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How dependent is France on Niger's uranium?
(www.lemonde.fr)
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this post was submitted on 07 Aug 2023
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Well, you can potentially design them in a way, that you can control the energy output more easily. However, then they will be even less economical than they are now. If you run at lower output, you waste more fuel.
@MattMastodon @Sodis
Free and cheap?!?
You are one deluded individual. Go do your research. Also, nuclear never had subsidies, only wind/solar did.
@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.
@Sodis @MattMastodon Nuclear power plants can quite easily do load following. It happens regularly e. g. in France. However, since it has the lowest running costs, other sources are usually cut first as far as possible.
Yes, it runs at full power most of the time. That's what being a "baseline energy source" means.
@MattMastodon @AlexisFR @Wirrvogel
The optimum imho is:
The bulk of the generation from wind and solar, and nuclear for 15% - 20% base load. Also some Geothermal where cheap but it's potential is small.
Grids improved to cover local and intermediate renewable generation, and extended to facilitate import/export.
Variable electricity pricing for demand shifting.
The result is vastly reduced need for storage, probably batteries used intelligently in a hierarchy of grid and home, compared to the naïve "just build wind and solar and batteries."
Then add in:
This all needs no new technology (although for nuclear there are several advances not yet used at scale: molten salt, small, modular, U238, thorium), it needs a fraction of the rare earths, and delivers a huge in reduction steel production courtesy of car recycling.
#Energy #Renewables #ClimateCrisis #Climate #Nuclear
[P.S. Dams damage eco-systems so I'm not in favour of more hydro generation, and pumped hydro storage needs the spare water too.
Biomass not "net zero" and obviously not "zero" which we actually need. It's just more carbon burning plus extra pollution from the agriculture and other products of combustion. It increases land use, and at present the industry is full of corruption with trees being burned sometimes alongside shredded car tyres... and subsidised!]
@MattMastodon @AlexisFR @Wirrvogel @Ardubal @Sodis
Tesla marketing heaven.
#FGPT