3 ms·

The cost of nuclear or the cost of wind/solar/storage? Solar is dirt cheap for 2 hours out of the day - how much does it cost at 10pm? This isn't a dennard-scal

The cost of nuclear or the cost of wind/solar/storage? Solar is dirt cheap for 2 hours out of the day - how much does it cost at 10pm? This isn't a dennard-scaling problem - it's Watts, and it won't necessarily get cheaper the more we need to store - if commodity scarcity kicks in, it could get more expensive! Storing enough energy to supply 3TW of power is daunting. I don't think we can do it and I think we'll need to just use less. Then what's the cost of using orders of magnitude less power? "You can't commute to work anymore because your car will be too expensive to charge. Or, rather it will be a luxury to use a car." "Ok, I guess?" "You'll have to live within a few miles of work" "Well..." "If you have a two income family and your workplaces are across the city, one of you will need to leave your job." "That sounds difficult." "You can't have a detached house in the suburbs. You'll bankrupt yourself heating it". "I have to move? Hmm... what was that you said about nuclear?"

Xylakant 7y ago
> "You can't commute to work anymore because your car will be too expensive to charge. Or, rather it will be a luxury to use a car." Yes it will be. There are many many more externalities to using cars as primary transit than their CO2 output. Noise, land use, inefficient use of energy in terms of kWh/personmile, microplastic from tires, accidents,... > You’ll have to live within a few miles of work.” There’s such things as mass transit that’s actually quite ok at solving that problem. Now, if you mean “we cannot all live in suburbs and everyone gets a house and a little garden.”, yes, that’s already true. The sprawl would not be possible to manage. It’s already not true for a large chunk of the population. Heating a house is the least of our issues. Heat is something that we can store fairly easily: Take a large, well insulated tank in your basement, fill it with water (or a better suited liquid, but water will actually do). Heat it up during the day, either using solar panels or electricity driving a heat pump, use it during the night. Works with coolant, too. Insulation is a fairly well understood problem and in such a setting, losses are fairly low.
- CountSessine 7y ago
  Yes it will be. There are many many more externalities to using cars as primary transit than their CO2 output. Noise, land use, inefficient use of energy in terms of kWh/personmile, microplastic from tires, accidents,... Hey, maybe you're right! Maybe we should stop using cars! Maybe you've convinced a couple of people to do that right now! Now convince 100 million US voters! Politics is the 'art of the possible'. That's what we're discussing! There’s such things as mass transit that’s actually quite ok at solving that problem But none of our cities in North America have been built with that in mind. Convince 100 million US voters to move to transit-serviceable neighborhoods. Now, if you mean “we cannot all live in suburbs and everyone gets a house and a little garden.”, yes, that’s already true With nuclear, you can continue doing this. Convince 100 million US voters to move out of the suburbs in the next 20 years. Maybe they will? Heating a house is the least of our issues. Heat is something that we can store fairly easily: Take a large, well insulated tank in your basement, fill it with water (or a better suited liquid, but water will actually do). Heat it up during the day, either using solar panels or electricity driving a heat pump, use it during the night. Works with coolant, too. Insulation is a fairly well understood problem and in such a setting, losses are fairly low. This is difficult in northern climates, with short days and shallow noontime sun. Or are we asking people to stop living north of some particular latitude? That's a tough sell too! And its not just the US - politics is reflexive. As soon as your "impose a heavy carbon tax to make oil and gas prohibitively expensive and to encourage the deployment of solar storage" bill gets passed, you can forget about winning the next election - people will vote a guy in who repeals it as soon as it hits their pocketbook and their standard of living drops. Politics is the art of the possible. I don't see how you're going to convince people to vote for this.
  - Xylakant 7y ago
    I don’t really see how nuclear power is helping you to replace all the fossil fuel cars on US roads with electric ones. Extending mass transit could be done in smaller timeframes given sufficient political will. Even then power generation for electric cars is really not a major issue with renewables: most cars will be charged during the day when for example solar power is quite abundant. So I don’t recognize the argument for nuclear power here.
Vinnl 7y ago
> The cost of nuclear or the cost of wind/solar/storage? Nuclear. Note that I'm not saying it shouldn't be done, just that it's a hard sell, even without risk perception.
- CountSessine 7y ago
  Will we ever reach a point where solar is cheaper than nuclear outside that 2-hours-a-day?
  - pfdietz 7y ago
    We're already there.

Xylakant 7y ago

> "You can't commute to work anymore because your car will be too expensive to charge. Or, rather it will be a luxury to use a car." Yes it will be. There are many many more externalities to using cars as primary transit than their CO2 output. Noise, land use, inefficient use of energy in terms of kWh/personmile, microplastic from tires, accidents,... > You’ll have to live within a few miles of work.” There’s such things as mass transit that’s actually quite ok at solving that problem. Now, if you mean “we cannot all live in suburbs and everyone gets a house and a little garden.”, yes, that’s already true. The sprawl would not be possible to manage. It’s already not true for a large chunk of the population. Heating a house is the least of our issues. Heat is something that we can store fairly easily: Take a large, well insulated tank in your basement, fill it with water (or a better suited liquid, but water will actually do). Heat it up during the day, either using solar panels or electricity driving a heat pump, use it during the night. Works with coolant, too. Insulation is a fairly well understood problem and in such a setting, losses are fairly low.

CountSessine 7y ago
Yes it will be. There are many many more externalities to using cars as primary transit than their CO2 output. Noise, land use, inefficient use of energy in terms of kWh/personmile, microplastic from tires, accidents,... Hey, maybe you're right! Maybe we should stop using cars! Maybe you've convinced a couple of people to do that right now! Now convince 100 million US voters! Politics is the 'art of the possible'. That's what we're discussing! There’s such things as mass transit that’s actually quite ok at solving that problem But none of our cities in North America have been built with that in mind. Convince 100 million US voters to move to transit-serviceable neighborhoods. Now, if you mean “we cannot all live in suburbs and everyone gets a house and a little garden.”, yes, that’s already true With nuclear, you can continue doing this. Convince 100 million US voters to move out of the suburbs in the next 20 years. Maybe they will? Heating a house is the least of our issues. Heat is something that we can store fairly easily: Take a large, well insulated tank in your basement, fill it with water (or a better suited liquid, but water will actually do). Heat it up during the day, either using solar panels or electricity driving a heat pump, use it during the night. Works with coolant, too. Insulation is a fairly well understood problem and in such a setting, losses are fairly low. This is difficult in northern climates, with short days and shallow noontime sun. Or are we asking people to stop living north of some particular latitude? That's a tough sell too! And its not just the US - politics is reflexive. As soon as your "impose a heavy carbon tax to make oil and gas prohibitively expensive and to encourage the deployment of solar storage" bill gets passed, you can forget about winning the next election - people will vote a guy in who repeals it as soon as it hits their pocketbook and their standard of living drops. Politics is the art of the possible. I don't see how you're going to convince people to vote for this.
- Xylakant 7y ago
  I don’t really see how nuclear power is helping you to replace all the fossil fuel cars on US roads with electric ones. Extending mass transit could be done in smaller timeframes given sufficient political will. Even then power generation for electric cars is really not a major issue with renewables: most cars will be charged during the day when for example solar power is quite abundant. So I don’t recognize the argument for nuclear power here.

Vinnl 7y ago

> The cost of nuclear or the cost of wind/solar/storage? Nuclear. Note that I'm not saying it shouldn't be done, just that it's a hard sell, even without risk perception.

CountSessine 7y ago
Will we ever reach a point where solar is cheaper than nuclear outside that 2-hours-a-day?
- pfdietz 7y ago
  We're already there.