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Can you explain more about why they don't make sense? My understanding is that they're extremely desirable. They're a drop-in replacement for millions of hydro

Can you explain more about why they don't make sense? My understanding is that they're extremely desirable. They're a drop-in replacement for millions of hydrocarbon plants. They can scale up/down with demand. They produce enormous amounts of energy and emit no C02. Think of the materials and industrial waste to produce 1 nuclear power plant versus all of the battery, solar cells, and turbines to equal the same in power and scalability. Besides, why do the technologies need to be exclusive? Shouldn't we be using them all where it makes sense?

toomuchtodo 7y ago
Cost [1]. Time from breaking ground to "permission to operate" as well (even if you cut red tape and systemize manufacturing of nuclear generators, you will not be as fast as wind, solar, and batteries). Solar PV Thin Film Utility Scale: $36-$44/MWh | Onshore Wind: $29-$56/MWh | Nuclear: $112-$189/MWh Can you build nuclear faster than the rest of the world can build and install PV solar and onshore/offshore wind turbines? Unlikely. Tesla installed the Hornsdale Power Reserve in 90 days. Bigger utility scale battery systems will take longer, but no where near 10 years. [1] https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-and-levelized-cost-of-storage-2018/ https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-...
- seren 7y ago
  Except that nuclear is running 24/7 even if it is not windy (minus the costly maintenance). As long as we don't have a superconductor grid around whole hemisphere, it seems to be the best way to generate power at night.
  - toomuchtodo 7y ago
    If it was the best, the entire US commercial generator fleet wouldn't be on death's door due to the economics. If you want to subsidize the last 59 US nuclear plants based on their low CO2 emissions, extending their operating license (if it can be done safely) until cleaner base load arrives, that's a sound decision. Building more nuclear is not. I question if we even have the fortitude to fund safe cleanup of existing decommissioned plants (spent rod casks have been sitting onsite in Zion, IL 19 years after that nuclear generator has been shut down, with nowhere to go [1]). Batteries will get cheaper faster than nuclear ever will, considering every automaker is moving to electric vehicles [2]. [1] https://www.chicagotribune.com/resizer/8tYxXLAlIOkm61zbZmVII2qJKTc=/800x449/top/arc-anglerfish-arc2-prod-tronc.s3.amazonaws.com/public/XYNK64ANGVCDFMWJNUHSU6THAE.jpg https://www.chicagotribune.com/resizer/8tYxXLAlIOkm61zbZmVII... [2] https://about.bnef.com/blog/energy-storage-investments-boom-battery-costs-halve-next-decade/ https://about.bnef.com/blog/energy-storage-investments-boom-... (Energy Storage Investments Boom As Battery Costs Halve in the Next Decade)
    - Ygg2 7y ago
      > Batteries will get cheaper faster than nuclear ever will That's a bold claim. Batteries could also suffer from law of diminishing returns. It might not be physically possible to store energy much more densely, without catastrophic failures.
      - toomuchtodo 7y ago
        > That's a bold claim. I don't think it is [1] [2]. Regardless of cell and pack density, there's plenty of open land to install outdoor enclosures. Utility storage isn't cars, where density is terribly important. [1] https://i2.wp.com/evobsession.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Battery-Cost-Curve-Chart-v.2.png?resize=1170%2C557&ssl=1 https://i2.wp.com/evobsession.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06... [2] https://cleantechnica.com/2018/06/09/100-kwh-tesla-battery-cells-this-year-100-kwh-tesla-battery-packs-in-2020/ https://cleantechnica.com/2018/06/09/100-kwh-tesla-battery-c...
        semi-extrinsic 7y ago
        I fear you do not sufficiently appreciate the gravitas of the energy storage problem. The big Hornsdale power reserve in Australia is 130 MWh. Say you want to store 6 hours of US average energy consumption. That's 1 500 000 MWh, or 11 000 Hornsdale stations. Just for 6 hours of electricity storage.
        toomuchtodo 7y ago
        It's ~6000 Tesla Megapack stations [1], along with HVDC transmission lines (if we're upgrading transmission lines from AC->DC, drop those aerial lines underground while you're at it for reliability and to stave off the NIMBYs). I entirely appreciate the scale of the problem we're facing regarding energy storage (climate change keeps my up at night), hence my arguments for solutions available today, not those that might (might!) start producing power in a decade. You can buy these battery stations today (Tesla quotes a 3 month deployment cycle). You can recycle their battery cells today. There are over 7,000 power plants in the United States run by over 3,000 companies. There are over 55,000 substations and over 450,000 miles of high-voltage transmission lines. I don't believe what I'm proposing is unreasonable. Hard? Sure. But unreasonable? Absolutely not. Going to the Moon was hard, and we still went to the Moon. [1] https://www.tesla.com/blog/introducing-megapack-utility-scale-energy-storage https://www.tesla.com/blog/introducing-megapack-utility-scal...
- travisoneill1 7y ago
  You conveniently forgot to list the costs of storage from the source you linked. The costs range from $108-$471 for utility scale storage. So nuclear is the clear winner in cost because it doesn't require this.
  - toomuchtodo 7y ago
    My comment within this thread communicates my belief that batteries will get cheaper faster than nuclear (solar and wind are fast approaching 1 cent/kwh; as that cost continues to decline storage will be the bulk of the cost of utility power). If you think I'm wrong, invest in nuclear. If nuclear was a clear winner, it would be funded and built. But it seems there are better ways to replace the last 100GW of US nuclear generating capacity, based on market participant actions.
    - dev_dull 7y ago
      Nuclear is being funded and built all around the world. There's 50 reactors under construction right now[1]. My original statement was that the aversion to it is political, not economical and certainly not scientific. There is no panacea. We need a well-rounded, safe, stable, and diversified energy portfolio and it must include nuclear. It also needs wind, solar, and high-density energy storage (batteries and other such strategies). 1. https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-generation/plans-for-new-reactors-worldwide.aspx https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-an...
  - godelski 7y ago
    I just want to break in here because that's a large range in prices. To explain those, they are because the different amounts of storage capacity. These very drastically in location. So somewhere like SoCal needs less than in the Bay area because SoCal is almost always sunny and windy. The Bay has plenty of shady days (go talk to the people at LLNL, there's plenty of people there working on this problem). Alternatively, places like Seattle have long periods of low sun and wind so need extremely high amounts of storage. This is the argument for a nuclear substitute, specifically in places where renewables are difficult. You don't replace renewables in SoCal with nuclear, you replace coal in Seattle with nuclear (and continue the expansion of renewables and storage). The underlying reason the IPCC promotes nuclear is that it is the only existing technology that can fill in the gap for renewables. It can handle load balancing, reduce storage costs/vulnerability, and helps with the duck curve (which has to this date not been solved by batteries). This isn't a "fund nuclear vs fund battery research" argument (seriously guys, stop with this!). This is a "well this works and we can start building it right now. Let's do that while we keep inventing new solutions because things are too bad to not have a backup plan. We also need to increase the total funding and use every feasible option on the table" kind of argument. I'm not sure why this is so difficult to see. No pro nuclear person is anti renewable. If they are I'll call them anti-scientific too. No pro nuclear person is anti-renewable. Come on. Let's stop having this debate. It's not a VS game, we have to use every available option. Edit: I want to reiterate what I said in my original comment. Not following the expert advice of those working in climate is anti-scientific. You may be as smart as them but you sure aren't as close to the data and have access to tons of other people working on the same problem. Trust the scientists. If you don't give a good reason, but you're going to have to go into as much detail as they do. You don't argue with scientist about dark matter, which we know less about than climate. It's just shocking to me that people here get all up in arms and ignore the expert advice.
ddxxdd 7y ago
>Think of the materials and industrial waste to produce 1 nuclear power plant versus all of the battery, solar cells, and turbines to equal the same in power and scalability. Please, also think of the carbon footprint of those materials. Every ton of cement produces 1 ton of CO2. Every ton of steel produces 1.8 tons of CO2. The mere process of building a hydroelectric dam and wind turbine involves emitting CO2 into the environment. Even the process of growing silicon crystals and doping them with ions to create a solar panel produces CO2 that must be offset over the lifetime of that solar panel. Carbon capture solutions, on the other hand, can involve simply planting trees. Each acorn that is dug into the ground will capture a ton of CO2 over the course of a decade.
- imtringued 7y ago
  Carbon capture with trees might work but it definitively will require a lot of manual work. The trees have to be cut down, stored in old mines and replanted periodically.
- godelski 7y ago
  I do want to say that nuclear does have lower life cycle emissions compared to solar [0][1]. [0] https://www.world-nuclear.org/uploadedFiles/org/WNA/Publications/Working_Group_Reports/comparison_of_lifecycle.pdf https://www.world-nuclear.org/uploadedFiles/org/WNA/Publicat... [1] there's also an IPCC study that's bigger than this and shows the same thing but I'm on my phone.
imtringued 7y ago
>They can scale up/down with demand. For something as capital intensive as a nuclear power plant, throttling their output makes them uneconomical. They have almost zero opex so you barely save a penny.
- GhettoMaestro 7y ago
  That's not the point of scaling up and down with energy generation. You need to match the demand. Generate too much and don't have demand? Not good.

toomuchtodo 7y ago

Cost [1]. Time from breaking ground to "permission to operate" as well (even if you cut red tape and systemize manufacturing of nuclear generators, you will not be as fast as wind, solar, and batteries). Solar PV Thin Film Utility Scale: $36-$44/MWh | Onshore Wind: $29-$56/MWh | Nuclear: $112-$189/MWh Can you build nuclear faster than the rest of the world can build and install PV solar and onshore/offshore wind turbines? Unlikely. Tesla installed the Hornsdale Power Reserve in 90 days. Bigger utility scale battery systems will take longer, but no where near 10 years. [1] https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-and-levelized-cost-of-storage-2018/ https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-...

seren 7y ago
Except that nuclear is running 24/7 even if it is not windy (minus the costly maintenance). As long as we don't have a superconductor grid around whole hemisphere, it seems to be the best way to generate power at night.
- toomuchtodo 7y ago
  If it was the best, the entire US commercial generator fleet wouldn't be on death's door due to the economics. If you want to subsidize the last 59 US nuclear plants based on their low CO2 emissions, extending their operating license (if it can be done safely) until cleaner base load arrives, that's a sound decision. Building more nuclear is not. I question if we even have the fortitude to fund safe cleanup of existing decommissioned plants (spent rod casks have been sitting onsite in Zion, IL 19 years after that nuclear generator has been shut down, with nowhere to go [1]). Batteries will get cheaper faster than nuclear ever will, considering every automaker is moving to electric vehicles [2]. [1] https://www.chicagotribune.com/resizer/8tYxXLAlIOkm61zbZmVII2qJKTc=/800x449/top/arc-anglerfish-arc2-prod-tronc.s3.amazonaws.com/public/XYNK64ANGVCDFMWJNUHSU6THAE.jpg https://www.chicagotribune.com/resizer/8tYxXLAlIOkm61zbZmVII... [2] https://about.bnef.com/blog/energy-storage-investments-boom-battery-costs-halve-next-decade/ https://about.bnef.com/blog/energy-storage-investments-boom-... (Energy Storage Investments Boom As Battery Costs Halve in the Next Decade)
  - Ygg2 7y ago
    > Batteries will get cheaper faster than nuclear ever will That's a bold claim. Batteries could also suffer from law of diminishing returns. It might not be physically possible to store energy much more densely, without catastrophic failures.
    - toomuchtodo 7y ago
      > That's a bold claim. I don't think it is [1] [2]. Regardless of cell and pack density, there's plenty of open land to install outdoor enclosures. Utility storage isn't cars, where density is terribly important. [1] https://i2.wp.com/evobsession.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Battery-Cost-Curve-Chart-v.2.png?resize=1170%2C557&ssl=1 https://i2.wp.com/evobsession.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06... [2] https://cleantechnica.com/2018/06/09/100-kwh-tesla-battery-cells-this-year-100-kwh-tesla-battery-packs-in-2020/ https://cleantechnica.com/2018/06/09/100-kwh-tesla-battery-c...
      - semi-extrinsic 7y ago
        I fear you do not sufficiently appreciate the gravitas of the energy storage problem. The big Hornsdale power reserve in Australia is 130 MWh. Say you want to store 6 hours of US average energy consumption. That's 1 500 000 MWh, or 11 000 Hornsdale stations. Just for 6 hours of electricity storage.
        toomuchtodo 7y ago
        It's ~6000 Tesla Megapack stations [1], along with HVDC transmission lines (if we're upgrading transmission lines from AC->DC, drop those aerial lines underground while you're at it for reliability and to stave off the NIMBYs). I entirely appreciate the scale of the problem we're facing regarding energy storage (climate change keeps my up at night), hence my arguments for solutions available today, not those that might (might!) start producing power in a decade. You can buy these battery stations today (Tesla quotes a 3 month deployment cycle). You can recycle their battery cells today. There are over 7,000 power plants in the United States run by over 3,000 companies. There are over 55,000 substations and over 450,000 miles of high-voltage transmission lines. I don't believe what I'm proposing is unreasonable. Hard? Sure. But unreasonable? Absolutely not. Going to the Moon was hard, and we still went to the Moon. [1] https://www.tesla.com/blog/introducing-megapack-utility-scale-energy-storage https://www.tesla.com/blog/introducing-megapack-utility-scal...
travisoneill1 7y ago
You conveniently forgot to list the costs of storage from the source you linked. The costs range from $108-$471 for utility scale storage. So nuclear is the clear winner in cost because it doesn't require this.
- toomuchtodo 7y ago
  My comment within this thread communicates my belief that batteries will get cheaper faster than nuclear (solar and wind are fast approaching 1 cent/kwh; as that cost continues to decline storage will be the bulk of the cost of utility power). If you think I'm wrong, invest in nuclear. If nuclear was a clear winner, it would be funded and built. But it seems there are better ways to replace the last 100GW of US nuclear generating capacity, based on market participant actions.
  - dev_dull 7y ago
    Nuclear is being funded and built all around the world. There's 50 reactors under construction right now[1]. My original statement was that the aversion to it is political, not economical and certainly not scientific. There is no panacea. We need a well-rounded, safe, stable, and diversified energy portfolio and it must include nuclear. It also needs wind, solar, and high-density energy storage (batteries and other such strategies). 1. https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-generation/plans-for-new-reactors-worldwide.aspx https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-an...
- godelski 7y ago
  I just want to break in here because that's a large range in prices. To explain those, they are because the different amounts of storage capacity. These very drastically in location. So somewhere like SoCal needs less than in the Bay area because SoCal is almost always sunny and windy. The Bay has plenty of shady days (go talk to the people at LLNL, there's plenty of people there working on this problem). Alternatively, places like Seattle have long periods of low sun and wind so need extremely high amounts of storage. This is the argument for a nuclear substitute, specifically in places where renewables are difficult. You don't replace renewables in SoCal with nuclear, you replace coal in Seattle with nuclear (and continue the expansion of renewables and storage). The underlying reason the IPCC promotes nuclear is that it is the only existing technology that can fill in the gap for renewables. It can handle load balancing, reduce storage costs/vulnerability, and helps with the duck curve (which has to this date not been solved by batteries). This isn't a "fund nuclear vs fund battery research" argument (seriously guys, stop with this!). This is a "well this works and we can start building it right now. Let's do that while we keep inventing new solutions because things are too bad to not have a backup plan. We also need to increase the total funding and use every feasible option on the table" kind of argument. I'm not sure why this is so difficult to see. No pro nuclear person is anti renewable. If they are I'll call them anti-scientific too. No pro nuclear person is anti-renewable. Come on. Let's stop having this debate. It's not a VS game, we have to use every available option. Edit: I want to reiterate what I said in my original comment. Not following the expert advice of those working in climate is anti-scientific. You may be as smart as them but you sure aren't as close to the data and have access to tons of other people working on the same problem. Trust the scientists. If you don't give a good reason, but you're going to have to go into as much detail as they do. You don't argue with scientist about dark matter, which we know less about than climate. It's just shocking to me that people here get all up in arms and ignore the expert advice.

ddxxdd 7y ago

>Think of the materials and industrial waste to produce 1 nuclear power plant versus all of the battery, solar cells, and turbines to equal the same in power and scalability. Please, also think of the carbon footprint of those materials. Every ton of cement produces 1 ton of CO2. Every ton of steel produces 1.8 tons of CO2. The mere process of building a hydroelectric dam and wind turbine involves emitting CO2 into the environment. Even the process of growing silicon crystals and doping them with ions to create a solar panel produces CO2 that must be offset over the lifetime of that solar panel. Carbon capture solutions, on the other hand, can involve simply planting trees. Each acorn that is dug into the ground will capture a ton of CO2 over the course of a decade.

imtringued 7y ago
Carbon capture with trees might work but it definitively will require a lot of manual work. The trees have to be cut down, stored in old mines and replanted periodically.
godelski 7y ago
I do want to say that nuclear does have lower life cycle emissions compared to solar [0][1]. [0] https://www.world-nuclear.org/uploadedFiles/org/WNA/Publications/Working_Group_Reports/comparison_of_lifecycle.pdf https://www.world-nuclear.org/uploadedFiles/org/WNA/Publicat... [1] there's also an IPCC study that's bigger than this and shows the same thing but I'm on my phone.

imtringued 7y ago

>They can scale up/down with demand. For something as capital intensive as a nuclear power plant, throttling their output makes them uneconomical. They have almost zero opex so you barely save a penny.

GhettoMaestro 7y ago
That's not the point of scaling up and down with energy generation. You need to match the demand. Generate too much and don't have demand? Not good.