Since releasing my oil video I've had so many people claiming that renewables will never work and we need nuclear power instead.
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This means that the concept of "base load" is not really relevant, because there is no consistent base. And when the residual load goes negative, the wholesale price of electricity goes negative as well.
Last year the Netherlands had negative wholesale electricity prices for about 7% of the year, and that amount is only going to grow.
You can't afford to run a nuclear reactor when electricity prices are negative, but you also can't shut it down every day either.
This was always my understanding of how renewables make the concept of "base load" irrelevant, again, as a person with a literal degree in Electrical Engineering.
But I was gaslit by so many people that I felt the need to research the current situation again today.
This could just be people using out of date information, but I suspect this is anti-renewables propaganda. Otherwise I don't know why so many people would even know what a "base load" is.
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@notjustbikes I used to be very pro-nuclear. While.I still think removing power plants today for ecological reasons is highly counter productive, I have significantly changed my position overall. So many countries don't have the ability to deploy nuclear. They don't have any already, building the expertise takes decades, and can be the cause of geopolitical tensions (see Iran...).
@sgued @notjustbikes I agree, new reactors just don't make financial sense any more.
And it will take so long to build them that renewables will be even more cheap. -
@notjustbikes I wonder if those advocating so vociferously for nuclear are happy for the long term storage (by which we mean over timescales no human civilisation could ever hope to last) in their their back yard?
@cabbagebeets Meh, I think the storage problem is way overblown.
The really radioactive stuff decays in a fairly short period of time and it's kept on-site in water pools (and the Cherenkov radiation looks so cool).
Once it's been there for a few years the remaining material is much less radioactive and very small.
Yeah, it needs to be handled carefully, but there are way more important issues to worry about when it comes to large-scale power generation.
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Since releasing my oil video I've had so many people claiming that renewables will never work and we need nuclear power instead.
What's odd is that almost all of the messages mention that nuclear power is the only solution for the "base load".
I have a degree in Electrical Engineering and I took several nuclear science electives. I like nuclear energy. But I received so much "base load" gaslighting that I started to doubt my own understanding of the situation.
@notjustbikes
The "base load" argument is a classic, and I have been hearing it for >20 years. There is some validity to it, but a lot can be mitigated by battery storage and grids.Nuclear power has the same supply chain risks as oil: do you want to buy from Russia, Kazakhstan or Niger, which is also Russia controlled.
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@sgued @notjustbikes it was an excellent option we should have deployed more of in the 90's.
But it isn't the 90's any more.
@LovesTha Yeah, that's the thing.
When I was studying nuclear energy in University (because I was a huge proponent of it) it was the 90s, and we should've built a shitload of nuclear reactors then. It made sense.
But now? Nuclear rectors take ages to construct and they will not be as cheap as renewables.
Nuclear reactors may still make sense for powering heavy industrial applications though.
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@augustusbrown From my quick search of it, it does seem like a lot of the "base load" stuff is coming out of Australia, so maybe it's the misinformation of choice for anti-renewables advocates there.
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This was always my understanding of how renewables make the concept of "base load" irrelevant, again, as a person with a literal degree in Electrical Engineering.
But I was gaslit by so many people that I felt the need to research the current situation again today.
This could just be people using out of date information, but I suspect this is anti-renewables propaganda. Otherwise I don't know why so many people would even know what a "base load" is.
@notjustbikes have not seen the video yet for context
Can't it be a misunderstanding that they mean grid momentum and not baseload and get the two confused?
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Since releasing my oil video I've had so many people claiming that renewables will never work and we need nuclear power instead.
What's odd is that almost all of the messages mention that nuclear power is the only solution for the "base load".
I have a degree in Electrical Engineering and I took several nuclear science electives. I like nuclear energy. But I received so much "base load" gaslighting that I started to doubt my own understanding of the situation.
@notjustbikes @jwildeboer at some point in time we had a "base load" in germany too [that light green coloured line at the bottom] https://mstdn.io/@march/110203828227475945
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Since releasing my oil video I've had so many people claiming that renewables will never work and we need nuclear power instead.
What's odd is that almost all of the messages mention that nuclear power is the only solution for the "base load".
I have a degree in Electrical Engineering and I took several nuclear science electives. I like nuclear energy. But I received so much "base load" gaslighting that I started to doubt my own understanding of the situation.
@notjustbikes I tend to think that the so-called base load is a stochastic phenomenon.
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This means that the concept of "base load" is not really relevant, because there is no consistent base. And when the residual load goes negative, the wholesale price of electricity goes negative as well.
Last year the Netherlands had negative wholesale electricity prices for about 7% of the year, and that amount is only going to grow.
You can't afford to run a nuclear reactor when electricity prices are negative, but you also can't shut it down every day either.
@notjustbikes sadly bs. like #MeritOrder and extensive #Lobbyism by #Corporations prevent that these prices reach consumers, espechally in #Germany!
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@notjustbikes
The "base load" argument is a classic, and I have been hearing it for >20 years. There is some validity to it, but a lot can be mitigated by battery storage and grids.Nuclear power has the same supply chain risks as oil: do you want to buy from Russia, Kazakhstan or Niger, which is also Russia controlled.
@residuum I agree with your first bit, but I don't really agree about nuclear having a supply-chain risk.
The physical amount of Uranium that is used in nuclear reactors is quite small, and it doesn't need to be delivered constantly like oil or gas.
Plus there's lots in Canada and Australia.
There are other reasons why nuclear doesn't make as much sense as it did in the 90s.
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This was always my understanding of how renewables make the concept of "base load" irrelevant, again, as a person with a literal degree in Electrical Engineering.
But I was gaslit by so many people that I felt the need to research the current situation again today.
This could just be people using out of date information, but I suspect this is anti-renewables propaganda. Otherwise I don't know why so many people would even know what a "base load" is.
@notjustbikes I'd always understood generator base load to be something like having to keep all your lights in the house on at a low setting, just glowing, so then when you needed proper light, they'd be no delay in coming up to full brightness.
Or is that an incorrect analogy? -
This was always my understanding of how renewables make the concept of "base load" irrelevant, again, as a person with a literal degree in Electrical Engineering.
But I was gaslit by so many people that I felt the need to research the current situation again today.
This could just be people using out of date information, but I suspect this is anti-renewables propaganda. Otherwise I don't know why so many people would even know what a "base load" is.
When I did some reading on the current situation, I found a lot of sites out of Australia that were repeating this "base load" idea, in the context of nuclear power.
I suspect that this is fossil-fuel propaganda.
Fossil fuel companies love promoting nuclear power because they know it takes decades to get a reactor built (if it gets built at all), and in the meantime, everyone keeps using fossil fuels.
It's the perfect way to cripple renewables without being obvious about it.
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Since releasing my oil video I've had so many people claiming that renewables will never work and we need nuclear power instead.
What's odd is that almost all of the messages mention that nuclear power is the only solution for the "base load".
I have a degree in Electrical Engineering and I took several nuclear science electives. I like nuclear energy. But I received so much "base load" gaslighting that I started to doubt my own understanding of the situation.
NP is BS for a number of reasons, but particularly in the current situation, both from a geopolitical and climate perspective.
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@notjustbikes sadly bs. like #MeritOrder and extensive #Lobbyism by #Corporations prevent that these prices reach consumers, espechally in #Germany!
@kkarhan @notjustbikes sadly also bs:
firstly, the merit order is slowly dying out because it makes no economic sense.
secondly, even given government subsidies and other special treatment, energy providers don't want to build nuclear plants anymore because it, again, makes no financial sense. corporations and their lobbyists aren't inherently evil. they just want to make as much money as possible and being evil is often a side-effect of that.
(i used to study sustainable economics) -
@kkarhan @notjustbikes sadly also bs:
firstly, the merit order is slowly dying out because it makes no economic sense.
secondly, even given government subsidies and other special treatment, energy providers don't want to build nuclear plants anymore because it, again, makes no financial sense. corporations and their lobbyists aren't inherently evil. they just want to make as much money as possible and being evil is often a side-effect of that.
(i used to study sustainable economics)Yeah, nuclear reactors are crazy expensive, so much so that it's hard to get a loan to construct one. Which means most financing needs to come from the government.
This may change as small modular reactors (SMRs) become more common, but even then, I think these make more sense for industrial uses, such as powering a datacentre, rather than being connected to the grid.
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When I did some reading on the current situation, I found a lot of sites out of Australia that were repeating this "base load" idea, in the context of nuclear power.
I suspect that this is fossil-fuel propaganda.
Fossil fuel companies love promoting nuclear power because they know it takes decades to get a reactor built (if it gets built at all), and in the meantime, everyone keeps using fossil fuels.
It's the perfect way to cripple renewables without being obvious about it.
@notjustbikes the only honest reason for using nuclear power is the desire to have nuclear weapons.
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When I did some reading on the current situation, I found a lot of sites out of Australia that were repeating this "base load" idea, in the context of nuclear power.
I suspect that this is fossil-fuel propaganda.
Fossil fuel companies love promoting nuclear power because they know it takes decades to get a reactor built (if it gets built at all), and in the meantime, everyone keeps using fossil fuels.
It's the perfect way to cripple renewables without being obvious about it.
@notjustbikes oh hey, that was actually my missing link as to why fossil fuel companies promote nuclear!
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Since releasing my oil video I've had so many people claiming that renewables will never work and we need nuclear power instead.
What's odd is that almost all of the messages mention that nuclear power is the only solution for the "base load".
I have a degree in Electrical Engineering and I took several nuclear science electives. I like nuclear energy. But I received so much "base load" gaslighting that I started to doubt my own understanding of the situation.
@notjustbikes Quite likely it's some kind of astroturf propaganda... and weirdly tailored for nuclear given the more reasonable argument would be for peaker plants, not base load.
Coincidentally this post was very close to yours in my feed: https://mastodon.green/@solar_chase/116402052661720866The author is great for no-bullshit data based discussions on renewables and especially solar.
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Since releasing my oil video I've had so many people claiming that renewables will never work and we need nuclear power instead.
What's odd is that almost all of the messages mention that nuclear power is the only solution for the "base load".
I have a degree in Electrical Engineering and I took several nuclear science electives. I like nuclear energy. But I received so much "base load" gaslighting that I started to doubt my own understanding of the situation.
@notjustbikes on the topic of what if takes to switch away from fossil fuels, someone found this super interesting video/conference presentation with lots of hard numbers that I want to re-share with you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBVmnKuBocc
