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‘Energy independent’ Uruguay runs on 100% renewables for four straight months
(theprogressplaybook.com)
this post was submitted on 18 Nov 2023
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Nuclear fanbois: GASP! How dare you?!
Well, not every country has wind farms or water turbines as viable option. You know, geography and stuff...
So which country has neither wind, water nor sunshine then?
For example Czech republic, Slovakia, baltic states, maybe Finland. It's not like there's none of these available. It's they're not really viable/meaningful options, yet. Sure you can build solar, but with nearly no sunlight in winter it's almost useless for half the year...
I am not intending to add fuel to this fire of a comment thread, however I was wondering if Stockholm, Sweden's solution of burning culled rabbits, for fuel, would be considered 'reneweable energy'?
Source: https://www.google.com/amp/s/abcnews.go.com/amp/International/rabbits-burned-fuel-sweden/story%3fid=8824540
My country of Belgium. Unless by "100 % renewable" you include fossile gas generation "offset" by summer's overproduction (which would be disingenuous).
Middle of January: 100% overcast for weeks on end with only 8 hours of daylight, some days with little to no wind. Geography does not support more hydro or any geothermal generation. Country is way too densely populated for meaningful biomass fuel production (not that it is a climate-friendly practice anyway).
Maaaybe there is a stretch argument to be made about offshore wind/water, but we have relatively little coastline and very busy waterways due to having some of the busiest shipping ports of Europe, so I doubt even in the most optimistic scenarios this can fill the gap during the winter season.
For any meaningful definition of the concept, we can't be 100 % dependent on nationally-sourced renewables until we figure out much much denser and cheaper long term storage solutions. Which is alright - maintaining existing nuclear reactors is an option (barely due to legaislative sabotage pushed by the "greens" but a couple gigawatts is nothing to scoff at) and more importantly we are part of the EU which will hopefully allow us to buy southern European solar/wind via HVDC lines in the future, and we're already very dependent on French nuclear. (Also we don't have to be 100 % independent to push for renewables, perfect mustn't be the enemy of good and all that)
Yeah, I think this is the future for small, densely populated countries without clear sources of renewable energy
Doesn't Belgium just import electricity from the European energy grid? You guys have access to Norwegian hydro, German coal, and French nuclear.
Yes, in rather large amounts since we aren't always self-sufficient (even with fossil gas).
Almost all of continental Europe is part of one, synchronous grid. Right now I'm using electricity simultaneously being produced in Belgium, Portugal, Ukraine, Turkey, and even Morocco; although for accounting purposes we calculate the difference at the border, electrons don't care.
You intentionally ignored the part about being overcast for weeks during the winter, the time of the year where they need the most energy. Tell me how solar can heat up the entire country when it's overcast and there are only 8 hours of day light, which reminder, is covered by the overcast weather that stays for weeks
I think you are forgetting on part of the message.
Sure on average over the year you can produce enough electricity, but how do you heat houses in december, January and February when there is almost no sun ?
Vatican City /s
I think that there are constraints for certain countries, but the majority probably could. And when they can't, it should be solved by cooperation and trade, IMHO.
Then maybe those countries shouldn't exist.
Though that's based solely on your example.
I don't understand the nuclear energy hate. Of the nonrenewables it is the cleanest, and it is not always possible to run 100% renewable, (they depend on natural factors such as sun or wind), while nuclear is constant and always producing. Look at Germany and how it is polluting using gas and fossiles, it would be a million times better it they used nuclear energy.
Nuclear is just not practical. Even if you discount the risk of severe impact if anything ever goes wrong, and the long term impact on the environment if the fuel and waste chain. we’ve countless case studies that it’s just too expensive, too complex to build, too much putting all your eggs in one basket.
Making up some numbers but I think the scale is right …. Which would you choose:
— $12B and 10-20 years to build a nuclear plant, requiring highly specialized fuel and employees.all or nothing: you get no benefit the whole time it’s under construction so payback is multiple decades. Given the specialty fuel, employees, security, it’s the most expensive choice to operate
— $1B and 10-12 years to build a wind farm, but you start getting income as soon as sections come online. Fuel cost is zero and one being out for maintenance has negligible impact in production/profit. You get payback practically as soon as the project is built and it’s all gravy from there
Adding to this, while the wind doesn't always blow, and the sun doesn't always shine, nuclear needs water to evaporate. In a world where droughts during summer get ever more common, nuclear/coal is not the 24/365 solution it once was. The future has to rely on a diverse mix of different energy sources, if it wants to be resilient.
Coal is not affected by droughts, though. Nuclear for better or worse is the most reliable and clean source we know today. Biggest hurdle with renewables is storage. Let's see if hydrogen is the way. But then again, storing large quantities of hydrogen might result in a big boom of something goes wrong.
AFAIK coal power plants often(always? Idk) use steam to drive their turbines in order to generate electricity. I'm not arguing against nuclear, but for a very diverse mix. Warm dry summer -> solar. Rainy dark winter -> hydro & wind. If we keep burning fossils, including nuclear, until we can switch to 100% renewals, I'm okay with that. The big advantage of renewals is the comparatively low cost of phases where no electricity is produced. A solar farm doesn't generate cost at night. Coal and nuclear plants can't just be "switched on and off" at will, and if they don't produce, still need a lot more attention. But for the meantime, they are necessary, until we either overbuilt so much renewables to cover for "no wind/sun/rain" situations, or get some storage solutions (batteries, hydrogen, biofuels,...) Implement on a large enough scale.
That steam is closed circuit though. But yes, they need cooling water and perhaps pollution cleaning water. So I guess they are affected by droughts as well.
Because it's an obvious psyop that took over almost every social media platform. No one was talking about nuclear then BOOM everyone was talking about nuclear all of a sudden with exactly zero mainstream public input from politicians or even marketing from nuclear power companies. People hate nuclear, because some of us have been alive long enough to remember Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima (the worst nuclear disaster in human history, 2011).
Here's a list of every single nuclear meltdown/disaster/catastrophe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_and_radiation_accidents_and_incidents
The fission reaction to boil the water to spin the turbines is clean, but literally every single other facet of nuclear production, from mining, to enriching, to transport, to post-reaction storage (where nuclear waste inevitably always leaks) is disastrous for the environment.
I'm pretty sure you're glossing over Germany replacing nuclear with coal, which has been probably been the largest story in nuclear since Fukushima.
Even including major disasters, nuclear is one of the safest and cleanest sources of power, and the only one poised to seriously displace fossil fuels in many places.
If anything, "Sunshine and rainbows" renewables are a psyop to help entrench fossil fuels long-term.
Specifically in regards to the "if it's not perfect we shouldn't even try" crowd, that's exactly what it is. Imperfect solutions we can implement now are infinitely better than perfect solutions that come years too late
"Don't allow Perfect to become the Enemy of Good."
Decades and decades of fossil fuel company FUD about nuclear that they managed to get the greens to buy into a long time ago.
No, not FUD. it's the radioactive waste issue. And enormous expense.
And a security issue. Think of the mess if war/terrorism comes home and adversaries starts blowing them up.
It's a good energy source in principle and Germany definitely should have let their reactors run longer, but it's just too damn expensive to build new ones. I'm not aware of any serious private installations of nuclear that are being built right now. One small modular reactor company in the US recently announced they will need twice as much money as previous estimated to build one.
Meanwhile, a ton of people and companies are building solar and wind everywhere.
Even worse, they prematurely closed their nuclear power plants, even recently. 🤦♂️
You seem to be the type of person that doesn't understand that you just can't easily decide from one day to another to keep nuclear power plants online, that where decided to go offline soon over 10 years ago. Supply chains already adapted, technically necessary inspections weren't performed because it would soon shut down etc. You just cant easily revert a plan to turn off all nuclear power plans by a certain date from 10 years ago just days or weeks before that date.
Did I ever say that, though? Global warming didn't happen yesterday, it's well known for decades. The decision to close npps in first place wasn't very clever, not revoking the decision later was even worse (I don't know what was the last possible date to revoke it, I admit - but it's not easy is a bad excuse). This brilliant plan is resulting in huge pollution while having plenty of renewable sources and spending a ton of money on those.
Edit: grammar
Yeah in a perfect world, Germany would have kept their npp and phased out coal first instead but it's not a perfect world sadly and considering the npp operators were heavily campaigning against renewables Germany probably wouldn't have invested that much in renewables if npp weren't phased out. The only problem now is that Germany didn't keep their momentum for investing in and expending renewables
But the issue is you still need something for when the sun isn't shining like what happens every night, and when the wind isn't blowing, which can also happen at night. What will power everything during that time? Nuclear can be the backbone that keeps things running when renewables aren't keeping up with demand. Sadly we can't fully rely on renewables, and between having gas and coal as the backup or nuclear as the backup, I'd prefer a billion times nuclear over the other option
Batteries my guy. Batteries. You charge up your batteries by producing more electricity than you would need during the day, that keeps the lights on (so to speak) during the night.
Did you ever calculate the amount of battery capacity you'd need for, let's say a week in winter?
I'd be willing to bet most people you'd categorize as "nuclear fanbois" would be perfectly happy if hydroelectric was providing 65% of the grid power.
The problem is that that renewables are pushed as a "one size fits all" solution that they really aren't.