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SMR is interesting and have advantages... but it is not ready yet, and there are uncertainty about the cost. Wind and solar are getting so cheap that I have dou

SMR is interesting and have advantages... but it is not ready yet, and there are uncertainty about the cost. Wind and solar are getting so cheap that I have doubt SMR can compete on price... Possibly it could compete at the margin when the cost of storage (electrical and thermal) and demand-response are too expensive. About the current cost of the different type of energy: https://www.lazard.com/media/451086/lazards-levelized-cost-of-energy-version-130-vf.pdf https://www.lazard.com/media/451086/lazards-levelized-cost-o... (please note that capacity factor would be different according to the country, for example renewable energy would be more expensive in France than is this document)

radu_floricica 6y ago
Economies of scale. Most of the cost for a traditional nuclear plant is regulatory&decomissioning. If new nuclear can get over that, and it's allowed to go through a couple of iterations (which happens much faster nowadays), there is really no way to estimate how low the price can go. A 10x reduction is not out of question, if you look at SpaceX for example, another industry where innovation has been frozen for decades.
- skitout 6y ago
  But the fact is we have now cheap existing clean technologies, with a fast decreasing cost (decreasing cost of energy, and decreasing cost of managing intermittence)... It does not seems wise to bet that SMR will be cheaper than renewable in 10 to 20 years and wait and pray... SMR is not a viable option right now. That is an interesting possibility we should study and work on, that could be a good surprise later on, but right now 1) it is not ready 2) we don't know if it will be cost competitive... Putting aside nuclear risks and radioactive waste problem (that are minimized by SMR)
  - pfdietz 6y ago
    SMRs are being touted not because they are particularly promising, but because they are the last option nuclear supporters have. Traditional reactors have run out of chances, so now it's either the Hail Mary Reactors or give up.
    - jnxx 6y ago
      Are there any known problems or difficulties with them? I guess the materials science aspect is extremely difficult as it is already a huge problem in conventional designs...
      - pfdietz 6y ago
        The big problem is diseconomies of scale in construction and operation. They require more material per MW of power, and more staff too. The story is that economies of scale of manufacture, and changes to regulations about operation, can counter this, but that remains to be demonstrated.
  - pjc50 6y ago
    Indeed. We need to keep rolling out renewables until nuclear is ready.
  - rwallace 6y ago
    > But the fact is we have now cheap existing clean technologies, with a fast decreasing cost (decreasing cost of energy, and decreasing cost of managing intermittence) The cost of solar and wind energy when the sun shines or the wind blows has certainly decreased a lot in recent years, you're right about that. But decreasing cost of managing intermittence? I haven't heard of any big recent advances in that (aside from the successful use in Australia of batteries to damp fluctuations on a timescale of minutes, which is great but doesn't address timescales of hours to months). What am I missing?
    - dmurray 6y ago
      Battery storage has got way cheaper. 4x cheaper per kWh since 2013, according to [0]. They're still not cheap enough to make solar + batteries price-competitive in most markets, but their cost absolutely has been decreasing fast. [0] https://cleantechnica.com/2019/12/04/powering-the-ev-revolution-battery-packs-now-at-156-kwh-13-lower-than-2018-finds-bnef/ https://cleantechnica.com/2019/12/04/powering-the-ev-revolut...
      - evgen 6y ago
        Considering the fact that battery storage would need to undergo several orders of magnitude in price reduction to provide true grid-scale storage, does this really matter? Battery storage is, at best, going to provide municipal load for minutes or maybe hours, but it is unlikely to cover a 24-48 hour power ebb anytime in the next few decades.
        dmurray 6y ago
        If battery storage keeps getting cheaper at the same rate, then yes - two orders of magnitude would be seen in twenty years. Absolutely an important consideration if you're considering a big upfront investment in a nuclear plant whose returns will be realized twenty to seventy years from now (or whatever reasonable build time and operating lifetime you come up with). Needing "several orders of magnitude" improvement is also pessimistic. There are installations that are borderline economically profitable right now (Tesla battery farm in South Australia): another factor of 5 or 10 makes those attractive in many more places.
  - radu_floricica 6y ago
    Why do you frame it as a decision between the two? The market is beyond huge, there are bound to be use cases where one or the other is clearly better. Also a 10x cost improvement on nuclear would blow everything else away (in a good way). I don't think renewables have the same potential - for one thing, they're a more mature technology (weird, I know, but they've been the focus of global development for quite some time now). And also there's only so much energy you can get out of solar and wind - you just can't get more than 1.3 kw from a square meter of solar, you have to cover more square meters. On the other hand there's no theoretical reason why you wouldn't have a clean, safe reactor in each car. It's just a technological challenge.

radu_floricica 6y ago

Economies of scale. Most of the cost for a traditional nuclear plant is regulatory&decomissioning. If new nuclear can get over that, and it's allowed to go through a couple of iterations (which happens much faster nowadays), there is really no way to estimate how low the price can go. A 10x reduction is not out of question, if you look at SpaceX for example, another industry where innovation has been frozen for decades.

skitout 6y ago
But the fact is we have now cheap existing clean technologies, with a fast decreasing cost (decreasing cost of energy, and decreasing cost of managing intermittence)... It does not seems wise to bet that SMR will be cheaper than renewable in 10 to 20 years and wait and pray... SMR is not a viable option right now. That is an interesting possibility we should study and work on, that could be a good surprise later on, but right now 1) it is not ready 2) we don't know if it will be cost competitive... Putting aside nuclear risks and radioactive waste problem (that are minimized by SMR)
- pfdietz 6y ago
  SMRs are being touted not because they are particularly promising, but because they are the last option nuclear supporters have. Traditional reactors have run out of chances, so now it's either the Hail Mary Reactors or give up.
  - jnxx 6y ago
    Are there any known problems or difficulties with them? I guess the materials science aspect is extremely difficult as it is already a huge problem in conventional designs...
    - pfdietz 6y ago
      The big problem is diseconomies of scale in construction and operation. They require more material per MW of power, and more staff too. The story is that economies of scale of manufacture, and changes to regulations about operation, can counter this, but that remains to be demonstrated.
- pjc50 6y ago
  Indeed. We need to keep rolling out renewables until nuclear is ready.
- rwallace 6y ago
  > But the fact is we have now cheap existing clean technologies, with a fast decreasing cost (decreasing cost of energy, and decreasing cost of managing intermittence) The cost of solar and wind energy when the sun shines or the wind blows has certainly decreased a lot in recent years, you're right about that. But decreasing cost of managing intermittence? I haven't heard of any big recent advances in that (aside from the successful use in Australia of batteries to damp fluctuations on a timescale of minutes, which is great but doesn't address timescales of hours to months). What am I missing?
  - dmurray 6y ago
    Battery storage has got way cheaper. 4x cheaper per kWh since 2013, according to [0]. They're still not cheap enough to make solar + batteries price-competitive in most markets, but their cost absolutely has been decreasing fast. [0] https://cleantechnica.com/2019/12/04/powering-the-ev-revolution-battery-packs-now-at-156-kwh-13-lower-than-2018-finds-bnef/ https://cleantechnica.com/2019/12/04/powering-the-ev-revolut...
    - evgen 6y ago
      Considering the fact that battery storage would need to undergo several orders of magnitude in price reduction to provide true grid-scale storage, does this really matter? Battery storage is, at best, going to provide municipal load for minutes or maybe hours, but it is unlikely to cover a 24-48 hour power ebb anytime in the next few decades.
      - dmurray 6y ago
        If battery storage keeps getting cheaper at the same rate, then yes - two orders of magnitude would be seen in twenty years. Absolutely an important consideration if you're considering a big upfront investment in a nuclear plant whose returns will be realized twenty to seventy years from now (or whatever reasonable build time and operating lifetime you come up with). Needing "several orders of magnitude" improvement is also pessimistic. There are installations that are borderline economically profitable right now (Tesla battery farm in South Australia): another factor of 5 or 10 makes those attractive in many more places.
- radu_floricica 6y ago
  Why do you frame it as a decision between the two? The market is beyond huge, there are bound to be use cases where one or the other is clearly better. Also a 10x cost improvement on nuclear would blow everything else away (in a good way). I don't think renewables have the same potential - for one thing, they're a more mature technology (weird, I know, but they've been the focus of global development for quite some time now). And also there's only so much energy you can get out of solar and wind - you just can't get more than 1.3 kw from a square meter of solar, you have to cover more square meters. On the other hand there's no theoretical reason why you wouldn't have a clean, safe reactor in each car. It's just a technological challenge.