3 ms·

> Money is fungible. Each cent spent on X is a cent not spent on Y. Money is fungible, but the supply curves for nuclear plants, solar panels, storage, etc, ar

by mlyle 5y ago

> Money is fungible. Each cent spent on X is a cent not spent on Y. Money is fungible, but the supply curves for nuclear plants, solar panels, storage, etc, are not flat. Further, as a political reality: the money allocated to renewable subsidies and nuclear subsidies isn't a direct exchange. If you convince governments to subsidize nuclear $20B less, you don't magically get $20B more for renewables. > Nuke costs are going up, not down. Yup, and why is that? Certainly that has something to do with the current regulatory environment and the scale at which nuclear is deployed. I.e. there's no magical way it has gotten "harder" other than us doing it less and losing expertise. > "Not going to be feasible", and "doesn't look practical" are not based in fact. Storage is not being built out yet because solar watts still displace NG watts, 1:1 In summer, we already have wholesale power costs dip negative at midday from time to time. That's going to become more pronounced. And at night, we have about 16GW of natural gas (counting imports) vs. 3GW of wind (counting imports) here in California. Maybe we can triple wind with a massive investment, but IMO that's about the point where we're going to see significantly diminished returns. And this is one of the markets that has most aggressively deployed renewables in the US and has some of the best resources for solar and wind outside of the desert. A few GW more of nuclear in the mix would make a significant difference. All these numbers are about present demand, too. Increased vehicle electrification is going to push up nighttime demand further.

ncmncm 5y ago
A few more GW of nuke plants under construction would produce exactly zero actual watts, but would suck up dollars that could otherwise be spent building out wind and solar that would produce immediately. So, that is a strong net negative. If the nukes ever did come online, years on, their power would then be unable to compete on price with wind and storage, costs of which are still plummeting. More likely, they would be cancelled first, and the money, real estate, and concrete wasted. Putting those $billions into offshore wind, HVDC transmission lines, hydrolysis, and underground hydrogen storage would be an overwhelmingly better use. Current NG plants can switch over incrementally to burn H2 as it becomes available.
- mlyle 5y ago
  > A few more GW of nuke plants under construction would make exactly zero difference, Yes, it takes awhile. This is a problem we should be working on! And "it won't help for awhile" isn't great justification for not doing something forever. > but would suck up dollars that could otherwise be spent building out wind and solar that would produce immediately. Already argued against with no objection by you. > their power would then be unable to compete on price with wind I do not think it is feasible for California to deploy ~6x as much wind as we have now. And we might need significantly more than that (overprovisioning for reliability, increased nighttime demands). > storage Again, we have no clarity that grid-scale storage using batteries is realistic or sustainable, even assuming doing it with new technologies like smelting iron. We simply need to be betting on everything to get through this. Solar-thermal probably doesn't win either, but we should absolutely be doing more of it than we are now. > More likely, they would be cancelled first. Even if one cedes your point, and some capital costs need to get written down, so be it. You still get the power. The operating costs of nuclear are cheap: it's the capital costs that are problematic. France proves the point: the CO2 intensity of energy production in France is significantly lower than neighboring states that have bet heavily on renewables. And this was done with comparatively ancient technology. If France got it done in the past, why can't it be done now?
  - ncmncm 5y ago
    Just operating a nuke plant, ignoring capital paydown, already costs more than building out and operating matching solar. A cancelled nuke plant generates zero watts, forever. And, nuke plant operation costs are only increasing. Reduced water availability increases this cost. Offshore wind is wholly untapped, in California. Installing solar over crop land reduces water and heat stress, both increasing yield and freeing up water for hydro storage. Iron-air batteries do not involve smelting (once produced). The iron oxidizes, yielding energy. Their advantage is extremely low cost per stored watt-hour.
    - mlyle 5y ago
      > Just operating a nuke plant, ignoring capital paydown, already costs more than building out and then operating matching solar. Nuclear is about $30 operating/megawatt hour. Solar, counting capital costs, is about $40/megawatt hour for utility scale solar and about $150/megawatt hour for rooftop after subsidies... but this is just daytime power and not base load. You'd need to add the cost of storage. > And, nuke plant operation costs are only increasing. This is false. They'd gone up for awhile, but then started a powerful downward trend. 2019 was a record low value even before correcting for inflation. 2019 is also the most recent year for which we have full data. > Iron-air batteries do not involve smelting (once produced). The iron oxidizes, yielding energy. And then is reduced, to recharge. There's various approaches here, from nanoscale powder sintering and pure electrochemical reduction to literally just reducing the iron anode at temperature ("smelting").

by mlyle 5y ago

ncmncm 5y ago

A few more GW of nuke plants under construction would produce exactly zero actual watts, but would suck up dollars that could otherwise be spent building out wind and solar that would produce immediately. So, that is a strong net negative. If the nukes ever did come online, years on, their power would then be unable to compete on price with wind and storage, costs of which are still plummeting. More likely, they would be cancelled first, and the money, real estate, and concrete wasted. Putting those $billions into offshore wind, HVDC transmission lines, hydrolysis, and underground hydrogen storage would be an overwhelmingly better use. Current NG plants can switch over incrementally to burn H2 as it becomes available.

mlyle 5y ago
> A few more GW of nuke plants under construction would make exactly zero difference, Yes, it takes awhile. This is a problem we should be working on! And "it won't help for awhile" isn't great justification for not doing something forever. > but would suck up dollars that could otherwise be spent building out wind and solar that would produce immediately. Already argued against with no objection by you. > their power would then be unable to compete on price with wind I do not think it is feasible for California to deploy ~6x as much wind as we have now. And we might need significantly more than that (overprovisioning for reliability, increased nighttime demands). > storage Again, we have no clarity that grid-scale storage using batteries is realistic or sustainable, even assuming doing it with new technologies like smelting iron. We simply need to be betting on everything to get through this. Solar-thermal probably doesn't win either, but we should absolutely be doing more of it than we are now. > More likely, they would be cancelled first. Even if one cedes your point, and some capital costs need to get written down, so be it. You still get the power. The operating costs of nuclear are cheap: it's the capital costs that are problematic. France proves the point: the CO2 intensity of energy production in France is significantly lower than neighboring states that have bet heavily on renewables. And this was done with comparatively ancient technology. If France got it done in the past, why can't it be done now?
- ncmncm 5y ago
  Just operating a nuke plant, ignoring capital paydown, already costs more than building out and operating matching solar. A cancelled nuke plant generates zero watts, forever. And, nuke plant operation costs are only increasing. Reduced water availability increases this cost. Offshore wind is wholly untapped, in California. Installing solar over crop land reduces water and heat stress, both increasing yield and freeing up water for hydro storage. Iron-air batteries do not involve smelting (once produced). The iron oxidizes, yielding energy. Their advantage is extremely low cost per stored watt-hour.
  - mlyle 5y ago
    > Just operating a nuke plant, ignoring capital paydown, already costs more than building out and then operating matching solar. Nuclear is about $30 operating/megawatt hour. Solar, counting capital costs, is about $40/megawatt hour for utility scale solar and about $150/megawatt hour for rooftop after subsidies... but this is just daytime power and not base load. You'd need to add the cost of storage. > And, nuke plant operation costs are only increasing. This is false. They'd gone up for awhile, but then started a powerful downward trend. 2019 was a record low value even before correcting for inflation. 2019 is also the most recent year for which we have full data. > Iron-air batteries do not involve smelting (once produced). The iron oxidizes, yielding energy. And then is reduced, to recharge. There's various approaches here, from nanoscale powder sintering and pure electrochemical reduction to literally just reducing the iron anode at temperature ("smelting").