13 ms·

Your post conveniently ignores solar/wind + batteries, which is even cheaper than coal.

by rgbrenner 6y ago

ComputerGuru 6y ago
Are you really suggesting those have zero externalities not priced in?
- 7952 6y ago
  The externalities are orders of magnitude less complex to deal with.
  - emteycz 6y ago
    This right here is a prime example of Dunning-Kruger effect. You're completely forgetting the large scale effects on nature, for example, which nuclear does not have.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
manfredo 6y ago
Where are you getting this claim? Natural gas costs somewhere between $40 and $70 per MWh [1]. Storage costs for batteries range from $100/KWh (very optimistic) to $300/KWh [2]. But that's per kilowatt hours. That's $100,000 per MWh to $300,000 per MWh. Solar and wind's dispatchability remains its key weakness. Storage at anywhere near the required amounts remains a fantasy. That's why Germany and California are still burning fossil fuels for ~40% of their energy, while France's share of fossil fuel generation is under 10%. 1. https://blog.aee.net/the-numbers-are-in-and-renewables-are-winning-on-price-alone#:~:text=With%20the%20cost%20of%20coal,competitive%20resources%20in%20today's%20marketplace https://blog.aee.net/the-numbers-are-in-and-renewables-are-w.... 2. https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy19osti/73222.pdf https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy19osti/73222.pdf
- reitzensteinm 6y ago
  You can use batteries more than once! If you cycle them once per day for ten years to store solar power until night, your numbers given mean they add $30-100 per MWh to the cost of that stored power (but not daytime use). Not cheap, but in no way a "fantasy". Certainly not in a world with sane carbon pricing.
  - VBprogrammer 6y ago
    So the cost of storage would exceed the cost of generating the same power via a CCGT plant?
    - reitzensteinm 6y ago
      I just took parent's numbers at face value to show how they were misinterpreting them. I haven't seen much in the way of true apples to apples comparisons. Most solar plants with storage don't have much storage. For instance I saw a link this week on HN for $30 + $15/MWh for solar + storage, but the storage was only one hour of the nameplate capacity. Based on the falling prices of batteries, I don't think it will be long before solar + storage providing power evenly over 24h (an unrealistic worst case) becomes economical. At a 30% capacity factor, assuming the batteries are charging for 8 hours and draining for 16, that plant would need 5x as much storage for a cost of $30 + $75/MWh. More realistically you'd only need 3-4x as much storage as you get small amounts of sunlight later and earlier in the day, and demand curves are not flat. Halve the price of batteries, which already happened in the 2010s, and that's looking economical even with a zero price on carbon. But most countries are pretty far from saturating solar potential, so you can still build solar without storage for a while. Once you need the battery backing, it's probably going to be cheap enough.
      - emteycz 6y ago
        Are you sure it was $15/MWh? That seems more than 1000x cheaper than state of the art batteries.
roenxi 6y ago
Those are held to a much lower standard. I've seen people on HN seriously argue that we need to isolate nuclear waste from the biosphere for multiple generations, including contingencies for the collapse of English as a comprehensible language. What is the plan to isolate the poisonous meals in a solar panel for multiple generations? There isn't one. It just goes in landfill, I expect with relatively little concern for if it is setting up the next Flint, Michigan scenario. I doubt any form of energy would be economic if it was held to the same standards as Nuclear. It is perfectly safe, has proved itself to be perfectly safe now that we have 50 years of evidence and then the operators have to spend however much it takes to make it safer than that. This impossible task turns out to be hellishly expensive. There are literally 2 or 3 stories where there was a bad meltdown, and even then the damage seems to be comparable to having used coal over the same period of time. Worst-case scenario with 40 year old reactor designs is comparable to business as usual, and people start arguing over if that is safe enough.
- mantap 6y ago
  Radioactive material is treated differently because it is dangerous at a distance. You don't need to eat it or even touch it. Simply standing close enough to it is enough to be harmful. It's just not comparable to anything in a solar panel. After decommissioning a solar farm, at worst the soil might not be suitable for farming but nobody would complain about building a house there. For the same to be true of a nuclear plant a very expensive decommissioning process must be completed.
  - VBprogrammer 6y ago
    The second hand market for decommissioned panels is now strong enough that it has gotten hard to source them by the container load. This used to be a great way of sourcing solar panels for off grid applications where a small drop in efficiency was totally offset by the low cost. I think we can also safely assume used lithium batteries will similarly remain in high demand.
  - roenxi 6y ago
    > Radioactive material is treated differently because it is dangerous at a distance. You don't need to eat it or even touch it. Simply standing close enough to it is enough to be harmful. It's just not comparable to anything in a solar panel. I don't think that is true, the article cites that the majority of the bad cancer cases from Chernobyl were caused by ingestion of tainted milk. Besides, the core of that argument there is you have no evidence ergo there is no problem. That isn't a good argument. There are some horrific substances used in industrial processes (like, eg, the production of solar panels). Just because you want to think about them in nuclear but not elsewhere doesn't mean the problems go away. Industrial waste is industrial waste; humanity has been ignoring this stuff for millennia. It is no reason to block something as measurably environmentally positive as nuclear. The numbers suggest nuclear does less harm. We should be holding all the options to the same safety standards. > After decommissioning a solar farm, at worst the soil might not be suitable for farming but nobody would complain about building a house there. For the same to be true of a nuclear plant a very expensive decommissioning process must be completed. Don't build a house there then. Incidentally it'd be a prime spot for a new nuclear plant. These things are perfectly safe for people to work in, the issue is highly localised. The area of a plant is small. And, again, by the numbers a solar panel farm is going to sterilise a larger area of land. The fact that in theory it could be used doesn't change the fact it is going to be unusable by virtue of being covered in solar panels.
macspoofing 6y ago
There is no such thing as batteries for wind/solar. You have battery-based peaker plants and occasionally you may have the right geography to for pumped storage. But no, there is no battery storage technology capable of bridging the variability of wind/solar.
- extropy 6y ago
  Why not? Its just a function of availability/price. Assuming some conservative numbers of 1kwh of batteries costs 100usd and can do 2k cycles, that results in extra 5cents per kwh. With the day/night cycle the utilization could be around 50%. Offset by only roughly half of your electricity needs to be stored. Sunless days would be pain though. Imo if combined with cheap solar can be competitive. FWIW my current electricity provider already applies a 1 cent/kwh surcharge for "peak capacity assurance".
belorn 6y ago
If solar/wind + batteries is cheaper than coal, why are new fossil fueled plants being built at a speed of about 10x capacity for every watt of renewable energy? Are people just bad at investments? If I was an investor and I would choose something that has lower cost and higher profits, especially if it also favored political. Lower costs and higher profits are pretty nice. Choosing something that cost more and has less profits sounds terrible.
- ntsplnkv2 6y ago
  Coal is a subset of fossil fuels. The investment in fossil fuel plants is mostly because of natural gas - a great deal many of coal plants have been converted or shutdown.
08-15 6y ago
And that's why electricity is so cheap in Germany, right?

Your post conveniently ignores solar/wind + batteries, which is even cheaper than coal.

ComputerGuru 6y ago

Are you really suggesting those have zero externalities not priced in?

7952 6y ago
The externalities are orders of magnitude less complex to deal with.
- emteycz 6y ago
  This right here is a prime example of Dunning-Kruger effect. You're completely forgetting the large scale effects on nature, for example, which nuclear does not have.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]

manfredo 6y ago

Where are you getting this claim? Natural gas costs somewhere between $40 and $70 per MWh [1]. Storage costs for batteries range from $100/KWh (very optimistic) to $300/KWh [2]. But that's per kilowatt hours. That's $100,000 per MWh to $300,000 per MWh. Solar and wind's dispatchability remains its key weakness. Storage at anywhere near the required amounts remains a fantasy. That's why Germany and California are still burning fossil fuels for ~40% of their energy, while France's share of fossil fuel generation is under 10%. 1. https://blog.aee.net/the-numbers-are-in-and-renewables-are-winning-on-price-alone#:~:text=With%20the%20cost%20of%20coal,competitive%20resources%20in%20today's%20marketplace https://blog.aee.net/the-numbers-are-in-and-renewables-are-w.... 2. https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy19osti/73222.pdf https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy19osti/73222.pdf

reitzensteinm 6y ago
You can use batteries more than once! If you cycle them once per day for ten years to store solar power until night, your numbers given mean they add $30-100 per MWh to the cost of that stored power (but not daytime use). Not cheap, but in no way a "fantasy". Certainly not in a world with sane carbon pricing.
- VBprogrammer 6y ago
  So the cost of storage would exceed the cost of generating the same power via a CCGT plant?
  - reitzensteinm 6y ago
    I just took parent's numbers at face value to show how they were misinterpreting them. I haven't seen much in the way of true apples to apples comparisons. Most solar plants with storage don't have much storage. For instance I saw a link this week on HN for $30 + $15/MWh for solar + storage, but the storage was only one hour of the nameplate capacity. Based on the falling prices of batteries, I don't think it will be long before solar + storage providing power evenly over 24h (an unrealistic worst case) becomes economical. At a 30% capacity factor, assuming the batteries are charging for 8 hours and draining for 16, that plant would need 5x as much storage for a cost of $30 + $75/MWh. More realistically you'd only need 3-4x as much storage as you get small amounts of sunlight later and earlier in the day, and demand curves are not flat. Halve the price of batteries, which already happened in the 2010s, and that's looking economical even with a zero price on carbon. But most countries are pretty far from saturating solar potential, so you can still build solar without storage for a while. Once you need the battery backing, it's probably going to be cheap enough.
    - emteycz 6y ago
      Are you sure it was $15/MWh? That seems more than 1000x cheaper than state of the art batteries.

roenxi 6y ago

Those are held to a much lower standard. I've seen people on HN seriously argue that we need to isolate nuclear waste from the biosphere for multiple generations, including contingencies for the collapse of English as a comprehensible language. What is the plan to isolate the poisonous meals in a solar panel for multiple generations? There isn't one. It just goes in landfill, I expect with relatively little concern for if it is setting up the next Flint, Michigan scenario. I doubt any form of energy would be economic if it was held to the same standards as Nuclear. It is perfectly safe, has proved itself to be perfectly safe now that we have 50 years of evidence and then the operators have to spend however much it takes to make it safer than that. This impossible task turns out to be hellishly expensive. There are literally 2 or 3 stories where there was a bad meltdown, and even then the damage seems to be comparable to having used coal over the same period of time. Worst-case scenario with 40 year old reactor designs is comparable to business as usual, and people start arguing over if that is safe enough.

mantap 6y ago
Radioactive material is treated differently because it is dangerous at a distance. You don't need to eat it or even touch it. Simply standing close enough to it is enough to be harmful. It's just not comparable to anything in a solar panel. After decommissioning a solar farm, at worst the soil might not be suitable for farming but nobody would complain about building a house there. For the same to be true of a nuclear plant a very expensive decommissioning process must be completed.
- VBprogrammer 6y ago
  The second hand market for decommissioned panels is now strong enough that it has gotten hard to source them by the container load. This used to be a great way of sourcing solar panels for off grid applications where a small drop in efficiency was totally offset by the low cost. I think we can also safely assume used lithium batteries will similarly remain in high demand.
- roenxi 6y ago
  > Radioactive material is treated differently because it is dangerous at a distance. You don't need to eat it or even touch it. Simply standing close enough to it is enough to be harmful. It's just not comparable to anything in a solar panel. I don't think that is true, the article cites that the majority of the bad cancer cases from Chernobyl were caused by ingestion of tainted milk. Besides, the core of that argument there is you have no evidence ergo there is no problem. That isn't a good argument. There are some horrific substances used in industrial processes (like, eg, the production of solar panels). Just because you want to think about them in nuclear but not elsewhere doesn't mean the problems go away. Industrial waste is industrial waste; humanity has been ignoring this stuff for millennia. It is no reason to block something as measurably environmentally positive as nuclear. The numbers suggest nuclear does less harm. We should be holding all the options to the same safety standards. > After decommissioning a solar farm, at worst the soil might not be suitable for farming but nobody would complain about building a house there. For the same to be true of a nuclear plant a very expensive decommissioning process must be completed. Don't build a house there then. Incidentally it'd be a prime spot for a new nuclear plant. These things are perfectly safe for people to work in, the issue is highly localised. The area of a plant is small. And, again, by the numbers a solar panel farm is going to sterilise a larger area of land. The fact that in theory it could be used doesn't change the fact it is going to be unusable by virtue of being covered in solar panels.

macspoofing 6y ago

There is no such thing as batteries for wind/solar. You have battery-based peaker plants and occasionally you may have the right geography to for pumped storage. But no, there is no battery storage technology capable of bridging the variability of wind/solar.

extropy 6y ago
Why not? Its just a function of availability/price. Assuming some conservative numbers of 1kwh of batteries costs 100usd and can do 2k cycles, that results in extra 5cents per kwh. With the day/night cycle the utilization could be around 50%. Offset by only roughly half of your electricity needs to be stored. Sunless days would be pain though. Imo if combined with cheap solar can be competitive. FWIW my current electricity provider already applies a 1 cent/kwh surcharge for "peak capacity assurance".

belorn 6y ago

If solar/wind + batteries is cheaper than coal, why are new fossil fueled plants being built at a speed of about 10x capacity for every watt of renewable energy? Are people just bad at investments? If I was an investor and I would choose something that has lower cost and higher profits, especially if it also favored political. Lower costs and higher profits are pretty nice. Choosing something that cost more and has less profits sounds terrible.

ntsplnkv2 6y ago
Coal is a subset of fossil fuels. The investment in fossil fuel plants is mostly because of natural gas - a great deal many of coal plants have been converted or shutdown.

08-15 6y ago

And that's why electricity is so cheap in Germany, right?