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by felgueres 1783 days ago
'Base load can be provided through carbon neutral sources, such as the burning of rest-mass left over from crop production.'

This statement is very uncalibrated. Biomass is possible just as much as tidal power but that doesn't make it viable for scale. It's not even part of the conversation.

'Smart control of appliances is another way in which the need for baseload power could be reduced'

Wrong. Smart control of appliances is used to shift demand from peak load not base.

Storage is not optional to make renewables base load.

'But it need not be so, not every source of pleasure or quality of life needs a combustion engine or a plug.'

You are obviously trivializing quality of life. High energy consumption means access to quality products and services in food, transport, education, entertainment and healthcare at minimum.

Unfortunately your arguments are uncalibrated so I will stop. Please take a look at the cost-effectiveness of nuclear on this source for future discussion: https://www.iea.org/reports/projected-costs-of-generating-el...
1 comments
jacquesm 1783 days ago
Nonproliferation agreements alone mean your scheme will never work. I prefer to solve problems with the available means rather than to fantasize about a world that could be, it tends to get more and faster results.

FWIW baseload is provided today by biomass augmented plants all over Europe (except for France, which does rely predominantly on nuclear. It's not yet the largest fraction but it is definitely moving the needle.

Smart control of appliances can be used to shift demand from peak, but it can also be used to shift demand away at times that baseload would have to be increased for baseload generators that are slow to ramp up (such as: nuclear).

As for storage not being optional, we are very far away from having excess power with such regularity that storing it is cheaper than reducing generating capacity. In other words we can safely ignore this problem until orders of magnitude more renewable energy generation capacity has been installed.

It looks to me like you are heavily personally invested in seeing nuclear (fission, presumably) based energy no matter the disadvantages, which are numerous and which leave us with a serious problem in terms of waste removal.

But you're the (anonymous) expert ;)

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