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I work in the energy industry and find these kinds of articles frustrating. Rather than arguing the facts, they paint a caricature of "the other side." Many en

I work in the energy industry and find these kinds of articles frustrating. Rather than arguing the facts, they paint a caricature of "the other side." Many environmentalists, particularly those focused on greenhouse gasses are very supportive of nuclear energy. The strongest argument against nuclear is not environmental. It is economic. New nuclear plants take over a decade to bring online, last 40+ years, and cost $20 billion plus. In an industry moving towards distributed generation and decentralization this is out of place. We can't predict our energy needs 50 years in advance. Furthermore, nuclear plant construction tend to run 100%+ over budget and those costs are passed onto the ratepayers rather than borne the utilities. The levelized cost of wind and solar is already cheaper than nuclear. They can be brought online in months rather than years, they can be deployed at whatever scale is needed and we can use market forces to do so. What's not to love? However, as many informed environmentalists will point out, it will be almost impossible to get to zero carbon emissions in the next 50 years without nuclear power. The truth is far more interesting and much less confrontational than these kinds of articles lead you to believe.

hirundo 8y ago
> And so the New Left environmentalists attacked nuclear energy as somehow bad for the environment. This would be more of a caricature against "many environmentalists" than it is against "the New Left". The Green New Deal has been getting approving reviews from all over that quarter, seemingly including all of the Democratic presidential candidates and many in the legislature. Given that the GND rules out nuclear energy, is it really such a caricature?
smashingfiasco 8y ago
Just wait until China figures out next-generation nuclear power generation and eclipses what the US is capable of. They will. Because they don't seem to be concerned with the BS talking points like our bubble-brained climate "scientists" and dishonest and or paid-off politicians. They also seem to be able to take the risks. I fully expect that the next great ideas of how to do energy production is going to happen elsewhere, because the US keeps shooting itself in the foot and going "well it's expensive and solar and wind and ..." instead of looking at it as an investment that secures our status and capability well into the future.
- toomuchtodo 8y ago
  Unlikely. > The country [China] has the capacity to build 10 to 12 nuclear reactors a year. But though reactors begun several years ago are still coming online, the industry has not broken ground on a new plant in China since late 2016, according to a recent World Nuclear Industry Status Report. > Officially China still sees nuclear power as a must-have. But unofficially, the technology is on a death watch. Experts, including some with links to the government, see China’s nuclear sector succumbing to the same problems affecting the West: the technology is too expensive, and the public doesn’t want it. https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612564/chinas-losing-its-taste-for-nuclear-power-thats-bad-news/ https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612564/chinas-losing-its-... (China’s losing its taste for nuclear power. That’s bad news.)
mc32 8y ago
>Furthermore, nuclear plant construction tend to run 100%+ over budget and those costs are passed onto the ratepayers rather than borne the utilities. Isn't some of that due to regulatory ratcheting which is instigated by environmentalists who want to delay and make the economics unfeasible? Also, SKorea is able to build them on-time and on-budget. So, it's not a given it can't be done.
- timoth3y 8y ago
  It's honestly very hard to say precisely. All parties are incentivized to blame someone else, but these kinds of regulations tend to change very slowly and usually grandfather in projects that are completed or are in process. Looking at the recent Summer plant in SC, for example, it looks like it was mostly poor planning and unforeseen changes in energy prices and building costs. These factors change much more quickly than regulations.
HillRat 8y ago
Great, succinct points. Also worth noting that a different Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors think-tank (of which the Breakthrough Institute is a subsidiary-ish entity) agrees with your economic analysis regarding nuclear power plants startup/op costs versus LNG, wind, and solar (https://climatenexus.org/climate-issues/energy/nuclear-energy-in-the-us-recent-plant-closures-and-policy-decisions/ https://climatenexus.org/climate-issues/energy/nuclear-energ...).
rurounijones 8y ago
What is the situation regarding storage and grid instability due to increasing renewables? This is my main question every time. Storage seems to be lagging behind generation.
- timoth3y 8y ago
  Grid operators the world over are screaming about it, but so far things have gone pretty well. Germany has had some hiccups, but they were extremely aggressive in bringing renewables online and moving away from nuclear. And these problems were mostly a matter of strange wholesale prices rather than outages. The gird and grid management certainly needs to be changed to accommodate renewables, but utilities all over the world are already making these changes, both to the infrastructure and to the way they balance the grid. It's a fascinating time to be in the industry.
  - rurounijones 8y ago
    Thank you for the information but, as a realtive laymen, the whole "It seems to be going pretty well" doesn't seem to jibe with the fact that we seem to be failing miserably to meet Paris accords with even Germany pulling out of the commiment. If things are going pretty well and renewables are "What's not to love?" (to shamelessly steal your quote) then what on earth is going on.
    - timoth3y 8y ago
      I was commenting on the effect the renewables would have on running the grid itself. In general, the grid seems to be able to handle to increases in renewables we've seen so far and those we see coming. The pace at which we are deploying renewable generation is another matter entirely.
      - southern_cross 8y ago
        (I'm working from memory here, so take this with a grain of salt.) IIRC, the latest info is that the existing grid can handle something like 15% renewable energy before things start falling over in a big way. This is a bit higher than the 10% to 12% which was originally forecast, but considerably lower than the 30% which some optimists were claiming.
lsfanwetew233 8y ago
>> The levelized cost of wind and solar is already cheaper than nuclear. They can be brought online in months rather than years, they can be deployed at whatever scale is needed and we can use market forces to do so. I'm not personally aware of any place where this is actually true. Even assuming you are not building out wind and solar on the scale of a country like germany you still need comparable subsidies to incentivize power producers to build new renewable energy sources; to say nothing of the grid management cost. You can quibble with exactly how large the subsidy is and, to be fair; unless you are employed by a consulting comapany you will never have access to the internal accounting figures that actually value the marginal cost of electricity produced by variable renewable sources compared to conventional sources but the subsidy is almost certainly not less than 15-17% of the wholesale price. Given that this subsidy is guaranteed by law to extend far into the future it simply defies imagination to assume that the levelized cost is somehow comparable at all. I see this kind of argument a lot and a fair number of times someone claims they work in the energy industry or at a think tank with renewable energy or something. If that is the case I find it strange that they can't name actual examples where wind/solar don't require subsidies. It's usually just a link to a Lezard report with strange CoC assumptions.
- olau 8y ago
  You need to be careful not to compare existing, written-off power plants with new plants. What's compared is what would happen if you start a tender for a new generation capacity - what generation capacity would then win. Regarding your questions: subsidies have fallen over the years, and we're beginning to see the first projects without direct subsidies: https://www.vox.com/2018/5/30/17408602/solar-wind-energy-renewable-subsidy-europe https://www.vox.com/2018/5/30/17408602/solar-wind-energy-ren... And yes, it's true that running a grid is much more complicated than just LCoE.
- timoth3y 8y ago
  Subsidies and grid management are important considerations regardless of what kind of generation we are talking about. However, there is widespread agreement that the levelized, unsubsidized cost of nuclear is more expensive than that of wind and solar, and the cots of renewables are dropping. Here's a good starting point. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source

hirundo 8y ago

> And so the New Left environmentalists attacked nuclear energy as somehow bad for the environment. This would be more of a caricature against "many environmentalists" than it is against "the New Left". The Green New Deal has been getting approving reviews from all over that quarter, seemingly including all of the Democratic presidential candidates and many in the legislature. Given that the GND rules out nuclear energy, is it really such a caricature?

smashingfiasco 8y ago

Just wait until China figures out next-generation nuclear power generation and eclipses what the US is capable of. They will. Because they don't seem to be concerned with the BS talking points like our bubble-brained climate "scientists" and dishonest and or paid-off politicians. They also seem to be able to take the risks. I fully expect that the next great ideas of how to do energy production is going to happen elsewhere, because the US keeps shooting itself in the foot and going "well it's expensive and solar and wind and ..." instead of looking at it as an investment that secures our status and capability well into the future.

toomuchtodo 8y ago
Unlikely. > The country [China] has the capacity to build 10 to 12 nuclear reactors a year. But though reactors begun several years ago are still coming online, the industry has not broken ground on a new plant in China since late 2016, according to a recent World Nuclear Industry Status Report. > Officially China still sees nuclear power as a must-have. But unofficially, the technology is on a death watch. Experts, including some with links to the government, see China’s nuclear sector succumbing to the same problems affecting the West: the technology is too expensive, and the public doesn’t want it. https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612564/chinas-losing-its-taste-for-nuclear-power-thats-bad-news/ https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612564/chinas-losing-its-... (China’s losing its taste for nuclear power. That’s bad news.)

mc32 8y ago

>Furthermore, nuclear plant construction tend to run 100%+ over budget and those costs are passed onto the ratepayers rather than borne the utilities. Isn't some of that due to regulatory ratcheting which is instigated by environmentalists who want to delay and make the economics unfeasible? Also, SKorea is able to build them on-time and on-budget. So, it's not a given it can't be done.

timoth3y 8y ago
It's honestly very hard to say precisely. All parties are incentivized to blame someone else, but these kinds of regulations tend to change very slowly and usually grandfather in projects that are completed or are in process. Looking at the recent Summer plant in SC, for example, it looks like it was mostly poor planning and unforeseen changes in energy prices and building costs. These factors change much more quickly than regulations.

HillRat 8y ago

Great, succinct points. Also worth noting that a different Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors think-tank (of which the Breakthrough Institute is a subsidiary-ish entity) agrees with your economic analysis regarding nuclear power plants startup/op costs versus LNG, wind, and solar (https://climatenexus.org/climate-issues/energy/nuclear-energy-in-the-us-recent-plant-closures-and-policy-decisions/ https://climatenexus.org/climate-issues/energy/nuclear-energ...).

rurounijones 8y ago

What is the situation regarding storage and grid instability due to increasing renewables? This is my main question every time. Storage seems to be lagging behind generation.

timoth3y 8y ago
Grid operators the world over are screaming about it, but so far things have gone pretty well. Germany has had some hiccups, but they were extremely aggressive in bringing renewables online and moving away from nuclear. And these problems were mostly a matter of strange wholesale prices rather than outages. The gird and grid management certainly needs to be changed to accommodate renewables, but utilities all over the world are already making these changes, both to the infrastructure and to the way they balance the grid. It's a fascinating time to be in the industry.
- rurounijones 8y ago
  Thank you for the information but, as a realtive laymen, the whole "It seems to be going pretty well" doesn't seem to jibe with the fact that we seem to be failing miserably to meet Paris accords with even Germany pulling out of the commiment. If things are going pretty well and renewables are "What's not to love?" (to shamelessly steal your quote) then what on earth is going on.
  - timoth3y 8y ago
    I was commenting on the effect the renewables would have on running the grid itself. In general, the grid seems to be able to handle to increases in renewables we've seen so far and those we see coming. The pace at which we are deploying renewable generation is another matter entirely.
    - southern_cross 8y ago
      (I'm working from memory here, so take this with a grain of salt.) IIRC, the latest info is that the existing grid can handle something like 15% renewable energy before things start falling over in a big way. This is a bit higher than the 10% to 12% which was originally forecast, but considerably lower than the 30% which some optimists were claiming.

lsfanwetew233 8y ago

>> The levelized cost of wind and solar is already cheaper than nuclear. They can be brought online in months rather than years, they can be deployed at whatever scale is needed and we can use market forces to do so. I'm not personally aware of any place where this is actually true. Even assuming you are not building out wind and solar on the scale of a country like germany you still need comparable subsidies to incentivize power producers to build new renewable energy sources; to say nothing of the grid management cost. You can quibble with exactly how large the subsidy is and, to be fair; unless you are employed by a consulting comapany you will never have access to the internal accounting figures that actually value the marginal cost of electricity produced by variable renewable sources compared to conventional sources but the subsidy is almost certainly not less than 15-17% of the wholesale price. Given that this subsidy is guaranteed by law to extend far into the future it simply defies imagination to assume that the levelized cost is somehow comparable at all. I see this kind of argument a lot and a fair number of times someone claims they work in the energy industry or at a think tank with renewable energy or something. If that is the case I find it strange that they can't name actual examples where wind/solar don't require subsidies. It's usually just a link to a Lezard report with strange CoC assumptions.

olau 8y ago
You need to be careful not to compare existing, written-off power plants with new plants. What's compared is what would happen if you start a tender for a new generation capacity - what generation capacity would then win. Regarding your questions: subsidies have fallen over the years, and we're beginning to see the first projects without direct subsidies: https://www.vox.com/2018/5/30/17408602/solar-wind-energy-renewable-subsidy-europe https://www.vox.com/2018/5/30/17408602/solar-wind-energy-ren... And yes, it's true that running a grid is much more complicated than just LCoE.
timoth3y 8y ago
Subsidies and grid management are important considerations regardless of what kind of generation we are talking about. However, there is widespread agreement that the levelized, unsubsidized cost of nuclear is more expensive than that of wind and solar, and the cots of renewables are dropping. Here's a good starting point. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source