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I don't see how nuclear can win over the long term. Solar and wind are simple and very amenable to mass production. Many parts of them are usable for other pur

I don't see how nuclear can win over the long term. Solar and wind are simple and very amenable to mass production. Many parts of them are usable for other purposes -- we need generators for things other than windmills, inverters for things other than solar powerplants, etc. This means we're not making things as a one off, but doing mass manufacturing, and the different users all reap benefits. They're easy to produce, which means there's lots and lots of competition, which pushes down price. They're easy to install, scale and maintain. They're easy to iterate, because it doesn't take billions to test a new design on a small scale. They don't need most of the parts nuclear has -- if you think of it a windmill contains parts a nuclear plant needs too, but unlike nuclear doesn't have all the nuclear stuff along with it, which isn't cheap. The way I see it, nuclear could have been successful but is going the way of the mainframe -- today mass computing is done on huge amounts of commodity hardware, and in the same way large, purpose built plants are already being overtaken by mass production of panel after panel being churned out of a factory, and that's not going to get any better for nuclear.

Andrew_nenakhov 6y ago
To make nuclear energy successful you need to stop fear mongering, and invest in improving technology. With scale, it will make far cheaper and reliable energy source than anything on earth. But it will hardly happen when politicians tirelessly promote solar & wind, while increasing the regulation of nuclear energy. And politicians act this way because of said fear mongering, which affects the public deeply.
- dale_glass 6y ago
  Why bother? What reason is there to believe a generator with blades attached to it is going to lose to a generator with a containment building and reactor attached to it?
  - shuckles 6y ago
    Isn’t the issue that the windmill also needs a large battery to meet demand?
    - pfdietz 6y ago
      Storage is needed, but storage has finite cost, and the cost is falling rapidly. Nuclear's window of opportunity is now closed.
      - shuckles 6y ago
        All of that is irrelevant to the argument that wind wins because it’s simpler, which is what I was trying to engage with.
      - Andrew_nenakhov 6y ago
        Far from it. After years of promotion, investment and development, wind and solar energy prices dropped 10-20x in the last decades. Same cost reduction can very well happen with nuclear power, and it'll take far less space than solar and wind, will disrupt the nature less, and will be much more reliable and predictable, capable of producing energy on demand and not requiring any storage.
        pfdietz 6y ago
        Nuclear had many decades in which its cost could drop. That failed to happen. Unlike with renewables, nuclear never had relentless cost decline. Its learning curve has even shown negative learning, with costs rising with time rather than falling. There's something about nuclear that just keeps it from getting cheaper. The scale and complexity of nuclear plants probably has something to do with it, and also the maturity of the non-nuclear side.
        Andrew_nenakhov 6y ago
        For the past 40+ years there was an non-stop ongoing attack on nuclear energy. See "china syndrome" for more info. Fear-mongering is _the reason_ for the absence of progress and rising prices, not some technical obstacles.
  - Nasrudith 6y ago
    Because it is cheaper to build many blades and posts. Plus economies of scale - wind is more factory scale in efficency as it is mostly assembly. The containment building alone is construction scale and is inherently pretty one off in requiring geology and planning as opposed to "look at weather patterns and slap it down". I am personally of the point of view that if we went on a nuclear power plant building spree back in the day to replace coal plants/provide for growing needs and used breeder reactors to deal with waste we would be far better off. Renewables are cheaper per kWhr now however. For the future, who knows if fusion or renewable will work better for terrestrial grid applications once fusion reaches the point of a positive energy balance?
manfredo 6y ago
Nuclear's non-intermittency is why it wind in the long run. Once intermittent sources fulfill demand during peak production hours, the actual cost of adding each usable watt goes up dramatically. If your goal is to run a primarily fossil fuel grid, supplemented by renewables that's fine. That's what Germany is doing. But if your goal is to actually eliminate carbon emissions, you need to factor in the cost of storage. And there really no feasible plan of storing the amount of energy required at the moment. If your goal is to actually eliminate carbon emissions, nuclear presents a much more realistic option. We keep celebrating Germany, but in reality their carbon emissions per KWh of electricity is not actually very good. It is worse than Britain. And it's ~7x worse than it's neighborhood to the west, which we tend to ignore for some reason.
- pfdietz 6y ago
  Storage solutions are advancing fast enough that your argument cannot succeed. What you are saying used to be sort of plausible, but the sell by date on it passed long ago.
  - manfredo 6y ago
    Right, as evidenced by the extensive storage infrastructure being deployed /s. The US has 25 GWh of storage, as compared to an hourly electricity consumption of 500 GWh. Literally less than ten minutes of storage. Almost all of it hydroelectric, which is a big infrastructure project on par with building nuclear power plants I'm sure you're eager to talk about how thermal storage, or concret weights with pulleys, or compressed air is going to be 100x better than current solutions. But until those things move out to prototypes and I to mass production, they represent potential solutions not actual solutions. Like fusion. If the next attempt at fusion works, great! But building out infrastructure assuming it's going to work is extremely unwise.
    - pfdietz 6y ago
      > Right, as evidenced by the extensive storage infrastructure being deployed /s. Invalid argument. > The US has 25 GWh of storage, as compared to an hourly electricity consumption of 500 GWh. Literally less than ten minutes of storage. Almost all of it hydroelectric, which is a big infrastructure project on par with building nuclear power plants Irrelevant point. Storage was marginal in the past because there wasn't much of a business case for it. With renewables crashing in price and fossil fuels being phased out, that is changing. There are now strong market forces pushing development of storage technologies. Your insistence of carrying over the market conditions of the past into the future leads you astray.

Andrew_nenakhov 6y ago

To make nuclear energy successful you need to stop fear mongering, and invest in improving technology. With scale, it will make far cheaper and reliable energy source than anything on earth. But it will hardly happen when politicians tirelessly promote solar & wind, while increasing the regulation of nuclear energy. And politicians act this way because of said fear mongering, which affects the public deeply.

dale_glass 6y ago
Why bother? What reason is there to believe a generator with blades attached to it is going to lose to a generator with a containment building and reactor attached to it?
- shuckles 6y ago
  Isn’t the issue that the windmill also needs a large battery to meet demand?
  - pfdietz 6y ago
    Storage is needed, but storage has finite cost, and the cost is falling rapidly. Nuclear's window of opportunity is now closed.
    - shuckles 6y ago
      All of that is irrelevant to the argument that wind wins because it’s simpler, which is what I was trying to engage with.
    - Andrew_nenakhov 6y ago
      Far from it. After years of promotion, investment and development, wind and solar energy prices dropped 10-20x in the last decades. Same cost reduction can very well happen with nuclear power, and it'll take far less space than solar and wind, will disrupt the nature less, and will be much more reliable and predictable, capable of producing energy on demand and not requiring any storage.
      - pfdietz 6y ago
        Nuclear had many decades in which its cost could drop. That failed to happen. Unlike with renewables, nuclear never had relentless cost decline. Its learning curve has even shown negative learning, with costs rising with time rather than falling. There's something about nuclear that just keeps it from getting cheaper. The scale and complexity of nuclear plants probably has something to do with it, and also the maturity of the non-nuclear side.
        Andrew_nenakhov 6y ago
        For the past 40+ years there was an non-stop ongoing attack on nuclear energy. See "china syndrome" for more info. Fear-mongering is _the reason_ for the absence of progress and rising prices, not some technical obstacles.
- Nasrudith 6y ago
  Because it is cheaper to build many blades and posts. Plus economies of scale - wind is more factory scale in efficency as it is mostly assembly. The containment building alone is construction scale and is inherently pretty one off in requiring geology and planning as opposed to "look at weather patterns and slap it down". I am personally of the point of view that if we went on a nuclear power plant building spree back in the day to replace coal plants/provide for growing needs and used breeder reactors to deal with waste we would be far better off. Renewables are cheaper per kWhr now however. For the future, who knows if fusion or renewable will work better for terrestrial grid applications once fusion reaches the point of a positive energy balance?

manfredo 6y ago

Nuclear's non-intermittency is why it wind in the long run. Once intermittent sources fulfill demand during peak production hours, the actual cost of adding each usable watt goes up dramatically. If your goal is to run a primarily fossil fuel grid, supplemented by renewables that's fine. That's what Germany is doing. But if your goal is to actually eliminate carbon emissions, you need to factor in the cost of storage. And there really no feasible plan of storing the amount of energy required at the moment. If your goal is to actually eliminate carbon emissions, nuclear presents a much more realistic option. We keep celebrating Germany, but in reality their carbon emissions per KWh of electricity is not actually very good. It is worse than Britain. And it's ~7x worse than it's neighborhood to the west, which we tend to ignore for some reason.

pfdietz 6y ago
Storage solutions are advancing fast enough that your argument cannot succeed. What you are saying used to be sort of plausible, but the sell by date on it passed long ago.
- manfredo 6y ago
  Right, as evidenced by the extensive storage infrastructure being deployed /s. The US has 25 GWh of storage, as compared to an hourly electricity consumption of 500 GWh. Literally less than ten minutes of storage. Almost all of it hydroelectric, which is a big infrastructure project on par with building nuclear power plants I'm sure you're eager to talk about how thermal storage, or concret weights with pulleys, or compressed air is going to be 100x better than current solutions. But until those things move out to prototypes and I to mass production, they represent potential solutions not actual solutions. Like fusion. If the next attempt at fusion works, great! But building out infrastructure assuming it's going to work is extremely unwise.
  - pfdietz 6y ago
    > Right, as evidenced by the extensive storage infrastructure being deployed /s. Invalid argument. > The US has 25 GWh of storage, as compared to an hourly electricity consumption of 500 GWh. Literally less than ten minutes of storage. Almost all of it hydroelectric, which is a big infrastructure project on par with building nuclear power plants Irrelevant point. Storage was marginal in the past because there wasn't much of a business case for it. With renewables crashing in price and fossil fuels being phased out, that is changing. There are now strong market forces pushing development of storage technologies. Your insistence of carrying over the market conditions of the past into the future leads you astray.