5 ms·

> The paper you cited shows that 1.5x overproduction can get the US to 75% of electricity from solar and wind without building any storage. Right, without stor

> The paper you cited shows that 1.5x overproduction can get the US to 75% of electricity from solar and wind without building any storage. Right, without storage you have to scale back the percentage of electricity you get from intermittent sources. Like I said, without storage, renewables do not present a valid option for a carbon free source of energy. I you want a US example of a nuclear plant construction, you can take the Diablo Canyon plant [1]. This is not only built in the US recently, but also in an earthquake prone area and thus needed more robust construction. It cost 13.8 billion in 2018 dollars. Plants constructed earlier are even more cost effective, even when adjusted for inflation. The Donald Cook plant [2] produces about as much as the AP1000 plant, for only 3.35 billion 2007 dollars. That's about 4.25 billion in 2020 dollars. And this isn't an anomaly. Plenty of plants built during the 70s were similarly cost effective [3] [4] You're picking an individual plant to inflate the cost of nuclear dramatically. You're absolutely right that the next reactor design isn't going to be affordable. First of a kind production is always the most expensive. Nuclear power gets cheaper with repeated constructions of the same design. You don't need to re-build the manufacturing pipeline to make components, staff become experienced in construction, and other benefits. This is why France's nuclear program was one of the most successful. They standardized on 3 designs, and built serial production of those same 3 designs. The APR is expensive precisely because it's one of the first large plants that France has built in decades, and they don't have that advantage of serial production. This is also why nuclear plants built during the 1970s in the US are much more cost effective than the ones built today. The US was building a lot of nuclear plants, and so it benefited from this economy of scale. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diablo_Canyon_Power_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diablo_Canyon_Power_Plant 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_C._Cook_Nuclear_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_C._Cook_Nuclear_Plant 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byron_Nuclear_Generating_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byron_Nuclear_Generating_Stati... 4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braidwood_Nuclear_Generating_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braidwood_Nuclear_Generating_S...

philipkglass 6y ago
75% of all electricity consumption is too low to be a "valid option" for decarbonizing electricity? We have different ideas of what's valid. If you want a US example of a nuclear plant construction, you can take the Diablo Canyon plant [1]. This is not only built in the US recently, but also in an earthquake prone area and thus needed more robust construction. It cost 13.8 billion in 2018 dollars. ... You're picking an individual plant to inflate the cost of nuclear dramatically. Diablo Canyon unit 1 construction began in 1968 and unit 2 in 1970 according to the page you linked. That's hardly recent. I was actually trying to be charitable to American nuclear by talking about the new Vogtle units without mentioning the billions spent at V.C. Summer on two incomplete AP1000 reactors that will not enter service at all. I agree that 1970s era nuclear plants cost less. Part of that was that there was more experience with building them, so the average was lower. Another reason is that when we look at nuclear plants running today and tabulate cost by year of construction, we're cherry picking the projects that went well. I count 41 American reactors that were cancelled while under construction on this page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cancelled_nuclear_reactors_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cancelled_nuclear_reac... 37 of them started construction in the 1970s. That's a high project failure rate compared to any other generation source.
- Manfredo_1 6y ago
  > 75% of all electricity consumption is too low to be a "valid option" for decarbonizing electricity? We have different ideas of what's valid. The US already generates ~40% of its electricity from carbon free sources. An increase to 75% represents only about a 60% reduction in fossil fuels from the current status quo. This is absolutely not a solution. We're still advancing climate change. Halving the time it takes to reach a disaster is not even remotely close to the same thing as averting a disaster. > 37 of them started construction in the 1970s. That's a high project failure rate compared to any other generation source Yes, because of Three Mile Island. Most of the cancellations were for reactors that started in the 1970s, because the US mostly stopped constructing reactors in the 1970s. You don't have cancellations for projects that began in the 1960s because those projects finished before Three Mile Island. You don't have project cancellations in the 1980s and 1990s because the US largely stopped starting new nuclear projects. This pattern of cancellations demonstrates the fact that the high failure rate is due to political pressure, not economic unsuitability of nuclear reactors. Serialized production yields costs per kilowatt hour well below your estimates for renewables even without the cost of storage. And no, if we look at reactors that are no longer in operation we don't see a much higher cost [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]. Serialized nuclear construction is by far the cheapest and most effective way to eliminate carbon emissions from electricity generation. Intermittent sources are cheap until they reach saturation during their time of production. Then costs skyrocket when storage becomes necessary. And even more importantly, nuclear is the only proven way of accomplishing this. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rancho_Seco_Nuclear_Generating_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rancho_Seco_Nuclear_Generating... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Rock_Point_Nuclear_Power_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Rock_Point_Nuclear_Power_P... 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_River_Nuclear_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_River_Nuclear_Plant 4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kewaunee_Power_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kewaunee_Power_Station 5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oyster_Creek_Nuclear_Generating_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oyster_Creek_Nuclear_Generatin...
  - philipkglass 6y ago
    The 75% figure is from solar and wind alone. The balance can come from any combination of nuclear, other renewables, and fossil fuels. It doesn't mean 25% electricity supplied by fossil fuels. You consider France's electricity sector a decarbonization success story, right? It generates "only" 72% of electricity from nuclear power: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_France https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_France The United States also gets 7% of its electricity from hydro and geothermal: https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3 https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3 Plus 19.7% from existing American reactors, though that number is going to drift downward as retirements continue to outpace construction. I think that the residual fossil demand would be significantly less than 25%. I can't say how much exactly. That needs another study. In the absence of storage, neither nuclear nor geothermal plants are good at supplying peak demands. Hydro can serve a peaking role to some extent even without building new pumped storage but it's constrained by reservoir volumes, minimum downstream flow rates, seasonal snow melt, etc.

philipkglass 6y ago

75% of all electricity consumption is too low to be a "valid option" for decarbonizing electricity? We have different ideas of what's valid. If you want a US example of a nuclear plant construction, you can take the Diablo Canyon plant [1]. This is not only built in the US recently, but also in an earthquake prone area and thus needed more robust construction. It cost 13.8 billion in 2018 dollars. ... You're picking an individual plant to inflate the cost of nuclear dramatically. Diablo Canyon unit 1 construction began in 1968 and unit 2 in 1970 according to the page you linked. That's hardly recent. I was actually trying to be charitable to American nuclear by talking about the new Vogtle units without mentioning the billions spent at V.C. Summer on two incomplete AP1000 reactors that will not enter service at all. I agree that 1970s era nuclear plants cost less. Part of that was that there was more experience with building them, so the average was lower. Another reason is that when we look at nuclear plants running today and tabulate cost by year of construction, we're cherry picking the projects that went well. I count 41 American reactors that were cancelled while under construction on this page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cancelled_nuclear_reactors_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cancelled_nuclear_reac... 37 of them started construction in the 1970s. That's a high project failure rate compared to any other generation source.

Manfredo_1 6y ago
> 75% of all electricity consumption is too low to be a "valid option" for decarbonizing electricity? We have different ideas of what's valid. The US already generates ~40% of its electricity from carbon free sources. An increase to 75% represents only about a 60% reduction in fossil fuels from the current status quo. This is absolutely not a solution. We're still advancing climate change. Halving the time it takes to reach a disaster is not even remotely close to the same thing as averting a disaster. > 37 of them started construction in the 1970s. That's a high project failure rate compared to any other generation source Yes, because of Three Mile Island. Most of the cancellations were for reactors that started in the 1970s, because the US mostly stopped constructing reactors in the 1970s. You don't have cancellations for projects that began in the 1960s because those projects finished before Three Mile Island. You don't have project cancellations in the 1980s and 1990s because the US largely stopped starting new nuclear projects. This pattern of cancellations demonstrates the fact that the high failure rate is due to political pressure, not economic unsuitability of nuclear reactors. Serialized production yields costs per kilowatt hour well below your estimates for renewables even without the cost of storage. And no, if we look at reactors that are no longer in operation we don't see a much higher cost [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]. Serialized nuclear construction is by far the cheapest and most effective way to eliminate carbon emissions from electricity generation. Intermittent sources are cheap until they reach saturation during their time of production. Then costs skyrocket when storage becomes necessary. And even more importantly, nuclear is the only proven way of accomplishing this. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rancho_Seco_Nuclear_Generating_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rancho_Seco_Nuclear_Generating... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Rock_Point_Nuclear_Power_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Rock_Point_Nuclear_Power_P... 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_River_Nuclear_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_River_Nuclear_Plant 4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kewaunee_Power_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kewaunee_Power_Station 5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oyster_Creek_Nuclear_Generating_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oyster_Creek_Nuclear_Generatin...
- philipkglass 6y ago
  The 75% figure is from solar and wind alone. The balance can come from any combination of nuclear, other renewables, and fossil fuels. It doesn't mean 25% electricity supplied by fossil fuels. You consider France's electricity sector a decarbonization success story, right? It generates "only" 72% of electricity from nuclear power: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_France https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_France The United States also gets 7% of its electricity from hydro and geothermal: https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3 https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3 Plus 19.7% from existing American reactors, though that number is going to drift downward as retirements continue to outpace construction. I think that the residual fossil demand would be significantly less than 25%. I can't say how much exactly. That needs another study. In the absence of storage, neither nuclear nor geothermal plants are good at supplying peak demands. Hydro can serve a peaking role to some extent even without building new pumped storage but it's constrained by reservoir volumes, minimum downstream flow rates, seasonal snow melt, etc.