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You've got it backwards. We've built nuclear plants. We've encountered unknown difficulties and overcome them. Our cost estimates for nuclear power are historic

You've got it backwards. We've built nuclear plants. We've encountered unknown difficulties and overcome them. Our cost estimates for nuclear power are historical estimates. We did built nuclear at scale before, and it did cost less. By comparison, the cost estimates for building things like massive amounts of energy storage are cost projections. These costs represent what we think these projects will cost. But these projections, by definition, don't account for unforseen engineering challenges. Historical costs do. Comparing the two is apples to oranges. Historical costs include the cost of engineering challenges, cost projections for new technologies do not.

pfdietz 6y ago
Yes, we've built nuclear power plants. And we've discovered they are complex and expensive, and we've discovered they take forever to design, and that very often the construction process fails and the investment is lost. Energy storage technologies have the property that they can rapidly iterate new designs, on a smaller scale than nuclear. They are inside nuclear's decision loop. The mammals are outbreeding the dinosaurs (yes, I know that metaphor is unfair to the actual animals). There's a reason business people don't swallow the kind of BS you sling on nuclear, and it isn't because they're Greenpeace members.
- Manfredo_1 6y ago
  But the point is, we have built nuclear at scale. And built it at scale. France has over 70% of its electricity coming from nuclear, Belgium over 50%. The US is at ~10%. We've encountered the emergent issues, and fixed them. Cost estimates on nuclear are historical estimates. They're not projections. We haven't built energy storage at anywhere close to the required levels of scale. We have 4 minutes worth of energy storage. Most of that is from hydro electric storage. 1% and 3% are from battery and thermal storage, respectively [1]. What will be the cost of scaling this up to the hours or days required to make intermittent sources viable? We can only offer cost projections: what we think massive grid-scale projects will cost. But cost projections do not include the costs of unknown engineering challenges. Remember, early nuclear proponents claimed it would be an order of magnitude cheaper than fossil fuels and had the studies to prove it. But real-world experience demonstrated otherwise. What makes us think that increasing our amount of energy storage by 2 or 3 orders of magnitude won't encounter similar unforeseen costs? We have built nuclear at scale, and yes we have discovered engineering challenges that increase cost. But we haven't built energy storage at scale, and we haven't encountered it's unforeseen engineering challenges. This post offers an excellent analogy on this topic [2]. With nuclear, we've walked this path, and know firsthand the difficulties it takes. With new technologies we're looking at the map. Those are two fundamentally different measurements of cost. 1. http://css.umich.edu/factsheets/us-grid-energy-storage-factsheet#:~:text=In%202020%2C%20the%20U.S.%20had,of%20total%20installed%20generation%20capacity.&text=Globally%2C%20installed%20energy%20storage%20capacity%20totaled%20173.6%20GW.&text=California%20leads%20the%20U.S.%20in,%2C%20New%20York%2C%20and%20Texas http://css.umich.edu/factsheets/us-grid-energy-storage-facts.... 2. https://www.quora.com/Why-are-software-development-task-estimations-regularly-off-by-a-factor-of-2-3/answer/Michael-Wolfe https://www.quora.com/Why-are-software-development-task-esti...
  - pfdietz 6y ago
    And the response to that is that (1) that golden age of nuclear was far less successful than you depict, and (2) attempts to replicate it have gone disastrously wrong. Cost overruns and failures have been the norm for nuclear. In France, we don't actually know the cost of that initial roll out. In the US, nuclear construction routinely overran budgets, often by large factors. When PURPA subjected US power markets to more market discipline nuclear construction evaporated. This should tell you that it was never a low cost source. Today, even the construction that occurred then is not possible. The nuclear supply chain is atrophied, especially without nuclear weapons programs to provide support. Attempts to repeat the past glories have gone even more disastrously wrong than they did then. The best people know not to go into nuclear now, so the expectation of its failure is self-reinforcing. Nuclear programs at universities are closing for lack of interest. Hell, even steam turbines (!) risk becoming a marginalized (and perhaps, eventually, forgotten) technology. > What will be the cost of scaling this up to the hours or days required to make intermittent sources viable? It will almost certainly be much cheaper than building nuclear reactors, and by a very large margin. But if it's not, no big deal. We could build reactors later if by some miracle it turns out they're needed. I think the best you can expect now is a dribble of seed money to keep the nuclear industry from disappearing entirely, just to keep some level of expertise around as an insurance policy. But if and when renewables prove themselves to a point even you cannot deny, even that could dry up.
    - Manfredo_1 6y ago
      Cost overruns have been the norm, but nuclear power generation at scale during the 1970s was still at most half as expensive as the Votgle and Flamanville projects that you like to cherry-pick. The atrophy of the nuclear supply chain is precisely why nuclear plants are cheaper when built at scale. When you have a steady demand for reactor pressure vessels, high pressure heat exchangers, and other specialized machinery for nuclear plants its cheaper on a per-unit basis. Also, I'm not sure why you think weapons programs have anything to do with nuclear power generation's supply chain. The supply chain issues pertain to the construction of pressure vessels, pumps, and pipes that need to withstand the more difficult environment inside a nuclear reactor. The only intersection that nuclear weapons manufacturing has with nuclear power is uranium enrichment. But the cost of fuel is negligible in nuclear power. > It will almost certainly be much cheaper than building nuclear reactors, and by a very large margin. Right, just like how early nuclear advocates said it would almost certainly be cheaper than fossil fuels. We don't know this. This isn't a historical cost estimate, it's cost speculation. And cost speculation fundamentally cannot account for unknown challenges. > But if it's not, no big deal. We could build reactors later if by some miracle it turns out they're needed. Trillions of dollars wasted is "no big deal"? Not to mention, exacerbating global warming because we delayed nuclearization of our energy sector pursuing energy storage? These are pretty big deals. Decarbonization of the energy sector is going to be one of the biggest endeavors that countries conduct. It's no time to bet on unproven technologies. We know nuclear is expensive. But we know that it works, and we have experience building it at scale. We're walking in the footsteps of what we've done before, not bushwhacking through unknown engineering challenges.

pfdietz 6y ago

Yes, we've built nuclear power plants. And we've discovered they are complex and expensive, and we've discovered they take forever to design, and that very often the construction process fails and the investment is lost. Energy storage technologies have the property that they can rapidly iterate new designs, on a smaller scale than nuclear. They are inside nuclear's decision loop. The mammals are outbreeding the dinosaurs (yes, I know that metaphor is unfair to the actual animals). There's a reason business people don't swallow the kind of BS you sling on nuclear, and it isn't because they're Greenpeace members.

Manfredo_1 6y ago
But the point is, we have built nuclear at scale. And built it at scale. France has over 70% of its electricity coming from nuclear, Belgium over 50%. The US is at ~10%. We've encountered the emergent issues, and fixed them. Cost estimates on nuclear are historical estimates. They're not projections. We haven't built energy storage at anywhere close to the required levels of scale. We have 4 minutes worth of energy storage. Most of that is from hydro electric storage. 1% and 3% are from battery and thermal storage, respectively [1]. What will be the cost of scaling this up to the hours or days required to make intermittent sources viable? We can only offer cost projections: what we think massive grid-scale projects will cost. But cost projections do not include the costs of unknown engineering challenges. Remember, early nuclear proponents claimed it would be an order of magnitude cheaper than fossil fuels and had the studies to prove it. But real-world experience demonstrated otherwise. What makes us think that increasing our amount of energy storage by 2 or 3 orders of magnitude won't encounter similar unforeseen costs? We have built nuclear at scale, and yes we have discovered engineering challenges that increase cost. But we haven't built energy storage at scale, and we haven't encountered it's unforeseen engineering challenges. This post offers an excellent analogy on this topic [2]. With nuclear, we've walked this path, and know firsthand the difficulties it takes. With new technologies we're looking at the map. Those are two fundamentally different measurements of cost. 1. http://css.umich.edu/factsheets/us-grid-energy-storage-factsheet#:~:text=In%202020%2C%20the%20U.S.%20had,of%20total%20installed%20generation%20capacity.&text=Globally%2C%20installed%20energy%20storage%20capacity%20totaled%20173.6%20GW.&text=California%20leads%20the%20U.S.%20in,%2C%20New%20York%2C%20and%20Texas http://css.umich.edu/factsheets/us-grid-energy-storage-facts.... 2. https://www.quora.com/Why-are-software-development-task-estimations-regularly-off-by-a-factor-of-2-3/answer/Michael-Wolfe https://www.quora.com/Why-are-software-development-task-esti...
- pfdietz 6y ago
  And the response to that is that (1) that golden age of nuclear was far less successful than you depict, and (2) attempts to replicate it have gone disastrously wrong. Cost overruns and failures have been the norm for nuclear. In France, we don't actually know the cost of that initial roll out. In the US, nuclear construction routinely overran budgets, often by large factors. When PURPA subjected US power markets to more market discipline nuclear construction evaporated. This should tell you that it was never a low cost source. Today, even the construction that occurred then is not possible. The nuclear supply chain is atrophied, especially without nuclear weapons programs to provide support. Attempts to repeat the past glories have gone even more disastrously wrong than they did then. The best people know not to go into nuclear now, so the expectation of its failure is self-reinforcing. Nuclear programs at universities are closing for lack of interest. Hell, even steam turbines (!) risk becoming a marginalized (and perhaps, eventually, forgotten) technology. > What will be the cost of scaling this up to the hours or days required to make intermittent sources viable? It will almost certainly be much cheaper than building nuclear reactors, and by a very large margin. But if it's not, no big deal. We could build reactors later if by some miracle it turns out they're needed. I think the best you can expect now is a dribble of seed money to keep the nuclear industry from disappearing entirely, just to keep some level of expertise around as an insurance policy. But if and when renewables prove themselves to a point even you cannot deny, even that could dry up.
  - Manfredo_1 6y ago
    Cost overruns have been the norm, but nuclear power generation at scale during the 1970s was still at most half as expensive as the Votgle and Flamanville projects that you like to cherry-pick. The atrophy of the nuclear supply chain is precisely why nuclear plants are cheaper when built at scale. When you have a steady demand for reactor pressure vessels, high pressure heat exchangers, and other specialized machinery for nuclear plants its cheaper on a per-unit basis. Also, I'm not sure why you think weapons programs have anything to do with nuclear power generation's supply chain. The supply chain issues pertain to the construction of pressure vessels, pumps, and pipes that need to withstand the more difficult environment inside a nuclear reactor. The only intersection that nuclear weapons manufacturing has with nuclear power is uranium enrichment. But the cost of fuel is negligible in nuclear power. > It will almost certainly be much cheaper than building nuclear reactors, and by a very large margin. Right, just like how early nuclear advocates said it would almost certainly be cheaper than fossil fuels. We don't know this. This isn't a historical cost estimate, it's cost speculation. And cost speculation fundamentally cannot account for unknown challenges. > But if it's not, no big deal. We could build reactors later if by some miracle it turns out they're needed. Trillions of dollars wasted is "no big deal"? Not to mention, exacerbating global warming because we delayed nuclearization of our energy sector pursuing energy storage? These are pretty big deals. Decarbonization of the energy sector is going to be one of the biggest endeavors that countries conduct. It's no time to bet on unproven technologies. We know nuclear is expensive. But we know that it works, and we have experience building it at scale. We're walking in the footsteps of what we've done before, not bushwhacking through unknown engineering challenges.