Needless to say, Jacob, there will, very likely, always be opposing camps when it comes to the use of Nuclear or fossil fuels on the one hand and the use of sun, wind, etc.., on the other hand.
And understandably, both camps will regard their reasons and positions as legitimate.
I'm not an authority on the subject of energy research, and such like. I'm a Civil Engineer by profession, so I happen to have some insight and understanding into the structures and facilities that are required as part of the energy production process.
In my previous post I emphasized the aspect of Base Load and its reliability. Any industrial country of any appreciable size needs a minimum Megawatt supply to feed its factories, plants, railways, etc.., etc.. That's a non-negotiable aspect. Whatever is providing that Base Load must run 24 hours a day. And the facilities that usually supply that power cannot be switched on in a matter of minutes. They take quite a while to power up.
However, as we know, there will be occasional peak loads that kick in for a few hours, usually early morning and early evening. But it makes no economical sense for a country to have facilities running 24 hours a day producing, say 100,000 M/watts when its average base load requirement is, say, 85,000 M/watts. So countries have additional power generators that can kick in, quickly, to provide the shortfall. In that regard countries often use Pumped Storage Schemes, where there's an upper dam, a pump/generator lower down and a storage dam below the generator.
When the evening peak demand arrives they open the valve and water runs down from the top dam, through the generator and electricity is INSTANTLY added to the grid.
At night, when electricity demand from the ongoing Base Load Generators is low, they use the spare electricity and "reverse" the Generator into a Pump and pump the water from the lower dam up to the upper dam, ready for the next peak demand.
With regard to the cost comparison numbers I posted, they came from an article I read that was published at the following link ....
nuclearfissionary.com
Unfortunately that site appears to be gone.
However, there is another source of cost comparisons provided from within the USA, viz. the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission ....
If one goes to the following link ...
eia.gov
.... there's a cost comparison table of NUCLEAR vs FOSSIL STEAM vs HYDROELECTRIC vs GAS TURBINE AND SMALL SCALE. The "Gas Turbine and Small Scale" includes, according to the note, "Gas Turbine and Small Scale category consists of gas turbine, internal combustion, photovoltaic, and wind plants."
Back in 2011 (which is a bit out of date, I guess, but nontheless relevant) we see that the costs per kWh for the 4 categories, in the order they're in in the previous paragraph, are :-
2.47c/kWh, 3.509c/kWh, 0.888c/kWh and 4.454c/kWh., bearing in mind that "a mill is a monetary cost and billing unit equal to 1/1000 of the U.S. dollar (equivalent to 1/10 of one cent)".
So it seems that back in 2011, based on the figures provided by a USA Federal body, that the Total cost, in terms of "Operation, Maintenance and Fuel" showed Nuclear to be about 55% that of Gas Turbine and Small Scale, also lower than Fossil Steam, but not surprisingly higher than Hydroelectric.
Of course, there's still your legitimate concern regarding waste disposal, etc... and that's where a lot of the "division" comes in regarding the "opposing camps".
I believe I also made the point that I'm certainly not opposed to the use of Solar, Wind, Tidal energy supply/production. I'm very much in favour of their use. I just believe that they are unlikely to be able to provide that ongoing and reliable Base Load supply of electricity that a country needs on a 24 hour basis. But they should certainly be used to supplement a country's electricity needs. |
