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I searched for 'nuclear' on that page, and found no mention of the word at all. Whatever you might think of nuclear energy, I don't think such a drastic energy

I searched for 'nuclear' on that page, and found no mention of the word at all. Whatever you might think of nuclear energy, I don't think such a drastic energy cut is even possible to implement without it. (After all, I see little point in cutting CO2 emissions in the US if people in other countries emit an amount equivalent to whatever gets cut here.)

deleted 7y ago
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toomuchtodo 7y ago
If you break ground today on a nuclear generator, you will not see your first kwh generated for at least a decade, and that kwh will not be cost competitive with anything else on the spot market. At the same time, you could replace all nuclear in the US currently operating in around three years (even compensating for capacity factor), solely from PV manufacturing capacity in the US. It is plainly obvious why nuclear is not included when renewables and at grid parity and the cost of utility scale storage is rapidly declining. Even if the cost decline of storage takes longer than expected, you can compensate with overbuilding, curtailment, transmission and demand response. You ask why nuclear isn't being talked about. I can't fathom anyone thinking it's a real option compared to solar, wind, and battery storage, all of which are cheaper unsubsidized than nuclear today, can be manufactured and shipped where ever needed, and scaling up production is trivial (in comparison). https://www.lazard.com/perspective/lcoe2019 https://www.lazard.com/perspective/lcoe2019 (Lazard Levelized Cost of Energy and Levelized Cost of Storage 2019)
- TomMarius 7y ago
  This seems weird to me. Would that be on the roofs or are you forgetting to count for all that land? But I am European and land is way more valuable here, so that might be the case, I don't know - perhaps you do?
  - toomuchtodo 7y ago
    There is a lot of worthless land where utility solar can be installed in the US, not to mention folks who want it on their roof (rooftop solar is cost competitive in most states over 25 years). Europe has enough wind potential to power the world [1]. "Taking into consideration socio-technical constraints, which restricts 54% of the combined land area in Europe, the study reveals a nameplate capacity of 52.5 TW of untapped onshore wind power potential in Europe - equivalent to 1 MW per 16 European citizens – a supply that would be sufficient to cover the global all-sector energy demand from now through to 2050." [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421519304343 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030142151...
    - TomMarius 7y ago
      What about the opposition because of worsened living standard of people around and because of the environmental impact, also hazardous maintenance etc? There is a wind farm being blocked in Germany over these concerns now. Same applies for solar and water (river/nature based) power plants in Europe.
- Pfhreak 7y ago
  > that kwh will not be cost competitive with anything else on the spot market Maybe capitalism isn't the right model for energy? Or, if you are a die hard capitalist, maybe we aren't costing externalities correctly and we should get some folks in power who will ensure that the right options are also the cost competitive options?
  - toomuchtodo 7y ago
    Even assuming you're not a die hard capitalist, why champion an outdated energy technology when there are superior options. We aren't costing CO2 properly, but then we're also not costing decommissioning of nuclear generators or the waste disposal either.
    - mlyle 7y ago
      We're not? https://www.nrc.gov/waste/decommissioning/finan-assur.html https://www.nrc.gov/waste/decommissioning/finan-assur.html We also have a nuclear waste fund that previously received $750M in fees per year and sits at a balance of $44B, but that's been paused since there has been no effort to actually use the funds to dispose of waste.
      - toomuchtodo 7y ago
        Accumulating funds for an activity you can't or won't undertake isn't properly accounting, it's aspirational accounting. Talk is cheap. https://www.politico.com/story/2013/11/nuclear-waste-fiasco-100450 https://www.politico.com/story/2013/11/nuclear-waste-fiasco-... "Doing nothing often has a cost — and when it comes to storing the nation’s nuclear waste, the price is $38 billion and rising. That’s just the lowball estimate for how much taxpayers will wind up spending because of the government’s decades of dithering about how to handle the radioactive leftovers sitting at dozens of sites in 38 states. The final price will be higher unless the government starts collecting the waste by 2020, which almost nobody who tracks the issue expects. The first $15 billion is what the government spent on a controversial nuclear waste repository at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain until the Obama administration scrapped the project. The other $23 billion is the Energy Department’s estimate of the damages the government will have to pay to nuclear power utilities, which for the past 30 years have paid a fee to DOE on the promise that the feds would begin collecting their waste in 1998. Industry argues that the damages are closer to $50 billion — which raises the bottom line to $65 billion including the money spent on Yucca." So we're going to build more reactors you say? Where will that waste go? This is not an issue with renewables and batteries.
- arkh 7y ago
  > If you break ground today on a nuclear generator, you will not see your first kwh generated for at least a decade. If Climate Change is so important, declare a total war against it like during WW2 against the Axis. With most production geared toward nuclear energy, you should have generator up and running a lot faster.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - altacc 7y ago
    The list of things I don't want built in a rush definitely includes nuclear reactors!
    - DennisP 7y ago
      Yes, but it's also possible to go a lot slower than necessary. France converted their grid to 80% nuclear in 20 years and it seems to have worked out ok.
    - RockIslandLine 7y ago
      And yet a ten year timeline is obviously nonsense. When these reactors were built in the 1970s, groundbreaking to power production was often 5 years. Why is the process much worse now? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zion_Nuclear_Power_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zion_Nuclear_Power_Station
  - deusofnull 7y ago
    Cant you do the same thing in regards to renewables?
- melling 7y ago
  Nuclear power is 20% of electricity in the United States. If you could replace it all in 3 years, wouldn’t we be better off replacing 20% of coal power over 3 years and wait a little longer on the nuclear power? If your math is right, half the grid would be zero carbon in 5 years.
  - toomuchtodo 7y ago
    Yes, you would absolutely want to stave off nuclear generator retirements as long as (safely) possible to displace carbon producing generators. I use the example only to demonstrate the ease of renewable deployments versus nuclear. You could go do a green bond offer (or PPA contract), bid out the construction project, and build a solar generation facility next to a nuclear power plant to replace its capacity. You cannot do this to build a new nuclear plant. Coal power is going away, full stop, due to the cheap cost of natural gas and renewables. It is not cost competitive. Natural gas throttles fast; it's why California can have such a steep Duck Curve [1] and support GWs of solar generation capacity. It is a great stop gap until batteries catch up. Utility scale generating plants coming online over the next year (green = wind, yellow = solar) https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/images/figure_6_01_c.png https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/images/figure_6_01_c... Utility scale generating retirements over the next year (gray = coal) https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/images/figure_6_01_d.png https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/images/figure_6_01_d... [1] https://www.nrel.gov/news/program/2018/10-years-duck-curve.html https://www.nrel.gov/news/program/2018/10-years-duck-curve.h... (Ten Years of Analyzing the Duck Chart: How an NREL Discovery in 2008 Is Helping Enable More Solar on the Grid Today)
    - graeme 7y ago
      China started building coal again, and global coal production is rising. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia-pacific/years-after-freezing-new-projects-china-is-back-to-building-coal-power-plants/2019/11/20/b9075baa-0b38-11ea-8054-289aef6e38a3_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia-pacific/years-afte...
      - toomuchtodo 7y ago
- DennisP 7y ago
  From that Lazard report, PV with four hours storage costs 10 to 13 cents/kWh. That's "in front of the meter" which is the wholesale cost. For retail cost, commercial/industrial pays 22 to 38 cents/kWh, and residential pays 45 to 66 cents/kWh. That's with only four hours storage. That's a convenient amount since it's the excess typically generated by solar installations during the day, but to actually get through a windless night we might need more storage. Lazard's retail cost for storage alone is 48 to 104 cents/kWh. Plus you'll need extra solar dedicated to charging it. At this point people often bring up long-distance transmission. The report happens to include that too, with a cost starting at $2.35/kWh wholesale and going way up from there. None of this includes the overcapacity we'd need, to get through cloudy winter weeks. Lazard puts nuclear's cost at 12 to 19 cents/kWh but it's unclear whether that's retail cost; I suspect so since I only pay 12 cents/kWh on a grid that's heavy on nuclear. Wind/solar is very cheap when the grid is still mostly fossil, but to run a reliable carbon-free grid in areas without abundant hydro, nuclear is still cheaper. The cheapest combination is probably nuclear to the level of minimum nighttime load, and renewables for everything beyond that, without just enough storage to even out remaining discrepancies with demand.
  - makapuf 7y ago
    What night base consumption is absolutely vital ? I understand that some of the consumption is necessary to function and that some other is made possible by the fact that fossil energy is as expensive to generate at night and that it's cheaper to function 24/7. But sometimes it can be cheaper to shut down widget X factory at night not to double storage capacity. Maybe this effect will be important, I don't know.
    - DennisP 7y ago
      If we have to build twice as many widget factories to make up for shutting them down at night, that's another cost to society that we should take into account. I've seen a lot of renewables advocates talk about "demand management" but not any estimate of this cost. There's also heating, air conditioning, street lights, etc. Aluminum plants, which can't shut down more than 4-5 hours without major damage from the metal solidifying. Before long, electric vehicles charging in people's garages at night; it'd be nice if we used them to supply the grid at night but that would require parking lots full of charging stations where everybody works, plus new infrastructure in people's houses, and some kind of incentive to get people to bother. All that costs money too.
- philipkglass 7y ago
  At the same time, you could replace all nuclear in the US currently operating in around three years (even compensating for capacity factor), solely from PV manufacturing capacity in the US. I think that you may have confused PV manufacturing capacity in the US with global PV manufacturing capacity. The US generated 807 TWh from nuclear power in 2018 [1]. If solar farms achieve a good-but-realistic capacity factor of 25%, you need 368 gigawatts of modules [2] to produce 807 TWh per year. That's about 3 years' worth of global module production at 2019 production rates. US domestic module production is currently below 10 GW per year. [1] https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-t-z/usa-nuclear-power.aspx https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-pr... [2] (807000 / (24*365)) / 0.25 = 368. Actually you need a bit more because most solar farms report capacity factor on an AC basis, and the inverter loading ratio is greater than 1.0. But close enough for a quick estimate.
  - toomuchtodo 7y ago
    You are correct. Thank you for pointing out my mistake. https://www.solarpowerworldonline.com/u-s-solar-panel-manufacturers/ https://www.solarpowerworldonline.com/u-s-solar-panel-manufa...
throwaway122kk 7y ago
Greenpeace and the environmental movement have a lot to answer for, thanks to their knee jerk reaction to nuclear one of the technologies (note that I say "one of", there is a range of choices, not an either/or black/white choice, as is so often case on internet discussions nowadays) we ended up with more coal/oil power plants contributing towards climate change nuclear could have been the bridging technology buying us decades to build up real renewables (and/or fusion) and provide base load, but no cant have that, ideology trumps pragmatism
- Pfhreak 7y ago
  We are where we are now. Turn your effort towards the future -- how do we get to where we want to go from where we are today. The same attitude applies in engineering -- post-mortems aren't about assigning blame, they are about understanding the current state and how you'll address or mitigate any failures so they don't happen again. If you want to be backwards looking, at least focus on what the lesson is and how you will turn that lesson into concrete actions that prevent the same failure case in the future.
  - melling 7y ago
    In the future, there are 450 nuclear power plants that will need to replaced as they are retired. There are about 100 nuclear plants in the United States generating 20% of the power.
- baot 7y ago
  Unfortunately, pragmatism like yours sounds unconvincing compared to the more passionate positions of somebody against nuclear fission power. It doesn't mix well with an expensive project with a long development time that risks being cancelled in a temporary shift of public opinion.
- eterm 7y ago
  Greenpeace isn't that influential, the reality is that the economics of nuclear never added up. Also, there really is something off-putting about leaving behind waste that lasts longer than civilisation has.
gscott 7y ago
Nuclear would be good but here in California nuclear waste is stored on the beach making it less enticing. Most people would prefer home solar.
- arkh 7y ago
  > nuclear waste is stored on the beach What?
  - trixie_ 7y ago
    San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station
    - gscott 7y ago
      It is pretty crazy. The government swears up and down that it is completely safe but yet the concrete bunkers are already wearing away now after just a few years.
cogman10 7y ago
The time for nuclear has passed (at least fission. Fusion may still be a good future energy source). I say this because the cost of building a new nuclear plant is more expensive than wind and solar. Nuclear might still be a good solution for northern and southern habitats. But, at this point, where most pollution is produced, solar and wind are viable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source With all that said, the real viability of renewables is partially going to be determined by storage costs. Nuclear doesn't really solve the storage problem though (it is a base load only power source). Eventually in order to hit a 7.6% reduction goal we'll have to phase out natural gas peaker plants. To do that, we need storage. We certainly shouldn't be decommissioning nuclear plants in favor of renewables. I just don't think the time to build new nuclear is here. The cheaper and faster solution is new renewables.
- arkh 7y ago
  Here is what you get some days with solar and wind: https://i.imgur.com/m2snJgg.png https://i.imgur.com/m2snJgg.png . Germany using a lot of standard gas and coal generators.
  - api 7y ago
    That doesn't really answer the point, which was that new solar and wind tend to be cheaper than new nuclear as of 2019.
    - jeffreyrogers 7y ago
      It doesn't matter how cheap it is. No sun and no wind means no power, which means using coal and other fossil fuels. Increasing use of natural gas has reduced emissions more than switching to renewables.
      - mrmanner 7y ago
        There's a thought provoking web site out there, Low Tech Magazine. Their basic idea is that electricity 100% of the time isn't as important for everyone and everyting as we think. The need for base capacity is still there of course, but if we allow unnecessary things to shut down when there's less supply we can get away with less. (Yes, of course we need to have electricity in hospitals and for heating 100% of the time - but if the newspapers are unavailable three days per year, or if some non-essential TV channels turn off when it's really cold - maybe not as bad.) https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/about.html https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/about.html
etaioinshrdlu 7y ago
Nuclear power seems to be considered too powerful to trust in the hands of many nations, making it kind of a non starter globally. My understanding is that with any type of nuclear plant, in a non trustworthy country, it would still be dependent on importing the fuel from a nuclear state, making it quite unappealing and a security risk for the purchasing state.
- trixie_ 7y ago
  I kinda wish there was a NASA equivalent for nuclear that would be given 10s of billions of dollars per year to R&D safer, next gen nuclear power plants. The organization could build/run those plants around the world in order to provide less developed countries with power while preventing proliferation.
  - aschampion 7y ago
    An international version of this was Oppenheimer's vision (both for peaceful nuclear applications and weapons) which he expressed in his personal writings and in the Acheson–Lilienthal report. It was not looked favorably on by most of the US government and was the first step to the eventual revocation of his security clearance and removal from any position of influence.
_ph_ 7y ago
Funny, one of the most often heard argument of those, who try to fight against reducing CO2 in Germany is, that other countries, e.g. the US, are not reducing theirs and we should wait until they do. That sounds to me, that every country should do its best to cut CO2 and not wait for others to lead first.
- ilikehurdles 7y ago
  Kyoto Protocol and Paris Agreement sought to do that. Unfortunately the time span between the launch of such talks and the agreement of terms is around the time in office for 1 US Democratic president.
- Junk_Collector 7y ago
  That's funny because the US actually has reduced per capita CO2 emissions by about 20% back down to levels not seen since 1960. Edit: I suppose I should include a source. From the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC?locations=US https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC?location...
marcosdumay 7y ago
Just to add to the two very insightful replies you've already got, yes, nuclear power could have been a great contributor on the fight against Global Warming, 30 years ago. And yes, it is a shame that "environmentalist" movements made so much noise that they ensured we took the most harmful possible path. Those movements should be shamed, and very loudly so because they still didn't give up on fighting improvements and waste the popular focus on useless feel-nice ideas. But, well, today is not 30 years ago, and the same way that nuclear power never could be the complete solution to carbon based fuels, today it is too late for them to even be a large component of it. So, today pushing for nuclear does more harm than good.
- whatshisface 7y ago
  >So, today pushing for nuclear does more harm than good. You made the case for why you don't think nuclear can do any good (because it's too late), but what's the case for harm?
  - gizmo686 7y ago
    Every dollar invested into nuclear is a dollar not invested into solar/wind/etc. Building new nuclear just usn't the most effective use of limited capital to reduce emmisions at this point.
    - tick_tock_tick 7y ago
      Every dollar in solar/wind/etc is wasted since it can't support the population without falling back to coal and gas. Renewable are a crapshoot relying on new storage technology that doesn't exist to make then viable. Why not focus on something we can 100% guarantee will fix the issues instead of leaving it to chance?
  - marcosdumay 7y ago
    It is not only a distraction, but pushing a non-viable technology reduces the credibility of everybody that is trying to solve the problem with technology.
- 7y ago

deleted 7y ago

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toomuchtodo 7y ago

If you break ground today on a nuclear generator, you will not see your first kwh generated for at least a decade, and that kwh will not be cost competitive with anything else on the spot market. At the same time, you could replace all nuclear in the US currently operating in around three years (even compensating for capacity factor), solely from PV manufacturing capacity in the US. It is plainly obvious why nuclear is not included when renewables and at grid parity and the cost of utility scale storage is rapidly declining. Even if the cost decline of storage takes longer than expected, you can compensate with overbuilding, curtailment, transmission and demand response. You ask why nuclear isn't being talked about. I can't fathom anyone thinking it's a real option compared to solar, wind, and battery storage, all of which are cheaper unsubsidized than nuclear today, can be manufactured and shipped where ever needed, and scaling up production is trivial (in comparison). https://www.lazard.com/perspective/lcoe2019 https://www.lazard.com/perspective/lcoe2019 (Lazard Levelized Cost of Energy and Levelized Cost of Storage 2019)

TomMarius 7y ago
This seems weird to me. Would that be on the roofs or are you forgetting to count for all that land? But I am European and land is way more valuable here, so that might be the case, I don't know - perhaps you do?
- toomuchtodo 7y ago
  There is a lot of worthless land where utility solar can be installed in the US, not to mention folks who want it on their roof (rooftop solar is cost competitive in most states over 25 years). Europe has enough wind potential to power the world [1]. "Taking into consideration socio-technical constraints, which restricts 54% of the combined land area in Europe, the study reveals a nameplate capacity of 52.5 TW of untapped onshore wind power potential in Europe - equivalent to 1 MW per 16 European citizens – a supply that would be sufficient to cover the global all-sector energy demand from now through to 2050." [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421519304343 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030142151...
  - TomMarius 7y ago
    What about the opposition because of worsened living standard of people around and because of the environmental impact, also hazardous maintenance etc? There is a wind farm being blocked in Germany over these concerns now. Same applies for solar and water (river/nature based) power plants in Europe.
Pfhreak 7y ago
> that kwh will not be cost competitive with anything else on the spot market Maybe capitalism isn't the right model for energy? Or, if you are a die hard capitalist, maybe we aren't costing externalities correctly and we should get some folks in power who will ensure that the right options are also the cost competitive options?
- toomuchtodo 7y ago
  Even assuming you're not a die hard capitalist, why champion an outdated energy technology when there are superior options. We aren't costing CO2 properly, but then we're also not costing decommissioning of nuclear generators or the waste disposal either.
  - mlyle 7y ago
    We're not? https://www.nrc.gov/waste/decommissioning/finan-assur.html https://www.nrc.gov/waste/decommissioning/finan-assur.html We also have a nuclear waste fund that previously received $750M in fees per year and sits at a balance of $44B, but that's been paused since there has been no effort to actually use the funds to dispose of waste.
    - toomuchtodo 7y ago
      Accumulating funds for an activity you can't or won't undertake isn't properly accounting, it's aspirational accounting. Talk is cheap. https://www.politico.com/story/2013/11/nuclear-waste-fiasco-100450 https://www.politico.com/story/2013/11/nuclear-waste-fiasco-... "Doing nothing often has a cost — and when it comes to storing the nation’s nuclear waste, the price is $38 billion and rising. That’s just the lowball estimate for how much taxpayers will wind up spending because of the government’s decades of dithering about how to handle the radioactive leftovers sitting at dozens of sites in 38 states. The final price will be higher unless the government starts collecting the waste by 2020, which almost nobody who tracks the issue expects. The first $15 billion is what the government spent on a controversial nuclear waste repository at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain until the Obama administration scrapped the project. The other $23 billion is the Energy Department’s estimate of the damages the government will have to pay to nuclear power utilities, which for the past 30 years have paid a fee to DOE on the promise that the feds would begin collecting their waste in 1998. Industry argues that the damages are closer to $50 billion — which raises the bottom line to $65 billion including the money spent on Yucca." So we're going to build more reactors you say? Where will that waste go? This is not an issue with renewables and batteries.
arkh 7y ago
> If you break ground today on a nuclear generator, you will not see your first kwh generated for at least a decade. If Climate Change is so important, declare a total war against it like during WW2 against the Axis. With most production geared toward nuclear energy, you should have generator up and running a lot faster.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- altacc 7y ago
  The list of things I don't want built in a rush definitely includes nuclear reactors!
  - DennisP 7y ago
    Yes, but it's also possible to go a lot slower than necessary. France converted their grid to 80% nuclear in 20 years and it seems to have worked out ok.
  - RockIslandLine 7y ago
    And yet a ten year timeline is obviously nonsense. When these reactors were built in the 1970s, groundbreaking to power production was often 5 years. Why is the process much worse now? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zion_Nuclear_Power_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zion_Nuclear_Power_Station
- deusofnull 7y ago
  Cant you do the same thing in regards to renewables?
melling 7y ago
Nuclear power is 20% of electricity in the United States. If you could replace it all in 3 years, wouldn’t we be better off replacing 20% of coal power over 3 years and wait a little longer on the nuclear power? If your math is right, half the grid would be zero carbon in 5 years.
- toomuchtodo 7y ago
  Yes, you would absolutely want to stave off nuclear generator retirements as long as (safely) possible to displace carbon producing generators. I use the example only to demonstrate the ease of renewable deployments versus nuclear. You could go do a green bond offer (or PPA contract), bid out the construction project, and build a solar generation facility next to a nuclear power plant to replace its capacity. You cannot do this to build a new nuclear plant. Coal power is going away, full stop, due to the cheap cost of natural gas and renewables. It is not cost competitive. Natural gas throttles fast; it's why California can have such a steep Duck Curve [1] and support GWs of solar generation capacity. It is a great stop gap until batteries catch up. Utility scale generating plants coming online over the next year (green = wind, yellow = solar) https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/images/figure_6_01_c.png https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/images/figure_6_01_c... Utility scale generating retirements over the next year (gray = coal) https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/images/figure_6_01_d.png https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/images/figure_6_01_d... [1] https://www.nrel.gov/news/program/2018/10-years-duck-curve.html https://www.nrel.gov/news/program/2018/10-years-duck-curve.h... (Ten Years of Analyzing the Duck Chart: How an NREL Discovery in 2008 Is Helping Enable More Solar on the Grid Today)
  - graeme 7y ago
    China started building coal again, and global coal production is rising. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia-pacific/years-after-freezing-new-projects-china-is-back-to-building-coal-power-plants/2019/11/20/b9075baa-0b38-11ea-8054-289aef6e38a3_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia-pacific/years-afte...
    - toomuchtodo 7y ago
DennisP 7y ago
From that Lazard report, PV with four hours storage costs 10 to 13 cents/kWh. That's "in front of the meter" which is the wholesale cost. For retail cost, commercial/industrial pays 22 to 38 cents/kWh, and residential pays 45 to 66 cents/kWh. That's with only four hours storage. That's a convenient amount since it's the excess typically generated by solar installations during the day, but to actually get through a windless night we might need more storage. Lazard's retail cost for storage alone is 48 to 104 cents/kWh. Plus you'll need extra solar dedicated to charging it. At this point people often bring up long-distance transmission. The report happens to include that too, with a cost starting at $2.35/kWh wholesale and going way up from there. None of this includes the overcapacity we'd need, to get through cloudy winter weeks. Lazard puts nuclear's cost at 12 to 19 cents/kWh but it's unclear whether that's retail cost; I suspect so since I only pay 12 cents/kWh on a grid that's heavy on nuclear. Wind/solar is very cheap when the grid is still mostly fossil, but to run a reliable carbon-free grid in areas without abundant hydro, nuclear is still cheaper. The cheapest combination is probably nuclear to the level of minimum nighttime load, and renewables for everything beyond that, without just enough storage to even out remaining discrepancies with demand.
- makapuf 7y ago
  What night base consumption is absolutely vital ? I understand that some of the consumption is necessary to function and that some other is made possible by the fact that fossil energy is as expensive to generate at night and that it's cheaper to function 24/7. But sometimes it can be cheaper to shut down widget X factory at night not to double storage capacity. Maybe this effect will be important, I don't know.
  - DennisP 7y ago
    If we have to build twice as many widget factories to make up for shutting them down at night, that's another cost to society that we should take into account. I've seen a lot of renewables advocates talk about "demand management" but not any estimate of this cost. There's also heating, air conditioning, street lights, etc. Aluminum plants, which can't shut down more than 4-5 hours without major damage from the metal solidifying. Before long, electric vehicles charging in people's garages at night; it'd be nice if we used them to supply the grid at night but that would require parking lots full of charging stations where everybody works, plus new infrastructure in people's houses, and some kind of incentive to get people to bother. All that costs money too.
philipkglass 7y ago
At the same time, you could replace all nuclear in the US currently operating in around three years (even compensating for capacity factor), solely from PV manufacturing capacity in the US. I think that you may have confused PV manufacturing capacity in the US with global PV manufacturing capacity. The US generated 807 TWh from nuclear power in 2018 [1]. If solar farms achieve a good-but-realistic capacity factor of 25%, you need 368 gigawatts of modules [2] to produce 807 TWh per year. That's about 3 years' worth of global module production at 2019 production rates. US domestic module production is currently below 10 GW per year. [1] https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-t-z/usa-nuclear-power.aspx https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-pr... [2] (807000 / (24*365)) / 0.25 = 368. Actually you need a bit more because most solar farms report capacity factor on an AC basis, and the inverter loading ratio is greater than 1.0. But close enough for a quick estimate.
- toomuchtodo 7y ago
  You are correct. Thank you for pointing out my mistake. https://www.solarpowerworldonline.com/u-s-solar-panel-manufacturers/ https://www.solarpowerworldonline.com/u-s-solar-panel-manufa...

throwaway122kk 7y ago

Greenpeace and the environmental movement have a lot to answer for, thanks to their knee jerk reaction to nuclear one of the technologies (note that I say "one of", there is a range of choices, not an either/or black/white choice, as is so often case on internet discussions nowadays) we ended up with more coal/oil power plants contributing towards climate change nuclear could have been the bridging technology buying us decades to build up real renewables (and/or fusion) and provide base load, but no cant have that, ideology trumps pragmatism

Pfhreak 7y ago
We are where we are now. Turn your effort towards the future -- how do we get to where we want to go from where we are today. The same attitude applies in engineering -- post-mortems aren't about assigning blame, they are about understanding the current state and how you'll address or mitigate any failures so they don't happen again. If you want to be backwards looking, at least focus on what the lesson is and how you will turn that lesson into concrete actions that prevent the same failure case in the future.
- melling 7y ago
  In the future, there are 450 nuclear power plants that will need to replaced as they are retired. There are about 100 nuclear plants in the United States generating 20% of the power.
baot 7y ago
Unfortunately, pragmatism like yours sounds unconvincing compared to the more passionate positions of somebody against nuclear fission power. It doesn't mix well with an expensive project with a long development time that risks being cancelled in a temporary shift of public opinion.
eterm 7y ago
Greenpeace isn't that influential, the reality is that the economics of nuclear never added up. Also, there really is something off-putting about leaving behind waste that lasts longer than civilisation has.

gscott 7y ago

Nuclear would be good but here in California nuclear waste is stored on the beach making it less enticing. Most people would prefer home solar.

arkh 7y ago
> nuclear waste is stored on the beach What?
- trixie_ 7y ago
  San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station
  - gscott 7y ago
    It is pretty crazy. The government swears up and down that it is completely safe but yet the concrete bunkers are already wearing away now after just a few years.

cogman10 7y ago

The time for nuclear has passed (at least fission. Fusion may still be a good future energy source). I say this because the cost of building a new nuclear plant is more expensive than wind and solar. Nuclear might still be a good solution for northern and southern habitats. But, at this point, where most pollution is produced, solar and wind are viable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source With all that said, the real viability of renewables is partially going to be determined by storage costs. Nuclear doesn't really solve the storage problem though (it is a base load only power source). Eventually in order to hit a 7.6% reduction goal we'll have to phase out natural gas peaker plants. To do that, we need storage. We certainly shouldn't be decommissioning nuclear plants in favor of renewables. I just don't think the time to build new nuclear is here. The cheaper and faster solution is new renewables.

arkh 7y ago
Here is what you get some days with solar and wind: https://i.imgur.com/m2snJgg.png https://i.imgur.com/m2snJgg.png . Germany using a lot of standard gas and coal generators.
- api 7y ago
  That doesn't really answer the point, which was that new solar and wind tend to be cheaper than new nuclear as of 2019.
  - jeffreyrogers 7y ago
    It doesn't matter how cheap it is. No sun and no wind means no power, which means using coal and other fossil fuels. Increasing use of natural gas has reduced emissions more than switching to renewables.
    - mrmanner 7y ago
      There's a thought provoking web site out there, Low Tech Magazine. Their basic idea is that electricity 100% of the time isn't as important for everyone and everyting as we think. The need for base capacity is still there of course, but if we allow unnecessary things to shut down when there's less supply we can get away with less. (Yes, of course we need to have electricity in hospitals and for heating 100% of the time - but if the newspapers are unavailable three days per year, or if some non-essential TV channels turn off when it's really cold - maybe not as bad.) https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/about.html https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/about.html

etaioinshrdlu 7y ago

Nuclear power seems to be considered too powerful to trust in the hands of many nations, making it kind of a non starter globally. My understanding is that with any type of nuclear plant, in a non trustworthy country, it would still be dependent on importing the fuel from a nuclear state, making it quite unappealing and a security risk for the purchasing state.

trixie_ 7y ago
I kinda wish there was a NASA equivalent for nuclear that would be given 10s of billions of dollars per year to R&D safer, next gen nuclear power plants. The organization could build/run those plants around the world in order to provide less developed countries with power while preventing proliferation.
- aschampion 7y ago
  An international version of this was Oppenheimer's vision (both for peaceful nuclear applications and weapons) which he expressed in his personal writings and in the Acheson–Lilienthal report. It was not looked favorably on by most of the US government and was the first step to the eventual revocation of his security clearance and removal from any position of influence.

_ph_ 7y ago

Funny, one of the most often heard argument of those, who try to fight against reducing CO2 in Germany is, that other countries, e.g. the US, are not reducing theirs and we should wait until they do. That sounds to me, that every country should do its best to cut CO2 and not wait for others to lead first.

ilikehurdles 7y ago
Kyoto Protocol and Paris Agreement sought to do that. Unfortunately the time span between the launch of such talks and the agreement of terms is around the time in office for 1 US Democratic president.
Junk_Collector 7y ago
That's funny because the US actually has reduced per capita CO2 emissions by about 20% back down to levels not seen since 1960. Edit: I suppose I should include a source. From the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC?locations=US https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC?location...

marcosdumay 7y ago

Just to add to the two very insightful replies you've already got, yes, nuclear power could have been a great contributor on the fight against Global Warming, 30 years ago. And yes, it is a shame that "environmentalist" movements made so much noise that they ensured we took the most harmful possible path. Those movements should be shamed, and very loudly so because they still didn't give up on fighting improvements and waste the popular focus on useless feel-nice ideas. But, well, today is not 30 years ago, and the same way that nuclear power never could be the complete solution to carbon based fuels, today it is too late for them to even be a large component of it. So, today pushing for nuclear does more harm than good.

whatshisface 7y ago
>So, today pushing for nuclear does more harm than good. You made the case for why you don't think nuclear can do any good (because it's too late), but what's the case for harm?
- gizmo686 7y ago
  Every dollar invested into nuclear is a dollar not invested into solar/wind/etc. Building new nuclear just usn't the most effective use of limited capital to reduce emmisions at this point.
  - tick_tock_tick 7y ago
    Every dollar in solar/wind/etc is wasted since it can't support the population without falling back to coal and gas. Renewable are a crapshoot relying on new storage technology that doesn't exist to make then viable. Why not focus on something we can 100% guarantee will fix the issues instead of leaving it to chance?
- marcosdumay 7y ago
  It is not only a distraction, but pushing a non-viable technology reduces the credibility of everybody that is trying to solve the problem with technology.
7y ago