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Renewable energy is cheaper than nuclear, or will be imminently. Proponents of nuclear tend to ignore the long-run costs associated with nuclear (eg. waste tra

Renewable energy is cheaper than nuclear, or will be imminently. Proponents of nuclear tend to ignore the long-run costs associated with nuclear (eg. waste transport and storage), and the potential for cost blowouts due to acute disasters like Fukushima (estimated cost to taxpayers: USD $100 Billion). The fact tax money is going towards Fukushima highlights another problem with nuclear power: the agency problem. The individuals and organizations that planned and built Fukushima are not directly shouldering the full cost of the problem it created. You can extrapolate from this to many other problems and risks associated with nuclear power, because the timeframe is long relative to the life of a human. If the average human lifespan was 200 years or more, maybe this would be less of an issue, but as it is now, profits now will inevitably trump responsibility tomorrow (and by tomorrow, I mean 30+ years from now). There's also the risk of weaponization, which increases as the number of plants increase, particularly if those plants are built in countries which currently do not possess much technical nous. It's not a technology that should be disseminated, because the risks are real, and catastrophic in their consequences. If this sounds paranoid, Warren Buffett had this to say about the threat of cyber, biological, nuclear, or chemical attack on in the US: "“What’s a small probability in a short period approaches certainty in the longer run. (If there is only one chance in thirty of an event occurring in a given year, the likelihood of it occurring at least once in a century is 96.6%.) The added bad news is that there will forever be people and organizations and perhaps even nations that would like to inflict maximum damage on our country. Their means of doing so have increased exponentially during my lifetime. “Innovation” has its dark side. There is no way for American corporations or their investors to shed this risk. If an event occurs in the U.S. that leads to mass devastation, the value of all equity investments will almost certainly be decimated. No one knows what “the day after” will look like. I think, however, that Einstein’s 1949 appraisal remains apt: “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”" [Source: 2016 annual letter to Berkshire shareholders]

BurningFrog 8y ago
> Renewable energy is cheaper than nuclear, or will be imminently. Renewable energy at that scale is still theoretical and hasn't shown its downsides yet. Nuclear has shown all its downsides, and they have been 95% corrected. It's a mature, known technology.
- eigenvector 8y ago
  In 2018, renewables provided 713 TWh of energy to the US electricity grid. Nuclear provided 807 TWh. They're already at the same scale, and renewables are rapidly increasing while nuclear has stagnated for decades. https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3 https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3
  - cheerlessbog 8y ago
    The largest part of that 713 TWh is hydro and presumably that's not growing fast - due to lack of remaining suitable sites, and ecological impact.
  - sanxiyn 8y ago
    Conflating hydro with wind and solar is bordering on deception.
- wiggler00m 8y ago
  Renewables already supply a similar amount of power to nuclear, its growth rate is higher, and its cost curve is improving faster. As for plant capacity, the largest power plant in the world is renewable (Hydropower):22.5 GW. Compare that with the largest nuclear plant, the Kashiwazaki Kariwa Nuclear Power Plant (currently closed due to safety concerns): 8GW. If you limit "renewables" to only solar and wind, there are already 1GW+ wind and solar PV projects operating, and more in the planning and construction phase. There's no theoretical obstacle to building 8GW solar PV projects, though it might be unnecessary, as they can be deployed in a modular fashion. There are several 500MW solar thermal projects operating and more planned. The downsides of nuclear are not comprehensively understood. The consequences of the Fukushima Daichi nuclear disaster of 2011 may be with us for decades or centuries. The interactions between radioactive material, the atmosphere, the ocean, the human body, and other organic matter, are complex.
  - realusername 8y ago
    > As for plant capacity, the largest power plant in the world is renewable (Hydropower):22.5 GW. Compare that with the largest nuclear plant, the Kashiwazaki Kariwa Nuclear Power Plant (currently closed due to safety concerns): 8GW. Hydro works well and is the best solution if our country has capacity for it, unfortunately, it's not available everywhere. > The downsides of nuclear are not comprehensively understood. The consequences of Fukushima may be with us for decades or centuries. The interactions between radioactive material, the atmosphere, the ocean, the human body, and other organic matter, are complex. The downsides are completely understood and the consequences of Fukushima (please specify in your message the nuclear plant) are well studied, the result is that there's not much impact.
eigenvector 8y ago
One of the biggest advantages renewable energy has over both nuclear and mega-dams is that the size of project required to achieve the commonly quoted LCOE (levelized cost of energy) is much, much smaller. 50 MW or perhaps less per site, versus 1000+ MW. This means: 1. no mega projects that attract similarly sized public opposition 2. 1-2 year construction timelines instead of 10+ 3. much, much less financial and regulatory risk 4. if an individual project goes off the rails because of bad management, it just gets cancelled instead of being pushed forward with endless public dollars because of sunk cost fallacies The private sector is well able to stomach the risk level of wind and solar and finance and build it on their own, whereas nuclear and mega hydro essentially require government financial backing, which again contributes to the agency problem. We know we can build 1,000s of MW of wind and solar per year in a safe and cost-effective way because we're already doing that. Every single nuclear or dam project in North America right now is a delayed, over-budget financial and project management boondoggle.
- danmaz74 8y ago
  Dams produce renewable energy.
  - DoreenMichele 8y ago
    There are a lot of problems with large scale dams. They interfere with fish migration. For some species, this means disrupting their reproductive cycle. They gradually accumulate sediment, so their reservoir slowly fills up and turns into land. This is one of the issues with the Aswan Dam, which is projected to have a much shorter lifespan than was initially projected due to high sediment accumulation. The Aswan met all of its goals, but it's a disaster. The sediment rapidly accumulating behind the dam used to provide free fertilizer for farmers. Use of commercial fertilizer skyrocketed. It's also the cause of a serious health crisis. Schistosomiasis cases have also skyrocketed. The annual floods used to keep snail populations in check. The snails are the vector for this gruesome parasitic infection.
  - pgeorgi 8y ago
    The problem is the "mega project" part of it, not the means of production. Unlike coal or nuclear, renewables are easily scaled down without creating a huge risk: for coal, you want to go large for efficiency reasons and to ensure that the right set of filters are installed and maintained. For nuclear, there were ideas of building a nuclear power plant in every basement, but given how the power plants we have look like military bases, that seems rather unfeasible. Once you go big, you have the issues mentioned elsewhere in the thread (sunk cost fallacy, NIMBY, ...) but also corruption and that these big sites become single points of failure. Dams are in the same space: NIMBY, once started you can't stop, large scale construction (which is rife with corruption). Create financially reasonable basement/rooftop level nuclear or coal systems that can be safely installed by any random electrician and operated by the home owner and the entire discussion may shift.
grecy 8y ago
It's also interesting to note the headline is "Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas emissions.." Even if the US was totally committed, and decided to build a brand new reactor right now, how long would it take? A decade? We can slap up renewables in a fraction of that time, and spend the next decade reaping the rewards, not sitting around waiting for the magical payoff of a reactor that will cost billions to build and operate, and doesn't do us a lick of good for an entire decade!
- adventured 8y ago
  > Even if the US was totally committed, and decided to build a brand new reactor right now, how long would it take? A decade? Totally committed? You sure? Ok. The US could bring at least two dozen new nuclear power plants online per year. It could do that with only modest impact on its massive economy. National security declaration (probably numerous). Bypass all environmental building concerns and impact reviews. Pull most of the US military out of Europe and all of it out of the Middle East. Mobilize at least 100,000 soldiers in support of the mission (ideally twice that number; clearing land, hauling materials, dealing with protestors, providing area security, restricting access including by drones). Whatever needs to be done, will be done. Redirect several agencies (DARPA, DOE, etc) to almost exclusively working on this mission for ten years. Have Congress declare a draft on the back of the national security declarations, pull relevant scientists and engineers out of the private economy via draft. Suspend all emigration. Federalize the control of all national guard troops, draft them all formally under the command of the US Military and remove them from their states to avoid potential state resistance (numerous states would attempt to resist this very strong-armed Federal plan). Nuclear plants would be reasonably distributed across the country, some states would attempt to resist any plants being built inside their borders, which is another reason you remove their national guard troops. This is serious, so we'll do what is necessary. It's life or death after all, right? If the Supreme Court attempts to block it, expand the size of the Supreme Court and stuff the bench until your votes win. Use eminent domain where necessary. Limit taking private land as much as reasonably possible; doing so just gives the resistance groups an issue to play up. Fortunately in this case the Federal Government owns a ridiculous amount of land (particularly in the western states). The US has an epic scale labor force, and millions of healthy people doing nothing that could be drafted into various basic positions in support of this large national project. Jobs! (there's that sound bite) Another plus: absolute secrecy would not be particularly paramount, unlike with the Manhattan Project. You wouldn't need a bunch of Oak Ridges. There isn't anything that special about a modern nuclear power plant, and the US wouldn't be using any radically new technology in these plants anyway. Initially getting up to speed would take several years (standardizing and getting new workers enough experience, etc), after which you could get to a rate of bringing a new plant or two online in a given month. Fund it with a trivial Federal Reserve Nuclear QE program. $20-$30 billion per month in 'printing.' The dollar wouldn't even notice, and it'd keep the budget from getting further stretched (which would keep the general population more calm than if you spiked their taxes or took from their social programs). Task the major banks - all of which are realistically under direct supervisory control of the Federal Reserve and Treasury these days - with helping to keep the US financial system stable (there might initially be some panic), including where interest rates are concerned. The US has the most powerful banking and financial system by a considerable margin, it would be told to accomodate and assist, or else (look what they did for funding the shale build-out, a spigot of hundreds of billions of dollars; private loans involved in the program would largely be back-stopped by the Fed; thousands of companies in the private economy would need loans to ramp up early on; the banks making some money on this would remove a potential resistance point). Put the talking heads on TV to work pushing the agenda favorably, to calm the population; spin how positive this will be for the economy, jobs jobs jobs (just keep repeating that). Do the exact same thing for the business & financial media to soothe Wall Street, talk up how good it'll be for corporate profits, manufacturing, construction, et al. Throw billions of printed magic dollars at the military industrial complex and their partners, to remove (bribe) a potential adversary to the plan. There's a line for everyone: jobs, green, do it for the children, manufacturing & blue collar, energy independence, tell them how great it will make America, etc. By necessity we'd build and improve a lot of grid along the way as well. There would be several hundred billion dollars spent on that over more than a decade. 15-20 total years for the program (a dozen or so prime building years in there, during which most of the plants would come online). Once the early years of hard work of ramping up, standardizing and getting it all rolling was done, you could relax some of the initial political policies that it took to get underway. The program would also include a considerable investment into the aging 60 plant fleet the US has now. In the end, this would wipe out most of the US fossil fuel economy. It would cost several trillion 2019 dollars, spread out over two decades. The ~20 year program span would give us time to gradually retrain labor away from the fossil fuel economy. As the plants are brought online, you'd start by eliminating existing coal plants and coal jobs first (there aren't actually that many workers in coal these days anyway), with the displaced workers getting jobs and job training to participate in the new nuclear power economy. How committed do you want to get? How dire is the situation?
BluSyn 8y ago
Somebody gets it! It makes absolutely no sense to start building nuclear now. Even if you could guarantee 10 year build time at a fixed cost today (which you can't), by the time it is operational solar+storage will be even more economical than it is today. The cost curves are simply too favorable for any private market to favor nuclear over solar currently. Everyone in this thread keeps talking about the technology, but it's purely about the economics. Solar+storage at grid-scale will be cheaper than basically all other forms of power generation within 5 years based on current cost curves. Within 10 years the cost of new solar+battery will be cheaper than the operational cost of nuclear, not even accounting for the billions in construction costs over decades. If the billions spent on nuclear plants now was instantly diverted to solar, we'd have way more clean energy in the grid on a way shorter timeline. That's the reality today. It's time to stop arguing and stop wasting money. Nuclear is dead.
- macspoofing 8y ago
  >It makes absolutely no sense to start building nuclear now. Imagine if the developed world invested in nuclear to the extent that France did in the 60s and 70s - how many trillions of tons of CO2 would NOT have been emitted into the atmosphere? You can talk about Republican denialism, but it is anti-nuke lobby that will be held responsible for climate change. >by the time it is operational solar+storage will be even more economical than it is today. Will it? Will the sun shine at night? when it's cloudy? No? Then it doesn't matter how cheap solar and wind are. You're not going to use either as a cornerstone of modern energy generation. So if not solar and wind, then what else is left? Germany knows - they are signing multi-decade deals for natural gas and coal-based power (from Russia and neighbors), as they are shutting down their nuclear plants.
  - rocqua 8y ago
    "magine if the developed world invested in nuclear to the extent that France did in the 60s and 70s - how many trillions of tons of CO2 would NOT have been emitted into the atmosphere? " I think OPs point is essentially that, even if nuclear would have helped in the 70s, it is now too late. As for the intermittent issues of power. I think there's a lot to gain from long distance transportation combined with reliable output like hydro, existing nuclear, and perhaps later tidal.
zone411 8y ago
The most important question is if wind and solar capacity can come online sooner than nuclear in order to slow down stop global warming, which is estimated to cause 250,000 deaths/year worldwide 2030-2050 by the WHO. Solar and wind were only 9.2% of the U.S. total in 2018 and the US has very good conditions for them. Solar energy will have a harder time replacing base load plants. It might work out fine in the US but how about other countries? I think both renewables and nuclear will be needed. Carbon caputre technology would need to be ~5 times cheaper than currently to be viable.
- ftr45 8y ago
  maybe we can use carbon capture and nuclear to produce carbon neutral fuel
macspoofing 8y ago
>Renewable energy is cheaper than nuclear, or will be imminently. Solar and wind are plenty cheap. That's not their problem. The problem, as the article stated, is that "they are not available around the clock, rain or shine, and batteries that could power entire cities for days or weeks show no sign of materializing any time soon." So now what do you do?
- DoreenMichele 8y ago
  Passive solar design as a requirement for new construction would help reduce how much energy buildings require. It also makes them more comfortable, not less. Design cities for pedestrians, bicycles and public transit. This will help reduce heat island effect, thereby reducing the need for AC. I slept in a tent for nearly six years. I plugged in at the library during the day. I got by on battery power in the evening until I fell asleep. I'm currently in a hundred year old building with radiant heat and no AC. It has good design that helps keep the building comfortable without a lot of modern amenities we think are required. I spend a lot of time online. I don't own a TV. You can have a very modern life on a lot less electricity than many people use. It's really not a given that we must use high levels of electricity to maintain a high quality of life. The first thing we should do is question such assumptions. The second is start actively challenging them. This is a problem rooted in culture more than technology.
  - rocqua 8y ago
    Even if the culture changes for that were to happen, cities roads anb buildings already exist. You can't replace all buildings and roads in 10 years.
  - kortilla 8y ago
    Doesn’t work unless you live in a place that has no weather (e.g. the Bay Area). People in Minneapolis aren’t going to turn off their heater at night when it’s 30 below 0 because the wind stopped and their battery went dead.
    - DoreenMichele 8y ago
kortilla 8y ago
Proponents of renewables fail to take into account the need for baseload. It’s nowhere near being cheaper when you take into account the over provisioning and storage costs required to actually compete with the reliability of nuclear (and coal/gas).
- imtringued 8y ago
  The planet doesn't care about intermittency. It only cares about total emissions.
  - kortilla 8y ago
    But the people do and they are in charge of what we adopt. Choosing renewables and poo-pooing nuclear is choosing fossil fuels for base load. It’s that simple.
athrowaway3z 8y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1EB1zsxW0k&t=519s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1EB1zsxW0k&t=519s ( 3 min to make his point )

BurningFrog 8y ago

> Renewable energy is cheaper than nuclear, or will be imminently. Renewable energy at that scale is still theoretical and hasn't shown its downsides yet. Nuclear has shown all its downsides, and they have been 95% corrected. It's a mature, known technology.

eigenvector 8y ago
In 2018, renewables provided 713 TWh of energy to the US electricity grid. Nuclear provided 807 TWh. They're already at the same scale, and renewables are rapidly increasing while nuclear has stagnated for decades. https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3 https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3
- cheerlessbog 8y ago
  The largest part of that 713 TWh is hydro and presumably that's not growing fast - due to lack of remaining suitable sites, and ecological impact.
- sanxiyn 8y ago
  Conflating hydro with wind and solar is bordering on deception.
wiggler00m 8y ago
Renewables already supply a similar amount of power to nuclear, its growth rate is higher, and its cost curve is improving faster. As for plant capacity, the largest power plant in the world is renewable (Hydropower):22.5 GW. Compare that with the largest nuclear plant, the Kashiwazaki Kariwa Nuclear Power Plant (currently closed due to safety concerns): 8GW. If you limit "renewables" to only solar and wind, there are already 1GW+ wind and solar PV projects operating, and more in the planning and construction phase. There's no theoretical obstacle to building 8GW solar PV projects, though it might be unnecessary, as they can be deployed in a modular fashion. There are several 500MW solar thermal projects operating and more planned. The downsides of nuclear are not comprehensively understood. The consequences of the Fukushima Daichi nuclear disaster of 2011 may be with us for decades or centuries. The interactions between radioactive material, the atmosphere, the ocean, the human body, and other organic matter, are complex.
- realusername 8y ago
  > As for plant capacity, the largest power plant in the world is renewable (Hydropower):22.5 GW. Compare that with the largest nuclear plant, the Kashiwazaki Kariwa Nuclear Power Plant (currently closed due to safety concerns): 8GW. Hydro works well and is the best solution if our country has capacity for it, unfortunately, it's not available everywhere. > The downsides of nuclear are not comprehensively understood. The consequences of Fukushima may be with us for decades or centuries. The interactions between radioactive material, the atmosphere, the ocean, the human body, and other organic matter, are complex. The downsides are completely understood and the consequences of Fukushima (please specify in your message the nuclear plant) are well studied, the result is that there's not much impact.

eigenvector 8y ago

One of the biggest advantages renewable energy has over both nuclear and mega-dams is that the size of project required to achieve the commonly quoted LCOE (levelized cost of energy) is much, much smaller. 50 MW or perhaps less per site, versus 1000+ MW. This means: 1. no mega projects that attract similarly sized public opposition 2. 1-2 year construction timelines instead of 10+ 3. much, much less financial and regulatory risk 4. if an individual project goes off the rails because of bad management, it just gets cancelled instead of being pushed forward with endless public dollars because of sunk cost fallacies The private sector is well able to stomach the risk level of wind and solar and finance and build it on their own, whereas nuclear and mega hydro essentially require government financial backing, which again contributes to the agency problem. We know we can build 1,000s of MW of wind and solar per year in a safe and cost-effective way because we're already doing that. Every single nuclear or dam project in North America right now is a delayed, over-budget financial and project management boondoggle.

danmaz74 8y ago
Dams produce renewable energy.
- DoreenMichele 8y ago
  There are a lot of problems with large scale dams. They interfere with fish migration. For some species, this means disrupting their reproductive cycle. They gradually accumulate sediment, so their reservoir slowly fills up and turns into land. This is one of the issues with the Aswan Dam, which is projected to have a much shorter lifespan than was initially projected due to high sediment accumulation. The Aswan met all of its goals, but it's a disaster. The sediment rapidly accumulating behind the dam used to provide free fertilizer for farmers. Use of commercial fertilizer skyrocketed. It's also the cause of a serious health crisis. Schistosomiasis cases have also skyrocketed. The annual floods used to keep snail populations in check. The snails are the vector for this gruesome parasitic infection.
- pgeorgi 8y ago
  The problem is the "mega project" part of it, not the means of production. Unlike coal or nuclear, renewables are easily scaled down without creating a huge risk: for coal, you want to go large for efficiency reasons and to ensure that the right set of filters are installed and maintained. For nuclear, there were ideas of building a nuclear power plant in every basement, but given how the power plants we have look like military bases, that seems rather unfeasible. Once you go big, you have the issues mentioned elsewhere in the thread (sunk cost fallacy, NIMBY, ...) but also corruption and that these big sites become single points of failure. Dams are in the same space: NIMBY, once started you can't stop, large scale construction (which is rife with corruption). Create financially reasonable basement/rooftop level nuclear or coal systems that can be safely installed by any random electrician and operated by the home owner and the entire discussion may shift.

grecy 8y ago

It's also interesting to note the headline is "Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas emissions.." Even if the US was totally committed, and decided to build a brand new reactor right now, how long would it take? A decade? We can slap up renewables in a fraction of that time, and spend the next decade reaping the rewards, not sitting around waiting for the magical payoff of a reactor that will cost billions to build and operate, and doesn't do us a lick of good for an entire decade!

adventured 8y ago
> Even if the US was totally committed, and decided to build a brand new reactor right now, how long would it take? A decade? Totally committed? You sure? Ok. The US could bring at least two dozen new nuclear power plants online per year. It could do that with only modest impact on its massive economy. National security declaration (probably numerous). Bypass all environmental building concerns and impact reviews. Pull most of the US military out of Europe and all of it out of the Middle East. Mobilize at least 100,000 soldiers in support of the mission (ideally twice that number; clearing land, hauling materials, dealing with protestors, providing area security, restricting access including by drones). Whatever needs to be done, will be done. Redirect several agencies (DARPA, DOE, etc) to almost exclusively working on this mission for ten years. Have Congress declare a draft on the back of the national security declarations, pull relevant scientists and engineers out of the private economy via draft. Suspend all emigration. Federalize the control of all national guard troops, draft them all formally under the command of the US Military and remove them from their states to avoid potential state resistance (numerous states would attempt to resist this very strong-armed Federal plan). Nuclear plants would be reasonably distributed across the country, some states would attempt to resist any plants being built inside their borders, which is another reason you remove their national guard troops. This is serious, so we'll do what is necessary. It's life or death after all, right? If the Supreme Court attempts to block it, expand the size of the Supreme Court and stuff the bench until your votes win. Use eminent domain where necessary. Limit taking private land as much as reasonably possible; doing so just gives the resistance groups an issue to play up. Fortunately in this case the Federal Government owns a ridiculous amount of land (particularly in the western states). The US has an epic scale labor force, and millions of healthy people doing nothing that could be drafted into various basic positions in support of this large national project. Jobs! (there's that sound bite) Another plus: absolute secrecy would not be particularly paramount, unlike with the Manhattan Project. You wouldn't need a bunch of Oak Ridges. There isn't anything that special about a modern nuclear power plant, and the US wouldn't be using any radically new technology in these plants anyway. Initially getting up to speed would take several years (standardizing and getting new workers enough experience, etc), after which you could get to a rate of bringing a new plant or two online in a given month. Fund it with a trivial Federal Reserve Nuclear QE program. $20-$30 billion per month in 'printing.' The dollar wouldn't even notice, and it'd keep the budget from getting further stretched (which would keep the general population more calm than if you spiked their taxes or took from their social programs). Task the major banks - all of which are realistically under direct supervisory control of the Federal Reserve and Treasury these days - with helping to keep the US financial system stable (there might initially be some panic), including where interest rates are concerned. The US has the most powerful banking and financial system by a considerable margin, it would be told to accomodate and assist, or else (look what they did for funding the shale build-out, a spigot of hundreds of billions of dollars; private loans involved in the program would largely be back-stopped by the Fed; thousands of companies in the private economy would need loans to ramp up early on; the banks making some money on this would remove a potential resistance point). Put the talking heads on TV to work pushing the agenda favorably, to calm the population; spin how positive this will be for the economy, jobs jobs jobs (just keep repeating that). Do the exact same thing for the business & financial media to soothe Wall Street, talk up how good it'll be for corporate profits, manufacturing, construction, et al. Throw billions of printed magic dollars at the military industrial complex and their partners, to remove (bribe) a potential adversary to the plan. There's a line for everyone: jobs, green, do it for the children, manufacturing & blue collar, energy independence, tell them how great it will make America, etc. By necessity we'd build and improve a lot of grid along the way as well. There would be several hundred billion dollars spent on that over more than a decade. 15-20 total years for the program (a dozen or so prime building years in there, during which most of the plants would come online). Once the early years of hard work of ramping up, standardizing and getting it all rolling was done, you could relax some of the initial political policies that it took to get underway. The program would also include a considerable investment into the aging 60 plant fleet the US has now. In the end, this would wipe out most of the US fossil fuel economy. It would cost several trillion 2019 dollars, spread out over two decades. The ~20 year program span would give us time to gradually retrain labor away from the fossil fuel economy. As the plants are brought online, you'd start by eliminating existing coal plants and coal jobs first (there aren't actually that many workers in coal these days anyway), with the displaced workers getting jobs and job training to participate in the new nuclear power economy. How committed do you want to get? How dire is the situation?

BluSyn 8y ago

Somebody gets it! It makes absolutely no sense to start building nuclear now. Even if you could guarantee 10 year build time at a fixed cost today (which you can't), by the time it is operational solar+storage will be even more economical than it is today. The cost curves are simply too favorable for any private market to favor nuclear over solar currently. Everyone in this thread keeps talking about the technology, but it's purely about the economics. Solar+storage at grid-scale will be cheaper than basically all other forms of power generation within 5 years based on current cost curves. Within 10 years the cost of new solar+battery will be cheaper than the operational cost of nuclear, not even accounting for the billions in construction costs over decades. If the billions spent on nuclear plants now was instantly diverted to solar, we'd have way more clean energy in the grid on a way shorter timeline. That's the reality today. It's time to stop arguing and stop wasting money. Nuclear is dead.

macspoofing 8y ago
>It makes absolutely no sense to start building nuclear now. Imagine if the developed world invested in nuclear to the extent that France did in the 60s and 70s - how many trillions of tons of CO2 would NOT have been emitted into the atmosphere? You can talk about Republican denialism, but it is anti-nuke lobby that will be held responsible for climate change. >by the time it is operational solar+storage will be even more economical than it is today. Will it? Will the sun shine at night? when it's cloudy? No? Then it doesn't matter how cheap solar and wind are. You're not going to use either as a cornerstone of modern energy generation. So if not solar and wind, then what else is left? Germany knows - they are signing multi-decade deals for natural gas and coal-based power (from Russia and neighbors), as they are shutting down their nuclear plants.
- rocqua 8y ago
  "magine if the developed world invested in nuclear to the extent that France did in the 60s and 70s - how many trillions of tons of CO2 would NOT have been emitted into the atmosphere? " I think OPs point is essentially that, even if nuclear would have helped in the 70s, it is now too late. As for the intermittent issues of power. I think there's a lot to gain from long distance transportation combined with reliable output like hydro, existing nuclear, and perhaps later tidal.

zone411 8y ago

The most important question is if wind and solar capacity can come online sooner than nuclear in order to slow down stop global warming, which is estimated to cause 250,000 deaths/year worldwide 2030-2050 by the WHO. Solar and wind were only 9.2% of the U.S. total in 2018 and the US has very good conditions for them. Solar energy will have a harder time replacing base load plants. It might work out fine in the US but how about other countries? I think both renewables and nuclear will be needed. Carbon caputre technology would need to be ~5 times cheaper than currently to be viable.

ftr45 8y ago
maybe we can use carbon capture and nuclear to produce carbon neutral fuel

macspoofing 8y ago

>Renewable energy is cheaper than nuclear, or will be imminently. Solar and wind are plenty cheap. That's not their problem. The problem, as the article stated, is that "they are not available around the clock, rain or shine, and batteries that could power entire cities for days or weeks show no sign of materializing any time soon." So now what do you do?

DoreenMichele 8y ago
Passive solar design as a requirement for new construction would help reduce how much energy buildings require. It also makes them more comfortable, not less. Design cities for pedestrians, bicycles and public transit. This will help reduce heat island effect, thereby reducing the need for AC. I slept in a tent for nearly six years. I plugged in at the library during the day. I got by on battery power in the evening until I fell asleep. I'm currently in a hundred year old building with radiant heat and no AC. It has good design that helps keep the building comfortable without a lot of modern amenities we think are required. I spend a lot of time online. I don't own a TV. You can have a very modern life on a lot less electricity than many people use. It's really not a given that we must use high levels of electricity to maintain a high quality of life. The first thing we should do is question such assumptions. The second is start actively challenging them. This is a problem rooted in culture more than technology.
- rocqua 8y ago
  Even if the culture changes for that were to happen, cities roads anb buildings already exist. You can't replace all buildings and roads in 10 years.
- kortilla 8y ago
  Doesn’t work unless you live in a place that has no weather (e.g. the Bay Area). People in Minneapolis aren’t going to turn off their heater at night when it’s 30 below 0 because the wind stopped and their battery went dead.
  - DoreenMichele 8y ago

kortilla 8y ago

Proponents of renewables fail to take into account the need for baseload. It’s nowhere near being cheaper when you take into account the over provisioning and storage costs required to actually compete with the reliability of nuclear (and coal/gas).

imtringued 8y ago
The planet doesn't care about intermittency. It only cares about total emissions.
- kortilla 8y ago
  But the people do and they are in charge of what we adopt. Choosing renewables and poo-pooing nuclear is choosing fossil fuels for base load. It’s that simple.

athrowaway3z 8y ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1EB1zsxW0k&t=519s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1EB1zsxW0k&t=519s ( 3 min to make his point )