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We shouldn't be using nuclear energy for power. Solar, wind and batteries will solve that. What we should be doing is using nuclear energy for HEAT. We need a

We shouldn't be using nuclear energy for power. Solar, wind and batteries will solve that. What we should be doing is using nuclear energy for HEAT. We need a LOT of heat for a variety of chemical and industrial processes, not to mention heating of homes in colder climates. For these uses nuclear fission has massive potential.

pauljurczak 7y ago
Baseline power based on batteries is not practical yet and it won't be for a while. Way too expensive and resource intensive.
- Retric 7y ago
  Solar + batteries averaged over the 24 hour demand curve are cheaper than current generation nuclear power plant operating 24/7/365. The issue is turning off nuclear power plants don’t significantly reduce costs so their competing head to head vs x hours @ 2c/kWh + y hours @ ~20c/kWh. At first glance it seems to slightly favor nuclear when it can operate 24/7, but nuclear power plants have a very long lifecycle 40+ years and projected battery costs for future replacements are lower than today’s values. Worse nuclear has a much longer lead time so you already need to compare battery prices ~5 years from now when you’re looking at building a new nuclear power plant. PS: Note grid batteries are significantly cheaper when they can share inverters with solar generation and be directly charged via DC. Standalone prices are higher. Also, fast discharge peaking power reduces battery lifetimes over longer discharge nighttime useage.
  - hokkos 7y ago
    In some countries maybe but in a lot of others there are days with almost no sun, batteries are not for seasonal storage.
    - e12e 7y ago
      I don't know about a lot. I live in Tromsø, Norway (69N). There aren't many populated areas this far north. And even here, solar is pretty decent for a lot of uses (Esp in combination with insulation to reduce the need for heating). We also have quite a lot of precipitation - but again, solar isn't hopeless even here. As for seasonal storage, I suspect some kind of kinetic/potential energy storage might be better than batteries? Like lifting a weight, or pumping a liquid up hill/up a tower?
      - manfredo 7y ago
        Over 99% of Norway's electricity is from hydroelectric plants: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_Norway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_Norway
        e12e 7y ago
        Yes, sure. It's hard to compete with already built hydro. So there's little incentive to move from cheap hydro. But for those that want, it's possible. And feasible. But with a solid grid built out - it's mostly as a supplement.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  - koheripbal 7y ago
    The important flaw in your argument is the use of the word average. A grid cannot make use of average power generation. It needs consistent power generation. ...and storage needed to make that happen is orders of magnitude higher than what's being factored in here.
    - Retric 7y ago
      Batteries inherently allow for peaking power, it’s nuclear that has issues with fluctuations in demand. So, by average I mean how much are you able to use directly vs how much do you need to store in batteries. To be more clear only using solar with battery backup you can provide 24/7 power that covers demand but at lower costs per kWh than current nuclear numbers operating 24/7 and vastly lower than trying to reach 100% nuclear generation in almost every country.
      - stjohnswarts 7y ago
        Your argument is completely shot down by the mere fact that 75% of France's power is provided by nuclear energy.
        Retric 7y ago
        Nope, ~60% of France’s power is provided by nuclear while 71.6% of it’s power production is nuclear. They export 86.3 TWh almost entirely nuclear power and import 26.1 TWh almost entirely non nuclear power (2016). Even then their nuclear capacity factor is 77% where it’s generally 90+% in the US because frequently nobody want’s to import electricity from France. So, France’s high percentage of nuclear power results roughly 17% higher costs per kWh for nuclear power due to oversupply. Or more depending on what it exports at. Further, the more you increase nuclear capacity globally, the less anyone is going to be importing it at night and weekends when everyone is over supplied.
Retric 7y ago
That’s one of those ideas that seems great on the surface but is much more expensive to implement than you might think. Moving heat around involves significant energy loss over long distances. That’s offset with combined heat and power generation which is very popular in Russia etc, but on it’s own it’s a tougher sell.
christophilus 7y ago
I wonder, though, how much we could bring the price of nuclear down if we were to actively develop the technology, rather than letting it languish. I also wonder how much toxic waste batteries will produce vs nuclear. Do we have clear numbers on that?
hokkos 7y ago
Why not both ? With cogeneration you raise the efficiency from only electric generation from 40% to 80% with heat, but in summer you can still generate electricity only. And SMR are better positioned than classic reactor because the smaller size and inherent passive security from surface to volume problem (heat raise with volume in power of 3 and cooling only with surface in power of 2) make them easier to build them near populated cities.
- radicalbyte 7y ago
  I should have been more nuanced: we shouldn't be building out the current design of fission power in order to decarbonize our electricity production. The biggest reason is that it just takes far too long to build: we're talking 15-20 years. Wind and solar can scale far more quickly than that. Closing existing nuclear power plants like they're doing in Germany is absolute lunacy. For heat that timeline is acceptable given that it can be "decarbonized" by switching to burning biomass to cover the transition. If we could build safe nuclear electric plants within a reasonable timeframe and cost then we should absolutely do it (this would make so much sense in huge countries like the US or China because you can have the reactors located well away from large populations).
koheripbal 7y ago
The batteries at the scale needed to provide consistent baseload, simply do not exist and are still entirely theoretical at this point.
- stjohnswarts 7y ago
  Yes I try to bring it up to my "only natural sources!" friends but they won't hear it. We need at least a 100 fold improvement in energy storage to make it practical and provide "base load" on par with what we have now with nuclear and fossil fuels.
otabdeveloper4 7y ago
> Solar, wind and batteries will solve that. Pretty sure that's not true if you account for total costs. (Including the energy and materials budget for making solar panels and batteries at scale.)

pauljurczak 7y ago

Baseline power based on batteries is not practical yet and it won't be for a while. Way too expensive and resource intensive.

Retric 7y ago
Solar + batteries averaged over the 24 hour demand curve are cheaper than current generation nuclear power plant operating 24/7/365. The issue is turning off nuclear power plants don’t significantly reduce costs so their competing head to head vs x hours @ 2c/kWh + y hours @ ~20c/kWh. At first glance it seems to slightly favor nuclear when it can operate 24/7, but nuclear power plants have a very long lifecycle 40+ years and projected battery costs for future replacements are lower than today’s values. Worse nuclear has a much longer lead time so you already need to compare battery prices ~5 years from now when you’re looking at building a new nuclear power plant. PS: Note grid batteries are significantly cheaper when they can share inverters with solar generation and be directly charged via DC. Standalone prices are higher. Also, fast discharge peaking power reduces battery lifetimes over longer discharge nighttime useage.
- hokkos 7y ago
  In some countries maybe but in a lot of others there are days with almost no sun, batteries are not for seasonal storage.
  - e12e 7y ago
    I don't know about a lot. I live in Tromsø, Norway (69N). There aren't many populated areas this far north. And even here, solar is pretty decent for a lot of uses (Esp in combination with insulation to reduce the need for heating). We also have quite a lot of precipitation - but again, solar isn't hopeless even here. As for seasonal storage, I suspect some kind of kinetic/potential energy storage might be better than batteries? Like lifting a weight, or pumping a liquid up hill/up a tower?
    - manfredo 7y ago
      Over 99% of Norway's electricity is from hydroelectric plants: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_Norway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_Norway
      - e12e 7y ago
        Yes, sure. It's hard to compete with already built hydro. So there's little incentive to move from cheap hydro. But for those that want, it's possible. And feasible. But with a solid grid built out - it's mostly as a supplement.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- koheripbal 7y ago
  The important flaw in your argument is the use of the word average. A grid cannot make use of average power generation. It needs consistent power generation. ...and storage needed to make that happen is orders of magnitude higher than what's being factored in here.
  - Retric 7y ago
    Batteries inherently allow for peaking power, it’s nuclear that has issues with fluctuations in demand. So, by average I mean how much are you able to use directly vs how much do you need to store in batteries. To be more clear only using solar with battery backup you can provide 24/7 power that covers demand but at lower costs per kWh than current nuclear numbers operating 24/7 and vastly lower than trying to reach 100% nuclear generation in almost every country.
    - stjohnswarts 7y ago
      Your argument is completely shot down by the mere fact that 75% of France's power is provided by nuclear energy.
      - Retric 7y ago
        Nope, ~60% of France’s power is provided by nuclear while 71.6% of it’s power production is nuclear. They export 86.3 TWh almost entirely nuclear power and import 26.1 TWh almost entirely non nuclear power (2016). Even then their nuclear capacity factor is 77% where it’s generally 90+% in the US because frequently nobody want’s to import electricity from France. So, France’s high percentage of nuclear power results roughly 17% higher costs per kWh for nuclear power due to oversupply. Or more depending on what it exports at. Further, the more you increase nuclear capacity globally, the less anyone is going to be importing it at night and weekends when everyone is over supplied.

Retric 7y ago

That’s one of those ideas that seems great on the surface but is much more expensive to implement than you might think. Moving heat around involves significant energy loss over long distances. That’s offset with combined heat and power generation which is very popular in Russia etc, but on it’s own it’s a tougher sell.

christophilus 7y ago

I wonder, though, how much we could bring the price of nuclear down if we were to actively develop the technology, rather than letting it languish. I also wonder how much toxic waste batteries will produce vs nuclear. Do we have clear numbers on that?

hokkos 7y ago

Why not both ? With cogeneration you raise the efficiency from only electric generation from 40% to 80% with heat, but in summer you can still generate electricity only. And SMR are better positioned than classic reactor because the smaller size and inherent passive security from surface to volume problem (heat raise with volume in power of 3 and cooling only with surface in power of 2) make them easier to build them near populated cities.

radicalbyte 7y ago
I should have been more nuanced: we shouldn't be building out the current design of fission power in order to decarbonize our electricity production. The biggest reason is that it just takes far too long to build: we're talking 15-20 years. Wind and solar can scale far more quickly than that. Closing existing nuclear power plants like they're doing in Germany is absolute lunacy. For heat that timeline is acceptable given that it can be "decarbonized" by switching to burning biomass to cover the transition. If we could build safe nuclear electric plants within a reasonable timeframe and cost then we should absolutely do it (this would make so much sense in huge countries like the US or China because you can have the reactors located well away from large populations).

koheripbal 7y ago

The batteries at the scale needed to provide consistent baseload, simply do not exist and are still entirely theoretical at this point.

stjohnswarts 7y ago
Yes I try to bring it up to my "only natural sources!" friends but they won't hear it. We need at least a 100 fold improvement in energy storage to make it practical and provide "base load" on par with what we have now with nuclear and fossil fuels.

otabdeveloper4 7y ago

> Solar, wind and batteries will solve that. Pretty sure that's not true if you account for total costs. (Including the energy and materials budget for making solar panels and batteries at scale.)