Fission and renewables are fundamentally incompatible technologies. Nuclear plants are comically expensive. The only hope you can possibly have of making them profitable is to build giant power plants that run at full capacity 24/7. It’s physically possible to throttle a nuclear reactor, but it is not economically possible to do so. (Small modular reactors have been tried and failed dozens of times.)
Renewables however have to partner with throttleable power sources. You need a power source that can run its output up and down to cover the swings in renewables. This is possible with fossil fuels, it’s not possible with fission.
The best example of this? The Bath County Pumped Storage Station.. It’s one if not the largest pumped storage facilities in the US. And yet, it was built…40 years ago?
We normally think of energy storage being built for solar and wind. But this energy storage was actually built to complement fission plants. The area has a lot of nuclear plants around it. The idea was that with this facility, they could keep the reactors running full power 24/7, and use the storage station to store the excess power at night.
This dramatically illustrates why fission and solar/wind pair so poorly. If you wanted to build a grid out of 100% solar/wind or 100% fission, either would require extensive energy storage solutions. Nuclear needs to be variable but it’s stuck in a fixed state. Solar/wind would like to be fixed but are stuck in variable. Either requires energy storage to build a grid off them.
This is why Germany keeping its fission plants wouldn’t have resulted in much decrease in fossil fuel use. Keeping the fission plants would have simply meant less renewables instead. They are not complementary technologies; they are competitive technologies.
I love that you took the time to type this. it must be the 487,329th time this has been written on the internet, and still it will need to be typed time and time again. (though this is a very good specimen, well written and reasoned)
But… Doesn’t the graph show a phase out of nuclear while also reducing fossil fuels? Pretty great accomplishment.
It does. But, keeping nuclear while increasing renewables would have resulted in a near elimination of fossil fuels.
That doesn’t make any sense.
Fission and renewables are fundamentally incompatible technologies. Nuclear plants are comically expensive. The only hope you can possibly have of making them profitable is to build giant power plants that run at full capacity 24/7. It’s physically possible to throttle a nuclear reactor, but it is not economically possible to do so. (Small modular reactors have been tried and failed dozens of times.)
Renewables however have to partner with throttleable power sources. You need a power source that can run its output up and down to cover the swings in renewables. This is possible with fossil fuels, it’s not possible with fission.
The best example of this? The Bath County Pumped Storage Station.. It’s one if not the largest pumped storage facilities in the US. And yet, it was built…40 years ago?
We normally think of energy storage being built for solar and wind. But this energy storage was actually built to complement fission plants. The area has a lot of nuclear plants around it. The idea was that with this facility, they could keep the reactors running full power 24/7, and use the storage station to store the excess power at night.
This dramatically illustrates why fission and solar/wind pair so poorly. If you wanted to build a grid out of 100% solar/wind or 100% fission, either would require extensive energy storage solutions. Nuclear needs to be variable but it’s stuck in a fixed state. Solar/wind would like to be fixed but are stuck in variable. Either requires energy storage to build a grid off them.
This is why Germany keeping its fission plants wouldn’t have resulted in much decrease in fossil fuel use. Keeping the fission plants would have simply meant less renewables instead. They are not complementary technologies; they are competitive technologies.
More important. Nuclear is a way of centralizing. Government pays the bill investment. That’s why you see so many ads for it and useful idiots.
I love that you took the time to type this. it must be the 487,329th time this has been written on the internet, and still it will need to be typed time and time again. (though this is a very good specimen, well written and reasoned)