Hacker News Reader

Actually there can be a year without a wind - see low winds in Europe in 2021

There actually have been many months without more than half of nuclear reactors in France in 2022 - beginning 2023. And in France there are not enough different energy sources to compensate.

https://www.france24.com/en/france/20220825-france-prolongs-...

Taking down such reactors is a periodically routine for maintenance. The question is only how fast you can bring them up again (especially in case of serious repair needs).

But that can be easily rectified by building cooling towers, instead of using river for cooling. What are you going to do with wind not blowing?

> easily

That can be easily rectified by building energy conservation facilities for wind (and other renewables) instead of halting wind generators.

But your point about French NPs is technicality which can be rectified. Time of low wind can't be rectified unless we are able to control the weather.

> But your point about French NPs is technicality which can be rectified.

No, you cannot avoid using electricity few months in summer to have electricity for the rest time. And you cannot double the number of extremely costly NPs to have one half online while another half is being maintained/repaired.

"Low" is a far cry from "no".

Reply on news.ycombinator.com