4 ms·

I'm in favor of an 80/20 policy. 80% renewables, 20% nuclear. The thing is, we're already at 20% nuclear. So the "debate" over it is largely a distraction/de

I'm in favor of an 80/20 policy. 80% renewables, 20% nuclear. The thing is, we're already at 20% nuclear. So the "debate" over it is largely a distraction/delay-tactic.

pfdietz 7y ago
But that doesn't work. If you go 80% renewable, there will be long periods where 100% of demand is being satisfied by the renewables (because they are so variable). This makes the economics of nuclear just horrible, as it needs to be selling its power at a good price most of the time to make ends meet. Nuclear and high penetration renewables just don't mix well.
- rtpg 7y ago
  Nationalizing the power grid reduces the problems caused by atomization of the players
  - pfdietz 7y ago
    The ecomomic argument against nuclear + renewables doesn't depend on who owns the grid.
- fulafel 7y ago
  They should mix ok there are no fossil sources messing up the market in your 80/20 scenario: If people are willing to pay enough for the 20% of time that nuclear stays in business. If not, we make do with just renewables. The practical issue how how the nuclear plant sells electricity can be handled either with contracts (they could sell electricity to resellers in "one month of continuous production" types of units) or by running them in load-following mode, french/german style, whichever is more profitable. In practice it seems fairly likely that there are many electricity applications where is pretty inelastic up to at least 10x current cost, so there will be demand for some amount nuclear power.
  - pfdietz 7y ago
    No, what happens in the no-fossil scenario is the last 10-20% is handled by long term storage, in particular renewable hydrogen with combustion turbines. Sure, the round trip efficiency is lousy, but it's a hell of a lot cheaper than trying to shoehorn nuclear into covering that last 20%.
    - manfredo 7y ago
      Is it? France generates over 70% of it's electricity from nuclear energy, at costs cheaper than most of its neighbors. Building up massive hydrogen storage and generation infrastructure is likely more expensive than building nuclear plants. The high overhead cost of nuclear is what makes it difficult to fund, the operating costs are minimal.
      - pfdietz 7y ago
        France's costs are opaque. They didn't separate military and civilian programs, and the information is now not available. In any case, going forward, France's cost for new reactors are as exorbitant as in the US, if not worse. The new reactor at Flamanville has been a disaster.
        manfredo 7y ago
        I found a source claiming that the total cost of their nuclearization program was 400 billion Francs (at 1993 inflation): https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-a-f/france.aspx https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-pr... At an exchange rate of 1 franc (1993) to 1 usd (1993) and 1 usd (1993) to 1.77 usd (2019), this yields a cost of 120 billion dollars. Not bad to decarbonize the electricity supply of a country with a GDP more than 1/8 that of the US. The nature of construction nuclear plants (and many other engineering products) is that that serial production is cheaper than the first several models, since the cost of development needs to be recouped. There are only 2 EPRs in operation and 4 in construction. By comparison, during the Messemer plan, 30 reactors of the same 900 MW design and 20 reactors of the 1300 MW design were constructed. This isn't counting reactors exported to different countries. Of course first 6 EPRs are going to be more expensive per unit as compared to serial runs in the dozens.
- adrianN 7y ago
  You still need storage when you go 80% renewable, so any extra production by renewables can be used to generate hydrogen or charge batteries or something so that the nuclear plants can still sell their energy. It's not like they don't get any subsidies today, there is no reason why they shouldn't get any in the future. It's just a question of what is cheaper or faster to achieve. I don't know enough details to say either way.
  - pfdietz 7y ago
    Sure, nuclear could sell into storage, but most of the time that storage will be charged up with renewables, which are much cheaper. At best, nuclear will get rock bottom $ for that, much less than what they need to charge. So this doesn't save nuclear.
  - malpighien 7y ago
    I don't think here are available storage solution for renewables and even if there was it would need to be a solution scalable without a risk of running out of resources to make the batteries. Renewables are great but they work on the shoulders of nuclear/coal which need to pick up the load when there is no sun/wind. Renewables feel like paying more for getting less with different but not necessarily less pollution issues.
    - mrec 7y ago
      Storage doesn't have to mean batteries. I'd have thought approaches like pumped hydro [1] could scale pretty well. I vaguely recall a similar story from a couple of years back that basically involved lifting giant concrete blocks. [1] http://www.british-hydro.org/pumped-storage/ http://www.british-hydro.org/pumped-storage/
      - malpighien 7y ago
        If those solutions were viable at scale then countries like germany or england using lot of renewables and coal (gas or gb) would have been using them already.
- hwillis 7y ago
  > This makes the economics of nuclear just horrible, as it needs to be selling its power at a good price most of the time to make ends meet. Nuclear is not uneconomical just because it only needs to run 50% of the time. That would just mean the price is double; there's no technical obstacle there. If twice as expensive is too expensive to compete with batteries (it is not), then nuclear is not economical period.
  - pfdietz 7y ago
    Twice as expensive is possibly not too expensive to compete with batteries for LONG TERM storage. It's far too expensive to compete with batteries for diurnal load leveling. DC coupled batteries are already helping solar displace gas in the US west, for example, at price points nuclear can only dream of. Renewables + batteries, and + hydrogen for rare lulls/seasonal storage, will leave no place for new nuclear. The system will optimize out to 0% nuclear, once existing nuclear plants are gone.
    - hwillis 7y ago
      IMO people, even experts, still hugely underestimate the importance of solar to long term storage. Utility solar is very uncommon in snowy parts of the US, but it's the only place you can reasonably generate winter power. The optimum winter angle in Massachusetts is just 24 degrees from vertical! That angle is so crazy steep that it can't possibly collect snow, but it generates several times more power than the rooftop panels that make up ~80% of MA solar. Since the total sunlight is 3.5x weaker in winter and demand is much higher, that's hugely important. The darkest winter months between October to February (~4 months total where insolation is ~1/2 annual average) would mean virtually no solar if MA does not build utility scale plants. Nuclear and wind would be flat out the only ways to supply that without emitting CO2. However, if panels are angled for winter use they can easily outcompete nuclear. Nuclear running 4 months per year would cost 3x as much as normal. Overbuilding solar by 3x and angling it at 24 degrees would cost over 3x as much and generate less than the nuclear (because of cloudy days), but all that power would be available year-round at no extra cost. The amount of storage required would be almost the same, since it only needs to account for the shorter length of the day.

I'm in favor of an 80/20 policy. 80% renewables, 20% nuclear. The thing is, we're already at 20% nuclear. So the "debate" over it is largely a distraction/delay-tactic.

pfdietz 7y ago

But that doesn't work. If you go 80% renewable, there will be long periods where 100% of demand is being satisfied by the renewables (because they are so variable). This makes the economics of nuclear just horrible, as it needs to be selling its power at a good price most of the time to make ends meet. Nuclear and high penetration renewables just don't mix well.

rtpg 7y ago
Nationalizing the power grid reduces the problems caused by atomization of the players
- pfdietz 7y ago
  The ecomomic argument against nuclear + renewables doesn't depend on who owns the grid.
fulafel 7y ago
They should mix ok there are no fossil sources messing up the market in your 80/20 scenario: If people are willing to pay enough for the 20% of time that nuclear stays in business. If not, we make do with just renewables. The practical issue how how the nuclear plant sells electricity can be handled either with contracts (they could sell electricity to resellers in "one month of continuous production" types of units) or by running them in load-following mode, french/german style, whichever is more profitable. In practice it seems fairly likely that there are many electricity applications where is pretty inelastic up to at least 10x current cost, so there will be demand for some amount nuclear power.
- pfdietz 7y ago
  No, what happens in the no-fossil scenario is the last 10-20% is handled by long term storage, in particular renewable hydrogen with combustion turbines. Sure, the round trip efficiency is lousy, but it's a hell of a lot cheaper than trying to shoehorn nuclear into covering that last 20%.
  - manfredo 7y ago
    Is it? France generates over 70% of it's electricity from nuclear energy, at costs cheaper than most of its neighbors. Building up massive hydrogen storage and generation infrastructure is likely more expensive than building nuclear plants. The high overhead cost of nuclear is what makes it difficult to fund, the operating costs are minimal.
    - pfdietz 7y ago
      France's costs are opaque. They didn't separate military and civilian programs, and the information is now not available. In any case, going forward, France's cost for new reactors are as exorbitant as in the US, if not worse. The new reactor at Flamanville has been a disaster.
      - manfredo 7y ago
        I found a source claiming that the total cost of their nuclearization program was 400 billion Francs (at 1993 inflation): https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-a-f/france.aspx https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-pr... At an exchange rate of 1 franc (1993) to 1 usd (1993) and 1 usd (1993) to 1.77 usd (2019), this yields a cost of 120 billion dollars. Not bad to decarbonize the electricity supply of a country with a GDP more than 1/8 that of the US. The nature of construction nuclear plants (and many other engineering products) is that that serial production is cheaper than the first several models, since the cost of development needs to be recouped. There are only 2 EPRs in operation and 4 in construction. By comparison, during the Messemer plan, 30 reactors of the same 900 MW design and 20 reactors of the 1300 MW design were constructed. This isn't counting reactors exported to different countries. Of course first 6 EPRs are going to be more expensive per unit as compared to serial runs in the dozens.
adrianN 7y ago
You still need storage when you go 80% renewable, so any extra production by renewables can be used to generate hydrogen or charge batteries or something so that the nuclear plants can still sell their energy. It's not like they don't get any subsidies today, there is no reason why they shouldn't get any in the future. It's just a question of what is cheaper or faster to achieve. I don't know enough details to say either way.
- pfdietz 7y ago
  Sure, nuclear could sell into storage, but most of the time that storage will be charged up with renewables, which are much cheaper. At best, nuclear will get rock bottom $ for that, much less than what they need to charge. So this doesn't save nuclear.
- malpighien 7y ago
  I don't think here are available storage solution for renewables and even if there was it would need to be a solution scalable without a risk of running out of resources to make the batteries. Renewables are great but they work on the shoulders of nuclear/coal which need to pick up the load when there is no sun/wind. Renewables feel like paying more for getting less with different but not necessarily less pollution issues.
  - mrec 7y ago
    Storage doesn't have to mean batteries. I'd have thought approaches like pumped hydro [1] could scale pretty well. I vaguely recall a similar story from a couple of years back that basically involved lifting giant concrete blocks. [1] http://www.british-hydro.org/pumped-storage/ http://www.british-hydro.org/pumped-storage/
    - malpighien 7y ago
      If those solutions were viable at scale then countries like germany or england using lot of renewables and coal (gas or gb) would have been using them already.
hwillis 7y ago
> This makes the economics of nuclear just horrible, as it needs to be selling its power at a good price most of the time to make ends meet. Nuclear is not uneconomical just because it only needs to run 50% of the time. That would just mean the price is double; there's no technical obstacle there. If twice as expensive is too expensive to compete with batteries (it is not), then nuclear is not economical period.
- pfdietz 7y ago
  Twice as expensive is possibly not too expensive to compete with batteries for LONG TERM storage. It's far too expensive to compete with batteries for diurnal load leveling. DC coupled batteries are already helping solar displace gas in the US west, for example, at price points nuclear can only dream of. Renewables + batteries, and + hydrogen for rare lulls/seasonal storage, will leave no place for new nuclear. The system will optimize out to 0% nuclear, once existing nuclear plants are gone.
  - hwillis 7y ago
    IMO people, even experts, still hugely underestimate the importance of solar to long term storage. Utility solar is very uncommon in snowy parts of the US, but it's the only place you can reasonably generate winter power. The optimum winter angle in Massachusetts is just 24 degrees from vertical! That angle is so crazy steep that it can't possibly collect snow, but it generates several times more power than the rooftop panels that make up ~80% of MA solar. Since the total sunlight is 3.5x weaker in winter and demand is much higher, that's hugely important. The darkest winter months between October to February (~4 months total where insolation is ~1/2 annual average) would mean virtually no solar if MA does not build utility scale plants. Nuclear and wind would be flat out the only ways to supply that without emitting CO2. However, if panels are angled for winter use they can easily outcompete nuclear. Nuclear running 4 months per year would cost 3x as much as normal. Overbuilding solar by 3x and angling it at 24 degrees would cost over 3x as much and generate less than the nuclear (because of cloudy days), but all that power would be available year-round at no extra cost. The amount of storage required would be almost the same, since it only needs to account for the shorter length of the day.