Have you heard? New small nuclear reactors are imminent. Great article here from .. oh, gosh, 2016. #smr #nuclear https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/03/19/rolls-royce-could-power-britains-nuclear-future-with-mini-reacto/ (the hype on SMR is a bit like on fusion and hydrogen; lots of words but no delivery. Meanwhile renewables are surging ahead).
@richardwerskine Renewables are a double-edged sword however.
Germany’s Energiewende has been adding a large quantity of renewables to the energy grid mix… Which have not been able to keep CO2 emissions low:
https://vxtwitter.com/TheFrackingGuy/status/1594444953547046912?s=20&t=PYbuN-6A67w9L9IHBBCBow
Renewables are part of the solution, but we also need to give ourselves a safe, 24/7 available, baseload capable system.
SMRs or just regular full-size reactors are great for this!
@xaseiresh baseload is not how experts in power systems now discuss the system. They do talk about ‘firm’ power, including nuclear, but you don’t necessarily need much of it. Only modelling can resolve what works and there is no single possible solution. A high penetration of variable renewables at 80% comes out as easy to achieve by most modellers. Things get tougher as one approaches 100% eg needing significant storage.
@xaseiresh here is an interesting paper that models wind and solar penetration for different countries https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-26355-z showing high levels of #renewables #wind #solar penetration
@richardwerskine
Ah, thank you for the elaboration! I think I heard about the move away from Baseload but need to read up on it further :)
The paper looks like a good resource as well!
That makes me wonder what makes Germany’s CO2eq per kWh so high, especially compared to France’s (France at 67gCO2eq/kWh versus Germany at 402, both in 2021)
Data taken from this chart
There is a large amount of both wind and photovoltaic installed here, but it seems like the coal plants still have to be run to provide this “firm” power, to an extent where there’s quite a lot of CO2 emission left.
Perhaps we just don’t have the needed hydro storage, and batteries are still being developed after all?
