A Boring Dystopia

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US slows plans to retire coal plants because of AI power usage (www.ft.com)

submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/17993293

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

As the article you linked also states, this feature is largely theoretical and for operational and economic reasons utility companies do not use it unless forced to. In France specifically, the high percentage of nuclear power makes it look like you can regulate it quite well, but that is an artifact of looking at total numbers that does not transfer to other grid situations where nuclear is only a small percentage of the overall production capacity. Generally speaking, nuclear and renewables are a bad match, and if you have to chose between them, renewables clearly win on both economics and scalability.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Sure, highly theorical:

When combining the different capabilities, power variations of up to 10,000 MW could be absorbed by German NPPs in 2010. In France, with an average of 2 reactors out of 3 available for load variations, the overall power adjustment capacity of the nuclear fleet equates to 21,000 MW (i.e. equivalent to the output of 21 reactors) in less than 30 minutes.

Of course they don't use it unless force to, as the article states it's cheaper to ramp down fossil fuels than nuclear. And this is a benefit, not a problem. But its also cheaper to ramp down nuclear than renewables, and this is also a benefit.

Nuclear and renewables are a better match than fossil and renewables, and right now we are doing fossil and renewables. We've been decades asking for no nuclear in the hopes of getting only renewables and we've gotten fossil and renewables.