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by Pxtl 4761 days ago
The thing is that nuclear isn't really good at this. Nuclear plants don't have much in the way of a throttle - they're just "on" or "complete shut-down and it will take substantial measures to start it up again". Fossil fuels or some sort of capacitive system (even just using the peak surpluses to pump water into a reservoir above a turbine) would do that task better.

The panicky nay-sayers of nuclear power are too obsessed with the risks of radiation, but there are a lot of other legitimate reasons that it might not have a place in our future. Uranium just isn't that plentiful, for example.
2 comments
TeMPOraL 4761 days ago
> Nuclear plants don't have much in the way of a throttle - they're just "on" or "complete shut-down and it will take substantial measures to start it up again".

Well, this is exactly what we need. Power demand is fluctuating, but mostly averages out to something constant. It's easier to throw in a little buffering to compensate demand fluctuations than to wake up with half the power in the grid because it suddenly got cloudy. You'd have to store very large amounts of power, which is this "substantial investment in energy storage systems" GP was writing about.

> Uranium just isn't that plentiful, for example.

Here you are wrong.

http://www.withouthotair.com/c24/page_162.shtml

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mpyne 4761 days ago
> The thing is that nuclear isn't really good at this. Nuclear plants don't have much in the way of a throttle - they're just "on" or "complete shut-down and it will take substantial measures to start it up again".

Nuclear can certainly be designed to ramp power output up or down in response to demand. After all there are many applications of nuclear technology in fields that require rapid and immediate changes in power output.

Nuclear power generation plants are not typically designed to do this, but it's not because nuclear can't, it's because nuclear doesn't have to. The plants are built by the utility companies to act as baseload power generation and can normally afford to take hours to change power output if they wish. But if utility plants wanted a nuke plant that would change power output quicker, that could be arranged as well.

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sentenza 4761 days ago
It's likely that baseload and renewables will meet half way. Supposedly, adding a small amount of battery capacity to wind turbines dramatically increases their power output predictability.

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/514331/wind-turbines-ba...

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