Will the EU energy crisis start to pull us away from reliance on fossil fuels?

[Endus]

Sorry to break it to you but nuclear energy is the greenest energy. It will maybe change in the future. But as it stands now, it is like that.

Not greenest. Hard to get greener than wind or hydro. Definitely greener than any fossil fuel by a wide margin, though.

[Specialka]

Because you say so?

Because reality says so. In theory, you would be right. In practice, not so much. Solar and such, simply can't produce enough energy and less "on demand". When storage capacity will be improved, maybe that will change, but it is not today.

[MoeSzyslak]

Because reality says so. In theory, you would be right. In practice, not so much. Solar and such, simply can't produce enough energy and less "on demand". When storage capacity will be improved, maybe that will change, but it is not today.

But this is just not true. Depending on location wind can produce power with a nearly 100% uptime. This energy has to be transfered to the location where it is needed. Solar is available through the whole day, more if it is not cloudy and this is the time where the industry needs the most energy. Also this power can be used to charge electric cars and batteries for the night for private homes. And how does solar not produce energy? The sun provides enough energy to the earth surface to provide for several earths as it is right now. Of course we have to build new solar plants but this is also the case with any other energy source.

And you even state it, if we need to build new infrastructure either way, why not build storage infrastructure if this makes more sense in the long run?

[Endus]

Because reality says so. In theory, you would be right. In practice, not so much. Solar and such, simply can't produce enough energy and less "on demand". When storage capacity will be improved, maybe that will change, but it is not today.

This is nonsense. Any power generation has to be built to make use of available productive capacity. For things like nuclear or fossil fuels, that's fuel. For solar, it's daytime hours. And the latter is far more predictable than the former. Nobody argues that solar all by itself can be a full solution, because of how temporally restricted it is, but the periods of solar's production cycle line up fairly well with the periods of energy usage, too, making solar an ideal component of a diverse generation capacity. Hydro's pretty darn reliable and completely manageable. Wind can offset hydro storage concerns by lightening the load enough to allow hydro storage in periods it might otherwise be expending from its reservoir. Geothermal's just generally consistent. Pointing at only solar's entirely predictable variability is not a reasonable counter to any argument actually being presented.

[Specialka]

But this is just not true. Depending on location wind can produce power with a nearly 100% uptime. This energy has to be transfered to the location where it is needed. Solar is available through the whole day, more if it is not cloudy and this is the time where the industry needs the most energy. Also this power can be used to charge electric cars and batteries for the night for private homes. And how does solar not produce energy? The sun provides enough energy to the earth surface to provide for several earths as it is right now. Of course we have to build new solar plants but this is also the case with any other energy source.

And you even state it, if we need to build new infrastructure either way, why not build storage infrastructure if this makes more sense in the long run?

Because storing energy (electricity) is not currently effective (we lose a lot of the stored energy). That is why overall the nuclear is the "greenest" (kinda of a hyperbole but still true overall for now). Obviously, as many things, I see nuclear as a "necessary evil". I hope in the next year, it will change but we have to find an effective way to store electricity.

And a nuclear plant produce many times the energy produced by a solar plant or a dam. Obviously, it is more expensive to build as well. I think there was a table laying around somewhere that shows that you get a better ratio energy/€€ with nuclear energy.

[Endus]

Because storing energy (electricity) is not currently effective (we lose a lot of the stored energy).

Only if you're talking about things like batteries. There are a lot of mechanical storage systems that are really efficient and almost perfectly stable over the long term.

And a nuclear plant produce many times the energy produced by a solar plant or a dam. Obviously, it is more expensive to build as well. I think there was a table laying around somewhere that shows that you get a better ratio energy/€€ with nuclear energy.

There isn't, because that claim is false.

The figure you're looking for is the Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE). Here's the most recent EIA report on such for the USA; https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf...generation.pdf

There's a lot there, so let me recommend Table 1b, the unweighted LCOE by type. 1a's good too but the weighting complicates factors; it's more useful for actual practice, but for hypothetical comparisons of costs in general, better to go unweighted.

The third-to-last column is the total LCOE without considering government subsidy programs. Let's look at those figures rather than the final column that includes the subsidies because again, we're talking more about raw costs and not how much the government defrays those costs, right?

The LCOE for nuclear is $88.24 (LCOE is measured in dollars per megawatt-hour).
Onshore wind's LCOE is $40.23. Standard solar is $36.49. Hydro is $64.27.

Nuclear is far more expensive per megawatt-hour. Not just more expensive in total cost, more expensive per unit of power produced, too. I'm pro-nuclear because it's one of the few dispatchable systems with minimal GHG emissions, but it's not one you can recommend for cost-efficiency.

I can't imagine the EU is that wildly different on these costs, since we're not factoring in government subsidies here. If anything, the EU probably has greater subsidization of green investment than the USA.

[Nymrohd]

Not greenest. Hard to get greener than wind or hydro.

Genuinely asking here, is hydro not at least somewhat controversial for the effect the necessary infrastructure can have on the environment?

[LeGin v3]

I mean you kinda pointed the obvious fault with the renewables that is reliability.

No, that's only solar and wind.

Tidal, geothermal, hydro and bioenergy do not suffer from reliability issues.

[Endus]

Genuinely asking here, is hydro not at least somewhat controversial for the effect the necessary infrastructure can have on the environment?

That significantly depends on the particular hydro structures in question and the local environment.

Dams have huge impacts. Not always negative, some are positive, but they need to be carefully assessed and considered. I'm generally not in favor. Particularly in arid regions, the creation of the reservoir may have more positives than negatives, but it still takes careful consideration. And dams always interrupt ecological traffic up and down the river, without additional infrastructure to encourage it.

Tidal is usually just fine; it doesn't impede ecological movement.

Riverine divergence hydro is also, potentially, impact-free. Older designs weren't good (we're basically talking dams again) but modern iterations diverge only a portion of the waterflow towards a turbine with a strong filter system ensuring fish and the like can't enter, the turbine generates the power, and the water is issued back into the riverine system at the outflow. The most convenient locations are alongside waterfalls, the taller the better, because the more vertical drop you have, the more turbine rotation you can get out of the flow, but you can put turbine systems along nearly any river, with modern designs.

Same for any variation on water wheels, though those don't scale nearly as well and don't really have industrial purposes.

Pumped storage can be added to pretty much any system, too, without negative impacts generally. "Extra" power is used to pump water to an elevated reservoir, and then released through turbines as needed when power levels in the regular system dip below maintenance. There's no reason this should have any significant environmental impact.

That all said, any construction project at these scales can have direct environmental impacts if poorly handled, too, obviously, but that's not necessary nor is it inherent to the system itself.

[Forogil]

This is nonsense. Any power generation has to be built to make use of available productive capacity. For things like nuclear or fossil fuels, that's fuel. For solar, it's daytime hours. And the latter is far more predictable than the former. Nobody argues that solar all by itself can be a full solution, because of how temporally restricted it is, but the periods of solar's production cycle line up fairly well with the periods of energy usage, too, making solar an ideal component of a diverse generation capacity.

Except that miss two rather important variables: clouds and the season.

Season first: You get more solar energy during summer than during winter, the difference is often more than a factor of 2 at high latitudes (including Ottawa) - the same places where you might also need to use energy for heating during the winter - the season when you get less solar energy (at low latitudes you might use more energy for air conditioning during the summer).

Hydro's pretty darn reliable and completely manageable.

Yes, but there are major environmental concerns (that's why many recent large hydro-plants are in places like China, Russia and Brazil where such concerns are more easily ignored) and nimbyism.

Pointing at only solar's entirely predictable variability is not a reasonable counter to any argument actually being presented.

Clouds are not entirely predictable. I'm not saying that solar is bad, just that it's more complicated.

[Endus]

Except that miss two rather important variables: clouds and the season.

Season first: You get more solar energy during summer than during winter, the difference is often more than a factor of 2 at high latitudes (including Ottawa) - the same places where you might also need to use energy for heating during the winter - the season when you get less solar energy (at low latitudes you might use more energy for air conditioning during the summer).

I didn't say solar was consistent, I said it was predictable. The variance from latitudinal differences in length of day doesn't vary randomly, it's calculable. Also, power demands in Ontario peak in the summer, not the winter; https://www.ieso.ca/en/Power-Data/De...torical-Demand
A/C is standard here for summers.

Yes, but there are major environmental concerns (that's why many recent large hydro-plants are in places like China, Russia and Brazil where such concerns are more easily ignored) and nimbyism.

Addressed in my last post up there. You're only talking about dams.

Clouds are not entirely predictable. I'm not saying that solar is bad, just that it's more complicated.

Not entirely, day-to-day, but in terms of productivity over a season, pretty predictable.

Power use hour-by-hour isn't fully predictable either.

[LeGin v3]

/snip

OP, good article here explaining the dismal state of the UK's nuclear industry:

https://www.investmentmonitor.ai/sec...-power-reactor

Essentially, the UK is set to lose nuclear capacity by 2035 and the reason is not a fault of the "uneducated masses", rather Thatcher and successive governments' commitment to privatisation.

It turns out that the free-marketeers' total conviction in the efficiency of the markets was misplaced. Who'd have thought?

[Twdft]

Sorry to break it to you but nuclear energy is the greenest energy. It will maybe change in the future. But as it stands now, it is like that.

As long as you don't care about its waste and deconstruction of power plants...

[Forogil]

I didn't say solar was consistent, I said it was predictable. The variance from latitudinal differences in length of day doesn't vary randomly, it's calculable. Also, power demands in Ontario peak in the summer, not the winter; https://www.ieso.ca/en/Power-Data/De...torical-Demand

That's not power demands - that's electricity demands, and you just showed that it varied about 10%.

For the residential sector electricity is less than 30% of power and natural gas more than 60% in Ontario (in terms of total energy use there's of course also oil). The price of natural gas is often considerably higher during winter than during summer - wonder why...

Sale of natural gas to commercial and residential use isn't just 10% more or double during winter, it's up to 6 times higher - including industrial use the difference is smaller, but it is still 30% more during winter.

Clearly that is with current energy mix, and one main idea with reducing the reliance on fossil fuels is to move a lot of the fossil fuel use to electricity that is then produced without fossil fuel - increasing the winter demand; it just seems that Canada is lagging a bit behind.

- - - Updated - - -

Addressed in my last post up there. You're only talking about dams.

Yes, because you want to store energy for when it is needed.

[Endus]

That's not power demands - that's electricity demands, and you just showed that it varied about 10%.

We're talking about electrical power, dude. They're the same thing. Sure, it's theoretically possible to generate mechanical energy directly from a river with a water wheel; that's what water mills were. But that's not what we're talking about.

Clearly that is with current energy mix, and one main idea with reducing the reliance on fossil fuels is to move a lot of the fossil fuel use to electricity that is then produced without fossil fuel - increasing the winter demand; it just seems that Canada is lagging a bit behind.

Behind who, exactly? You're not providing any data or sourcing for any of this.

- - - Updated - - -

As long as you don't care about its waste and deconstruction of power plants...

Nuclear waste is eminently manageable. All the nuclear waste created by every nuclear reactor in the world over their entire lifetimes to date would all, if collected together, fit inside a single football field. Even just building big underground concrete bunkers to shove it into with a "do not open until we figure out how to deal with this" sign on the doors is totally feasible as an approach. It may take 1000 years to develop such a tech, but a properly-designed bunker can last at least that long. Note that we've got Roman concrete structures still hanging around in a geologically active region after several thousand years; concrete can be pretty darn resilient.

[Twdft]

It may take 1000 years to develop such a tech,

Waste that nobody can touch for a 1000 years, very green. The greenest of green.

[Endus]

Waste that nobody can touch for a 1000 years, very green. The greenest of green.

I'm not sure you understand the implication behind the term "green", here. Nuclear waste has no harmful emissions other than the radioactivity, which can be completely contained inside the bunkers I described (and which are actually being used). There's no harm to the environment that results; the only emissions from most nuclear plants is clean steam.

[Forogil]

We're talking about electrical power, dude. They're the same thing. Sure, it's theoretically possible to generate mechanical energy directly from a river with a water wheel; that's what water mills were. But that's not what we're talking about.

Dude someone else.

The subject line is fossil fuel and Canada uses a lot of fossil fuel (=natural gas) for space heating during winter, instead of using electricity. If you want to reduce the reliance on fossil fuel the simplest idea is to use electricity for heating and produce electricity without fossil fuels.

Behind who, exactly? You're not providing any data or sourcing for any of this.

For Ontario's energy mix: https://apps2.cer-rec.gc.ca/energy-f...=&sourceOrder=

As for natural gas use in Canada: https://www.cga.ca/wp-content/upload...l-Canada-3.pdf

As for Canada being behind, take a look at a country that rely more on hydro-power, for the total energy: Norway. https://www.ssb.no/en/statbank/table...leViewLayout1/ - where the gross consumption of electricity is 80% higher during the winter compared to the summer. That's what happens when you really reduce the reliance on fossil fuel at high latitudes (and are "lucky" enough to get a lot of rain).

[Muzjhath]

What's generally glossed over for nuclear power is mining and refining.
Generally speaking you need to dig up a lot of other stuff for 1kg of Uranium. Because an intensive deposit is something like 0.01% uranium or some crap.

[Endus]

Dude someone else.


For Ontario's energy mix: https://apps2.cer-rec.gc.ca/energy-f...=&sourceOrder=

You realize the data on the graph I think you're looking at starts in 2005, right? Because the 2020 data on power generation (last before forecasted values) only has 6.7% of Ontario power generation via natural gas, and no other appreciable fossil fuel use.

And sure, Ford's government is fucking shit up right now. If you're expecting me to defend decisions made by his provincial government, you don't know me very well.

As for Canada being behind, take a look at a country that rely more on hydro-power, for the total energy: Norway. https://www.ssb.no/en/statbank/table...leViewLayout1/ - where the gross consumption of electricity is 80% higher during the winter compared to the summer. That's what happens when you really reduce the reliance on fossil fuel at high latitudes (and are "lucky" enough to get a lot of rain).

So "lagging behind" means "not the absolute best in the world"? That seems ridiculous.