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The claim is that a renewable grid would be manageable and affordable IF we could produce enough solar and wind installations, but that even optimistic projecti

The claim is that a renewable grid would be manageable and affordable IF we could produce enough solar and wind installations, but that even optimistic projections don't have enough supply (of solar/wind/etc. installations) to get there in a timely manner.

pfdietz 7y ago
But this logic makes little sense. It's not like there's some fundamental limit to the supply of wind or solar equipment. If we want more, we build more factories. Nuclear advocates are implicitly admitting this when they propose building new reactors at large scale for which there are no existing factories.
- AnthonyMouse 7y ago
  It's an economic issue. Solar reaches a price advantage in Phoenix before it does in Toronto because there's more sun, so people in Arizona are willing to pay a higher price for panels. Or there is more demand during the day so it's profitable much sooner to buy solar to satisfy the daytime/nighttime load differential than if you need to combine it with batteries. So you build a bunch of panel factories, sell panels to Arizona and pay off most of the fixed costs of building those factories. But then the markets willing to pay higher prices get saturated. Once you've sold them as many panels as they need, they already have them and stop buying as many. Lower demand. So by supply and demand, the price comes down. That's good -- now you're competitive in Northern California and people start buying panels there. But it's also bad -- it's profitable to keep operating your existing factories which are already built, but at the lower price it's not as profitable to build new ones. Eventually the price gets low enough that production capacity stops growing. You can use the existing production capacity to get to 100% eventually, but if you wanted to do it faster you would need higher prices to justify building more factories. Only then there would be less demand, so you still can't increase the growth rate. Nuclear comes at it from the other end. Can't compete with solar in Phoenix for the daytime peak but it can in Toronto for baseload. Which means there is greater demand for solar for some uses and greater demand for nuclear for other uses, and you replace carbon faster when you build both at once.
  - pfdietz 7y ago
    New nuclear is not competitive in Toronto. Ontario gave up on it ten years ago, when the only bid they got came in a factor of 3 too high. https://www.thestar.com/business/2009/07/14/26b_cost_killed_nuclear_bid.html https://www.thestar.com/business/2009/07/14/26b_cost_killed_...
    - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
      Nuclear is the second largest generation source in Canada after hydro. One bidder was not competitive ten years ago. And it's a bit silly to argue against doing things that make it more cost effective to build something (improving regulatory efficiency, increasing production scale) by arguing that it costs too much to build. The whole idea is that if we did the things then it wouldn't cost as much. These NuScale reactors cost less (even per MW) than that bid in Ontario, do they not?
      - pfdietz 7y ago
        There were no other compliant bidders ten years ago. What was notable about that process was the province required bidders to taking on risks that the province would not back. The only bidder willing to do that (Areva bid but did not do so, so their bid was not compliant) priced the cost of the risk into the bid. This demonstrated that, properly priced, nuclear is far out of the running economically. It only gets built when the risks are forced on others (taxpayers, ratepayers) outside a fair competitive process. In retrospect, this should have been a serious warning that other new builds in the "nuclear renaissance" were extremely risky, as they turned out to be. Given this history, I would believe NuScale only after they've built their Nth-of-a-kind system on budget and aren't bankrupt.
        AnthonyMouse 7y ago
        > What was notable about that process was the province required bidders to taking on risks that the province would not back. The only bidder willing to do that (Areva bid but did not do so, so their bid was not compliant) priced the cost of the risk into the bid. The problem with these risk calculations is that you're asking a private insurance company to issue a very large policy with a small probability of payout. The major cost of those policies isn't actually in the risk itself, it's the cost of holding enough capital in reserve to be able to satisfy the policy size independent of the risk probability. They're not allowed to just invest that money in the stock market, so you're essentially paying them to forego the market rate of return on a huge pile of money for the entire term of the policy, even if no claim is ever filed. That's why it's typically a government providing the insurance in these cases -- they're not required to hold the money in reserve so they don't have to effectively pay interest to hold money that might never actually have to be paid out. Also notice that the competition there still wasn't solar, it was fossil fuels. And if you want to talk about pricing in the that risk then nuclear looks very attractive.

pfdietz 7y ago

But this logic makes little sense. It's not like there's some fundamental limit to the supply of wind or solar equipment. If we want more, we build more factories. Nuclear advocates are implicitly admitting this when they propose building new reactors at large scale for which there are no existing factories.

AnthonyMouse 7y ago
It's an economic issue. Solar reaches a price advantage in Phoenix before it does in Toronto because there's more sun, so people in Arizona are willing to pay a higher price for panels. Or there is more demand during the day so it's profitable much sooner to buy solar to satisfy the daytime/nighttime load differential than if you need to combine it with batteries. So you build a bunch of panel factories, sell panels to Arizona and pay off most of the fixed costs of building those factories. But then the markets willing to pay higher prices get saturated. Once you've sold them as many panels as they need, they already have them and stop buying as many. Lower demand. So by supply and demand, the price comes down. That's good -- now you're competitive in Northern California and people start buying panels there. But it's also bad -- it's profitable to keep operating your existing factories which are already built, but at the lower price it's not as profitable to build new ones. Eventually the price gets low enough that production capacity stops growing. You can use the existing production capacity to get to 100% eventually, but if you wanted to do it faster you would need higher prices to justify building more factories. Only then there would be less demand, so you still can't increase the growth rate. Nuclear comes at it from the other end. Can't compete with solar in Phoenix for the daytime peak but it can in Toronto for baseload. Which means there is greater demand for solar for some uses and greater demand for nuclear for other uses, and you replace carbon faster when you build both at once.
- pfdietz 7y ago
  New nuclear is not competitive in Toronto. Ontario gave up on it ten years ago, when the only bid they got came in a factor of 3 too high. https://www.thestar.com/business/2009/07/14/26b_cost_killed_nuclear_bid.html https://www.thestar.com/business/2009/07/14/26b_cost_killed_...
  - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
    Nuclear is the second largest generation source in Canada after hydro. One bidder was not competitive ten years ago. And it's a bit silly to argue against doing things that make it more cost effective to build something (improving regulatory efficiency, increasing production scale) by arguing that it costs too much to build. The whole idea is that if we did the things then it wouldn't cost as much. These NuScale reactors cost less (even per MW) than that bid in Ontario, do they not?
    - pfdietz 7y ago
      There were no other compliant bidders ten years ago. What was notable about that process was the province required bidders to taking on risks that the province would not back. The only bidder willing to do that (Areva bid but did not do so, so their bid was not compliant) priced the cost of the risk into the bid. This demonstrated that, properly priced, nuclear is far out of the running economically. It only gets built when the risks are forced on others (taxpayers, ratepayers) outside a fair competitive process. In retrospect, this should have been a serious warning that other new builds in the "nuclear renaissance" were extremely risky, as they turned out to be. Given this history, I would believe NuScale only after they've built their Nth-of-a-kind system on budget and aren't bankrupt.
      - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
        > What was notable about that process was the province required bidders to taking on risks that the province would not back. The only bidder willing to do that (Areva bid but did not do so, so their bid was not compliant) priced the cost of the risk into the bid. The problem with these risk calculations is that you're asking a private insurance company to issue a very large policy with a small probability of payout. The major cost of those policies isn't actually in the risk itself, it's the cost of holding enough capital in reserve to be able to satisfy the policy size independent of the risk probability. They're not allowed to just invest that money in the stock market, so you're essentially paying them to forego the market rate of return on a huge pile of money for the entire term of the policy, even if no claim is ever filed. That's why it's typically a government providing the insurance in these cases -- they're not required to hold the money in reserve so they don't have to effectively pay interest to hold money that might never actually have to be paid out. Also notice that the competition there still wasn't solar, it was fossil fuels. And if you want to talk about pricing in the that risk then nuclear looks very attractive.