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I think the current nuclear attention actually has more to do with oil and gas price instability scaring consumers, and more importantly voters, than with the c

I think the current nuclear attention actually has more to do with oil and gas price instability scaring consumers, and more importantly voters, than with the climate. Climate is a vague threat in the future for most people. But high gas and electricity prices are something to be feared right now. Of course the irony is that nuclear is actually more expensive than gas powered electricity and it will be consumers and tax payers that will pay for it. The key metric to focus on is $/kwh. Anything else is just noise. People will wield terms like base load and speak in very assertive terms about how important it is to have it. Ask them 1 question: how many GWH at what price? It's a simple question with a simple answer for nuclear: not a whole lot at great cost. Anything above 10 cents is ludicrously expensive. It's not competitive. It can't be done without raising energy prices and taxes or increasing national debt. I'm not talking consumer rates but actual cost per kwh for the producer. The difference is their profit. Profitability of nuclear plants in a market with dirt cheap renewables, is going to be a challenge and the mitigation plan for that is charging consumers and tax payers for it. It's beyond stupid to support that. Put a price on it and do the math. It doesn't add up to anything good. Slightly below 2 cents is about the best you can get right now. E.g. solar in the United Emirates is bidding close to 1 cent in recent years (unsubsidized). Offshore wind is a few cents more expensive (5-6 cents). Onshore is actually cheaper but less reliable. Consumer cost is much higher than that. Which is why relatively expensive roof top solar (15-20 cents/kwh) is attractive to consumers paying much more than that for grid energy. Prices are trending down over time (learning effect, improved technology, etc). Probably half a cent is a good cost target a few years from now. I.e. by the time these planned nuclear plants become operational. Certainly less than 1 cent. The most rosy projections for new nuclear plants tend to be closer to 10 than to 1 cents per kwh. Emphasis on rosy. Nuclear plants never get build on time and on budget. So that's an order of magnitude difference in cost in the best case. Worst case (i.e. what you should plan for), it's much worse. And that's of course on top of raised taxes needed to pay for all this. Nuclear plants are expensive and not really doable without vast amounts of subsidies. The reason they are being lobbied for is, ironically, that they are that expensive and that it involves vast amounts of government handouts to build them. Good old greed is the main motive here. The nuclear lobby represents many billions of interests and they'll be happy to take your tax money. They'll take the money and then make you pay again on your monthly bill. And they are spending billions on lobbying to make you believe that's a good thing.

diordiderot 5y ago
How much would fossil fuels cost if the west hadn't spent tens of trillions of 'your tax money' on security, and statecraft in the name of oil only to pass on the profits to private companies. How much would it cost if demand wasnt subsidized by tens of billions of 'your tax money' going into mega highways, and three lane roads in rural places who's property taxes couldn't pay it in 500 years.
- gefhfff 5y ago
  You need to compare with renewables. Fossil fuel isn't an option either way
  - horns4lyfe 5y ago
    Talk to someone who builds and maintains windmills, and ask them how they would be doing without subsidies.
rich_sasha 5y ago
Price for nuclear includes the cost of all externalities typically, whereas fossil fuel power assumes CO2 can be dumped for free (or cheap CO2 credits). Quoting solar costs in UAE as representative for general solar production is clearly wrong. What about countries with seasons and clouds? And it’s nice to have cheap energy when the sun doth shine and the wind doth blow, but it doesn’t always. Maybe we’ll develop battery technology that lets renewables take us to 100%, but we’re not there yet. And if you include even modest storage costs in renewables, you don’t end up with fractions of a penny per kWh anymore, either.
- jillesvangurp 5y ago
  Your assumption is that storage is expensive. Where expensive is unspecified. That's long term simply wrong and even short term, electricity companies are already some relatively expensive options to save money relative to using gas/coal powered peaker plants. Because it saves them money. So, never mind nuclear here: this is cheaper than gas powered plants already. But again, a simple question of expressing the requirement in $/kwh. It's a good measure of cost for batteries too. You pay for MWH of storage and GW delivery capacity. Lithium Ion hits the sweet spot of lots of capacity (GW) with modest amounts of storage (GWH). Other storage options store more but are less able to deliver quickly. There's a nice tradeoff here. Combining the different options gives you the best of both worlds. E.g. thermal mass is dirt cheap, because it can literally be made of dirt (well sand or rocks). Takes relatively long to charge but it can deliver power for weeks or months. Lithium ION is the opposite but it only lasts a few hours. The dirty little secret with base load is that a few hours is all that is needed mostly to deal with, again, the typically unspecified intermittency. It's a simple matter of how much GWH you need to mitigate against e.g. a few clouds or windless days. There are many solutions and it all boils down to $/kwh. I'd say long term fractions of a penny is exactly what this will be. And by long term I mean less than the lifetime of the nuclear plants that we're debating here that have yet to be planned and built; and possibly even their construction phase (this could take decades).

diordiderot 5y ago

How much would fossil fuels cost if the west hadn't spent tens of trillions of 'your tax money' on security, and statecraft in the name of oil only to pass on the profits to private companies. How much would it cost if demand wasnt subsidized by tens of billions of 'your tax money' going into mega highways, and three lane roads in rural places who's property taxes couldn't pay it in 500 years.

gefhfff 5y ago
You need to compare with renewables. Fossil fuel isn't an option either way
- horns4lyfe 5y ago
  Talk to someone who builds and maintains windmills, and ask them how they would be doing without subsidies.

rich_sasha 5y ago

Price for nuclear includes the cost of all externalities typically, whereas fossil fuel power assumes CO2 can be dumped for free (or cheap CO2 credits). Quoting solar costs in UAE as representative for general solar production is clearly wrong. What about countries with seasons and clouds? And it’s nice to have cheap energy when the sun doth shine and the wind doth blow, but it doesn’t always. Maybe we’ll develop battery technology that lets renewables take us to 100%, but we’re not there yet. And if you include even modest storage costs in renewables, you don’t end up with fractions of a penny per kWh anymore, either.

jillesvangurp 5y ago
Your assumption is that storage is expensive. Where expensive is unspecified. That's long term simply wrong and even short term, electricity companies are already some relatively expensive options to save money relative to using gas/coal powered peaker plants. Because it saves them money. So, never mind nuclear here: this is cheaper than gas powered plants already. But again, a simple question of expressing the requirement in $/kwh. It's a good measure of cost for batteries too. You pay for MWH of storage and GW delivery capacity. Lithium Ion hits the sweet spot of lots of capacity (GW) with modest amounts of storage (GWH). Other storage options store more but are less able to deliver quickly. There's a nice tradeoff here. Combining the different options gives you the best of both worlds. E.g. thermal mass is dirt cheap, because it can literally be made of dirt (well sand or rocks). Takes relatively long to charge but it can deliver power for weeks or months. Lithium ION is the opposite but it only lasts a few hours. The dirty little secret with base load is that a few hours is all that is needed mostly to deal with, again, the typically unspecified intermittency. It's a simple matter of how much GWH you need to mitigate against e.g. a few clouds or windless days. There are many solutions and it all boils down to $/kwh. I'd say long term fractions of a penny is exactly what this will be. And by long term I mean less than the lifetime of the nuclear plants that we're debating here that have yet to be planned and built; and possibly even their construction phase (this could take decades).