The construction, fuelling and cleanup of a site is far from carbon zero. There is also a geographic dependency, or should be.
Nuclear power puts out more CO2 than solar or wind according to Nature (hydro isn’t mentioned for some reason).
“carbon emissions ranged from 1.4 grammes of carbon dioxide equivalent per kilowatt-hour (gCO2e/kWh) of electricity produced up to 288 gCO2e/kWh. Sovacool believes the mean of 66 gCO2e/kWh to be a reasonable approximation.”
No, the storage part is not there. Hydroelectric storage is expensive, takes a long time to build, and is geographically dependent to boot. Only ~5 minutes of global electricity storage can be provided with batteries using all known lithium deposits. Only 19 minutes worth of storage is available with all the lithium we can mine with today's equipment [1].
This is why plans for a solar and wind grid assume that some silver bullet is going to provide dirt-cheap and nigh-infinitely scalable storage.
These are not particularly relevant or helpful comparisons for knowing whether lithium ion is ready to deploy now (it is), or whether storage will be achievable with lithium ion and other chemistries (it will).
This is only looking at currently known reserves, a number which has doubled in only a few years. It also compares it to total energy consumption, a meaningless comparison for the coming decades.
Further, the same industrial capacity for lithium ion batteries also works for sodium chemistries. We have only focused on lithium because the primary applications are in mobile things at the moment: cars and mobile devices, where the weight advantage of lithium is important.
For grid storage, weight and specific energy are not important, and sodium chemistries will be ideal. There are also entire classes of flow chemistries that are in their infancy.
But what is mature and cost effective is lithium ion storage. The only place where we have open data about the feelings of investors, the PJM and ERCOT interconnection queues, storage is being deployed in GW comparable to new natural gas GW. This number alone, the GW and not the GWh, tells us that investors think this new tech is ready and deplorable. And it is falling in cost exponentially. Other battery tech is following and dropping in cost too, but lithium ion is benefitting from having existing markets that can fund massive learning.
> This is only looking at currently known reserves, a number which has doubled in only a few years.
False. It is estimating at the total amount of accessible lithium, not just the known reserves.
> For grid storage, weight and specific energy are not important, and sodium chemistries will be ideal. There are also entire classes of flow chemistries that are in their infancy.
Feel free to cite this as an option once sodium batteries actually become available at scale. Until then this amounts to, "hope some future solution solves storage."
> But what is mature and cost effective is lithium ion storage. The only place where we have open data about the feelings of investors, the PJM and ERCOT interconnection queues, storage is being deployed in GW comparable to new natural gas GW.
This is not even remotely true. We don't even have 1 GWh of battery storage [1]. Sure, we're not deploying "new" natural gas because energy demand is decreasing and we already have existing natural gas plants. But the point is that
> And it is falling in cost exponentially. Other battery tech is following and dropping in cost too, but lithium ion is benefitting from having existing markets that can fund massive learning.
Cost is a function of supply and demand. If you actually try to use lithium ion batteries for grid storage, this will create massive demand and thus increase cost. Again, there is insufficient accessible lithium to provide even half an hour of energy storage.
The GitHub estimate is only using known resources and reserves, a number which goes up every year as we discover more. It is not an estimate of total accessible lithium. Lithium resources, the type where we get most of our lithium, increased from 40M tons to 80M tons from 2016 to 2020 estimates, and will continue to increase:
And even if your number were right, it doesn't address the core point that battery storage deployment is growing at an absolutely incredible pace. In cost-competitive grids, it's replacing natural gas:
This is just bad economics. These all affect each other. As production costs fall for lithium ion batteries, demand is growing, as shown by that RMI document. The cost of batteries is not falling because the demand is falling, the cost of lithium ion battery is primarily determined by manufacturing costs at the moment. The input costs of lithium is not going up because there's not enough lithium. And if supply of lithium does get constrained in the future, then there are alternative chemistries that are not supply limited.
Nuclear power plants are thermal power plants and that means they need cooling. The power density of nuclear power plants is so high that most of them can't be placed near rivers because rivers have a variable flow rate.
If the flow rate is too low you risk killing aquatic life in the river ecosystem so instead the nuclear plant is turned off. You can avoid this by placing the nuclear power plant near the ocean. That's what the Japanese did with the Fukushima power plant even though it's a tsunami prone area.
What gives you the idea that nuclear power plants can't be placed near rivers? Almost all that aren't on the coast are near rivers.
And they don't need to use potable water. The Palo Verde plant uses wastewater.
Because humans need water to survive, all population centers are built with access to water. Thus, cooling is available pretty much anywhere one would want to build a nuclear plant.
> So you can build nuclear in a tsunami zone? in a seismic zone? in an area without cooling?
Yes, you harden the structure against tsunamis and earthquakes. That's part of why nuclear plants are so expensive.
Atmospheric cooling can indeed be done anywhere. It's typically easier and more efficient to use water cooling. And humans need water to survive, and thus population centers are built near sources of water, water cooling is almost always an option. Also nuclear plants can be cooled with seawater.
This is in stark contrast to hydroelectricity which needs both a river and a valley to be viable. Geothermal power needs magma near enough to the surface to heat water into steam.
> So you can mine and enrich uranium without carbon?
I don't see why not. Use electricity produced by nuclear plants to drive centrifuges. Also use said electricity to power mining equipment.
And you didn't answer my question: What other carbon-free sources provide energy 24/7, besides ones that need very specific geography like hydroelectricity and geothermal power?
There is not enough accessible lithium to provide nearly enough storage [1]. 5 minute with known deposits, and 19 minutes estimated to be accessible with current mining techniques.
Biofuels are low energy density, and don't provide nearly enough power. Not to mention they aren't carbon-free. Burning biofuels releases carbon into the atmosphere that would otherwise be trapped.
Your source seems to be low by about 2 orders of magnitude on the energy density of lithium. They assume ~100% of a battery is made of lithium. There are only 200-300g of lithium metal per kwh in a lithium ion battery[0,1], or 12-18MJ per kg.
Battery: it doesn't have to be lithium (even thought, currently all planned ones use lithium-ion). Sodium-sulphur would be an option as well.
Biofuels are low energy density: this isn't about aviation or transportation, so that's not a concern at all.
Biofuels don't provide enough power: citation needed (are you moving the goalpost again?) - note that most energy will come from wind and the sun, so there is relatively little need for biofuels.
Burning biofuels releases carbon into the atmosphere that would otherwise be trapped: No, it would be released anyway (well, unless if you burry it really deep).
The problem with nuclear power is cost, due to high risks. And even then, the insurance (which is really expensive for nuclear plants) doesn't cover all the risks. The biggest risk is externalized: if e.g. a power plant in Switzerland would blow up, almost the whole country would be become un-inhabitable. And there is no insurance company paying for that.
3) use some energy produced by hydro to manufacture some concrete river beds and reservoirs
4) use some of the energy produced by 1-3 to dig real deep for geothermal everywhere
5) Ocean thermal energy conversion
Don’t get me wrong , I’m not anti nuclear , I’m a huge fan of the big reactor in the sky it produces all we need with perfect reliability there’s no reason to do something as dumb as trying to build terrestrial reactors
These don't produce power consistently. That's why one would need to build redundancy. Also it's not always sunny somewhere, unless you build transcontinental transmission lines. And even then, there's a period of time where most sunlight is hitting the pacific ocean.
> 4) use some of the energy produced by 1-3 to dig real deep for geothermal everywhere
> 5) Ocean thermal energy conversion
Both of these are geographically dependent. Might as well has just said hydroelectricity.
> Solar + transmission lines. It’s always sunny somewhere
Unless it is sunny 24/7 in a given country or even group of coutnries (e.g. the EU) this is not viable.
Countries will not give up their energy security and put themselves at the mercy of the other side of the planet (where it is sunny) plus whoeever might want to damage those transmission lines and cripple a country. It is already an issue with oil and gas.
It’s also failed. Why not just avoid it? That’s the approach taken according to your link.
The solution to the problems faced at Onagawa were to decommission the plant, and this process would take longer than the duration for which the plant actually ran.
“the 2011 events strongly influenced the decision to decommission the Onagawa Unit 1 early, brought to attention the length of the decommissioning process (which will surpass the operation stage)”
The decision to decommission the plant is political, not technical.
Onagawa was closer to the epicenter than fukushima and suffered no ill effects. It can be done, the main different between Onagawa and Fukushima is that they were owned by different companies and one company took safety seriously.