The military coup in Niger has raised concerns about uranium mining in the country by the French group Orano, and the consequences for France's energy independence.
@MattMastodon@Sodis Only about 40% of demand can be directly met from volatiles (wind and solar), i. e. no intermediate storage. The rest has to come from »backup« or »storage« or however you call it.
Current storage tech is still almost 100% pumped hydro. Batteries have not made a real dent there yet. But pumped hydro is not enough by far, even potentially, and batteries have a long way to go to be even as scalable as pumped hydro.
So, backup. The only clean, scalable backup is nuclear.
@MattMastodon@Sodis Careful about labels. »Renewables« often includes biomass (which is just fast-track fossil tbh) and hydro (which is not so volatile). I’m talking about wind and solar specifically (volatiles).
40% is roughly the mean capacity factor of a good mix of volatiles. This is what you can directly feed to the user from the windmill/panel, without storage. You can expand a bit by massive overbuilding, but you can’t overbuild your way out of no wind at night.
Mostly we don’t use energy at night. In the UK there is a peak in the morning. In the UK we mainly use gas to fill this. We will have to find a storage solution as nuclear can’t be upscale that quickly. Gas was meant to be used just to fill the gaps but it’s quickly become a staple.
We need to find a way of smoothing the graph. Energy storage is the best option in the short term.
@MattMastodon@Sodis Again: that demand is lower at night is already factored in. Roughly 40% of demand can be directly met by volatile sources. You may think nuclear is slow to deploy, but it’s still much faster than anything that doesn’t exist.
The gap is 60%. Gas is a fossil fuel. Varying use is mostly a euphemism. If you hurt industry, you won’t have the industry to build clean energy sources.
And let’s say we treble wind power and solar and add battery and hydro storage we can upscale our energy mix to meet demand. And continue to reduce demand.
The amazing thing about this is for most of the time we will have a superabundance of energy. So energy on most days will be crazy cheap.
Our industries can use the energy at superlow cost. We could have free energy days where charging your car or washing is free.
I struggling to find anywhere that convincingly shows #nuclear is cheap compared to #renewables. There’s references to cheap ‘running cost’ but this probably doesn’t include construction and disposal costs. The main costs tbh.
And then there is the fact that uranium comes from #Russia or #Niger.
@MattMastodon@Sodis If you include construction and disposal (and transport and so on…) it is called lifecycle costs. First image shows that per energy produced (sorry german, »AKW neu« is new-built nuclear).
Uranium comes from all over the world. Second image shows the situation a few years ago. Niger is place 5, Russia place 7.
The cost is £106/MWh in 2021 for Hinkley Point, the #nuclear powerstations in the UK but it’s indexed linked (goes up with inflation) so. Is higher now, and only starts when the reactor goes live in 2028 (estimated) .
The reactor was going to cost £23,000,000,000 but this has jumped to £33,000,000,000 and there is a suggestion (Reuters) that it will jump again to nearer £40,000,000,000.
To me this seems expensive #energy when #renewables can cost £50/MWh. At the moment.
@MattMastodon @Sodis Only about 40% of demand can be directly met from volatiles (wind and solar), i. e. no intermediate storage. The rest has to come from »backup« or »storage« or however you call it.
Current storage tech is still almost 100% pumped hydro. Batteries have not made a real dent there yet. But pumped hydro is not enough by far, even potentially, and batteries have a long way to go to be even as scalable as pumped hydro.
So, backup. The only clean, scalable backup is nuclear.
@Ardubal @Sodis
We have to be careful. Different counties have very differnt energy make ups. I live in the UK where nuclear is
I don’t understand where you got 40% from. This seems arbutrary.
In the UK Nuclear is 15% and renewables about 40% (over the last year) we mainly burn gas for the rest.
@MattMastodon @Sodis Careful about labels. »Renewables« often includes biomass (which is just fast-track fossil tbh) and hydro (which is not so volatile). I’m talking about wind and solar specifically (volatiles).
40% is roughly the mean capacity factor of a good mix of volatiles. This is what you can directly feed to the user from the windmill/panel, without storage. You can expand a bit by massive overbuilding, but you can’t overbuild your way out of no wind at night.
@Ardubal @Sodis
Mostly we don’t use energy at night. In the UK there is a peak in the morning. In the UK we mainly use gas to fill this. We will have to find a storage solution as nuclear can’t be upscale that quickly. Gas was meant to be used just to fill the gaps but it’s quickly become a staple.
We need to find a way of smoothing the graph. Energy storage is the best option in the short term.
Or we can vary use.
#nuclear #renewables
@MattMastodon @Sodis Again: that demand is lower at night is already factored in. Roughly 40% of demand can be directly met by volatile sources. You may think nuclear is slow to deploy, but it’s still much faster than anything that doesn’t exist.
The gap is 60%. Gas is a fossil fuel. Varying use is mostly a euphemism. If you hurt industry, you won’t have the industry to build clean energy sources.
@Ardubal @Sodis
Wind power is hardly new technology.
And let’s say we treble wind power and solar and add battery and hydro storage we can upscale our energy mix to meet demand. And continue to reduce demand.
The amazing thing about this is for most of the time we will have a superabundance of energy. So energy on most days will be crazy cheap.
Our industries can use the energy at superlow cost. We could have free energy days where charging your car or washing is free.
#renewables #nuclear
@Ardubal @Sodis
I struggling to find anywhere that convincingly shows #nuclear is cheap compared to #renewables. There’s references to cheap ‘running cost’ but this probably doesn’t include construction and disposal costs. The main costs tbh.
And then there is the fact that uranium comes from #Russia or #Niger.
@MattMastodon @Sodis If you include construction and disposal (and transport and so on…) it is called lifecycle costs. First image shows that per energy produced (sorry german, »AKW neu« is new-built nuclear).
Uranium comes from all over the world. Second image shows the situation a few years ago. Niger is place 5, Russia place 7.
@Ardubal @Sodis
The cost is £106/MWh in 2021 for Hinkley Point, the #nuclear powerstations in the UK but it’s indexed linked (goes up with inflation) so. Is higher now, and only starts when the reactor goes live in 2028 (estimated) .
The reactor was going to cost £23,000,000,000 but this has jumped to £33,000,000,000 and there is a suggestion (Reuters) that it will jump again to nearer £40,000,000,000.
To me this seems expensive #energy when #renewables can cost £50/MWh. At the moment.