Hacker News Reader

Comment by pfdietz | Hacker News Reader

> The one thing that low carbon grids around the world share is high portion of nuclear (or hydro, which you can't build unless it naturally exists).

This is an historical artifact. When that generating capacity was built, nuclear was the alternative to fossil fuels. It isn't today; renewables are now cheaper and faster to install.

Your argument can be seen as a way to ignore the cost decline of renewables without at first glance doing so.

(As you say, there are hydro-dominated grids with no nuclear, for example Costa Rica, which gets 98% of its electrical energy from renewables.)

View on HN

I was responding to the thread, which is comparing nuclear to natural gas.

Comparing to renewables is a different story - it can be done but it's much more complex (not dispatchable, seasonally variable) but certainly renewables makes sense in some or many places, (and in all places for a portion of the supply). I'm all in favour as long as it is actually done with the intent of getting to zero CO2, and doesn't just stall when it gets to the more difficult part of the transition. So many places get to 50% annual generation as renewable and throw up their hands about the remainder and leave it on coal/oil/natural gas

> I was responding to the thread, which is comparing nuclear to natural gas.

It's comparing nuclear to alternatives, one of which is natural gas. Others are renewables. One cannot make or justify a decision on nuclear without considering all the alternatives.

Weather dependent renewables (wind, solar) are not an alternative to nuclear, even when they are perceived in this way by the public.

From point of view of an electrical grid operator only wind/solar+fossil are alternative to nuclear, if you want to maintain stable electric grid without blackout or rolling blackouts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_blackout

> Weather dependent renewables (wind, solar) are not an alternative to nuclear, even when they are perceived in this way by the public.

This is a common misconception. The reality is that coupled with storage in a cost-optimized way renewables are no more expensive than nuclear for providing 365/24/7 power and likely considerably cheaper.

https://model.energy/

> This is a common misconception.

I should have clarified it more precisely:

Weather dependent renewables (wind, solar) without storage are not an alternative to nuclear.

Now we can discuss more precisely the kinds of storage: pumped hydro, battery storage, H2 storage, thermal energy storage, the costs and space and material needs of each kind of storage.

> https://model.energy/

This energy model is not 100% renewables, Combined cycle gas turbine with CO2 capture is also included in the mix.

There are basically two kinds of storage needed: a sort term, high efficiency storage, and a longer term low-capex storage. For example, batteries for the former, and either e-fuels like hydrogen or low capex thermal for the latter.

This optimizes cost because different properties of the storage drive cost in the two cases. For the first, there are thousands of charge-discharge cycles, so high round trip efficiency pays off. For the second, there are many fewer such cycles, so efficiency has a much lower payoff; instead the name of the game is minimizing capex.

In practice the second will not be installed until later in decarbonization, especially if the storage is being used to counter rare dark-calm periods when neither wind nor solar are available for a prolonged period. But it can be done, and so little of the total energy flow would go through in that case that high per-kWh costs for that small fraction can be tolerated.

Anyway, your clarification destroys the argument that was being made that nuclear is needed.

The original argument was that renewables are alternative to nuclear:

> It's comparing nuclear to alternatives, one of which is natural gas. Others are renewables. One cannot make or justify a decision on nuclear without considering all the alternatives.

Renewables (solar, wind) alone are not alternative to nuclear, without energy storage. This additional energy storage can be: short term energy storage, long term energy storage, or fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are solar energy stored in ancient times.

China is currently building many new coal plants as an backup for solar and wind power plants.

Germany is building new gas power plants, in future possible running on H2.

https://themunicheye.com/germany-approves-new-gas-power-plan...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com