No, this is not what this is all about. It's about national security and grid resiliency. When all you have is 2 pipelines with first dibbs on residential heating purposes, it can lead to blackouts. We almost had a major one in 2014 when there wasn't enough gas supply to New England. 80% of the coal that's supposed to retire in 5 years had to be brought online else several states in New England would have had rolling blackouts with millions in damage.
Some would argue coal has to go at all costs, and I understand it is awful for the environment and kills people due to pollution (absolutely horrible). However, getting rid of nuclear and coal completely is premature according to much of the literature put out by independent and neutral parties. It's ok for places like Germany to get rid of Nuclear power when they can get it from France down the road.
That's a bullshit ticket to do anything they want. Next.
> grid resiliency
As others have mentioned, batteries. Next.
> unprofitable nuclear (from GP)
> However, getting rid of nuclear
Do you recognize the difference between antiquated, unprofitable nuclear power plants and modern ones like those in the article? Your comment seems to lump them all togther, which suggests you don't. The US has many of the former and none of the latter. The latter would be beneficial.
No my friend. It isn't a joke. This is being taken seriously throughout the entire industry. Batteries are nowhere near where they need to be. If we lose a pipeline in New England, batteries will not last long enough to serve load along with solar and wind. That might be viable in 10-15 years, but not now. Look at all the latest reports from ISO-NE. They are the neutral party running the grid in that area. I understand very well that the majority of nuclear plants slated to retire in the US are doing so because of economics. I'm not interested in something that isn't slated to be built over here anytime soon.
Would you mind elaborating on how centralized plants are better from a national security perspective? Wouldn't it be easier for an attacker to disrupt a coal or nuclear plant than it would be to disrupt a more distributed scheme like wind or solar?
Wind and solar if distributed is better if A) it currently exists and B) enough transmission exists to connect it to the higher voltage grid and C) the sun always shines and the wind always blows.
Several regions of our grid don't have near enough of these resources. You might only have 10% of your fuel-mix as renewable, but the percentage is constantly growing.
Having a nuclear plant that can generate a freaking GW 24/7 for years gives you fuel diversity and security. Coal plants typically have months of fuel on-site.
In the future, we can imagine tons and tons of renewable and batteries working together for a distributed and secure grid, but we're just not there yet despite a lot of excitement just like Musk hasn't really setup a Mars colony yet.
>would have had rolling blackouts with millions in damage.
Well. There is more than one solution to that problem. What batteries bring to the table are grid stability, which addresses exactly the types of damage problems you are talking about.
Agreed in theory, but we're honestly just not there yet. In fact the large grid-size batteries aren't even a 1/10 of a percent of grid capacity. Getting enough batteries to cover hundreds of GW of demand ain't cheap.
Coal is not exactly cost-free either. And you don't need to match the grid capacity... that's a red herring. Even a tiny fraction of the grid capacity having battery backup is enough to have a disproportionate positive effect on grid stability.
Never said coal was cost free. Economically coal flat out loses. Everyone knows that and it isn't relevant to the discussion of grid reliability/resiliency. A tiny fraction of grid capacity having battery backup would be nice. Well, technically they already have lots of batteries and auxillary power, but you're talking about really big batteries I assume. Regardless, the answer in the short term isn't get rid of coal and replace with batteries and more renewable. Indeed that will most likely happen in the long-term, but not in the ~5 year frame.
How'd you figure out which solution was the lowest cost? Because if subsidizing these power plants was the lowest cost, that would probably be already happening. Normally grid operators use an economic model (including huge penalties for blackouts) to pick the solution with the lowest cost. Batteries are cost-effective in the short-term, and natural gas storage is cost-effective in the medium-term. Subsidizing expensive coal and nuclear is not cost-effective at any timescale.
Add a carbon tax, then maybe nuclear might still make sense.
As much as I propose to shut down coal plants everywhere, fast, grid operators don't have a natural incentive to keep the grid stable.
It's the job of the State (in broad terms) to either force how that's supposed to work through legislation, or to nudge it with legislated incentives.
If what we have now is that coal is a guarantor for base load conditions, I can see how a politician may come to the (on the surface) reasonable conclusion that we need to prop up the guarantor of base load, coal in this case, if coal was in danger of being closed due to it not being profitable anymore.
This kind of thinking has a LOT of precedent in other areas. (The US subsidized corn to make starvation in case of a global blockade/war impossible. The EU subsidized farms in general for the same reason.) These stop gap measures can easily spiral out of control.
What see is a severe lack of vision. We should legislate, by force or nudge, towards a bright solution with modern solutions. Batteries, a decentralized grid etc is much better option for national security than some large coal plants.
The idea that grid operators don't have an incentive to keep the grid stable is completely false. I work with and talk to and support system operators on a daily basis and it is pretty much the only thing on their minds as they monitor the grid 24/7 and some days can get very tense. To use an analogy, you basically just said Air Traffic Controllers have zero incentive to keep planes from crashing.
On that level yes, just like doctors care about patients. But the owner of a coal plant will not keep operating a coal plant at a loss. The plant will be shuttered. The same goes for a private hospital operating at a loss.
I was referring to those regulations/legislated incentives, actually, sorry that I wasn't very clear. Usually they're monetary and the utility gets to choose the most cost-effective way to meet these requirements.
Regarding your last point. You're thinking in the long-term (5-15 years). The fuel-security concern is right now and batteries aren't going to fix this in a couple of years.
Canada is a great place to generate huge amounts of reliable power; there's large masses of relatively geologically stable and safe space to build nuclear on, and huge amounts of flowing water through most of it that makes for lots of Hydro. Canada already sells huge amounts of cheap power to the USA.
If only Trump wasn't hell-bent on spoiling that relationship.
Some would argue coal has to go at all costs, and I understand it is awful for the environment and kills people due to pollution (absolutely horrible). However, getting rid of nuclear and coal completely is premature according to much of the literature put out by independent and neutral parties. It's ok for places like Germany to get rid of Nuclear power when they can get it from France down the road.