The True Cost of Renewables - LCOE Calcs with John Poljak | Engineering with Rosie Live ep. 20
Вставка
- Опубліковано 3 лип 2024
- This is a follow up livestream from my recent upload • Are Renewables Actuall... on LCOE (levelised cost of energy) from solar, wind, combined cycle gas, geothermal, coal and nuclear. Plus transmission and storage costs needed to integrate a lot of variable renewables into the grid.
Do you have opinions about the assumptions I’ve made in that video? Or ideas about more realistic ones? I think that is so fun to play around with the calculations like that, and so I’m going to get John Poljack from Keynumbers www.keynumbers.com on for this livestream to run through the Keynumbers for a bunch of these. As well as changing fuel prices to reflect the increases over the last year or two, we might change assumptions on capacity factor, to reflect the trend towards coal plants operating less of the time, or nuclear’s current woes in France, where it is sitting at around 60% capacity factor for 2022. Or we could change asset lifetimes or financing assumptions, anything at all.
Bookmarks:
00:00 Intro
01:38 Intro to John Poljak from Keynumbers
02:44 Thanks to Weather Guard Lightning Tech for sponsoring this livestream!
03:14 Challenges of Measurement
10:34 How accurate is Lazard (Capital Cost)?
13:03 Accuracy of capacity factors (US figures)
15:31 Why is capacity factor for coal very low?
17:18 Reduction in capacity factor due to increasing renewables - David Osmond NEM Simulation
20:08 Increasing wind energy in the UK
23:36 Delays in Constructing Nuclear
26:06 Mass Production Nuclear - NuScale SMR
29:32 Nuclear Project Lifetime
40:30 Decommissioning Costs
44:12 Nuclear Waste Storage and Accidents
46:19 Impact of Subsidies
49:21 Carbon Tax
53:31 Offshore Wind
55:08 Variation in Renewables by Location
55:28 Storage Requirements
57:01 Electric Vehicles as Storage - V2G
59:05 System Costs in Renewable Energy
1:03:45 Rosie at Fully ChargedLIVE Australia Sydney March 11-12
1:04:04 Outro
⚡This livestream is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech.
⚡Check out the Uptime Podcast that I co-host with Allen and Dan from WeatherTech:
🎙Listen to the Uptime Podcast on Spotify: bit.ly/uptimepod
🎥Watch the Uptime Podcast on UA-cam: bit.ly/watchuptime
⚡And sign up for the weekly Weather Guard Tech News email here:
✅Sign up for Uptime Tech News: bit.ly/uptimetech
I will be hosting some panels at #FullyChargedLIVE Australia!
Join me in Sydney, March 11&12 and use discount code ERFCLAU10 for 10% off. Tickets are on sale now: au.fullycharged.live
If you would like to help develop the Engineering with Rosie channel, you could consider joining the Patreon community, where there is a chat community (and Patreon-only Discord server) about topics covered in the videos and suggestions for future videos and production quality improvements. / engineeringwithrosie
Or for a one-off contribution you can support by buying a coffee ☕️ here -
www.buymeacoffee.com/engwithr... - Розваги
Your progression into a source of scientific information on our transition to renewables and electric vehicles is really important and interesting to watch Thanks
Especially now, a year later, when offfshore wind and the EV market are collapsing!
Video on energy storage would be great. It's a wide range of problems from the short-term storage (to replace peaker plants) and long-term storage when the wind isn't blowing or sun is hiding for weeks on end. Then how the financing works out, replacing peakers is an easier economic problem but long-term storage is harder because you essentially make your own product less desirable by providing it, i.e cost goes down with greater availability. Do we need to go down the path of government owned storage just to make sure that electricity is available?
before seasonal storage even becomes relevant, we need to have seasonal energy overproduction. And in order, to get there, we need short term storage.
If too much energy is produced the price goes down as well, so storage has the same market incentive controls there as well.
@@davieb8216 the viability of grid storage is not just about the prise you have to pay for the energy. It is also about the prise you can sell it for.
f.e. if we calculate 4c per kWh for Batterie degrtedation per cycle, 4c Grid charges per kWh and a roundturn efficiency of 0.8 than we only earn income in price differences above 100$ per MWh. so when Energy prices are around 60 to 80$ per MWh there is no market for that storage. no matter how cheap you get your renewable energy source.
@@MusikCassette I agree, that's why supply demand rules still apply.
Rosie and John, Thank you for such an informative presentation. I would like to make one clarification. The downward sloping, discounted cash flow (DCF) valuation model, is not meant for evaluating an individual liability. Such as decommissioning a power plant. That would tend to have a flat to upward sloping line, instead.
Which means as the discounted assets (the plant) become less valuable than the liabilities (cost of decommissioning) , i.e. equity value becomes negative. The owner, is incentivized to find a way to abandon the power plant (such as by going bankrupt) and leaving it up to the government. So pre-funding the decommissioning, needs to become a requirement, to prevent such a perverse incentive. Since it is just another form of a negative externality, that perverts the efficiency of the market.
Lastly, the only way to get enough support is to reframe this as an issue of small government fairness, that reduces government expenditures.
Thanks NC, I muddled up the explanation of a DCF, always struggle explaining it. I'm doing a write-up all of they questions, will look to add a clearer explanation there!
@@keynumbers John, actually you gave a clear classical definition of DCF, but Rosie's inquiry is outside of its normal limits of its use.
So I would be interested in your write-up, to see how you address only the decommissioning via DCF analysis OR by any other means analysis. So where will that write-up be posted? And future value analysis seems more appropriate, IMHO.
The cost of storage is a big factor. A large part of the cost can be in the round trip efficiency, for example pumped storage the motor/pump is 80% and generator/turbine is 80%.
Efficiencies multiply so RTE = 64%. Therefore for the stored part of the energy, 1.5x the generation infrastructure is needed
Hydrogen production is at best 80% efficient. Burning in a thermal power plant is maybe 40% efficient at best. Using in a fuel cell should also be about 80% efficient. storage and transportation of hydrogen is a major problem. Yes, is used for fertilizer, but there is no storage involved in that process.
Total electric energy production in the US is 4.2 Trillion KWH.annual. Divide by 365 and 24 to get Average Generation power ... approximately 500 Gigawatts. Presently 60% is from fossil fuel. Therefore 300 x 1 Gigawatt Nuclear power plants would be needed to replace fossil fuel in the US. in the last 30 years the US has built 3.5 GW and taken down 14.5 GW of nuclear generation capacity.
That average 300 GW is about 4 billion x400 watt solar panels at 20% CF, or 450,000 x2 MW wind towers at 33% CF...PLUS STORAGE. Storage Time and therefore Capacity is another big consideration for cloudy or calm weather. Li-Ion batteries have a life of about 10 years.
Now factor in PEAK DEMAND. in the US Peak demand was 720 GW in august 2021 -- almost 1.5x average. You better have a good backup plan for that week or 2 of cloudy calm weather. (meaning added cost for storage or redundant infrastructure)
On to the next problem Transportation:
About 125 GW additional AVERAGE generation capacity will be needed to replace gasoline transportation.
Add another 125 GW for diesel.
In this case Average means all the cars are charging all the time. Therefore more generation capacity is needed to take into account Peak charging. Yes much of this can be offset by charging at night while demand is lower, but at the cost of double the power consumption during 12 hours at night. Daytime charging (while at work) could be used in conjunction with solar.
Carbon tax is just a tax on the consumer to build new infrastructure.
I do not believe there is any viable pathway to transition within 100 years.
Cheap Reliable Energy is the Backbone of the Economy. Unreliable energy will have a huge impact on the economy. Lower GDP will increase in Inflation.
Thanks @Kerry, we'll look to the levelised cost of storage soon and discuss RTE etc.
Thank you Rosie and John. My brain has heated with the concentration, but what fantastic tools and great explanation. So much to know and learn, but massively encouraging to know that your expertise is publicly accessible.
Thanks!
Rosie, it is so great you can put forward a channel of discussion without comments becoming political or idea logical. Truth is we will need all energy sources in the foreseeable future unless some Martians come down and awaken us to some overlooked energy source. For example, reengineering the diamond, got to be much energy hidden in a diamond, right?
What is needed is Full Cost not Levelised Cost, the former gives a far higher figure for renewables.
There still seems to be the myth that we can run a renewables plus storage grid. It is not possible with current and prospective technology at the moment. Like it or not nuclear is the only possible way we have now.
China's perspective and priority is reliability and cost, which is why they use so much coal generation.
very interesting stream. 👍
Thanks for the visit 😊
Thanks Rosie and John this is interesting stuff. 2 points to raise please. Nuclear, whatta word! Firstly I'm ambivalent about Nuclear. OK what do we do with spent fuel, storage, burial, sink in deep ocean, hope like heck it never leaks out. And, droughts, or water inundation; earthquakes, operational maintenance when the global average temperature and mega weather chaos takes us above 2, 2.5, 3, and if it reaches those levels we're looking at 5+ deg C. I think this is now a well accepted scenario, ask Zurich Re: Jason Box, Kevin Anderson, Johan Rockstrom, David King, and many ors. Plus construction times and required resources. It's never going to be a serious contributor globally. Maybe mini size Nuclear? Even so it's already looking practically unsuited to the situation faced, so forget the cost. No one's going to worry about cost when there's little to no food and no drinking water. I just heard the word discounting, that's what we're doing with our kid's future, and the discounted value is down below Zero. Maybe we actually owe them something, don't you think?Thanks again
> [Nuclear] It's never going to be a serious contributor globally
Well, it currently contributes about 10% of global electricity production, from a mere 435-odd NPPs. Not exactly small potatoes.
But, how effective is it? For example, Germany at about 40% wind/solar grid has the worst per-capita emissions in the EU (and near worst in total emissions).
France at about a 70% nuclear grid has some of the best emissions in the EU at near sustainable levels.
If wind/solar provide 'cheap' power (Germany also has retail electricity prices 2x that of France - a lot of German fees on electricity go to support wind/solar), is it worth the cost at these high emissions?
1:01:00 don't forget that grid storage does not need to meet the same criteria as battaries for the enduser. They don't need high energy dancity nor do they need the same ease of use. Therefore they can be made from more abundant material.
I've love to see you tackle the cost of storage. I find it complicated to determine how much storage is needed and what type to pick. There are many storage options available now (PSH, Li-ion battery, etc) and on the near horizon (CAES, redox flow battery, etc).
Also, how much of the need for seasonal storage can be addressed with simple thermal storage such as boreholes linked to district heating/cooling.
Lastly, in my jurisdiction, there is a requirement to have 20% reserve for power generation. Can storage satisfy the need for reserves?
Thanks Tom, we're looking to do a talk on LCOS in the future, do you have a specific country/region in my mind that you would like to analyse?
> Can storage satisfy the need for reserves?
Sure - how much money do you have?
The main thing is over what timeframe.
Hornsdale Power Reserve is often touted as a great storage example. However, what it truly does is smooth out the grid frequency on the order of seconds. They just don't have enough to support _bulk_ storage of energy over the course of minutes (yes, minutes, let alone days).
Let's apply the Chicago Test (where I live) - we get 3-day blizzards with no sun, and either too much wind or no wind. But we only get them 2-3 times a year, and some years no blizzards. However, the cost of the storage asset would have to be carried whether or not it is used. Accountants don't like idle assets - but, on the other hand, emergency room doctors don't like lack of power.
As an aside, hospitals in the US have a 3-4 day supply of backup (diesel generators), try using batteries for a single building, let alone a major city, and see if that cost is affordable.
@@orionbetelgeuse1937 Simply pointing out the major costs (and presuming you could actually get the materials given the money).
I agree that it would be nigh impossible from a practical perspective - this is of course what is 'bad' about the LCOE calculation in the first place - it presumes that we live in a marginal cost world (which is usually true for the common artifacts that make up our daily lives - and usually untrue for the artifacts used by industry.
Can’t wait for a video on total cost, including the expensive parts of the equation. Transmission lines and storage, including DER. The cost of all the EV’s and technology required at a residential level plus all the direct and indirect subsidies etc etc etc. It seems the true and total cost to the taxpayer is being hidden in a disingenuous, convoluted soup!
I used 2 kwH yesterday. My twenty marine batteries were charged by 10 : 30 this morning. I'm building a 370 watts DC home made wind generator. I'm saving for a 1 kwH PMA wind generator and a midnight classic controller. I pay for it as I go. I'll be adding six more batteries for the wind generator. That will give me 32,500 watt hours of storage. I get to use 50% but will keep it to 75% charged, extending the battery life. So I get 8 kwH per day but of course can use more, lol. It's more than I use most days. It just works. If I save up $300 a year, I can replace the battery bank in ten years. Not bad cost. I will literally have over a ton of batteries in the group. I feel pretty safe with my battery material choice. Caution, if you use ⛵ boat batteries, prepare to buy a ton of them. This time of year, I lose about three hours of 🌞 sunshine on account of shading, so I'm going to move one pair of panels to the West side of the building. Today is my birthday. I'm 67 now, LOL. I'm making a bushing to attach an aluminum propeller to a DC motor. The motor has a pulley on it, when I wrapped a cord around and pulled, it made 79 volts three times in a row. So it just needs a propeller. I have a 3 foot aluminum propeller that I want to try on it. I hope it works okay. It's going to snow in a week, for several days maybe. So I'm sorting out windmill parts. I have a handle from an old tiller for the tail. It's made of tubing. I bought an 80 amp DC inverter welder and a Winco Lil Dog generator just so I can build the wind generator. I'm already independent of the grid, but I'm improving the solar system this year. A few weeks ago there was a small tornado that went less than a half a mile away. It's a good year to get independent from the grid. They said it was an F-0 but several power poles blew down.
You mean marine lead acid batteries?
@@gregorymalchuk272 Yes, that's what I have. I bought mine at AutoZone because of the price at the time. They don't sell this size battery anymore. Right after I finished my battery bank they changed them a little bit. They're 105 amp hours. I have them in 24 volts hookup.
Just like wind and solar, nuclear costs cannot be simply judged by historic costs. You have to look at what future developments will bring.
For nuclear the direction is towards distributed small modular, load following, high temperature (combined cycle) reactors. These will be factory built to highly standardised designs. They will produce far less waste and be less dependent on water cooling (air cooling suffices). As the plants wear out the nuclear module is simply removed and replaced. Their operational characteristic is more that of a gas plant than coal plant.
The technology is more like the 'nuclear battery', similar to that proposed for Australia's nuclear submarines than to legacy industrial scale plants like the UKs large centralised Hinkley Point project.
The issue is really about the last 20% of energy assurance. The decision whether to use gas, nuclear or god forbid coal, to meet this assurance is political/strategic rather than commercial. You can ignore the issue and get widespread outages as occurred in Texas. You can keep some coal plants, this would be costly, polluting and bad for climate. You can use gas, not so costly but polluting, bad for climate and possibly not sustainable. Finally, nuclear, somewhat costly but non polluting, good for climate and likely to be quite sustainable.
What about a race between different storage solutions and a gas piker. You could plug in the costs from renewabels/storageefficiency as fuel cost. As Energy output we could assume, that the storage facility discharges and reloads ones per day, Or we can use its actual power and assume the same runtime as the gas piker dependant on which of the two is the stricter limitation.
this might be a fair cost comparison for the most valuable slice of Energy production. There is a lot of in between, but covering those extrems might give some insight.
Most interesting point about transmission v distribution costs @ 1:00:07
I would like to know about a financing option where it could be an Energy Transition Cooperative Credit Union. So, people in a country, region, state, etc. can all use their money to purchase shares toward a known entity and asset with predictable returns. they get a solid, predictable rate of return on their money. An individual could then "co-own" the storage and receive the tax depreciation benefits from ownership. Additionally, having ownership of the storage would mean everyone has potential to benefit from its success, not just a handful of elites. It removes the concerns from people saying that only elites benefit from these energy transition solutions.
LCOE Calcs for storage please!!!
There’s cost effective ways to generate electricity without spending a fortune on installation using tidal energy but the big companies believe unless you spend a fortune it won’t work
Much of the problem of the intermittentcy of renewables can be addressed by changing the consumption patterns of the public and of industry, e.g. hydrogen generation when power is in surplus, EV charging off peak. This will greatly reduce the need for expensive storage or peaker plants and allow for a greater percentage of intermittent generators. This is coming and is already happening and is not adequately accounted for in the figures presented in this video.
Would be great to do a analysis on a total energy system. So what mix of intermittent renewable solution, storage facilities, peaker-plants would demand balancing would be needed to have a reliable energy system in the future.
Gravitricity has a good energy storage system that could be used as a system to generate electricity 247 not just a storage system
Please do the LCOE of storage.
Always grates o y ears whenever anyone says 'nucelar' insted fo 'nuclear' (from 'nucleus').
lmfao
(from 'No one With an IQ cares';).
It seems, that the bottleneck for solar production is the production of Polycrystalline silicon which is a very energy intense process. So could overproduction of renewables be used to produce Polycrystalline silicon? could that be a way to export Energy from Energy rich regions? creating a virtuos cycle?
IMO nuclear power is a dead issue. I believe the controversy comes from the fact that as far as science and engineering are concerned it is very doable, but with politics and regulation it becomes impossible to do with any economic benefit.
Can we get access to the document that you used for the stream? I'd love to have a copy of it.
Can't economically build a nuke plant to service anything above baseload, need to run 24 / 7 /365 in order to have even a reasonable LCOE. Baseload at night and in the low season is only 50% less than summer peaks.
As previously commented in other videos on the Engineering with Rosie YT channel: nuclear power is responsible for 4% of the global electricity production. The currently know (and economically exploitable) global uranium 235 ore reserves are sufficient to support this electricity production for around a century. Now let us assume that the construction of nuclear plants around the world is massively ramped up, so that e.g. 40% of the worlds electrical energy is produced via nuclear. The U235 ore reserves will then be depleted in less than a decade (or 1/4 of the live span of the newly build nuclear pants). Everyone with some common sense can see that nuclear can (and will) never attain a significant part in the global electricity production.
OK, what is the alternative?
Well, lets look at the joint wind turbine project Germany, Belgium, The Netherlands and Denmark have set-up in the past year. All turbines in this project will be installed off-shore in the great North-Sea area. The currently total installed capacity on the North Sea is 15 GW. By 2030 an additional 50 GW of capacity will be installed. Between 2030 and 2050 a additional 85 GW will be installed. The total installed capacity will then be 150 GW (or the equivalent of 75 nuclear plants, when we account for the difference in capacity factor between off shore wind and newly build nuclear).
Wind + solar is thus the solution.
Sodium-ion back-up batteries can overcome the wind and sun free days for remote areas where dunkelflaute is a problem and connection to a larger electricity net or geothermal is not an option.
Good to review this difficult topic. If you add the estimated cost of fossil fuel damage of $200 per metric ton of CO2 fossil fuels cannot compete. Yes a toxic topic but the damage of CO2 is unavoidable and fossil fuels benefit from subsides too.
Can't claim to have grasped all that in one go. Not my forte. But it was interesting and is a critical part of the energy equation.
That nested diagram of (((Plant-level)Grid-level)Social and environmental) makes more sense to me as a triangle.
Real Hinckley C cost is now above 37 Billion Pounds Sterling. KWh price for electricity generated by this plant is about 3 to 4 times prices of the energy generated by wind turbines.
Are you referring to an old Guardian article that describes total lifetime costs of the plant. They had a number of £37b. I just had realised I had a typo in the capex chart for hinkley! At £26b for just the construction cost, electricity works out to be $151/MWh. Very expensive.
@@keynumbers Of course, Hornsea One (same economy, same currency, same time period of 2009-2011 planning, contract awarded in 2014, construction in 2016, came on line in 2020, and same government during planning/contract/construction) - has a strike price of 140 pounds/MWh = $171/MWh (at fx rate of 1.2386)
Very expensive.
@@keynumbers Also, what is the price for electricity at 8pm when the wind is not blowing? Is $151/MWh worth it if people are reading with lamps and watching telly, while the factory that employs them starts the 3rd shift?
@@keynumbers Indeed it is from the article of the Guardian. That article was pre-pandemic, final cost is now estimated at 39-40 Billion Pound Steriling for the Hinckley C plant.
@@factnotfiction5915 The wind is blowing always somewhere. In Germany the number of (onshore) dunkelflaute days are somewhere between 6 to 12 per year. When we look at the number of dunkleflaute days in the great North Sea area (onshore + off-shore: GER+DEN+GB+BE) are nihil.
Nuclear fission is an excellent way to produce highly toxic waste that has to be cared for very carefully for 100s of thousands of years, with some hot water and electricity produced as a short term byproduct.
"gradual transition" seems like the way to go with electric.
Nuclear subsides make it hard to compute a true unsubsidized LCOE. Nuclear is uninsurable and Price Anderson is insufficient, as $450 million insurance is effectively uninsured for an accident like Fukushima. How do you figure the cost of looking after U235 nuclear waste for 100,000 years. Or maybe only 300 years if you use thorium 232 to start. You cannot just say nuclear with so many different reactors, moderators, and fuels. The specific nuclear reactor design, government support, and fuel cycle must be considered.
> as $450 million insurance is effectively uninsured for an accident like Fukushima
Or for the major 'renewable energy' contributor, hydro (at about 50% of RE worldwide). An accident like Banquio is completely uninsurable.
> How do you figure the cost of looking after U235 nuclear waste for 100,000 years
The US charges $0.001/kWh for that. See 'US Nuclear Waste Fund'
> You cannot just say nuclear with so many different reactors, moderators, and fuels
Exactly!
An AP1000 is completely different from a one of the SMRs and both are so different from RBMKs (Chernobyl No 4) or GE-BWR Gen II (Fukushima). Not too mention siting - Palo Verde in the Arizona desert doesn't really need to mitigate tsunamis.
How do I make contact with Rosie please respond thank you
Please make sure when you talk about cost energy, make sure your always talking about base load. True value of energy.
cost of solar/wind is = solar/wind plus gas peaking
Thanks Jon, most models assume the last bit of renewables will be plugged by gas peaking or some other form of non-renewables. Peaking works as it's cheap to build and apart from recent years, gas is relatively cheap.
@@keynumbers thanks for the response👍 from my experience Solar and Wind need at least the same capacity of gas for times of Dunkelflaute, also some level of batteries or synchronous condensers for millisecond response for network events causing frequency dips from unforeseen load increases/or network outages.
Does your figures consider this? Or would it need to be factored in separately?
Up
I posted about the French Nuclear load factor which was 51.5% in 2022
Wind was 26.8% of GB Elec in 2022.
GB less ideal for solar than Aus (though it had more capacity until very recently!) but ~14GW today with the UK Energy Strategy aiming at 70GW by 2035.
The Netherlands at 800MW/pp (2021) was the world leader and near neighbour (GB 200MW/pp)
The load factor is low in France because they shut them down in fall and spring. Uranium sitting idle in reactor cores serves as seasonal energy storage.
@@gregorymalchuk272 No it was so low in France in 22 bc they had huge issues around maintenance and corrosion.
@@tcroft2165 Because they ignored preventive maintenance during COVID. And yes, a significant portion of France's low capacity factor DOES come from the fact that they have enough nuclear for peak periods so they curtail production during the spring and fall. They are one of the few countries with a nuclear fleet big enough to need to do that.
@@gregorymalchuk272 Fra N was well down on even recent years due to corrosion issues not just delayed covid maintenance. They were scrambling for everything they could get running and didn't have enough.
Comments that will achieve anything valuable on this topic are about as possible as the cure for Rabies, ie Lockjaw is terminal, and so is the sacred state of profiteering, fossil fuel defended Military Industrial Complex. ("Not happy Jan")
So I am very pleased with Rosie and all, working valiantly against insane odds.
dng it , I missed it.
When they have an accident, they have a BIG accident and that says it all for me.
I always love it when money comes into the picture and Dr. Rosie seems to get flustered with it.
Subsidize are horrible here in the USA for all energy sectors.
(On a lighter note, what did you name boy Dr. Rosie ?)
Thanks! Fortunately or unfortunately there's only been a few "big accidents"
Well, Chernobyl No 4's BIG accident (the biggest ever in the nuclear space) killed about 65 people (see UNSCEAR) and maybe, just maybe 4000-11000 people will get cancer (UNSCEAR and IARC) as a result - vs the 10,000,000 million who get cancer every year.
Coal - well, quite deadly in general.
Hydro - the BIGGEST ever energy plant accident was hydro, killing about 26,000 people (in just a few days, and displacing millions, along with massive environmental contamination. Note that Hydro is about 50% of RE.
Wind - strangely, the wind industry does not publish raw data or statistics. They prefer to let national labor boards announce that sort of thing.
Solar - no big accidents. Simply ongoing slavery of Uighur workers in China to supply cheap solar panels. Easy to make them cheap when you have a captive workforce.
@@factnotfiction5915 WOW !! What a snow job. Chernobyl has a zone around 1,000 square miles that is totally uninhabitable for people. You just lost all credibility with me.
@@Sondan1988 > Chernobyl has a zone around 1,000 square miles that is totally uninhabitable for people.
Yes, there is an exclusion zone.
No, it is not totally uninhabitable for people.
First, the accident at reactor No 4 occurred in 1986.
However, reactors No 1, 2, & 3 (100 meters or so away from reactor No 4) operated for years afterwards - with their full crews coming in to operate the reactors.
No 1 shut down in 1996 - 10 years after the accident
No 2 shut down in 1991 - 5 years after the accident
No 3 shut down in 2000 - 14 years after the accident
That is a long time for those crews to be working for an 8-12 hour shift each and every day if the exclusion zone were 'uninhabitable'.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_Nuclear_Power_Plant
Second, you used to be able to visit the zone.
Was it radiation and the threat of cancer that stopped tourism (124,000 / year)?
No, it was an illegal Russian invasion where the Russian army went about killing people that stopped the tourism.
Again, tourism is not typically a feature of an area 'totally uninhabitable for people'
www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g294474-d3370334-Reviews-CHERNOBYL_TOUR-Kyiv.html
www.dw.com/en/fact-check-5-myths-about-the-chernobyl-nuclear-disaster/a-57314231
Third, the population (of this 'totally uninhabitable' zone is a few 1000 who live there and about 3000 workers.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_Exclusion_Zone
adventure.com/chernobly-exclusion-zone-tourism/
Hello Rosie, are you still consulting? I have tried to contact you.
Yes I am. Scaled back a bit over the last few months though due to maternity leave. I'm sorry I missed your enquiry, I'll look for it now. Was it through the pardaloteconsulting.com web form?
@Engineering with Rosie Congratulations! I sent one to pardalote and later to Gmail from my Gmail.
A carbon tax with all the money collected being equally distributed to all adult residents should be Step One for any country's decarbonization.
Regarding how producers can connect to the grid, I don't know what you have there, but this is what we have here:
S: So you say, well, why don't we just massively build wind and solar?
S: Do you know that the backlog of wind and solar projects in the United States is greater than our total current electricity capacity?
S: Think about that.
J: Wait, what does that mean?
J: Explain that.
S: Yeah.
S: So there are people who want to build wind and solar projects.
S: And they're in a queue.
S: They're in a waiting line.
S: You know what that waiting line is for?
S: To get connected to the grid.
S: That waiting time is 20 years long.
S: And it's greater in capacity than the total current capacity of our electricity generation.
E: Oh, boy.
E: It's like having a football stadium that holds 100,000 people and having 150,000 people out in line trying to get into the full stadium.
S: Exactly.
S: Right.
S: Or you have one dirt road that leads to the stadium.
S: Crazy.
S: That's the problem.
S: So here's what's happening.
S: A company, an Indian tribe, whatever, somebody with land is like, hey, we could cheaply put wind turbines up on our property and sell all that electricity to this city over there and make lots of money because it's cheap.
S: Okay, let's do it.
S: So they apply to do it.
S: And they say, okay, so first we need $2 million for you to get in the line to be connected to the grid.
S: So we'll get to you when we get to you.
S: And then three years later, they say, you know what, we need $40 million.
S: The $2 million wasn't enough.
S: And they say, okay, well, we can't do it.
S: I'm altering the deal.
S: Pray I don't alter it no further.
S: Yeah, pray I don't alter it any further.
S: Or they say, we'll get to you in 20 years.
S: That's what they're saying.
S: The same is true in the UK.
S: The same exact thing is happening in the UK.
S: So this is one of the problems with renewables.
S: Again, I'm a big fan of renewables.
S: I have solar panels on my roof.
S: I think that we should maximize renewables.
S: But it's going to take decades to upgrade the grid in order to accept distributed energy production from wind and solar.
S: And not only the wind and solar, but the grid storage in order to make them work, which also needs connections to the grid.
S: And the grid itself needs to be updated in order to transfer all of that, especially if you're going to use overcapacity to compensate for variable output.
S: You know what makes all of that better?
S: Having big power generators that are on demand and that use a little bit of land and only need one connection to the grid.
S: In other words, nuclear, geothermal, hydroelectric, and fossil fuel.
S: So what we need to be doing is replacing existing coal plants and then oil plants and then natural gas plants in that order with low carbon sources of energy, which is going to be mostly nuclear, to get rid of them as quickly as possible while we're spending 20, 30 years building our wind and solar infrastructure and building our grid storage infrastructure.
S: That's what we need to be doing.
S: And it's not happening.
S: Well, it's just happening slowly.
S: It's too slow.
S: It's timing and pathway.
S: So the fact that wind and solar is cheap is becoming irrelevant.
S: It's irrelevant because if you can't connect to the grid, who cares?
S: Yeah, what's the difference?
S: If it's going to take you 20 years to put that cheap solar panel on the grid, it's not doing us any good right now.
S: People say, oh, nuclear takes too long to build.
S: So does a grid.
S: So does updating the grid to accept all of this distributed energy.
S: Isn't that amazing?
S: Like, why isn't this happening faster?
S: This is why it's not happening faster.
S: Our grid cannot accept a renewable infrastructure beyond, you know, we're already breaking the limits of what it can accept.
S: Even with 75% fossil fuel still in the mix, we're already getting to these, running up against these limits.
S: And sure, there are solutions to it, but it's just going to take time.
S: Meanwhile, keep every nuclear power plant open as long as you possibly can.
S: And we need to at least tread water with nuclear in terms of a percentage, which means building it out as our demand increases.
S: That's going to make the whole system much more viable.
S: And sure, in 50 years, we may have an entire grid with renewable and storage, sure.
S: But in 50 years, we're already past peak global warming, you know.
S: That's not the point.
S: The point is getting it as quickly as possible through the least amount of carbon possible and as low as possible.
S: And in order to do that, we need to do everything.
S: I mean, just the idea of prioritizing closing nuclear over closing coal plants is mind blowing.
S: It's mind blowing.
S: It's infuriating.
S: Given the realities that we are facing and given an alleged dedication to the environment and to green technology, it's mind blowing.
S: It's just one more thing, one more reason why we, you know, our dysfunction, our political dysfunction is the most dangerous thing that we face.
B: I weep for our grandkids, even our kids.
S: So anyway, that's my rant for the week.
B: I read all this and I'm like, oh my God, our generation is going to be reviled.
www.sgutranscripts.org/wiki/SGU_Episode_931#Germany_and_Nuclear_Power_.28.29
Why do you ask for comments when you don’t have the courtesy to respond
If we look at so-called Fusion power generation and study the political motivations as well, it appears to anyone with a basic knowledge of how to rob a bank by owning one, that projected costs are infinitely elastic, "whatever you can get away with", so of course an analysis of imperial policy power will tell you that the deep silence and forced belief in ownership is mostly to do with gun ownership, then..
"There's your problem".
Taxpayers, if not educated about Democracy, don't know whom they serve. "Self serving" is a mono-dualistic concept that is The Observable constant.
would be simpler with 4 lines in a spreadsheet
K
|
S
S