Dear Maxy G

Just surrender mate. The march of batteries are making renewables efficient.

That lefty outlet, Forbes http://www.forbes.com/sites/chipregister1/2015/01/13/the-battery-revolution-a-technology-disruption-economics-and-grid-level-application-discussion-with-eos-energy-storage/ explains to residual Strangeloves:

"The Battery Revolution: A Technology Disruption, Economics and Grid Level Application Discussion with Eos Energy Storage"

The ability to store power bridges the reliability gaps that occur with renewables, when, on any given day, the sun just doesn’t shine bright enough or the wind doesn’t blow hard enough to feed the hungry power grid.

So what is this amazing new technology? It’s batteries – yes, batteries.

But we aren’t talking about any old battery here; rather, we are talking about super batteries with the ability to store megawatt-sized loads, enough to power entire neighborhoods or towns if need be. While you could theoretically achieve the same result by stringing together the type of batteries used to power your laptop or smartphone, the cost of doing so would be economically prohibitive. But entrepreneurial companies, such as Ambri and Eos Energy Storage, are pursuing the next generation of battery technology, with the aim of bringing storage costs down significantly for utilities."

And that is renewable-batttery setups moving up on fossil fuel power generation - let alone your "cheap" multi-$Billion nuclear power reactors. Nuclear dreams were for the late Admiral Rickover and now retired Admiral https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Scarce

Your nuclear dreams are just too extreme for normal Australians.

Confess Maxy matey.

Hi Christina Mac,
Please tell us what generation of nuclear power all those incidents were? How many people died at each incident? How many die from coal each day? The statistical reality on a deaths per terawatt basis is that more people die falling off solar rooftops and wind turbines than have been killed by radiation!
http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/

http://www.theage.com.au/comment/want-to-kill-fewer-people-go-nuclear-20130710-2pqbq.html

http://roarmag.org/2011/04/coal-kills-4000-times-more-people-per-unit-of-energy-than-nuclear/

http://theenergycollective.com/willem-post/191326/deaths-nuclear-energy-compared-other-causes

Please don’t let raw emotion compel you into fearing old Gen2 reactors when even their antiquated technology proved safer than today’s renewables on a per terawatt basis! The way you quote a few power station names rings of the melodrama of saying “Fukushima and Nagasaki!” No. That will not do. Even the peer-reviewed journals say Chernobyl, the worst nuclear disaster in human history from the worst regime operating the worst possible nuclear-configuration (a type of reactor that was NEVER built in the west!) turns out will probably only kill 4000 people. The worst hydro dam disasters kill order of magnitude more people! Banqiao Dam killed 171,000 people and left 11 million people homeless! That dwarfs Chernobyl by a factor of 42.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_hydroelectric_power_station_failures

But coal? That kills around 3 million people a year. It’s almost 2 Chernobyl’s a day! So if you want to create fear and mayhem around an energy source, please get your facts straight and pick coal. It causes climate change and chokes people to death. Then maybe have a long hard look at the money we’re paying for wind and solar that kill more people than OLD nuclear technology AND are OFF more than they are ON!

But compared to today’s Gen3.5 reactors that are self-cooling, the safety of Gen2 looks like the stone age. Technologies like the LFTR CANNOT melt down, as they are already a liquid.

Lastly, what do we really know about radiation? Did you know there is 3 times as much radiation in Kerala, India, as there are at Fukushima, and that cancer rates there are down compared to the rest of the world? We should move everyone home to Fukushima and alleviate evacuee related depression.
http://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/issues/nuclear/five-surprising-public-health-facts-about-fukushima

Hi Plantagenet,
Many renewables die in winter. You don’t need a battery to last a day, you need weeks at a time! But the reality is the cost of batteries is so astronomical that just buying 1 week of storage (not power systems to charge that storage!) could completely power Germany with SAFE modern reactors like the Gen3.5 AP1000!!
http://thebreakthrough.org/blog/2011/03/doing_the_math_comparing_germa.shtml

These aren’t even the cheap nukes. AP1000 still use water as a coolant, requiring high pressure vessels. They’re safer than coal, and probably safer than wind and solar with all those accidents. But they’re not Gen4. Gen4 reactors like the Integral Fast Reactor and Liquid Fluoride Thorium reactor will use different coolants and run at normal pressures. That’s a big deal with cost, as it means the reactor core can be mass produced on a factory line, not just a huge single-cast steel core 2 stories high and 12 inches thick from the one foundry in the world that can do it!
Basically, a 50/50 renewable /nuclear grid is probably possible. But 100% renewables? Yeah, right. When wind and solar are mostly off, not mostly on!
As Dr James Hansen, the grandfather of modern climate science said:
"Can renewable energies provide all of society’s energy needs in the foreseeable future? It is conceivable in a few places, such as New Zealand and Norway. But suggesting that renewables will let us phase rapidly off fossil fuels in the United States, China, India, or the world as a whole is almost the equivalent of believing in the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy."

http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/08/05/hansen-energy-kool-aid/

Thar advanced batteries is gittin cheaper n cheaper Maxy http://cleantechnica.com/2014/10/13/battery-costs-may-drop-100kwh/ :)

No worries Max.

Can't afford a reactor, even a pretty one. Can afford a battery soon!

Or do you plan to coerce me not to?

Rusty

There's a certain familiarity in "Max Green"'s demands that I provide all the statistics of the nuclear facilities and the exact "reality on a deaths per kilowatt basis" of the 10 major radiological accidents that I listed.

Now where have I heard that kind of questioning before?

Oh, now I remember - it was from the tobacco industry, when a few "emotional" people, like Sir Richard Doll, had the effrontery to suggest that cigarette smoking was harmful to heath.

And then there was the asbestos industry - very affronted with the "emotional" approach of people suggesting that their product was unhealthy.

Of course, "Max Green" must be right, with all his detailed technical knowledge.

And the Soviets and the Japanese must be stupid - evacuating all those people when ionising radiation is not harmful at all.

Even the conservative old World Health Organisation, contracted as it is to not impede the nuclear industry, also got it wrong. Their Director, Dr Margaret Chan recently said "There is no safe level of ionising radiation". But then she is a woman , and therefore "emotional about such things.

WHO should put Max Green in charge. He obviously knows best.