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Nuclear power is more expensive per KWh than renewables. Even more if you factor in nuclear waste storage. Why would you ever consider nuclear instead of renewa

Nuclear power is more expensive per KWh than renewables. Even more if you factor in nuclear waste storage. Why would you ever consider nuclear instead of renewables with this in mind?

PaulHoule 5y ago
Nuclear works when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow. Renewables provide cheap energy at the margin (e.g. negative energy prices in Germany at peak hours) but cannot be counted on all the time.
- bushbaba 5y ago
  I’d bet storing excess energy for a rainy day is cheaper than storing nuclear waste for many lifetimes.
  - TameAntelope 5y ago
    Not if you store it in space.
    - falcolas 5y ago
      Space launches still fail. The fallout from a failed launch of radioactive fuel would be pretty devastating. Not to mention that launch prices are still, pardon the pun, astronomical.
  - PaulHoule 5y ago
    I think there is almost a theorem that storage capacity will cost at least as much as generation capacity.
  - Gwypaas 5y ago
    It's all about the geographical decoupling with local storage and smart consumers to smooth the loads. For example tying the charging of your electric car while it's parked to the current price. For example using Norwegian hydro together with German, British and Danish wind. Germany <-> Norway (2021): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NordLink https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NordLink UK <-> Norway (2021) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sea_Link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sea_Link Denmark <-> Norway (1977) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skagerrak_(power_transmission_system) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skagerrak_(power_transmission_...
  - ohgodplsno 5y ago
    Converting energy into anything that can be stored long time is an absolute waste. * The best option is storing it as potential energy for water, i.e. using a pump and a dam. That's 90% efficient, except, we can't exactly build dams everywhere. * Power to gas to power has a dreadful 10% efficiency ratio, and it also requires energy to make. So, you use a ton of energy to store very little energy. * Conversion to hydrogen has the same problems. Best we can do 25%. What do you do when you only have a tiny bit of excess energy? The process takes a constant amount of energy in, so you need a constant power source. Nuclear reactors, ideally. Storing nuclear waste isn't hard. France is building a storage place that will handle all our nuclear waste produced until 2080, safely for hundreds of years. The project cost 25 billion euros, and that includes looking for potential places, running tests, and everything else involved in new things. Future projets would be much cheaper. Considering the country is subsidizing renewables to the tune of 70 billion, it costs us one third of the price for a solution of literally a lifetime. That's also taking into account that, ultimately, very little of the nuclear waste is truly oh-shit-oh-shit dangerous. With a simple phone call, you can most likely go visit a low activity waste storage location, which is 90% of the waste we produce, and you can just go dance on storage tanks. Radioactivity is basically nil. Additionally, waste is only waste because we can't use it. Look at projects like Superphénix and breeder reactors, and suddenly you've got all this stored "waste" able to produce much more energy.
    - bushbaba 5y ago
      But you are storing it for thousands of years. That comes at a cost per year over thousands of years. I doubt that it comes out cheaper than building pumped storage or hydrogen facilities. Even if that means building more renewables to account for inefficiencies involved
  - michaelt 5y ago
    You can certainly charge batteries from solar during the day, to charge your electric car at night. The challenge for countries like the UK is saving solar generation from summer to use for heating in the winter: The capital costs are much higher, because instead of storing one day's solar output, you need to store a few hundred days' output. Of course, nuclear is super-expensive (or at least, it is the way my country tries to build it). I don't know what the answer is.
    - bushbaba 5y ago
      How much does it cost to build pumped hydro storage/generation though. I’d bet it’s still cheaper than the long term costs of storing nuclear waste.
- bildung 5y ago
  Then just deploy more? The difference in price compared to nuclear is so high that we can easily install double the renewables we need and still come out cheaper.
  - PaulHoule 5y ago
    It is zero at night. 2x zero is still zero. This kind of thinking is exactly what's wrong with armchair modeling of renewables.
    - bildung 5y ago
      Neither molten salt nor wind are zero at night. In fact, wind usually is higher at night than during the day.
      - sportanova 5y ago
        Molten salt storage doesn't work well in practice. https://www.renewableenergyworld.com/storage/nevadas-crescent-dunes-csp-project-that-includes-molten-salt-storage-goes-belly-up/#gref https://www.renewableenergyworld.com/storage/nevadas-crescen... Even if you're somewhere where the wind could give you 90% of your energy, you'll still need a reliable, baseline power source if you don't want everything to randomly shut down the other 10% of the time. Wind + solar aren't as cheap as the LCOE makes it seem because you always have to pay for another source of power as baseline. If you added similar subsidies to natural gas it would be by far the cheapest energy source
        bildung 5y ago
        That's a problem with this particular plant, it works fine e.g. in Spain.
        sportanova 5y ago
        The only one I know of in Spain is Andasol, which is small scale and enormously expensive
typon 5y ago
Because you are right-wing Koch funded think-tank who wants to spread FUD about renewables?
- Loughla 5y ago
  I don't know why you're being downvoted - this is more than likely the actual answer. Look at who sits on the FREOPP board and who funds it, and where their leanings/policies are politically. Daniel Garza is, I thought, well known for leading groups responsible for astro-turfing various political/minority issues. This is obviously not an unbiased organization, regardless of claiming to be non-partisan.
choeger 5y ago
Density. Renewables use an insane amount of space (arguably wind energy can leave some space literally below it). (I leave mining operations out for simplification because such operations are necessary for both renewables and fission energy). If you have seen what industrial-scale photovoltaic production can do to a rural area, you would at least consider this point. You need to build at least 1000a to cover the power output of even a small-scale nuclear power plant with PV. If you account for the load factor, you probably need something like 8 times as much. Of course, nuclear power plants could be build close to cities and people living in cities are not affected by the space usage, so the political equation is clear. edit: To put the space requirements into perspective. Germany has a (rough) requirement of 70GW of electrical power. To cover this with the (roughly) 1k hours of solar production and dense packaging of 1MW/a the country would have to install about 500000a of PV panels (plus some kind of storage over the year). That is about 3% of the currently used agricultural land. And covering here means putting up to 4m high steel structures on it, very close to each other. Generating the whole primary energy with PV would at least require five times the amount of space. Naturally, there are a lot of caveats (roofs, unused space, wind energy, storage, conversion efficiency...) but it should make clear why people are hesitant to accept such a buildup. Nuclear energy would, on the other hand, only require around 20-30 medium-sized powerplants for electricity or less than 100 of them for full primary energy generation (heating homes would be basically free due to waste heat). Of course, it would be much more expensive and you would have to deal with eithe proliferation and yet unknown error modes or an insane amount of radioactive waste, but you wouldn't need nearly the same amount of space.
- pfdietz 5y ago
  The cost of land doesn't add a whole lot. PV in Texas, for example, is going on land costing $1200/acre. How much do you think an acre of installed PV modules costs, compared to this?
gloriana 5y ago
This is flawed reasoning. Electricity is not just kWh. It is kWh delivered at specific times. The way electricity markets work, this is not factored into the price. Nuclear power is more expensive per kWh. But not all kWh or energy are available at the same time, which means nuclear's kWh are worth more, even though that is not reflected in the market price.
Youden 5y ago
> Nuclear power is more expensive per KWh than renewables. You state this as fact but it seems to actually be pretty contentious. Wikipedia lists [0] many studies and the estimated costs of nuclear vs. renewables vary pretty wildly. Of the global studies that considered nuclear, OECD NEA and IPCC both list nuclear as cheaper than solar and similar to onshore wind, while Lazard is quite favourable towards renewables. Of the regional studies, on the positive side, France found nuclear cheaper than anything but hydro and Japan (pre-Fukushima) found it about half the price of solar or wind. Of the regional studies, on the negative side, the UK found it marginally more expensive than solar, much more expensive than onshore wind and much marginally less expensive than offshore wind and the US EIA found it to be one of the most expensive options there were. So the estimates vary pretty wildly, it's not an accepted fact that nuclear is more expensive than renewables. Personally, I trust France, as they actually have large-scale nuclear power. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source
- pfdietz 5y ago
  The OECD NEA numbers seem to assume the same interest rate for nuclear as for renewables. This is not a fair comparison, since nuclear builds are riskier and require a higher interest rate to account for the risk. Giving them the same rate is putting a thumb on the scales.

Nuclear power is more expensive per KWh than renewables. Even more if you factor in nuclear waste storage. Why would you ever consider nuclear instead of renewables with this in mind?

PaulHoule 5y ago

Nuclear works when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow. Renewables provide cheap energy at the margin (e.g. negative energy prices in Germany at peak hours) but cannot be counted on all the time.

bushbaba 5y ago
I’d bet storing excess energy for a rainy day is cheaper than storing nuclear waste for many lifetimes.
- TameAntelope 5y ago
  Not if you store it in space.
  - falcolas 5y ago
    Space launches still fail. The fallout from a failed launch of radioactive fuel would be pretty devastating. Not to mention that launch prices are still, pardon the pun, astronomical.
- PaulHoule 5y ago
  I think there is almost a theorem that storage capacity will cost at least as much as generation capacity.
- Gwypaas 5y ago
  It's all about the geographical decoupling with local storage and smart consumers to smooth the loads. For example tying the charging of your electric car while it's parked to the current price. For example using Norwegian hydro together with German, British and Danish wind. Germany <-> Norway (2021): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NordLink https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NordLink UK <-> Norway (2021) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sea_Link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sea_Link Denmark <-> Norway (1977) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skagerrak_(power_transmission_system) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skagerrak_(power_transmission_...
- ohgodplsno 5y ago
  Converting energy into anything that can be stored long time is an absolute waste. * The best option is storing it as potential energy for water, i.e. using a pump and a dam. That's 90% efficient, except, we can't exactly build dams everywhere. * Power to gas to power has a dreadful 10% efficiency ratio, and it also requires energy to make. So, you use a ton of energy to store very little energy. * Conversion to hydrogen has the same problems. Best we can do 25%. What do you do when you only have a tiny bit of excess energy? The process takes a constant amount of energy in, so you need a constant power source. Nuclear reactors, ideally. Storing nuclear waste isn't hard. France is building a storage place that will handle all our nuclear waste produced until 2080, safely for hundreds of years. The project cost 25 billion euros, and that includes looking for potential places, running tests, and everything else involved in new things. Future projets would be much cheaper. Considering the country is subsidizing renewables to the tune of 70 billion, it costs us one third of the price for a solution of literally a lifetime. That's also taking into account that, ultimately, very little of the nuclear waste is truly oh-shit-oh-shit dangerous. With a simple phone call, you can most likely go visit a low activity waste storage location, which is 90% of the waste we produce, and you can just go dance on storage tanks. Radioactivity is basically nil. Additionally, waste is only waste because we can't use it. Look at projects like Superphénix and breeder reactors, and suddenly you've got all this stored "waste" able to produce much more energy.
  - bushbaba 5y ago
    But you are storing it for thousands of years. That comes at a cost per year over thousands of years. I doubt that it comes out cheaper than building pumped storage or hydrogen facilities. Even if that means building more renewables to account for inefficiencies involved
- michaelt 5y ago
  You can certainly charge batteries from solar during the day, to charge your electric car at night. The challenge for countries like the UK is saving solar generation from summer to use for heating in the winter: The capital costs are much higher, because instead of storing one day's solar output, you need to store a few hundred days' output. Of course, nuclear is super-expensive (or at least, it is the way my country tries to build it). I don't know what the answer is.
  - bushbaba 5y ago
    How much does it cost to build pumped hydro storage/generation though. I’d bet it’s still cheaper than the long term costs of storing nuclear waste.
bildung 5y ago
Then just deploy more? The difference in price compared to nuclear is so high that we can easily install double the renewables we need and still come out cheaper.
- PaulHoule 5y ago
  It is zero at night. 2x zero is still zero. This kind of thinking is exactly what's wrong with armchair modeling of renewables.
  - bildung 5y ago
    Neither molten salt nor wind are zero at night. In fact, wind usually is higher at night than during the day.
    - sportanova 5y ago
      Molten salt storage doesn't work well in practice. https://www.renewableenergyworld.com/storage/nevadas-crescent-dunes-csp-project-that-includes-molten-salt-storage-goes-belly-up/#gref https://www.renewableenergyworld.com/storage/nevadas-crescen... Even if you're somewhere where the wind could give you 90% of your energy, you'll still need a reliable, baseline power source if you don't want everything to randomly shut down the other 10% of the time. Wind + solar aren't as cheap as the LCOE makes it seem because you always have to pay for another source of power as baseline. If you added similar subsidies to natural gas it would be by far the cheapest energy source
      - bildung 5y ago
        That's a problem with this particular plant, it works fine e.g. in Spain.
        sportanova 5y ago
        The only one I know of in Spain is Andasol, which is small scale and enormously expensive

typon 5y ago

Because you are right-wing Koch funded think-tank who wants to spread FUD about renewables?

Loughla 5y ago
I don't know why you're being downvoted - this is more than likely the actual answer. Look at who sits on the FREOPP board and who funds it, and where their leanings/policies are politically. Daniel Garza is, I thought, well known for leading groups responsible for astro-turfing various political/minority issues. This is obviously not an unbiased organization, regardless of claiming to be non-partisan.

choeger 5y ago

Density. Renewables use an insane amount of space (arguably wind energy can leave some space literally below it). (I leave mining operations out for simplification because such operations are necessary for both renewables and fission energy). If you have seen what industrial-scale photovoltaic production can do to a rural area, you would at least consider this point. You need to build at least 1000a to cover the power output of even a small-scale nuclear power plant with PV. If you account for the load factor, you probably need something like 8 times as much. Of course, nuclear power plants could be build close to cities and people living in cities are not affected by the space usage, so the political equation is clear. edit: To put the space requirements into perspective. Germany has a (rough) requirement of 70GW of electrical power. To cover this with the (roughly) 1k hours of solar production and dense packaging of 1MW/a the country would have to install about 500000a of PV panels (plus some kind of storage over the year). That is about 3% of the currently used agricultural land. And covering here means putting up to 4m high steel structures on it, very close to each other. Generating the whole primary energy with PV would at least require five times the amount of space. Naturally, there are a lot of caveats (roofs, unused space, wind energy, storage, conversion efficiency...) but it should make clear why people are hesitant to accept such a buildup. Nuclear energy would, on the other hand, only require around 20-30 medium-sized powerplants for electricity or less than 100 of them for full primary energy generation (heating homes would be basically free due to waste heat). Of course, it would be much more expensive and you would have to deal with eithe proliferation and yet unknown error modes or an insane amount of radioactive waste, but you wouldn't need nearly the same amount of space.

pfdietz 5y ago
The cost of land doesn't add a whole lot. PV in Texas, for example, is going on land costing $1200/acre. How much do you think an acre of installed PV modules costs, compared to this?

gloriana 5y ago

This is flawed reasoning. Electricity is not just kWh. It is kWh delivered at specific times. The way electricity markets work, this is not factored into the price. Nuclear power is more expensive per kWh. But not all kWh or energy are available at the same time, which means nuclear's kWh are worth more, even though that is not reflected in the market price.

Youden 5y ago

> Nuclear power is more expensive per KWh than renewables. You state this as fact but it seems to actually be pretty contentious. Wikipedia lists [0] many studies and the estimated costs of nuclear vs. renewables vary pretty wildly. Of the global studies that considered nuclear, OECD NEA and IPCC both list nuclear as cheaper than solar and similar to onshore wind, while Lazard is quite favourable towards renewables. Of the regional studies, on the positive side, France found nuclear cheaper than anything but hydro and Japan (pre-Fukushima) found it about half the price of solar or wind. Of the regional studies, on the negative side, the UK found it marginally more expensive than solar, much more expensive than onshore wind and much marginally less expensive than offshore wind and the US EIA found it to be one of the most expensive options there were. So the estimates vary pretty wildly, it's not an accepted fact that nuclear is more expensive than renewables. Personally, I trust France, as they actually have large-scale nuclear power. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source

pfdietz 5y ago
The OECD NEA numbers seem to assume the same interest rate for nuclear as for renewables. This is not a fair comparison, since nuclear builds are riskier and require a higher interest rate to account for the risk. Giving them the same rate is putting a thumb on the scales.