Comment on Anon has a power fantasy
Zagorath@aussie.zone 5 months agoI won’t comment on what’s true worldwide, but at least in Australia, a report from 2014, a decade ago, found that it would be more economical to invest fully in renewables rather than starting up a nuclear industry.
The notable difference between Australia and some other countries like America is that at the moment, we have no nuclear generators. So we have no capacity in terms of expertise in designing, building, operating, and maintaining nuclear generators whatsoever, and would be starting an industry from scratch, which obviously will be more expensive than merely scaling up an existing industry in places that have it.
The other problem Australia has is we have too little need for power. We couldn’t build five nuclear plants to allow one at a time to be stopped for maintenance
We could probably use two, but then lose half our baseload supply for maintenance
That 2014 plan was for 100% renewable energy by 2020-something wasn’t it?
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
Yeah, just getting nuclear waste disposal and whatnot started up would be very expensive, despite having a ton of space to put said waste, since there are likely all kinds of regulations around moving such waste between states and territories.
That said, Australia surely needs some electric backbone for overnight use, and the goto solution for renewables is batteries, which are quite expensive at scale.
Zagorath@aussie.zone 5 months ago
So, what you’re talking about here is essentially the concept of “baseload power”, which is a very common talking point in anti-renewables conversation, including by well-meaning people who have simply come to accept it because of how often it gets mentioned in the media and in online conversations.
But it turns out that we have known for over a decade that a mix of different renewable technologies do not need any base-load power stations to operate reliably.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
From your article:
So basically the concentrated solar w/ thermal storage acts as a battery. I’m interested to know what the costs look like (is that the salt reactor thing I’ve heard about). And if you have lots of hydro available, then yeah, you can probably get away with it, and may even be able to pump water so the hydro station can act as a battery. However, hydro isn’t practical in many areas, and moving electricity long distances may be too lossy.
I’m interested in the development of nuclear microreactors, which can be transported where they’re needed. I think they could potentially replace hydro in areas where it’s not available. So as areas transition to more renewables, these could operate as a backup in case simulations don’t match reality.
I’d love to go 100% renewable, I just don’t think that’s feasible at the moment. But I could absolutely be wrong, I may need to read up on the latest energy storage options.
psud@aussie.zone 5 months ago
Rubbish dump methane to electricity is cheap and effective. The Canberra mugga lane tip has had a pilot plant, not sure if it’s still running
Hydro on the mainland is pretty much just Snowy Hydro. There was a project from a former government to make that pumped hydro. I don’t think it has yet been finished. I don’t know whether the project has been cancelled
SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca 5 months ago
You can extract hydrogen from water with electricity. You can store hydrogen in tanks. Burn hydrogen to produce electricity similar to natural gas, except without any carbon in the equation.