13 ms·

I get all the pro-nuclear arguments here and really wish that I could agree. However, what most commenters are missing is the real reason, nuclear came out of f

• zozin 6y ago
  This line of thinking would have never made renewables possible.
  • phicoh 6y ago
    As far as I know, this is not true. On a small scale wind has been profitable for a long time. In The Netherlands, small scale commercial wind turbines go back a long time. As far as I know there were no subsidies back then.
    • manderley 6y ago
      There's also hydroelectric power, with a very long history of being economically viable.
      • bluGill 6y ago
        Economically viable because the costs of the land used behind the dams were not nearly as high. Today most of the good places for hydro are already taken, and we have far more concern for the environmental impacts. There is still room for adding hydro, but it isn't as easy as in the past.
      • stjohnswarts 6y ago
        Hydro is being phased out in the USA because it destroys river/watershed biomes. You won't see any significant hydro being done in the USA for quite a while as the environmental groups won't allow it and it will be locked up in court for decades.
  • stjohnswarts 6y ago
    Not true. Technology is making breakthroughs because that is what technology does. Solar and wind may not have moved along quite as fast but they would have moved along. We need nuclear for stability (as we don't have energy storage facilities that can handle extreme weather events for days or weeks) and we need solar and wind because who can afford to give up "free" energy that is there for the taking. Solar is the end goal (or fusion) of course but energy storage density at grid scale is decades off. There are several viable nuclear designs available now that can't go critical and are practical with just a little more work and government support.
    • pfdietz 6y ago
      > We need nuclear for stability (as we don't have energy storage facilities that can handle extreme weather events for days or weeks) We also don't have the nuclear reactors that would supply that energy (particularly at global scale, where breeding would be needed). Why is building those reactors conceivable, but building energy storage systems not?
• RobinL 6y ago
  Looking at the costs of e.g. Hinkley Point c, this feels right. I do wonder, though, what the costs would look like if a big country like the US built, say, 400 Hinkley Point Cs. What economies of scale would you see? You could probably get a sense by looking at the marginal build costs were associated with some of the last French plants during the 1970s-early 1990s construction boom, when they built over 50 plans.
  • fuoqi 6y ago
    You can get a rough measurement of the scale effect by comparing Hinkley Point C and Olkiluoto with cost of new VVER plants and time which it takes to build them.
  • ttul 6y ago
    Even hydro power can have cost overruns. See the Site C project in British Columbia for example. Massively over budget, yet the province absolutely needs this source of carbon free electricity to support its energy needs in the coming decades.
• pjc50 6y ago
  Everyone's also forgotten nuclear proliferation. I assume that everyone advocating new nuclear in America is also happy for Iran to build a line of new nuclear plants?
  • wmiel 6y ago
    It can be and is controlled. It's not that easy to use the civilian reactor to get a bomb, otherwise Iran would already have it long time ago.
  • bluGill 6y ago
    I'm fine with it. There is some concern about them building plants that can create bomb grade material as a byproduct, but we can verify they don't build that into their plants.
    • fuoqi 6y ago
      No, it's impractical to use civilian reactors for generating materials for a nuclear bomb (I don't count "dirty" bombs as nuclear). Also usually spent fuel rods are returned to the country of production.
      • pfdietz 6y ago
        Certain kinds of civilian reactors produce plutonium with large amounts of higher isotopes, but (1) it's still possible to use that stuff in bombs, with boosting, and (2) other reactor type produce plutonium that's better than weapons grade (for example, fast breeders with a breeding blanket region around the core; the Pu from that blanket is almost entirely 239Pu, and remember that scaling nuclear to supply world energy demand will likely require breeding.)
  • briandear 6y ago
    https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/11/171106112256.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/11/171106112256.h...
  • hcurtiss 6y ago
• wmiel 6y ago
  1. Renewables receive huge subsidies as well, especially in Europe. It is rarely being taken into account, but that's essentially what allowed it to become that cheap. The Nuclear would also be much cheaper if we were investing more in it. 2. There are countries that cannot rely on renewables because there's not enough wind or sun. 3. Renewables don't really work at the moment without stable source that can quickly kick in when there's no sun or no wind. The Nuclear energy is stable and clean. That combination of features is hugely underappreciated in favour of natural gas mostly for political reasons (at least in Europe). Natural Gas is not clean and won't prevent the global warming. Also Natural Gas and Coal have environmental impact and kill people all the time, not only when there's highly unlikely accident. 4. The small modular reactors (SMRs) may be the solution for a huge capital cost required for building a classic Nuclear Powerplant.
  • martinald 6y ago
    I think the biggest 'externality' subsidy of renewables is exactly your point 3. It's all well and good saying you can produce solar + wind en masse for 3c/kWh (even without govt incentives), but if you need to have a gas plant running extremely inefficiently to pick up the shortfall, I'm not sure you can say it is 3c/kWh. I'm very pro renewables but think it is increasingly getting missed. You often see charts that solar/wind is significantly cheaper than nuclear, but never taking into account this.
    • pfdietz 6y ago
      A simple cycle gas turbine power plant is 5% of the capital cost of a nuclear power plant. So even if you have to cover your entire renewable system with 100% CT backup, you still aren't paying as much as nuclear.
  • Blikkentrekker 6y ago
    Wind energy also kills people, more direct deaths than nuclear power by any estimate, actually. Windmills fall over and kill people. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/?sh=7ae51b80709b https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-d... The interesting thing is that nuclear power is at 90, and Windmills at 150, but only if accidents in undeveloped nations be included, if they not be, and only developed nations are included, then the death toll is 0.1 from nuclear. The overwhelming majority of accidents with nuclear energy happen in undeveloped nations.
• neximo64 6y ago
  The cost of an integrated circuit in the 1970s would be so prohibitive you couldn't even type this today if we used this argument. Likewise with lithium batteries. It just takes use, iteration and scale nuclear energy can easily be cheaper than everything else out there.
  • quelsolaar 6y ago
    Over the last 50 years nuclear has gotten more expensive not less. Also we dont have another 50 years. We dont even have the 10 years it takes to build a nuclear powerplant.
    • briandear 6y ago
      Why exactly has it gotten more expensive?
      • black_puppydog 6y ago
        Because otherwise even a state wouldn't want to vouch for it.
      • brandmeyer 6y ago
        In large part, because civil engineering projects got more expensive.
      • michieldotv 6y ago
        I see two reasons: Increased nuclear safety. Proponents often tout nuclear's relative safety. Good, but that safety is hard won through regulation. Compliance is costly, and improved safety has been subject to diminishing returns. Economies of scale. Building a nuclear power plant is a massive undertaking, so the world simply hasn't been building a lot of nuclear power plants. Supply chains (parts, know how) are getting smaller and more uncompetitive with every passing year as other forms of energy production have become more attractive.
      • quelsolaar 6y ago
        I dont really know why civil engineer projects of all kinds have gotten so expensive but they have. One would think that the more we learn from our failiures the more things we have to make sure we do right and that should take more time, on the other hand we should also learn to streamline and use technology to speed things up, but apparently not enough.
• mobjack 6y ago
  Nuclear can be competitive with subsidies. A serious response to climate change would be large government support of both nuclear power and renewables. Are we going to tell our children that the main reason we did nothing to fight climate change was because fossil fuels were more competitive economically? First replace every coal and gas power plant, then we can argue about nuclear vs renewables.
  • michaelcampbell 6y ago
    > Are we going to tell our children that the main reason we did nothing to fight climate change was because fossil fuels were more competitive economically? We're doing exactly that.
  • ttul 6y ago
    Aren’t the subsidies that nuclear needs essentially a poor form of carbon taxation? Without a real price on carbon (in the US, for instance), nuclear and renewables need subsidies in order to compete with fossil fuel generation. Fossil fuels receive an implicit subsidy, which is the externalities of climate change and air pollution that we must all pay for. If a proper price on carbon existed, would nuclear and renewables not automatically look a whole lot cheaper without subsidies?
    • obelos 6y ago
      Exactly this. Fossil-based energy is enormously subsidized by a deferred carbon tax. No fossil/nuclear comparison is really meaningful without internalizing that externality.
      • stjohnswarts 6y ago
        I have to argue this to friends all the time.
    • stjohnswarts 6y ago
      That's why once you have a strong fission program you retire fossil fuel power as new nuclear comes online and then electrical vehicles and other more environmentally friends travel/HVAC etc starts happening. Economies of scale and training lower the price even more. This could happen in big powerhouses like China/India/Europe/USA and reverse some of the damage we've done to the environment and green house gas increases.
• moistbar 6y ago
  >No, in practice humanity never figured out how to safely and efficiently use this power source That's patently false. Nuclear has the fewest deaths per TW generated of any power source.
  • acidburnNSA 6y ago
    It also ignores the economic successes seen in China recently, like the Hualong One builds. And in Russia with the VVERs.
    • koheripbal 6y ago
      Yes, and those really highlight what the problem in the West is. The cost of nuclear has nothing to do with the physical construction, safety, or operation of Nuclear. The costs are caused by legal challenges that cause massive delays and interruptions to construction, the transport of fuel and spent fuel, and to storage. There are egregious regulations that place unreasonable and outdated requirements on nuclear plant construction and operation. Nuclear isn't a science or engineering problem. It's a political and legal problem.
  • quelsolaar 6y ago
    > Nuclear has the fewest deaths per TW generated of any power source. Yes, but its doesn't have the fewest We-have-hours-to-abandon-this-entire-city-because-no-one-can-live-here-for-the-next-100-years per TW generated of any power source. Risks don't have to be counted in deaths. The risks of nuclear are very low, but risk is not just about the chance of an accident, its about the acceptability of a potential failure.
    • selectodude 6y ago
      Okuma, Japan is already inhabitable again. Understand the reason people aren't moving back is less due to nuclear fallout but more because the whole town was leveled by the earthquake and tsunami.
      • 6y ago
• mabbo 6y ago
  > No, in practice humanity never figured out how to safely and efficiently use this power source and now renewables are a way safer and cheaper bet Take a look at Ontario's power generation data right now: https://ieso.ca/en/Power-Data https://ieso.ca/en/Power-Data We have a steady state of about 8.3 GW of nuclear power generation as our base supply of power, representing most power generation in the province. Electricity prices are pretty good- but they used to be better even before it was all privatized. The CANDU reactor design is safe and practical. We can't rely on solar this far north- the days get too short in the winter. We have wind, but it's too unstable to be a sole source. You can see in the graphs what happens when the wind dies down- we fire up the gas plants to make up the difference. We have hydroelectric dams, and they're wonderful for variable supply- like a self-refilling battery- but we only have so much capacity there without damming the whole province. In conclusion: we have figured out a way to safely and efficiently use nuclear. Renewables are cheap, but not steady enough to be usable here. The alternatives are fossil fuels. Nuclear works.
  • Retric 6y ago
    First the price customers see ignores subsides. That’s essentially what subsides do. Also, Ontario’s production is weighted towards nuclear, but it’s second by second usage is significantly less so. They export a lot of nuclear power and import non nuclear power. That arrangement only works because nuclear is less common in other areas. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_power_transmission_grid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_power_transmiss... Also, hydro complements Nuclear extremely well as it can shift production across time, thus maximizing each nuclear power plant’s capacity factor. However, wind fills the same niche more cheaply even with significant excess capacity. This shows up as a grid where the wholesale price frequently sits around zero, which makes nuclear even less economically viable. I personally expect nuclear to stick around for various reasons like bulk radioactive isotope production, but ramping up to become a significantly larger chunk of global electricity production would take dramatically lower unsubsidized prices.
    • ggm 6y ago
      Hydro complementing Nuclear is Pumped Hydro Storage. I like this but economists will note, it has system loss: the energy costs to store, include losses which can't be recovered: the value proposition is that SOME (large) amount of energy is shifted in time, behind the dam wall. So its real. but, its not perfect. All systems have losses. The losses in PHES are not necessarily a huge problem.
• Accujack 6y ago
  Like most discussions of nuclear power here, this will rapidly devolve into proponents of nuclear arguing it's necessary for our near term future while opponents argue that everything that made nuclear weapons bad and 1960s reactors expensive is still the reason that we can't use nuclear going forward. The truth is that both sides need to update their knowledge of the state of the art in nuclear power generation, learn how the power grid works in depth and learn the patterns of power consumption both by residential locations and industrial ones. Once you have all the knowledge about what's needed to avoid a significant decrease in our standard of living, you'll understand that a power generation technology with certain characteristics (foremost it has to be carbon neutral) is required... not optional, in other words, and simply adding more renewables is not enough to solve the problem. The only practical solution (barring spending trillions of $$ and time to completely rebuild the US power grid and invent power storage technologies that don't exist as well as the industrial processes to produce them and infrastructure to handle their whole life cycle) is modern nuclear technology.
  • elproxy 6y ago
    I would add that beyond that, electricity is usually a rather small (~25%) fraction of final energy consumption in developed economies, so really there's a lot more to worry about if we're thinking about climate, and that might well imply "lifestyle changes" as David MacKay called them.
• r00fus 6y ago
  Doesn't France make lots of money selling nuclear baseload power to UK, Germany, etc?
• deleted 6y ago
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• belorn 6y ago
  The biggest recipient for subsidies in the energy sector is fossil fuels, for which many would not be commercial viable unless they were directly given funds to stay operating. Here in Sweden we have oil fueled power plants which is paid just to exist, and then they get paid a second time for any energy they do produce. Why do they get this money but not renewables? The name of the subsidy program makes that very clear. Reserve energy. The oil fueled power plant get paid to simply exist in the case where demand exceeds production of renewables. Before they shut down the latest nuclear reactor this was mostly to address cold windless winter nights, but now its operating basically all year as dips in renewable energy regularly cause situations where that reserve energy is required for a stable energy grid. I get how people do not like subsidies for nuclear, but I really dislike subsidies for fossil fuels and I hate how oil is being burned just because it now is called "reserve energy". One would think that if storage costs were the cheaper choice then we would be phasing out fossil fuel from the "reserve energy" strategy. There is no such plans. In contrast, the current plan and government investments goes to increase the reserve energy capacity from fossil fuel in every way possible. To my knowledge there does not exist a single commercial operated storage system that get charged with wind and later sold, here or globally. There does exist solar and battery, commonly with about 75% capacity for 4hrs, and a charge cycle of a single day. The economics for wind require massively higher capacity (weeks rather than hours), and the charge cycle which will repay the investment is significant slower (several weeks rather than a single day).
• stjohnswarts 6y ago
  But you're acting like nothing advances? Fission is still the best chance we have. We are decades away from battery technology that could provide stable power for several days in the case of grid level from non-nuclear green friendly power sources. That's not an issue with nuclear fission reactors.
• elproxy 6y ago
  Not a technical problem, it's just that long term projects with large upfront investments end up costing a lot within the socio-economic system we have. These are societal choices. Do we collectively want low-carbon electricity, with proper regulation and independent safety authorities, or do we want neoliberalism, small government and free markets... https://www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Hinkley-Point-C.pdf https://www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Hinkley-Po...
• sunstone 6y ago
  Another aspect of the economics is that renewables are cheaper yes, but their capacity can also be built out incrementally year by year whereas with nuclear the construction risk is very high often taking decades before the plant is commissioned. With renewable's costs dropping consistently year by year who wants to take a chance on nuclear being competitive fifteen years from now when it's finally built? Nuclear's economic window of opportunity has almost entirely shut at this point. Though niche applications for small reactors in remote locations may be viable.