6 ms·

Sorry, but you are incorrect. Technically, every manufactured good has a learning curve. A very quick google search will show you that there is sizeable docume

Sorry, but you are incorrect. Technically, every manufactured good has a learning curve. A very quick google search will show you that there is sizeable documentation out there on the learning curve for li-ion batteries. See: https://www.solarchoice.net.au/wp-content/uploads/Solar-PV-lithium-ion-learning-curve.png https://www.solarchoice.net.au/wp-content/uploads/Solar-PV-l... Additionally, while nuclear is definitely a good option for delivering clean, always on electricity - the reason nuclear power plants aren't being built is because whoever is financing it / coming up with the money has to deal with not only a 5-10 year construction lead time but also a 50 year operating period. Given the cost reductions of renewables, how do you price in the risk that your plant will become completely uneconomic at some point in that time period?

jabl 8y ago
> Sorry, but you are incorrect. Technically, every manufactured good has a learning curve. Sure. But at some point physics limits how far you can go. We had a good run for many decades with micro-electronics because it's possible to cram a huge number of transistors on a tiny microchip. For solar cells and batteries we're not that far away from fundamental physical limits. So even though batteries look poised to replace gas for services like frequency control and some peak shaving, they're still orders of magnitude too expensive to allow us to completely run a grid on wind and solar, with no guarantee they will ever actually hit those price levels required.
- diafygi 8y ago
  What? Wood Mackenzie is predicting that renewables + batteries will be able to beat both peak and baseload by 2035. https://www.woodmac.com/press-releases/batteries-renewables-displacing-gas/ https://www.woodmac.com/press-releases/batteries-renewables-...
- clomond 8y ago
  Totally. And yes, no guarantee that battery storage will reach those price levels needed (i.e. if volume dries up). However, for the last 20 or so years there were chants about the end of Moore's Law. Still appears to be going strong, "somehow". My take on battery storage: several incremental developments coming down the pipeline on the anode and cathode side of li-ion batteries (improved chemistries, less cobalt, increased silicon %, new electrolyte mediums, etc). Combined with the "coming surge" of li-ion batteries and development for upcoming EV models with billions invested in new battery factories, it's hard to not see significant changes to the price within even a decades time.
  - sbov 8y ago
    Although Dennard scaling has been dead for over a decade, which is why we have consumer multicore CPUs.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - jabl 8y ago
    > However, for the last 20 or so years there were chants about the end of Moore's Law. Still appears to be going strong, "somehow". Well, Moore's law has already slowed down quite a lot, and in the not too far future we won't be able to miniaturize further since atoms are only so small (e.g. lattice spacing of Si is, from memory so might be wrong, 0.54 nm). Of course, there is hope for various non-Si based electronics; we'll see. > My take on battery storage: several incremental developments coming down the pipeline on the anode and cathode side of li-ion batteries (improved chemistries, less cobalt, increased silicon %, new electrolyte mediums, etc). Combined with the "coming surge" of li-ion batteries and development for upcoming EV models with billions invested in new battery factories, it's hard to not see significant changes to the price within even a decades time. To clarify, I didn't mean to say that we're at the end of the road for battery development today. Just that we cannot expect decades of exponential improvement like we have seen with microchips. I don't think an order of magnitude improvement in price/kWh is out of the question (in terms of kWh/kg it probably is, though?). But two orders of magnitude? Color me skeptical.
- mbostleman 8y ago
  Aside from storing energy from a large array in the desert, won't we still need batteries for transportation in order to get them off fossil fuels? That is, even if my house runs off nuclear and hence no batteries, wouldn't I still need one in my car, hence a lot more innovation is needed in batteries anyway (albeit drastically different types of batteries)?
  - jabl 8y ago
    Like I mentioned in an answer to a sibling comment of yours, I didn't mean to say that we're at the end of the road for battery development today. Just that we cannot expect decades of exponential improvement like we have seen with microchips. I don't think an order of magnitude improvement in price/kWh is out of the question (in terms of kWh/kg it probably is, though?). But two orders of magnitude? Color me skeptical. Wrt cars, I think batteries are not too far from being viable to replace most uses in cars, city buses etc. And that will be a massive, and welcome change, in our society. For long-range ships, planes etc. I don't see batteries as viable. My guess would be, for a future decarbonized society, synthetic hydrocarbons for planes and ships; some ships might use hydrogen or nuclear reactors.
java-man 8y ago
And it appears nobody factors in the cost of nuclear electricity the cost of associated with non-zero probability of a malfunction, or dealing with the long-term storage of nuclear waste. I do not understand how spending 2 billion on a plant and 50 billion in case of a major meltdown is better that putting 2 billion into covering the country in solar panels and batteries. The reason, as many commenters have said, is the vested interest of powerful players.
- distances 8y ago
  > I do not understand how spending 2 billion on a plant and 50 billion in case of a major meltdown is better that putting 2 billion into covering the country in solar panels and batteries. And 2 billion may be very optimistic even. The current price tag estimate for the nuclear plant being built in Finland is almost 10 billion euros, and over 10 years late. It'll likely be the second most expensive building in the world.
  - java-man 8y ago
    This is a number I remember from 1999. For Finland specifically, I understand it is difficult to rely on solar. May be in a 100 years, when we can run a superconducting cable through Russia to more Southern places. On the other hand, imagine a scale of disaster if Fukushima-style meltdown happens in Finland. Is it really worth it?
DennisP 8y ago
Simple. Build molten salt reactors like Terrestrial Energy's IMSR, which have low capital costs and relatively short lifetimes for the reactor cores. This is really hard in the U.S. because the NRC is very unfriendly to R&D, but T.E. has already gotten through the hardest part of Canada's licensing process and expects to have the first IMSR running by 2025 or so. Moltex and Elysium also have MSR projects in Canada. Nuclear naturally looks bad if you compare today's nuclear to the future of wind/solar/storage.
- olau 8y ago
  Permissioning is complicated because nuclear plants, even small ones, are complicated. There's a reason real nuclear plants are getting bigger and bigger. You're comparing vaporware to technologies with a proven track record.
  - DennisP 8y ago
    Well let me describe what I mean. A couple years ago I got to sit in a meeting between people from a dozen GenIV reactor startups and a former head of the NRC. The reactor people said their biggest problem was that the NRC required a near-complete design before they would even take a look. At that point they either said yes or no. If no then that was the end of it, you were out of business. If yes you still had only a paper reactor. Getting to that point required several hundred million dollars. That's a very difficult sell to investors. They said just a more phased process would help a lot. The NRC person was unsympathetic, said it wasn't the NRC's job to help develop or promote nuclear technology, and was uninterested in climate change. Canada has a more rational approach to R&D, while maintaining rigorous safety. That's why MSR companies are moving there, and why the first one, Terrestrial Energy, is making solid progress. (And as a side note, molten salt reactors are a lot simpler than light water reactors, because they have safety advantages inherent to the physics of the fuel and coolant.)
    - 7952 8y ago
      WOuldn't you expect those kind of costs? It seems fairly low compared to airline development costs, where a program may cost $25+ billion.
cal5k 8y ago
I was referring specifically to the rapid Moore's Law-type decreases we've seen in the panels themselves, but upon investigation it looks that the price of batteries is decreasing faster than I had realized. So I'll cede that point. Global output of LiPo batteries is still a pittance compared to what would be required to run the world on solar, but there are promising trends there. I should clarify that I'm not against solar as an important part of the energy mix, but it seems incredibly wasteful when we consider the sheer amount of material required in panels + storage to replicate the sustained output of a single fission plant, not all of which can be easily recycled. Solar hasn't historically been widespread enough for us to experience the issues associated with widespread end-of-lifing of components, but one look at the electronics industry and the waste it produces should tell us that it could be a massive problem we're kicking down the road. The sheer amount of material required to run the world on solar energy is staggering. Nuclear waste is comparatively a tiny and easily tractable problem by comparison - all the world's nuclear waste over a 50 year period could probably fit in a single underground site of sufficient volume. There has been plenty of work done on smaller, safer fission reactor designs over the last 50 years, but the regulatory burden to get new designs approved & operational is extremely limiting. There's no way to do it without the support of government as things currently stand, and it's a pity - nuclear could provide 50%+ of the global energy mix emission-free with a relatively small footprint compared to solar, and certainly with far less in the way of materials input between plant construction & fissionable material (the latter producing 24,000,000 kWh from a single KG of U-235).
- mikepurvis 8y ago
  You might be surprised how much nuclear waste is out there. A bunch of estimates on this thread put it in the "millions of cubic feet" range, which is considerably more than what could fit in a single underground site: https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-total-mass-and-volume-of-all-the-stored-nuclear-waste-in-the-world https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-total-mass-and-volume-of-a... Note also that this is mostly just considering high level waste (like, the actual spend fuel rods and reactor parts), and not all low- and intermediate-level waste, of which there is a lot more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste#Classification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste#Classificati...

jabl 8y ago

> Sorry, but you are incorrect. Technically, every manufactured good has a learning curve. Sure. But at some point physics limits how far you can go. We had a good run for many decades with micro-electronics because it's possible to cram a huge number of transistors on a tiny microchip. For solar cells and batteries we're not that far away from fundamental physical limits. So even though batteries look poised to replace gas for services like frequency control and some peak shaving, they're still orders of magnitude too expensive to allow us to completely run a grid on wind and solar, with no guarantee they will ever actually hit those price levels required.

diafygi 8y ago
What? Wood Mackenzie is predicting that renewables + batteries will be able to beat both peak and baseload by 2035. https://www.woodmac.com/press-releases/batteries-renewables-displacing-gas/ https://www.woodmac.com/press-releases/batteries-renewables-...
clomond 8y ago
Totally. And yes, no guarantee that battery storage will reach those price levels needed (i.e. if volume dries up). However, for the last 20 or so years there were chants about the end of Moore's Law. Still appears to be going strong, "somehow". My take on battery storage: several incremental developments coming down the pipeline on the anode and cathode side of li-ion batteries (improved chemistries, less cobalt, increased silicon %, new electrolyte mediums, etc). Combined with the "coming surge" of li-ion batteries and development for upcoming EV models with billions invested in new battery factories, it's hard to not see significant changes to the price within even a decades time.
- sbov 8y ago
  Although Dennard scaling has been dead for over a decade, which is why we have consumer multicore CPUs.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- jabl 8y ago
  > However, for the last 20 or so years there were chants about the end of Moore's Law. Still appears to be going strong, "somehow". Well, Moore's law has already slowed down quite a lot, and in the not too far future we won't be able to miniaturize further since atoms are only so small (e.g. lattice spacing of Si is, from memory so might be wrong, 0.54 nm). Of course, there is hope for various non-Si based electronics; we'll see. > My take on battery storage: several incremental developments coming down the pipeline on the anode and cathode side of li-ion batteries (improved chemistries, less cobalt, increased silicon %, new electrolyte mediums, etc). Combined with the "coming surge" of li-ion batteries and development for upcoming EV models with billions invested in new battery factories, it's hard to not see significant changes to the price within even a decades time. To clarify, I didn't mean to say that we're at the end of the road for battery development today. Just that we cannot expect decades of exponential improvement like we have seen with microchips. I don't think an order of magnitude improvement in price/kWh is out of the question (in terms of kWh/kg it probably is, though?). But two orders of magnitude? Color me skeptical.
mbostleman 8y ago
Aside from storing energy from a large array in the desert, won't we still need batteries for transportation in order to get them off fossil fuels? That is, even if my house runs off nuclear and hence no batteries, wouldn't I still need one in my car, hence a lot more innovation is needed in batteries anyway (albeit drastically different types of batteries)?
- jabl 8y ago
  Like I mentioned in an answer to a sibling comment of yours, I didn't mean to say that we're at the end of the road for battery development today. Just that we cannot expect decades of exponential improvement like we have seen with microchips. I don't think an order of magnitude improvement in price/kWh is out of the question (in terms of kWh/kg it probably is, though?). But two orders of magnitude? Color me skeptical. Wrt cars, I think batteries are not too far from being viable to replace most uses in cars, city buses etc. And that will be a massive, and welcome change, in our society. For long-range ships, planes etc. I don't see batteries as viable. My guess would be, for a future decarbonized society, synthetic hydrocarbons for planes and ships; some ships might use hydrogen or nuclear reactors.

java-man 8y ago

And it appears nobody factors in the cost of nuclear electricity the cost of associated with non-zero probability of a malfunction, or dealing with the long-term storage of nuclear waste. I do not understand how spending 2 billion on a plant and 50 billion in case of a major meltdown is better that putting 2 billion into covering the country in solar panels and batteries. The reason, as many commenters have said, is the vested interest of powerful players.

distances 8y ago
> I do not understand how spending 2 billion on a plant and 50 billion in case of a major meltdown is better that putting 2 billion into covering the country in solar panels and batteries. And 2 billion may be very optimistic even. The current price tag estimate for the nuclear plant being built in Finland is almost 10 billion euros, and over 10 years late. It'll likely be the second most expensive building in the world.
- java-man 8y ago
  This is a number I remember from 1999. For Finland specifically, I understand it is difficult to rely on solar. May be in a 100 years, when we can run a superconducting cable through Russia to more Southern places. On the other hand, imagine a scale of disaster if Fukushima-style meltdown happens in Finland. Is it really worth it?

DennisP 8y ago

Simple. Build molten salt reactors like Terrestrial Energy's IMSR, which have low capital costs and relatively short lifetimes for the reactor cores. This is really hard in the U.S. because the NRC is very unfriendly to R&D, but T.E. has already gotten through the hardest part of Canada's licensing process and expects to have the first IMSR running by 2025 or so. Moltex and Elysium also have MSR projects in Canada. Nuclear naturally looks bad if you compare today's nuclear to the future of wind/solar/storage.

olau 8y ago
Permissioning is complicated because nuclear plants, even small ones, are complicated. There's a reason real nuclear plants are getting bigger and bigger. You're comparing vaporware to technologies with a proven track record.
- DennisP 8y ago
  Well let me describe what I mean. A couple years ago I got to sit in a meeting between people from a dozen GenIV reactor startups and a former head of the NRC. The reactor people said their biggest problem was that the NRC required a near-complete design before they would even take a look. At that point they either said yes or no. If no then that was the end of it, you were out of business. If yes you still had only a paper reactor. Getting to that point required several hundred million dollars. That's a very difficult sell to investors. They said just a more phased process would help a lot. The NRC person was unsympathetic, said it wasn't the NRC's job to help develop or promote nuclear technology, and was uninterested in climate change. Canada has a more rational approach to R&D, while maintaining rigorous safety. That's why MSR companies are moving there, and why the first one, Terrestrial Energy, is making solid progress. (And as a side note, molten salt reactors are a lot simpler than light water reactors, because they have safety advantages inherent to the physics of the fuel and coolant.)
  - 7952 8y ago
    WOuldn't you expect those kind of costs? It seems fairly low compared to airline development costs, where a program may cost $25+ billion.

cal5k 8y ago

I was referring specifically to the rapid Moore's Law-type decreases we've seen in the panels themselves, but upon investigation it looks that the price of batteries is decreasing faster than I had realized. So I'll cede that point. Global output of LiPo batteries is still a pittance compared to what would be required to run the world on solar, but there are promising trends there. I should clarify that I'm not against solar as an important part of the energy mix, but it seems incredibly wasteful when we consider the sheer amount of material required in panels + storage to replicate the sustained output of a single fission plant, not all of which can be easily recycled. Solar hasn't historically been widespread enough for us to experience the issues associated with widespread end-of-lifing of components, but one look at the electronics industry and the waste it produces should tell us that it could be a massive problem we're kicking down the road. The sheer amount of material required to run the world on solar energy is staggering. Nuclear waste is comparatively a tiny and easily tractable problem by comparison - all the world's nuclear waste over a 50 year period could probably fit in a single underground site of sufficient volume. There has been plenty of work done on smaller, safer fission reactor designs over the last 50 years, but the regulatory burden to get new designs approved & operational is extremely limiting. There's no way to do it without the support of government as things currently stand, and it's a pity - nuclear could provide 50%+ of the global energy mix emission-free with a relatively small footprint compared to solar, and certainly with far less in the way of materials input between plant construction & fissionable material (the latter producing 24,000,000 kWh from a single KG of U-235).

mikepurvis 8y ago
You might be surprised how much nuclear waste is out there. A bunch of estimates on this thread put it in the "millions of cubic feet" range, which is considerably more than what could fit in a single underground site: https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-total-mass-and-volume-of-all-the-stored-nuclear-waste-in-the-world https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-total-mass-and-volume-of-a... Note also that this is mostly just considering high level waste (like, the actual spend fuel rods and reactor parts), and not all low- and intermediate-level waste, of which there is a lot more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste#Classification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste#Classificati...