Posted on 05/20/2025 4:22:32 AM PDT by MtnClimber
Just use nuclear to charge the batteries for peak demand.
The new generation designs leave almost no waste. What waste is generated can be reused repeatedly until something nearly inert is left.
Manhattan Contrarian ping
“Don’t be fooled. As far as I know, “biofuels” mainly means burning garbage, with some wood pellets from cutting down trees thrown into the mix.”
I think it’s primarily wood pellets from forests being cut down in Estonia and other Eastern European countries.
Talk about DECEPTION!
“For their virtue, the Danes got to enjoy average residential electricity prices of 37.63 euro cents per kWh.”
Roughly 3 times the average price in the US, by the way.
“Just use nuclear to charge the batteries for peak demand.”
Or use pumped storage (of water, of course) for the same, as is widely done in the US...if you don’t want a little battery cell issue taking out the entire system.
Nuclear actually makes sense. It produces large amounts of electricity and is reliable unlike wind and solar. Its also much cheaper in the long run. Not that I believe in Gaia worship, but it also produces no carbon emissions. Its also a source that is directly under the control of the national government in any country - ie they don’t have imports of fuel anybody could cut off and they don’t need to worry about price spikes for energy.
That is a very good article. Thanks for posting.
It is taking the world a LONG time to wake up to reality of the folly of “renewables.”
The author asked a couple of key questions:
1. “Do wind and solar actually serve any real function here?”
2. “Are they just a large added cost without any corresponding benefit?”
Yes, they allow government and uneducated boobs to convince themselves “we are doing SOMETHING to solve the climate crisis and save the earth.” They get to feel smug and pat themselves on the back.
The author discussed the overall system reliability and why conventional generation is required for reliable, low cost power. He did not touch on the looming environment disasters of “renewables” at the end of their 20-30 year lives or the ridiculous and staggering amounts of scarce materials needed to build them.
You have to see cost to consumers for each. In the USA, gas is still the best way to go.
I think it's primarily wood pellets from forests being cut down in Estonia and other Eastern European countries.
Talk about DECEPTION!
That significant fraction with the vague title of Net Imports. Wanna bet there is a large portion of that that is either coal or nuclear? Deception indeed.
Problems with this article:
Nukes are very hard to turn On and OFF.
They are the ultimate Base Power.
And Batteries are extremally expensive.
There are a couple plants like that here in NH.
They burn the chipped up branches/tops of trees.
When you log the forest the sawmills only take the logs.
The top of the trees gets chipped up and blown into a van.
It gets burned at these plants to make electricity.
Similar to our trash gets burned to make electricity.
Northern Europe produces a lot of timber. Nordic Spruce, Scots Pine, even Douglas Fir and Larch. The first two have been planted all over Scandanavia, the Baltics, Germany, Austria, Check, Slovakia, Romania, Poland, and RUSSIA.
Some of the best Nordic Spruce comes out of western Russia. Up until the war my company bought from Russian sawmills. All the sawmills in Germany, Sweden, Poland were buying Russian timber because it was cheaper and better quality than the timber growing in their own countries.
Today we are still buying lumber from Germany, Austria, Estonia, Lithuania, Sweden, Finland, etc. We are not buying any Russian lumber currently.
We are also buying OSB from Ireland and Poland.
Generally, all of these products are brought into ports along the east coast. From as far north as Boston all the way to Houston.
A trader two seats away from me just bought 20 trucks of 2x4-16’s #2 Nordic Spruce from Germany. They will come into the port of Baltimore in July.
I know, the normal approach would be to use Nuclear for base load and natural gas turbine or combined cycle natural gas turbine for variable peak load generation.
I follow this guy out of MA on YouTube who calls his channel Undecided with Mike Ferrel. He reviews all sorts of “green Energy” systems.
Everything from solar panels to sea wave generators.
Recently, he did an episode on these wave powered generators being experimented on in the Baltic or North Sea. They have buoys that bob up and down generating power.
I found this to be interesting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1pxV7Nro34
FYI, this guy Mike Ferrel walks the walk too. He built a super insulated house somewhere in MA. It has a geothermal heating/cooling system, solar panels, etc. It was built in a factory up here in SW NH. Where they build these super insulated houses.
Makes sense. Doesn’t really get more green than nuclear power.
Historically, coal and nukes were the base load power sources and hydro and gas for the peaks.
That worked perfectly.
Now, we have a mess!
The immediate impetus for the resolution appears to have been the recent blackout in Spain and Portugal, which has been generally attributed to the lack of synchronous generation on the power grids of those countries.....
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Denmark has links to Sweden and Norway and of course with Germany since they share a ground border with them. I was curious to see how things shaped up with ‘import and export of electrical energy’ and this data is from 2023….
The numbers are the imported and exported electrical energy in TWh....
Country Imports Exports
Sweden 8.54 1.47
Norway 5.60 (very small/negligible)
Germany 2.45 9.26
Totals 16.89 10.73
Bottom line is that this may have something to do with the recent blackout in Spain/Portugal but up to now, the adjacent countries are what has sufficed for synchronous generation and inertia for Denmark… the advantage of being a small country that is next door to a big country where the neighbors can’t act as a big battery. The problem is that these other countries too have jumped on the UI (unreliable/interruptible) bandwagon. Norway is still fine since almost all of its electrical power is generated by hydro but Sweden is up to nearly 25% wind and Germany is at 60% and therefore are the same type of risk as what took down Spain/Portugal.
Nukes load follow if they are designed to.do so. The ABWR which the Japanese can build in 39 months btw load follows natively by pump speed control from 50-100% and control rods down to 25%. Those can ramp at 2% per minute with the control rods and 30% per minute with the pumps. With a full flow steam bypass to the condensers they can ramp down in seconds by instantly dumping the live steam directly to the condensers it is then how much inertia do the turbine rotors have. If anyone tells you nukes cannot load follow and do it as well as or better than gas turbines they are lying to you with a political agenda.
https://www.hitachi.com/rd/news/topics/2024/2403_hiabwr.html
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.