The military coup in Niger has raised concerns about uranium mining in the country by the French group Orano, and the consequences for France's energy independence.
⇒ - Storage: obviously, we’d want to smoothen out the time dimension as well. This means adding storage that can meet 100% of demand as well (volatile sources frequently drop to 0), and feeding it with enough additional clean sources that it can fill every expected gap (and gap accumulation).
And here I’d like to repeat my point from before: the best (most effective) storage we have right now is pumped hydro, by far. And pumped hydro is not enough, by far.
⇒
The UK has the same problem with it’s grid and we are rebuilding our grid. But this it true of #nuclear too. Massive new powerlines are being built across Somerset.
One thing I am getting out of this is how different counties are. In the UK we have massive capacity for wind tidal etc.
Overbuilding renewables is good. Zero wind can happen but in the UK it’s usually windy somewhere. Overcapacity means big surpluses for industry
⇒ - Backup. Of course, anything inherently CO₂-producing is out for this, and this includes gas, obviously, and biomass (maybe less obviously, but think about it). And that leaves?
So, this is my plan: keep building solar and wind till peak demand is sometimes met, build nuclear to replace all the fossil »backup«.
@MattMastodon@Sodis My thinking about biomass: if we don’t burn it, it will not be released as CO₂ to the atmosphere.
I guess the thinking about biomass was: if we only burned biomass, not fossil mass, then we’d have an equilibrium and no problem. But saying that biomass is net-zero gets it backwards. The CO₂ doesn’t care where it’s coming from. It is our task to produce as little CO₂ as possible. The goal is to get below the amount of CO₂ /captured/ by biological processes.
@MattMastodon @Sodis
⇒ - Storage: obviously, we’d want to smoothen out the time dimension as well. This means adding storage that can meet 100% of demand as well (volatile sources frequently drop to 0), and feeding it with enough additional clean sources that it can fill every expected gap (and gap accumulation).
And here I’d like to repeat my point from before: the best (most effective) storage we have right now is pumped hydro, by far. And pumped hydro is not enough, by far.
⇒
@Ardubal @Sodis
Interesting about hydro.
The UK has the same problem with it’s grid and we are rebuilding our grid. But this it true of #nuclear too. Massive new powerlines are being built across Somerset.
One thing I am getting out of this is how different counties are. In the UK we have massive capacity for wind tidal etc.
Overbuilding renewables is good. Zero wind can happen but in the UK it’s usually windy somewhere. Overcapacity means big surpluses for industry
@MattMastodon @Sodis
⇒ - Backup. Of course, anything inherently CO₂-producing is out for this, and this includes gas, obviously, and biomass (maybe less obviously, but think about it). And that leaves?
So, this is my plan: keep building solar and wind till peak demand is sometimes met, build nuclear to replace all the fossil »backup«.
deleted by creator
@MattMastodon @Sodis My thinking about biomass: if we don’t burn it, it will not be released as CO₂ to the atmosphere.
I guess the thinking about biomass was: if we only burned biomass, not fossil mass, then we’d have an equilibrium and no problem. But saying that biomass is net-zero gets it backwards. The CO₂ doesn’t care where it’s coming from. It is our task to produce as little CO₂ as possible. The goal is to get below the amount of CO₂ /captured/ by biological processes.
deleted by creator