Comment by mpweiher
5 hours ago
The storage problem is home-made, because our problem is intermittent renewables that can't produce on-demand.
With consistent producers like nuclear there is no storage problem.
And of course the Natrium plant has the buffer so it can ramp grid output up and down while maintaining the reactor at consistent power levels.
Nuclear power plants and the electric networks have a big problem when power consumption has sudden big changes, like this
https://www.wsj.com/business/energy-oil/a-new-threat-to-powe...
Storage would mean just to reroute the energy to storage, otherwise you need to lower the power plant‘s output what doesn’t happen fast in nuclear power plants
> With consistent producers like nuclear there is no storage problem.
This tells me you’ve never looked at a demand curve. In for example California the demand swings from 18 GW to 50 GW over the day and seasons.
The problem has always been economical. And this solution is looking like a bandaid to get taxpayer handouts.
Why store expensive nuclear electricity rather than extremely cheap renewable electricity?
> This tells me you’ve never looked at a demand curve. In for example California the demand swings from 18 GW to 50 GW over the day
Have you been looking at "net demand" curves? Total demand variation is not too large over the day. The wind/solar production enormously increases the magnitude of remaining demand difference over the day.
https://www.caiso.com/todays-outlook
> and seasons.
Nobody is talking about batteries to deal with demand swings between seasons though. Capacity has to accommodate whether it's nuclear or fossil or battery or renewable. The issue is day to day variation. And it does not matter how much wind/solar capacity you have, you can't supply demand without storage. That is untrue of other generation types.
Other generation might use batteries to take the edge of peaks, but that would only be done if it made total cost cheaper. That's not the case for renewables. If there were no other generation then they would have to use storage, so it's always going to make them more expensive.