5 ms·

To me this makes so much sense. But when you look at the costs involved it's far cheaper and less risky to deploy 2x in renewables and a bunch of energy storage

by eloff 5y ago

To me this makes so much sense. But when you look at the costs involved it's far cheaper and less risky to deploy 2x in renewables and a bunch of energy storage plus some gas plants and long distance transmission. New innovations in nuclear maybe have a chance to change this, but renewables are still getting cheaper so even if they succeed they must still beat the moving target. In another world where we had embraced nuclear long ago and kept innovating it would have made so much sense. It still will be a part of the solution, but the economics really aren't there and the private sector isn't dumb. Markets will allocate capital according to risks and returns and nuclear will continue to be overlooked until it can compete.

jjoonathan 5y ago
Nuclear is able to compete on merit and has been forever, but we chose to create a legal environment in which one or two dedicated NIMBYs could stall a project indefinitely. That's the entire reason why "the economics aren't there." We aren't talking about costs of building a reactor or risk of it melting down, we're talking about the cost and risk of 1001 strategically sequential ground squirrel environmental impact studies pushing the project duration out to infinity. Allowing this is a political choice, not an evaluation of the technology. I tend to agree with you that the ship has sailed, though. If we had just kept building at the same pace as 40 years ago (linear extrapolation, not exponential) then we'd recently have celebrated the completion of a zero-emission grid. Unfortunately, we chose to pump the atmosphere full of CO2 instead. Ugh.
- munk-a 5y ago
  It's not really the ahead of time NIMBY complaints but the potential for future liability shifts which existing plants will not be exempt from. A good number of plants constructed in the 60s and 70s hit their EOL (after getting a a bunch of lifetime extensions from governments) and then had their nice glittering warchest of profits eaten away by cleanup expenses (which sometimes exceeded the cash left in those contingency funds with the deficit falling on state & local governments). There have been issues with water contamination due to poor holding pool sealing and due to unforseen natural disasters. Nuclear power requires millions in its initial investment. It has a not-insignificant profit margin over other power sources, but it also has a significant chance for large liabilities (more often due to changing laws than meltdowns). The result is an investment with an extremely high investment threshold (you don't build small nuke plants) with a decent short term prospect and a poor long term prospect that's extremely hard to get out of. This makes nuclear a really bad option for private investors when held up in comparison to tech and the like. Meltdowns can happen and they're catastrophic but the bigger impediment is the unpredictable legal and fiscal liabilities involved. And, honestly, it's my personal opinion that a fair amount of these post-de-facto fiscal liabilities are extremely just and fairly applied - they're externalities we were ignoring decades ago. This is a segment of the market where we need government funding and guarantees to get things done - and we should do so since nuclear is an extremely safe and clean option for power generation.
  - whall6 5y ago
    I wonder if any improvements could be made to mitigate some of these risks considering we’ve had 50-60 years to learn.
    - munk-a 5y ago
      The unfortunate thing is that the extreme lack of investment in nuclear energy means we don't have a ton of experts in this area.
      - lobocinza 5y ago
        Let's ask the ad engineers. :) I don't like the historical alternatives but our current society (in general) approach for social-economical organization reached it's threshold and made us waste human potential tackling artificial problems while ignoring those that were right in front of us. But who knows as those "blind investments" generated knowledge that might be critical for the next decades.
- notJim 5y ago
  I don't think NIMBYs are the only problem. Nuclear is just too expensive to build and maintain, especially with dirt-cheap renewables and storage coming down too. I have some hope that SMRs or something will end up working out, but like you say, I think it's mostly too late.
- phs318u 5y ago
  > Nuclear is able to compete on merit If that were the case, then this would not be required: https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF10821 https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF10821
  - outworlder 5y ago
    Only because any accidents, while rare, are incredibly high profile. Where's the compensation for all the deaths due to coal plants? Unlike nuclear, they spew carcinogenic crap in the atmosphere by design. And some radioactivity too.
- Angostura 5y ago
  > Nuclear is able to compete on merit and has been forever Hmmm https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-49823305 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-49823305 "Hinkley Point C nuclear plant to run £2.9bn over budget" > Last week, prices for new wind power delivered by 2025 were set at prices as low as £40 per megawatt hour. By comparison, power from Hinkley Point C is expected to cost £92.50 per megawatt hour.
ClumsyPilot 5y ago
"Markets will allocate capital according to risks" Like you know, the risk to end organised civilisation through climate change. Haha, funny
- bumby 5y ago
  Their premise assumes humans are good at estimating risk. I’m not so sure that assumption holds
- eloff 5y ago
  Unfortunately markets are not good at accounting for those kinds of external risks (but they could be with the right incentives, like a carbon tax.) It's a tragedy of the commons scenario. I don't understand why politicians don't just do the hard/right thing. Supposedly that's why we have them. If they always just do the popular thing we could cut them out of the picture and go to direct democracy. I'm not advocating for that, but we need politicians to step up and do their jobs competently.
  - munk-a 5y ago
    The way in which markets properly account for climate change is to suffer so much damage from the effect that the market collectively agrees to internalize the costs to the climate into prices of exchange - this price adjustment might not happen before cataclysmic levels of deaths or a tipping point that makes climate recovery infeasible and coping as our only recourse. Additional taxes, in the US at least, as currently seen as being contrary to the American experiment by a large enough segment of the population that consensus won't be gained when, while driving on the highway, we see the bridge out ahead sign - nor when we see the cliff in the distance - nor even when we feel the front walls fall off into air. We'll reach consensus when we look out the front windshield and see the earth racing up to give us a kiss... At least that's my pessimistic opinion.
matkoniecz 5y ago
> deploy 2x in renewables and a bunch of energy storage plus some gas plants and long distance transmission Is it actually sufficient? Feel free to link even technical sources (as long as it is not paywalled without way of checking quality). My impression is that right now "bunch of energy storage" is 100% unfeasible to provide power from renewables without blackouts. And existing ones work thanks to nearby countries with scalable non-renewable on demand power, with rare exception of countries with low population density and great opportunity for hydropower that is available on demand.
- eloff 5y ago
  I'll turn that around and ask specifically why that's not possible. It would require a better interconnected grid, overbuilt renewables, and plenty of storage with some level of on demand generation like gas. A good percentage of baseload power like hydro and nuclear certainly help, but it's not required. It's just a matter of how much are you willing to spend as opposed to something that's physically impossible. I believe renewables + grid scale batteries are already cheaper than new nuclear and much lower risk and much faster to deploy. The momentum is in favor of widening that gap.
  - matkoniecz 5y ago
    Currently power storage is tiny, even largest hydropower projects would be insufficient to provide backup power in most places. And just 2x renewables overbuilt would regularly run below demands - sadly solar/wind is not acting on demand. And during drought also hydropower may be unable to work. And in most places hydropower, geothermal is unable to provide enough power. (please correct me if I am wrong! But last time I checked nearly no place can run on renewables without relying on importing fossil-based power, and places that succeed have ideal places for hydropower/geothermal)
  - sesuximo 5y ago
    > renewables + grid scale batteries are already cheaper than new nuclear I wish this were true, but it’s not. There aren’t competitive grid scale batteries.

by eloff 5y ago

jjoonathan 5y ago

Nuclear is able to compete on merit and has been forever, but we chose to create a legal environment in which one or two dedicated NIMBYs could stall a project indefinitely. That's the entire reason why "the economics aren't there." We aren't talking about costs of building a reactor or risk of it melting down, we're talking about the cost and risk of 1001 strategically sequential ground squirrel environmental impact studies pushing the project duration out to infinity. Allowing this is a political choice, not an evaluation of the technology. I tend to agree with you that the ship has sailed, though. If we had just kept building at the same pace as 40 years ago (linear extrapolation, not exponential) then we'd recently have celebrated the completion of a zero-emission grid. Unfortunately, we chose to pump the atmosphere full of CO2 instead. Ugh.

munk-a 5y ago
It's not really the ahead of time NIMBY complaints but the potential for future liability shifts which existing plants will not be exempt from. A good number of plants constructed in the 60s and 70s hit their EOL (after getting a a bunch of lifetime extensions from governments) and then had their nice glittering warchest of profits eaten away by cleanup expenses (which sometimes exceeded the cash left in those contingency funds with the deficit falling on state & local governments). There have been issues with water contamination due to poor holding pool sealing and due to unforseen natural disasters. Nuclear power requires millions in its initial investment. It has a not-insignificant profit margin over other power sources, but it also has a significant chance for large liabilities (more often due to changing laws than meltdowns). The result is an investment with an extremely high investment threshold (you don't build small nuke plants) with a decent short term prospect and a poor long term prospect that's extremely hard to get out of. This makes nuclear a really bad option for private investors when held up in comparison to tech and the like. Meltdowns can happen and they're catastrophic but the bigger impediment is the unpredictable legal and fiscal liabilities involved. And, honestly, it's my personal opinion that a fair amount of these post-de-facto fiscal liabilities are extremely just and fairly applied - they're externalities we were ignoring decades ago. This is a segment of the market where we need government funding and guarantees to get things done - and we should do so since nuclear is an extremely safe and clean option for power generation.
- whall6 5y ago
  I wonder if any improvements could be made to mitigate some of these risks considering we’ve had 50-60 years to learn.
  - munk-a 5y ago
    The unfortunate thing is that the extreme lack of investment in nuclear energy means we don't have a ton of experts in this area.
    - lobocinza 5y ago
      Let's ask the ad engineers. :) I don't like the historical alternatives but our current society (in general) approach for social-economical organization reached it's threshold and made us waste human potential tackling artificial problems while ignoring those that were right in front of us. But who knows as those "blind investments" generated knowledge that might be critical for the next decades.
notJim 5y ago
I don't think NIMBYs are the only problem. Nuclear is just too expensive to build and maintain, especially with dirt-cheap renewables and storage coming down too. I have some hope that SMRs or something will end up working out, but like you say, I think it's mostly too late.
phs318u 5y ago
> Nuclear is able to compete on merit If that were the case, then this would not be required: https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF10821 https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF10821
- outworlder 5y ago
  Only because any accidents, while rare, are incredibly high profile. Where's the compensation for all the deaths due to coal plants? Unlike nuclear, they spew carcinogenic crap in the atmosphere by design. And some radioactivity too.
Angostura 5y ago
> Nuclear is able to compete on merit and has been forever Hmmm https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-49823305 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-49823305 "Hinkley Point C nuclear plant to run £2.9bn over budget" > Last week, prices for new wind power delivered by 2025 were set at prices as low as £40 per megawatt hour. By comparison, power from Hinkley Point C is expected to cost £92.50 per megawatt hour.

ClumsyPilot 5y ago

"Markets will allocate capital according to risks" Like you know, the risk to end organised civilisation through climate change. Haha, funny

bumby 5y ago
Their premise assumes humans are good at estimating risk. I’m not so sure that assumption holds
eloff 5y ago
Unfortunately markets are not good at accounting for those kinds of external risks (but they could be with the right incentives, like a carbon tax.) It's a tragedy of the commons scenario. I don't understand why politicians don't just do the hard/right thing. Supposedly that's why we have them. If they always just do the popular thing we could cut them out of the picture and go to direct democracy. I'm not advocating for that, but we need politicians to step up and do their jobs competently.
- munk-a 5y ago
  The way in which markets properly account for climate change is to suffer so much damage from the effect that the market collectively agrees to internalize the costs to the climate into prices of exchange - this price adjustment might not happen before cataclysmic levels of deaths or a tipping point that makes climate recovery infeasible and coping as our only recourse. Additional taxes, in the US at least, as currently seen as being contrary to the American experiment by a large enough segment of the population that consensus won't be gained when, while driving on the highway, we see the bridge out ahead sign - nor when we see the cliff in the distance - nor even when we feel the front walls fall off into air. We'll reach consensus when we look out the front windshield and see the earth racing up to give us a kiss... At least that's my pessimistic opinion.

matkoniecz 5y ago

> deploy 2x in renewables and a bunch of energy storage plus some gas plants and long distance transmission Is it actually sufficient? Feel free to link even technical sources (as long as it is not paywalled without way of checking quality). My impression is that right now "bunch of energy storage" is 100% unfeasible to provide power from renewables without blackouts. And existing ones work thanks to nearby countries with scalable non-renewable on demand power, with rare exception of countries with low population density and great opportunity for hydropower that is available on demand.

eloff 5y ago
I'll turn that around and ask specifically why that's not possible. It would require a better interconnected grid, overbuilt renewables, and plenty of storage with some level of on demand generation like gas. A good percentage of baseload power like hydro and nuclear certainly help, but it's not required. It's just a matter of how much are you willing to spend as opposed to something that's physically impossible. I believe renewables + grid scale batteries are already cheaper than new nuclear and much lower risk and much faster to deploy. The momentum is in favor of widening that gap.
- matkoniecz 5y ago
  Currently power storage is tiny, even largest hydropower projects would be insufficient to provide backup power in most places. And just 2x renewables overbuilt would regularly run below demands - sadly solar/wind is not acting on demand. And during drought also hydropower may be unable to work. And in most places hydropower, geothermal is unable to provide enough power. (please correct me if I am wrong! But last time I checked nearly no place can run on renewables without relying on importing fossil-based power, and places that succeed have ideal places for hydropower/geothermal)
- sesuximo 5y ago
  > renewables + grid scale batteries are already cheaper than new nuclear I wish this were true, but it’s not. There aren’t competitive grid scale batteries.