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this post was submitted on 05 Mar 2024
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Unpopular Opinion
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Peak-load scaling. The major advantage that fossil fuel generators have is that you can spin them up faster to react to higher demand. You can't do that with solar or wind, but you can with nuclear.
If we had grid-scale storage solutions, dealing with peak load would be easier but it's still more cost effective to build pumped hydro storage than large battery arrays. Most electric grids have to produce electricity on-demand which means they have to be highly responsive.
We don't have good grid-scale storage yet. We need demand-responsive energy production. Fission is better than burning coal.
That's why I said renewables and storage. There are lots of storage technologies such as pumped hydro and various kinds of battery that can react very quickly to increased demand. You categorically cannot do that with nuclear, where did you learn this?
Firstly, nuclear needs to run 24/7 as it's not economically feasible to do anything else given how much these things cost. Secondly, you're still heating water to create steam to drive turbines to generate electricity. All of that takes time to ramp up and means that nuclear is not used to generate in response to increased demand.
This is not correct.
A Brief Survey of Load-Following Capabilities in Modern Nuclear Power Plants
It's true that load-following is mostly not done with nuclear in the US, but this is policy/common practice/habit, not a technical limitation of nuclear power plants.
Also, I mentioned pumped hydro storage to point out specifically that battery technology really isn't effective enough yet. It still doesn't scale well, it's too expensive for large grids.
thanks for sharing this!
hilarious to see the other guy doubling down even after you cited an actual source.
It is, you just proved it yourself:
"typical ramps are kept below 1.5%/min."
Compare that with batteries or pumped hydro.
That's plenty fast enough for a power grid.
1.5% of 900MW is 13.5MW. That's plenty of power output scaling per minute.
I think you're getting peaker plants, e.g gas fired confused with load following.
Nuclear plants are not used as peaker plants. you incorrectly stated that they are.
It's a shame that you're being voted down here, even though your points are actually more on the factual side. Well, that's probably the fate of those who "dare" to say something against nuclear. Even if everyone else demonstrably doesn't have a clue about the subject: They're still bashing it. It's just good that downvotes on Lemmy don't really matter.
Yes, but your assertion that renewable is cheaper completely ignored the cost of grid scale energy storage suitable to remove fossil fuel generation.
No, it's cheaper than new nuclear with storage included.
Your statement disagrees with what I could turn up on duckduckgo. Can you provide your sources, I'm not a subject matter expert.
Sure:
"Later this month the LA Board of Water and Power Commissioners is expected to approve a 25-year contract that will serve 7 percent of the city's electricity demand at 1.997¢/kwh for solar energy and 1.3¢ for power from batteries. ... Conventional nuclear often benefits from optimistic estimates in the range of 12¢/kwh."
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2019/07/01/new-solar--battery-price-crushes-fossil-fuels-buries-nuclear/?sh=1e2355a25971
I mean, it's speculation. Current estimated completion is November this year, and the battery power price was already raised to 4c in 2020 estimated https://www.capdyn.com/news/capital-dynamics-and-8minute-solar-energy-partner-on-breakthrough-400mwac-eland/
This would still be cheaper than nuclear. But it's not a true comparison. I am asking the cost to replace fossil generation. Which means some degrees of over provisioning and redundancy. The bank of America paints a very different picture in its 2023 report (https://advisoranalyst.com/2023/05/11/bofa-the-nuclear-necessity.html/) but I hardly trust them.
Either way your evidence from anecdote makes it clear you have as little understanding as I do. So I am still none the wiser if solar + generation is a solution today that makes nuclear irrelevant. If it's not we can't just keep burning coal till it is though. People have been saying for 30 years let's just use renewables. But the world would look very different today if we had transition to nuclear energy back then.