I found it on Google Scholar, just using keywords to get you a reference (since you requested one).

And it was a dud.

If global warming is truly the problem people say it is – than we should look to all the solutions.

Indeed we should. And since the nuclear industry’s most optimistic estimation of where it might get by 2050 is only 25% of global electricity generation, it is obvious that we need to include – not exclude – a very large scale contribution from W&S. There really is no getting away from this.

My main problem with renewable energy (wind and solar) is that the cost/benefit isn’t as favorable as with nuclear.

First, you need to do more than just assert this. Second, since nuclear cannot deliver what is required, no matter how much opinionated wishful thinking we engage in, then we are going to have to accept the cost of large-scale W&S and associated backup technologies.

Correct me if I am mistaken, but I see no evidence for any willingness by the nuclear industry or its necessary investors to build these 300 plants in the US. Free market guy that you are, this should be deeply troubling, yet you gloss over it without a blink. This is disturbing.

BBD:

Since you asked so nicely (grin) – nobody is “peddling” this study.

I found it on Google Scholar, just using keywords to get you a reference (since you requested one). I found the LA Times news article doing a simple google search. There are lots of places one can find support for the proposition that hooking up a wind farm or solar farm to the grid requires backup power to smooth out the intermittency.

Yes – pumped hydro can be used to smooth out the intermittency of wind or solar. Not available in all geographic areas and pretty expensive to set up as a backup energy provider – but yes – pumped hydro is available. More commonly coal or natural gas is currently used for that purpose (because it is cheaper).

My main point – which we might just disagree on forever – is that it would be cheaper to just build 300 nuclear power plants to simply replace the fossil fuel power plants, and use nuclear to smooth out the remaining 20% renewable wind and solar power we currently have.

I am sure we could probably do 60% nuclear and 40% renewable if we changed the grid (instead of 80/20). It is my understanding that anything over about 35% intermittent won’t work with the current grid (we would have to make very large changes to accommodate that level of intermittency).

Nuclear could work to solve the carbon emission problem – if we want it to. I think it would be cheaper than building two power systems (a renewable one and a backup one). It would take less land, less mining, less transportation of fuel, it would last longer than solar panels or wind towers, it is baseload and its waste, while radioactive is recyclable.

So as one individual voter – I advocate using nuclear to replace all fossil fuel power plants. That is just my personal opinion.

You don’t have to agree. I am just letting you (and the other readers) know my opinion of how to solve the problem of global warming. At least in the USA.

Would fusion be better? Yes – if we can get it to work. No radioactive waste to deal with using fusion. We don’t have fusion yet and probably won’t for 20 to 50 years.

If global warming is truly the problem people say it is – than we should look to all the solutions. Nuclear is a solution and it doesn’t need to be invented – it is here right now. All we need to do is decide to build it (as a nation). That part isn’t going so well. Hopefully if I keep educating readers of this blog more people will read up on nuclear power and decide it is a solution we should be looking at.

My main problem with renewable energy (wind and solar) is that the cost/benefit isn’t as favorable as with nuclear. It is impossible to replace all our fossil fuel with renewable without using nuclear (in my opinion). I have no problem with renewable at 20% or 25% or 30% of our total power needs. Going to 35% or higher IS a problem (in my opinion). But I am willing to let renewable go higher in some state or region and see if they can make it work (especially without buying fossil fuel power from outside their region to smooth out intermittency). It would be nice to have a test case to study. In the meantime, I simply share my opinion.

Re: “we need to dismantle neoliberal capitalism is favor of a much more equitable, egalitarian political, economic system.”

World pop. in 1940 is est. at 2.3 billion and is now est. at 7.8 billion, despite several wars and genocides since 1940. That’s just one lifetime, not so far from the median for first world countries. Increased affluence seems correlated with declining birth rate and increased longevity, which combination has its own problems already seen in Europe and North America so a lot of things have to be thought out carefully or we’ll just trade one dark future for another.

Thanks dean. It was obviously flawed and very much an outlier as a consequence but there comes a point where aside of pointing out the obvious, I cannot any longer be bothered to chase down the crap Ricky throws up. But I feel a bit guilty now…

What is interesting to me is where did Ricky get this study from?

Who is peddling it?

Perhaps he would be kind (honest) enough to tell us in his next comment on this thread.

The first page of a detailing of the issues is here
https://www.sciencedirect.com/sdfe/pdf/download/eid/1-s2.0-S0360544214014327/first-page-pdf

Another rebuttal, apparently in response to comments by the original authors, is here.

https://radar.brookes.ac.uk/radar/file/b1d4ee13-ca9e-4bb9-b149-d3f40747314f/1/raugei2015rebuttal.pdf

From the conclusion:

In conclusion, we cannot help but reiterate here Raugei’s previous conclusions that “in the light of all of the above, there appears to be ample reason to question the reliability of the authors’ numerical results, and, most importantly, their internal as well as external comparability to those produced by previously published studies.”
In addition, the authors make a number of physically impossible statements, such as “only exergy is generated and destroyed” [3, p.212] (exergy can only be destroyed, never created), which could be forgiven as a typographical error (though suggesting a lack in methodological rigour) were it not for the fact that
it was compounded four sentences later with discussion of”generated exergy” suggesting (perhaps even worse) that the authors lack a fundamental grasp of basic thermodynamics, further underlining the need to question the original analysis. Finally, Weißbach et al.’s defence of their untenable assertions by setting up straw man arguments and misinterpreting and misquoting Raugei’s comments comes across as a worrying indication of their seeming lack of familiarity with scientific standards and widely accepted methodological conventions.

The study I cited isn’t 20 years old. It was submitted to Energy in 2013, so it is 7 years old.

And still demonstrably incorrect in a key finding.

The more renewable power is deployed, the more fossil fuel is required to back it up […] That is also a fact.

Except that it’s not. You could use pumped hydro (PHES) in combination with hydrogen produced and stored during the periods when large-scale W&S generation exceeds demand. There’s no necessity to use FFs. You are trying to create a false dilemma. Yet another logical fallacy in the service of your bizarre anti-renewables fixation.

I ask again: why *are* you so anti-renewables? Is it just a tribal thing, or what?

I think eventually more and more people will see the wisdom of going nuclear.

This is now pure trolling. You’ve had the industry’s own optimistic projection and it’s grossly insufficient to be the mainstay of decarbonisation. You’ve been reminded – again – that CO2 is a global problem and the US is not the world and you are pushing a silly false equivalence.

This blind resistance to the facts is disturbing.

Here is an article from 2012 which makes the same point:

https://www.latimes.com/local/la-xpm-2012-dec-09-la-me-unreliable-power-20121210-story.html

The more renewable power is deployed, the more fossil fuel is required to back it up (unless we switch to nuclear power). Solar and wind power is intermittent. That is a fact. Because wind and solar are intermittent, we will use more fossil fuel as backup the more wind and solar we deploy. That is also a fact.

Nuclear power is baseload power (i.e. not intermittent).

As we rebuild Americas power generation ability, I would like to see us replace coal power plants with nuclear, as they reach their end-of-life. Eventually, I would like to see us replace all fossil fuel power with nuclear. I would like to see us build a couple of recycling nuclear power plants and recycle all the nuclear waste which is currently being stored onsite at over 100 power plants, and is currently being wasted.

I think eventually more and more people will see the wisdom of going nuclear.

We will see.

https://gregladen.com/blog/2020/04/27/no-michael-moore-did-not-make-a-documentary-called-planet-of-the-humans/#comment-872102

The results show that nuclear,hydro, coal, and natural gas power systems (in this order) are one order of magnitude more effective than photovoltaics and wind power.

The only way that can work is if the externalities, especially of coal and natural gas, are ignored. Also ignoring the environmental vulnerability of nuclear.

As BBD points out, RickA is far up his own fundament given the state of play twenty years later.

I certainly do not expect a right wing, anti-environmental-Republican Party supporting lawyer to understand any of this. But that does not abrogate the truth. If we are to have a sustainable future for everyone on Earth then the rich nations need to reduce their consumption dramatically and we need to dismantle neoliberal capitalism is favor of a much more equitable, egalitarian political, economic system.

There is nothing irrational about being afraid of radiation doses that are likely to produce damage to your body, including cancer. Equating the UV of sunlight with radiation from radioactive isotopes from the waste of nuclear power plants or the radiation released when a nuclear power plant goes blooey is a false equivalency.

For one thing, the act of getting a suntan results in (some) protection from further exposure to sunlight, whereas the radiation from radioisotopes does no such thing. Furthermore, information about the dangers of overexposure to solar radiation has resulted in many people safeguarding themselves (and their children) using sunblock and protective clothing but there is no widely available “radioactivity block” lotion or protective clothing.

Other notes: Radon given off by isotope decay in granite countertops is a special case and can be mitigated by replacing the countertops or making sure there is plenty of circulation of outside air into the house. ventilation to the outside. The amount of natural radiation given off by soil varies with its composition and geological history but is moderated by footwear and is at a low enough level to show no statistical correlation with medical problems. [I have no specific references at hand for the radon and soil radiation items; I may look if I can remember to do so.]