5 ms·

most of that cost is politically based not technical

pfdietz 5y ago
Fission is being built at all only for political reasons. People who build power plants on their own dime are shunning the technology. No merchant nuclear power plant selling into a competitive market has ever been built anywhere.
- parkingrift 5y ago
  China will construct 150 fission reactors between now and 2035 to produce 200 gigawatts of power at a total cost of $440B. A similar buildout in the US would take 70 years and cost well over a trillion dollars. Do you think China is building all those reactors for political reasons as opposed to generating reliable power 24/7 for a century?
  - pfdietz 5y ago
    Do you think China does things without regard to politics? They have clear political motivation to continue to build nuclear power plants. For example, this keeps their nuclear sector occupied and preserves the technology against deterioration. Even if civilian NPPs are not military, the overall technology has direct connection to their military (as it does in France.) Even with that, they are installing more renewables than nuclear. And China is pushing aggressively to reduce the cost of hydrogen. They are now exporting electrolysers at < $300/kW, a fraction of the cost from elsewhere. Cheap electrolysers are a crucial technology for pairing with intermittent renewables to get to a 100% renewable grid and remove the last tenuous argument in favor of nuclear. I seriously doubt they will build that many reactors by 2035, btw.
    - parkingrift 5y ago
      China doesn't need to build 150 nuclear reactors at breakneck speed to keep their nuclear sector occupied. They're making a massive investment in this technology from the education level all the way to the construction level. China isn't planning to realize a majority of their power supply from solar until after 2045. Like you, I doubt they'll hit that solar goal. Instead, they'll likely build more reactors.
    - orthecreedence 5y ago
      > They have clear political motivation to continue to build nuclear power plants. If realizing what a terrible bet solar and wind are is political, then yes I agree their motivation is political.
      - ncmncm 5y ago
        Strange, then, that they are building more solar and wind than fission.
        orthecreedence 5y ago
        Why not build both? Nuclear is great, and pound-for-pound is a much better energy source than solar, but you can build solar much more quickly than nuclear. I don't think your rebuttal is particularly damning. My points against solar I raised to you in another thread stand: to build the panels/batteries we need, it will create an extreme excess of carbon in the atmosphere. That's not to say we shouldn't build solar, but to pretend it can solely serve all of our collective energy needs is myopic give the constraints. To be clear, I'm all for covering the entire planet in solar panels...after we switch our production to be powered via fission.
        ncmncm 5y ago
        I.e., never. "What a terrible bet solar and wind are", as you claim immediately above, would be a reason not to build out solar and wind, if it were correct. But it's not, and they are. And, it is at best naive to believe that it takes more energy to produce a solar panel than it will generate. People mining and refining silicon, cadmium, and tellurium and making solar panels out of them do not get power for free. They pay open market prices for energy, which they pass directly on to customers all down the chain to the final buyer. When your panel's production output pays off its purchase cost, its output has (much more than) exceeded the energy used to produce it.
        orthecreedence 5y ago
        > as you claim immediately above The claim was regarding nuclear VS solar (either/or), in which case yet, solar is a terrible bet. I stand by that. > People mining and refining silicon, cadmium, and tellurium and making solar panels out of them do not get power for free And you say I'm being naive... Firstly, the price of the panels doesn't even match the price of production because of subsidies. Secondly, they do get power for free: the well-known, terrible cost of burning fossil fuels at their current scale is not incorporated into the price of fossil fuels. Capitalist markets are not capable of doing so. So my point is if you were to actually price fossil fuels according to their cost solar panel production would not be competitive with nuclear in any way. > When your panel's production output pays off its purchase cost, its output has (much more than) exceeded the energy used to produce it. Sure, it can pay off its purchase cost, but as above, that means absolutely nothing. A more interesting payment would be watts-in, watts-out, in which case I'd wager you get marginal gains. And if the watts-in are generated with fossil fuels, you're doing a lot more damage than you think. Regarding nuclear, sure it's expensive, but a lot of that is artificial, and a lot of the high comparative cost is due to the price/cost disparity in fossil fuels. And hey, as a bonus, it works at night and on cloudy days and you don't need to build an enormous battery which is another can of worms people love to gloss over.

Fission is being built at all only for political reasons. People who build power plants on their own dime are shunning the technology. No merchant nuclear power plant selling into a competitive market has ever been built anywhere.

parkingrift 5y ago
China will construct 150 fission reactors between now and 2035 to produce 200 gigawatts of power at a total cost of $440B. A similar buildout in the US would take 70 years and cost well over a trillion dollars. Do you think China is building all those reactors for political reasons as opposed to generating reliable power 24/7 for a century?
- pfdietz 5y ago
  Do you think China does things without regard to politics? They have clear political motivation to continue to build nuclear power plants. For example, this keeps their nuclear sector occupied and preserves the technology against deterioration. Even if civilian NPPs are not military, the overall technology has direct connection to their military (as it does in France.) Even with that, they are installing more renewables than nuclear. And China is pushing aggressively to reduce the cost of hydrogen. They are now exporting electrolysers at < $300/kW, a fraction of the cost from elsewhere. Cheap electrolysers are a crucial technology for pairing with intermittent renewables to get to a 100% renewable grid and remove the last tenuous argument in favor of nuclear. I seriously doubt they will build that many reactors by 2035, btw.
  - parkingrift 5y ago
    China doesn't need to build 150 nuclear reactors at breakneck speed to keep their nuclear sector occupied. They're making a massive investment in this technology from the education level all the way to the construction level. China isn't planning to realize a majority of their power supply from solar until after 2045. Like you, I doubt they'll hit that solar goal. Instead, they'll likely build more reactors.
  - orthecreedence 5y ago
    > They have clear political motivation to continue to build nuclear power plants. If realizing what a terrible bet solar and wind are is political, then yes I agree their motivation is political.
    - ncmncm 5y ago
      Strange, then, that they are building more solar and wind than fission.
      - orthecreedence 5y ago
        Why not build both? Nuclear is great, and pound-for-pound is a much better energy source than solar, but you can build solar much more quickly than nuclear. I don't think your rebuttal is particularly damning. My points against solar I raised to you in another thread stand: to build the panels/batteries we need, it will create an extreme excess of carbon in the atmosphere. That's not to say we shouldn't build solar, but to pretend it can solely serve all of our collective energy needs is myopic give the constraints. To be clear, I'm all for covering the entire planet in solar panels...after we switch our production to be powered via fission.
        ncmncm 5y ago
        I.e., never. "What a terrible bet solar and wind are", as you claim immediately above, would be a reason not to build out solar and wind, if it were correct. But it's not, and they are. And, it is at best naive to believe that it takes more energy to produce a solar panel than it will generate. People mining and refining silicon, cadmium, and tellurium and making solar panels out of them do not get power for free. They pay open market prices for energy, which they pass directly on to customers all down the chain to the final buyer. When your panel's production output pays off its purchase cost, its output has (much more than) exceeded the energy used to produce it.
        orthecreedence 5y ago
        > as you claim immediately above The claim was regarding nuclear VS solar (either/or), in which case yet, solar is a terrible bet. I stand by that. > People mining and refining silicon, cadmium, and tellurium and making solar panels out of them do not get power for free And you say I'm being naive... Firstly, the price of the panels doesn't even match the price of production because of subsidies. Secondly, they do get power for free: the well-known, terrible cost of burning fossil fuels at their current scale is not incorporated into the price of fossil fuels. Capitalist markets are not capable of doing so. So my point is if you were to actually price fossil fuels according to their cost solar panel production would not be competitive with nuclear in any way. > When your panel's production output pays off its purchase cost, its output has (much more than) exceeded the energy used to produce it. Sure, it can pay off its purchase cost, but as above, that means absolutely nothing. A more interesting payment would be watts-in, watts-out, in which case I'd wager you get marginal gains. And if the watts-in are generated with fossil fuels, you're doing a lot more damage than you think. Regarding nuclear, sure it's expensive, but a lot of that is artificial, and a lot of the high comparative cost is due to the price/cost disparity in fossil fuels. And hey, as a bonus, it works at night and on cloudy days and you don't need to build an enormous battery which is another can of worms people love to gloss over.