Reply #25: Fair enough

[Nederland]

I do this knowing full well it is a waste of time. It's good practice though, I have kids.

Let's look at what Amory Lovins wrote:

The manifest need for some amount of steady, reliable power is met by generating plants collectively, not individually. That is, reliability is a statistical attribute of all the plants on the grid combined. If steady 24/7 operation or operation at any desired moment were instead a required capability of each individual power plant, then the grid couldn’t meet modern needs, because no kind of power plant is perfectly reliable. For example, in the U.S. during 2003–07, coal capacity was shut down an average of 12.3% of the time (4.2% without warning); nuclear, 10.6% (2.5%); gas-fired, 11.8% (2.8%). Worldwide through 2008, nuclear units were unexpectedly unable to produce 6.4% of their energy output.26 This inherent intermittency of nuclear and fossil-fueled power plants requires many different plants to back each other up through the grid. This has been utility operators’ strategy for reliable supply throughout the industry’s history. Every utility operator knows that power plants provide energy to the grid, which serves load. The simplistic mental model of one plant serving one load is valid only on a very small desert island. The standard remedy for failed plants is other interconnected plants that are working—not “some sort of massive energy storage devised.”

The power sources that Lovins lists (coal, nuclear, gas) all have unexpected outages less than 5% of the time. Wind has unexpected outages more than 60% of the time. Only someone extremely bad at math would assert that there is no difference between connecting a bunch of sources that experience unexpected outages in the 60%+ range will result in a similar degree of reliability as a bunch of sources that have unexpected outages in the <5% range. It's just mathematically impossible. The again, anti-nukes were never very good at math.

Now theory is one thing, but let's look at real world data. Is it true that wind, even if you connect a bunch of wind farms together, is a lot less reliable than coal, nuclear or gas? Well, yes, it is true.

Here is a chart showing the variance of all the wind power in Germany (nameplate capacity: 24GW):



Now compare it to all the nuclear power in NRC Region I (nameplate capacity: 25GW):



Now, which looks more "reliable" to you?

:rofl: