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In fairness, nuclear is also just incredibly expensive. Witness Vogtie. Take away all taxes and regulations, then compare the price of, say, Iowa, building a nu

In fairness, nuclear is also just incredibly expensive. Witness Vogtie. Take away all taxes and regulations, then compare the price of, say, Iowa, building a nuclear plant instead of just slapping up windmills wherever they want. (Remember, we're assuming zero regulations. So while slapping up windmills would normally be incredibly illegal, we're able to do that under the conditions that our thought experiment postulates.) There's just no way to make nuclear compete. Which is why when you drive through Iowa, all you see are windmills everywhere. It's cheap. Much cheaper than nuclear. If people want nuclear, the government has to provide the lion's share of the assistance to make it happen. Even then, there are no guarantees you'll be in love with what that looks like. At Vogtie for instance, the government has taken the unprecedented step of prohibiting future users of Vogtie power from ever switching to cheaper wind or coal alternatives. And that's on top of the government agreeing to pay over half of the initial construction costs. So you basically have government paying the lion's share of the tab, and mandating that everyone use it, and it's still over budget, late, and more expensive than wind and coal alternatives. Too many analyses of nuclear power ignore the financial realities. Iowans choose wind, because it's cheaper than nuclear, solar, and coal. So they slap up windmills, and they have the old coal plants to fill in the gaps. Now Iowa was not trying to put its nuclear plants out of business, but as a consumer if you can choose an electricity bill at 2 cents per kWh, wouldn't you? Or would you continue to pay the minimum 8x 2 cents per kWh for nuclear? That's why nuclear is on the ropes in the US, if you give people a choice, they tend to vote with their wallets.

rayiner 8y ago
Your first paragraph misses the mark, because, unlike a nuclear plant, a windmill or solar plant isn't a standalone power source. To have reliable baseload power with renewables, you need massive battery storage. Right now, you don't factor in the (very high) cost of building battery storage into the cost of wind power because you still have all those coal, gas, and nuclear plants providing baseload power. But the cost of all that baseload capacity that's increasingly sitting around not being used (but has to be there to ensure grid stability) can't be ignored.
- bilbo0s 8y ago
  >because you still have all those coal, gas, and nuclear plants providing baseload power... That's right. So why would you not decommission all of that incredibly expensive nuclear, and draw down your use of the coal plants to fill in the gaps? That's how most dispatch stacks work. It's just common sense. Consumers want to save money. Utilities want to make enough money. There's just no way you use nuclear in any scenario you can come up with, unless the government is paying for it. Then you don't care, because you're not paying the costs.
  - rayiner 8y ago
    Coal can't dispatch fast enough, and most coal plants are at the end of their lifecycle and need to be replaced. So you have to build new baseload capacity, usually gas. (And really, you still need a bunch of batteries to handle short-term fluctuations in renewables output.) The problem, then, is that you have all new coal or gas plants, which are expensive capital assets, that you're basically using for standby power. (And they incur operating and maintenance costs even when not running.) You can't say that electricity from renewables is cheap without accounting for the cost of that standby capacity renewables require. A nuclear plant, by contrast, doesn't need a bunch of coal or gas plants sitting around on standby. You can shut down that old coal plant, stop paying the workers, reuse the land, etc.
    - epistasis 8y ago
      Baseload is not the necessity, the necessity is to match the power to the load. Up until now, baseload has been a convenient way to do that matching because baseload was usually the cheapest source of power. Once baseload is no longer the cheapest source, it's time to re-evaluate that model. Also, when we have a global communication grid and lots of flexibility in our load schedule, it's also fine to re-evaluate how we are doing pricing for electricity. That time is now. Utilities are highly regulated, and both utility and regulator are slow to adapt to the quickly changing technology that they're now confronting, after nearly a century of glacial technology change. But they will adapt. As we must not only change our economic mode but also become carbon neutral. Those with huge capital investments may resist, but as you say, we can repurpose that old coal plant and reuse its connections to the grid, which are valuable and expensive to recreate. In Moss Landing, California, gas turbines are getting replaced by over a GWh of lithium ion battery. The change will happen as soon as utilities start bringing recent pricing into their planning process.
nickelcitymario 8y ago
Don't disagree with anything you said here, however: > and they have the old coal plants to fill in the gaps ...this is the problem with solar and most renewables. They have gaps. The question, it seems to me, is are we in a fight for the survival of our species, or not? If we are, then we should pull all the stops. I want my grandchildren and their grandchildren to have a liveable planet. I'll pay the bloody premium to make that happen.
- bilbo0s 8y ago
  >If we are, then we should pull all the stops... But is coal not one of the stops? I guess you should help me understand. Why should we use nuclear instead of coal to fill the gaps? They both pollute. With wind providing the lion's share of the energy, the use of coal is drawn down considerably in any case. And coal is far less expensive than nuclear, even with the onerous regulations that have been slapped on it recently. So how are you going to sell nuclear to your consumers when your competitor may be selling a wind/coal package? And as to the question of the long term, clearly that is using pumped hydro storage and other such technologies along with more efficient wind turbines. Both lowering the duration of gaps, and providing more power during gaps. So your nuclear or coal plant is, even in the optimistic case, transitional. Who's gonna put up money like that for a transitional technology without some kind of draconian government guarantees?
  - ekimekim 8y ago
    > They both pollute. In this "pulling out all the stops" scenario to stop climate change, only one of them pollute in ways that matter. Unless you mean the CO2 emissions resulting from construction, etc. I admittedly don't know the numbers there, and I'd imagine a nuclear plant uses a LOT of concrete - but it's also very long lived, which means it should amortize and come out ahead of coal which produces CO2 in operation even if it produces more upfront.
    - nickelcitymario 8y ago
      ^this. This was going to be my response. All energy production creates pollution in construction. Nuclear is the only source I know of that can produce consistent and reliable energy without creating any emissions from operation.
jatsign 8y ago
Does anyone know if Saudi Arabia has explored solar power. Seems like they have a lot of unused land that gets a lot of sunlight...
- manicdee 8y ago
  There has been significant noise in the space, with a SoftBank project set up to install 200GW of solar projects. That project was cancelled relatively quickly though. I am not up to date with current projects.
nickik 8y ago
> In fairness, nuclear is also just incredibly expensive. This is only now wit the current regulation and legal technology. There is no fundamental reason, that nuclear power production should be so expensive. If we go from first principle, nuclear power requires the least amount of land, the least amount of resources and not a lot of people to run. It runs for very long time. Nuclear plants were massively out-competing coal in the 80s until there was a huge regulatory changes that essentially killed the industry. Since then no new reactor technology has been license, pretty much all research has been killed, access to nuclear materials is basically impossible, almost no new nuclear plants were built. And just as with anything else, higher production makes things efficient. If you build one nuclear plant ever 10 years its gone be very expensive. This has been proven for nuclear plants over and over, any place that attempted to build many found that you could actually build them pretty fast and cheap. Also, there is a massive step up in our ability to improve nuclear power. Wind and solar will not get all that much better. With nuclear we are operating on 2% efficiency and we are having to build massive building and civil engineering to get it done. Even if we have know for 40-50 years that we could massively improve this technology, it just wasn't done. For example, having nuclear power plants that can load follow very effectively. > That's why nuclear is on the ropes in the US, if you give people a choice, they tend to vote with their wallets. If its all about cost then nothing competes with gas most of the time. If you take into account end-to-end cost of solar its quite a bit more expensive then people like to quote. In reality with intensive and tax credits, solar and wind would not be so successful outside of a few perfectly located places. And the cost goes up the closer you want to go to 100%. The approach the government likes of slowly getting utilities to up their % of green energy will run into more and more problems the longer it goes on.
- joecool1029 8y ago
  >Nuclear plants were massively out-competing coal in the 80s until there was a huge regulatory changes that essentially killed the industry. Since then no new reactor technology has been license, pretty much all research has been killed, access to nuclear materials is basically impossible, almost no new nuclear plants were built. Are you talking about the US or South Korea? China seems to be investing pretty hard into nuclear: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_China

rayiner 8y ago

Your first paragraph misses the mark, because, unlike a nuclear plant, a windmill or solar plant isn't a standalone power source. To have reliable baseload power with renewables, you need massive battery storage. Right now, you don't factor in the (very high) cost of building battery storage into the cost of wind power because you still have all those coal, gas, and nuclear plants providing baseload power. But the cost of all that baseload capacity that's increasingly sitting around not being used (but has to be there to ensure grid stability) can't be ignored.

bilbo0s 8y ago
>because you still have all those coal, gas, and nuclear plants providing baseload power... That's right. So why would you not decommission all of that incredibly expensive nuclear, and draw down your use of the coal plants to fill in the gaps? That's how most dispatch stacks work. It's just common sense. Consumers want to save money. Utilities want to make enough money. There's just no way you use nuclear in any scenario you can come up with, unless the government is paying for it. Then you don't care, because you're not paying the costs.
- rayiner 8y ago
  Coal can't dispatch fast enough, and most coal plants are at the end of their lifecycle and need to be replaced. So you have to build new baseload capacity, usually gas. (And really, you still need a bunch of batteries to handle short-term fluctuations in renewables output.) The problem, then, is that you have all new coal or gas plants, which are expensive capital assets, that you're basically using for standby power. (And they incur operating and maintenance costs even when not running.) You can't say that electricity from renewables is cheap without accounting for the cost of that standby capacity renewables require. A nuclear plant, by contrast, doesn't need a bunch of coal or gas plants sitting around on standby. You can shut down that old coal plant, stop paying the workers, reuse the land, etc.
  - epistasis 8y ago
    Baseload is not the necessity, the necessity is to match the power to the load. Up until now, baseload has been a convenient way to do that matching because baseload was usually the cheapest source of power. Once baseload is no longer the cheapest source, it's time to re-evaluate that model. Also, when we have a global communication grid and lots of flexibility in our load schedule, it's also fine to re-evaluate how we are doing pricing for electricity. That time is now. Utilities are highly regulated, and both utility and regulator are slow to adapt to the quickly changing technology that they're now confronting, after nearly a century of glacial technology change. But they will adapt. As we must not only change our economic mode but also become carbon neutral. Those with huge capital investments may resist, but as you say, we can repurpose that old coal plant and reuse its connections to the grid, which are valuable and expensive to recreate. In Moss Landing, California, gas turbines are getting replaced by over a GWh of lithium ion battery. The change will happen as soon as utilities start bringing recent pricing into their planning process.

nickelcitymario 8y ago

Don't disagree with anything you said here, however: > and they have the old coal plants to fill in the gaps ...this is the problem with solar and most renewables. They have gaps. The question, it seems to me, is are we in a fight for the survival of our species, or not? If we are, then we should pull all the stops. I want my grandchildren and their grandchildren to have a liveable planet. I'll pay the bloody premium to make that happen.

bilbo0s 8y ago
>If we are, then we should pull all the stops... But is coal not one of the stops? I guess you should help me understand. Why should we use nuclear instead of coal to fill the gaps? They both pollute. With wind providing the lion's share of the energy, the use of coal is drawn down considerably in any case. And coal is far less expensive than nuclear, even with the onerous regulations that have been slapped on it recently. So how are you going to sell nuclear to your consumers when your competitor may be selling a wind/coal package? And as to the question of the long term, clearly that is using pumped hydro storage and other such technologies along with more efficient wind turbines. Both lowering the duration of gaps, and providing more power during gaps. So your nuclear or coal plant is, even in the optimistic case, transitional. Who's gonna put up money like that for a transitional technology without some kind of draconian government guarantees?
- ekimekim 8y ago
  > They both pollute. In this "pulling out all the stops" scenario to stop climate change, only one of them pollute in ways that matter. Unless you mean the CO2 emissions resulting from construction, etc. I admittedly don't know the numbers there, and I'd imagine a nuclear plant uses a LOT of concrete - but it's also very long lived, which means it should amortize and come out ahead of coal which produces CO2 in operation even if it produces more upfront.
  - nickelcitymario 8y ago
    ^this. This was going to be my response. All energy production creates pollution in construction. Nuclear is the only source I know of that can produce consistent and reliable energy without creating any emissions from operation.

jatsign 8y ago

Does anyone know if Saudi Arabia has explored solar power. Seems like they have a lot of unused land that gets a lot of sunlight...

manicdee 8y ago
There has been significant noise in the space, with a SoftBank project set up to install 200GW of solar projects. That project was cancelled relatively quickly though. I am not up to date with current projects.

nickik 8y ago

> In fairness, nuclear is also just incredibly expensive. This is only now wit the current regulation and legal technology. There is no fundamental reason, that nuclear power production should be so expensive. If we go from first principle, nuclear power requires the least amount of land, the least amount of resources and not a lot of people to run. It runs for very long time. Nuclear plants were massively out-competing coal in the 80s until there was a huge regulatory changes that essentially killed the industry. Since then no new reactor technology has been license, pretty much all research has been killed, access to nuclear materials is basically impossible, almost no new nuclear plants were built. And just as with anything else, higher production makes things efficient. If you build one nuclear plant ever 10 years its gone be very expensive. This has been proven for nuclear plants over and over, any place that attempted to build many found that you could actually build them pretty fast and cheap. Also, there is a massive step up in our ability to improve nuclear power. Wind and solar will not get all that much better. With nuclear we are operating on 2% efficiency and we are having to build massive building and civil engineering to get it done. Even if we have know for 40-50 years that we could massively improve this technology, it just wasn't done. For example, having nuclear power plants that can load follow very effectively. > That's why nuclear is on the ropes in the US, if you give people a choice, they tend to vote with their wallets. If its all about cost then nothing competes with gas most of the time. If you take into account end-to-end cost of solar its quite a bit more expensive then people like to quote. In reality with intensive and tax credits, solar and wind would not be so successful outside of a few perfectly located places. And the cost goes up the closer you want to go to 100%. The approach the government likes of slowly getting utilities to up their % of green energy will run into more and more problems the longer it goes on.

joecool1029 8y ago
>Nuclear plants were massively out-competing coal in the 80s until there was a huge regulatory changes that essentially killed the industry. Since then no new reactor technology has been license, pretty much all research has been killed, access to nuclear materials is basically impossible, almost no new nuclear plants were built. Are you talking about the US or South Korea? China seems to be investing pretty hard into nuclear: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_China