I guess we can talk about transmission then, yes if you can get enough renewable energy across a continent then in theory you can transmit it to where it is needed, however you would need a LOT of transmission capability that is not currently available. The current interconnects can handle an impressive amount of load but you’re not going to transmit enough power for all of sweeden from spain. There are some massive transmission projects underway that should help address this but they’re still not going to be enough to cover a 100% outage for most places. So a cost analysis would have to be done to determine if massive transmission projects are better than building nuclear plants. Keep in mind, these same transmission lines can transmit nuclear power as well so they should be built regardless of what energy source you use.
you would need a LOT of transmission capability that is not currently available
can be build faster and cheaper than nuclear, doesn’t need fuel and needs to be build anyway.
We get the cheapest, strongest and least dangerous grid if we invest in more renewables, storage and better transmission. And that’s something we can get done fast and start harvesting the profits in a few years.
I mostly agree except transmission is not cheap, and further I’m not convinced transmission across a continent is even possible even with crazy high voltage DC lines which currently don’t exist. The current massive projects are going to take several years for just a few lines, it would take an insane ramp up in production to do the entire continent. While we’re working on that nuclear can be built reasonably fast without political hurdles blocking every step of the way. That’s not to downplay the need for recycling the waste which will need to be invented regardless because the waste already exists. I’m also not convinced renewables can ramp up production on a scale that would be able to replace in excess of 100% of the demand within a few years, but I guess I’ll have to look that up. Your concerns about nuclear are valid, but rebewables won’t magically solve all the problems of reliability and scale, we’re going to need a baseload and nuclear has proven for decades that it can do the job.
I guess we can talk about transmission then, yes if you can get enough renewable energy across a continent then in theory you can transmit it to where it is needed, however you would need a LOT of transmission capability that is not currently available. The current interconnects can handle an impressive amount of load but you’re not going to transmit enough power for all of sweeden from spain. There are some massive transmission projects underway that should help address this but they’re still not going to be enough to cover a 100% outage for most places. So a cost analysis would have to be done to determine if massive transmission projects are better than building nuclear plants. Keep in mind, these same transmission lines can transmit nuclear power as well so they should be built regardless of what energy source you use.
can be build faster and cheaper than nuclear, doesn’t need fuel and needs to be build anyway. We get the cheapest, strongest and least dangerous grid if we invest in more renewables, storage and better transmission. And that’s something we can get done fast and start harvesting the profits in a few years.
I mostly agree except transmission is not cheap, and further I’m not convinced transmission across a continent is even possible even with crazy high voltage DC lines which currently don’t exist. The current massive projects are going to take several years for just a few lines, it would take an insane ramp up in production to do the entire continent. While we’re working on that nuclear can be built reasonably fast without political hurdles blocking every step of the way. That’s not to downplay the need for recycling the waste which will need to be invented regardless because the waste already exists. I’m also not convinced renewables can ramp up production on a scale that would be able to replace in excess of 100% of the demand within a few years, but I guess I’ll have to look that up. Your concerns about nuclear are valid, but rebewables won’t magically solve all the problems of reliability and scale, we’re going to need a baseload and nuclear has proven for decades that it can do the job.
High voltage dc transmission lines already exist and are already in use .
This is build faster and with fewer risks than nuclear.