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1041 points mpweiher | 1 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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epistasis ◴[] No.45229249[source]
It would actually cost a lot less to use renewables and storage than a bunch of nuclear.

For a completely decarbinized grid, there are two paths: 1) 100% renewables plus storage, or 2) ~90% renewable plus storage, and 10% nuclear/advanced geothermal.

There's lots of debate about which one would be cheapest. But the true answer depends on how the cost curve of technologies develops over the coming 20 years. (Personally, I think 100% renewables will win because projections of all experts severely overestimate storage and renewables costs, while simultaneously severely underestimating the costs of nuclear. Renewables and storage are always over delivering, while nuclear always under delivers. So I think that trend will continue...)

You won't hear much about this in the popular media though, because they are too afraid of offending conservatives with politically incorrect facts. Sites like Ars Technica cover it though:

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/22092022/inside-clean-ene...

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realusername ◴[] No.45229629[source]
> Renewables and storage are always over delivering, while nuclear always under delivers

Well no, storage would need another 100x improvement for being usable in a 100% renewable scenario in any country you have any sort of winter.

Say what you want on nuclear but we have example of countries which managed it successfully, for renewables, we still haven't.

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1. pfdietz ◴[] No.45233568[source]
It sounds like you're making the usual idiot argument that batteries are the only storage technology and would be used for seasonal storage.

That's not how it would work. There are far better -- orders of magnitude better -- storage options over timescales of many months.