Nuclear is not going to help that. It doesn’t synergize well with wind and solar. You want something that can scale up when wind and solar drop off. Nuclear only makes sense if you can run it at the same level all the time.
There is. Clouds come in, and all that cheap solar goes away. You want something else to ramp up. Clouds go away, solar is dumpling dirt cheap power to the grid, and those other things ramp down.
Batteries and other power storage exist though… just run nuclear to x% percentage and y exists in battery form to cover potential solar/wind/geothermal/tidal outages.
When you have batteries, you don’t need nuclear. You just need solar and wind.
Edit: I’ll also point out that there are other arguments from nuclear advocates (bad ones that don’t realize where we are in the tech development) saying storage solutions aren’t ready. Estoppel much?
What do you mean it doesnt scale up? It sure does. What do you think the control room operators are doing? Nukes turn water to steam and run that steam through turbines much like any other steam driven plant. Using control rods you can adjust the energy output of the plant. Could a single nuke cover a whole state covered in solar? Not likely. But neither can a single battery.
That’s because private companies are incapable of large scale engineering. They want fast profits, not stable infrastructure.
Nuclear is not going to help that. It doesn’t synergize well with wind and solar. You want something that can scale up when wind and solar drop off. Nuclear only makes sense if you can run it at the same level all the time.
There’s no reason you can’t run it at the same level all the time?
There is. Clouds come in, and all that cheap solar goes away. You want something else to ramp up. Clouds go away, solar is dumpling dirt cheap power to the grid, and those other things ramp down.
Nuclear is not the solution to that.
Batteries and other power storage exist though… just run nuclear to x% percentage and y exists in battery form to cover potential solar/wind/geothermal/tidal outages.
When you have batteries, you don’t need nuclear. You just need solar and wind.
Edit: I’ll also point out that there are other arguments from nuclear advocates (bad ones that don’t realize where we are in the tech development) saying storage solutions aren’t ready. Estoppel much?
I can’t believe we’re about to hit 2024 and people are still saying this.
What do you mean it doesnt scale up? It sure does. What do you think the control room operators are doing? Nukes turn water to steam and run that steam through turbines much like any other steam driven plant. Using control rods you can adjust the energy output of the plant. Could a single nuke cover a whole state covered in solar? Not likely. But neither can a single battery.