginal costs of installing a MW of capacity and handwaving away how a grid made up of that would actually work. If you do
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I'm the UK it was very cost, not fear of atoms.
The UK tried to build some new, safer designs. They didn't work properly, they weren't built properly, and decommissioning was incredibly expensive. That's why nuclear fell out of favour in the 70s - it was just too expensive and didn't live up to the promises.
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More likely a Chinese shill but you do you.
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The thing is, I rather pay more for nuclear than be subject to arbitrary price increases and abuse by oil supply nations and companies.
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Nuclear plants are heavily regulated and required to take on long term costs like plant decommissioning and long term waste storage that "renewables" are not factoring into their costs
It was the same when coal was considered to be less expensive than nuclear, but was allowed to release mercury and uranium into the atmosphere without consequences (not to mention the vast fly ash ponds that occasionally spill into waterways.
If you take all costs into consideration, energy generation density in particular, nuc [mackinac.org]
Re: Who gives a rodent's rear? (Score:2)
This is a fallacy. Nuclear accounts for all externalities, no other method yielding base power does.
Re:Who gives a rodent's rear? (Score:4, Insightful)
Renewables can't even currently completely power the electric grid in Hawaii
Of course they can. Just because they haven't gotten there yet doesn't mean the technology can't do it. They're working on a long term plan [hawaii.gov] to convert to 100% renewable energy by 2045. It's a big project and it'll take time. But you can't interpret that as a problem with the technology, or an argument against installing the same technology in other places. That's what you're doing.
Hawaii still needs coal powered baseload generators
Wrong. The one and only coal plant in Hawaii was shut down in 2022 [wikipedia.org]. Hawaii no longer uses any coal at all.
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Renewables can't even currently completely power the electric grid in Hawaii
Of course they can. Just because they haven't gotten there yet doesn't mean the technology can't do it. They're working on a long term plan [hawaii.gov] to convert to 100% renewable energy by 2045. It's a big project and it'll take time. But you can't interpret that as a problem with the technology, or an argument against installing the same technology in other places. That's what you're doing.
No I'm not. I'm saying that you should not set the energy policy of a country/continent on promises that the tech will "work". Prove it. Saying you have the technology to fulfill the requirement and actually making it work in the real world are two different things. I know this first hand as I'm in Research and Development. Except for home storage or Tesla's grid stabilization batteries (which is all good tech), all these grid storage technologies still have not proven long term baseload capability. I know,
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I'm sure the plan is to add renewables little by little, each time checking for and finding ways to mitigate any grid instability and other unintended consequences before proceeding. At least that's how I would do it.
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If you look at the chart you've posted, you'll note that Hawaii is a bit of an exception when it comes to power production in at least one area. The chart is for sources for primary power production, not just electrical production and you'll note that the single largest item on the list by a good margin is jet fuel. There's a huge amount of jet travel in and out of Hawaii. That includes planes that are just landing there to refuel and go on their way. In many ways, it's not even reasonable to count most of
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Yes, costs do matter but your skipping over the most important thing that matters. That is uptime. The grid must be up ALL the time. Not 75%, not 99%, 100%.
Turns out we're used to a grid that's up all the time, but there are a lot of places where the grid isn't.
And, more important, it's not a law of nature that the grid has to sell electricity at the same price regardless of time.
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The grid must be up ALL the time. Not 75%, not 99%, 100%.
Except that, in reality, the grid is not up all the time. Sometimes it is down for days or weeks in some locations. That's not a desirable state of affairs, but the point is that nuclear power plants (which do not have 100% uptime themselves) don't magically guarantee a grid that will be up all the time.
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Low carbon is great, but another important and vital aspect is reduced dependency on monopolistic supply. I am talking about not being subject to OPEC arbitrary price increases and terrorism funding.
France is Blindingly Pro-Nuclear (Score:2)
Re:France is Blindingly Pro-Nuclear (Score:5, Insightful)
Germany's mindset is like: I saw a plane crash once, so we must never fly again.
"inflexible" (Score:5, Insightful)
Rainer Hinrichs-Rahlwes has a curious definition of "inflexible". Nuclear power is actually flexible - it is dispatchable, meaning you can turn it on and off when you want. You can't turn on a solar power station at night, or a wind turbine when the wind speed is low. It is not dispatchable, and it is inflexible.
This is not the first time I've seen a German energy expert in complete reality denial about nuclear power. I have had personal discussions with several German energy experts and their blanket refusal to consider nuclear energy anything other than impossible and non-existent is incredible. They don't live in the real world.
In practice they would rather sustain or even increase carbon emissions - by burning gas and coal, especially lignite - than use all available zero-carbon energy sources. Debating with these people is no use, as they do not debate rationally. Instead, they must be bypassed.
Re:"inflexible" (Score:4)
That may have referred to the economics. The huge capital costs of a nuclear plant make it very expensive to turn it off or down for even an hour longer than you have to for maintenance. When it's off, you're paying construction loans with no income. They're run as close to capacity as humanly possible.
Re: "inflexible" (Score:2)
I have studied the economics, and in all cases I see nuclear being more profitable than the next best option, natural gas.
The only problem is that it requires a very long-term investment to do so, longer than any private business would be willing to commit to.
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By inflexible they mean the ability to ramp up and down quickly. Nuclear power can do this, but the commercial plants don't operate this way for some reason.
I can see two economic reasons for this, first you need all the cash flow you can get to pay off the whopping great construction loan, second refueling needs to be planned well in advance and the first question is when to do it. If you're load following then exactly when it's going to be time to refuel is a little nebulous.
The technical reason it might
Re:"inflexible" (Score:5, Informative)
By inflexible they mean the ability to ramp up and down quickly. Nuclear power can do this, but the commercial plants don't operate this way for some reason.
False assumption.
France have been operating its nuclear plants in load-following mode [world-nuclear.org] for the last 50 years now (jump to the "Load-following with PWR nuclear plants" section).
TL;DR summary: reactors can reduce their power from 100% to 30% in 30 minutes when their fuel cycle is higher than 65%. Then they play a more moderate role until the fuel cycle reaches 90%, after which they just operate at a steady state until the next refuel (which is just around the corner when the fuel cycle is at 90% anyway). If, like France, you have 50+ reactors running at the same time, then it is just fairly simple planning to make sure you always have half your reactors that can effectively reduce or increase their power in less than 30 mins.
This actually allows France to also adjust their nuclear plants power to accomodate changes in renewable inputs to the grid.
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That's what the report is talking about.
You should really read the report, and cite your actual sources. Everything you say is pure fantasy.
I've been paid to use electricity when the French have too much of it.
Did you get a receipt at least?
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France relies on being able to export excess energy when its nuclear plants can't ramp down fast enough, and importing when they can't ramp up fast enough.
_Any_ nuclear power plant can ramp down in seconds, just by shunting steam around the turbine directly into the cooling system.
This is, of course, not very economic because you're just using reactors to heat up the air (or water) around the plant. But it can be done. But why do it when you can export the energy?
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Nuclear plant can load follow through two standard mechanisms.
They can change the reactivity of the core generally between about 100%-60% however this is only possible when the reactor is newly fuelled, as the fuel is almost spent you can't load follow quickly because it takes longer to ramp.
Secondly you can bypass the turbines, steam generators pump steam straight to the condensers. You're still burning fuel however you aren't generating power. You want to do this at times when the prices is negative.
But t
Political Reality (Score:4, Interesting)
"They don't live in the real world."
That's a little unfair (though only a little).
The politics of Germany are such, due to the power and influence of their Green Party - who are vehemently anti-nuclear, having their roots in the pan-European CND movements of the 60s & 70s - that the policy-makers have to jump through hoops to come up with plausible-sounding arguments against nuclear power, instead of admitting to an ideological objection.
France, on the other hand, has an independent nuclear weapon stockpile, so is ideologically committed to nuclear power.
Any arguments by them, for or against, are very much moot.
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The situat
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Nuclear power is inflexible in that it takes hours to go from idle to full power.
What renewables need is more electric cars equipped with V2G, and a smart grid to charge them when the sun is shining and then use them as temporary grid storage when the sun is setting and nuclear is ramping up.
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In theory you can adjust nuclear output based on demand, but there are good reasons that's rarely done in practice. First, the adjustments are very slow. Once you decrease output, it takes about 36 hours to increase it again. You can't turn it up at night and back down during the day, any more than you can for solar. Varying the power also creates stress on the reactor which shortens its life span. Given how expensive reactors are, no one wants to do that. And varying the power also lowers the overall
Re: "inflexible" (Score:2)
Let's burn brown coal.
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Your post is a bunch of misinformation lies.
Nuclear can be shut down, in less than 30 mins. This is how France is actually doing load-following with their nuclear plants [world-nuclear.org].
On the other hand, wind/solar can't be easily turned off, have grid priority in Europe (meaning other plants have to make room for them, even hydro, nuclear or biomass), and are quite often making electricity prices go into the negatives during summer days (which is bad for solar farms operators... oh wait, they are guaranteed a buying pric
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30 minute ramp down an over a day to ramp back up is not load following.
Load following is adjusting to demand in seconds or milliseconds. Being able to adjust output over a few minutes maximum, less for hydro and battery.
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30 minute ramp down an over a day to ramp back up is not load following.
It is 30 mins to go from 100% to 30%. During a day, if you need to go from 100% to 90%, you need less time. I don't know in which world you are living where countries need to go from 100% power output to 30% instantly.
And you don't need a day to ramp up, no idea where you got that idea from. Please read the report again.
Load following is adjusting to demand in seconds or milliseconds. Being able to adjust output over a few minutes maximum, less for hydro and battery.
If you had read the actual report, you would see that using nuclear in load-following mode allows for hydro to compensate quite easily for peak times, or when you need 1-2 mins reaction time
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Do you know how nuclear plants operate?
The nuclear core heats water in a closed system loop, which is kept from boiling with high pressure
That water uses a heat exchanger to heat other water to boiling steam that is used to drive a turbine to produce electricity in a separate closed loop
Yet another water source is used to cool that steam back to water to be reheated and run through the turbine ad infinitum
It may take a while to turn off the actual nuclear reactor, BUT the output from the turbine can be turn
Of all the stupid debates (Score:3, Insightful)
Nuclear is, for all practical intents and purposes, a renewable source of energy. The anti-nuclear idiots should be used as reactor shielding. Wind and solar are great too. At this point, anti-renewable idiots can all shove their heads up their own asses.
Some places will focus on solar/wind, some places will go nuclear. Different regions will need to coordinate somehow. FFS get on with the business of decarbonizing cause the world is clearly barreling towards a climate disaster.
We’ve spent the last 4 decades ignoring and denying the science on this issue. Future generations are going to study this whole sorry mess as an object lesson in what happens when humanity willfully ignores science.
Predicting the future has a poor success rate (Score:2)
They could just as easily blame the implementation of uncoordinated small fixes over the past 50 years like reducing particulates as bringing the whole house of cards down. You just don't know now.
Re:Of all the stupid debates (Score:4, Insightful)
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It would be dump if it were like this. But power trade statistics for Germany show net profits. It also exports more to France than it imports and at similar prices.
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Re: Of all the stupid debates (Score:2)
Excess. That's a good thing. Why do you think Italy and Germany have issues?
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I wouldn't exactly call nuclear a renewable source of energy, but it is one that is at least far cleaner than almost any others save solar and wind, and even there, with the way these things are produced, it may be debated.
But it for sure is at the very least the second best option for our power needs behind renewables (solar/wind/hydro/youknowthedrill). Yes, we need to dump the waste somewhere, but even for that, a technical solution exists. We only need to finally crack the political NIMBY problem behind
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Propaganda vs reality (Score:3)
In 2022, France produced more renewable energy for its final consumption than Germany (20.7% vs 20.4%) [twitter.com]. All that while Germany used coal for 30% of its electricity, while in France coal was used for 0.6%.
Go figure.
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Not just coal. Lignite. The WORST kind of coal you could possibly use.
But nuke is evil, don't use nuke! Remember Fukushima, it could happen in Bavaria too... wait, what sea is remotely close to it again?
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Maybe taking into account that the tweet is from the actual energy minister in France would help.
And if you don't like that, it can give you pointers to find the same facts from other reliable [umweltbundesamt.de] sources [euractiv.com].
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2022, let's see. That was the year when France had a major shortage of nuclear energy and where Southern Germany had to run all gas power plants at max to compensate, so that France doesn't get black? That 2022?
The 2022 you are describing happened in your imagination.
What indeed really happened [euractiv.com] is that in 2022, France needed to consume ~445TWh of electricity. They were not able to produce ~16TWh of it. That's... oh wait, is it ~3% of their electricity needs? And you are saying that for those mere 16TWh (which were needed in July, August and September by the way), Germany had to run their gas power plants all year round, and to reopen coal plants, and to extract a shitload of lignite? Do you really believe in what
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Yes, it was a huge problem. But keep in mind that other countries have been relying on France to keep providing them with cheap, low-carbon electricity, for the past 50 years. What? It was not enough time for them to follow the same strategy? They had to keep emitting CO2 from their coal/gas plants like Germany did?
Anyway, I understand that you want to focus on the 3 months of 2022 when France actually asked its neighbors to help, the same as France itself has been doing for the past 50 years (minus 3 month
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Wind and solar need all the scale they can get? (Score:2)
What does that even mean? They "need" all the scale they can get? There is plenty of room for growth of wind and solar, even if France does double down on nuclear. It's a big, big world.
Every source of energy production has its own down sides. It's better to dilute those negative impacts by deploying many kinds of "green" energy production, rather than focusing on one single option.
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Intermittent energy generation is only suitable for dispatchable loads. ie loads which are not time critical. Think pumped Hydro off peak water heating or chlorinating your swimming pool.
The only way to make it work to form a large part of the grid capacity is to back it with a second dispatchable power generation system. To date only gas has been deployed at scale to make this model work and gas is a dirty CO2 generating source of power. For every MW of renewables deployed 1.2MW of gas generation has been
Re: (Score:2)
I don't see how scale helps here. If you scale up wind and solar, you still have a dip of about 50% from peak to trough. For Texas, ERCOT has some nice real-time graphs that show this: https://www.ercot.com/ [ercot.com]
It's not scale that is needed, it's alternative power generation methods, or storage.
Nuclear is not an "enemy" of renewable (Score:2)
Fossil fuel is.
Nuclear can coexist with renewable energies because they both contribute to a lower CO2 balance. I am quite positive that renewable is the better choice, but don't let perfect be the enemy of good.
Make it the enemy of bad.
Baseload is the lowest demand (Score:2)
Here are your choices (Score:2)
1. Increase the amount of energy you produce and do so without fossil fuels.
2. Not have enough energy for basic needs and industry and suffer a severe decline in your economy.
Because using fossil fuels is not going to be an option very quickly.
800 French "scientists"? (Score:2)
In mid-2023, 800 French scientists warned against the risks of the country's new nuclear programme, pointing to unresolved questions of radioactive waste management, which remain largely unresolved in most of the EU
Nuclear waste management is NOT an unsolved problem. France is one of the few countries that recycles nuclear waste, and even without it, it is not a big problem because there is not that much of it and it is easy to contain. Nuclear power is not without problems (no energy production is) but waste is not a real one.
So who are these "scientists". Probably not scientists who know about the subject and express their professional opinion. It is more like using their status as scientists to give more weight to
It is backwards. (Score:2)
Nuclear is CLEAN energy. Sadly, the same GD far lefties that stopped new nuclear reactor production in the 70s/80s are the ones DIRECTLY responsible for pushing the west to emit loads more GHG than what we should have. Why? Because had they been educated and not been a bunch of Luddites, the west would NOT have built the number of Coal/Nat gas plants that we have built. Instead, all of the west's electricity's emissions would all be
Question designed to misdriect. (Score:2)
Nuclear is not and never has been "in the way" of other alleged solutions.
A few years after leaving college I got over blaming the 'rich powerful corporations' because I finally realized that without a cesspool full of crooked politicians the corporations have little sway over national policy.
As long a politicians can get bribes (they like to call them contributions) from competing $$ rich corporations then the politicians will make sure the
Nuclear energy is the Green solution (Score:2)
Wind and Solar are only suitable for dispatchable loads or discretionary loads. For example if you have a big hot water system and power is super cheap you can heat the water, when power is expensive you can switch it off.
It's not suitable for meeting constant loads such as powering a grid 24x7, for that you need something that is not intermittent. Nuclear fits this role.
The problem for Wind and Solar is that the cost of nuclear is almost all in the construction cost, they have very low running costs, so th
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
take into account the "waste per GW of energy" generated.
On that, the ONLY truly safe for the environment is nuclear. That's a fact.
What massive quantities of hazardous waste do you imagine that wind turbines generate?
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What mass quantities of production waste, transportation waste, unable-to-recicle waste, etc. does produce wind turbines per the GW of energy generated in their live VS the waste (which is not a problem today) of a nuclear per GW generated?
You reaaaaaaaaaally need to look for those numbers. Seriously.
Re: (Score:2)
It's not that bad, and it would be even better if we used modern designs that just use more of the power in the radioactive material instead of relying on 1950 technology.
Now it's too late for that, as battery technology will probably make nuclear irrelevant in the time it would take to actually build new nuclear reactors, but the damage was already been done.
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Nuclear waste only is more of a "problem" because it's more visible. You don't exactly see the waste of fossil fuel because it gets blown in the atmosphere and CO2 is an odorless, colorless gas. You don't see it, so it doesn't exist.
We do have a solution for nuclear waste. We actually have a solution for better nuclear reactors that produce less waste that can even be recycled to a considerable degree. And there is plenty of old coal and salt mines that we could use to bunker the remaining waste safely for
Re: (Score:3)
We have a *theoretical* solution for nuclear waste. It's only theoretical because when it comes to solutions, politics matter. If politics prevent you from using a solution, it's not really a solution, is it!
And suppose your sold domes are your answer. Salt domes *usually* last for thousands of years. But earthquakes happen. Sometimes they collapse. https://64parishes.org/entry/b... [64parishes.org] Sometimes they explode. https://abc13.com/brenham-expl... [abc13.com] When it comes to nuclear waste, you need a solution that can be cou
Re: (Score:2)
On what basis?
France can and does buy uranium on the International market from places like Australia and Canada.
France can also reprocess uranium from spent fuel which is slightly more expensive but still provides fuel.
While solar generates cheap power during the day it doesn't work at night when there is the greatest demand. Maybe you could buy some cobalt from those African countries which apparently will no longer want to trade with Europe?