SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Solar — it's not just a clean power source producing zero emissions and almost no local water impact, it's also now one of the best choices on the basis of how much energy you get back for your investment. And with climate change impacts rising, solar's further potential to take some of the edge off the harm that's coming down the pipe makes speeding its adoption a clear no-brainer.
In 2016, according a trends analysis based on this report by the Royal Society of London, the energy return on energy investment (EROEI) for oil appears to have fallen below a ratio of 15 to 1 globally. In places like the United States, where extraction efforts increasingly rely on unconventional techniques like fracking, that EROEI has fallen to 10 or 11 to 1 or lower.
Meanwhile, according to a new study by the Imperial College of London, solar energy's return on investment ratio as of 2015 was 14 to 1 and rising. What this means is that a global energy return on investment inflection point between oil and solar was likely reached at some time during the present year.
(Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Saturday December 24 2016, @07:53AM
Steam bypass (feature of most modern reactors) and use that for process heat (in siberia it is used for central heating, in some parts of the world it is used for desalination).
Having processes that can stand being unpowered for a while (days, weeks) makes this even more aftractive.
Nuclear is interesting in that regard, unless you have hydro (save water) or pumped storage (fill upper reservoir) or fastacting plants at neighbour grids (export) it often is cheaper to just co-place it with industrial processes that needs heat.
Heck, modern nuclear engineering intro courses even traina people to provise a rough estimate at how it will perform at various steam bypasses (or if they can take higher heat prior to the steam generators)
(Also - modern nuclear reactors can cycle down to between 40% and 60% in about an hour, and then ramp up to 95% at a rate of 3-5% per minute. Coupled with steam bypass this allows for very interesting options)