> This is shortsighted because [...] electricity renewables are cheaper than nuclear

This is an oversimplification - Renewables are cheaper than nuclear, but they are also less reliable than nuclear in the sense that when the wind stops blowing, power stops being generated. Also if you include the cost of energy storage to survive a week or two without substantial wind, suddenly it's not the cheaper anymore.

A mixed nuclear + renewables grid would reduce the total cost because nuclear can provide a stable base load which isn't affected by seasonality. Modern plants can also ramp up/down to some extent to balance the overall system.

That's why you need an energy mix rather than just putting all your eggs in a single source.

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adrianN 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Either you build enough nuclear to cover 95% of peak demand and essentially only run it a few weeks a year (because most of the time you have plenty of renewable supply) for terrible ROI or you need storage and peaker plants anyway. Nuclear energy is mostly interesting for cross subsidizing a military nuclear program by keeping relevant skills in domestic supply.

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hdgvhicv 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

What good is a “base load” when the problem is peak demand. You’re saying nuclear gets to take the easy stuff and another industry can worry about peaker plants.

I suspect you need far ledd in peaker capacity - both GW and GWh - with a 100% wind than 100% nuclear if you spend the same amount on wind and nuclear.

	▲	Closi an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I'm just going on the fact that most energy experts say a diversified mix is what you usually want - although my lay assumption would be that if you have a portion of your energy need covered by a stable base load, you need less batteries per wind turbine etc and it lowers overall energy risk. e.g. lets pick two overly-simplified hypothetical scenarios where you can have a 50/50 nuclear/wind mix, or 100% wind mix. And then lets say in a shortage scenario you can: - Suppress demand / demand shift (say you can reduce/shift demand 10% hypothetically) - Import energy, up to 20% of your total requirement In this simple scenario, in a 100% wind scenario, you would need to cover 60% of your energy need with batteries (every 1% of wind needs 0.6% of batteries), but in the 50/50 mix scenario the 50% of wind only needs to cover 10% with batteries (i.e. every 1% of wind needs 0.2% of batteries) In reality there will be other things, like you might also have burst-gas power etc. I'm not saying the numbers above are correct - just trying to show in theory that a mix / base load can still help reduce the level of batteries/storage required and make the energy mix more economic.

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Melatonic 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

For civilian use I believe this has proven unnecessary (assuming mix of wind, solar, etc) plus battery and other storage

Still seems like a worthwhile pursuit though

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DoctorOetker 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

nuclear energy still causes a lot of prompt heating

other forms of renewables could generate electricity while cooling the planet.

a super chimney (perhaps suspended with balloons) piercing the tropopause and carrying either air in open or closed loop fashion, or a "refrigerant" (not necessarily a harmful one, could just be moist air, or any other medium of thermal exchange, like a gravity assisted heat siphon) in a closed loop could generate power while cooling the planet, it would also be base load given the large temperature difference between surface level and tropopause (which persists day and night, summer and winter). Obviously this can also be used to desalinate sea water by freeze desalination.

as soon as such technology takes off and multiple blocs make use of such technology, they will probably even get into arguments about how long or what fraction of the time each nation state is allowed to generate power this way (arguing it was our Western excessive CO2 consumption to which we have to thank this excess heat availability, and India countering that we should take into account their proper share of excess CO2 due to the underground coal mines that have been burning uncontrollably for decades on end, etc...) to the point of nation states attacking each others superchimneys.

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TheOtherHobbes 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

If you invest in battery and storage tech you'll get reliable storage long before the first "baseload nukes" start contributing to the grid.

Storage tech has been criminally underfunded and under-researched. There are many, many options. But because of poor investment decisions and lobbying from the usual suspects the tech is around twenty years behind where it could be.

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jayflux 7 hours ago | parent [-]

That’s simply not true, or at least not today.

First of, the UK are investing in battery storage, there’s already a rollout of grid-level battery systems across the country*.

None of them hold capacity for longer than 2 hours before they need to start discharging. In fact, the record breaking duration is 6 hours. This is great as a short buffer, but it’s not “storage”.

To put this in perspective, last year the UK went 2 weeks without any significant wind, so a 2 hour buffer is nothing. This is why Hydrogen is still being kept as an option for long term storage.

https://stateraenergy.co.uk/projects/thurrock-storage

https://rhomotion.com/news/longest-duration-battery-energy-s...

	▲	ViewTrick1002 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The ratio between GW and GWh is always an optimization of the fixed costs vs potential profit. A 4 hour battery can run at 50% for 8 hours or 25% for 16 hours. The determining factor is what the market needs.