In a recent study, researchers from the European Environmental Bureau (EEB), the Stockholm School of Economics (SSE), and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) questioned the planned development of new nuclear capacities in the energy strategies of the United States and certain European countries.
Pumped-storage hydroelectricity is an old and proven method for load balancing intermittent power sources. Would like to see more of that as geography permits.
The “as geography permits” part is a big obstacle, unfortunately.
Actually it isn’t if you stop only looking at places that are also suitable as power plant, that is, have a big river flowing through them.
You can do pumped hydro in an old mineshaft.
Can you? To store the energy you need to pump up; to use it you need to flow back down. Where is the ‘down’ or ‘up’ from a mine shaft?
I’d also question if the volume would be worth it.
Edit: maybe you are thinking compressed air?
…the up is at the surface and the down is at the bottom of the mine shaft? I’m not talking about horizontal ones, of course. You let water in, generating power, and then, to regenerate empty space and with that the capacity to again generate power, you spend energy to pump it up.
As to volume, there’s some gigantic mineshafts, but even small ones might warrant small installations it’s not like some pipes and a pump and generator are much of an investment. Of course, don’t try that in a salt mine geology will play an important part.
And lastly: Mineshafts aren’t the only option. There’s a lot of mountains, and they have many sides, and also plateaus and valleys. Build two concrete basins, connect them via pipe, ship in water from somewhere, voila, pumped hydro storage.
I guess I wasn’t clear where on the surface the storage is. Do they still make a dam type area to store the ‘high’ water, or is it just a different part of the mine which is closer to the surface?
I was able to find some mine numbers… yeah; insane. Especially something like an open cut mine which is functionally already lake shaped.
It’s an obstacle for anything, including nuclear. Just ask Japan.
That will not remotely cover baseline loads and is not without significant efficiency loss due to the pumping phase.
All commonly used forms of energy storage have some efficiency loss. Pumped storage is not perfect but my understanding is that it usually comes at a 10-25% loss, which isn’t all that shabby all things considered.