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US Could Lower Carbon Emissions 78% With New National Transmission Network (smithsonianmag.com)
mdsolar writes with this story from Smithsonian magazine about how building a national transmission network could lead to a gigantic reduction in carbon emissions. From the story: "The United States could lower carbon emissions from electricity generation by as much as 78 percent without having to develop any new technologies or use costly batteries, a new study suggests. There's a catch, though. The country would have to build a new national transmission network so that states could share energy. 'Our idea was if we had a national 'interstate highway for electrons' we could move the power around as it was needed, and we could put the wind and solar plants in the very best places,' says study co-author Alexander MacDonald, who recently retired as director of NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado."
With new nuclear power generating plants.
O come on! That's done today and would be no different in principle. Besides did you actually read the study & ask the authors on the model they used such that you know they didn't include 'cost of right of way'?
Geez, mdsolar IS an ass but just because he submits something doesn't mean its not an interesting read.
Seriously, the article simply basis the model on the use of HVDC widely...googling the use of HVDC you find out that in fact it is being built out so as its built out it will produce other benefits, some accrue to traditional generation and centralized production models & some may make Wind & Solar economically viable.
Look, I'm a huge proponent of the use of nuclear, I figure the 'greenies' got us in to any current mess with global warming due to their combative position over the last 30 years having stunted its growth...that doesn't mean I'm automatically biased AGAINST Wind & Solar...on their face their not entirely stupid ways of generating energy & when they get reasonably cost effective & useful we should use them more.
Nuclear scales fine. Conventional LWRs however are a different story; they worked fine in a submarine, but it was foolish to scale them so large. The inventors of the technology (Alvin Weinberg and Eugene Wigner) argued against it, and proposed the molten salt reactor as a safer alternative for civilian nuclear power. Unfortunately, politics won over safety, and the rest is history. Decay heat removal in an LWR is extremely difficult at a large scale, and accidents have and can still happen. (However, it is important to note that all accidents combined to date have resulted in very little loss of human life or damage to the environment; certainly far less than the alternatives, solar and wind included.)
Molten salt reactors however, can be scaled up and down, and even load follow. They can be placed near the load using existing transmission infrastructure, and do not require an enormously expensive nation-wide renewable-friendly grid to be constructed. Ironically, small regional grids with reactors already provide a distributed and reliable energy system that the proposed super-grid of renewables is fundamentally incapable of.
MSRs would be sized for flexibility and series manufacturing. (typically < 250MWe) They can be sited virtually anywhere, allowing rapid replacement of existing fossil plants with no other change in transmission infrastructure. In addition to producing safe power, they also solve the "waste" problem, and minimize mining and other environmental impacts.