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1041 points mpweiher | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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jama211 ◴[] No.45225631[source]
I’m totally fine with nuclear honestly, but I feel like I don’t understand something. No one seems to be able to give me a straight answer with proper facts that explain why we couldn’t just make a whole load more renewable energy generators instead. Sure, it might cost more, but in theory any amount of power a nuclear plant would generate could also be achieved with large amounts of renewables no?
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StopDisinfo910 ◴[] No.45225896[source]
The issue is that renewable tends to be intermittent and long-term storage is an open problem. You can do find in a day with battery but you can’t really produce a lot in the summer and use in winter.

It means you either need an alternative when production is too low such as coal or gas-fired power plants or a lot of capacity sufficiently stretched out than they are not stopped at the same time. Managing such a large grid with huge swings in capacity and making it resilient is a massive challenge. That’s why you end up with Germany building 70-ish new gas-fired power plants next to their alleged push towards renewable.

It’s probably doable but when you look at it from this angle nuclear starts to look good as an alternative.

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hvb2 ◴[] No.45226339[source]
> You can do find in a day with battery but you can’t really produce a lot in the summer and use in winter.

Batteries aren't the only storage. The better options in my opinion are the places where you can use the landscape to your advantage. Pump a lake full when there's too much power and let it drain when there's too little.

Also in a connected grid setup, the sun always shines somewhere though that does come with potentially huge transmission losses from distance

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1. StopDisinfo910 ◴[] No.45227216[source]
> The better options in my opinion are the places where you can use the landscape to your advantage.

We already do that. France notably has a lot of hydropower and they pump water up when they don’t want to shutdown a nuclear unit.

The issue is that there is very little places where you could build new dams in Europe and water shortage is becoming a regular occurrence.

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2. hvb2 ◴[] No.45234316[source]
Not every dam has to be of the size of the Hoover dam. A single huge battery is also not practical.

Yes water shortage might be a problem if the river you're on runs dry. That's not often a problem though, plenty of major rivers. And a dam doesn't change the total amount that flows, it just changes when. As a result it might even help in lowering some flood risks.