OT? Germany Shutting Down Nuke Plants...

[Anthony William Sloman]

On Tuesday, April 18, 2023 at 4:26:48 AM UTC+10, John Larkin wrote:

On Mon, 17 Apr 2023 10:31:09 -0700 (PDT), whit3rd <whi...@gmail.com> wrote:
On Saturday, April 15, 2023 at 10:01:14?AM UTC-7, John Larkin wrote:
On Sat, 15 Apr 2023 16:12:48 GMT, Jan Panteltje <al...@comet.invalid> wrote:

<snip>

So, you mean lots of governments?

In the USA, we have state governments, and people are free to move
themselves (and their businesses) between states. Unfortunately we
have only one Federal government, so companies move their factories
and their cash offshore to be competitive.

In Germany, the government spends taxpayer money on educating the workforce, and the more productive work force this produces lets Germany export as much as the US despite having about a quarter of the population.

> But my point was that governments should regulate minimally, and let people and businesses compete, and see what works. Some cities, for example, let contractors bid for maintenance of street lights.

And contractors bribe the city councils to get the contracts.

Like the hundreds in the UN? Or all the states of the US? Or do you refer to businesses, which mainly
are for-profit and benefit only owners, not the planet as a whole?

Businesses feed and house and transport and entertain you. And you have the right to not use anything that they sell, or shop around for
a better deal, or grow your own potatoes, or move to Sudan where fewer nasty capitalists will exploit you.

Businesses also lie to you about how good their products are and actively conspire to shut down competition. The US is famous for it\'s obesity problem, which is in part due to businesses selling food that encourages people to eat more of it than is good for them.

The best government is minimal government.

That\'s nonsense; who decides what \'minimal\' means? If you mean less than you\'re accustomed to, it means you have NEVER SEEN IT DONE,so how would you know that?

Ayn Rand told him.

> The Texas legislature meets for about 5 months every other year. Which is one reason so many people and businesses are moving to Texas. Some cities in Texas have no zoning laws and do fine without them.

By the US definition of \"fine\".

> I know rich people who moved just over the border into Nevada when they found out they would make a bundle somehow. Nevada has no personal or business taxes, and less crime and better roads than California.

Actually, more crime, but when the state was run by the Mafia for years, criminality is normalised.

https://www.reviewjournal.com/local/local-las-vegas/the-mafias-history-in-las-vegas-from-bugsy-siegel-to-anthony-spilotro-413833/

\"They have taken notice of less colorful but more sophisticated organized criminal groups — those with roots in Asia, adept at pulling off casino cheating and marker schemes, and those from Russia and Eastern Europe knowledgeable about financial fraud, credit card and cyberschemes.\"

That is harder to prosecute, and people tend not to bother.

Incline Village is just across the line, also called Income Village.

Setting the target to be \'less\' is just lazy; urban dwellers DO need roads, sewers, and public works that run on taxation...but someone could always say that isn\'t minimal, and someone else will say that it is...

America is still run on the basis that the people who own the country run the country for their own advantage. Stuff that benefits the population as a whole gets played down in favour of stuff that benefits property owners.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Fred Bloggs]

On Tuesday, April 18, 2023 at 9:13:15 AM UTC-4, Dean Hoffman wrote:

On Sunday, April 16, 2023 at 5:55:10 AM UTC-5, upsid...@downunder..com wrote:
On Sat, 15 Apr 2023 06:18:56 -0700 (PDT), Dean Hoffman
dean...@gmail.com> wrote:

Politicians aren\'t listening to constituents if this article is correct.
https://dailycaller.com/2023/04/14/germany-shut-down-last-nuclear-plants-amid-warnings-new-energy-crisis/
An interesting coincidence, last night when the last nuclear reactors
were closed down in Germany, the same night in Finland the 1600 MW OL3
EPR reactor was finally commissioned. Unfortunately it was 14 years
behind schedule :-(

I just ran across an article about it. Its final cost is 3 times initial estimates.
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2023/04/16/finland-turns-on-europes-largest-capacity-nuclear-power-plant-after-years-of-delay/

In the U.S. it takes them 6 years just to get the final permit, and even that might cost several hundred million. All of this before even a single shovelful of dirt is dug.

 

[Anthony William Sloman]

On Wednesday, April 19, 2023 at 1:12:48 AM UTC+10, Fred Bloggs wrote:

On Tuesday, April 18, 2023 at 9:13:15 AM UTC-4, Dean Hoffman wrote:
On Sunday, April 16, 2023 at 5:55:10 AM UTC-5, upsid...@downunder.com wrote:
On Sat, 15 Apr 2023 06:18:56 -0700 (PDT), Dean Hoffman
dean...@gmail.com> wrote:

Politicians aren\'t listening to constituents if this article is correct.
https://dailycaller.com/2023/04/14/germany-shut-down-last-nuclear-plants-amid-warnings-new-energy-crisis/
An interesting coincidence, last night when the last nuclear reactors
were closed down in Germany, the same night in Finland the 1600 MW OL3
EPR reactor was finally commissioned. Unfortunately it was 14 years
behind schedule :-(

I just ran across an article about it. Its final cost is 3 times initial estimates.
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2023/04/16/finland-turns-on-europes-largest-capacity-nuclear-power-plant-after-years-of-delay/
In the U.S. it takes them 6 years just to get the final permit, and even that might cost several hundred million. All of this before even a single shovelful of dirt is dug.

Nuclear plants are an awful lot of eggs in one basket.

Solar farms can be put together in much smaller chunks, and wind turbines come on much smaller modules than nuclear plants.

They are both intermittent sources, so you need grid-scale storage to fill in the gaps. When you integrate them into an existing grid, you get enough geographical spread that you don\'t need as much grid storage.

On current cost figures, renewables are are quite a bit cheaper than any other source of electricity, so it is hard to see why anybody would bother investing in a nuclear plant. If we get around to manufacturing solar cells in even higher volume they\'d probably end up even cheaper than they are now.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[server]

On Tue, 18 Apr 2023 06:13:10 -0700 (PDT), Dean Hoffman
<deanh6929@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sunday, April 16, 2023 at 5:55:10?AM UTC-5, upsid...@downunder.com wrote:
On Sat, 15 Apr 2023 06:18:56 -0700 (PDT), Dean Hoffman
dean...@gmail.com> wrote:

Politicians aren\'t listening to constituents if this article is correct.
https://dailycaller.com/2023/04/14/germany-shut-down-last-nuclear-plants-amid-warnings-new-energy-crisis/
An interesting coincidence, last night when the last nuclear reactors
were closed down in Germany, the same night in Finland the 1600 MW OL3
EPR reactor was finally commissioned. Unfortunately it was 14 years
behind schedule :-(

I just ran across an article about it. Its final cost is 3 times initial estimates.
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2023/04/16/finland-turns-on-europes-largest-capacity-nuclear-power-plant-after-years-of-delay/

It us more than 3 times the original turnkey price was 3.2 billion
euros, now it is over 11 billion.

Take a look at the electricity produced in Scandinavian and Baltic
states https://www.svk.se/en/national-grid/the-control-room/ You can
select a single country or the whole area. Quite different methods are
used in each country.

The installed wind capacity is multiple times the installed nuclear
capacity, but only rarely the actual wind production reach the nuclear
production.

Denmark wit stories about huge wind capacity has an installed capacity
of 7 GW, but rarely reaches 2 to 3 GW.

Currently about 50 percent of all production in the region comes from
hydro, thanks to the melting snow in Norway and Sweden.

 

[server]

On Tue, 18 Apr 2023 08:26:28 -0700 (PDT), Anthony William Sloman
<bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote:

On Wednesday, April 19, 2023 at 1:12:48?AM UTC+10, Fred Bloggs wrote:
On Tuesday, April 18, 2023 at 9:13:15?AM UTC-4, Dean Hoffman wrote:
On Sunday, April 16, 2023 at 5:55:10?AM UTC-5, upsid...@downunder.com wrote:
On Sat, 15 Apr 2023 06:18:56 -0700 (PDT), Dean Hoffman
dean...@gmail.com> wrote:

Politicians aren\'t listening to constituents if this article is correct.
https://dailycaller.com/2023/04/14/germany-shut-down-last-nuclear-plants-amid-warnings-new-energy-crisis/
An interesting coincidence, last night when the last nuclear reactors
were closed down in Germany, the same night in Finland the 1600 MW OL3
EPR reactor was finally commissioned. Unfortunately it was 14 years
behind schedule :-(

I just ran across an article about it. Its final cost is 3 times initial estimates.
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2023/04/16/finland-turns-on-europes-largest-capacity-nuclear-power-plant-after-years-of-delay/
In the U.S. it takes them 6 years just to get the final permit, and even that might cost several hundred million. All of this before even a single shovelful of dirt is dug.

Nuclear plants are an awful lot of eggs in one basket.

Solar farms can be put together in much smaller chunks, and wind turbines come on much smaller modules than nuclear plants.

They are both intermittent sources, so you need grid-scale storage to fill in the gaps. When you integrate them into an existing grid, you get enough geographical spread that you don\'t need as much grid storage.

In the Nordel area (Scandinavia and Baltic states) the consumption is
about 50 GW, thus to supply it from batteries for 1 hour requires 50
GWh storage. Unfortunately solar energy is more or less us less here
for 3 to 6 months (2000 to 4000 h/a) during the winter.thus the
storage capacity needed is 100 to 200 TWh. A typical car battery is 1
kWh, thus at least 100 billion car batteries are required.If you can
put 30 batteries on 1 m2 or 30 million on 1 km2 thus 3000 km2 space
needed.

How much does a 1 kWh battery cost ? Perhaps 100 euros or dollars, so
the total storage would cost 10 000 billions. You could build 1000 OL3
plants with that money.

If you plan to handle the winter only with wind, you may still have to
store 1-2 weeks for calm periods or 10 billion car batteries.

On current cost figures, renewables are are quite a bit cheaper than any other source of electricity, so it is hard to see why anybody would bother investing in a nuclear plant. If we get around to manufacturing solar cells in even higher volume they\'d probably end up even cheaper than they are now.

To handle the 50 GW consumption with 1600 MW EPR reactors, you just
would need 30 reactors, costing at current prices 330 billion and in
practice the unit price would drop significantly.

 

[Fred Bloggs]

On Tuesday, April 18, 2023 at 4:42:01 PM UTC-4, upsid...@downunder.com wrote:

On Tue, 18 Apr 2023 08:26:28 -0700 (PDT), Anthony William Sloman
bill....@ieee.org> wrote:

On Wednesday, April 19, 2023 at 1:12:48?AM UTC+10, Fred Bloggs wrote:
On Tuesday, April 18, 2023 at 9:13:15?AM UTC-4, Dean Hoffman wrote:
On Sunday, April 16, 2023 at 5:55:10?AM UTC-5, upsid...@downunder.com wrote:
On Sat, 15 Apr 2023 06:18:56 -0700 (PDT), Dean Hoffman
dean...@gmail.com> wrote:

Politicians aren\'t listening to constituents if this article is correct.
https://dailycaller.com/2023/04/14/germany-shut-down-last-nuclear-plants-amid-warnings-new-energy-crisis/
An interesting coincidence, last night when the last nuclear reactors
were closed down in Germany, the same night in Finland the 1600 MW OL3
EPR reactor was finally commissioned. Unfortunately it was 14 years
behind schedule :-(

I just ran across an article about it. Its final cost is 3 times initial estimates.
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2023/04/16/finland-turns-on-europes-largest-capacity-nuclear-power-plant-after-years-of-delay/
In the U.S. it takes them 6 years just to get the final permit, and even that might cost several hundred million. All of this before even a single shovelful of dirt is dug.

Nuclear plants are an awful lot of eggs in one basket.

Solar farms can be put together in much smaller chunks, and wind turbines come on much smaller modules than nuclear plants.

They are both intermittent sources, so you need grid-scale storage to fill in the gaps. When you integrate them into an existing grid, you get enough geographical spread that you don\'t need as much grid storage.

In the Nordel area (Scandinavia and Baltic states) the consumption is
about 50 GW, thus to supply it from batteries for 1 hour requires 50
GWh storage. Unfortunately solar energy is more or less us less here
for 3 to 6 months (2000 to 4000 h/a) during the winter.thus the
storage capacity needed is 100 to 200 TWh. A typical car battery is 1
kWh, thus at least 100 billion car batteries are required.If you can
put 30 batteries on 1 m2 or 30 million on 1 km2 thus 3000 km2 space
needed.

How much does a 1 kWh battery cost ? Perhaps 100 euros or dollars, so
the total storage would cost 10 000 billions. You could build 1000 OL3
plants with that money.

If you plan to handle the winter only with wind, you may still have to
store 1-2 weeks for calm periods or 10 billion car batteries.
On current cost figures, renewables are are quite a bit cheaper than any other source of electricity, so it is hard to see why anybody would bother investing in a nuclear plant. If we get around to manufacturing solar cells in even higher volume they\'d probably end up even cheaper than they are now.
To handle the 50 GW consumption with 1600 MW EPR reactors, you just
would need 30 reactors, costing at current prices 330 billion and in
practice the unit price would drop significantly.

With the exception of Finland, which is kind of a disaster, the other Nordic countries are already over 50% renewable energy Norway is 99% hydropower, Sweden is something like 50% hydropower, and Denmark is putting its money on windpower, hoping to achieve 85% by 2035. None of those countries has a problem with intermittency. Nuclear power is banned in Denmark.

 

[Anthony William Sloman]

On Wednesday, April 19, 2023 at 6:42:01 AM UTC+10, upsid...@downunder.com wrote:

On Tue, 18 Apr 2023 08:26:28 -0700 (PDT), Anthony William Sloman
bill....@ieee.org> wrote:

On Wednesday, April 19, 2023 at 1:12:48?AM UTC+10, Fred Bloggs wrote:
On Tuesday, April 18, 2023 at 9:13:15?AM UTC-4, Dean Hoffman wrote:
On Sunday, April 16, 2023 at 5:55:10?AM UTC-5, upsid...@downunder.com wrote:
On Sat, 15 Apr 2023 06:18:56 -0700 (PDT), Dean Hoffman
dean...@gmail.com> wrote:

Politicians aren\'t listening to constituents if this article is correct.
https://dailycaller.com/2023/04/14/germany-shut-down-last-nuclear-plants-amid-warnings-new-energy-crisis/
An interesting coincidence, last night when the last nuclear reactors
were closed down in Germany, the same night in Finland the 1600 MW OL3
EPR reactor was finally commissioned. Unfortunately it was 14 years
behind schedule :-(

I just ran across an article about it. Its final cost is 3 times initial estimates.
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2023/04/16/finland-turns-on-europes-largest-capacity-nuclear-power-plant-after-years-of-delay/
In the U.S. it takes them 6 years just to get the final permit, and even that might cost several hundred million. All of this before even a single shovelful of dirt is dug.

Nuclear plants are an awful lot of eggs in one basket.

Solar farms can be put together in much smaller chunks, and wind turbines come on much smaller modules than nuclear plants.

They are both intermittent sources, so you need grid-scale storage to fill in the gaps. When you integrate them into an existing grid, you get enough geographical spread that you don\'t need as much grid storage.

In the Nordel area (Scandinavia and Baltic states) the consumption is about 50 GW, thus to supply it from batteries for 1 hour requires 50 GW,h storage.

Pumped storage, which is relatively easy to provide if you already have a lot of hydropower. would be a better choice than batteries in that region.

Unfortunately solar energy is more or less useless here for 3 to 6 months (2000 to 4000 h/a) during the winter, thus the
storage capacity needed is 100 to 200 TWh.

The Nordel area does seem to go in more for wind turbines, which aren\'t useless in winter.

Your 100 to 200 TWh is a false estimate,

A typical car battery is 1 kWh, thus at least 100 billion car batteries are required.If you can put 30 batteries on 1 m2 or 30 million on 1 km2 thus 3000 km2 space
needed.

The Nordel area does seem to have a lot of hydroelectric power. Most of it seems to be to the North of the Baltic, but cross-Baltic high voltage links are practical and more of them are being built. Pumped hydroelectric storage would seem be preferred over car batteries. Australia has couple of hundred megawatt hours of lithium battery capacity, mainly because electric vehicles use enough of them to get them mass produced. Vanadium flow cells may take over that market eventually, but they aren\'t being mass produced yet.

The Telsa car batteries are 55 and 75kW,hour devices, so your 1 kWh car battery is presumaby a lead-acid starter battery.

How much does a 1 kWh battery cost ? Perhaps 100 euros or dollars, so the total storage would cost 10 000 billions. You could build 1000 OL3
plants with that money.

They\'d better not put you in charge of storage procurement.

> If you plan to handle the winter only with wind, you may still have to store 1-2 weeks for calm periods or 10 billion car batteries.

Except that you wouldn\'t use car batteries. And international high voltage links provide for rather more geographical averaging than you seem to have allowed for.

Sweden currently gets 45% of its electric power from hydroelectric generation. That could be a lot more pumped hydroelectric storage.

On current cost figures, renewables are are quite a bit cheaper than any other source of electricity, so it is hard to see why anybody would bother investing in a nuclear plant. If we get around to manufacturing solar cells in even higher volume they\'d probably end up even cheaper than they are now.

To handle the 50 GW consumption with 1600 MW EPR reactors, you just would need 30 reactors, costing at current prices 330 billion and in practice the unit price would drop significantly.

But building thirty reactors would take forever. Solar cells are mass produced. Wind turbines are produced in volume. Nuclear power plants have to be tailor made for their sites, and Fukashima provides an object lesson in how that can go wrong.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[server]

On Tue, 18 Apr 2023 14:33:39 -0700 (PDT), Fred Bloggs
<bloggs.fredbloggs.fred@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tuesday, April 18, 2023 at 4:42:01?PM UTC-4, upsid...@downunder.com wrote:
On Tue, 18 Apr 2023 08:26:28 -0700 (PDT), Anthony William Sloman
bill....@ieee.org> wrote:

>> >Nuclear plants are an awful lot of eggs in one basket.

The problem is the NIMBY effect. Only in places that already have at
least one nuclear rector, the population is more than willing to have
more reactors installed on the same site. For this reason, there are
going to be clusters of reactors on only a few places.

One problem with current big dumb reactors is that they require an
_active_ emergency cooling system that _must_ function a few weeks
after chain reaction shutdown. This emergency cooling failed in
Fukushima due to the tsunami.

Due to the need for an active emergency cooling system, big nuclear
reactors are not built close to big population centers.Thus means that
is very hard to use the reactor excess heat for district heating and
cooling.

Smaller reactors that survive with a _passive_ emergency system can be
built closer to population centers and the excess heat can be used for
district heating/cooling. Very small reactors with low temperatures
and low pressures could be used for district heat/cooling with no
electricity generation, which could be built inside a city, but the
general fear for everything \'nuclear\' might make it hard.


>> >Solar farms can be put together in much smaller chunks, and wind turbines come on much smaller modules than nuclear plants.

150 MWth, 50 MWe (KLT-40S) is a quite small chunk. Just waiting for
western SMR reactors.

They are both intermittent sources, so you need grid-scale storage to fill in the gaps. When you integrate them into an existing grid, you get enough geographical spread that you don\'t need as much grid storage.

In the Nordel area (Scandinavia and Baltic states) the consumption is
about 50 GW, thus to supply it from batteries for 1 hour requires 50
GWh storage. Unfortunately solar energy is more or less us less here
for 3 to 6 months (2000 to 4000 h/a) during the winter.thus the
storage capacity needed is 100 to 200 TWh. A typical car battery is 1
kWh, thus at least 100 billion car batteries are required.If you can
put 30 batteries on 1 m2 or 30 million on 1 km2 thus 3000 km2 space
needed.

How much does a 1 kWh battery cost ? Perhaps 100 euros or dollars, so
the total storage would cost 10 000 billions. You could build 1000 OL3
plants with that money.

If you plan to handle the winter only with wind, you may still have to
store 1-2 weeks for calm periods or 10 billion car batteries.
On current cost figures, renewables are are quite a bit cheaper than any other source of electricity, so it is hard to see why anybody would bother investing in a nuclear plant. If we get around to manufacturing solar cells in even higher volume they\'d probably end up even cheaper than they are now.
To handle the 50 GW consumption with 1600 MW EPR reactors, you just
would need 30 reactors, costing at current prices 330 billion and in
practice the unit price would drop significantly.

>With the exception of Finland, which is kind of a disaster,

Why do you think Finland is a disaster ?

Finland produces about 40 % by nuclear, hydro and wind both have 10 to
30 % each and 20 % thermal. Of that thermal power about one half is an
byproduct of the forest industry i.e. renewable.Only about 10-15 % is
fossil and mostly coproduction for district heating.


>the other Nordic countries are already over 50% renewable energy

Keep in mind that the current good hydro situation this spring is due
to the melting snow. When this water has been used, some hydro plants
might run for only a few hours a _week_ at the end of summer.


>Norway is 99% hydropower,

Norway has got quite a lot of export income by selling to England, the
Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden and Finland.No need to burn oil from the
North Sea.


>Sweden is something like 50% hydropower,

Yes, during spring melting water. The nuclear production is greater
than wind production.


>and Denmark is putting its money on windpower, hoping to achieve 85% by 2035.

Denmark is a geographically small country with few energy resources of
their own, so they must heavily rely on daily import/export with
neighboring countries.That 85 % sounds very optimistic, but perhaps
some spectacular accounting might justify such figures


>None of those countries has a problem with intermittency.

Thanks to the mild winter, nuclear plants and melting snow in the
spring, the good hydro situation in Norway and Sweden.

>Nuclear power is banned in Denmark.

They have shot himself in the foot due to their only renewable
resource being the intermittent wind in their small land/sea area.

 

[Anthony William Sloman]

On Wednesday, April 19, 2023 at 10:02:53 PM UTC+10, upsid...@downunder.com wrote:

On Tue, 18 Apr 2023 14:33:39 -0700 (PDT), Fred Bloggs
bloggs.fred...@gmail.com> wrote:
On Tuesday, April 18, 2023 at 4:42:01?PM UTC-4, upsid...@downunder.com wrote:
On Tue, 18 Apr 2023 08:26:28 -0700 (PDT), Anthony William Sloman
bill....@ieee.org> wrote:

Nuclear plants are an awful lot of eggs in one basket.

The problem is the NIMBY effect. Only in places that already have at least one nuclear rector, the population is more than willing to have more reactors installed on the same site. For this reason, there are going to be clusters of reactors on only a few places.

Until another Fukishima reminds everybody that it isn\'t a great idea.

Nuclear reactors produce long-lived radioactive waste, and nobody has yet set up a long term repository to keep it safe fro the couple of hundered thousand years that have to elapse before it genuinely is safe.

> One problem with current big dumb reactors is that they require an _active_ emergency cooling system that _must_ function a few weeks after chain reaction shutdown. This emergency cooling failed in Fukushima due to the tsunami.

That\'s one problem. There are others.

Due to the need for an active emergency cooling system, big nuclear reactors are not built close to big population centers.Thus means that
is very hard to use the reactor excess heat for district heating and cooling.

> Smaller reactors that survive with a _passive_ emergency system can be built closer to population centers and the excess heat can be used for district heating/cooling.

Since it hasn\'t been done yet, we don\'t actually know whether communities can be gulled into accepting them, and the claims about their no needing active cooling are equally untested. Some of the promotors of thorium reactors who post here claim that they don\'t produce long-lived radio-active waste despite the fact that \"thorium reactors\" actually fisson U-233 and the fission products are much the same as you get from U-235 and Pu-239.
There\'s a lot of misleading propaganda being circulated.

>Very small reactors with low temperatures and low pressures could be used for district heat/cooling with no electricity generation, which could be built inside a city, but the general fear for everything \'nuclear\' might make it hard.

The perfectly rational dislike of everything radioactive does create problems.

Solar farms can be put together in much smaller chunks, and wind turbines come on much smaller modules than nuclear plants.

150 MWth, 50 MWe (KLT-40S) is a quite small chunk. Just waiting for western SMR reactors.

A big wind turnbine produces 15MW. It is a much smaller chunk.

They are both intermittent sources, so you need grid-scale storage to fill in the gaps. When you integrate them into an existing grid, you get enough geographical spread that you don\'t need as much grid storage.

In the Nordel area (Scandinavia and Baltic states) the consumption is
about 50 GW, thus to supply it from batteries for 1 hour requires 50
GWh storage. Unfortunately solar energy is more or less us less here
for 3 to 6 months (2000 to 4000 h/a) during the winter.thus the
storage capacity needed is 100 to 200 TWh. A typical car battery is 1
kWh, thus at least 100 billion car batteries are required.If you can
put 30 batteries on 1 m2 or 30 million on 1 km2 thus 3000 km2 space
needed.

That was car starter batteries. Tesla sell 55kW.hour and 75kWh.hor batteries and these actually are used in grid scale batteries.

> >> How much does a 1 kWh battery cost ? Perhaps 100 euros or dollars, so the total storage would cost 10 000 billions. You could build 1000 OL3 plants with that money.

If you used rechargeable nickel-cadmium D-cells, they\'d be even more expensive, if equally implausible.

If you plan to handle the winter only with wind, you may still have to store 1-2 weeks for calm periods or 10 billion car batteries.

On current cost figures, renewables are are quite a bit cheaper than any other source of electricity, so it is hard to see why anybody would bother investing in a nuclear plant. If we get around to manufacturing solar cells in even higher volume they\'d probably end up even cheaper than they are now.

To handle the 50 GW consumption with 1600 MW EPR reactors, you just would need 30 reactors, costing at current prices 330 billion and in practice the unit price would drop significantly.

With the exception of Finland, which is kind of a disaster,
Why do you think Finland is a disaster ?

Finland produces about 40 % by nuclear, hydro and wind both have 10 to
30 % each and 20 % thermal. Of that thermal power about one half is an
byproduct of the forest industry i.e. renewable.Only about 10-15 % is
fossil and mostly coproduction for district heating.

the other Nordic countries are already over 50% renewable energy

Keep in mind that the current good hydro situation this spring is due to the melting snow. When this water has been used, some hydro plants
might run for only a few hours a _week_ at the end of summer.

If you use the plant for pumped storage and recycled the water, you could do better

Norway is 99% hydropower,

Norway has got quite a lot of export income by selling to England, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden and Finland.No need to burn oil from the
North Sea.

Sweden is something like 50% hydropower,

Yes, during spring melting water.

It\'s a whole year figure.

The nuclear production is greater than wind production.and Denmark is putting its money on wind power, hoping to achieve 85% by 2035.

Denmark is a geographically small country with few energy resources of their own, so they must heavily rely on daily import/export with
neighboring countries.That 85 % sounds very optimistic, but perhaps some spectacular accounting might justify such figures

The same sort of accounting that tells you that small nuclear reactors don\'t need active emergency cooling?

None of those countries has a problem with intermittency.

Thanks to the mild winter, nuclear plants and melting snow in the spring, the good hydro situation in Norway and Sweden.

Nuclear power is banned in Denmark.

They have shot himself in the foot due to their only renewable resource being the intermittent wind in their small land/sea area.

They seem to be coping rather well, for somebody who has been \"shot in the foot\". If Bismark hadn\'t stolen

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schleswig-Holstein

they might have had more choices.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney