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How dependent is France on Niger's uranium?
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this post was submitted on 07 Aug 2023
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@Ardubal @MattMastodon @BrianSmith950 @Pampa @AlexisFR @Wirrvogel @Sodis As I already mentioned, California has 2.5GW of batteries today. And credible half hourly models suggest that you only need hours of storage to get up to approximately 98%.
There are lots of ways to solve intermittency. Nuclear is one strategy that potentially works, but still needs short term storage - modern designs can vary load, but not quickly.
3x renewables plus a few hours storage is likely fine. So is a lot of nuclear. Hydrogen or iron-air *might* make the whole thing much cheaper, but indeed are immature technologies. More interconnectors are mature technology that always makes it easier, but are not enough on their own; dynamic demand is helpful and semi-proven.
But building "too much" renewables while we wait for nuclear is fine. Because most likely that nuclear will never be delivered. At least not in the UK. And as I understand it the supply chains don't really overlap. But above all because *it's the total carbon emitted that matters*. We're on a deadline.
I see no obvious reason to expect that the UK can build large amounts of nuclear quickly, even if there was the political will to do so. Successive governments have tried and failed. On recent progress, by 2050, if we're lucky, we might have 3 more 3GW plants running, which is nowhere near current demand, let alone future demand with electrification.
Even if the government meets its own target of 24GW by 2050, which seems extraordinarily unlikely given the slow progress so far, that will be a lot less than the total peak demand given electrification. So you still need storage.
So I'm not going to campaign to stop building renewables on the basis that one day we *might* build more nuclear.
Having too much renewables is *NOT* a problem, especially when compared to nuclear that will probably never materialise. Worst case, switching off wind and solar farms is much easier than switching off nuclear reactors. Best case, we can export that energy, use it for intermittent energy intensive industrial processes, or store it.
@matthewtoad43 @MattMastodon @BrianSmith950 @Pampa @AlexisFR @Wirrvogel @Sodis
There are already single events of more than a few hours where sunshine and wind are lacking. But that is only the immediate perspective; you need to integrate over at least several years to see the longer-term shortages that need to be handled as well. And that is quite obviously much more than a few hours. Therefore, I have some problems regarding such studies as credible.
@Ardubal @MattMastodon @BrianSmith950 @Pampa @AlexisFR @Wirrvogel @Sodis Interconnectors make the "long term no wind in winter" scenario much less likely, though obviously this varies depending on the country; there's less opportunity for it in Australia, but on the other hand it's just much bigger - "long range" may be within the country.
As I understand it the Australian study was based on real world data.
But let's say you're right. After all the study accepted that 2% of the time it's not sufficient. You have a few options for that last 2%. One is more nuclear - not necessarily 100% nuclear, or even 40% nuclear, but enough to prevent any freak weather events from causing serious harm. Another is hydrogen - an immature technology that is nonetheless 50+ years old.
There was a European study ... I think I lost it on X though. That specifically made the case for hours not days. But to achieve that you have to over-build.
Really one of the biggest arguments for nuclear is that over-building renewables makes a minor problem with rare earths into something much more serious.
Most likely we need either some nuclear or some long-term storage. Long term storage means immature but clearly technically feasible technologies: hydrogen or iron-air, maybe a few other candidates. Against that you have the fact that with the exception of France in the 1980s, building large amounts of nuclear power quickly has almost never happened.
Nuclear just takes too long. So use it for what it is - a modest amount of baseload power at roughly twice the cost of renewables.
Let me see if I can find some of the sources ... I already posted the study on Australia.
Here's a Scottish one, they concluded that over-building renewables is feasible. Also arguing for some more hydro. Unfortunately hydro is generally considerably dirtier than nuclear.
https://scottishscientist.wordpress.com/2015/04/03/scientific-computer-modelling-of-wind-pumped-storage-hydro/
http://re100.scienceontheweb.net/
https://scottishscientist.wordpress.com/2017/07/14/wind-storage-and-back-up-system-designer/
Here's the National Grid's view; IIRC they are skeptical about the claim of 24GW of nuclear by 2050, but their models say it won't be enough on its own anyway and bet on hydrogen.
https://www.nationalgrideso.com/document/263951/download
Here are some of the numerous academic-ish sources, probably out of date. As I said, system models often assume there is infinite lithium, so doubtful IMHO.
https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/145Country/22-145Countries.pdf
https://twitter.com/AukeHoekstra/status/1557466581185224704
https://www.helsinkitimes.fi/themes/themes/science-and-technology/22012-researchers-agree-the-world-can-reach-a-100-renewable-energy-system-by-or-before-2050.html#.YvPUxCrrWdI.twitter
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9837910
@matthewtoad43 @MattMastodon @BrianSmith950 @Pampa @AlexisFR @Wirrvogel @Sodis
Ah, but historically, France is not an outlier. Here are the largest 10-year deployments of clean energy sources. The green ones are nuclear.
Nuclear doesn't take long.
Here is an overview of historic build times.
The task is not fearing we might get a bad case, but creating an environment in which we get a good one.
@Ardubal @MattMastodon @BrianSmith950 @Pampa @AlexisFR @Wirrvogel @Sodis That graph includes some huge deployments of wind, and today, it's a mature, cheap technology (though still improving). Same with solar.
On the timescale on which the historic installs occurred, that was not the case: nuclear and hydro were the only mature options.
@Ardubal @MattMastodon @BrianSmith950 @Pampa @AlexisFR @Wirrvogel @Sodis Can you name *one* nuclear project in the last 20 years in Europe that wasn't severely over-budget and severely delayed?
It's not just the UK. Every third gen PWR has taken way longer than expected.
The public rightly insist on the safest designs possible. And those at least have been tried once (generally only once!). However, they take a long time.