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It sounds like you want a climate policy that allows us to migrate off fossil fuels while energy remains as cheap and abundant as it was for the past century.

It sounds like you want a climate policy that allows us to migrate off fossil fuels while energy remains as cheap and abundant as it was for the past century. Have you considered whether this might be physically impossible? If so, would you prefer no action and dealing with the full effects of climate change, or would you prefer to accept a flawed climate policy that migrates off fossil fuels while civilization deals with the impact of expensive and/or limited energy?

pclmulqdq 4y ago
Nuclear energy.
- helen___keller 4y ago
  Nuclear is expensive. Depending on your source this can be a factor of 6 on capital costs for new nuclear projects compared to oil/gas (per kWh), and possibly even a factor of 3 on levelized electricity costs. Rising energy prices means poor folk will have to turn off their AC in the summer and turn off their heat in the winter. Sorry, nuclear doesn’t pass the bar you’ve set. (Note: many sources do suggest nuclear levelized cost is not much higher than other energy sources, but even then it’s a massive capital investment so any nuclear policy would look like “trillions in spending and limiting [fossil fuel] energy”, as earlier derided)
  - pclmulqdq 4y ago
    Wright's law is a very powerful force. It brought down the cost of solar and wind below the cost of fossil fuels. It will do the same for nuclear power. Using current energy prices to make predictions about developments in solar power in 1990 would have said the same thing you say about nuclear energy today. By the way, nuclear and photovoltaic solar technologies are about equally old - the trope that nuclear power has had a lot longer to become scalable is incorrect. Solar has become scalable due to the amount of money being poured into it. If you pour a lot of energy into nuclear reactors, the price will go down by a lot, too.
    - helen___keller 4y ago
      Taking the least charitable interpretation of opposing policies while assuming the policy you advocate will lead to drastic cost-saving technology improvements. A true straw man classic. You could have saved a lot of text in your original post by saying something like “we need more nuclear than is currently planned to achieve climate goals sustainably”. A lot of HN (myself included!) would have agreed with you.
      - pclmulqdq 4y ago
        Talk about strawmen: Nobody said that nuclear technology didn't need to go through a lot of technological improvements - look at the difference between 1960s photovoltaics and modern ones. Every other technology in human history has improved significantly with investment. You can look at all of the studies about Wright's law: when Wright's law gets studied, it is found to apply to every product, resulting in 10-30% unit cost reductions as production doubles - the only question is how big the reduction is. Whether you are talking about vegetables, power plants, or microchips, production gets cheaper the more of them you produce. Batteries, by the way, are undergoing similar improvements. However, there are a lot more open questions in terms of the scalability of battery technology, and it is nowhere near the scale where nuclear is today. Also, if you agreed that nuclear power would have made energy cheap and plentiful, why did you argue that there was no way to keep energy cheap and plentiful without fossil fuels? Finally, I just noticed that you put some brackets in a quote of mine: "trillions in spending and limiting [fossil fuel] energy." I never said "fossil fuel energy." I said energy. Energy restrictions are about restrictions at point of demand irrespective of the technology that generates the energy. The "peaky" and unreliable nature of renewables requires this (until batteries are ready). When you want to argue with someone, don't try to put words in their mouth.
        helen___keller 4y ago
        I agree nuclear is needed for a sustainable energy mix due to reliability, not price. Your optimism on price seems unfounded. As you said, nuclear is the same age as PV. PV gets more interest now, but nuclear used to have WAY more interest. The world has had no shortage of multi billion dollar nuclear investments. Why would continued nuclear investment fare better price reductions than continued solar investments? If anything mega projects have evidence of getting more expensive over time (US at least) and nuclear afaik is always a mega project Regardless, even if you’re right, the point is that you can’t know that for sure yet to are so quick to talk of the revealed preferences of opposing policy, as if everyone took a look at free energy and said “nah I’d rather have blackouts”. When in reality everyone looked at how expensive nuclear was and didn’t share your excessive optimism on future price reductions > I never said "fossil fuel energy." I said energy. “Limit fossil fuel” I meant supply side restrictions on cheap non renewables which would outcompete expensive nuclear on one hand, or cover the gap from insufficient/peaky energy production via solar/wind (should we not pursue nuclear). I didn’t realize you were talking about demand side restrictions.

pclmulqdq 4y ago

Nuclear energy.

helen___keller 4y ago
Nuclear is expensive. Depending on your source this can be a factor of 6 on capital costs for new nuclear projects compared to oil/gas (per kWh), and possibly even a factor of 3 on levelized electricity costs. Rising energy prices means poor folk will have to turn off their AC in the summer and turn off their heat in the winter. Sorry, nuclear doesn’t pass the bar you’ve set. (Note: many sources do suggest nuclear levelized cost is not much higher than other energy sources, but even then it’s a massive capital investment so any nuclear policy would look like “trillions in spending and limiting [fossil fuel] energy”, as earlier derided)
- pclmulqdq 4y ago
  Wright's law is a very powerful force. It brought down the cost of solar and wind below the cost of fossil fuels. It will do the same for nuclear power. Using current energy prices to make predictions about developments in solar power in 1990 would have said the same thing you say about nuclear energy today. By the way, nuclear and photovoltaic solar technologies are about equally old - the trope that nuclear power has had a lot longer to become scalable is incorrect. Solar has become scalable due to the amount of money being poured into it. If you pour a lot of energy into nuclear reactors, the price will go down by a lot, too.
  - helen___keller 4y ago
    Taking the least charitable interpretation of opposing policies while assuming the policy you advocate will lead to drastic cost-saving technology improvements. A true straw man classic. You could have saved a lot of text in your original post by saying something like “we need more nuclear than is currently planned to achieve climate goals sustainably”. A lot of HN (myself included!) would have agreed with you.
    - pclmulqdq 4y ago
      Talk about strawmen: Nobody said that nuclear technology didn't need to go through a lot of technological improvements - look at the difference between 1960s photovoltaics and modern ones. Every other technology in human history has improved significantly with investment. You can look at all of the studies about Wright's law: when Wright's law gets studied, it is found to apply to every product, resulting in 10-30% unit cost reductions as production doubles - the only question is how big the reduction is. Whether you are talking about vegetables, power plants, or microchips, production gets cheaper the more of them you produce. Batteries, by the way, are undergoing similar improvements. However, there are a lot more open questions in terms of the scalability of battery technology, and it is nowhere near the scale where nuclear is today. Also, if you agreed that nuclear power would have made energy cheap and plentiful, why did you argue that there was no way to keep energy cheap and plentiful without fossil fuels? Finally, I just noticed that you put some brackets in a quote of mine: "trillions in spending and limiting [fossil fuel] energy." I never said "fossil fuel energy." I said energy. Energy restrictions are about restrictions at point of demand irrespective of the technology that generates the energy. The "peaky" and unreliable nature of renewables requires this (until batteries are ready). When you want to argue with someone, don't try to put words in their mouth.
      - helen___keller 4y ago
        I agree nuclear is needed for a sustainable energy mix due to reliability, not price. Your optimism on price seems unfounded. As you said, nuclear is the same age as PV. PV gets more interest now, but nuclear used to have WAY more interest. The world has had no shortage of multi billion dollar nuclear investments. Why would continued nuclear investment fare better price reductions than continued solar investments? If anything mega projects have evidence of getting more expensive over time (US at least) and nuclear afaik is always a mega project Regardless, even if you’re right, the point is that you can’t know that for sure yet to are so quick to talk of the revealed preferences of opposing policy, as if everyone took a look at free energy and said “nah I’d rather have blackouts”. When in reality everyone looked at how expensive nuclear was and didn’t share your excessive optimism on future price reductions > I never said "fossil fuel energy." I said energy. “Limit fossil fuel” I meant supply side restrictions on cheap non renewables which would outcompete expensive nuclear on one hand, or cover the gap from insufficient/peaky energy production via solar/wind (should we not pursue nuclear). I didn’t realize you were talking about demand side restrictions.