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That was indeed in 2004 – long before nuclear stopped being cost-competitive with renewable energies. Oh, and renewables are also faster to deploy than nuclear

That was indeed in 2004 – long before nuclear stopped being cost-competitive with renewable energies. Oh, and renewables are also faster to deploy than nuclear plants (which take years to build).

StavrosK 7y ago
But renewables are very bursty and don't allow you to plan well, so we need both.
- pfdietz 7y ago
  The intermittency of renewables means nuclear doesn't help. Nuclear needs a constant market at a good average price to make sense. Renewables, even when they do not cover 100%, crash the price often enough to kill nuclear's business case. As renewables build out, the prospects for nuclear will only get worse. At this point, it's a delaying action by utilities to try to get their existing reactors profitable enough to keep from shutting them down. New reactors are not close to making economic sense, and the effective CO2 taxes that would be needed to make them so would be very large.
  - StavrosK 7y ago
    Isn't that because we're using fossil fuels for the base load? What happens when all we have is renewables?
    - pfdietz 7y ago
      Fossil fuel baseload is also incompatible with renewables, although not as badly because more of its costs are variable. This is one of the reasons coal is hurting. Think carefully about the economics. Suppose we want to use nuclear to cover the (say) 20% of the time renewables + short term storage might not cover. Nuclear's cost of power would be greatly inflated over what it would be if it were baseload. The effective CO2 tax to make that cheaper than (say) gas turbines burning natural gas would be outrageous, over $1000/ton. A vast array of CO2-reducing changes would occur before that. It would also likely be cheaper to use renewable hydrogen (from electrolysis, stored underground) in gas turbines for that last bit. The round trip efficiency would be lousy, but it would still be cheaper than using nuclear there. View it another way: if we have really cheap power most of the time, insisting we use nuclear then, just so nuclear would be available in that other 20%, would incur a huge opportunity cost. That cost should properly be assigned to the place nuclear is being depended on (that 20%).
      - StavrosK 7y ago
        That makes sense, although I don't know enough to refute it. However, renewables covering 80% sounds very high to me without some large-scale energy storage solutions.
        pfdietz 7y ago
        Solar is getting so cheap that the first thing one would do is over-install and curtail it. In some places, the solar gets installed at near-vertical angles to maximize output in winter. The next is diurnal storage. The final 20% or so is seasonal and rare long outages due to weather. Dispatchable demand is also a big possibility, especially if it can exploit the times the curtailed output is almost free. There was a study in Minnesota that solar and wind could get to 70% of the market there before storage would make sense. The crossover point depends on economic details.
      - acidburnNSA 7y ago
        I'm sure you're aware that nuclear heat and electricity could be stored and/or distributed just like renewable stuff in the vast energy storage system of the future. I still would like an answer from you on EROI
        pfdietz 7y ago
        There is no point charging batteries with expensive nuclear energy when cheap renewable energy can be used. And the operator of a battery can shift when they are charged, making nuclear even less likely to be the cheapest source available at any time. So this doesn't save nuclear. Heat is difficult to transport any great distance, and the reactors we have today produce only moderate grade heat, which isn't very valuable. And if PV becomes a bit cheaper, then the cost per joule of its power will become comparable to the cost per thermal joule of natural gas. In that situation, consumers will shift to resistive heat, and be able to bank that heat in large thermal stores. This will provide enormous cheap storage capacity for that solar energy. EROI of renewables is just fine, some horribly flawed claims to the opposite notwithstanding. In particular, the EROI of PV was estimated to be about 8 in Europe -- but that assumes one puts the solar-powered PV factories IN EUROPE, rather than in a location with more sun. The real issue there is that energy-intensive industry will flee Europe in a solar-powered world.
  - 7952 7y ago
    It needs government backed strike prices, which is definitely possible and somewhat unavoidable for countries with an energy market (like the UK).
- natch 7y ago
  This is so debunked, I don’t know why the industry keeps repeating this falsehood. Google “Hornsdale” for just one example.
  - keanzu 7y ago
    Anything is viable if you want to pay Australia's electricity prices. Australia (Hornsdale) enjoys some of the highest electricity costs in the world despite being a major coal producer and using coal for 75% of their electricity.
    - natch 7y ago
      We have highly variable prices here in the US. It's all about demand. During periods of peak demand, energy prices spike, and providers bring more costly dirty plants online as a stopgap. This has bad environmental effects, and is expensive in money terms as well. Batteries offer a compelling solution to such problems even outside of places like Australia.

That was indeed in 2004 – long before nuclear stopped being cost-competitive with renewable energies. Oh, and renewables are also faster to deploy than nuclear plants (which take years to build).

StavrosK 7y ago

But renewables are very bursty and don't allow you to plan well, so we need both.

pfdietz 7y ago
The intermittency of renewables means nuclear doesn't help. Nuclear needs a constant market at a good average price to make sense. Renewables, even when they do not cover 100%, crash the price often enough to kill nuclear's business case. As renewables build out, the prospects for nuclear will only get worse. At this point, it's a delaying action by utilities to try to get their existing reactors profitable enough to keep from shutting them down. New reactors are not close to making economic sense, and the effective CO2 taxes that would be needed to make them so would be very large.
- StavrosK 7y ago
  Isn't that because we're using fossil fuels for the base load? What happens when all we have is renewables?
  - pfdietz 7y ago
    Fossil fuel baseload is also incompatible with renewables, although not as badly because more of its costs are variable. This is one of the reasons coal is hurting. Think carefully about the economics. Suppose we want to use nuclear to cover the (say) 20% of the time renewables + short term storage might not cover. Nuclear's cost of power would be greatly inflated over what it would be if it were baseload. The effective CO2 tax to make that cheaper than (say) gas turbines burning natural gas would be outrageous, over $1000/ton. A vast array of CO2-reducing changes would occur before that. It would also likely be cheaper to use renewable hydrogen (from electrolysis, stored underground) in gas turbines for that last bit. The round trip efficiency would be lousy, but it would still be cheaper than using nuclear there. View it another way: if we have really cheap power most of the time, insisting we use nuclear then, just so nuclear would be available in that other 20%, would incur a huge opportunity cost. That cost should properly be assigned to the place nuclear is being depended on (that 20%).
    - StavrosK 7y ago
      That makes sense, although I don't know enough to refute it. However, renewables covering 80% sounds very high to me without some large-scale energy storage solutions.
      - pfdietz 7y ago
        Solar is getting so cheap that the first thing one would do is over-install and curtail it. In some places, the solar gets installed at near-vertical angles to maximize output in winter. The next is diurnal storage. The final 20% or so is seasonal and rare long outages due to weather. Dispatchable demand is also a big possibility, especially if it can exploit the times the curtailed output is almost free. There was a study in Minnesota that solar and wind could get to 70% of the market there before storage would make sense. The crossover point depends on economic details.
    - acidburnNSA 7y ago
      I'm sure you're aware that nuclear heat and electricity could be stored and/or distributed just like renewable stuff in the vast energy storage system of the future. I still would like an answer from you on EROI
      - pfdietz 7y ago
        There is no point charging batteries with expensive nuclear energy when cheap renewable energy can be used. And the operator of a battery can shift when they are charged, making nuclear even less likely to be the cheapest source available at any time. So this doesn't save nuclear. Heat is difficult to transport any great distance, and the reactors we have today produce only moderate grade heat, which isn't very valuable. And if PV becomes a bit cheaper, then the cost per joule of its power will become comparable to the cost per thermal joule of natural gas. In that situation, consumers will shift to resistive heat, and be able to bank that heat in large thermal stores. This will provide enormous cheap storage capacity for that solar energy. EROI of renewables is just fine, some horribly flawed claims to the opposite notwithstanding. In particular, the EROI of PV was estimated to be about 8 in Europe -- but that assumes one puts the solar-powered PV factories IN EUROPE, rather than in a location with more sun. The real issue there is that energy-intensive industry will flee Europe in a solar-powered world.
- 7952 7y ago
  It needs government backed strike prices, which is definitely possible and somewhat unavoidable for countries with an energy market (like the UK).
natch 7y ago
This is so debunked, I don’t know why the industry keeps repeating this falsehood. Google “Hornsdale” for just one example.
- keanzu 7y ago
  Anything is viable if you want to pay Australia's electricity prices. Australia (Hornsdale) enjoys some of the highest electricity costs in the world despite being a major coal producer and using coal for 75% of their electricity.
  - natch 7y ago
    We have highly variable prices here in the US. It's all about demand. During periods of peak demand, energy prices spike, and providers bring more costly dirty plants online as a stopgap. This has bad environmental effects, and is expensive in money terms as well. Batteries offer a compelling solution to such problems even outside of places like Australia.