Climate - truthful information about climate, related activism and politics.

6924 readers

705 users here now

Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.

As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades: Graph of temperature as observed with significant warming, and simulated without added greenhouse gases and other anthropogentic changes, which shows no significant warming

How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world:

Anti-science, inactivism, and unsupported conspiracy theories are not ok here.

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

silence7@slrpnk.net

Energy buffs give small modular reactors a gigantic reality check (www.theregister.com)

submitted 1 year ago by kalkulat@lemmy.world to c/climate@slrpnk.net

14 comments fedilink hide all child comments

With a few SMR projects built and operational at this point, and more plants under development, the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) concludes in a report that SMRs are "still too expensive, too slow to build, and too risky to play a significant role in transitioning away from fossil fuels."

all 18 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] fpslem@lemmy.world 26 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Return on investment is still heavily in favor of solar or wind generation with battery or hydro storage for low generation periods.

[–] RvTV95XBeo@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yes, and SMR tech is not mature enough to be considered useful, BUT if it can overcome that hurdle, it has the potential for applications that need exceptionally high availability, like data centers targeting five 9s availability.

Energy costs aren't always the only consideration

[+] Forester@yiffit.net -11 points 1 year ago (4 children)

We can't scale battery storage or hydro storage to the capacity we need to go carbon free

[–] MrMakabar@slrpnk.net 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

When you look at a large grid such as the EUs, you will find that wind + solar has no days without any electricity production and that worse case is at more then half of average electricity production of these sources.

https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=EU&interval=day&legendItems=jw3w1&year=2023

As soon as you go weekly it becomes even more stable:

https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=EU&interval=week&legendItems=jw3w1&year=2023&week=-1

We also already have a lot of hydro storage in form of reservoirs. Those are built already and can vary their output. It is more of a matter of changing how we use those.

[–] Womble@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Are we looking at the same graphs? Even going by the weekly one you are vairing by 2x between weeks, that is not stable generation by any serious measure. The grid needs have supply following demand with a tolerance of a percent or two not 50% difference, half a week of EU total energy demand is an insane amount of storage needed that would cost trillions of euros.

E: and if you look at 2022 its worse with a two week period in nov/dec getting down to just over 1/3rd of peak, you would need to have enough storage to cover this eventuality.

[–] MrMakabar@slrpnk.net 11 points 1 year ago

That is why you overbuilt solar and wind and also add storage. Wind and solar can easily be shut down, so that is an option or the electiricty can be used for making heat and storing that, charge up EVs or something similar. So doubling the average needed solar + wind and having enough storage to balance out a day is enough. Also things like biomass and even more importantly conventional hydro storage are good options. Norway for example has 86TWh of hydro storage alone today.

[–] spidermanchild@sh.itjust.works 9 points 1 year ago

Why not? We're working on things like iron air batteries that only need basic material inputs. We have all kinds of demand response potential that isn't realized. And we can do more transmission so a local event can be covered by capacity in other regions. Besides, any issues we have with the last 5% of generation are meaningless for the next 50%.

[–] nightwatch_admin@feddit.nl 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Be that as it may, nuclear is not the answer either.

[–] paysrenttobirds@sh.itjust.works 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Big overruns in budget and time for first 4 plants currently under construction, but the analysis double dips regarding "risk" as they are again talking about financial risk to investors, not risk of meltdown or other disaster.