Deloitte: Utility "Decarbonization" Not Even Close w/o Big NG Cuts, Large-Scale Grid Integration

[hunter]

1. Solar and wind alone will not support the high energy industrial consumer economy...

... many affluent people now enjoy.

If fossil fuels were banned today I think many people would embrace nuclear power.

Bill Gates’ Nuclear Startup Unveils Mini-Reactor Design Including Molten Salt Energy Storage

Nuclear power is the Immovable Object of generation sources. It can take days just to bring a nuclear plant completely online, rendering it useless as a tool to manage the fluctuations in the supply and demand on a modern energy grid.

Now a firm launched by Bill Gates in 2006, TerraPower, in partnership with GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy, believes it has found a way to make the infamously unwieldy energy source a great deal nimbler — and for an affordable price.

The new design, announced by TerraPower on August 27th, is a combination of a "sodium-cooled fast reactor" — a type of small reactor in which liquid sodium is used as a coolant — and an energy storage system. While the reactor could pump out 345 megawatts of electrical power indefinitely, the attached storage system would retain heat in the form of molten salt and could discharge the heat when needed, increasing the plant’s overall power output to 500 megawatts for more than 5.5 hours.

“This allows for a nuclear design that follows daily electric load changes and helps customers capitalize on peaking opportunities driven by renewable energy fluctuations,” TerraPower said.

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https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottcarpenter/2020/08/31/bill-gates-nuclear-firm-says-new-reactor-can-backstop-grid-with-molten-salt-storage/#79ceb3ee5e65