this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2023
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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They don't provide different things, they both provide electricity. Nuclear is only really suited to base load, whereas renewables can be spun up and down to match varying demand - however renewables are also more than capable of covering base load, because it's all just electricity.

The only thing nuclear provides that renewables don't is grid stability. Nuclear turbines have large rotating masses, when loads are switched on and off they keep spinning the same speed, helping to maintain voltage and frequency. Meanwhile renewables are almost all run via inverters, which use feedback loops to chase an ideal voltage and frequency, but that gives them an inherent latency when dealing with changes on the network. However, there are other ways of providing grid stability.

It's not a windmill. It doesn't mill anything. The technical term is Wind Turbine Generator (WTG), but usually they're called wind turbines or just turbines. A group of turbines make up a wind farm.

Land occupied is not much of a concern when most renewables (and nuclear, for that matter) tend to be installed away from population centres. It feels like you're grasping for reasons now.

Suffice it to say, I work in the electrical industry, and this isn't the first report that's come out saying renewables are cheaper, better value and quicker to build and get us to net zero when compared to nuclear. That isn't to say nuclear isn't important and shouldn't be built, just that nuclear shouldn't be a priority in pursuit of phasing out fossil fuels. At the end of the day, demand will only go up, so building a lot of renewables before building nuclear won't exactly be going to waste. We'll need all of it.