Danes Are Finally Going Nuclear. They Have To, Because of All Their Renewables (telegraph.co.uk) 109
"The Danish government plans to evaluate the prospect of beginning a nuclear power programme," reports the Telegraph, noting that this week Denmark lifted a nuclear power ban imposed 40 years ago.
Unlike its neighbours in Sweden and Germany, Denmark has never had a civil nuclear power programme. It has only ever had three small research reactors, the last of which closed in 2001. Most of the renewed interest in nuclear seen around the world stems from the expected growth in electricity demand from AI data centres, but Denmark is different. The Danes are concerned about possible blackouts similar to the one that struck Iberia recently. Like Spain and Portugal, Denmark is heavily dependent on weather-based renewable energy which is not very compatible with the way power grids operate... ["The spinning turbines found in fossil-fuelled energy systems provide inertia and act as a shock absorber to stabilise the grid during sudden changes in supply or demand," explains a diagram in the article, while solar and wind energy provide no inertia.]
The Danish government is worried about how it will continue to decarbonise its power grid if it closes all of its fossil fuel generators leaving minimal inertia. There are only three realistic routes to decarbonisation that maintain physical inertia on the grid: hydropower, geothermal energy and nuclear. Hydro and geothermal depend on geographic and geological features that not every country possesses. While renewable energy proponents argue that new types of inverters could provide synthetic inertia, trials have so far not been particularly successful and there are economic challenges that are difficult to resolve.
Denmark is realising that in the absence of large-scale hydroelectric or geothermal energy, it may have little choice other than to re-visit nuclear power if it is to maintain a stable, low carbon electricity grid.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the news.
The Danish government is worried about how it will continue to decarbonise its power grid if it closes all of its fossil fuel generators leaving minimal inertia. There are only three realistic routes to decarbonisation that maintain physical inertia on the grid: hydropower, geothermal energy and nuclear. Hydro and geothermal depend on geographic and geological features that not every country possesses. While renewable energy proponents argue that new types of inverters could provide synthetic inertia, trials have so far not been particularly successful and there are economic challenges that are difficult to resolve.
Denmark is realising that in the absence of large-scale hydroelectric or geothermal energy, it may have little choice other than to re-visit nuclear power if it is to maintain a stable, low carbon electricity grid.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the news.
This is nonsensical. (Score:5, Interesting)
Nuclear relies on operating with a very high capacity factor (over 90%) in order to achieve its already terrible economics. It doesn't "ramp". If you don't ramp, then you can't compensate for shortfalls from alternatives. And if you want to slash the capacity factor to be able to ramp - the mean peaking plant has a capacity factor of 15% - then you're 6x'ing your already incredibly high cost.
For nuclear to help out with renewables you need sizable storage. But that also helps renewables in general.
This is not how you do peaking. With peaking you want your plant's capital cost to be as *cheap* as possible - even if with high operating costs when in use - so that you can afford to leave it idle the vast majority of the time. Nuclear is the precise opposite of this - very high capital costs, low operating costs.
Re:This is nonsensical. (Score:5, Interesting)
ALSO: if we want to talk about "blackouts similar to the one that struck Iberia recently" - everyone is obsessively talking about renewables over that, but almost nobody is talking about the fact that nuclear was at record lows [ketanjoshi.co] during that time.
It's just like when Texas had its big cold-weather power shortfalls, and everyone wanted to talk about reduced wind generation, while nobody wanted to talk about the failure of Texas' natural gas system in the same cold snap which was much more impactful to the overall electricity picture. People have their designated boogeyman that they want to attack, and anything that complicates that narrative must be written off.
Re:This is nonsensical. (Score:5, Informative)
The way you do a high renewables grid is:
1) Overbuild renewables (they're dirt cheap, and just keep getting cheaper). Produce well more than the nominal demand, potentially even 2-4x.
2) Both wind and solar (even if the location is more optimal for one or the other). Solar is most during the day when the wind is calmest. Wind is weak during highs while solar is strong; solar is weak during lows when wind is strong.
3) Add storage. The optimal amount depends on storage cost vs. wind and solar cost. Solar benefits greatly from overnight storage, but benefits fall rapidly as you approach and then pass 12h. While wind benefits more slowly from increased storage but keeps on benefiting significantly from multiday storage.
Depending on the location and the degree of overbuilding, the above can get you to 90% to well over 99%. An amount within reach of using waste as fuel for your peaking to make up the remainder. For the vast majority of the year, you have a sizable power surplus, available to any industry that can curtail for dirt-cheap.
On top of this:
4) Long-distance links, esp. HVDC. HVDC also helps stabilize frequencies to avoid the sort of Iberian failure that occurred, since it can convert to whatever frequency the grid needs. Long-distance links in general let you timeshift supply and demand curves, as well as to even out supply shortages.
5) Other types of renewables. Preexisting hydro can be commonly uprated with new turbine houses for a more cyclic rather than sustained flow rate (river health generally benefits from more variable flow rates as well), for mid to long-term storage. Enhanced geothermal (deep hot dry rock - the type you can do basically anywhere) is finally becoming cost competitive (Fervo is now scaling to 400MW at their plant in Utah). Wave isn't yet, but the benefits of having a small amount on the grid may justify the cost. Etc.
With a high renewables grid, you ideally don't entirely mothball all your existing fossil plants - you operate them in a standby mode (with enough battery buffer to allow them to ramp). The choice of which to keep depends on which ones' infrastructure (not just the plant, but also the fuel supply) is cheapest to maintain. Pollution is minimal because they run so rarely. Ideally they're converted to run on waste, as - again - you need so little supplemental energy to make up for the rare shortfalls, that waste actually becomes viable.
If building new peaking plants rather than using preexisting fossil plants for peaking, then again, minimizing capital cost is key. You're not building fancy, over-60%-efficient combined cycle plants. You're making the cheapest OCGTs you can.
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The aim is net zero by 2055, fossil backup soon won't be an option then.
Continent spanning dunkelflautes means you need a lot of storage or multi-continent spanning HVDC grids capable of feeding power to an entire continent from a different one. Even if the HVDC grid is physically possible, it has geopolitical problems. You want a couple weeks of stockpile to not be immediately dependent on foreign nations that far away.
Nuclear, renewable with massive hydrogen storage, power beaming from orbit ... those are
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I'm not sure you understand what the word "net" means. They're already planning on offsetting/sequestration to offset e.g. long-distance air travel. And waste** combustion will continue to be a thing regardless; it's a question of time-shifting it to when it's needed.
Also, this is a classic violation of the Pareto Principle [wikipedia.org]. If you eliminate 90-99+% of emissions, you've solved the problem. Making ridiculously expensive means to try t
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The thing is, having backup fuel generators are cheap, and if the operation is a minor fraction of time, even expensive e-fuels/biofuels are acceptable.
So if you want a 100% renewable grid, you also can do it. Through Power to Fuel technology for the last 10% fraction of consumption.
That's said, while fossil fuels are available, and lots of things require electrification, the money spend on electrification will reduce CO2/fossil fuel consumption faster than focus on the remaining 5-10% of the electricity pr
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You are arguing (quite well) for a diversity of energy supplies.
Unfortunately - in case you haven't heard - diversity is bad. Bigly bad.
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Re:This is nonsensical. (Score:4, Insightful)
And the outage occured in secondes. Nuclear can never ever be a factor there.
The point they are making is that nuclear can be a factor there because, like any fossil-fuel power station nuclear heats water into steam to power turbines and those turbines have inertia that can bridge short gaps in supply vs. demand i.e. the increased draw will start to slow the turbine extracting more energy that the steam is adding but that's ok for a few seconds due to the stored kinetic energy of the turbine itself.
That being said if your only concern is bridging a few seconds then purpose built flywheels can probably do that quite easily and for far less cost than a nuclear power station so I do not think it is a good reason to build nuclear. You build nuclear to ensure that you have enough on-demand baseload that runs for extended periods - hours or days - when there is not enough renewable power.
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purpose built flywheels can probably do that quite easily
Known as "synchronous condensers". I believe some companies have installed them in decommissioned thermal power plants. Nothing we have can match the instantaneous power output capacity of a whacking great chunk of iron moving fast for a comparable price.
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I was more referring to the a) point, keep it off, except when emergency. And it is not useful for that either. It is just so hard to justify nuclear power anymore.
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everyone is obsessively talking about renewables over that
No one should be talking anything about that because the investigation into the root cause and recommendations haven't been concluded. That said I suspect the Danes are talking far more generically.
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We don't have a full analysis for the blackout in Spain yet, but it appears to have been completely unrelated to renewables.
When blackouts happen, renewables are key to getting the grid up and running again. Fossil and nuclear plants need power to start up, which comes from other plants that didn't go down. Hydro is a popular choice because it only needs some generators to work the gates, so is ideal for bootstrapping fossil/nuclear.
Yep, all sources of electricity failed in Texas (Score:2)
Natural gas is still our biggest source of electricity* and heat in Texas, and it's production dropped nearly in half during the freeze:
Regional natural gas production (January 2020-February 2021) [eia.gov]
Re: This is nonsensical. (Score:2)
That article has a weird take. They clearly demonstrate with data that Spain's renewable energy can't keep the grid stable without nuclear. But throughout they take the stance that we should be questioning the value of nuclear. Like, I can't even argue with the guy. He so clearly provides evidence for a viewpoint he doesn't hold.
Re: This is nonsensical. (Score:2)
You cannot ramp nuclear up and down at will in seconds. It will never be reliable in mitigating sudden power loss, or exorbitantly expensive.
Even building batteries or just overbuilding solar and wind is a cheaper strategy than going nuclear at this point.
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With peaking you want your plant's capital cost to be as *cheap* as possible - even if with high operating costs when in use - so that you can afford to leave it idle the vast majority of the time. Nuclear is the precise opposite of this - very high capital costs, low operating costs.
Which is why nukes are for base load, not peaking. Source of power aside, Denmark wants to help ensure grid stability as power sources change but the fundamental grid architecture doesn't. Not a bad idea; even if it is only an interim fix as technology and the grid evolve over time.
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Renewables don't need "base load", they need peaking.
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Renewables don't need "base load", they need peaking.
However, you can run the nuke as base load for grid stability and peak with renewables. Of course, a few spinning generators won't solve the problem but give you some precious milliseconds to shed non-critical loads to avoid a bigger problem.
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Problem is that nuclear is the most expensive option, and prone to sudden and unpredictable failures. If you want stability, add spinning mass and distribute everything as much as possible, don't centralize it.
Ireland has done it, they have flywheels installed at old fossil plants.
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Renwables (wind and solar) are literally the opposite of peaking. They are entirely nondispatchable.
And I'll repeat: renewables do not need base load. Renewables provide incredibly cheap, but unstable, power. They need peaking. Which is not nuclear.
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You can not use solar or wind for balancing because you need something you can turn on when needed, i.e. gas or storage. But with enough solar (as Europe now has) it makes not much sense to have nuclear on the grid. Renewables will easily cover all demand in good times. Base load plants make no economic sense anymore so nuclear is basically out.
Re: This is nonsensical. (Score:2)
Not only that, but every time someone has built a nuclear plant in the last few decades it became an expensive monster, going fast and far over the budget. This leads to huge cost per Kw/h over the projected life span, which is already optimistic in and of itself.
Nuclear is thoroughly dead, unless politically resurrected, until fusion becomes viable.
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"Base load" is a false concept. The term originated early on when power plants were coal fired; It's not the minimum amount of power that must be supplied to satisfy the grid, it's the minimum amount of demand there must be to keep the power plant operational, because if you shut a coal plant off you're not turning it back on for a week or more. The use of the term these days is entirely misdirection to suppress renewable energy.
The concept you want to work with, and is being explained to you by others, is
Needs vs Wants (Score:2)
From my research on the subject, BOTH can assist in maintaining grid stability.
With renewables, we have roughly three categories of power source:
Base load: These are the plants that produce power on a very consistent basis, without much variance.
Peaking: These plants can produce power on demand with relative quickness but generally aren't desirable to run on a general basis.
Variable: These power sources produce power on their own schedule and thus are not good for baseload because they produce or not sep
Re:This is nonsensical. (Score:4, Interesting)
It is not an economical solution. Having blackouts is a more economical solution than building nuclear power plants to prevent them.
France. (Score:2)
Yeah. Just trying explaining to France that their nuclear energy production shouldn't realistically exist.
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Yeah, I know they don't like to hear that nuclear has suffered from a negative learning curve (the more we've learned, the more expensive it's gotten to build nuclear plants, not vice versa) and that it was subsidized by low capital costs through EDF, and that because of the long lead times with nuclear and the need for scale, they got their forecasts wrong and overbuilt, leading to a temporary electric
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It doesn't "ramp". If you don't ramp, then you can't compensate for shortfalls from alternatives.
I don't know if this was explained in the fine article as I was presented with a paywall but as was explained in many other analyses on the matter the issue is a lack of "inertia". The large spinning turbines in thermal power plants (coal, natural gas, nuclear fission, and more) have an inherent flywheel effect on maintaining a stable frequency on the electrical grid. As loads are added and removed from the grid there's changes to the current flow, and this is seen on the electrical grid as minute changes
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> So, it's not about ramping up and down as most people understand the issue, it is about smoothing over the teeny tiny variations in the grid in a way that only a spinning turbine can do.
So you suggest that building a whole nuclear plant is worthwhile because it comes with some heavy turbines that can smooth the grid?
Standalone flywheels can do this better than turbines for a fraction of the cost.
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When a government--any government--announces they are doing something for a stated reason, I tend not to believe the stated reason. In this case, if what they wanted was to guarantee a steady flow of electricity by creating a supply of 'on-demand' energy sources that can ramp up when there are disruptions in the grid due to weather, they'd be looking at things like natural gas turbines (basically jet engines attached to power generators which can spin up and down at a moment's notice).
Not nuclear.
So I'd be
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Unless there has been a breakthrough in on-demand nuclear that I haven't seen...
You don't know about the TerraPower Natrium reactor? I believe it's been featured on Slashdot before.
https://www.ans.org/news/2025-... [ans.org]
Natrium is an advanced 345-MWe reactor that has liquid sodium as a coolant, improved fuel utilization, enhanced safety features, and an integrated energy storage system, allowing for a brief power output boost to 500-MWe if needed for grid resiliency.
If this works, and I don't know why it would not, then the trope of nuclear power being unable to adjust to changes in grid demand is gone. The thermal energy storage system is nearly identical to solar thermal systems, so it's already seen real world testing. The turbines in these systems operate much like natural gas turbines already in use, the difference being that th
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There's a lot there to hang your hat on, especially for something not slated for completion until 2030. [terrapower.com]
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So everyone is going to try to become the king of AI because if you are then you're basically the king of the world. It's going to be a level of wealth the human species has never seen concentrated in the hands of approximately 10 to 20,000 people out of 8 billion.
It's the single greatest gold rush in human history.
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To be fair I'm not going to mince word: I'd rather a couple larger nuclear plants than a one or two dozen smaller fossil fuel plants that can "ramp up" economically. Burning fossil fuels is, in general, short-sighted
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Exactly.
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Indeed. The only advantages nuclear power has are 1) it makes some assholes filthy rich and 2) it is needed for maintenance of nuclear weapons. Without that, it would just be a failed historic tech that would be barely even remembered by now.
This is a *good* problem to have (Score:1)
Denmark reached nearly 90% renewable electricity generation in 2024. That, plus the Iberia issue, is why it’s now considering this. Would be great if lots of other countries were at the same renewables penetration and having to face this challenge.
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Note that Denmark could not do it alone. Denmark relies heavily on water power from Norway and Sweden.
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It's a mutual dependence, though. Denmark exports a lot of wind power. Trading Danish wind for Norwegian hydro, French nuclear and Spanish solar is how we get a reliable carbon free grid.
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Europe has a deregulated market for electricity, which flows over national borders. Both Norway and Sweden usually produce more than they consume, but sometime import. And while Norway produces most electricity from hydro, it also gets a bit from wind and Sweden produces about 40% from hydro and significant amounts from nuclear and wind.
Whats wrong with batteries? (Score:2)
Some places use large batteries and inverters for load leveling and keeping the frequency stable at 50Hz
(Oz comes to mind)
(Yes EUrope has AC at 50Hz)
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Load yes, but synchronizing a DC battery to a frequency (including phase!) is a different thing.
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A trivial thing ... emulating some spinning metal in a generator really isn't hard.
Upto peak power a grid scale inverter can supply and absorb power at any relative phase you want, they are bidirectional, it's just software.
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I'm not saying it's impossible or unfeasible, but it has to be taken care off. It's effort, it's part of a device that can fail or break. There's something nice that the spinning metal takes care of that automatically. Physics has much less bugs than software.
But I agree that there are probably easier ways to cope with that problem than building a nuclear power plant.
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How much inertia do they need? The UK was doing some of this with giant flywheels.
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Except the inverters failed to stabilize the grid. Instead they started chasing the transient and induced an oscillation that brought down the system. Think of a feedback loop when you get the microphone too close to the speaker.
A 500 ton flywheel connected to a synchronous motor generator would do a lot of good to calm a twitchy grid. I looked up the equipment at the local hydroelectric dam. The rotors are 470 tons each, and they have ten of them.
Also keep in mind that starting an induction motor takes six
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> A trivial thing ... emulating some spinning metal in a generator really isn't hard.
It actually is, especially when you're dealing with mega- to gigawatts of energy. You're not just needing to match the frequency, you need to emulate the physical inertia that resists change in frequency on the sub-second scale. It will take at least half a cycle (10ms @ 50Hz) to detect an anomaly at best, and another half cycle of try and fix it. By that point it's too late and the whole thing becomes unstable with thou
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Load yes, but synchronizing a DC battery to a frequency (including phase!) is a different thing.
Actually you are misunderstanding grid dynamics (as are the people who wrote TFS). You need a synchronization to start such a system, and that synchronization requires two things: a timing source, and a base level of inertia to maintain stability as load is slowly brought online. The former is a simple technical issue that we simply haven't implemented, the latter is just a case of size.
Unlike TFS's point that synthetic inertia can't compensate for physical inertia, reality doesn't work like that. Physical
Re: Whats wrong with batteries? (Score:2)
There is nothing wrong with batteries. As long as you can actually get someone to buy them. There are too many people (some in this thread) with PV panels who were promised by the salesman that "you can just use the grid as your battery." Well, not anymore. We are running into a classic tragedy of the commons situation.
It should be a legal requirement that all solar (and wind) installations be equipped with storage of some type. At some capacity set by the local utility/system operator. Or you can just tak
Who will pay (Score:5, Interesting)
For the last week, here in Denmark, I have had to PAY to get rid of my solar electricity, had it not been because I disconnected my panels before driving to work.
I produce 30-38kWh pr day this time of year if the sun is shining And the price was negative and i have to pay a transmission tariff for every kWh sold. I reconnected my panels when returning home from work and the actual productions was only about 6kWh instead of at least 30kWh. This weekend the prices also were negative although it was cloudy. I was home so I charged my car and did not disconnect the panels.
So who can make money from creating green energy when you are not getting paid for the production in summer when they produce the majority of the electricity?
I was promised to be able to use the grid as a battery, by having my meter running "backwards", which was why I invested in solar panels back in 2011. At that time the cost price of the installation was triple of what it was just a few years later. It didn't take the government more than a year to walk back that promise, on which I had based my calculation for the next 10 years.
Re:Who will pay (Score:5, Interesting)
You should change your solar panel angles so that you get more morning and evening sun and less during the day. You get less total energy, but you get it during the time when price is not negative. This diagram explains it perhaps better:
https://commons.m.wikimedia.or... [wikimedia.org]
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That is why "efficiency" is such nonsense when it comes to energy. Our first windmills were grinding grain, while wind is the most terrible form of energy to do that. But we did it, because wind was available.
Likewise, if you build an off-grid system, you optimize your solar panels and collectors for the winter, because you need most energy then and get the days are short. But the energy boys will try to convince you that you will have to put them on the summer angles because it is more "efficient". No, it
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That's probably because the "energy boys" aren't used to optimizing for off-grid solutions, they're used to "net metering" where maximizing kWh generation without regard for time of generation is ideal.
Yes, if you're going off-grid, you need power available when you need power, which means enough panels and batteries to provide the power when required. Especially if you're further north and thus demand is higher in the winter, while generation is at the least.
I have it relatively easy in Florida - I actual
Re: Who will pay (Score:2)
In Alaska most go solar as an added safety net, rather than as a full solution for electricity.
On the other hand, if you've got the land for ground based solar, it's absolutely still cost effective in the long run to deploy off-grid solar in Alaska (at least where people live).
(I was looking into off-grid homesteading in Alaska; couldn't get past the extra money spend on building a foundation safe for the grinding landscape, but the solar still came out as worth it).
Re:Who will pay (Score:4, Interesting)
The general solution to the problem would be grid level energy storage where you can use cheap electricity to store energy. I think we need at least 2 kind of storages. One is battery for cheap and fast hour-to-hour price changes. At most 3 days. The other is chemical storage, which most likely means hydrogen generation. The latter would allow us to store electricity during the summer and use it during the winter. These systems cost a lot of money and the round trip efficiency is at most 75%, but storage expansions themselves are dirt cheap, so you can easily store energy for 3 months or even 3 years. (but if you store for years, you might want to convert hydrogen to hydrocarbons, which means max 50% round trip).
There are batteries already in the grid and more will likely come. There are also hydrogen plants planned:
https://www.energiequelle.fi/n... [energiequelle.fi]
So I am pretty sure the situation is going to change, but it is hard to estimate how exactly as some are building more renewables while others build batteries and we have several countries in Europe connected to each other, affecting prices.
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I would not mind that at all. I don't see it happening, even if the politicians agrees on it, it would probably take 20 years to get it built and that is assuming the next politicians in power wont stop the project before it is getting started.
We are sadly not going to get nuclear energy here ever.
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Do you have any "export avoidance" features in your house? Disconnecting the panels is one, although rather an extreme one.
For example, do you have an "immersion diverter" that overheats your hot water tank by about 10C, thus consuming quite a lot of solar that would otherwise get exported, but then when you take a shower, you'll use less of the hotter water (so will need less from your heat pump to put it back again).
Other options include battery storage (so charge during the day, empty them during the nig
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It is a good point, my installation is old and so all it can do is activate a control line if production is over a certain watt. I would probably need a new inverter with CT clamps on the power into the house so it can monitor that.
I am contemplating replacing the inverter with a newer one. there are solutions now that can mitigate that problem. Batteries also seems to be coming down in price. as well are systems that can monitor the price. it seems like a lot of things are happening in that market right no
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This is - as usual - misleading. The negative prices affect only a small amount of time while the costs are distributed over all. The income is certainly not dominated by subsidies. In Germany there also no subsidies but feed-in tariffs and for new plants there is no support when the prices are negative anymore. Finally, the lights "do not go out" when there is an oversupply. When the grid can not handle it (which is not the same thing as negative price) then then the plants are simply downregulated.
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What do you make in the winter? More generally, do the winds howling off the North Sea keep the national lights on?
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Ouch, sounds like a reason to get a battery storage system with a smart operation feature that is aware of current prices.
Might even be better than getting a solar system itself - just have the battery charge when prices go negative, return to grid when they go positive.
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Have you looked at what connectivity options your inverter has? You may be able to program it to not feed the grid when the price is negative. I don't know what options you have in Denmark, but in the UK data about energy prices is published a day in advance and there is plenty of open source software you can run on something like a Raspberry Pi to read it and control your inverter.
As well as avoiding negative pricing for people on that kind of tariff, you can do things like look at weather predictions to e
Nuclear generation (Score:2)
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Is there really a waste problem? What if we just recycle it than store the remaining stuff for few hundred years?
https://www.researchgate.net/p... [researchgate.net]
I don't know total cost, but I think it is something like 1300 dollars per kg (about 45MWh or 2250 dollars with 0.05 dollars per kWh), about double of what direct disposal would cost.
So I don't think that this is unsolvable problem, it is not just economical to recycle it, so we would rather leave in under ground for millions of years.
Re: Nuclear generation (Score:2)
The waste problem is overblown. On site storage is (relatively) cheap and easy. What was a big problem was transporting the waste all over the country to stockpile it all in one place. The actual amount of waste produced is completely manageable. It's dwarfed by the amount of waste produced in building a power plant, whether nuclear or otherwise.
It's the infrastructure (Score:1)
Entire article is misinformation (Score:4, Informative)
This is the kind of article I would expect in Pravda in the "good" old days of the Soviet Union.
These are some of the lies in the article:
The "ban" never existed, it was just a decision not to plan for nuclear power. Lifting the "ban" will not allow anyone to build nuclear reactors; that requires a separate legal framework.
The Danish grid has solved the inertia problem by buying commercial off-the-shelf synchronous compensators, at a far lower cost than implementing nuclear power.
The "ban" is not being lifted yet, the government is merely ordering an analysis of whether it makes sense to remove it.
Nuclear power is not being considered because it might help grid stability but because some people / politicians are worried about the fluctuating prices of electricity.
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Parent is correct.
In fact, I'd go so far to say that the real reason for the decision to be revisited probably doesn't actually have anything to do with building nuclear, but simply that the juicy EU subsidies for research and development of new energy tech is affected by this decision. And it so happens to be that Denmark has two nuclear SMR startups that would really love to get their hands on some of that money. They've been lobbying for years.
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Well, the nuclear assholes lie, lie and then lie some more. What do you expect? Suddenly reporting the truth? Come on.
Voice of reason (Score:2, Insightful)
To me this is the voice of reason; an intelligent, realistic approach, regardless of the political climate around nuclear at the moment and some (loud) people being always unhappy with it.
Personally, I am also getting fed up with so many wind turbines popping up everywhere and destroying peaceful, rural landscape. Perhaps we should have gone full nuclear from the start.
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Going nuclear from the start was a good option, but do remember when you do to be outraged at large open cut uranium mines disturbing the peaceful rural landscape as well won't you.
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That is because you are abysmally stupid and disconnected from reality.
France (Score:2)
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France does not export much to Germany. It is mostly renewables which undercut the prices of the remaining coal plants in Germany, i.e. this year Germany net-imported so far ca 5.4 TWh from Denmark (no nuclear) and 3.2 TWh from Neitherlands (almost no nuclear), 2.7 TWh from Norway (no nuclear) and 2.8 TWh from France which cause some imports (production from coal is well below capacity in Germany). It would also not help much in terms of energy security, because sometimes France relies on imports itself.
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Nice bunch of direct lies you have there. HAVE YOU NO SHAME???
Editors fail basic english again. (Score:5, Insightful)
No the Danes are not "Finally Going Nuclear". The Danes are investigating a proposal, the ultimate decision of which will be decided at some point, but they are very VERY far from "going nuclear".
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Indeed. But the asshole nuclear fanbois cannot grasp that nuclear is a very bad idea and hence they push likes like they just did here.
Why add a turbine for inertia? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
For solar, a capacitor or battery of any technology can act the same as inertia. Such storage is already a priority.
The Last Living Tetraethyl Lead Lobbyist (Score:2)
"Danes Are Finally Going Nuclear. They Have To, Because of All Their Renewables."
REDNECK BAR PATRON 1: Hey, you, let's fight!
REDNECK BAR PATRON 2: Them's fightin' words!
All the experts in here! (Score:2)
I am sure Denmark wishes it could have as many amazing experts as the ones commenting here! Because surely Denmark made this decision on a whim and without involving anyone who knows anything.
Never forget: if it flies in the face of your preferred narrative, it clearly must be corruption and stupidity!
A nation like Denmark surely cannot be capable of making macro decisions! Not like you, the all knowing comment experts!
Who writes this crappy propaganda? (Score:2)
Full of lies, misdirection and innuendo. Assholes.
Denmark is heavily dependent on weather-based rene (Score:2)
Denmark is heavily dependent on weather-linked renewable energy.
Having the weather as a renewable energy base would be a great achievement.
Like harvesting point-zero energy.
I'll make a deal with you (Score:1, Interesting)
I'll make a deal with you, and all the other rabid proponents of nuclear energy.
You will all sign a document, legally binding in your jurisdiction, in which you will declare that you and your family will exchange your entire property with the property of a family located in the future exclusion zone of an eventual nuclear accident that will render thousands of square miles inhabitable for hundreds of years. If you truly believe what you always claim that a Chernobyl/Fukushima level event is virtually imposs
I'll make a deal with you (Score:1, Troll)
You stop your whining, and I'll continue to support measures including nuclear power so we can stop global warming and prevent our planet being rendered uninhabitable.
Re: (Score:1)
I'll continue to support measures including nuclear power so we can stop global warming
Nuclear is worthless for opposing AGW, just like your comments are worthless in every way.
Re: (Score:1, Troll)
Re: (Score:2)
So you wouldn't sign such a document. Got it. Pretty much what I suspected anyway.
Quite vocal about pushing something, but unwilling to accept the responsibility of negative impacts of said thing, how improbable they may be.
Basically just another form of NIMBY, i.e. hypocricy.
Oh, hai! (Score:2)
I'll make a deal with {...} all the other rabid proponents of nuclear energy.
Oh, hai!
(Note: rabid proponent of nukes AND renewables solar/wind/hydro)
You will all sign a document, legally binding in your jurisdiction, in which you will declare that you and your family will exchange your entire property with the property of a family located in the future exclusion zone of an eventual nuclear accident that will render thousands of square miles inhabitable for hundreds of years.
I don't need to relocate, my government is already issuing us iodine tabs.
We are already living in the (very) general vicinity of nuke power plants.
If you truly believe what you always claim that a Chernobyl/Fukushima level event is virtually impossible nowadays, then you should have no problem signing such a document.
Impossible? No.
Unfathomly low probability? Yes.
Have knowledge about security been vastly improved? Yes.
(Think about air travel safety for another example of some tech that is acutally much safer that what could think from a few hyper-documented black swan events).
Also, remember that the
Re: (Score:2)
Think about air travel safety for another example of some tech that is acutally much safer that what could think from a few hyper-documented black swan events
That's an interesting argument, except for one detail: I can choose not to use air travel. And if I choose to use air travel, i do so knowingly and accept the consequences. My choice involves my life only, and no-one else's.
Nobody in Chernobyl chose to have their entire life ripped away from them.
BTW Do you seriously think that taking a few iodine tablets will allow you to continue living in a radiation-contaminated environement and raise your family there for decades to come without adverse effects ?
Re: (Score:1)
Just as a reminder to everyone; nuclear causes around 1-2 orders of magnitude more deaths per produced terawatt-hour of energy than the usual fossil fuel suspects (oil, coal, natural gas), and this does not exclude large-scale nuclear accidents (or in the case of Chernobyl, a downright disaster). I'd live next to a nuclear power plant every time than a coal power plant.
Now if a country has to choose between nuclear and staying on fossile, then the choice should be nuclear every time. Eventually we may have
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I think you got your more/less deaths swapped. I say this because you later say that you'd rather live next to a nuclear plant than a coal one.
Nuclear causes 1-2 orders of magnitude fewer deaths per TWh than oil/coal/natural gas. The death rate from nuclear, including major accidents but not deliberate action like dropping bombs, is so low as to compete with solar power and wind turbines.
It's lower than the coal power accident rate, much less the estimated deaths from air pollution, even with controls.
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Just as a reminder to everyone; nuclear causes around 1-2 orders of magnitude more deaths per produced terawatt-hour of energy than the usual fossil fuel suspects (oil, coal, natural gas), and this does not exclude large-scale nuclear accidents (or in the case of Chernobyl, a downright disaster).
Now there's a claim that could benefit from a citation.
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I assume you mean "less". I somehow doubt these numbers for deaths by TWh for nuclear (at least I found the sources I have seen not entirely convincing), although I do believe nuclear is better than coal. I am also would rather live next to nuclear plant than a coal plant. But there is no choice between nuclear and coal. Coal and gas can economically be used to complement renewables while nuclear simply can not. In terms storage, the prices are dropping.
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Nope. The article is full of lies. As are you. Please go die.