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> This is why nuclear power plants should be state-sponsored projects. States typically have loans at 0% rate, or even negative interests. Not anymore with inf

> This is why nuclear power plants should be state-sponsored projects. States typically have loans at 0% rate, or even negative interests. Not anymore with inflation at around 8% in many western countries. And even so, construction and operation still remain expensive. France's EDL is basically bankrupt if it were not for the state backstopping them. However you want to slice it, nuclear power is not economically viable, and looks even worse compared to the rapidly decreasing costs of renewable sources of energy. So why waste more money on an obsolete technology rather than use it for solving the remaining issues with renewables like energy storage? Invest that money in battery technology and everything that comes with that. That approach will do a lot more good in the long run than trying to keep the nuclear industry on life support even though it has failed for half a century to deliver on its promises.

outworlder 4y ago
> So why waste more money on an obsolete technology It is not obsolete. At all. You can argue that some reactor designs should not be used and I would agree. But fission is the only answer we currently have for baseline power that doesn't involve burning things. It will become obsolete if we can ever make fusion work. We should be deploying more reactors. There are small reactors (shipping container-sized) that could be used to power small towns and are pretty safe. Good luck getting one approved and installed in your neighborhood. It's not the tech that's being held back, it's people. Look, I love batteries, I drive EVs since 2015. But if we want to avoid the worst effects of climate change, we need to provide cheap and reliable baseline power 24/7. There's not enough time to do so with batteries alone.
- bozhark 4y ago
  Had to delete my one line response because you embodied everything I meant. Cheers
- samstave 4y ago
  I have long thought there should be a global nuclear consortium and have that organization build and run and manage and secure all the nuclear power plants in the world. Earth/Humanity needs electricity FOREVER. Its bizarre that we cant come together over this expressly universal need. This and water.
  - ncmncm 4y ago
    A global nuclear consortium would have as its first goal its own continuance and its continued hegemony over energy policy. It would be catastrophic. Fortunately there is no such possibility.
- epistasis 4y ago
  > There's not enough time to do so with batteries alone. I suggest you run the numbers on this, because I think you have them exactly reversed. We are increasing battery production capacity 10x every five years. This could be accelerated if there was government investment as is done for every single nuclear reactor. At current rates we expect to produce 20-30TWh/year of lithium ion batteries, not including other chemistries that could be used for stationary storage but not mobile applications. Currently in the US we are only building 2GW of reactors, but we have ~100GW of reactors quickly reaching retirement age. Even if we scale our current nuclear construction capacity 10x every five years like we do for batteries, and add in the 10 year construction time, we are going to see a big decrease in nuclear before we see an increase.
  - epistasis 4y ago
    Argh, there's a typo there, we expect 20-30TWh/year in 2031.
  - ncmncm 4y ago
    Anyway only the tiniest fraction of utility storage will ever be batteries.
    - epistasis 4y ago
      Your comment conveys cynicism, but I'm not sure what you're saying. So you're proposing 100s to 1000s of TWh of utility storage in what form, exactly? Or are you saying that there will be almost not utility storage? Are you counting EV batteries as part of utility storage? How about if the batteries take part in vehicle to grid transmission? People have been skeptical of batteries for decades, claiming that they are never going to be ready for EVs. Then they were ready. You can still find absolutely ridiculous videos on YouTube only a few years old of people going through all sorts of numerical arguments about volume and size to say that EVs will never work on lithium ion batteries. Millions of Tesla owners are proving them wrong on their bad "physics" every single day. I have a feeling that utility battery storage skepticism is even less rational. Batteries are being deployed extremely effective on the grid right now, disproving the faith.
- derriz 4y ago
  The electricity from small modular reactors is far more expensive than that from large reactors - about twice as expensive by some estimates[1]. They also produce more waste per MWh generated. The industry has been pushing in the opposite direction with larger reactors like the EPR[2] to reduce costs. When measured by LCOE, a MWh from a new conventionally sized nuclear plant is 4 to 7 times as expensive as a MWh from solar PV, then SMR are simply out of the question from a cost point of view. [1] https://publications.csiro.au/publications/publication/PIcsiro:EP201952 https://publications.csiro.au/publications/publication/PIcsi... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_(nuclear_reactor) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_(nuclear_reactor)
  - trashtester 4y ago
    Solar is great in deserts, where the sun always shines and were the main use of electricity is air conditioning during the hottest parts of the day. Solar is near-useless in colder areas, where you want to use the power for heating in the winter. If you include the storage + grid expansion needed to compensate for the intermittent nature of most renewables (especially if you don't want to rely on fossil fuels when the wind is not blowing), the LCOE of many of them will be many times higher than just the production cost. Meanwhile, Korea claims to be able to construct Nuclear capacity at prices down to $0.03/kwh with their APR1400 reactors: https://www.kns.org/files/pre_paper/34/15A-435%EC%9D%B4%EA%B8%B0%ED%98%84.pdf https://www.kns.org/files/pre_paper/34/15A-435%EC%9D%B4%EA%B... That's at least an order of magnitude lower than the cost of renewables when constant output is required.
    - Gwypaas 4y ago
      Awesome then that on-shore wind is even cheaper than solar, and exists at night. Then for some more, still less than 1/3 to 1/4 of nuclear you get off-shore wind with higher capacity factors.
      - trashtester 4y ago
        When the wind is not blowing, the cost of wind per kwh is infinite.
- freemint 4y ago
  > But fission is the only answer we currently have for baseline power that doesn't involve burning things. Patently false. The sun shines 24/7. This (besides power satellites) offers other possibilities like a world wide connected grid. Even if you are a proponent of nuclear you will also need that, as i assume you do not want to put reactors in every country.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
belorn 4y ago
> So why waste more money on an obsolete technology rather than use it for solving the remaining issues with renewables like energy storage? Invest that money in battery technology and everything that comes with that. A few years ago Sweden did a study on green hydrogen, the energy storage that Germany and many other countries seem to view as the best bet as a storage for places where solar + daily discharging batteries won't work. The cost was then around 10-20 times more expensive than nuclear. Those costs has gone down a bit since then, but it is still several times more expensive than nuclear. Sweden and Germany are still very much in favor of green hydrogen, and there are on-going experiment to use it for industries that need hydrogen itself (rather than burning it for energy), but they are no investments for a grid storage. If nuclear is not economically viable, a technology that is several time more expensive is not something they are just going to throw money at. Those money are currently going towards fossil fuels, since that is cheaper than nuclear. If however we would ban fossil fuel, especially cheap fossil fuel from Russia, the economics might change. There is also always the hope that politicians investment into fossil fuels today will give green hydrogen enough time to become economical viable for the energy sector.
- pfdietz 4y ago
  China is selling electrolyzers for < $300/kw. Given that renewable electricity's LCOE is a fraction of nuclear, I don't see how hydrogen could be 10-20 times the cost of nuclear. Were they doing something ridiculous like assuming it's stored as liquid hydrogen? Also, remember the big use of hydrogen on the grid would be as a dispatchable backstop to cheap renewable sources, not as something that's used 24/7. So most of the energy flow would not be through hydrogen, it would be from the renewables directly (or through batteries for short term smoothing.)
  - belorn 4y ago
    There is a massive war and shortage of natural gas in Europe so if there exist cheap electrolyzers + wind power combinations that can solve that issue today then people should rush to invest before next winter where prices are predicted to sky rock. I recall that the study did say that existing natural gas power plants could cheaply and easily be converted to run on hydrogen. Hydrogen prices has also gone up a lot since the war. And it was 10-20 times a few years ago. Prices has gone down a significant bit. If you get the prices to around $1 per/kg (about 3-10x reduction from this year prices), and we don't account for transportation, infrastructure and physical storage, the price would start to look really competitive to nuclear. If you search online you will find plenty of predictions that prices might reach that magical $1 per/kg in say 2030 or so, in which case that will be a great choice. As a bonus it will make medical oxygen dirt cheap. At that point all discussions about nuclear power will mostly be made moot since hydrogen will be the factual best choice.
samstave 4y ago
Inflation is WAY fn higher than 8%. Try more like 30% Go to costco's meat section, walmarts juice section, any fn gas station. Fleecing is whats happening. EDIT: Cool, clearly you arent tracking prices like I do. Costco's meat section is up ~22%$ Walmarts Juices are up ~30% We all know what gas prices are. $7 a gallon in Napa.

outworlder 4y ago

> So why waste more money on an obsolete technology It is not obsolete. At all. You can argue that some reactor designs should not be used and I would agree. But fission is the only answer we currently have for baseline power that doesn't involve burning things. It will become obsolete if we can ever make fusion work. We should be deploying more reactors. There are small reactors (shipping container-sized) that could be used to power small towns and are pretty safe. Good luck getting one approved and installed in your neighborhood. It's not the tech that's being held back, it's people. Look, I love batteries, I drive EVs since 2015. But if we want to avoid the worst effects of climate change, we need to provide cheap and reliable baseline power 24/7. There's not enough time to do so with batteries alone.

bozhark 4y ago
Had to delete my one line response because you embodied everything I meant. Cheers
samstave 4y ago
I have long thought there should be a global nuclear consortium and have that organization build and run and manage and secure all the nuclear power plants in the world. Earth/Humanity needs electricity FOREVER. Its bizarre that we cant come together over this expressly universal need. This and water.
- ncmncm 4y ago
  A global nuclear consortium would have as its first goal its own continuance and its continued hegemony over energy policy. It would be catastrophic. Fortunately there is no such possibility.
epistasis 4y ago
> There's not enough time to do so with batteries alone. I suggest you run the numbers on this, because I think you have them exactly reversed. We are increasing battery production capacity 10x every five years. This could be accelerated if there was government investment as is done for every single nuclear reactor. At current rates we expect to produce 20-30TWh/year of lithium ion batteries, not including other chemistries that could be used for stationary storage but not mobile applications. Currently in the US we are only building 2GW of reactors, but we have ~100GW of reactors quickly reaching retirement age. Even if we scale our current nuclear construction capacity 10x every five years like we do for batteries, and add in the 10 year construction time, we are going to see a big decrease in nuclear before we see an increase.
- epistasis 4y ago
  Argh, there's a typo there, we expect 20-30TWh/year in 2031.
- ncmncm 4y ago
  Anyway only the tiniest fraction of utility storage will ever be batteries.
  - epistasis 4y ago
    Your comment conveys cynicism, but I'm not sure what you're saying. So you're proposing 100s to 1000s of TWh of utility storage in what form, exactly? Or are you saying that there will be almost not utility storage? Are you counting EV batteries as part of utility storage? How about if the batteries take part in vehicle to grid transmission? People have been skeptical of batteries for decades, claiming that they are never going to be ready for EVs. Then they were ready. You can still find absolutely ridiculous videos on YouTube only a few years old of people going through all sorts of numerical arguments about volume and size to say that EVs will never work on lithium ion batteries. Millions of Tesla owners are proving them wrong on their bad "physics" every single day. I have a feeling that utility battery storage skepticism is even less rational. Batteries are being deployed extremely effective on the grid right now, disproving the faith.
derriz 4y ago
The electricity from small modular reactors is far more expensive than that from large reactors - about twice as expensive by some estimates[1]. They also produce more waste per MWh generated. The industry has been pushing in the opposite direction with larger reactors like the EPR[2] to reduce costs. When measured by LCOE, a MWh from a new conventionally sized nuclear plant is 4 to 7 times as expensive as a MWh from solar PV, then SMR are simply out of the question from a cost point of view. [1] https://publications.csiro.au/publications/publication/PIcsiro:EP201952 https://publications.csiro.au/publications/publication/PIcsi... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_(nuclear_reactor) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_(nuclear_reactor)
- trashtester 4y ago
  Solar is great in deserts, where the sun always shines and were the main use of electricity is air conditioning during the hottest parts of the day. Solar is near-useless in colder areas, where you want to use the power for heating in the winter. If you include the storage + grid expansion needed to compensate for the intermittent nature of most renewables (especially if you don't want to rely on fossil fuels when the wind is not blowing), the LCOE of many of them will be many times higher than just the production cost. Meanwhile, Korea claims to be able to construct Nuclear capacity at prices down to $0.03/kwh with their APR1400 reactors: https://www.kns.org/files/pre_paper/34/15A-435%EC%9D%B4%EA%B8%B0%ED%98%84.pdf https://www.kns.org/files/pre_paper/34/15A-435%EC%9D%B4%EA%B... That's at least an order of magnitude lower than the cost of renewables when constant output is required.
  - Gwypaas 4y ago
    Awesome then that on-shore wind is even cheaper than solar, and exists at night. Then for some more, still less than 1/3 to 1/4 of nuclear you get off-shore wind with higher capacity factors.
    - trashtester 4y ago
      When the wind is not blowing, the cost of wind per kwh is infinite.
freemint 4y ago
> But fission is the only answer we currently have for baseline power that doesn't involve burning things. Patently false. The sun shines 24/7. This (besides power satellites) offers other possibilities like a world wide connected grid. Even if you are a proponent of nuclear you will also need that, as i assume you do not want to put reactors in every country.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

belorn 4y ago

> So why waste more money on an obsolete technology rather than use it for solving the remaining issues with renewables like energy storage? Invest that money in battery technology and everything that comes with that. A few years ago Sweden did a study on green hydrogen, the energy storage that Germany and many other countries seem to view as the best bet as a storage for places where solar + daily discharging batteries won't work. The cost was then around 10-20 times more expensive than nuclear. Those costs has gone down a bit since then, but it is still several times more expensive than nuclear. Sweden and Germany are still very much in favor of green hydrogen, and there are on-going experiment to use it for industries that need hydrogen itself (rather than burning it for energy), but they are no investments for a grid storage. If nuclear is not economically viable, a technology that is several time more expensive is not something they are just going to throw money at. Those money are currently going towards fossil fuels, since that is cheaper than nuclear. If however we would ban fossil fuel, especially cheap fossil fuel from Russia, the economics might change. There is also always the hope that politicians investment into fossil fuels today will give green hydrogen enough time to become economical viable for the energy sector.

pfdietz 4y ago
China is selling electrolyzers for < $300/kw. Given that renewable electricity's LCOE is a fraction of nuclear, I don't see how hydrogen could be 10-20 times the cost of nuclear. Were they doing something ridiculous like assuming it's stored as liquid hydrogen? Also, remember the big use of hydrogen on the grid would be as a dispatchable backstop to cheap renewable sources, not as something that's used 24/7. So most of the energy flow would not be through hydrogen, it would be from the renewables directly (or through batteries for short term smoothing.)
- belorn 4y ago
  There is a massive war and shortage of natural gas in Europe so if there exist cheap electrolyzers + wind power combinations that can solve that issue today then people should rush to invest before next winter where prices are predicted to sky rock. I recall that the study did say that existing natural gas power plants could cheaply and easily be converted to run on hydrogen. Hydrogen prices has also gone up a lot since the war. And it was 10-20 times a few years ago. Prices has gone down a significant bit. If you get the prices to around $1 per/kg (about 3-10x reduction from this year prices), and we don't account for transportation, infrastructure and physical storage, the price would start to look really competitive to nuclear. If you search online you will find plenty of predictions that prices might reach that magical $1 per/kg in say 2030 or so, in which case that will be a great choice. As a bonus it will make medical oxygen dirt cheap. At that point all discussions about nuclear power will mostly be made moot since hydrogen will be the factual best choice.

samstave 4y ago

Inflation is WAY fn higher than 8%. Try more like 30% Go to costco's meat section, walmarts juice section, any fn gas station. Fleecing is whats happening. EDIT: Cool, clearly you arent tracking prices like I do. Costco's meat section is up ~22%$ Walmarts Juices are up ~30% We all know what gas prices are. $7 a gallon in Napa.