6 ms·

Nuclear may or may not beat coal, but the competition is with renewables. Nuclear is far, far more expensive than renewables.

by tlocke 5y ago

enaaem 5y ago
Renewables are very cheap if you want to improve your clean energy portion from let us say 11.2% to 12.9%. You don’t have to think about storage and it’s good enough for the next election. But what if we want go full carbon neutral by 2050?
- api 5y ago
  Looking around the world it seems like it’s easy and cheap today to get to 30% or so solar and wind (averaged over 24-48h). Going beyond that gets a lot harder. You need storage, long range grid connects (e.g. HVDC), etc. The actual practical max varies by location. Some places have a ton of solar or wind and some have poor conditions. There are regions with poor renewables and high population density. That would require long range grid connects but that in turn raises the bar for the regions from which they are drawing. Batteries need to drop in price by at least another order of magnitude. They’ve already experienced almost Moore’s Law price drops for the past two decades so this is probably possible. The major cost now is manufacturing not materials and batteries are amenable to a lot of manufacturing automation.
sofixa 5y ago
Unless you consider that with renewables you need grid scale storage that is extremely expensive and impractical.
- chefkoch 5y ago
  Not really https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source
  - sofixa 5y ago
    I don't see any data on the costs of grid scale storage capable of handling multiple days of no sun or wind.
    - chefkoch 5y ago
      With the difference in cost you can overbuild the renewable capacity as well as paying for even uneconomical storage like "green H²".
- mrep 5y ago
  We already have electrical grid scale storage with methane which is one of the possible power to gas implementations [0]. It's just nobody does it because it is cheaper to get it out of the ground. Sure, the efficiency isn't as good as batteries, but wikipedia shows nuclear being over 3x as expensive as wind/solar [1]. Power to gas using wind/solar can definitely be done cheaper than that. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-to-gas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-to-gas [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source#/media/File:20201019_Levelized_Cost_of_Energy_(LCOE,_Lazard)_-_renewable_energy.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source#...
  - MagnumOpus 5y ago
    Wikipedia shows nuclear in France at EUR 70/MWh, and solar without storage at around EUR 50/MWh. Storage will make it easily more expensive than nuclear plants. Remember, Europe is farther north and less insolated than California, Hawaii or Morocco, where solar PV might achieve $30-40/MWh.
    - LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
      Seen this not too long ago: [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28679985 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28679985 [1] https://xlinks.co/morocco-uk-power-project/ https://xlinks.co/morocco-uk-power-project/ [2] https://www.pv-magazine.com/2021/04/22/submarine-cable-to-connect-10-5-gw-wind-solar-complex-in-morocco-to-the-uk-grid/ https://www.pv-magazine.com/2021/04/22/submarine-cable-to-co... [3] https://electrek.co/2021/09/27/the-worlds-longest-subsea-cable-will-send-clean-energy-from-morocco-to-the-uk/ https://electrek.co/2021/09/27/the-worlds-longest-subsea-cab... Smells like Desertec, but what the heck?
    - tlocke 5y ago
      It's difficult to work out the cost of nuclear in France because the electricity industry is so intertwined with the state. For example, how much does their insurance cost? I bet they're effectively insured by state which doesn't show up in the figures. Also, the only country in the world that actually has a long-term solution for nuclear waste is Finland. To their credit, the Finns have built a storage facility that can remain intact for the necessary 10,000 years. The French have no long term nuclear waste storage, they're just kicking the can down the road, as is every other country except Finland.
bettysdiagnose 5y ago
No, that is exactly the opposite of true. Competition is specifically with fossil fuels because it's not always windy and it's not always sunny. We need renewables, obviously, but we need nuclear as well to provide baseload.
alexis-d 5y ago
Renewables can't provide a consistent baseload which is a big (unfortunate) drawback.
- tlocke 5y ago
  To address the baseload question. Baseload for a period is the level below which demand doesn't drop. Baseload isn't a relevant figure if you're running a power network. The job of a grid operator is to make sure supply matches demand from second to second. What happens is that the grid operator uses the cheapest marginal electricity first, which is always renewables, then if there's still a gap it's filled with power from a gas power station. That gap is continuously varying, and gas power is needed because it can continuously vary in response. The point is that baseload isn't a relevant concept in balancing the grid, it's all about matching supply with demand.
  - DennisP 5y ago
    Ok but we need a grid without natural gas if we're going to fix climate change. Baseload is a relevant figure if we're designing that new grid. Grid-scale multi-day battery storage is expensive, and possibly even infeasible, so we might be best off using nuclear for baseload, with renewables and battery balancing on top of that.
    - tlocke 5y ago
      To take the USA for example, it'll play out like this. As more and more renewables are built there will be periods where the amount of renewable electricity will exceed demand. During these periods, electricity will be very cheap and will be used to create hydrogen. The existing natural gas storage and pipework will be used for hydrogen instead, and hydrogen turbines / fuel cells will be built. So the natural gas infrastructure will be taken over by hydrogen, generated from renewable electricity. This gradual takeover will extend to heating. Natural gas boilers in homes / buildings will be converted to hydrogen, and so in the end the USA will end up with zero carbon emissions for electricity and heating.
tlocke 5y ago
So to address the point of renewables and storage. Storage of the electricity produced by renewables is only needed when it exceeds demand. The UK is part of a European grid, and so a wind farm in Scotland only needs to store electricity if the whole of Europe is already running on 100% renewable. We've not reached that level so far, and won't for quite a while.
- Beldin 5y ago
  I would argue it's the other way around: storage is needed for when demand exceeds supply. You need to make up the difference somehow. When supply exceeds demand, you could just "bleed it off" or reduce supply by decoupling generators.
  - tlocke 5y ago
    I think we're talking at cross-purposes. I'm saying that it's only when the supply from renewables exceeds total demand, you need storage. Otherwise if the supply from renewables doesn't meet demand then there's nothing left over to store, and you'd need to start burning gas. Note that the end-game is that renewables become so pervasive that there are significant periods when renewable generation does exceed total demand, and then you generate hydrogen with it. That hydrogen then displaces the natural gas that's currently used, the storage / pipework infrastructure for natural gas being equally suitable for hydrogen.
mytailorisrich 5y ago
I'd like to see a comparison of costs for the same result, though. Indeed, it seems to me that comparisons tend to focus on the raw cost of producing 1 kWh, leaving aside the very important issue of reliability of production. Cheaper is better, sure, but supply comes first. I don't think that there currently is an alternative to nuclear to guarantee a large supply of low emission electricity. The best alternative is hydropower but it's very limited by geography. So renewables and nuclear are actually complementary.
- Gwypaas 5y ago
  Regarding reliability, in perfect conditions solar + 4 hours storage are starting to bid at $40 per MWh [0]. Nuclear is well above $100 per MWh [0]: https://www.energy-storage.news/developer-8minute-says-more-than-24gwh-of-batteries-included-in-its-us-solar-plus-storage-pipeline/ https://www.energy-storage.news/developer-8minute-says-more-...
  - mytailorisrich 5y ago
    Reliability means what happens when conditions are not perfect and outright bad.
    - pfdietz 5y ago
      Ultimately the 100% renewable grid is backed up by something like hydrogen. The round trip efficiency is lousy, but it's not needed very often so that's not very important. A combined cycle power plant has a cost per watt just 10% of that of a nuclear plant (and simple cycle, just 4-5%), so you can completely back up the grid with them and still come out cheaper than nuclear.
- pfdietz 5y ago
  https://model.energy/ https://model.energy/ No, nuclear and renewables are not complementary. They are both inflexible.

Nuclear may or may not beat coal, but the competition is with renewables. Nuclear is far, far more expensive than renewables.

by tlocke 5y ago

Nuclear may or may not beat coal, but the competition is with renewables. Nuclear is far, far more expensive than renewables.

enaaem 5y ago

Renewables are very cheap if you want to improve your clean energy portion from let us say 11.2% to 12.9%. You don’t have to think about storage and it’s good enough for the next election. But what if we want go full carbon neutral by 2050?

api 5y ago
Looking around the world it seems like it’s easy and cheap today to get to 30% or so solar and wind (averaged over 24-48h). Going beyond that gets a lot harder. You need storage, long range grid connects (e.g. HVDC), etc. The actual practical max varies by location. Some places have a ton of solar or wind and some have poor conditions. There are regions with poor renewables and high population density. That would require long range grid connects but that in turn raises the bar for the regions from which they are drawing. Batteries need to drop in price by at least another order of magnitude. They’ve already experienced almost Moore’s Law price drops for the past two decades so this is probably possible. The major cost now is manufacturing not materials and batteries are amenable to a lot of manufacturing automation.

sofixa 5y ago

Unless you consider that with renewables you need grid scale storage that is extremely expensive and impractical.

chefkoch 5y ago
Not really https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source
- sofixa 5y ago
  I don't see any data on the costs of grid scale storage capable of handling multiple days of no sun or wind.
  - chefkoch 5y ago
    With the difference in cost you can overbuild the renewable capacity as well as paying for even uneconomical storage like "green H²".
mrep 5y ago
We already have electrical grid scale storage with methane which is one of the possible power to gas implementations [0]. It's just nobody does it because it is cheaper to get it out of the ground. Sure, the efficiency isn't as good as batteries, but wikipedia shows nuclear being over 3x as expensive as wind/solar [1]. Power to gas using wind/solar can definitely be done cheaper than that. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-to-gas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-to-gas [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source#/media/File:20201019_Levelized_Cost_of_Energy_(LCOE,_Lazard)_-_renewable_energy.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source#...
- MagnumOpus 5y ago
  Wikipedia shows nuclear in France at EUR 70/MWh, and solar without storage at around EUR 50/MWh. Storage will make it easily more expensive than nuclear plants. Remember, Europe is farther north and less insolated than California, Hawaii or Morocco, where solar PV might achieve $30-40/MWh.
  - LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
    Seen this not too long ago: [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28679985 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28679985 [1] https://xlinks.co/morocco-uk-power-project/ https://xlinks.co/morocco-uk-power-project/ [2] https://www.pv-magazine.com/2021/04/22/submarine-cable-to-connect-10-5-gw-wind-solar-complex-in-morocco-to-the-uk-grid/ https://www.pv-magazine.com/2021/04/22/submarine-cable-to-co... [3] https://electrek.co/2021/09/27/the-worlds-longest-subsea-cable-will-send-clean-energy-from-morocco-to-the-uk/ https://electrek.co/2021/09/27/the-worlds-longest-subsea-cab... Smells like Desertec, but what the heck?
  - tlocke 5y ago
    It's difficult to work out the cost of nuclear in France because the electricity industry is so intertwined with the state. For example, how much does their insurance cost? I bet they're effectively insured by state which doesn't show up in the figures. Also, the only country in the world that actually has a long-term solution for nuclear waste is Finland. To their credit, the Finns have built a storage facility that can remain intact for the necessary 10,000 years. The French have no long term nuclear waste storage, they're just kicking the can down the road, as is every other country except Finland.

bettysdiagnose 5y ago

No, that is exactly the opposite of true. Competition is specifically with fossil fuels because it's not always windy and it's not always sunny. We need renewables, obviously, but we need nuclear as well to provide baseload.

alexis-d 5y ago

Renewables can't provide a consistent baseload which is a big (unfortunate) drawback.

tlocke 5y ago
To address the baseload question. Baseload for a period is the level below which demand doesn't drop. Baseload isn't a relevant figure if you're running a power network. The job of a grid operator is to make sure supply matches demand from second to second. What happens is that the grid operator uses the cheapest marginal electricity first, which is always renewables, then if there's still a gap it's filled with power from a gas power station. That gap is continuously varying, and gas power is needed because it can continuously vary in response. The point is that baseload isn't a relevant concept in balancing the grid, it's all about matching supply with demand.
- DennisP 5y ago
  Ok but we need a grid without natural gas if we're going to fix climate change. Baseload is a relevant figure if we're designing that new grid. Grid-scale multi-day battery storage is expensive, and possibly even infeasible, so we might be best off using nuclear for baseload, with renewables and battery balancing on top of that.
  - tlocke 5y ago
    To take the USA for example, it'll play out like this. As more and more renewables are built there will be periods where the amount of renewable electricity will exceed demand. During these periods, electricity will be very cheap and will be used to create hydrogen. The existing natural gas storage and pipework will be used for hydrogen instead, and hydrogen turbines / fuel cells will be built. So the natural gas infrastructure will be taken over by hydrogen, generated from renewable electricity. This gradual takeover will extend to heating. Natural gas boilers in homes / buildings will be converted to hydrogen, and so in the end the USA will end up with zero carbon emissions for electricity and heating.

tlocke 5y ago

So to address the point of renewables and storage. Storage of the electricity produced by renewables is only needed when it exceeds demand. The UK is part of a European grid, and so a wind farm in Scotland only needs to store electricity if the whole of Europe is already running on 100% renewable. We've not reached that level so far, and won't for quite a while.

Beldin 5y ago
I would argue it's the other way around: storage is needed for when demand exceeds supply. You need to make up the difference somehow. When supply exceeds demand, you could just "bleed it off" or reduce supply by decoupling generators.
- tlocke 5y ago
  I think we're talking at cross-purposes. I'm saying that it's only when the supply from renewables exceeds total demand, you need storage. Otherwise if the supply from renewables doesn't meet demand then there's nothing left over to store, and you'd need to start burning gas. Note that the end-game is that renewables become so pervasive that there are significant periods when renewable generation does exceed total demand, and then you generate hydrogen with it. That hydrogen then displaces the natural gas that's currently used, the storage / pipework infrastructure for natural gas being equally suitable for hydrogen.

mytailorisrich 5y ago

I'd like to see a comparison of costs for the same result, though. Indeed, it seems to me that comparisons tend to focus on the raw cost of producing 1 kWh, leaving aside the very important issue of reliability of production. Cheaper is better, sure, but supply comes first. I don't think that there currently is an alternative to nuclear to guarantee a large supply of low emission electricity. The best alternative is hydropower but it's very limited by geography. So renewables and nuclear are actually complementary.

Gwypaas 5y ago
Regarding reliability, in perfect conditions solar + 4 hours storage are starting to bid at $40 per MWh [0]. Nuclear is well above $100 per MWh [0]: https://www.energy-storage.news/developer-8minute-says-more-than-24gwh-of-batteries-included-in-its-us-solar-plus-storage-pipeline/ https://www.energy-storage.news/developer-8minute-says-more-...
- mytailorisrich 5y ago
  Reliability means what happens when conditions are not perfect and outright bad.
  - pfdietz 5y ago
    Ultimately the 100% renewable grid is backed up by something like hydrogen. The round trip efficiency is lousy, but it's not needed very often so that's not very important. A combined cycle power plant has a cost per watt just 10% of that of a nuclear plant (and simple cycle, just 4-5%), so you can completely back up the grid with them and still come out cheaper than nuclear.
pfdietz 5y ago
https://model.energy/ https://model.energy/ No, nuclear and renewables are not complementary. They are both inflexible.