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Nuclear was perhaps the correct option 20 years ago. A nuclear power plant can easily take a decade to build (Hinkley C, announced 2010, approved 2016, generat

Nuclear was perhaps the correct option 20 years ago. A nuclear power plant can easily take a decade to build (Hinkley C, announced 2010, approved 2016, generation expected 2025), how many decades will it take to build enough plants to replace our current fossil fuel based generation? It is time we don't have anymore. We should now be focusing renewables and, more cruicially, storage.

carlmr 6y ago
>We should now be focusing renewables and, more cruicially, storage. And don't forget reducing power usage. Corona has shown that we can drastically reduce the amount of commuters on the road and airplanes in the sky.
- read_if_gay_ 6y ago
  The lockdown is/was an extraordinarily shitty situation for a lot of people and is therefore not a permanent solution for climate change.
- nefitty 6y ago
  I understand that some climate change deniers may be motivated by their belief that the adaptations we would have to make to reverse it would negatively impact the economy. Interestingly enough, the those change that covid has forced have had devastating economic impacts.
- ben_w 6y ago
  I wouldn’t count on that. A lot of people are already brisling against the restrictions imposed in response to the pandemic despite the virus actually existing — I doubt they would be sustainable once this crisis has passed.
- shakermakr 6y ago
  And also reduced our basic freedom, our economies, and placed millions into poverty. Covid isn’t a good example of a sustainable balancing of the environment over human activity.
  - johnnyfaehell 6y ago
    To be fair, our lifestyles weren't sustainable in the first place. That's kind of the point.
  - carlmr 6y ago
    Of course it would have an economic impact, but our economy has been unsustainable for a long time.
2muchcoffeeman 6y ago
Well, the worst possible outcome is potentially catastrophic enough that actually, you want to invest in both simultaneously.
- chroem- 6y ago
  This. Myopia on a single method for reducing carbon emissions is how you get rolling blackouts. Perfect is truly the enemy of good here.
zpeti 6y ago
The IPCC predicts 2 degrees of temperature increase by 2050, which is the same as between 1950-2000. I believe they also think world GDP _increase_ (not actual GDP) might be 6% less due to this, but don't quote me on that. This is the number 1 authority on climate change. While there are risks associated with that increase, it won't be the end of the world. Despite what the sensationalist media says, or democratic politicians and 15 year olds predicting the end of the world in 12 years. That is simply not true. The world will not become a ball of flame, in a few decades. Not even the UN thinks so. There is plenty of time to build nuclear power plants, if that's how we wanted to deal with this issue.
- imtringued 6y ago
  The only problem is that if you tell everyone that we have plenty of time then nobody is going to do anything until it is too late. I hate sensationalism in both directions but as it is right now, humans certainly aren't going to stop at 2 degrees.
- ClumsyPilot 6y ago
  Most people have no idea how fucked we actually are. What happens after 2050? Climate change continues, even if the world goes completely carbon neutral. Economic damage continues. Read the report, the only way to keep to 2 degrees is to pull carbon out of the atmosphere. The sequestation industry would have to be larger than the oil industry was at its peak. Given that we can't even switch to renewables and plant trees, what are the odds we will subsidise an enormous industry to fix the atmosphere?
  - zpeti 6y ago
    Actually, another interesting argument that gets ignored is that global warming is not proportional to emissions. You need exponential increase in emissions for a linear increase in warming. Therefore since we are actually close to starting to reduce our emissions, global warming will probably peak and then cool. This is also in the IPCC's report, but gets ignored everywhere. Reading LT3000s post on this is very insightful: https://lt3000.blogspot.com/2019/11/contrarianism-esg-investing-coal-and.html?m=1 https://lt3000.blogspot.com/2019/11/contrarianism-esg-invest...
jka 6y ago
Yep. The total levelized cost of energy (LCOE[1]) for both wind and solar is now lower than nuclear: it's cheaper to procure equivalent power production via non-nuclear means. The UK's Business, Energy and Industry Strategy department published energy production cost estimates in 2016[2], and the Open Energy Information organization has collated similar statistics[3]. You're spot on that post-energy-generation storage remains a problem - I'd be really glad to hear if anyone in this thread has up-to-date knowledge of where we are with regards to that. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levelized_cost_of_energy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levelized_cost_of_energy [2] - https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/566567/BEIS_Electricity_Generation_Cost_Report.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/... [3] - https://openei.org/apps/TCDB/ https://openei.org/apps/TCDB/
- Erlich_Bachman 6y ago
  "post-energy-generation storage" is only a problem for the intermittent generators like solar and wind. This is exactly why nuclear is a solution. It doesn't suffer from problems of storage and can easily offset intermittence of other power sources by varying its power, as long as those different kinds of generators are on the same grid. This is the key reason we are talking about nuclear, it is not simply about levelized cost.
  - jka 6y ago
    Do you have any references (i.e. quantative statistics) for how much of a problem storage is? It'd be really useful to understand how large a gap exists there - it's not something I'd claim to know about at all.
    - jka 6y ago
      Self-replying; perhaps the downvote(s) were for not doing my own research...? :) Here's a starter reading resource from the National Renewable Energy Lab in the US: https://www.nrel.gov/news/features/2020/declining-renewable-costs-drive-focus-on-energy-storage.html https://www.nrel.gov/news/features/2020/declining-renewable-... And some more reading material from OpenEI: https://openei.org/wiki/Solar+Storage https://openei.org/wiki/Solar+Storage
jamesrom 6y ago
This is a completely fallacious argument. You would've said the same thing 20 years ago. Secondly, just because one plant takes a decade to build, that does NOT mean we can't build 100 plants in a decade. Again, your argument does not make any sense. If we had started 20 years ago, we very well could be stamping out SMRs by the hundreds, today. Finally, granting the urgency you claim, there is no evidence to suggest replacing fossil fuel based generation with renewable is going to be quicker than nuclear. To frame it as such is misleading.
jonathanstrange 6y ago
I've heard conflicting stories about that. On the one hand, the people from TerraPower seem to have a solution with a good ecobalance. It was featured in the documentary about Bill Gates. On the other hand, I've heard several people claim that renewables are much cheaper and have better ecobalances, but I haven't seen the evidence for it. So I'm personally undecided and with my limited knowledge believe that investing in renewable energy and new, modern nuclear power plants seems to be the right solution. In any case, change needs to occur as soon and fast as possible. But I'd be interested in sources to better information, particularly the claims I've heard that the costs for nuclear power plants is too high. Is there an unbiased,reliable source for looking up complete ecobalances for energy sources, including the whole lifespan and all manufacturing of components and their disposal?
- ClumsyPilot 6y ago
  I feel that untill the last coal powerplant is gone, splitting hair on ecobalance is a distraction. Full ecobalance is hard, many variables, many will vary by country or by state/county.
goatinaboat 6y ago
A nuclear power plant can easily take a decade to build (Hinkley C, announced 2010, approved 2016, generation expected 2025), how many decades will it take to build enough plants to replace our current fossil fuel based generation? Building one-offs after spending years battling scientific illiteracy in the courts is indeed time consuming, but there is actually no reason we couldn't just churn them out assembly line style. The technology is pretty mature now. We should now be focusing renewables and, more cruicially, storage. Those things aren't without lead time either. Wind farms don't grow on trees. Solar panels have an intricate manufacturing process requiring rare earth elements.
- wazoox 6y ago
  Case in point: China has built and put into production several EPR-design reactors while the projects started earlier in Europe are still lingering.
topbanana 6y ago
> It is time we don't have anymore. We should now be focusing renewables and, more cruicially, storage. You think that can be done faster than 10 years?
- pjc50 6y ago
  The UK managed something like 5% -> 25% renewables in the past 10 years; complete decarbonisation of electricity isn't really possible in 10 years, but I'm cautiously optimistic. Especially as the price has fallen so dramatically; large areas of the US are ripe for cheap solar.
  - dispat0r 6y ago
    As mentioned by topbanana you need storage for renewables. No good solution at the moment for that problem.
    - pjc50 6y ago
      .. but we've already done that 5 to 25% increase. Without significant storage. Storage will be needed to get to 100%, but we've already displaced all the coal generation with renewables! (and, I admit, some gas) Don't let the best be the enemy of the good. Keep expanding the renewables until 0-carbon moments are possible and curtailment starts to be a problem. Maybe 50%? (or, in meme format: noooo, you can't just replace everything with renewables! haha wind turbine go brrr)
  - ryathal 6y ago
    The 5% -> 25% was literally the easiest part. The big expensive downsides to renewables really aren't a factor. Intermittency is minor when you can fall back on 75%, if there's only 50% to fall back on that's a problem.
AnthonyMouse 6y ago
> A nuclear power plant can easily take a decade to build (Hinkley C, announced 2010, approved 2016, generation expected 2025), how many decades will it take to build enough plants to replace our current fossil fuel based generation? If it takes about a decade to build a nuclear plant then building enough nuclear plants should take... about a decade? It's not as if you build one, wait until it's completely finished and then start building a second one somewhere else. You build more than one starting right now and then more than one is finished in about a decade. Less if people would stop using "it takes too long" and similar as an excuse to make it take longer to build them.
- m4x 6y ago
  > If it takes about a decade to build a nuclear plant then building enough nuclear plants should take... about a decade? Only if the world had unlimited access to appropriately skilled engineers and trades people, and the mountain of resources required to construct a nuclear power station. Training people for something as specialised as building nuclear power stations is very time consuming in its own right.
- imtringued 6y ago
  It's not that simple. If you want to build more nuclear plants at the same time you also need more workers, more specialized factories and a proven design that has been field tested so that you don't end up with a fleet of defective plants after you have built 100 of them. >It's not as if you build one, wait until it's completely finished If you assign a worker to Hinkley C then he is going to work at Hinkley C until it is finished. You can't just send him to a different plant. That would delay Hinkley C.
  - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
    > If you want to build more nuclear plants at the same time you also need more workers So hire more workers. Most "nuclear plant construction work" isn't some foreign species of construction work. It's pouring concrete and laying pipe. The main part that isn't is the reactor vessel itself, but that's the part that can be made on an assembly line and shipped in. > more specialized factories Building a factory takes what, a year? Then it's mass production. > a proven design This is literally the main reason construction takes as long as it does already. If it isn't accomplishing that then throw that process away and build them all in three years with plenty of time left over to correct any issues before bringing them online. > If you assign a worker to Hinkley C then he is going to work at Hinkley C until it is finished. You can't just send him to a different plant. That would delay Hinkley C. Fortunately there is not only a single worker in the entire country, and arbitrarily many can be trained on a scale not measured in decades.
TaylorAlexander 6y ago
Don’t forget reducing consumption.
onion2k 6y ago
The best time to build a nuclear power station was twenty years ago, but the second best time is now.
oliwarner 6y ago
I think we can do both, no? Build a fleet of small reactor sites around the country, deploy PV everywhere now, and invest in battery technologies for tomorrow. If we end up with way too much energy production, we undercut fossil entirely, plus get to use some to start physically fixing environmental damage being done. Carbon capture, etc.
tarboreus 6y ago
So we do...what? To power the US with solar you would need over 11 million acres of solar panels, and that's likely an extreme lowball estimate. That's half of Tennessee. That model doesn't really account for storage and intermittentcy issues, which we need to innovate ourselves out of. Some newer estimates also suggest we'd need more like all of Texas covered in solar panels. Sorry, but there aren't alternatives here. Nuclear is it.
0xy 6y ago
Renewables don't work short term without gas peaking plants, which are not renewable and are extremely bad for the environment. "Renewables", as usually pitched, are anything but renewable. Solar with gas peaking plants is not renewable. Wind with gas peaking plants is not renewable. Nuclear on the other hand, is extremely green and can be working at 100% capacity on windless sunless drought-stricken days.

carlmr 6y ago

>We should now be focusing renewables and, more cruicially, storage. And don't forget reducing power usage. Corona has shown that we can drastically reduce the amount of commuters on the road and airplanes in the sky.

read_if_gay_ 6y ago
The lockdown is/was an extraordinarily shitty situation for a lot of people and is therefore not a permanent solution for climate change.
nefitty 6y ago
I understand that some climate change deniers may be motivated by their belief that the adaptations we would have to make to reverse it would negatively impact the economy. Interestingly enough, the those change that covid has forced have had devastating economic impacts.
ben_w 6y ago
I wouldn’t count on that. A lot of people are already brisling against the restrictions imposed in response to the pandemic despite the virus actually existing — I doubt they would be sustainable once this crisis has passed.
shakermakr 6y ago
And also reduced our basic freedom, our economies, and placed millions into poverty. Covid isn’t a good example of a sustainable balancing of the environment over human activity.
- johnnyfaehell 6y ago
  To be fair, our lifestyles weren't sustainable in the first place. That's kind of the point.
- carlmr 6y ago
  Of course it would have an economic impact, but our economy has been unsustainable for a long time.

2muchcoffeeman 6y ago

Well, the worst possible outcome is potentially catastrophic enough that actually, you want to invest in both simultaneously.

chroem- 6y ago
This. Myopia on a single method for reducing carbon emissions is how you get rolling blackouts. Perfect is truly the enemy of good here.

zpeti 6y ago

The IPCC predicts 2 degrees of temperature increase by 2050, which is the same as between 1950-2000. I believe they also think world GDP _increase_ (not actual GDP) might be 6% less due to this, but don't quote me on that. This is the number 1 authority on climate change. While there are risks associated with that increase, it won't be the end of the world. Despite what the sensationalist media says, or democratic politicians and 15 year olds predicting the end of the world in 12 years. That is simply not true. The world will not become a ball of flame, in a few decades. Not even the UN thinks so. There is plenty of time to build nuclear power plants, if that's how we wanted to deal with this issue.

imtringued 6y ago
The only problem is that if you tell everyone that we have plenty of time then nobody is going to do anything until it is too late. I hate sensationalism in both directions but as it is right now, humans certainly aren't going to stop at 2 degrees.
ClumsyPilot 6y ago
Most people have no idea how fucked we actually are. What happens after 2050? Climate change continues, even if the world goes completely carbon neutral. Economic damage continues. Read the report, the only way to keep to 2 degrees is to pull carbon out of the atmosphere. The sequestation industry would have to be larger than the oil industry was at its peak. Given that we can't even switch to renewables and plant trees, what are the odds we will subsidise an enormous industry to fix the atmosphere?
- zpeti 6y ago
  Actually, another interesting argument that gets ignored is that global warming is not proportional to emissions. You need exponential increase in emissions for a linear increase in warming. Therefore since we are actually close to starting to reduce our emissions, global warming will probably peak and then cool. This is also in the IPCC's report, but gets ignored everywhere. Reading LT3000s post on this is very insightful: https://lt3000.blogspot.com/2019/11/contrarianism-esg-investing-coal-and.html?m=1 https://lt3000.blogspot.com/2019/11/contrarianism-esg-invest...

jka 6y ago

Yep. The total levelized cost of energy (LCOE[1]) for both wind and solar is now lower than nuclear: it's cheaper to procure equivalent power production via non-nuclear means. The UK's Business, Energy and Industry Strategy department published energy production cost estimates in 2016[2], and the Open Energy Information organization has collated similar statistics[3]. You're spot on that post-energy-generation storage remains a problem - I'd be really glad to hear if anyone in this thread has up-to-date knowledge of where we are with regards to that. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levelized_cost_of_energy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levelized_cost_of_energy [2] - https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/566567/BEIS_Electricity_Generation_Cost_Report.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/... [3] - https://openei.org/apps/TCDB/ https://openei.org/apps/TCDB/

Erlich_Bachman 6y ago
"post-energy-generation storage" is only a problem for the intermittent generators like solar and wind. This is exactly why nuclear is a solution. It doesn't suffer from problems of storage and can easily offset intermittence of other power sources by varying its power, as long as those different kinds of generators are on the same grid. This is the key reason we are talking about nuclear, it is not simply about levelized cost.
- jka 6y ago
  Do you have any references (i.e. quantative statistics) for how much of a problem storage is? It'd be really useful to understand how large a gap exists there - it's not something I'd claim to know about at all.
  - jka 6y ago
    Self-replying; perhaps the downvote(s) were for not doing my own research...? :) Here's a starter reading resource from the National Renewable Energy Lab in the US: https://www.nrel.gov/news/features/2020/declining-renewable-costs-drive-focus-on-energy-storage.html https://www.nrel.gov/news/features/2020/declining-renewable-... And some more reading material from OpenEI: https://openei.org/wiki/Solar+Storage https://openei.org/wiki/Solar+Storage

jamesrom 6y ago

This is a completely fallacious argument. You would've said the same thing 20 years ago. Secondly, just because one plant takes a decade to build, that does NOT mean we can't build 100 plants in a decade. Again, your argument does not make any sense. If we had started 20 years ago, we very well could be stamping out SMRs by the hundreds, today. Finally, granting the urgency you claim, there is no evidence to suggest replacing fossil fuel based generation with renewable is going to be quicker than nuclear. To frame it as such is misleading.

jonathanstrange 6y ago

I've heard conflicting stories about that. On the one hand, the people from TerraPower seem to have a solution with a good ecobalance. It was featured in the documentary about Bill Gates. On the other hand, I've heard several people claim that renewables are much cheaper and have better ecobalances, but I haven't seen the evidence for it. So I'm personally undecided and with my limited knowledge believe that investing in renewable energy and new, modern nuclear power plants seems to be the right solution. In any case, change needs to occur as soon and fast as possible. But I'd be interested in sources to better information, particularly the claims I've heard that the costs for nuclear power plants is too high. Is there an unbiased,reliable source for looking up complete ecobalances for energy sources, including the whole lifespan and all manufacturing of components and their disposal?

ClumsyPilot 6y ago
I feel that untill the last coal powerplant is gone, splitting hair on ecobalance is a distraction. Full ecobalance is hard, many variables, many will vary by country or by state/county.

goatinaboat 6y ago

A nuclear power plant can easily take a decade to build (Hinkley C, announced 2010, approved 2016, generation expected 2025), how many decades will it take to build enough plants to replace our current fossil fuel based generation? Building one-offs after spending years battling scientific illiteracy in the courts is indeed time consuming, but there is actually no reason we couldn't just churn them out assembly line style. The technology is pretty mature now. We should now be focusing renewables and, more cruicially, storage. Those things aren't without lead time either. Wind farms don't grow on trees. Solar panels have an intricate manufacturing process requiring rare earth elements.

wazoox 6y ago
Case in point: China has built and put into production several EPR-design reactors while the projects started earlier in Europe are still lingering.

topbanana 6y ago

> It is time we don't have anymore. We should now be focusing renewables and, more cruicially, storage. You think that can be done faster than 10 years?

pjc50 6y ago
The UK managed something like 5% -> 25% renewables in the past 10 years; complete decarbonisation of electricity isn't really possible in 10 years, but I'm cautiously optimistic. Especially as the price has fallen so dramatically; large areas of the US are ripe for cheap solar.
- dispat0r 6y ago
  As mentioned by topbanana you need storage for renewables. No good solution at the moment for that problem.
  - pjc50 6y ago
    .. but we've already done that 5 to 25% increase. Without significant storage. Storage will be needed to get to 100%, but we've already displaced all the coal generation with renewables! (and, I admit, some gas) Don't let the best be the enemy of the good. Keep expanding the renewables until 0-carbon moments are possible and curtailment starts to be a problem. Maybe 50%? (or, in meme format: noooo, you can't just replace everything with renewables! haha wind turbine go brrr)
- ryathal 6y ago
  The 5% -> 25% was literally the easiest part. The big expensive downsides to renewables really aren't a factor. Intermittency is minor when you can fall back on 75%, if there's only 50% to fall back on that's a problem.

AnthonyMouse 6y ago

> A nuclear power plant can easily take a decade to build (Hinkley C, announced 2010, approved 2016, generation expected 2025), how many decades will it take to build enough plants to replace our current fossil fuel based generation? If it takes about a decade to build a nuclear plant then building enough nuclear plants should take... about a decade? It's not as if you build one, wait until it's completely finished and then start building a second one somewhere else. You build more than one starting right now and then more than one is finished in about a decade. Less if people would stop using "it takes too long" and similar as an excuse to make it take longer to build them.

m4x 6y ago
> If it takes about a decade to build a nuclear plant then building enough nuclear plants should take... about a decade? Only if the world had unlimited access to appropriately skilled engineers and trades people, and the mountain of resources required to construct a nuclear power station. Training people for something as specialised as building nuclear power stations is very time consuming in its own right.
imtringued 6y ago
It's not that simple. If you want to build more nuclear plants at the same time you also need more workers, more specialized factories and a proven design that has been field tested so that you don't end up with a fleet of defective plants after you have built 100 of them. >It's not as if you build one, wait until it's completely finished If you assign a worker to Hinkley C then he is going to work at Hinkley C until it is finished. You can't just send him to a different plant. That would delay Hinkley C.
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  > If you want to build more nuclear plants at the same time you also need more workers So hire more workers. Most "nuclear plant construction work" isn't some foreign species of construction work. It's pouring concrete and laying pipe. The main part that isn't is the reactor vessel itself, but that's the part that can be made on an assembly line and shipped in. > more specialized factories Building a factory takes what, a year? Then it's mass production. > a proven design This is literally the main reason construction takes as long as it does already. If it isn't accomplishing that then throw that process away and build them all in three years with plenty of time left over to correct any issues before bringing them online. > If you assign a worker to Hinkley C then he is going to work at Hinkley C until it is finished. You can't just send him to a different plant. That would delay Hinkley C. Fortunately there is not only a single worker in the entire country, and arbitrarily many can be trained on a scale not measured in decades.

TaylorAlexander 6y ago

Don’t forget reducing consumption.

onion2k 6y ago

The best time to build a nuclear power station was twenty years ago, but the second best time is now.

oliwarner 6y ago

I think we can do both, no? Build a fleet of small reactor sites around the country, deploy PV everywhere now, and invest in battery technologies for tomorrow. If we end up with way too much energy production, we undercut fossil entirely, plus get to use some to start physically fixing environmental damage being done. Carbon capture, etc.

tarboreus 6y ago

So we do...what? To power the US with solar you would need over 11 million acres of solar panels, and that's likely an extreme lowball estimate. That's half of Tennessee. That model doesn't really account for storage and intermittentcy issues, which we need to innovate ourselves out of. Some newer estimates also suggest we'd need more like all of Texas covered in solar panels. Sorry, but there aren't alternatives here. Nuclear is it.

0xy 6y ago

Renewables don't work short term without gas peaking plants, which are not renewable and are extremely bad for the environment. "Renewables", as usually pitched, are anything but renewable. Solar with gas peaking plants is not renewable. Wind with gas peaking plants is not renewable. Nuclear on the other hand, is extremely green and can be working at 100% capacity on windless sunless drought-stricken days.