this post was submitted on 04 Nov 2023
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The levelised cost doesn't take into account the need to offset intermittence, which is the big fucking problem that the entire population of Germany seems to be ignoring.
Ah yes you don't have the exact same problem with nuclear because energy usage never fluctuates. But even if it would takes 10 times more money to store solar energy it still would be cheaper than nuclear.
Rare earths for batteries are a bottleneck, especially if you want to electrify transport too.
No they aren't. There are so many different battery types that don't use any rare materials. You can store heat in salt. SALT
Yes and we absolutely should, but Germany is going to have to build a shit ton more storage and generation capacity to make that work. Also different storage technologies have different discharge rates, while traditional batteries can provide instant, short lasting and much needed frequency regulation, heat-based batteries take time to respond but can operate for prolonged periods. This is also a really complex balance to reach.
Again, not saying there isn't space for renewables: my ideal grid is 40% nuclear 60% renewable.
but I'm not certain we can grow storage and production with the rate of increase in demand by purely using renewables. Especially given the future need for air conditioning, and green hydrogen production for industrial processes like steelmaking.
We're in the midst of a climate crisis, and my only and primary goal is to reduce Greenhouse Gas emissions. The statistics show clearly that Germany's phase out of nuclear had done the opposite. The wrong decision was made: these plants should have at least been maintained, and, in my opinion, moderately expanded. The EU should have developed an EU-wide nuclear fuel reprocessing and storage programme, and we could be much closer to climate neutrality and relative energy independence today.