this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2024
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We’re talking 11 years for 7 “small” reactors. The first decade just to establish a business, but no real difference in the overall picture. How many years, decades after that to make a noticeable difference?
Meanwhile we’re building out more power generation in renewables every year. Renewables are already well developed, can be deployed quickly, and are already scaling up, renewables make a difference NOW.
Renewables cannot provide a reliable base load. Not unless you can have your solar panels in space where the sun always shines, we figure out tidal power, or you're lucky in terms of geography and either hydroelectric or geothermal work for you.
Solar power doesn't produce energy at night, wind doesn't always blow. You know the drill.
You completely sidestepped the entire crux of my comment.
We need a base load of energy to fill that gap, because batteries currently can't, and likely won't be for decades. Here are the options we have available:
nuclear power, which produces a waste that while trivial to store far away from people, will be radioactive for hundreds of years.
fossil fuels, which cause massive damage not only to the local environment, but to the planet, and cleanup is effectively impossible.
we put society on unpredictable energy curfews. At night the population can't use much energy. When there's a drop in wind or solar production, we cut people's energy off. Both political parties must commit wholeheartedly to this in order to make it viable. Our lives would become worse, but we'd not have either of the above problems.
Of those 3 options, I'd rather go with nuclear. What's your choice?
More renewables.
We’re at the beginnings of having useful levels of storage and can keep building out renewables while we develop storage. At the current rates of adoption, we’ll need true grid storage in about ten years.
However, note that one option for “grid” storage is a battery in every home. Another is a battery in every vehicle. Neither is the best option but those are options we already know and just need to scale up
Ok, you've added more solar panels and wind turbines.
It's nighttime. There isn't much wind. An extremely common thing to happen I'm sure you'll agree.
There now isn't enough power, places have constant blackouts, electricity prices skyrocket because demand far outstrips supply.
Grid storage large enough to replace fossil fuels + nuclear is far, far, far, far, far, far further than 10 years off.
I'll ask again:
Nuclear base load that assists renewables
Continued fossil fuels for multiple decades that assists renewables, and hope that we can reverse some of the damage done in the meantime through some kind of carbon capture tech
regular blackouts, energy rationing, but 100% renewable
What do you choose? Saying that you'll magic up some batteries in a capacity that currently isn't possible isn't an answer.
I want 100% renewables too, but it's currently not feasible. Our choice is between having a fossil fuel base load or a nuclear base load. Other options aren't available yet.
And here’s the magic choice …… “time of use metering”. As we electrify everything and add “smart” controls, we can be much more dynamic with time of use metering to adjust the load.
When the sun doesn’t shine at night, already has much lower electrical load than daytime. Early analog efforts at time of use metering tried to shift more load to the night so “base load” wouldn’t have to adjust, and max load wouldn’t be as high
Now we can develop smart time of use metering to shift more load to “when the sun shines”. I’m not aware of anything to quantify this so let me just make shit up: if the load “when the sun doesn’t shine” is half what it is when solar is producing, that’s a crap load of grid storage or base load that magically never has to exist
Right but how about actually addressing the question?
What about base load then. It's all well and good building shit tons of solar panels and wind farms but sometimes you need energy and the sun isn't shining and it isn't windy. What do you do then?
That's why we need base load and I'd rather the base load came from nuclear than from fossil fuels, as I'm sure you would too, but you seem to be anti-nuclear as well, so what do you want?
I'm so sick of you eco warrior types with absolutely no understanding of the problem. It's not as if the internet doesn't exist it's not as if you couldn't educate yourself if you wanted to. People are out here trying to educate you all about it, and you cope by ignoring them.
Base load? Oh you mean the kind of power only the industry needs but wouldn't be able to pay for if it wouldn't be shifted towards the public? Don't try to fool people by just not talking about this little fact.
Solar and small scale power buffering could easily be decentralized for the publics overall power need, including charging and utilizing cars as buffers. A private person isn't "the base load"... but we all pay for "the base load".
Base load err... educate yourself nuclear boy.
Apart from that: Your arguments didn't change, they are still wrong, that's why "we" stopped listening. You reproduce Industry talking points without checking. (e.g. "bAsE loAD") like an angry little LLM.
Who needs the power needs to pay for it. Including the waste. I don't see why I should clean up Google's micro nuclear waste.
This reply is both unintelligible, and unhinged. You also seem to be berating someone for not knowing what baseload is, while simultaneously showing (I think, it’s hard to tell honestly) that you have no idea what it means.
I don't berate. He is right, but again I don't see how the containment of nuclear waste, Google is producing for LLM training for their profits, should be a public concern. Even on a global scale, "base load" is the continuous need of power .... so mostly industries. You don't need Nuclear Power Plants to run street lights and Hospitals, you need them to run steel mills and manufacturing plants.
My point is exactly: Why should the industrial need for reliable power be priced on our bill without a fair share on the profits for society? And this isn't even touching the impossibility of putting a price tag on something that has to be stored for 1000ns of years.
Unhinged? I just replied in the same tone. He didn't even reply to any of my points. Come clear, what's your point?
You need to be on pills.
Base load is the amount of charge that you need in the system to deal with just basic usage. This includes powering your computer so you can post incoherent rents on the internet. Something I assume you think is very important.
Without base load when it's night and not windy all the power goes out, I assume you would think that was inconvenient even though you are not a mega corporation.
Now rather than trying to deflect answer the question how do we supply fundamental power when the sources are renewable are not operating and don't say we can store it in batteries because we can't not at that capacity.
That's not completely wrong but in parts. I can easily buffer solar energy to cover 80% of my energy needs. You have to understand that most of the base load isn't "our" power consumption. It's mostly commercial.
And again. Google training LLMs is not Base-Load and nether deflection. It's the subject of the Article!
You are totally ignoring their arguments. Not every place can do wind or solar or hydro. Like it’s simply not an option.
Time doesn’t care. Neither does the rate of climate change.