Durandal
Well-known member
Renewable energy can likely take a large brunt of the replacement of fossil fuels, especially when time of use/generation consumption is more widespread. It requires more smart grid adoption, and power companies providing real time pricing structures to encourage consumption to match production, especially for things that can be "smart" about it such as EV charging, etc.
The base load that will still need to exist will be the hydro and hopefully 4th gen nuclear power. Just replacing the 1/3 of the power that comes from coal (where I am) to be solar and wind would eliminate virtually all particulate emissions, as natural gas emissions are negligible in comparison. (In Arkansas, the power spread is 1/3 coal, 1/3 natural gas, and 1/3 mix of hydro and nuclear.)
While all of the coal plants need to be phased out, all of the earlier generation plants designed any time before the 1980's need to be phased out as well, and replaced with newer and safer plants. While the actual number of failures for the older generation plants is small, the hazard is large. It's not a binary choice, saying nuclear is safe or not, it's all dependent on the generation of the technology and the maintenance and upgrades performed, but in many cases, the utilities prefer not to take the necessary steps to upgrade or maintain their nuclear plants. As such the more viable path is to retire them and replace them with newly designed plants, which will allay the concerns of all but the most hardcore NIMBYs.
The base load that will still need to exist will be the hydro and hopefully 4th gen nuclear power. Just replacing the 1/3 of the power that comes from coal (where I am) to be solar and wind would eliminate virtually all particulate emissions, as natural gas emissions are negligible in comparison. (In Arkansas, the power spread is 1/3 coal, 1/3 natural gas, and 1/3 mix of hydro and nuclear.)
While all of the coal plants need to be phased out, all of the earlier generation plants designed any time before the 1980's need to be phased out as well, and replaced with newer and safer plants. While the actual number of failures for the older generation plants is small, the hazard is large. It's not a binary choice, saying nuclear is safe or not, it's all dependent on the generation of the technology and the maintenance and upgrades performed, but in many cases, the utilities prefer not to take the necessary steps to upgrade or maintain their nuclear plants. As such the more viable path is to retire them and replace them with newly designed plants, which will allay the concerns of all but the most hardcore NIMBYs.