It's still not earning you money to spend electricity because you still have to pay the transfer fee which is around 6 cents / kWh but it's pretty damn cheap nevertheless, mostly because of the excess in wind energy.
Last winter because of a mistake it dropped down to negative 50 cents / kWh for few hours, averaging negative 20 cents for the entire day. People were literally earning money by spending electricity. Some were running electric heaters outside in the middle of the winter.
What's your opinion on smaller scale power plants? It seems like a decent way to cut the costs and still get that extra power in those seasonal low power periods. Or do you think it's not worth pursuing at all?
I'm in the US which is quite large. I've always thought small scale power plants in conjunction with solar and wind would be good.
Especially since a lot of states turn the land surrounding the power plant into wildlife sanctuaries since nothing can be built in the safety zone anyway.
It's like bird watching heaven at the power plant near me. I guess I just really like the idea of a power source that also incidentally protects forested areas.
In Finland they've been developing small scale reactors about the size of a shipping container but they're not intented to produce electricity but instead just heat water and then push it into the district heating grid. This way the powerplant would also be much simplier to produce and maintain as well as safer due to the lower pressures and temperatures it operates at. Basically a nuclear powered kettle.
That really fucking cool! Whoever came up with that application for nuclear power is a genius.
SMRs (or small-scale nuclear plants in general) solve some problems with nuclear power. If you were to build a single design very often, the principles of economies at scale would apply and drive down costs.
I like the theory. But in practice there's a couple problems that so far I've not seen addressed very often. First is the issue that not all costs of building a nuclear power plant can be brought down by simply having more of them. Particularly infrastructure costs can rise significantly, because instead of building one large plant with a connection to the grid, necessary buildings for operational control, infrastructure for the coolant water, roads, security etc... you have to build several instead, which multiplies the costs of these.
Then there's the issue of personnel. You need people to operate and maintain the plant, security, management, etc... Per reactor you may need less people, but because you have so many reactors you end up needing more people overall. Most countries have a hard enough time as it is to get enough qualified staff, you'd also need to heavily invest in education for the next generation of nuclear engineers.
You also have these container-sized reactor concepts that basically promise to run themselves, requiring almost no maintenance other than the occasional refueling. But those are very much still in the concept-stage and also need to address the security issue. An unmanned container with nuclear fuel and expensive equipment inside could very well make a worthwhile target for criminals.
I like the utopian vision that nuclear promises but I worry the path to get there is full of pitfalls. I also don't see the cost of nuclear coming down any time soon, and if we want to remain competitive in manufacturing for example, cheap energy is absolutely key.
Personally, I prefer investments in renewables and battery tech. Particularly battery tech I'm hopeful about. In theory there's so much to gain still on that front, and it has the potential to improve so much other technology, from phones to drones to pacemakers to reliable, decentralised power. Nuclear tech is cool, but it only really promises to result in more nuclear power, rather than improvements in other areas as well. Fusion is interesting (and almost worth investing in just for the cool "it can be done"-factor) but at the same time still so far away. Too risky to rely on for now.
Haha, I can see why that makes you more inclined to support nuclear! Though it does make me a little sad that in order to protect our forests and wildlife we first need to build a nuclear reactor next to it. Can't we just designate them wildlife sanctuaries regardless of that power plant being there or not?
That was a wonderfully in depth explanation! Thank you! I have a lot to think about(in a good way)
I also wish we could have more wildlife sanctuaries without the power plants basically forcing them into existence, but I guess I'm at the point where I'll take what we can get. However, I shouldn't forget that we can do better too.
Hopefully we as a species can figure out our energy problems globally... and work together on it instead of fighting each other over which one is best.
Thank you again for your really informative answer! I really appreciate it!!
Hey thanks! I certainly don't claim to know everything here, but I mostly dislike how the discourse regarding clean energy, nuclear etc... has... devolved so much. You always hear the same fairly boring catchphrases, arguments and rebuttals, but there's genuine issues and questions that need all of us to come together and find the answers to. It's developed its own little "politics" almost.
I hope we can breathe some new life into the discussions, as it's a super-interesting problem to think about and I certainly hope we as a species find a solution.