Environmentalists and Nuclear Energy

[mash107]

After debating friends for quite a bit on this topic... I thought I'd bring it here

If carbon emissions is indeed the issue of our generation... and there is no shortage of demand for energy. We absolutely need energy, both in the physical and metaphysical sense, to work, make goods abundant (affordable), and diminish the effects of poverty.

Why is there not more widespread support for employing nuclear energy across the board? I just don't get it. Telling people they have to pay more for goods produced by energy because you lack an alternative to fossil fuels is not a tenable position.

[Kleinstein]

Nuclear energy also has it's down sides - real physical ones, more morally or social and a lot of emotionally. It is so much different from what normal people know and hard to understand, that people get scared and are thus more on the careful side. It also did not help nuclear energy that in the 1960s some scientist or those who claimed understand nuclear energy did promises that turned out to be false (and they could have known by then). In this context it is essentially impossible to do argumentation based on facts on a topic that most people just don't understand.

A big point, at least in Europe is that the environmental movements really stared with opposition to nuclear energy. So even if you have good arguments - they would not even try to understand you and it is a difficult topic.

Even if you try to look just at the facts, there are real problems with nuclear energy. So it is not a clear pro but not a clear no either:
1) Much of the costs / downsides come disposal of the waste. So it is like a big loan from future generations with uncertain interests. So it would need a long term (e.g. 1000's of years) stable society to work. You can always argue one such a social problem - no definite answer appealing to all.

2) The simple once through nuclear energy only works for a limited time / amount. So to be a real solution one would need breeding reactors - here development / predictions badly failed. There was quite some trouble with fast reactors, and they are no doubt the more dangerous ones. Also fast reactors bear more danger for nuclear proliferation.

3) If there is a really big accident happening (like Chernobyl), the damage can be really big in a dense populated area. The Fukushima accident was not that far away from turning into really bad (like evacuation for Tokio). Such an extreme danger would be only acceptable if there would be an insurance for it - but there is no such thing. The world is just to small and divided for it. There is just no way one could have treaties that would allow things like all the Japanese or half of India to evacuate to the US and Europe in case of an accident. So even if the expected frequency of accidents and expected accumulated damages are OK, it is just the single damage that can be to large.

[mikron]

Have a look at this presentation from Arnie Gundersen:

[ez24]

Just learned a nuclear safety tip today.

Got a Fujitsu Scansnap S1300i scanner.  According to their safety instructions the scanner is NOT to be used inside a nuclear plant.   

All we can hope is everyone reads the manual.

[Someone]

Have a look at this presentation from Arnie Gundersen:

Thats grabbing some "big" headline figures/arguments which push a certain narrative. Its certainly true that solar and wind have a lower energy production cost, but you do need to account for the increased distribution/arbitrage/storage costs which are externalised, just as disposal is externalised for nuclear power. I'd be guessing that the final costs would still be strongly in favour of wind and solar. But the headline:
"New Nukes Make Global Warming Worse"
Is a dangerous over simplification, the global warming cost of nuclear energy is possibly greater than wind or solar, but still much lower than the incumbent generation types and there is no clear agreement on the relative intensities:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life-cycle_greenhouse-gas_emissions_of_energy_sources
From the economic perspective the world could do better (from a CO2 centric point of view) by investing in solar and wind, but that has its downsides with availability, limited space, distribution, and the need for more efficient markets for electricity. But you could invest in nuclear power and still get huge improvements in the CO2 emissions compared to doing nothing, its only when comparing to massive investment in solar and wind that its possibly a worse solution.

After debating friends for quite a bit on this topic... I thought I'd bring it here

If carbon emissions is indeed the issue of our generation... and there is no shortage of demand for energy. We absolutely need energy, both in the physical and metaphysical sense, to work, make goods abundant (affordable), and diminish the effects of poverty.

Why is there not more widespread support for employing nuclear energy across the board? I just don't get it. Telling people they have to pay more for goods produced by energy because you lack an alternative to fossil fuels is not a tenable position.

Kleinstein makes most of the points, but a few others are:

Nuclear power in its current form (or even considering the emerging technologies) isn't going to last forever, we're still stuck with a finite resource of uranium and a very inefficient way of producing electricity from it, if the entire world switched to nuclear power we'd only have a few hundred years before that resource ran out.

The materials science (and nuclear industry in general) is still a long way from maturity, its not a simple and low risk solution yet and there needs to be a lot more reactors built before it becomes routine and cheap/easy/safe.

[station240]

Big downside I see with Nuclear power, compared to wind and solar, is the single point of failure.
The grid is distributed, so why shouldn't the power generation also be distributed ?

Say you build a 1000MW reactor complex, then you need to feed high voltage power lines into it, and a substation.
Should events caused by mother nature damage said power feed, lightning, storms, earthquake, then the entire plant shuts down. Hence large scale blackouts.

If anything wind and solar should make the power grid more reliable and cheaper to build. Use power near where it is generated, less need for huge transformers and electricity pylons.
At the moment in Australia things are in a transitional phase, we have wind and solar, but not enough power storage. As idiots voted in the "anti progress" party, otherwise known as Liberals (sic), any attempts to modernise the grid are being messed with.

One political issue not mentioned in this thread so far, time and cost!
Nuclear power stations are not cheap to build, nor are they quick to construct.
Climate change is a problem we need to solve today, not in 10+ years. Between the redtape and construction time it can take this long.
Also the actual total costs of a Nuclear power station are [redacted], that is construction + grid connection + approvals + insurance.
The 3rd party insurance for nuclear power as you can imagine is insane, the tax payers are the ones that pay it, one way or another.

[Someone]

i do not support nuclear power.
to start up a reactor is easy, 10 years? 20 years?
to close it? after using it for 100 years? 200 years? will take more than 1,000,000 million years.
and those who watched the fukushima documentary will understand, our current containment technology is not enough for accidents, and will never be enough. between the reactor and the outside world in reality is just some safety water barrier, thats it.

The waste is safe to store and handle within a few decades of shutdown, politics prevent it happening.

between the reactor and the outside world in reality is just some safety water barrier, thats it.

Which is completely false, all modern reactors have a "bomb proof" containment:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Containment_building
Which at Fukushima was blown apart by an explosion.

[zl2wrw]

Business as usual (burning fuel for energy?) seems to be causing lots air pollution (which makes people sick, and causes some to die before they otherwise would):
http://berkeleyearth.org/air-pollution-overview/

This map, in terms of cigarettes per day, is easier to understand than ?g / m³:


There is a case to argue that coal, oil and gas fired generation kill more people per unit of electricity produced than nuclear:
https://web.archive.org/web/20161125154327/http://www.withouthotair.com/c24/page_168.shtml

Whilst battery technology is better than what we had 30 years ago, it still sucks if you want to say store enough energy from PV panels during the day to keep a city running at night... (we are lucky here in NZ, something like 80% of our electricity is already produced from renewables because we are blessed with hydro & geothermal power).

Costs of construction - rather than each reactor being a custom build, "standardise" on a handful of designs and build as much as you can on a production line in a factory (eg think airliners A380, B777, etc with massive NRE and certification costs, but these costs are spread over large volume of identical product produced).

Centralisation - the laws of physics do not require reactors to be > 1000 MWe capacity. Production line construction may make smaller reactors cost effective.
In the case of New Zealand, our nuclear free legislation does not ban land-based civil nuclear reactors (nuclear weapons and nuclear propelled ships/aircraft are illegal), however, our national grid is small, and probably could not handle the step change of a 1000 MWe unit tripping off-line (200 to 300 MWe units are probably a more suitable size for us, should we want to do away with our gas and oil fired thermal plant).

re: 3roomlab's chart of radioactivity over time - it is a log/log graph and it shows total radiation, but does not distinguish alpha/beta/gamma. (alpha is easiest to shield, but causes the most damage if it gets into your body).
Starting at the top, Cs137 & Sr90 are fission products, then the Americium and Plutonium are what you call transuranic elements. If you re-process your spent reactor fuel (yes, I know it is not politically correct, because that is how you get Pu239) you can send the transuranic elements back to the reactor for another fuel cycle. The fission products can be vitrified (mixed with molten glass) and buried as high level waste. According to 3roomlab's chart, after less than 1000 years, the activity of the separated fission products will have fallen practically to that of its Tc99 content: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technetium-99
At ten times less activity than Tc99 you have U238, which is an alpha emitter (so most of the alpha particles can't escape from a solid source), and many years ago at University of Canterbury, I got to handle kg-size metallic U238 (at the time, the density of it was amazing to me).

Fukushima was old technology (Mk. 1 BWR?), in a bad location, which arguably combined with some bad culture (something like "I shouldn't push for catalytic hydrogen scrubbers to be installed because it will make me look bad for signing off that the reactor was safe last year when said scrubbers were not available")

[Someone]

There is a case to argue that coal, oil and gas fired generation kill more people per unit of electricity produced than nuclear:
https://web.archive.org/web/20161125154327/http://www.withouthotair.com/c24/page_168.shtml

Nice cigarette equivalency map, but the numbers on fatalities per unit of energy are very rubbery and open to interpretation from different sources:
http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/nuclear-reaction/deaths-and-energy-technologies/blog/34275/
I'd suggest nuclear power is higher than most renewables for fatalities caused just on the basis of lifetime/fleet/cumulative energy generated of all nuclear plants and the "true" estimates of total fatalities caused by Chernobyl. Pick your own figure for total deaths caused from the nuclear industry (just the figures for Chernobyl are very rough and in dispute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster#Human_impact) and divide it by approximately 100,000 TWh (world bank dataset) then compare to the promoted figures:
http://www.nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html
http://www.nuceng.ca/refer/risk/risk.htm
They're all on the lowest possible end of the estimates before you add in deaths from uranium mining and fuel processing/disposal.

Nuclear power is a great option but its easy to get caught up in the hype and happy statistics promoted by the industry.

[mash107]

Big downside I see with Nuclear power, compared to wind and solar, is the single point of failure.
The grid is distributed, so why shouldn't the power generation also be distributed ?

Say you build a 1000MW reactor complex, then you need to feed high voltage power lines into it, and a substation.
Should events caused by mother nature damage said power feed, lightning, storms, earthquake, then the entire plant shuts down. Hence large scale blackouts.

If anything wind and solar should make the power grid more reliable and cheaper to build. Use power near where it is generated, less need for huge transformers and electricity pylons.
At the moment in Australia things are in a transitional phase, we have wind and solar, but not enough power storage. As idiots voted in the "anti progress" party, otherwise known as Liberals (sic), any attempts to modernise the grid are being messed with.

While solar/wind might be more decentralized, it is far more susceptible to those environmental events you're referring to. Earthquakes, tsunamis, etc would just completely destroy a solar field, I'm almost certain. When I was in school, I went through dozens of cells because of how easy they fracture, and that was me being clumsy. I'm sure it can be ruggedized with plastics, but that would harm the efficiency of what is not a high-power output device. In the grand scheme of things, though, a diversified portfolio might not be a bad idea to hedge against one environmental factor or another, but energy output needs to substantially increase to account for the rising population, not decrease. And that's what I worry might come about from these alternative sources.

One political issue not mentioned in this thread so far, time and cost!
Nuclear power stations are not cheap to build, nor are they quick to construct.
Climate change is a problem we need to solve today, not in 10+ years. Between the redtape and construction time it can take this long.
Also the actual total costs of a Nuclear power station are [redacted], that is construction + grid connection + approvals + insurance.
The 3rd party insurance for nuclear power as you can imagine is insane, the tax payers are the ones that pay it, one way or another.

Either way, if you make energy less abundant, the taxpayer's are stuck with the bill as well with increased energy costs. If we're serious about combating climate change, a realistic solution that doesn't harm the pocket book needs to come about.

[amspire]

Nuclear power stations are not cheap to build, nor are they quick to construct.
Climate change is a problem we need to solve today, not in 10+ years. Between the redtape and construction time it can take this long.
Also the actual total costs of a Nuclear power station are [redacted], that is construction + grid connection + approvals + insurance.

The biggest factor of the cost of fission power by far is the cost that no supporter ever wants to mention - the cost of safe storage of waste for 50,000 years+. That would totally dwarf all other costs. The idea that anyone currently has a method of "safe storage" is pure fiction. All currently proposed methods are gambles that will fall on futures generations to live with - not us. There are currently methods that will probably be safe for the lifetime of anyone alive today, but people don't even know what changes might occur over the next 50,000 years - crustal, environmental, political and economical. The reality is that we could easily have a setback - like an asteroid strike that might send us back to subsistence farming. People in 5000 years may not have a clue about the strange containers in the mine. They might not even be able to read or comprehend the warning signs. Basically, when we make elements like plutonium as a waste product, we are making elements that hardly exist naturally. Risking a mistake that puts them into major water tables is a risk that only the most thoughtless and greedy could impose on the future generations.

The thing is it is probably not needed as long as we can solve the one big problem of renewables - storing energy economically and safely for, say, 10 years. Even 12 months is inadequate - it needs to be longer. Batteries like Lithium batteries are not the answer.

The numbers do not make it impossible - the only thing missing is our abilities.

Just to pick a simple example, if you store energy in the form of aluminium, you can fairly easily fit enough aluminium to be a source of 10 years electric supply in shallow basement room in a normal home.

If you had a fat cycle like the plants + the human body currently uses, you could store 10 years supply of energy at an average power usage of 1kWh per hour (24kWh/day) in a space 2M x 2.5M x 2M. OK, there will be energy losses which means you need more space, but the point is the concept is not impossible - we are just currently way to dumb to be able to implement a fat cycle the way plants + our own body can already do. So it is possible - just not for us at the moment.

Silicanes are an interesting option. Silicon is the second most abundant element in the earth's crust, and silicanes react with air (nitrogen+oxygen) to release their energy. I think the reaction uses something like 80% nitrogen + 20% oxygen.

There are probably thousands of candidate storage methods, but the issue is how to create a complete reversible room temperature cycle. The discharge rate does not have to be quick like a battery if you are storing 10 years worth of energy.

[Kleinstein]

From my view the technical problems with nuclear energy can be solved. Long time storage is a little difficult, but still much easier than it is with CO2 that does not decay at all, and the environment can only consume a rather limited amount per year - so we already have excess CO2 for several 1000 years out there. The really deep geological storage (e.g. > 3000 m) is a rather compelling option. Not 100% sure, but if a little of it comes out after 100000 years, the radiation is not that bad, and it will not come up all at once - so future generations will have centuries to learn about it. It is still not a really good solution, but better than fossil fuel. However nuclear energy turned out to be rather expensive - so it is not a cheap solution.

The big problem with nuclear energy is that human societies are not fit for it. You have to change humans first, to make them non egoistic - so maybe in the long run, in a few million years. Also the risks are global - so you have to convince everybody, and this is just not working with so many people and some areas that can have better options (e.g geothermal, waterpower).

The big problem with wind and solar power is storage. You don't need storage for more than about half a year though, but only daily storage is not enough. In many areas there is still more energy need in either summer of winter and production may not follow that. The problem with longer time storage are costs due to rather few cycles (e.g. maybe 2-10 a year). So far it looks like we have to prepare for considerably higher and more fluctuating prices for energy - no obvious cheap source in sight. Higher costs could effect how we use energy to: for some industries it can get more attractive to run only when power is cheap (e.g. good wind) and stop production when power would come from storage.

Even if the production of wind and solar power is decentralized, we need the large area grid, to average out production and demand over a larger number of sources and sinks. The grid is reducing the required storage quite a lot and it is more efficient. In Germany we even need more long distance grid because of the decentralized renewable sources. There could be exceptions in low populated areas like parts of Australia where more storage and thus local electricity are an option, but this is only for a few of us.

[jonovid]

If carbon emissions is indeed the issue of our generation

but If carbon emissions is Not an issue. as many scientific theories come and go,
 substantially or stagnation is more like BS. remember it was global cooling in 1970s.
problem is only political.  when obama leaves office problem it is solved.
remember their are other scientific theories not just the CO2 theorie.
eugenics or human population control is a also a bad move. it was tryed back in 1940 Europe but it failed.
trying to control the future.

[Kleinstein]

If carbon emissions is indeed the issue of our generation

but If carbon emissions is Not an issue. as many scientific theories come and go,
 substantially or stagnation is more like BS. remember it was global cooling in 1970s.
problem is only political.  when obama leaves office problem it is solved.
remember their are other scientific theories not just the CO2 theorie.
eugenics or human population control is a also a bad move. it was tryed back in 1940 Europe but it failed.
trying to control the future.

Even if there would be no global warming, there is still a a big (maybe even bigger) problem with to much CO2: it makes the oceans more acidic and this makes is more and more difficult for some marine life to make there shells. So the CO2 is poisoning the oceans.

Evidence for global worming gets more and more clear. There are clear weather data, and the physics of the atmosphere also suggest a warming of about the observed size. So we may exactly how much warmer it will get, but that is not the problem. To be on the safe side with releasing so much would be need to be sure that there is not problem with it. So even if in doubt, we should play safe.

[tggzzz]

For a balanced discussion of the alternatives, see http://www.inference.eng.cam.ac.uk/withouthotair/

Who say it is balanced? All the environmental lobby. All big energy. Just about everybody elsel

[djos]

Interesting discussion, I'm personally pro-nuclear despite supporting a range of Green Policies and Ideas.

The big Issue I see with Fission Generation is not Saftey, (new passive designs are amazingly safe and imo 100's of years of burning Coal has prolly killed more ppl than every nuclear accident and intentional detonation combined), but waste management. You need the political will to build proper storage infrastructure and/or re-processing infrastructure (the better option imo) at the same time as you build the generation infrastructure or you end up with a stack of "temporary" waste dumps scattered around your country and the ensuing political quagmire as everyone fights to get rid of the "temporary" dump and fights to keep the "permanent" facility out of "their backyard".

To be blunt, a nation like Straya would be better off building several whacking great big Molten Salt plants per state for base load power plus incentivise say 70% penetration of residential Solar with Storage (PW2 has really changed the game imo). This would likely tide us over as we ditch Coal/Gas power generation until Fusion Power becomes genuinely viable in about 50 years time (big strides are now being made which is bloody exciting!).

/2c worth

[amspire]

As long as we have to dance between bad choices, we will end up with this "which is the worse - CO₂ or nuclear waste? question" and in all the discussions, we will ignore the cost to future generations - we are too far gone down the energy addiction path to care.

How do you decide between two really bad choices?

The two elements that would change the whole discussion are safe long term energy storage, and allowing individual homes and businesses to be genuine energy wholesalers. The storage is the total key, because you have to be able to save power in Summer and sell it in Winter and at night. Without the power storage, intermittent power generators are just a big headache for the companies trying to balance the grid. The year to year variation can be huge. Were I live the wettest year is 1500mm rainfall. The driest year is 250mm rainfall. You ideally want to have enough storage to save a bit in the drought years and use it in the overcast wet years.

The solution is to engineer new choices so you do not have to choose between coal or fission. Nuclear fusion may not have the same waste issues as fission, so that would also be an interesting path if anyone can work out how to practically achieve it.

Once storage is possible, every farm would probably become a power generator (could be solar on unfertile ground, wind, gasses from rotting waste) that would be a second income stream, and the energy price would be a genuine free market price. If the big energy companies charge too much, more people would become net energy producers instead of consumers.

[djos]

As long as we have to dance between bad choices, we will end up with this "which is the worse - CO₂ or nuclear waste? question" and in all the discussions, we will ignore the cost to future generations - we are too far gone down the energy addiction path to care.

How do you decide between two really bad choices?

The bulk of "Nuclear waste" can be reprocessed and reused greatly reducing the volumes of waste needing to be stored (iirc by about 60x). AIUI the main reason it isn't done is political.

https://whatisnuclear.com/articles/recycling.html

[mash107]

If carbon emissions is indeed the issue of our generation

but If carbon emissions is Not an issue. as many scientific theories come and go,
 substantially or stagnation is more like BS. remember it was global cooling in 1970s.
problem is only political.  when obama leaves office problem it is solved.
remember their are other scientific theories not just the CO2 theorie.
eugenics or human population control is a also a bad move. it was tryed back in 1940 Europe but it failed.
trying to control the future.

Even if its effects are overstated, it seems beneficial for us to come with more abundant and plentiful energy that is not contingent on dangerous fracking or drilling, and that's fairly limited in terms of quantity. Plus, over the long term it would make sense for CO2 to contribute to a greenhouse effect. CO2 is a greenhouse gas, there is no doubt about that. It's up to debate, I think, how much of an effect it would have in a closed-loop environment.

[Someone]

As long as we have to dance between bad choices, we will end up with this "which is the worse - CO₂ or nuclear waste? question" and in all the discussions, we will ignore the cost to future generations - we are too far gone down the energy addiction path to care.

How do you decide between two really bad choices?

The two elements that would change the whole discussion are safe long term energy storage, and allowing individual homes and businesses to be genuine energy wholesalers. The storage is the total key, because you have to be able to save power in Summer and sell it in Winter and at night. Without the power storage, intermittent power generators are just a big headache for the companies trying to balance the grid. The year to year variation can be huge. Were I live the wettest year is 1500mm rainfall. The driest year is 250mm rainfall. You ideally want to have enough storage to save a bit in the drought years and use it in the overcast wet years.

The solution is to engineer new choices so you do not have to choose between coal or fission. Nuclear fusion may not have the same waste issues as fission, so that would also be an interesting path if anyone can work out how to practically achieve it.

Once storage is possible, every farm would probably become a power generator (could be solar on unfertile ground, wind, gasses from rotting waste) that would be a second income stream, and the energy price would be a genuine free market price. If the big energy companies charge too much, more people would become net energy producers instead of consumers.

The idea with widely distributed generation is that storage needs will be minimised by the averaging of so many fluctuating sources, seasonal storage is likely unnecessary for somewhere mild like Australia and only interesting in areas of the far north of Europe/America where people live snowbound for a period of the year. But nuclear waste is not such a big problem:

As long as we have to dance between bad choices, we will end up with this "which is the worse - CO₂ or nuclear waste? question" and in all the discussions, we will ignore the cost to future generations - we are too far gone down the energy addiction path to care.

How do you decide between two really bad choices?

The bulk of "Nuclear waste" can be reprocessed and reused greatly reducing the volumes of waste needing to be stored (iirc by about 60x). AIUI the main reason it isn't done is political.

https://whatisnuclear.com/articles/recycling.html

Reprocessing is energy (CO2) intensive, but still a good way to reduce the overall impacts of Nuclear sourced electricity. Storage is not the big problem people keep making it out to be, just enclosing the waste in several layers of metal and plastic/concrete then putting it underground would be stable for the hundreds of years needed for decay to take on. The long term is making sure the alpha emitters don't reach the water or food supply, which is entirely possible with dry underground storage. Again the potential releases are tiny compared to the intentional releases from weapons testing already spread around the world.

[djos]

Reprocessing is energy (CO2) intensive, but still a good way to reduce the overall impacts of Nuclear sourced electricity. Storage is not the big problem people keep making it out to be, just enclosing the waste in several layers of metal and plastic/concrete then putting it underground would be stable for the hundreds of years needed for decay to take on. The long term is making sure the alpha emitters don't reach the water or food supply, which is entirely possible with dry underground storage. Again the potential releases are tiny compared to the intentional releases from weapons testing already spread around the world.

The other option is to move to Thorium Reactors which can burn Nuclear waste as fuel.

http://www.zdnet.com/article/how-thorium-can-burn-nuclear-waste-and-generate-energy/

[tggzzz]

The idea with widely distributed generation is that storage needs will be minimised by the averaging of so many fluctuating sources,

Yes, that's the idea.

Shame about reality, though. The problem is you need excessively large areas for that to work. Certainly the entire UK wind generation can and does reduce to <3% of peak output for several days in succession. The meterological condition is known as a "blocking high", and occurs frequently enough for it to be a problem.

If you process the raw stats given at http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/ to determine the CDF (cumulative distribution function), you will find that as a rule of thumb the CDF(x) ~= x. In other words, 100% of the time the wind output is less than or equal to the peak output (duh!), 50% of the time it is less than 50% of peak, and 3% of the time it is less than 3% of peak.

So, to counter the one day during the year when 99% of the wind power isn't there, you have to have the equivalent conventional plant available. And thermally cycling that plant doesn't do it any good.

[Someone]

For a balanced discussion of the alternatives, see http://www.inference.eng.cam.ac.uk/withouthotair/

Who say it is balanced? All the environmental lobby. All big energy. Just about everybody elsel

Except I've linked above where there are legitimate questions about the presentation of fatality rates from Nuclear power. Its a great reference for quick figures but not perfect.

[amspire]

The idea with widely distributed generation is that storage needs will be minimised by the averaging of so many fluctuating sources,

Yes, that's the idea.

Shame about reality, though. The problem is you need excessively large areas for that to work. Certainly the entire UK wind generation can and does reduce to <3% of peak output for several days in succession. The meteorological condition is known as a "blocking high", and occurs frequently enough for it to be a problem.

This is why you need cheap long term energy storage at the generator sites. If the storage is separate from the generator sites, then to make recyclable energy work, you would need a power transport system that can manage several times the peak load demands.

Energy storage should be the No 1 research priority - definitely should have more money then military, nuclear, etc.

[tggzzz]

For a balanced discussion of the alternatives, see http://www.inference.eng.cam.ac.uk/withouthotair/

Who say it is balanced? All the environmental lobby. All big energy. Just about everybody elsel

Except I've linked above where there are legitimate questions about the presentation of fatality rates from Nuclear power. Its a great reference for quick figures but not perfect.

The reference I gave just prevents facts for all of the alternatives, plus very explicit plausible extrapolations. As the author correctly stated, he is disinterested in the choice that society makes - but very interested to see that the arithmetic adds up. "Numbers, not adjectives".

That's why it is so highly regarded by all the players.