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You can iterate the argument one step further and say that affordable nuclear is too far into the future, and that we should instead focus on more immediately r

by bborud 4y ago

You can iterate the argument one step further and say that affordable nuclear is too far into the future, and that we should instead focus on more immediately realizable options such as wind, solar, geothermal etc. This is where much of the energy debate in Europe is at now. It is exactly the same argument being used against fission. Pick any technology that has come to fruition in the last decade. Video streaming as a substitute for cable and terrestrial TV. Mass adoption of Smart Phones. EVs becoming a viable option for broad populations of car owners. A space startup that came from nowhere and rapidly out-competed the incumbents. All of them. Remember the Apollo astronauts who walked on the moon shitting on private space companies on C-SPAN not that many years ago? Look at the time span between people dismissing these technologies as off in the distant future and when they arrived. People have a tendency to assume that tomorrow will be the same as today. Affordable nuclear is still some years away. I think the events in Europe actually shortened that distance into the future by a significant amount just in the last 6 months. But fission power is still "too slow". Fusion is even more years away into the future. If/When it comes to fruition people are going to be surprised, and none more so than the experts. Because the experts are almost always wrong for a good while after disruptive breakthroughs have already happened. It means we have to think ahead and make sufficient bets on technologies that exist at all time scales. And the more potential they have for delivering stable base load, the higher the payoff. Yes we have to invest in both fission and fusion. And we have to invest a lot more than we already do.

jacknews 4y ago
I don't think this is quite the same argument. I agree with funding the future. But in this case the 'experts' seem to be putting all the funding toward fusion, which is likely decades away, if at all, and almost not at all toward new fission, which could be viable this decade.
- ncmncm 4y ago
  Except, it cannot. No new nuke design begun today could produce any power before 2035. The money spent building it, spent on renewables instead, would produce immediately, displace CO2 immediately, and produce more.
  - jacknews 4y ago
    Which currently-deployable renewables work at night, when there's no wind, and can produce enough for our base load needs? Small modular reactors could well be operating before the end of the decade, with government assistance, esp. regarding permitting. But that's beside the point, and your argument is exactly that criticized above - ie we should spend today on current tech rather than research for tomorrow. Renewables are now essentially 'baked', and from the government pov it's just a matter of tweaking regulations etc to encourage further commercial rollout. But we should also be researching for the future, and new nuclear needs help to actually develop the technology to commercial viability, along with say, deep geothermal. In comparison fusion is pie-in-the-sky, and doesn't warrant it's outsized funding - some funding (for the science), yes.
    - ncmncm 4y ago
      Anything that depends on converting heat will be more expensive than renewables + storage. So, nukes, howsoever clever, have no place. Please do not pretend not to have heard of storage. It fools no one, but makes you look foolish.
      - jacknews 4y ago
        lol, go and do some calculations, and come back and tell us how many batteries we'll need to cover base load during a couple of weeks of calm, dark-skies snow or rain. I agree we should be investing in storage technologies too, just not to the exclusion of other options.
        pfdietz 4y ago
        People have done the calculations on how much a 100% renewable energy economy would cost. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9837910 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9837910 > Even former critics must admit that adding e-fuels through PtX makes 100% RE possible at costs similar to fossil fuels. These critics are still questioning whether 100% RE is the cheapest solution but no longer claim it would be unfeasible or prohibitively expensive.
ncmncm 4y ago
Affordable nuclear recedes further with each passing day, as costs for better tech continue on down. Each dollar diverted from renewables build-out to nukes brings climate catastrophe incrementally nearer.
7952 4y ago
None of those technologies has ever been cheap exactly. It always costs someone a lot of money. But because it is desirable it can be justified. Nuclear power is identical to any other source of power as far as the consumer is concerned Also, if we are going to be super optimistic about fission we can also be optimistic about battery storage and solar.
- bborud 4y ago
  Lots of technologies have gone from "not cheap" to dirt cheap in my lifetime so this isn't really an argument. Let me give you an example. Right now I have at least half a dozen 6-9 channel IMUs on my person. Most of which cost from a couple of dollars to a few cents apiece. When I was a kid a much less precise IMU could cost more than a decent car. If you asked people who worked on equipment containing IMUs back then they would probably not have predicted today's price point and the fact that billions of these devices are owned by people of all levels of wealth. Before the advent of MEMS devices, cheap chip manufacturing and a mobile market to drive up volumes and drive down costs it was fairly hard to envision that you could make a decent precision IMU and make a profit selling it for pocket change. In fact, when I was a kid, nobody very few people who ran numbers really believed that mobile phones could be had for less money than a dinner at a not-even-fantastic-restaurant within our lifetime. If you are to argue that something can't happen, you kind of have to find compelling argument rooted in fundamental limitations. I don't think fission is ever going to be cheap as it deals with materials that are tricky. But I'm not ready to make the assumption that they can't be made cheaper per kWh than, say wind or solar (as you have to combine these with storage to solve the same problem).
  - 7952 4y ago
    The kind of investment you see in those areas is not because the technology is amazing value for money (although it is), but because of the extrinsic value to a user. An iPhone or a Tesla is a very different value proposition than a landline phone or a petrol car. But nuclear power does not give that kind of value to a user. The product is perfectly fungible with other sources. That makes it harder to bootstrap an industry. These kind of technological jumps forward require lots of different factors to align. We absolutely should be optimistic and maybe nuclear can differentiate itself. But it is really not the same as an iPhone. An absolutely collosal amount of money went into the supply chain that makes a modern phone possible. That was not done because having IMUs in your pocket is amazing.

by bborud 4y ago

jacknews 4y ago

I don't think this is quite the same argument. I agree with funding the future. But in this case the 'experts' seem to be putting all the funding toward fusion, which is likely decades away, if at all, and almost not at all toward new fission, which could be viable this decade.

ncmncm 4y ago
Except, it cannot. No new nuke design begun today could produce any power before 2035. The money spent building it, spent on renewables instead, would produce immediately, displace CO2 immediately, and produce more.
- jacknews 4y ago
  Which currently-deployable renewables work at night, when there's no wind, and can produce enough for our base load needs? Small modular reactors could well be operating before the end of the decade, with government assistance, esp. regarding permitting. But that's beside the point, and your argument is exactly that criticized above - ie we should spend today on current tech rather than research for tomorrow. Renewables are now essentially 'baked', and from the government pov it's just a matter of tweaking regulations etc to encourage further commercial rollout. But we should also be researching for the future, and new nuclear needs help to actually develop the technology to commercial viability, along with say, deep geothermal. In comparison fusion is pie-in-the-sky, and doesn't warrant it's outsized funding - some funding (for the science), yes.
  - ncmncm 4y ago
    Anything that depends on converting heat will be more expensive than renewables + storage. So, nukes, howsoever clever, have no place. Please do not pretend not to have heard of storage. It fools no one, but makes you look foolish.
    - jacknews 4y ago
      lol, go and do some calculations, and come back and tell us how many batteries we'll need to cover base load during a couple of weeks of calm, dark-skies snow or rain. I agree we should be investing in storage technologies too, just not to the exclusion of other options.
      - pfdietz 4y ago
        People have done the calculations on how much a 100% renewable energy economy would cost. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9837910 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9837910 > Even former critics must admit that adding e-fuels through PtX makes 100% RE possible at costs similar to fossil fuels. These critics are still questioning whether 100% RE is the cheapest solution but no longer claim it would be unfeasible or prohibitively expensive.

ncmncm 4y ago

Affordable nuclear recedes further with each passing day, as costs for better tech continue on down. Each dollar diverted from renewables build-out to nukes brings climate catastrophe incrementally nearer.

7952 4y ago

None of those technologies has ever been cheap exactly. It always costs someone a lot of money. But because it is desirable it can be justified. Nuclear power is identical to any other source of power as far as the consumer is concerned Also, if we are going to be super optimistic about fission we can also be optimistic about battery storage and solar.

bborud 4y ago
Lots of technologies have gone from "not cheap" to dirt cheap in my lifetime so this isn't really an argument. Let me give you an example. Right now I have at least half a dozen 6-9 channel IMUs on my person. Most of which cost from a couple of dollars to a few cents apiece. When I was a kid a much less precise IMU could cost more than a decent car. If you asked people who worked on equipment containing IMUs back then they would probably not have predicted today's price point and the fact that billions of these devices are owned by people of all levels of wealth. Before the advent of MEMS devices, cheap chip manufacturing and a mobile market to drive up volumes and drive down costs it was fairly hard to envision that you could make a decent precision IMU and make a profit selling it for pocket change. In fact, when I was a kid, nobody very few people who ran numbers really believed that mobile phones could be had for less money than a dinner at a not-even-fantastic-restaurant within our lifetime. If you are to argue that something can't happen, you kind of have to find compelling argument rooted in fundamental limitations. I don't think fission is ever going to be cheap as it deals with materials that are tricky. But I'm not ready to make the assumption that they can't be made cheaper per kWh than, say wind or solar (as you have to combine these with storage to solve the same problem).
- 7952 4y ago
  The kind of investment you see in those areas is not because the technology is amazing value for money (although it is), but because of the extrinsic value to a user. An iPhone or a Tesla is a very different value proposition than a landline phone or a petrol car. But nuclear power does not give that kind of value to a user. The product is perfectly fungible with other sources. That makes it harder to bootstrap an industry. These kind of technological jumps forward require lots of different factors to align. We absolutely should be optimistic and maybe nuclear can differentiate itself. But it is really not the same as an iPhone. An absolutely collosal amount of money went into the supply chain that makes a modern phone possible. That was not done because having IMUs in your pocket is amazing.