fastcompany.com
www.fastcompany.com

Days before President Donald Trump returned to the Oval Office and took actions to stall the transition to clean energy, a disaster unfolded on the other side of the country that may have an outsize effect on the pace of the transition.

A fire broke out last Thursday at the Moss Landing Energy Storage Facility in California, one of the largest battery energy storage systems in the world. The fire raged through the weekend, forcing local officials to evacuate nearby homes and close roads.

Battery storage is an essential part of the transition away from fossil fuels. It works in tandem with solar and wind power to provide electricity during periods when the renewable resources aren’t available. But lithium-ion batteries, the most common technology used in storage systems, are flammable. And if they catch fire, it can be difficult to extinguish.

Last week’s fire is the latest and largest of several at the Moss Landing site in recent years, and I expect that it will become the main example opponents of carbon-free electricity use to try to stop battery development in other places.

  • acosmichippo@lemmy.worldEnglish
    156·
    2 days ago

    rebuttal: yes it is.

    great conversation! feel free to add any context, reasoning, or citations to support your opinion.

      • acosmichippo@lemmy.worldEnglish
        98·
        2 days ago

        lol this is such lazy bullshit. god forbid you actually have to type more than one sentence to explain your position.

        yes, nuclear has a high startup cost, this is known. that does not automatically mean it’s not economically viable.

        • IchNichtenLichten@lemmy.worldEnglish
          83·
          2 days ago

          Read the rest of the article, focus on the LCOE section. I’m not here to hold your hand.

          Alternatively, just admit you don’t know what you’re talking about and we’ll leave it there.

          • Iceblade@lemmy.worldEnglish
            21·
            1 day ago

            The main argument for nuclear is not its individual cost, neither for remewables. The main argument is that we need to rid ourselves of fossil fuels.

            When planning for a future global energy system w/o fossil fuels, nuclear power has a key role to play as the most reliable source of clean, dispatchable electricity. This allows it to punch far above its equivalent capacity by massively reduce the need for expensive grid scale storage solutions.

            Source 1: IEA (2019), Nuclear Power in a Clean Energy System, IEA, Paris https://www.iea.org/reports/nuclear-power-in-a-clean-energy-system, Licence: CC BY 4.0

            Source 2: NEA (2019), The Costs of Decarbonisation: System Costs with High Shares of Nuclear and Renewables, OECD Publishing, Paris https://www.oecd-nea.org/jcms/pl_15000

            • IchNichtenLichten@lemmy.worldEnglish
              11·
              1 day ago

              dispatchable electricity.

              I really don’t get this. Nuclear isn’t dispatchable. It never was and never will be. You have to create heat from the fission reaction, use that to turn water into steam, and use the steam to drive turbines to generate electricity.

              All of that takes time to ramp up which makes nuclear non-dispatchable. Compare it with a battery or pumped hydro where you can get power flowing anywhere from milliseconds to seconds.

              Furthermore, nuclear is so expensive that it makes no economic sense to build new nuclear that would run as close to 24/7 as possible, let alone as a dispatchable source.

              So this begs the question, did you already know this?

              • Iceblade@lemmy.worldEnglish
                21·
                16 hours ago

                Nuclear isn’t dispatchable.

                This statement is false.

                “A dispatchable source of electricity refers to an electrical power system, such as a power plant, that can be turned on or off; in other words they can adjust their power output supplied to the electrical grid on demand. Most conventional power sources such as coal or nuclear power plants are dispatchable in order to meet the always changing electricity demands of the population. In contrast, many renewable energy sources are intermittent and non-dispatchable, such as wind power or solar power which can only generate electricity while their primary energy flow is input on them.”

                Source: EnergyEducation.ca (Provided by the University of Calgary)

                Either you don’t know what you’re talking about, or are actively deceptive. I sincerely hope it is the prior. As such, I suggest that you educate yourself on the topic before commenting further to avoid spreading disinformation.

          • acosmichippo@lemmy.worldEnglish
            42·
            1 day ago

            this will be my last reply only to reply specifically to LCOE since you put so much effort into finally typing some kind of semblance of an actual argument. Yes, nuclear is expensive (partly because we haven’t been DOING it), we have already covered that. I assume the unstated premise you are operating on is that we can supply our entire energy needs with cheap renewable, but that is NOT the case, especially as we use more computing and electrified transportation in the future.

            Renewable energy sources are all geographically limited. Solar and wind takes up a lot of space and are are highly variable, so they require lots of grid storage as stated already (did you factor grid storage into your cost analysis?). I’m not even arguing against them, by all means we should be using them as much as possible. But we need to be realistic about their limitations and true LCOE.

            Also the cost of nuclear can be greatly reduced by directly replacing coal plants with them where all the grid connections already exist. You can’t do that with solar or wind.

            So your entire premise that nuclear isn’t viable because renewables are cheaper is a non-sequitur. The choice isn’t between renewables or nuclear, the choice is between renewables and coal. In that context, nuclear is absolutely economically viable because we know coal is not.

            I have read plenty and know what I’m talking about, but I’m not here to participate in lopsided conversations. I know a sea lion when I see one, and I look forward to your arrogant 5-word disrespectful reply.

            edit since a citation was requested:

            https://www.mackinac.org/blog/2022/nuclear-wasted-why-the-cost-of-nuclear-energy-is-misunderstood

            Mark Nelson, environmentalist and managing director of Radiant Energy Fund, explains that LCOE was developed as a tool to describe “the cost of energy for power plants of a given nature.” But this tool fails when it attempts to compare the different energy sources needed to provide reliable, 24/7 electricity supply.

            …

            The problem of cost is therefore one that is both exaggerated by critics and exacerbated by overzealous regulation. In other words, not only is the problem not as bad as it is often portrayed, but there’s far more significant room for improvement.

            • IchNichtenLichten@lemmy.worldEnglish
              23·
              1 day ago

              I assume the unstated premise you are operating on is that we can supply our entire energy needs with cheap renewable, but that is NOT the case, especially as we use more computing and electrified transportation in the future.

              I stopped reading there.

              Drop the attitude and provide sources to back up your claim like I did or quit wasting my time.