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Nuclear is expensive - but it's cheap compared to the costs of climate change and environmental destruction. The minuscule amount of waste it generates and the

Nuclear is expensive - but it's cheap compared to the costs of climate change and environmental destruction. The minuscule amount of waste it generates and the tiny land-use requirements per kWh - it's almost magical. >we'll have to wait a while for people like you to clue in how an optimized renewable-only grid I'm willing to be clued-in. This isn't an ideological fight for me. I have nothing against solar and wind. I want what you want. Ideally, if you could point me to an example of 100% or near 100% renewable smart grid that is running primarily on wind and solar - the discussion would be over. Problem is, there isn't one. For all the billions that have been poured into solar and for all the talk about smart-grids, battery and kinetic storage, and molten salt batteries and all kinds of exotic things - you cannot point out ONE example. And it isn't like we aren't trying. Poor Germany is desperately throwing out their billions of surplus hoping it would happen, but the best they could do is 2060!! WTF. ITER, the cold fusion reactor, is supposed to be trialled by 2035[1]!!!. Is that not insanity? And they are signing multi-billion/multi-decade deals with authoritarian Russia to build pipelines for their natural gas at the same time they are decommissioning their nuclear plants!!! What is going on here?!?!?! What am I missing!?! Please tell me, because I honestly feel I am being gaslighted. Here an up-to-date energy mix of my home province of Ontario: http://live.gridwatch.ca/home-page.html http://live.gridwatch.ca/home-page.html Hydro and Nuclear make my province carbon-free today.. not 2050. Today. But we're building windmills (and consequently natural gas plants to provide base-load) because people have been told we need wind to fight climate change. I don't understand what's happening. It feels like religion. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER#Timeline_and_status https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER#Timeline_and_status

pfdietz 6y ago
> I'm willing to be clued-in. This isn't an ideological fight for me. I have nothing against solar and wind. I want what you want. Ideally, if you could point me to an example of 100% or near 100% renewable smart grid that is running primarily on wind and solar - the discussion would be over. You are giving the "nothing can ever happen for the first time" argument. Grids right now use fossil fuels. This does not mean that a fossil-fuel free grid is impossible, or that IF fossil fuels were excluded, renewables could not do the job. It just means that the policies to ban fossil fuels are not yet in place. If you model what it would take to produce a 0% fossil fuel grid, using plausible numbers for the costs, you will find in most cases that nuclear gets optimized right out of the picture. It's just too expensive. Instead, some combination of wind, solar, possibly hydro if available, short term storage (like batteries) and long term storage (like hydrogen) is cheaper. Your focus on what exists now is irrelevant to what I was talking about, which is what would be cheapest in a ground-up fossil-free grid using costs as they exist today. The nuclear plants in Ontario are sunk costs. They would not be built today as new plants. As historical remnants, they will eventually disappear, and likely will not be replaced with more nuclear.
- macspoofing 6y ago
  >This does not mean that a fossil-fuel-free grid is impossible, or that IF fossil fuels were excluded We know fossil-fuel-free grids are very possible. Hydro/Geothermal (if you can get it) and Nuclear can enable it. Today. What is clear is that wind and solar cannot create a fossil-fuel-free grid because both wind and solar need base-load backup - which today is natural gas in most places. Everything else like molten-salt, kinetic, Li-ion batteries are either unproven or will never work (such as Li-ion batteries being used for long-term grid-scale backup). And proponents will usually equivocate and just assume we can invent our way out of this. >You are giving the "nothing can ever happen for the first time" argument No. But did you ask yourself: Why isn't it happening? Why is it taking Germany decades to get that 'first time'? Maybe it just doesn't work but so many people are so emotionally invested, they don't want to hear it. So much so, that they actually think that burning wooden pellets is an energy source of the future because that's one way to provide carbon-neutral base-load for solar.
  - pfdietz 6y ago
    > What is clear is that wind and solar cannot create a fossil-fuel-free grid because both wind and solar need base-load backup That does not prevent wind and solar from providing an all renewable grid. And as I explained, for plausible near term costs figures, dealing with intermittency via proper system design makes the all-renewable grid cheaper than one including nuclear. That the backup "today, is natural gas" is not relevant to that question. Use of Li-ion batteries for long term storage is a strawman brought up by persons who are attempting to throw shade on renewables. But that would be idiot system design. Long term storage would be much better done with hydrogen (trading lower efficiency for lower capital cost). > But did you ask yourself: Why isn't it happening? Because the effective CO2 tax isn't high enough yet, particularly to cause the shutdown of existing fossil fuel plants for which capital costs are sunk. I could well ask "why isn't nuclear displacing natural gas?" You seem to be arguing that wind/solar have to displace fossil fuels without any Pigouvian taxes (or the equivalent) on the latter. By this standard, nuclear also won't displace fossil fuels.
    - 6y ago

pfdietz 6y ago

> I'm willing to be clued-in. This isn't an ideological fight for me. I have nothing against solar and wind. I want what you want. Ideally, if you could point me to an example of 100% or near 100% renewable smart grid that is running primarily on wind and solar - the discussion would be over. You are giving the "nothing can ever happen for the first time" argument. Grids right now use fossil fuels. This does not mean that a fossil-fuel free grid is impossible, or that IF fossil fuels were excluded, renewables could not do the job. It just means that the policies to ban fossil fuels are not yet in place. If you model what it would take to produce a 0% fossil fuel grid, using plausible numbers for the costs, you will find in most cases that nuclear gets optimized right out of the picture. It's just too expensive. Instead, some combination of wind, solar, possibly hydro if available, short term storage (like batteries) and long term storage (like hydrogen) is cheaper. Your focus on what exists now is irrelevant to what I was talking about, which is what would be cheapest in a ground-up fossil-free grid using costs as they exist today. The nuclear plants in Ontario are sunk costs. They would not be built today as new plants. As historical remnants, they will eventually disappear, and likely will not be replaced with more nuclear.

macspoofing 6y ago
>This does not mean that a fossil-fuel-free grid is impossible, or that IF fossil fuels were excluded We know fossil-fuel-free grids are very possible. Hydro/Geothermal (if you can get it) and Nuclear can enable it. Today. What is clear is that wind and solar cannot create a fossil-fuel-free grid because both wind and solar need base-load backup - which today is natural gas in most places. Everything else like molten-salt, kinetic, Li-ion batteries are either unproven or will never work (such as Li-ion batteries being used for long-term grid-scale backup). And proponents will usually equivocate and just assume we can invent our way out of this. >You are giving the "nothing can ever happen for the first time" argument No. But did you ask yourself: Why isn't it happening? Why is it taking Germany decades to get that 'first time'? Maybe it just doesn't work but so many people are so emotionally invested, they don't want to hear it. So much so, that they actually think that burning wooden pellets is an energy source of the future because that's one way to provide carbon-neutral base-load for solar.
- pfdietz 6y ago
  > What is clear is that wind and solar cannot create a fossil-fuel-free grid because both wind and solar need base-load backup That does not prevent wind and solar from providing an all renewable grid. And as I explained, for plausible near term costs figures, dealing with intermittency via proper system design makes the all-renewable grid cheaper than one including nuclear. That the backup "today, is natural gas" is not relevant to that question. Use of Li-ion batteries for long term storage is a strawman brought up by persons who are attempting to throw shade on renewables. But that would be idiot system design. Long term storage would be much better done with hydrogen (trading lower efficiency for lower capital cost). > But did you ask yourself: Why isn't it happening? Because the effective CO2 tax isn't high enough yet, particularly to cause the shutdown of existing fossil fuel plants for which capital costs are sunk. I could well ask "why isn't nuclear displacing natural gas?" You seem to be arguing that wind/solar have to displace fossil fuels without any Pigouvian taxes (or the equivalent) on the latter. By this standard, nuclear also won't displace fossil fuels.
  - 6y ago