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I think one basic argument against nuclear is that it can't produce energy as cheaply as renewables (and nuclear energy is getting more expensive while renewabl

I think one basic argument against nuclear is that it can't produce energy as cheaply as renewables (and nuclear energy is getting more expensive while renewables are getting cheaper). If we had decided to invest heavily in nuclear 20 years ago, we might not be in the mess we're in now, but it's probably too late for nuclear to help now. Look at Flamanville unit 3, for example. They started building it in 2007, and it still isn't producing power (in fact just this year they announced more delays to its start date). Even if we abandoned all concerns about where they were built, and started building a load of them today, they probably wouldn't all be ready until after 2040 because there probably isn't enough spare capacity in skilled nuclear engineers to parallelise their production. By that time, batteries and power-to-gas could be cheaply supplying reliable energy to a grid that's over-provisioned with renewables, without having to worry about storing radioactive waste for thousands of years or proliferation risks.

StillBored 4y ago
Except we have been saying the same thing for 20-30 years. And when you actually look at the costs of wind/solar (although maybe solar thermal might be useful, but for various reasons its been abandoned) they aren't as cheap as the cost to install them because they have external costs which never get accounted for. Starting with the fact that the cheapest way to build them is to build a KW of wind/solar and match it with a KW of natural gas. When you start looking at overbuilding them to supply some kind of energy storage, or to meet even their nameplate capacity 100% of the time on average they suddenly become a lot more expensive. I posted elsewhere (and was downvoted) for posting one of the many studies of how much it actually costs to build a KW of energy using particular technologies in various countries, and it turns out that those numbers, can be summarized as: Nuke plants are expensive because we want them to be, they aren't as expensive in countries (South Korea, China, etc) where random people don't (or cant) sue to stop construction even when the reactors are the exact same technology being proposed in the US/Europe (because they parent company doing the design and construction is frequently US/European) Followed by, wind farm's aren't cheap, and the prices only go up when you start talking about offshore and on the tops of mountain ranges. So, its no surprise that people who just want cheap energy will continue to pick carbon sources. Some people look at this differently, There are fundamental laws around energy density which tend to inform the economics (aka dig a ton a uranium and process it, or dig 10T to extract Neodymium, Lithium, etc and then built something that has 1/1000000th the energy density). So, one can claim wind/solar are cheaper and getting cheaper, but its like comparing apples to oranges, there is a reason places like TX, which have a world leading level of wind installed, also have some of the dirtiest power around. Sorta the computer equivalent of building ones datacenter around the raw price/perf of a given CPU/SoC, while ignoring every other variable. Then wondering why the HW ends up costing more per unit perf (cause maybe the motherboards cost more) and why the energy bill is eating your lunch (cause the cores are running at some extreme clock rate, and burning power). Finally, to summarize, you simply cannot hand wave the largest problem with wind/solar away, which is the fact that they are not on demand dispatchable. To get reliable power of of them easily adds a good 10x cost multiplier or more if your not willing to use a carbon source as a backup. So, basically standing around yelling wind and solar, is the same as asking for more carbon. And using wind+solar+NG is cleaner than just NG along, but it actually costs just as much as Nukes built in countries without regulatory bodies setup to stop the construction of Nuke plants. Despite the fact that even plants built 50 years ago are the safest form of energy production in existence (safer than wind for sure) when measured by deaths per MWh.
- pixl97 4y ago
  Safe nuclear is expensive and humans are cheap.
- robocat 4y ago
  > maybe solar thermal might be useful https://www.e-education.psu.edu/eme811/node/682 https://www.e-education.psu.edu/eme811/node/682 “Minus field losses, the typical average overall efficiency of solar trough thermal plants is around 15-20%”. Your first sentence has an implicit contradiction! PV has efficiency of say 20%. I get that you are thinking about thermal storage, but the only sensible argument is overall economic costs, which you seem to be explicitly arguing against. > I posted elsewhere (and was downvoted) for posting one of the many studies If you have links explaining your position, I think always add them. I strongly suspect you are mistaken in your reasoning about why you are getting downvoted. I’m not sure how to help you correctly guess why people downvote (sometimes their reasons are opaque), but I can tell you my own in this case: I think your core point is interesting. However overall your comment across to me as waffling and mixing in opinionated misinformation and fact. Perhaps make one major point, with a modicum of supporting information. Avoid random tangents. Your comment here in particular appears to me to be mish-mashing implicit economic arguments with other issues.
  - StillBored 4y ago
    Less efficient yes in absolute production, but solves the majority of the storage problem. Which is a huge problem, one that most people are ignoring, and many of the storage solutions lower PV efficiency as much or more. Here are a couple links from my comment history, the first is a comparison of KW costs, and the second is an overview of what the Chinese are doing. https://www.vox.com/2016/2/29/11132930/nuclear-power-costs-us-france-korea https://www.vox.com/2016/2/29/11132930/nuclear-power-costs-u... https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-a-f/china-nuclear-power.aspx#SCRO_report https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-pr... I've repeatedly posted hard facts on this board and few people bother to do much research at all, overwhelmingly posting puff pieces and data which is obviously wrong (aka nameplate install/$, average capacity factors (because average doesn't tell you the worse case, which is required for a reliable grid)) and a bunch of other things that get hand waved away by "renewable" supporters, like the fact that in most places with a lot of "renewables" its actually 50+ year old hydro and not wind/solar providing the energy. Or that places with a lot of wind/solar are basically green washing their natural gas usage (like Germans are suddenly discovering). edit: And to be clear, did you down vote the parent comment too, which states as fact something that is provably wrong (that nukes are more expensive than wind/solar, note the vox article which points out they were cheaper than natural gas plants at one point.), but commonly accepted, or did you let your own personal bias decide the misinformation he was repeating sounded correct?

StillBored 4y ago

Except we have been saying the same thing for 20-30 years. And when you actually look at the costs of wind/solar (although maybe solar thermal might be useful, but for various reasons its been abandoned) they aren't as cheap as the cost to install them because they have external costs which never get accounted for. Starting with the fact that the cheapest way to build them is to build a KW of wind/solar and match it with a KW of natural gas. When you start looking at overbuilding them to supply some kind of energy storage, or to meet even their nameplate capacity 100% of the time on average they suddenly become a lot more expensive. I posted elsewhere (and was downvoted) for posting one of the many studies of how much it actually costs to build a KW of energy using particular technologies in various countries, and it turns out that those numbers, can be summarized as: Nuke plants are expensive because we want them to be, they aren't as expensive in countries (South Korea, China, etc) where random people don't (or cant) sue to stop construction even when the reactors are the exact same technology being proposed in the US/Europe (because they parent company doing the design and construction is frequently US/European) Followed by, wind farm's aren't cheap, and the prices only go up when you start talking about offshore and on the tops of mountain ranges. So, its no surprise that people who just want cheap energy will continue to pick carbon sources. Some people look at this differently, There are fundamental laws around energy density which tend to inform the economics (aka dig a ton a uranium and process it, or dig 10T to extract Neodymium, Lithium, etc and then built something that has 1/1000000th the energy density). So, one can claim wind/solar are cheaper and getting cheaper, but its like comparing apples to oranges, there is a reason places like TX, which have a world leading level of wind installed, also have some of the dirtiest power around. Sorta the computer equivalent of building ones datacenter around the raw price/perf of a given CPU/SoC, while ignoring every other variable. Then wondering why the HW ends up costing more per unit perf (cause maybe the motherboards cost more) and why the energy bill is eating your lunch (cause the cores are running at some extreme clock rate, and burning power). Finally, to summarize, you simply cannot hand wave the largest problem with wind/solar away, which is the fact that they are not on demand dispatchable. To get reliable power of of them easily adds a good 10x cost multiplier or more if your not willing to use a carbon source as a backup. So, basically standing around yelling wind and solar, is the same as asking for more carbon. And using wind+solar+NG is cleaner than just NG along, but it actually costs just as much as Nukes built in countries without regulatory bodies setup to stop the construction of Nuke plants. Despite the fact that even plants built 50 years ago are the safest form of energy production in existence (safer than wind for sure) when measured by deaths per MWh.

pixl97 4y ago
Safe nuclear is expensive and humans are cheap.
robocat 4y ago
> maybe solar thermal might be useful https://www.e-education.psu.edu/eme811/node/682 https://www.e-education.psu.edu/eme811/node/682 “Minus field losses, the typical average overall efficiency of solar trough thermal plants is around 15-20%”. Your first sentence has an implicit contradiction! PV has efficiency of say 20%. I get that you are thinking about thermal storage, but the only sensible argument is overall economic costs, which you seem to be explicitly arguing against. > I posted elsewhere (and was downvoted) for posting one of the many studies If you have links explaining your position, I think always add them. I strongly suspect you are mistaken in your reasoning about why you are getting downvoted. I’m not sure how to help you correctly guess why people downvote (sometimes their reasons are opaque), but I can tell you my own in this case: I think your core point is interesting. However overall your comment across to me as waffling and mixing in opinionated misinformation and fact. Perhaps make one major point, with a modicum of supporting information. Avoid random tangents. Your comment here in particular appears to me to be mish-mashing implicit economic arguments with other issues.
- StillBored 4y ago
  Less efficient yes in absolute production, but solves the majority of the storage problem. Which is a huge problem, one that most people are ignoring, and many of the storage solutions lower PV efficiency as much or more. Here are a couple links from my comment history, the first is a comparison of KW costs, and the second is an overview of what the Chinese are doing. https://www.vox.com/2016/2/29/11132930/nuclear-power-costs-us-france-korea https://www.vox.com/2016/2/29/11132930/nuclear-power-costs-u... https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-a-f/china-nuclear-power.aspx#SCRO_report https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-pr... I've repeatedly posted hard facts on this board and few people bother to do much research at all, overwhelmingly posting puff pieces and data which is obviously wrong (aka nameplate install/$, average capacity factors (because average doesn't tell you the worse case, which is required for a reliable grid)) and a bunch of other things that get hand waved away by "renewable" supporters, like the fact that in most places with a lot of "renewables" its actually 50+ year old hydro and not wind/solar providing the energy. Or that places with a lot of wind/solar are basically green washing their natural gas usage (like Germans are suddenly discovering). edit: And to be clear, did you down vote the parent comment too, which states as fact something that is provably wrong (that nukes are more expensive than wind/solar, note the vox article which points out they were cheaper than natural gas plants at one point.), but commonly accepted, or did you let your own personal bias decide the misinformation he was repeating sounded correct?