Svante

@matthewtoad43 @MattMastodon @BrianSmith950 @Pampa @AlexisFR @Wirrvogel @Sodis

There are already single events of more than a few hours where sunshine and wind are lacking. But that is only the immediate perspective; you need to integrate over at least several years to see the longer-term shortages that need to be handled as well. And that is quite obviously much more than a few hours. Therefore, I have some problems regarding such studies as credible.

@MattMastodon @Sodis We’re going in circles. Volatile sources can only supply 40% of current demand for £50/MWh. The question is what fills the rest.

If storage, then the price goes up immediately by at least two conversion losses from/to storage, in addition to the cost of storage itself. Which doesn’t exist at the needed scalability.

Pointing to single projects is not meaningful, as we need to build a fleet anyway, which has its own dynamics.

@MattMastodon @Sodis

⇒ - Backup. Of course, anything inherently CO₂-producing is out for this, and this includes gas, obviously, and biomass (maybe less obviously, but think about it). And that leaves?

So, this is my plan: keep building solar and wind till peak demand is sometimes met, build nuclear to replace all the fossil »backup«.

@MattMastodon @Sodis My thinking about biomass: if we don’t burn it, it will not be released as CO₂ to the atmosphere.

I guess the thinking about biomass was: if we only burned biomass, not fossil mass, then we’d have an equilibrium and no problem. But saying that biomass is net-zero gets it backwards. The CO₂ doesn’t care where it’s coming from. It is our task to produce as little CO₂ as possible. The goal is to get below the amount of CO₂ /captured/ by biological processes.

@MattMastodon @Sodis

⇒ Now the volatile supply line has valleys between the peaks. If you integrate over time and place, the supply line covers about 40% of demand in this situation.

That is /very rough/ and depends on a lot of factors, but my point is the same if it were 30% or 60%: where does the rest come from?

- Transmission: as already mentioned, we know how to transmit electric energy, it’s just material and effort. This smoothes out the »place« dimension.

⇒

@MattMastodon @Pampa @AlexisFR @Wirrvogel @Sodis

Without klicking anything, 61 million € is practically nothing, so I do not expect this to be a big, impactful project. It might be a nice little extra income from surplus hydro power (Norway is almost completely running on hydro).

Then looking into the links, this supports just a small fleet of up to 40 ships. Which is good.

I think it can be a good way for this niche, and it might be one little thing less to worry about.

@KnitWit @Emil Oh wait, you mean transporting reactor parts per ship? If they are new, they’re not even hazardous.

And nuclear fuel gets shipped all the time. If it’s new, it’s not a problem—very low activity, and water is a good shield—and spent fuel is just kept on site for decades.

@Sodis @MattMastodon Nuclear power plants can quite easily do load following. It happens regularly e. g. in France. However, since it has the lowest running costs, other sources are usually cut first as far as possible.

@KnitWit @Emil I guess you’re not alone, sadly.

However…

A nuclear powered ship probably wouldn’t be under ship regulation and supervision, but under nuclear regulation and supervision. Nuclear supervision is much easier to do and harder to circumvent than that of oil. Compliance would be enforced at ports. A ship that cannot dock is useless.

Also, the worst case with a nuclear powered ship is less bad than normal operation of an oil powered ship, and sufficiently improbable.

@Emil The reactor wouldn’t be filled, right? And not under pressure? It would just be a big lump of metal?