Examining the myth of nuclear and ‘baseload power’

Intermittency and you Do we need nuclear and coal plants for baseload power? Grist by David Roberts 9 Nov 09 “….Matt Yglesias made the point that only socialist state control seems capable of creating a robust nuclear power industry. After all, the only countries building nuke plants these days are the ones where governments are making the decisions…………

It’s become conventional wisdom that the grid can only incorporate a limited amount of renewable energy; ergo, we need coal and nuclear power plants for “baseload” electricity.
There’s far less to the claim than meets the eye, though. As Amory Lovins points out – ‘…….there is not and has never been a need for any particular plant or kind of plant to run all the time, and none can. All power plants fail, varying only in their failures’ size, duration, frequency, predictability, and cause. Solar cells’ and windpower’s variation with night and weather is no different from the intermittence of coal and nuclear plants, except that it affects less capacity at once, more briefly, far more predictably, and is no harder and probably easier and cheaper to manage. In short, the ability to serve steady loads is a statistical attribute of all plants on the grid, not an operational requirement for one plant. Variability (predictable failure) and intermittence (unpredictable failure) must be managed by diversifying type and location, forecasting, and integrating with other resources. Utilities do this every day, balancing diverse resources to meet fluctuating demand and offset utages. Even with a largely (or probably a wholly) renewable grid, this is not a significant problem or cost, either in theory or in practice—as illustrated by areas that are already 30-40% wind-powered.
Right now our power system might be characterized as Security Through Oversupply. We’ve built enough power plants to create the maximum level of power we might ever need at a given point in time; but since “peak load” times are relatively brief, most of the time dozens and dozens of large power plants are cycled down, sitting idle……….
Rather than spending the next decade or two building nuke and CCS plants, with all the attendant management hassles, public opposition, lawsuits, and cost overruns, why not spend it reducing demand, creating a more resilient grid, and diversifying the generation portfolio? The former is just a more expensive version of what exists now. The latter is a revolution, a platform for innovation that will make the internet look like, um, the electricity industry.

Do we need nuclear and coal plants for baseload power? | Grist