Scandinavia and the World
Scandinavia and the World

Comments #9876914:


Energy Saver 14 1, 5:18am

@Cris Nuclear power is not that clean once you factor in all the fossil fuels burned in every step of the process from mining ore to long term waste storage. Also nuclear power is notably unflexible and slow. Shutting down and starting again takes literal weeks and power output can be fine tuned by about 1.5% so it's either always on or always off.

Also, economically viable uranium ores are mostly rare and certainly they wouldn't last long if we tried to go nuclear.

The answer to the renewable conundrum is grid storage, with facilites holding terawatt/hours and acting as standup for renewables. Since batteries operate as packs, a grid storage facility could have some packs in already synchronized idle capacity, transfering their output either to other packs or the grid as clouds pass and winds slow down. And for industrial scale storage we don't need fancy lightweight lithium batteries -just look at molten metal batteries.