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Renewables are already widely deployed and payed for. It is nuts to build nuclear to replace fully functional wind turbines and solar cells. Nuclear fans just

Renewables are already widely deployed and payed for. It is nuts to build nuclear to replace fully functional wind turbines and solar cells. Nuclear fans just have no economic sense. It is all about nuclear no matter the cost.

manfredo 6y ago
Maybe some promising new storage technology will prevail, but solutions that are 5-10 years of development away from being viable have a habit of taking a lot more than 5-10 years to become viable. Until then nuclear presents the only proven way of decarbonizing an energy sector to a great extent that works in any environment. It's true that nuclear doesn't make economic sense relative to running a gas plant and using solar when you can. You can get a greater immediate carbon reduction by spending the cost if a nuclear plant on supplementing fossil fuels with nuclear. But that'll only go so far. Once you outstrip demand during peak generation hours, you're effectively getting less energy for the same capacity. It doesn't provide a path to decarbonization without storing large amounts if energy - much larger than what we'll be able to store for decades at least.
- Muanh 6y ago
  Ignoring the fact that we don't need 5-10 year development for batteries. You are ignoring the 5-10 year build time for a nuclear reactor.
  - jnxx 6y ago
    Five years is extremely optimistic. The Finnish Olkiluoto plant might go on line in 2022 and then it would have had a 22-year development time. Starting such a project today this would mean it finishes around 2040. And this was planned with "conventional" nuclear technology and knowing well all the difficulties such a construction entails. That would perhaps be in time to power a kind of cold house museum to show our children how Earth has been looking before runaway climate change. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olkiluoto_Nuclear_Power_Plant#Timeline https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olkiluoto_Nuclear_Power_Plant#... Proposing new technology which is sure to run longer smells to me a lot like to suggest doing nothing in order to avoid change that is both absolutely urgent, and totally possible now.
  - manfredo 6y ago
    There exist no feasible plan to build out the storage required to make renewables work within 5-10 years. The US consumes 11.5 TWh of electricity every day. About 500GWh every hour. We have about one Gigawatt hour worth of battery storage. We need terawatt hours worth of storage. The availability of battery storage remains off by several orders of magnitude.
- jnxx 6y ago
  There are a lot of things which are already employed, like generating hydrogen by electrolysis and feeding it into natural gas storage and gas distribution networks. This is not a full solution but works and is being used in Germany now. Also, we will need many transition technologies to make every step ecomonical, it won be a single technical break-through.
opo 6y ago
>...It is all about nuclear no matter the cost. Oddly, this is the exact sort of behavior I sometimes see with the advocates for renewables. Cost should always be a consideration, but when people conveniently ignore some costs and focus on others, it does a disservice to the goal of decarbonizing the grid. The levelized cost for residential rooftop solar is at least as high as nuclear, but that cost doesn't seem to matter to some advocates. The cost for renewables + storage is at least the cost of nuclear, but that cost also doesn't matter to some advocates. (If grid storage was cheap, we would have built it decades ago.) https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-and-levelized-cost-of-storage-2020/ https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-... Some advocates recommend massively overbuilding solar or wind to deal with seasonal differences. This is obviously a cost multiplier but that doesn't seem to matter to some advocates. Advocates also describe how we will rebuild the electrical grid to move vast amounts of solar or wind power across the USA. This will not be cheap or easy. Even the relatively small proposed Tres Amos SuperStation hasn’t been completed yet. This cost doesn't seem to matter to some advocates. Advocates for renewables seem happy with relying on natural gas peaker plants to get around the costs of building grid storage, but methane is a very potent GHG in the short term and there are lots of methane losses in its capture and distribution. No one seriously thinks that natural gas is a long term answer to climate change. It is possible there will be some major advances in grid storage that will allow us to stop using natural gas to cover for the intermittent nature of wind and solar. In that case - great! But... what if that doesn't pan out? The dangers we are facing in the coming decades are immense. If you were forced to choose, would you prefer the world to suffer through catastrophic climate change rather than use nuclear power?
- amanaplanacanal 6y ago
  I’m an advocate for taxing carbon and letting the utility companies figure out what is really cheaper. They have the expertise and the incentive.
  - pfdietz 6y ago
    Exelon has stated that for new nuclear plants in the US to compete with NG CC, CO2 taxes would have to be $300-400/ton. To compete with NG for filling in around renewables, CO2 taxes would have to be much higher than that. Other projections have the economy basically decarbonizing (without needing nuclear) at a CO2 tax of just $200/ton. There's a good reason Exelon is tryin to spin off all its NPPs.

manfredo 6y ago

Maybe some promising new storage technology will prevail, but solutions that are 5-10 years of development away from being viable have a habit of taking a lot more than 5-10 years to become viable. Until then nuclear presents the only proven way of decarbonizing an energy sector to a great extent that works in any environment. It's true that nuclear doesn't make economic sense relative to running a gas plant and using solar when you can. You can get a greater immediate carbon reduction by spending the cost if a nuclear plant on supplementing fossil fuels with nuclear. But that'll only go so far. Once you outstrip demand during peak generation hours, you're effectively getting less energy for the same capacity. It doesn't provide a path to decarbonization without storing large amounts if energy - much larger than what we'll be able to store for decades at least.

Muanh 6y ago
Ignoring the fact that we don't need 5-10 year development for batteries. You are ignoring the 5-10 year build time for a nuclear reactor.
- jnxx 6y ago
  Five years is extremely optimistic. The Finnish Olkiluoto plant might go on line in 2022 and then it would have had a 22-year development time. Starting such a project today this would mean it finishes around 2040. And this was planned with "conventional" nuclear technology and knowing well all the difficulties such a construction entails. That would perhaps be in time to power a kind of cold house museum to show our children how Earth has been looking before runaway climate change. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olkiluoto_Nuclear_Power_Plant#Timeline https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olkiluoto_Nuclear_Power_Plant#... Proposing new technology which is sure to run longer smells to me a lot like to suggest doing nothing in order to avoid change that is both absolutely urgent, and totally possible now.
- manfredo 6y ago
  There exist no feasible plan to build out the storage required to make renewables work within 5-10 years. The US consumes 11.5 TWh of electricity every day. About 500GWh every hour. We have about one Gigawatt hour worth of battery storage. We need terawatt hours worth of storage. The availability of battery storage remains off by several orders of magnitude.
jnxx 6y ago
There are a lot of things which are already employed, like generating hydrogen by electrolysis and feeding it into natural gas storage and gas distribution networks. This is not a full solution but works and is being used in Germany now. Also, we will need many transition technologies to make every step ecomonical, it won be a single technical break-through.

opo 6y ago

>...It is all about nuclear no matter the cost. Oddly, this is the exact sort of behavior I sometimes see with the advocates for renewables. Cost should always be a consideration, but when people conveniently ignore some costs and focus on others, it does a disservice to the goal of decarbonizing the grid. The levelized cost for residential rooftop solar is at least as high as nuclear, but that cost doesn't seem to matter to some advocates. The cost for renewables + storage is at least the cost of nuclear, but that cost also doesn't matter to some advocates. (If grid storage was cheap, we would have built it decades ago.) https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-and-levelized-cost-of-storage-2020/ https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-... Some advocates recommend massively overbuilding solar or wind to deal with seasonal differences. This is obviously a cost multiplier but that doesn't seem to matter to some advocates. Advocates also describe how we will rebuild the electrical grid to move vast amounts of solar or wind power across the USA. This will not be cheap or easy. Even the relatively small proposed Tres Amos SuperStation hasn’t been completed yet. This cost doesn't seem to matter to some advocates. Advocates for renewables seem happy with relying on natural gas peaker plants to get around the costs of building grid storage, but methane is a very potent GHG in the short term and there are lots of methane losses in its capture and distribution. No one seriously thinks that natural gas is a long term answer to climate change. It is possible there will be some major advances in grid storage that will allow us to stop using natural gas to cover for the intermittent nature of wind and solar. In that case - great! But... what if that doesn't pan out? The dangers we are facing in the coming decades are immense. If you were forced to choose, would you prefer the world to suffer through catastrophic climate change rather than use nuclear power?

amanaplanacanal 6y ago
I’m an advocate for taxing carbon and letting the utility companies figure out what is really cheaper. They have the expertise and the incentive.
- pfdietz 6y ago
  Exelon has stated that for new nuclear plants in the US to compete with NG CC, CO2 taxes would have to be $300-400/ton. To compete with NG for filling in around renewables, CO2 taxes would have to be much higher than that. Other projections have the economy basically decarbonizing (without needing nuclear) at a CO2 tax of just $200/ton. There's a good reason Exelon is tryin to spin off all its NPPs.