[threeseed]

This is happening right now in Australia.

Conservative opposition are pushing heavily for nuclear energy in a country that has more access to renewables than almost any other.

And what happens is that the arguments over why you need it, where the reactors would be placed etc. are causing doubts from investors that long term, bi-partisan support for renewables exists. And investors need stability to invest.

It's an insidious plan that is actually working.

[candiodari]

Why would consensus against renewables work? Renewables work from pretty small-scale all the way up to industrial deployments (well, not in Alaska/Siberia but in Australia ...)

So consensus shouldn't matter because if Joe the hairdresser or Jane the mechanic decide they, personally, want to do renewables, they can. Just by themselves. Hell, in most Australian cities ... I bet it would work in anything but the CBD.

[threeseed]

We are talking about major renewable projects not small scale solar panels on your roof.

Even small scale needs stability in government support because you need to invest in the grid and energy storage to handle the excess in power generated by solar panels during the day.

[rbanffy]

You don’t need to invest in the grid for that. You can use batteries. There are chemistries that work really well for large building batteries.

[defrost]

"The grid" is literally the thing that joins battery parks (eg: the massive one in Adelaide South Australia) to rooftop providers, wind farms, household and commercial electricity consumers

"Investing in the grid" means expanding capacity in order to meet increased electricity demands as electric vehicles replace fosil fuel vehicles and increasing switching and grid intelligence to better handle a more distributed supply and demand.

More solar + more batteries and thermal storage + better grid are all things that grow hand in hand.

Of course investment in the grid is required to meet large scale population demands.

[threeseed]

Yes you can use batteries.

But you can also invest in the grid and have excess energy shifted to other regions that can make use of it.

[candiodari]

You could also just waste the power. Why not?

[rbanffy]

It might be cheaper to waste it than to reclaim it, if integrating that source to the grid is too expensive. When generation significantly exceeds demand, that scenario will happen.

[rbanffy]

Small-scale solar and wind is relatively inefficient and expensive when compared with large deployments.

One thing solar excels for is providing shade and reducing water loss from the soil. Australia might reclaim some land that way.

[jimbokun]

Renewables still need fossil fuel generators as a backstop as battery technology still isn’t good enough to meet the full electric demand when the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing. Nuclear fills this need as an always available electricity source cheaper than fossil fuels without the carbon pollution.

[matthewdgreen]

Nuclear in current designs doesn’t really fill this need because it can’t be economically spun up and down to match renewables’ down-periods. Current designs allow some load following but only a very limited amount, and the capital costs are still so high that it doesn’t pay to run the unit at partial output. Maybe someone will find a design (SMRs possibly) that changes this, but it will take at least a decade or two to get deployed and then it will be in competition with battery tech that exists in 10-20 years, which will probably eat all the low-hanging profitable use-cases.