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1-2 billion per gigawatt is very economically competitive. And that's what nuclear has historically cost when it was built at scale in the US. A fair comparison

1-2 billion per gigawatt is very economically competitive. And that's what nuclear has historically cost when it was built at scale in the US. A fair comparison against intermittent sources like wind and solar needs to include the costs of energy storage for the latter.

ZeroGravitas 5y ago
Why would you include integration costs for renewables but not nuclear? They face very similar challenges with very similar solutions. The demand curve is lumpy on a daily, weekly and yearly cycle. Nuclear is flat and predictable, renewables are (like demand) predictable to a reasonable degree but variable (weather and energy demand are linked too). Nuclear (and coals) difficulty meeting peaky demand is a big reason for pumped hydro to exist for decades. It is still the biggest source of energy storage we have. Why should renewables pay for storage built for nuclear?
- Manuel_D 5y ago
  No, they do not. The demand curve is mostly flat. Peaky demand is not nearly as large as problem as people make it out to be [1]. Furthermore, nuclear poet's output can be modulated by more aggressively cooling the reactor. 1. https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=42915 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=42915
  - ZeroGravitas 5y ago
    I can clearly see daily, weekly and seasonal lumps in your graph. Why do you think that contradicts what I said? And note that's averaged across 4 years, across the whole US across multiple time zones and doesn't include energy for heat currently not sourced from electricity. Cold places use more energy in winter and in cold years, the opposite in hot places that need a lot of cooling. But, let's put that all to one side, on that graph what amount of energy are you intending to generate with nuclear and what are you intending to do with the excess (if you aim high) or with the peaks (if you aim low). Because whatever you do, is almost certainly going to be the same things renewables would do when demand and supply don't meet exactly. Like pumped hydro or off peak pricing which already exists and is therefore included in your "flat" graph.
    - Manuel_D 5y ago
      Weekly and seasonal changes are not a concern for nuclear power - reactors can scale up or down thermal generation on that larger time frame. Daily power fluctuations are much smaller than you seem to think, 20% to 30%. Excesses of energy are easily solved: use it to desalinate water, create hydrogen fuel, or some other energy intensive things. And as stated previously, nuclear power plants can reduce their output if needed by more aggressively cooling the reactor. Nuclear plants want to operate at 100% load as much as they can, but they don't need to. Renewables have the opposite problem: they don't produce energy when we need it. No amount of solar panels will produce energy when the sun is down. Peak pricing is not going to help us here. This is why renewable advocates assume that there's going to be some magic storage solution that offers effectively free and unlimited storage. > Like pumped hydro or off peak pricing which already exists and is therefore included in your "flat" graph. The USA has 20 GWh of pumped hydro storage. That's 2.4 minutes of electricity supply at an average hourly consumption of 500 GW.
      - ZeroGravitas 5y ago
        Okay, so your answer is that you're going to aim for the high end, and your going to waste the extra energy as heat when required on the short term and turn entire plants off during seasonal lulls. This is called "overprovisioning" and it's exactly what renewables intend to do. In both cases it's more expensive than having magical demand matching production. Or your going to use it to desalinate when power is abundant. This is "demand response" and again, it's exactly what renewables grids are going to do. I see you also want to create Hydrogen, another great idea that renewables also plan to do, except nuclear generated is called Pink Hydrogen and renewable powered is called Green Hydrogen for some reason. Same basic idea though. So, I don't understand why you're so angry about renewables when you already know all the solutions a fossil free grid needs. > No amount of solar panels will produce energy when the sun is down. Did you happen to notice where the bottom of the lumps in your graph were? Nighttime. So we'll need some wind power and/or storage and/or HVDC lines. But if you have to pretend you've never heard of wind power in order to justify nuclear power, maybe that's a sign that it's not as good an idea as you think. And finally, the reason we don't have much storage on the grid today, is because we burn fossil fuels for a great deal of power and turning them off actually saves money (and lives) so that's what we do rather than store energy. I'm fairly chill about storage because cheap solar that lets you turn off gas during the day and cheap wind that lets you turn gas off another half of the time is the quickest and cheapest way to stop burning fossil fuels. We only need to come up with crazy solutions once we try to get rid of the last few bits of fossil fuels. And you already listed them for a fully nuclear grid so we don't need to go over that again. Some people try to act all appalled about that, as if burning 80% less fossil fuels easily at an overall cost saving in a short period of time is some big conspiracy by fossil fuel companies to undermine nuclear. It doesn't really pencil out though. Not even if you pretend wind power doesn't exist.

ZeroGravitas 5y ago

Why would you include integration costs for renewables but not nuclear? They face very similar challenges with very similar solutions. The demand curve is lumpy on a daily, weekly and yearly cycle. Nuclear is flat and predictable, renewables are (like demand) predictable to a reasonable degree but variable (weather and energy demand are linked too). Nuclear (and coals) difficulty meeting peaky demand is a big reason for pumped hydro to exist for decades. It is still the biggest source of energy storage we have. Why should renewables pay for storage built for nuclear?

Manuel_D 5y ago
No, they do not. The demand curve is mostly flat. Peaky demand is not nearly as large as problem as people make it out to be [1]. Furthermore, nuclear poet's output can be modulated by more aggressively cooling the reactor. 1. https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=42915 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=42915
- ZeroGravitas 5y ago
  I can clearly see daily, weekly and seasonal lumps in your graph. Why do you think that contradicts what I said? And note that's averaged across 4 years, across the whole US across multiple time zones and doesn't include energy for heat currently not sourced from electricity. Cold places use more energy in winter and in cold years, the opposite in hot places that need a lot of cooling. But, let's put that all to one side, on that graph what amount of energy are you intending to generate with nuclear and what are you intending to do with the excess (if you aim high) or with the peaks (if you aim low). Because whatever you do, is almost certainly going to be the same things renewables would do when demand and supply don't meet exactly. Like pumped hydro or off peak pricing which already exists and is therefore included in your "flat" graph.
  - Manuel_D 5y ago
    Weekly and seasonal changes are not a concern for nuclear power - reactors can scale up or down thermal generation on that larger time frame. Daily power fluctuations are much smaller than you seem to think, 20% to 30%. Excesses of energy are easily solved: use it to desalinate water, create hydrogen fuel, or some other energy intensive things. And as stated previously, nuclear power plants can reduce their output if needed by more aggressively cooling the reactor. Nuclear plants want to operate at 100% load as much as they can, but they don't need to. Renewables have the opposite problem: they don't produce energy when we need it. No amount of solar panels will produce energy when the sun is down. Peak pricing is not going to help us here. This is why renewable advocates assume that there's going to be some magic storage solution that offers effectively free and unlimited storage. > Like pumped hydro or off peak pricing which already exists and is therefore included in your "flat" graph. The USA has 20 GWh of pumped hydro storage. That's 2.4 minutes of electricity supply at an average hourly consumption of 500 GW.
    - ZeroGravitas 5y ago
      Okay, so your answer is that you're going to aim for the high end, and your going to waste the extra energy as heat when required on the short term and turn entire plants off during seasonal lulls. This is called "overprovisioning" and it's exactly what renewables intend to do. In both cases it's more expensive than having magical demand matching production. Or your going to use it to desalinate when power is abundant. This is "demand response" and again, it's exactly what renewables grids are going to do. I see you also want to create Hydrogen, another great idea that renewables also plan to do, except nuclear generated is called Pink Hydrogen and renewable powered is called Green Hydrogen for some reason. Same basic idea though. So, I don't understand why you're so angry about renewables when you already know all the solutions a fossil free grid needs. > No amount of solar panels will produce energy when the sun is down. Did you happen to notice where the bottom of the lumps in your graph were? Nighttime. So we'll need some wind power and/or storage and/or HVDC lines. But if you have to pretend you've never heard of wind power in order to justify nuclear power, maybe that's a sign that it's not as good an idea as you think. And finally, the reason we don't have much storage on the grid today, is because we burn fossil fuels for a great deal of power and turning them off actually saves money (and lives) so that's what we do rather than store energy. I'm fairly chill about storage because cheap solar that lets you turn off gas during the day and cheap wind that lets you turn gas off another half of the time is the quickest and cheapest way to stop burning fossil fuels. We only need to come up with crazy solutions once we try to get rid of the last few bits of fossil fuels. And you already listed them for a fully nuclear grid so we don't need to go over that again. Some people try to act all appalled about that, as if burning 80% less fossil fuels easily at an overall cost saving in a short period of time is some big conspiracy by fossil fuel companies to undermine nuclear. It doesn't really pencil out though. Not even if you pretend wind power doesn't exist.