3 ms·
To be sustainable, nuclear also needs to be sustainable economically. There's a cost problem with nuclear that often gets swept under the carpet by its proponen
by jillesvangurp 5y ago
To be sustainable, nuclear also needs to be sustainable economically. There's a cost problem with nuclear that often gets swept under the carpet by its proponents. But it's actually a big reason for its current lack of popularity.
Nuclear proponents instead love to emphasize how safe nuclear can be and how great of a safety track record it has. And with some caveats (e.g. the Fukushima mess was pretty bad) they are not wrong for modern nuclear reactor designs. However, nuclear is expensive and that combined with safety (which costs money to mitigate) is the real reason for the impopularity.
It always was expensive but historically, a lot of that was paid for out of tax payer money. Most new plants are still very expensive compared to almost everything else in the market. And they still involve a lot of taxpayer money.
Nuclear is not economically sustainable currently and those cost are either not payed (many countries don't have permanent waste storage solutions) or basically payed for out of tax money instead of revenue. If you add it all up it makes an already bad cost picture worse. Even without that accounted for it is easily the most expensive form of power. With all that accounted for, it only gets worse.
To be economically sustainable, it needs to become vastly cheaper and account for the full cost.
Will it always be that expensive? There are definitely ways to lower cost and there is of course a learning effect. But it seems we have a lot to learn. About an order of magnitude's worth of cost. And that would just be catching up to the status quo.
- bryanlarsen 5y agoFrench nuclear had a negative learning effect. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/223761273_The_costs_of_the_French_nuclear_scale-up_A_case_of_negative_learning_by_doing https://www.researchgate.net/publication/223761273_The_costs...
- ZeroGravitas 5y agoNuclear is cost competitive with fossil fuels, if you include carbon externalities. Still more expensive than renewables though, so only the best option if they didn't exist.
- jillesvangurp 5y agoYeah, fossil fuel is also economically sustainable at this point. Even without carbon capture it is generally too expensive. However. but the best power is the power you have. While renewables are cheaper, we don't yet have enough renewable capacity. And while fixing that is happening at an enormous pace, it's going to take a bit of time. A few decades should help. E.g. China has more than a TW of coal plants and more under construction. The global rollout of renewables is in the order of a bit over 100 GW. At that pace, it would take a decade to roll out enough (globally) just to get rid of China's coal plants. That's why they are investing in expensive Nuclear plants. 150 plants adds up to about a TW pretty much. Assuming these are pretty big ones doing 6GW each. That's not because they are so cheap but because it is the only way to get China on a path where they can shut down most of their coal this half of the century. Doing that is becoming more urgent. Long term, they might shut down those nuclear plants as soon as they can get away with it to save money. That will require a massive increase in production for renewable generation and storage. These plants have a lifetime of around 60 years. They might not actually be online that long.
- ZeroGravitas 5y ago> That will require a massive increase in production for renewable generation and storage. I have good news: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.ELC.RNWX.KH https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.ELC.RNWX.KH
- marak830 5y agoTrying to make everything economic, us going to ruin our planet. Why not have it as a government service?