7 ms·

In countries with dark winters and without enough hydro power, the only reliable alternative are fossil fuels...

• oblio 2mo ago
  Wind + storage, geothermal.
  • deepsummer 2mo ago
    Storage of energy in the dimensions required for weeks with almost no wind is an unsolved problem. Right now, we can't store enough to make it through a single night without using fossil fuels. Most countries don't even have the capacity to store the energy for a single hour.
    • emsign 2mo ago
      Geothermal and storage is worth investing in, investing in nuclear is not. NPPs are simply too expensive and you won't find investors unless you heavily subsidize it with tax money. Only compnies willing to invest in NPPs are those with virtually free money: the handful of AI big tech giants.
      • deepsummer 2mo ago
        How can you be sure of that before even having a practical and proven solution for the required scale of storage?
        • ben_w 2mo ago
          We have proven solutions. We're building the factories to make them as fast as we can find investors with money to spend on them, because they're already cheaper than fossil fuels which are themselves cheaper than nuclear.
    • RandomLensman 2mo ago
      As we can store fossil fuels for weeks of demand, we can store the required energy in chemical form, no? Germany has huge natural gas storage, for ezample.
      • deepsummer 2mo ago
        If you mean hydrogen, this video explains the issues better than I can: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zklo4Z1SqkE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zklo4Z1SqkE
        • RandomLensman 2mo ago
          Doesn't need to be hydrogen - plenty of possible substances that could be used as storage (might not even need to be gaseous for some applications).
• comrade1234 2mo ago
  Iceland has no nuclear power plants.
  • deepsummer 2mo ago
    Countries like UK, Ireland, Germany, Danmark, Netherland, Poland also have dark winters. Solar in winter is only about a fifth of production in summer months. Iceland has geothermal, which is amazing, but won't help central Europe.
    • ben_w 2mo ago
      Those places also have a huge wind resource in the form of the North Sea, for Ireland whatever the other bits of that submerged continental shelf are called, and for Poland the Baltic: https://globalwindatlas.info/en/ https://globalwindatlas.info/en/ This is important because wind season anti-correlates with PV season. Plus, it's not like north-south power lines are beyond the wit of mankind. The US western interconnection includes both Canada and Mexico: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NERC-map-en.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NERC-map-en.svg
      • deepsummer 2mo ago
        Yet there are whole weeks practically without wind in winter. And most climate models estimate that global warming reduces wind further. Storage in the required dimensions is an unsolved problem.
        • frm88 2mo ago
          Storage in the required dimensions is an unsolved problem. No, it's not. Decommissioned nuclear plant infrastructure used as massive battery storage. https://gesi-deutschland.de/en/gesi-project-presented-in-grohnde/ https://gesi-deutschland.de/en/gesi-project-presented-in-gro...
          • deepsummer 2mo ago