|
I am sorry, but I think most of what you wrote is plain wrong. Yes, I agree, the total amount of energy used by humanity is going up. Especially as there are so many nations on earth which so far only use little energy. On the other side, it will somewhat go down from the current state for many leading industrial nations. However, the bigger change will be how we use energy. In the last century the whole grid was optimized for a mostly constant load because that is what the then-used technologies, nuclear and coal, could do best. There were even big incentives given to customers to have a mostly constant draw of power. But now this changes. We have energy sources which produce electricity very cheaply, but not at a constant rate. And the experience shows, if the end customer is charged by availability, the consumption patterns change to optimize costs. This will be a big factor in the rollout of renewables. As the article shows, cost-wise the SMRs can't compete. Renewables are getting ridiculously cheap. And even more: every one can set up renewables. You can go and buy yourself solar panels and put them onto your house or into your garden. The same advantage applies to industry-scale deployments. Same with wind. The only disadvantage with wind are the permits, as wind generators are quite big. But those are still trivial compared to nuclear, as the wind generators are not dangerous in any other sense. Because they are cheap, the electricity markes are going to be flooded by renewables. That is basic economy. So the question is, how can we complement renewables best, especially to cover the gaps in their production. It won't be one thing, but a combination of several options as they are non-exclusive. Local conditions will put a stronger emphasis on one technology vs. the other. But one thing is clear: it won't be nuclear. Because even in the most optimistic szenarios, nuclear is a bad counterpart, as it is not good at providing varying output. Even if that is technically possible (usually it is not), economically it doesn't make any sense at all. For a transition time, it will be gas, as gas plants are relatively cheap and fast. Gas is expensive, so running the plants infrequently makes sense. The gas can later be provided out of renewable production. Most likely, battery storage will kill that too. But if not, the gas power plants can still be used. And in all of that I haven't even touched the operational safety, nuclear waste, and of course giving nuclear technology to countries we don't trust. |