Do you ever stop to wonder whether anyone may think differently from you without necessarily being the puppet of propaganda?

Sure, sometimes I just write it off to their stupidity, sometimes I put it down to the arrogance of intellect. Whatever, mostly I gave up expecting people to agree or think like me sometime before my age reached double figures.

As you and I have been around here a while, why do my limitations grate all of a sudden ?

keep to the Fen Causeway

The problem with nuclear for the transition is that I'm not sure I've seen a credible plan for rolling out new nukes in the necessary time period either.

So the 'still night' problem has to be seen in the context of non-sustainable technology that still can't guarantee reliable power to all of the population.

During the last freeze in the UK it literally became impossible to buy heating oil, and gas stocks were getting close to the bone.

So it's false to imply that only renewables suffer from practical supply issues.

Now, you can argue that Good Nukes™ might solve some supply problems. But the history of nukes has been one of heavy subsidy and practical underperformance.

So it's reasonable to ask if giving similar subsidies to sustainables might not improve supply reliability, rather than degrade it.

Well, surely you know that we all support that. I still haven't seen a credible rampup plan that credibly replaces everything within a decade though.

The credible plan is not a "credible plan," rather the evidence that the entire supply chain ramp up of wind and PV has already made. To do it ALL in a decade might take something in rather short supply around this globe, mainly visionary political willpower. China did it in 5 years (though it will take another 5 years to reach European quality standards.)

If you ask SKF (bearings) or Winergy (gearboxes) or The Switch (generators/full power controllers) if they could quadruple production in 6-8 years, they will tell you with the right political conditions, their answer would be yes. What they'v already accomplished gives the answer some weight.

(PS. Nuclear supply chain issues are much worse. Currently there are two forges worldwide capable of producing a modern single containment vessel, which would take some effort to expand to the necessary scale. Could they build 4-8 in China in the next six years? Probably. Probably not with uniform steel.)

I sure won't dispute that, and am sincerely thankful that you never lost heart during all that time.

Given the noticeably rising anger (sometimes unwarranted) of some of my comments in the past six months, i'm not certain i haven't already lost heart. I am aware of suffering huge depression for the past year.

Regarding Storage. If the idiocracies running the world spent half as much money on storage as they do chasing CCS, we wouldn't be having this debate. It's a whole lot simpler to compress air with nighttime wind and store it in empty gas wells or parliament buildings, for just one of the host of technologies ready at breakthrough stage.

Again, the energy solution is in the mix of so many technologies. And using the existence of already built conventional fuels as the transition period.

The decision for society is rather to face up to and admit the high costs of the externalities. Once that decision has been reached, game over, success. Until then, game on as we try to keep away from being trampled by dinosaur hooves, and crushed by dinosaur bodies falling over on us.

Society might also have to make some adjustments in lifestyle, but i'm not talking about wearing cardigans under our hoodies in the dark.

So yeah, my LP vinyl seems to be stuck on 100%, 100% of the time.

Ramp up plan? Bremerhaven.

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin

I'm still intrigued as to what happens at night during a prolonged still period over most of Europe. Not a common occurence maybe, but one I have known several times in my adult life.

The same happens as when all the nuclear plants are shut down for safety reasons at the same time. (With half the Swedish reactors being off-line at the same time a couple of times, all does not look all the unprobable.)

Solar, wind, coal and nuclear are all base-load technologies - hydro, oil and gas are top-load technologies.

Sweden's finest (and perhaps only) collaborative, leftist e-newspaper Synapze.se

Generation IV reactor - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Generation IV reactors (Gen IV) are a set of theoretical nuclear reactor designs currently being researched. Most of these designs are generally not expected to be available for commercial construction before 2030. Current reactors in operation around the world are generally considered second- or third-generation systems, with most of the first-generation systems having been retired some time ago. Research into these reactor types was officially started by the Generation IV International Forum (GIF) based on eight technology goals, including to improve nuclear safety, improve proliferation resistance, minimize waste and natural resource utilization, and decrease the cost to build and run such plants.

So it is still 20 years off (cue xkcd reference).

While on this topic, I would like to point out something else that often crops up among those entusiastic for this technology (I was one once):
Generation IV reactor - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

100-300 times more energy yield from the same amount of nuclear fuel ^[4]

While true it is also misleading if the reader thinks "Woo-hoo, lots and lots of energy!" as this is not related to EROI.

Sweden's finest (and perhaps only) collaborative, leftist e-newspaper Synapze.se

The point is that Pauli called his protegé neutron which was all right since the particle called "neutron" today (the chargeless proton) had not yet been discovered. However, that name was not "copyrighted" since it was only used in private conversations and correspondence and never in print.  When, in 1932, James Chadwick proved the existence of a chargeless particle with a mass closely equal to that of a proton, he called it neutron in his paper in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. When Fermi, still being a professor in Rome, reported Chadwick's discovery at the weekly physics seminar, somebody from the audience asked whether "Chadwick's neutron" was the same as "Pauli's neutron". "No" answered Fermi (naturally speaking in Italian), "i neutroni di Chadwick sono grandi e pesanti, I neutroni di Pauli sono piccoli e leggeri, essi debbono essere chiamati neutrino".