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>...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 alway

by 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.
  - opo 6y ago
    The Exelon proposals I've seen are for a carbon tax of $40 increasing 5% a year. Where are they proposing a $200 tax?
    - pfdietz 6y ago
      I didn't say they were.
      - opo 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. Where did they say that?
        pfdietz 6y ago
        https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/PT.3.4088 https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/PT.3.4088 “The cost of new nuclear is prohibitive for us to be investing in,” says Crane. Exelon considered building two new reactors in Texas in 2005, he says, when gas prices were $8/MMBtu and were projected to rise to $13/MMBtu. At that price, the project would have been viable with a CO2 tax of $25 per ton. “We’re sitting here trading 2019 gas at $2.90 per MMBtu,” he says; for new nuclear power to be competitive at that price, a CO2 tax “would be $300–$400.” Exelon currently is placing its bets instead on advances in energy storage and carbon sequestration technologies.
        opo 6y ago
imtringued 6y ago
Ok, tell me how do you plan on restoring the dying nuclear industry? It's still dying to this very day and it's not because there is a lack of trying or too much regulation. It's because of the inherent complexity of a monolithic power plant. They are so complicated that no single party except the government can take full responsibility for them. Meanwhile no other industry has this problem.
- roenxi 6y ago
  My plan is to watch China do it, they're currently aiming to be the world #1 nuclear energy producer by 2035. They probably have the infrastructure experience to pull it off. It is an interesting experiment and it'll be fascinating to compare it to the German Energiewende to see which is more effective. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_China#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_China#History
- opo 6y ago
  >Ok, tell me how do you plan on restoring the dying nuclear industry? That is a different discussion. France built France built over 50 reactors in about 15 years, so obviously a rapid buildup could be done if that ends up being the best option, but that is worthy of its own discussion. My point was that there are advocates who only talk about the cost of nuclear power compared to say the low cost of solar electricity from solar cells in Arizona at noon. If we are going to only rely on wind/solar there are a lot of unknowns about how long term grid storage could work or the costs of over building of wind/solar that might have to be done, etc etc. Yea that all might just work out, but if it doesn't is it better to suffer an existential threat from climate change or use nuclear power? If people are opposed to nuclear power no matter the consequences, then they should just say that. I think Bill Gates has the right approach here - he is investing in grid storage technologies AND investing in advanced nuclear plant designs.
  - godelski 6y ago
    That's because Bill Gates listened to the scientists, and you can see him write about this. He knows to not put all his eggs in one basket. So he invests in small nuclear, because it is a technology we have and can fix deployment issues. He invests in solar because it is a far cheaper option in sunny areas. He invests in carbon capture and sequestration to reverse the effects of climate change to this point and how we'll likely continue to pollute. He invests in battery technology so we can use those renewables without a base load (really would be a phase in). And he's investing in fusion because it could make all these questions obsolete. He's investing from many different angles because you can't really predict what will work. There's this weird myth of "either or" here. People are treating money, labor, and materials as if they are these static things. This isn't a video game where if you need more pylons you just buy them. In reality we only have so many experts in a field at a time. We can't just solve fusion faster by throwing more money at it. There are diminishing returns after a point. So you use this money elsewhere. This weird myth of "either or" really comes down to thinking that everyone is stupid and "I'm an expert" (the "It's so simple, you just..."). I find this odd on a site full of tech nerds who have to frequently deal with these types of logistical issues and laymen making wildly naive conjectures.
pfdietz 6y ago
> Oddly, this is the exact sort of behavior I sometimes see with the advocates for renewables. If so, the renewable advocate should argue based on cost. Nuclear is very likely going to lose that argument, ultimately spurious arguments about energy density or intermittency notwithstanding.
jnxx 6y ago
Rooftop solar is cost-effective. It is already starting to get below the price people pay for getting electricity from the grid.
- opo 6y ago
  The levelized cost of energy report I linked too (https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-and-levelized-cost-of-storage-2020/ https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-...). is the latest report and is dated OCT 19 2020. Consumer rooftop solar might be the most highly subsidized form of power in the world, so yes it might be cost-effective for the people getting the subsidies - but that doesn't mean it is not expensive.
- pfdietz 6y ago
  Yeah, no. Rooftop grid-connected solar is a way to get the reliability benefit of being on the grid without having to pay your fair share of the cost of providing that reliability.

by opo 6y ago

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.
- opo 6y ago
  The Exelon proposals I've seen are for a carbon tax of $40 increasing 5% a year. Where are they proposing a $200 tax?
  - pfdietz 6y ago
    I didn't say they were.
    - opo 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. Where did they say that?
      - pfdietz 6y ago
        https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/PT.3.4088 https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/PT.3.4088 “The cost of new nuclear is prohibitive for us to be investing in,” says Crane. Exelon considered building two new reactors in Texas in 2005, he says, when gas prices were $8/MMBtu and were projected to rise to $13/MMBtu. At that price, the project would have been viable with a CO2 tax of $25 per ton. “We’re sitting here trading 2019 gas at $2.90 per MMBtu,” he says; for new nuclear power to be competitive at that price, a CO2 tax “would be $300–$400.” Exelon currently is placing its bets instead on advances in energy storage and carbon sequestration technologies.
        opo 6y ago

imtringued 6y ago

Ok, tell me how do you plan on restoring the dying nuclear industry? It's still dying to this very day and it's not because there is a lack of trying or too much regulation. It's because of the inherent complexity of a monolithic power plant. They are so complicated that no single party except the government can take full responsibility for them. Meanwhile no other industry has this problem.

roenxi 6y ago
My plan is to watch China do it, they're currently aiming to be the world #1 nuclear energy producer by 2035. They probably have the infrastructure experience to pull it off. It is an interesting experiment and it'll be fascinating to compare it to the German Energiewende to see which is more effective. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_China#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_China#History
opo 6y ago
>Ok, tell me how do you plan on restoring the dying nuclear industry? That is a different discussion. France built France built over 50 reactors in about 15 years, so obviously a rapid buildup could be done if that ends up being the best option, but that is worthy of its own discussion. My point was that there are advocates who only talk about the cost of nuclear power compared to say the low cost of solar electricity from solar cells in Arizona at noon. If we are going to only rely on wind/solar there are a lot of unknowns about how long term grid storage could work or the costs of over building of wind/solar that might have to be done, etc etc. Yea that all might just work out, but if it doesn't is it better to suffer an existential threat from climate change or use nuclear power? If people are opposed to nuclear power no matter the consequences, then they should just say that. I think Bill Gates has the right approach here - he is investing in grid storage technologies AND investing in advanced nuclear plant designs.
- godelski 6y ago
  That's because Bill Gates listened to the scientists, and you can see him write about this. He knows to not put all his eggs in one basket. So he invests in small nuclear, because it is a technology we have and can fix deployment issues. He invests in solar because it is a far cheaper option in sunny areas. He invests in carbon capture and sequestration to reverse the effects of climate change to this point and how we'll likely continue to pollute. He invests in battery technology so we can use those renewables without a base load (really would be a phase in). And he's investing in fusion because it could make all these questions obsolete. He's investing from many different angles because you can't really predict what will work. There's this weird myth of "either or" here. People are treating money, labor, and materials as if they are these static things. This isn't a video game where if you need more pylons you just buy them. In reality we only have so many experts in a field at a time. We can't just solve fusion faster by throwing more money at it. There are diminishing returns after a point. So you use this money elsewhere. This weird myth of "either or" really comes down to thinking that everyone is stupid and "I'm an expert" (the "It's so simple, you just..."). I find this odd on a site full of tech nerds who have to frequently deal with these types of logistical issues and laymen making wildly naive conjectures.

pfdietz 6y ago

> Oddly, this is the exact sort of behavior I sometimes see with the advocates for renewables. If so, the renewable advocate should argue based on cost. Nuclear is very likely going to lose that argument, ultimately spurious arguments about energy density or intermittency notwithstanding.

jnxx 6y ago

Rooftop solar is cost-effective. It is already starting to get below the price people pay for getting electricity from the grid.

opo 6y ago
The levelized cost of energy report I linked too (https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-and-levelized-cost-of-storage-2020/ https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-...). is the latest report and is dated OCT 19 2020. Consumer rooftop solar might be the most highly subsidized form of power in the world, so yes it might be cost-effective for the people getting the subsidies - but that doesn't mean it is not expensive.
pfdietz 6y ago
Yeah, no. Rooftop grid-connected solar is a way to get the reliability benefit of being on the grid without having to pay your fair share of the cost of providing that reliability.