I'm so tired of all these people that seem to be firmly convinced that we can't do nuclear and any other option.
Why can't we do both? We run nuclear for the base load that will always be there and then supplement it with wind and solar and what not. We know nuclear works we know it is stable. My understanding is that a lot of the battery and solar technology needs to be replace every few decades or so and generally involves mining operations that are highly toxic and produce many emissions.
Not too mention that we have to construct elaborate massive sprawling battery infrastructure to supplement a grid that depends heavily on wind and solar in order to answer the simple questions of "what about when it is nighttime or cloudy, or the wind isn't blowing?"
I don't get why so many people are fighting against nuclear. Either we need to do everything possible to reduce carbon emissions or not. Nuclear does not rely on some battery technology that is "almost there", and that is "showing promise". It is a proven technology that works and has a reliable answer.
So in short nuclear for the base, solar and wind for the supplement. There is no reason we can't do both.
P.S. Given the massive amount of government money being handed out for "green technologies" there's part of me that wonders about how honest this objection to nuclear and pushing of solar and wind is.
I dont know why you're being downvoted, you're correct.
We need base load capacity to replace thermal fossil fuel generation, it's not negotiable if you want the lights to work reliably 24 hours a day, no matter the weather conditions. Be it nuclear or more hydro - or we reconfigure to only run hydro when we need base load - either way it must be there.
I dont think we can reach zero fossil fuels, because of the need for peaking generation - but we can get pretty close though. Having to fire up a dozen gas turbines during severe weather conditions seems like a small price to pay if the other 99% of the time we could go without any fossil fuels at all.
There's another issue with firing up dozens of gas turbines: they don't spin up instantly. Hawaii (and California) are already starting to run into this issue, where peak use follows sunset. So even if you don't need it, you have to keep some generators going so they can ramp up fast enough when solar drops off and peak use starts. Otherwise you get outages.
With at most a ~30 min dispatch time, I dont know why a turbine wouldn't be adequate - what the turbines can't do, I would think a battery storage should be able to do. I suspect we have the same issue in Texas too.
What gets me is people propsing battery storage as a replacement for turbine peaking plants - which seems like a poor mix. I wish more places could build pumped storage, but it's hard to build.
I'm still a firm believer in nuclear though, with a mix of nuclear, renewables (solar, hydro, wind), batteries, and gas turbines, we should be able to solve this.
Why can't we do both? We run nuclear for the base load that will always be there and then supplement it with wind and solar and what not. We know nuclear works we know it is stable. My understanding is that a lot of the battery and solar technology needs to be replace every few decades or so and generally involves mining operations that are highly toxic and produce many emissions.
Not too mention that we have to construct elaborate massive sprawling battery infrastructure to supplement a grid that depends heavily on wind and solar in order to answer the simple questions of "what about when it is nighttime or cloudy, or the wind isn't blowing?"
I don't get why so many people are fighting against nuclear. Either we need to do everything possible to reduce carbon emissions or not. Nuclear does not rely on some battery technology that is "almost there", and that is "showing promise". It is a proven technology that works and has a reliable answer.
So in short nuclear for the base, solar and wind for the supplement. There is no reason we can't do both.
P.S. Given the massive amount of government money being handed out for "green technologies" there's part of me that wonders about how honest this objection to nuclear and pushing of solar and wind is.