14 ms·

I mean, the quote and the article disagree with what you're saying - it's not the "invisible hand of the market", it's a policy choice by California to prioriti

by hguant 5y ago

I mean, the quote and the article disagree with what you're saying - it's not the "invisible hand of the market", it's a policy choice by California to prioritize buying from renewables over "dirty" power. Oil and coal can eat that because they have lower operating costs and fill a different need than nuclear does. Implying that this is due to the superiority of "the juggernaut of solar" seems incorrect to me. I get there's this utopian vision of solar, and the gains in the industry have been impressive, but those gains are backed by some really deep market subsidies and policy choices - which, to be fair, were needed to get the technology off the ground. However, it's not there yet, and it didn't get there under its own power. What we're seeing here is a repercussion of those policy choices, not the a market stabilization in favour of a superior player.

short12 5y ago
Are not all forms of generation heavily subsidized? I feel if you could generate electricity by killing kittens and baby seals you would instantly get a subsides
TrispusAttucks 5y ago
It's sad really. There is an alternative reality where anti nuclear activist [1] never succeeded and we continued to make great progress on reactors. Ultimately, reducing fossil fuel use and corresponding GHG levels. One of the very things the environmental groups fought against was one of the things that could have saved us. "The road to hell is paved with good intentions." [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-nuclear_movement https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-nuclear_movement
- rsj_hn 5y ago
  Yes, this country should be covered in nuclear plants that provide the majority of our electricity. Energy should be too cheap to meter. Whatever problems we as a society may have, it will take energy to address those problems, and the core of our energy production has to be stable and reliable.
  - hguant 5y ago
    I had a conversation with a co-worker who used to work for Toshiba heavy industries on their nuclear stuff - he made the interesting point that there's only so much accessible uranium on the planet, to the point where we'd use up all of it in ~75 years if we were running the entire planet on nuclear. The only way around this is to use breeder reactors, which is a huge no-no from an international relations perspective because those are the same types of reactors used to make nuclear grade fissile materials.
    - collegeburner 5y ago
      I believe Russia runs the only 2 breeder reactors known to be operational? So if they can get away with it, seems like major nuclear powers could agree to produce fissile material for energy purposes, keeping public record of how much is made and selling some limited quantity to poor countries for running small plants. Require public audits by an agreed upon body created for such a purpose and representing equally each major nuclear power. There can be solutions made.
      - ethbr0 5y ago
        It's a fair point. The US or Russia having more bomb-grade fissile material isn't such a shift in geopolitical reality.
    - mmastrac 5y ago
      This is an interesting point. Is there some data to use as a reference for it? Would other forms of nuclear fuel replace uranium in larger quantities? I feel like this has been absent in many pro-nuclear arguments (I always assumed we had much more)
      - hguant 5y ago
        There's "uranium in the planet" - lots! - and "uranium accessible to humans" - not so much. The other fuel used would be plutonium and thorium, I believe. My understanding (not a nuclear scientist) is that there's a cycle of enrichment and decay that produces more fissile materials than it consumes. Interestingly, from my perusal of wikipedia, it seems like you effectively can recycle the uranium isotopes indefinitely in such a reactor, as well as generating fissile plutonium and thorium. Again, the problem is that generating fissile plutonium is how you make a bomb
7thaccount 5y ago
That's not how electricity markets work such as the CAISO market. Generators bid in their short run marginal cost for energy and the cost to provide certain reserve services and the unit commitment and economic dispatch algorithms choose which resources to turn on and what level they run at based on some cost minimization function. Before markets, the incumbent utility would run all their nukes and coal as base load. Now with regional markets you have lots of utilities and private entities competing. Once massive amounts of cheap renewables (armed with subsidies to boot) entered the supply mix, it pushed out the most expensive generation to where instead of running ~24/7, they began running far less. Go look at any nuke plants capacity factor (percentage of the year running) in the US by year (you can Google it). You'll see a rather sharp drop. It can only go so low before the plant has to be retired as the cost to run it is greater than the break even point. CAISO operators obviously don't want that, but absent some kind of side payment from the state (unpopular with economists), it's the inevitable outcome. I just wanted to make the distinction that the entity running the market and making sure the grid doesn't blackout usually doesn't make any decisions regarding what the rate payers at the retail level pay for. Even if they know a plant is required for reliability, it's a difficult process to figure out how to accommodate the plant outside the market. It could be argued that these markets in the US need to figure out how to better quantify the risk from losing these nukes and reflect that as part of the price (as well as other technologies). So far that hasn't occurred. Some areas have long-term capacity markets (example: PJM), but California does not (I don't think). Even then, the capacity markets have had many issues.
- AnthonyMouse 5y ago
  > Now with regional markets you have lots of utilities and private entities competing. Once massive amounts of cheap renewables (armed with subsidies to boot) entered the supply mix, it pushed out the most expensive generation to where instead of running ~24/7, they began running far less. What this really means is that their cost function is broken. Power plants really have three types of costs. The first is the construction cost. This is a sunk cost for anything that already exists. The second is fixed operating costs. This is things like property tax and security and maintenance, which you could save if you shut down the plant permanently, but you don't save at all by having it run at e.g. 50% capacity. The third is variable operating costs. The cost of generating the incremental MWh, given that the plant is operational. For fossil fuel plants this is dominated by fuel. For nuclear plants (and renewables) this is basically zero. Only the second and third should be a factor in whether a plant that already exists gets shut down. But more importantly, only the third should be a factor in where you buy power. If you have a nuclear power plant which you're paying to keep operational but not consuming 100% of its output, you did the math wrong. (Or your electricity prices are regularly zero or negative.)
sdenton4 5y ago
"it didn't get there under its own power" Existing power infrastructure has already paid its capital costs, meaning they have a massive incumbent advantage. Coal and gas power also haven't historically had to pay for their externalities, which is another distortion in their favor. This means that without extra incentives, you're stuck with coal until the plants need to be replaced, which essentially means until something truly magical happens or forever, whichever comes first. So, you can look at the subsidies for solar as offsets for the incumbent advantages and externality subsidies enjoyed by fossil fuels. Meanwhile, the LCOE of solar has improved exponentially with scale and semiconductor improvements, which gets close to the 'something magical.'

by hguant 5y ago

short12 5y ago

Are not all forms of generation heavily subsidized? I feel if you could generate electricity by killing kittens and baby seals you would instantly get a subsides

TrispusAttucks 5y ago

It's sad really. There is an alternative reality where anti nuclear activist [1] never succeeded and we continued to make great progress on reactors. Ultimately, reducing fossil fuel use and corresponding GHG levels. One of the very things the environmental groups fought against was one of the things that could have saved us. "The road to hell is paved with good intentions." [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-nuclear_movement https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-nuclear_movement

rsj_hn 5y ago
Yes, this country should be covered in nuclear plants that provide the majority of our electricity. Energy should be too cheap to meter. Whatever problems we as a society may have, it will take energy to address those problems, and the core of our energy production has to be stable and reliable.
- hguant 5y ago
  I had a conversation with a co-worker who used to work for Toshiba heavy industries on their nuclear stuff - he made the interesting point that there's only so much accessible uranium on the planet, to the point where we'd use up all of it in ~75 years if we were running the entire planet on nuclear. The only way around this is to use breeder reactors, which is a huge no-no from an international relations perspective because those are the same types of reactors used to make nuclear grade fissile materials.
  - collegeburner 5y ago
    I believe Russia runs the only 2 breeder reactors known to be operational? So if they can get away with it, seems like major nuclear powers could agree to produce fissile material for energy purposes, keeping public record of how much is made and selling some limited quantity to poor countries for running small plants. Require public audits by an agreed upon body created for such a purpose and representing equally each major nuclear power. There can be solutions made.
    - ethbr0 5y ago
      It's a fair point. The US or Russia having more bomb-grade fissile material isn't such a shift in geopolitical reality.
  - mmastrac 5y ago
    This is an interesting point. Is there some data to use as a reference for it? Would other forms of nuclear fuel replace uranium in larger quantities? I feel like this has been absent in many pro-nuclear arguments (I always assumed we had much more)
    - hguant 5y ago
      There's "uranium in the planet" - lots! - and "uranium accessible to humans" - not so much. The other fuel used would be plutonium and thorium, I believe. My understanding (not a nuclear scientist) is that there's a cycle of enrichment and decay that produces more fissile materials than it consumes. Interestingly, from my perusal of wikipedia, it seems like you effectively can recycle the uranium isotopes indefinitely in such a reactor, as well as generating fissile plutonium and thorium. Again, the problem is that generating fissile plutonium is how you make a bomb

7thaccount 5y ago

That's not how electricity markets work such as the CAISO market. Generators bid in their short run marginal cost for energy and the cost to provide certain reserve services and the unit commitment and economic dispatch algorithms choose which resources to turn on and what level they run at based on some cost minimization function. Before markets, the incumbent utility would run all their nukes and coal as base load. Now with regional markets you have lots of utilities and private entities competing. Once massive amounts of cheap renewables (armed with subsidies to boot) entered the supply mix, it pushed out the most expensive generation to where instead of running ~24/7, they began running far less. Go look at any nuke plants capacity factor (percentage of the year running) in the US by year (you can Google it). You'll see a rather sharp drop. It can only go so low before the plant has to be retired as the cost to run it is greater than the break even point. CAISO operators obviously don't want that, but absent some kind of side payment from the state (unpopular with economists), it's the inevitable outcome. I just wanted to make the distinction that the entity running the market and making sure the grid doesn't blackout usually doesn't make any decisions regarding what the rate payers at the retail level pay for. Even if they know a plant is required for reliability, it's a difficult process to figure out how to accommodate the plant outside the market. It could be argued that these markets in the US need to figure out how to better quantify the risk from losing these nukes and reflect that as part of the price (as well as other technologies). So far that hasn't occurred. Some areas have long-term capacity markets (example: PJM), but California does not (I don't think). Even then, the capacity markets have had many issues.

AnthonyMouse 5y ago
> Now with regional markets you have lots of utilities and private entities competing. Once massive amounts of cheap renewables (armed with subsidies to boot) entered the supply mix, it pushed out the most expensive generation to where instead of running ~24/7, they began running far less. What this really means is that their cost function is broken. Power plants really have three types of costs. The first is the construction cost. This is a sunk cost for anything that already exists. The second is fixed operating costs. This is things like property tax and security and maintenance, which you could save if you shut down the plant permanently, but you don't save at all by having it run at e.g. 50% capacity. The third is variable operating costs. The cost of generating the incremental MWh, given that the plant is operational. For fossil fuel plants this is dominated by fuel. For nuclear plants (and renewables) this is basically zero. Only the second and third should be a factor in whether a plant that already exists gets shut down. But more importantly, only the third should be a factor in where you buy power. If you have a nuclear power plant which you're paying to keep operational but not consuming 100% of its output, you did the math wrong. (Or your electricity prices are regularly zero or negative.)

sdenton4 5y ago

"it didn't get there under its own power" Existing power infrastructure has already paid its capital costs, meaning they have a massive incumbent advantage. Coal and gas power also haven't historically had to pay for their externalities, which is another distortion in their favor. This means that without extra incentives, you're stuck with coal until the plants need to be replaced, which essentially means until something truly magical happens or forever, whichever comes first. So, you can look at the subsidies for solar as offsets for the incumbent advantages and externality subsidies enjoyed by fossil fuels. Meanwhile, the LCOE of solar has improved exponentially with scale and semiconductor improvements, which gets close to the 'something magical.'