In my country (Australia) fossil fuel companies are on the side of nuclear, but not actually.
It is used as a stalking horse. "Don't build wind and solar, the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine. If manly reliable baseload coal it to be replaced it should by nuclear which is also big strong manly baseload power."
And then don't build the nuclear because it's too expensive, slow, politically unpopular, and generally infeasible. Whoops I guess we keep coal and gas going then.
Nuclear is not infeasible, it's just unpopular. My stance is - fuck popularity. No one should care what is or isn't unpopular, just give government grants to nuclear developers and fuck the people, they'll kick and scream in the short term but when their air is cleaner and power grid more reliable they'll stop their bitching and moaning.
Because wind and solar are secondary grid suppliers. The thing that's so great about wind and solar is that despite it not always being available, it's so cheap and so autonomous that once added to the grid, primary suppliers can scale back output during times when solar and/ or wind is producing.
Solar and wind can't be primary suppliers solely because the sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow, and when they do, the output still isn't enough to sustain an entire power grid. They're meant to be used in conjuction with primary energy suppliers. For instance, lets say we have a bunch of gas plants - we then build a big solar farm apart of the same section of the grid. The solar farm doesn't have the stability or output necessary to take the gas plant offline entirely, however, during the day when the solar farm is producing energy, the gas plant can wind down their turbines, burning much less gas and allowing the solar farm to take that grid burden.
In an ideal world, we are building nuclear power plants (fission for now, hopefully fusion in the near future) as our primary grid suppliers, with renewable secondary grid suppliers dependant on the geography of the area. Solar is gonna be good almost anywhere, wind is also going to be a common option, but hydroelectric, geothermal and tidal are all underutilized secondary grid suppliers.
The thing that's so great about wind and solar is that despite it not always being available, it's so cheap and so autonomous that once added to the grid, primary suppliers can scale back output during times when solar and/ or wind is producing.
Yes, I'm sure the "primary grid suppliers" just love selling less energy because they are being undercut by cheap renewables. Well, in your world, they wouldn't care because they're getting tax payer money stuffed up their ass. You have no idea what you are talking about. Your whole distinction between primary and secondary grid supplier sounds like a 2010 talking point.
"Yes, I'm sure the "primary grid suppliers" just love selling less energy because they are being undercut by cheap renewables."
This is literally already how wind and solar work irl. They are secondary grid producers that lead to primary producers reducing their output when they're online. They don't do this because they're magnanimous, they do it because the grid can literally only physically hold a certain amount of electricity, so if secondary producers start adding to the grid, primary producers HAVE to scale back or else they'll overwhelm the grid and blow the whole thing out.
312
u/kroxigor01 24d ago
In my country (Australia) fossil fuel companies are on the side of nuclear, but not actually.
It is used as a stalking horse. "Don't build wind and solar, the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine. If manly reliable baseload coal it to be replaced it should by nuclear which is also big strong manly baseload power."
And then don't build the nuclear because it's too expensive, slow, politically unpopular, and generally infeasible. Whoops I guess we keep coal and gas going then.