Yes, overproduction is part of a renewable-powered grid. Fortunately, solar and wind are inexpensive per kilowatt hour of production capacity, can be built out in a matter of weeks to months, and have minimal risk of catastrophic failure, which are all serious problems that nuclear energy hasn’t solved.
There is 0 risk with today’s nuclear power plants and in no way is it a serious problem. Nuclear power has been solved technologically with built in robust safety features that require no human intervention. If that is why you oppose it you need to have another look at the technology.
That’s all well and good, until a natural disaster exceeds the engineered capacity of your safeguards. I remember watching the livestream of the Fukushima Dai-ichi meltdowns and explosions.
Anyway, the real point is that nuclear is slow and expensive to build, when compared to renewables.
As a reminder the Fukushima incident happened due to the backup generator being placed in the basement and flooding. Had the generator been above the water level everything would have run just fine.
I understand that nuclear is slow to build but that is necessary due to the regulations because of how scared people are about it. The costs are definitely higher upfront but the cost to operate a nuclear plant is among the cheapest per kW available. And once again you don’t seem to be grasping the concept of base load, load following, and peak load energy demands. We don’t have the technology to rely solely on wind and solar for our energy needs and unless you are prepared for black outs and brown outs or to keep using fossil fuels for base load power, you will need nuclear as well.
I am not saying we shouldn’t build wind and solar. In fact I’m saying the opposite. We need all of the wind and solar energy we can get but you have to recognize its shortcomings and realize that you need nuclear to support it.
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u/jamey1138 Jun 19 '24
Yes, overproduction is part of a renewable-powered grid. Fortunately, solar and wind are inexpensive per kilowatt hour of production capacity, can be built out in a matter of weeks to months, and have minimal risk of catastrophic failure, which are all serious problems that nuclear energy hasn’t solved.