15 ms·

I can get the "We cannot build them in time" part but the whole "It is not economical to build them" strikes me as a pretty crazy position to take. Uneconomica

I can get the "We cannot build them in time" part but the whole "It is not economical to build them" strikes me as a pretty crazy position to take. Uneconomical compared to the massive disruption that climate change will bring to our civilization? Are we fighting to save our future or not? Discarding a proven technology that will massively reduce our carbon emission for an unproven "We still have problems to solve around wide-scale baseload" seems to be ass-backwards to me and pinning more on hope than common sense.

i_am_proteus 8y ago
Renewables will replace the most expensive fossil plants before the cheaper ones, which will make the base load price to compete with pretty hard for nuclear to match.
- adrianN 8y ago
  Right now it looks like the opposite is true. Due to a lack of storage we need more expensive gas plants instead of cheap coal plants that can't follow demand as quickly.
  - philipkglass 8y ago
    Overnight capital costs are significantly lower for new gas plants than new coal plants. Real capital costs are lower yet since gas plants are faster to complete. Fixed O&M costs are also lower for gas. The shale revolution made fuel for them cheap too. There's no combination of circumstances that presently makes a new coal plant cost-competitive with a new gas plant in the continental US. See table 1 here: https://www.eia.gov/analysis/studies/powerplants/capitalcost/pdf/capcost_assumption.pdf https://www.eia.gov/analysis/studies/powerplants/capitalcost... The renewable costs are already badly outdated but AFAICT the relative prices of coal and gas plants are still about right.
skybrian 8y ago
That's not the right metric. The question is whether you can sell electricity for a lower price than the competition or will end up selling electricity at a loss, resulting in "stranded costs" for rate payers. To do that comparison, you need to predict prices in the electricity market for many decades. Predicting the future is hard, but the trend for solar and wind costs is pretty clear and it seems foolish to bet against them. A high carbon tax would make nuclear more competitive against fossil fuels, but not solar and wind.
- rurounijones 8y ago
  > That's not the right metric. I guess that opinion comes down to whether you think Climate Change is an existential threat to our civilisation or not. If you are of the opinion that it is then costs be damned and build everything: Renewables, Storage, Nuclear. If we end up with more power than we need then we can shutdown excess or funnel that into powering carbon capture technologies if we ever get there. If you are not of the opinion then current economics, as you have described, rule the day.
  - MapleWalnut 8y ago
    It's always going to be a matter of economics.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - godelski 8y ago
      Climate is a matter of economics though. The difference is that the cost is in the future. That's why the poster was talking about the cost of climate and if you consider it an existential crisis. I guess it also matters if you care about current costs vs future costs.
      - rurounijones 8y ago
        As a sidenote. I also have trouble understanding the mindset of people who argue purely on economic basis. It seems that telling out grandchildren "Sorry you inherited a ruined climate, but we didn't want to spend the money at the time to avoid it" is a rational decision. (And hey, maybe some people think it is; but I can't)
rtpg 8y ago
It's not that nuclear is unproven, it's that _renewables at this point are proven_. You can build huge (or tiny! it's super scalable) fleets of renewable energy sources pretty economically, with a ~0% chance of making surrounding areas uninhabitable for 20 years if there's a failure. Yeah sure a truckload of uranium goes a long way but building the plants is really hard even when you look past the regulatory issues.
- rurounijones 8y ago
  Someone said roughly the same thing in another thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19167849 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19167849 But as far as I know there is no proven large-scale storage system, which is a criticla part of renewables. The other commenter mentioned building batteries and then it is just a matter of scale which seems like an over-simplification to me but I cannot find much useful info on it. Personally I would love a 100% renewable setup but I would not bet the future of our civilization on it when nuclear is another option.
  - darkmarmot 8y ago
    We do have a very simple large-scale storage system that's already in use across the world: pumping water uphill. It's just not as economical as rain when you factor in the efficiency losses from generating and transferring power twice.
    - rurounijones 8y ago
      And pumping water uphill is a regional solution that requires specific regional geography, to me that does not class as "scalable". I should be more specific in that to me "scalable" is a solution that can be deployed anywhere without require specific regional properties. Maybe you think this is unneeded and that a lot of region specific solutions can cover the storage requirements. However another posted did point out that 1 mile by 1 mile of batteries is apparently enough to store US energy requirements.
      - 8y ago
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
dv_dt 8y ago
> "It is not economical to build them" strikes me as a pretty crazy position to take. Why, no matter what resources you allocate financially, if you have X dollars, you can do more and sooner with X building renewable sources than if you split it between renewables and nuclear.
- rurounijones 8y ago
  Because that is based on the assumption that renewables and no nuclear is viable and going to work based on advances in technology. I think there is enough debate in this thread to illustrate why that is not a universal position. This comment explains it better: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19169073 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19169073
  - pfdietz 8y ago
    It's difficult to see how nuclear can fit in, even if renewables aren't directly covering everything. Renewables will be intermittent, which means as they build out they will often crash the price of electrical power. Nuclear cannot do well in that environment, since it cannot dispatch economically. Its costs are largely fixed, and it depends on selling power at a good price averaged over the large fraction of time it needs to be operating. But renewables slash the price it can get much of the time, even if they cannot cover everything. If nuclear is reduced to covering (say) 20% of the time cheap renewables are not available, it's a dead technology. Something else, like using hydrogen produced from renewables during their high output times, will be used instead.

i_am_proteus 8y ago

Renewables will replace the most expensive fossil plants before the cheaper ones, which will make the base load price to compete with pretty hard for nuclear to match.

adrianN 8y ago
Right now it looks like the opposite is true. Due to a lack of storage we need more expensive gas plants instead of cheap coal plants that can't follow demand as quickly.
- philipkglass 8y ago
  Overnight capital costs are significantly lower for new gas plants than new coal plants. Real capital costs are lower yet since gas plants are faster to complete. Fixed O&M costs are also lower for gas. The shale revolution made fuel for them cheap too. There's no combination of circumstances that presently makes a new coal plant cost-competitive with a new gas plant in the continental US. See table 1 here: https://www.eia.gov/analysis/studies/powerplants/capitalcost/pdf/capcost_assumption.pdf https://www.eia.gov/analysis/studies/powerplants/capitalcost... The renewable costs are already badly outdated but AFAICT the relative prices of coal and gas plants are still about right.

skybrian 8y ago

That's not the right metric. The question is whether you can sell electricity for a lower price than the competition or will end up selling electricity at a loss, resulting in "stranded costs" for rate payers. To do that comparison, you need to predict prices in the electricity market for many decades. Predicting the future is hard, but the trend for solar and wind costs is pretty clear and it seems foolish to bet against them. A high carbon tax would make nuclear more competitive against fossil fuels, but not solar and wind.

rurounijones 8y ago
> That's not the right metric. I guess that opinion comes down to whether you think Climate Change is an existential threat to our civilisation or not. If you are of the opinion that it is then costs be damned and build everything: Renewables, Storage, Nuclear. If we end up with more power than we need then we can shutdown excess or funnel that into powering carbon capture technologies if we ever get there. If you are not of the opinion then current economics, as you have described, rule the day.
- MapleWalnut 8y ago
  It's always going to be a matter of economics.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - godelski 8y ago
    Climate is a matter of economics though. The difference is that the cost is in the future. That's why the poster was talking about the cost of climate and if you consider it an existential crisis. I guess it also matters if you care about current costs vs future costs.
    - rurounijones 8y ago
      As a sidenote. I also have trouble understanding the mindset of people who argue purely on economic basis. It seems that telling out grandchildren "Sorry you inherited a ruined climate, but we didn't want to spend the money at the time to avoid it" is a rational decision. (And hey, maybe some people think it is; but I can't)

rtpg 8y ago

It's not that nuclear is unproven, it's that _renewables at this point are proven_. You can build huge (or tiny! it's super scalable) fleets of renewable energy sources pretty economically, with a ~0% chance of making surrounding areas uninhabitable for 20 years if there's a failure. Yeah sure a truckload of uranium goes a long way but building the plants is really hard even when you look past the regulatory issues.

rurounijones 8y ago
Someone said roughly the same thing in another thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19167849 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19167849 But as far as I know there is no proven large-scale storage system, which is a criticla part of renewables. The other commenter mentioned building batteries and then it is just a matter of scale which seems like an over-simplification to me but I cannot find much useful info on it. Personally I would love a 100% renewable setup but I would not bet the future of our civilization on it when nuclear is another option.
- darkmarmot 8y ago
  We do have a very simple large-scale storage system that's already in use across the world: pumping water uphill. It's just not as economical as rain when you factor in the efficiency losses from generating and transferring power twice.
  - rurounijones 8y ago
    And pumping water uphill is a regional solution that requires specific regional geography, to me that does not class as "scalable". I should be more specific in that to me "scalable" is a solution that can be deployed anywhere without require specific regional properties. Maybe you think this is unneeded and that a lot of region specific solutions can cover the storage requirements. However another posted did point out that 1 mile by 1 mile of batteries is apparently enough to store US energy requirements.
    - 8y ago

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

dv_dt 8y ago

> "It is not economical to build them" strikes me as a pretty crazy position to take. Why, no matter what resources you allocate financially, if you have X dollars, you can do more and sooner with X building renewable sources than if you split it between renewables and nuclear.

rurounijones 8y ago
Because that is based on the assumption that renewables and no nuclear is viable and going to work based on advances in technology. I think there is enough debate in this thread to illustrate why that is not a universal position. This comment explains it better: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19169073 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19169073
- pfdietz 8y ago
  It's difficult to see how nuclear can fit in, even if renewables aren't directly covering everything. Renewables will be intermittent, which means as they build out they will often crash the price of electrical power. Nuclear cannot do well in that environment, since it cannot dispatch economically. Its costs are largely fixed, and it depends on selling power at a good price averaged over the large fraction of time it needs to be operating. But renewables slash the price it can get much of the time, even if they cannot cover everything. If nuclear is reduced to covering (say) 20% of the time cheap renewables are not available, it's a dead technology. Something else, like using hydrogen produced from renewables during their high output times, will be used instead.