5 ms·

Just thinking the problem through, I think that's very unlikely, unless you're in a pathological situation. So, for a nuclear plant to be profitable in a compe

Just thinking the problem through, I think that's very unlikely, unless you're in a pathological situation. So, for a nuclear plant to be profitable in a competitive market, it needs to produce energy for less than its competitors. If its competitors don't have to pay to capture carbon (through money or output) then they are always going to be cheaper per watt, and the plant is going to become unprofitable. The only way that would work is if you had chronic electricity undersupply (v. likely but also pathological) or if nuclear plants were way more efficient than alternatives (the opposite is true). Generally the argument for nuclear is you need a diverse range of energy sources to have a stable power supply, not that they are a great 'bang-for-buck' option. (An argument I agree with, fwiw). EDIT, PS: It's worth keeping in mind that carbon capture is largely an unsolved technical problem, and I think it's perfectly feasible that it will never be solved. The basic idea of burning fossil fuels for energy, then using energy to recoup the carbon from the atmosphere, just makes no sense at all. There's no world where this would be cheaper than just not releasing the CO2 in the first place.

DuskStar 4y ago
If you made all the alternatives also pay to capture their carbon cost, I think nuclear would be very competitive. Obviously it blows fossil fuels out of the water, but hydroelectric also uses huge amounts of concrete, and IIRC the energy return on investment (MWh you get out per MWh it takes to construct) for solar and wind is quite poor and so I'd expect that to take a while to pay off too.
- Retric 4y ago
  Nuclear has a vastly worse EROI than grid PV solar. Nuclear lasts longer which somewhat offsets construction costs, but needs a vast workforce continually and a maintenance and power simply to operate. As a sanity check, sub 2c/KWh solar can’t require that much energy simply because energy costs money. Nuclear on the other hand ends up having ~1,000 workers drive somewhere for 50 years which also takes energy, but that’s often ignored. That said, people love to come up with all kinds of irrelevant comparisons using vastly outdated data to make things look worse for solar while ignoring Nuclear’s downsides. For example France’s capacity factor fell below 70% when they tried to ramp up production and things would look even worse on a 100% nuclear grid.
  - cinntaile 4y ago
    It seems highly unlikely that grid PV solar has a higher EROI than nuclear and I can't find anything that supports this either (I find plenty of graphs supporting the opposite).
    - Schroedingersat 4y ago
      Most of those are from fossil fuel or nuclear shills. You can get wildly varying numbers based on what you include and exclude. Meta analyses say current/upcoming techs are about as good or maybe a bit better, but energy payback time is significantly lower due to reduced lifetime. Additionally the GHG impact of nuclearand wind isn't quite proportional to energy payback time because of concrete. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8118077 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8118077 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421513003856 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030142151... Really though the answer is both are fine and nuclear probably wins once you include a mix of wind, hydro and storage. And embodied emissions will go down as low carbon energy becomes a bigger share. The main arguments against new nuclear are political (making new oil barons but with nuclear is stupid among other problems) and opportunity cost (using a nuclear reactor to replace 1GW of fossil fuels 80% of the time uses the same resources as using renewables to replace 10GW of fossil fuels ~40% of the time -- some of which is uncorrelated -- but at much longer delay).
      - Retric 4y ago
        I largely agree with what you said, but that 80% capacity factor is rather nuanced. Nuclear’s capacity factor varies quite a bit depending on the local grid. France’s averaged below 70% while US nuclear reactor’s where generally over 90% largely due to the local energy mix. Solar is running into similar issues as it scales, but they both can greatly benefit from energy storage. The issue is nuclear power is so expensive it makes energy storage less appealing. So, if we are talking about a potential grid with 30% nuclear 10% hydro and the rest solar and wind then nuclear could have a 90+% capacity factor and mostly be offline in the spring and fall when seasonal demand is low. Unfortunately that means Nuclear isn’t going to scale and help with global warming. On the other hand if you want a 90% nuclear 10% hydro grid then nuclear is going to have something like a 40% capacity factor without a great deal of energy storage.
triceratops 4y ago
Obviously it's impossible to burn fossil fuels to capture carbon and remain carbon-negative. But that doesn't necessarily hold true for nuclear, solar, and wind. It might still be true, but it's plausible.

DuskStar 4y ago

If you made all the alternatives also pay to capture their carbon cost, I think nuclear would be very competitive. Obviously it blows fossil fuels out of the water, but hydroelectric also uses huge amounts of concrete, and IIRC the energy return on investment (MWh you get out per MWh it takes to construct) for solar and wind is quite poor and so I'd expect that to take a while to pay off too.

Retric 4y ago
Nuclear has a vastly worse EROI than grid PV solar. Nuclear lasts longer which somewhat offsets construction costs, but needs a vast workforce continually and a maintenance and power simply to operate. As a sanity check, sub 2c/KWh solar can’t require that much energy simply because energy costs money. Nuclear on the other hand ends up having ~1,000 workers drive somewhere for 50 years which also takes energy, but that’s often ignored. That said, people love to come up with all kinds of irrelevant comparisons using vastly outdated data to make things look worse for solar while ignoring Nuclear’s downsides. For example France’s capacity factor fell below 70% when they tried to ramp up production and things would look even worse on a 100% nuclear grid.
- cinntaile 4y ago
  It seems highly unlikely that grid PV solar has a higher EROI than nuclear and I can't find anything that supports this either (I find plenty of graphs supporting the opposite).
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    Most of those are from fossil fuel or nuclear shills. You can get wildly varying numbers based on what you include and exclude. Meta analyses say current/upcoming techs are about as good or maybe a bit better, but energy payback time is significantly lower due to reduced lifetime. Additionally the GHG impact of nuclearand wind isn't quite proportional to energy payback time because of concrete. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8118077 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8118077 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421513003856 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030142151... Really though the answer is both are fine and nuclear probably wins once you include a mix of wind, hydro and storage. And embodied emissions will go down as low carbon energy becomes a bigger share. The main arguments against new nuclear are political (making new oil barons but with nuclear is stupid among other problems) and opportunity cost (using a nuclear reactor to replace 1GW of fossil fuels 80% of the time uses the same resources as using renewables to replace 10GW of fossil fuels ~40% of the time -- some of which is uncorrelated -- but at much longer delay).
    - Retric 4y ago
      I largely agree with what you said, but that 80% capacity factor is rather nuanced. Nuclear’s capacity factor varies quite a bit depending on the local grid. France’s averaged below 70% while US nuclear reactor’s where generally over 90% largely due to the local energy mix. Solar is running into similar issues as it scales, but they both can greatly benefit from energy storage. The issue is nuclear power is so expensive it makes energy storage less appealing. So, if we are talking about a potential grid with 30% nuclear 10% hydro and the rest solar and wind then nuclear could have a 90+% capacity factor and mostly be offline in the spring and fall when seasonal demand is low. Unfortunately that means Nuclear isn’t going to scale and help with global warming. On the other hand if you want a 90% nuclear 10% hydro grid then nuclear is going to have something like a 40% capacity factor without a great deal of energy storage.

triceratops 4y ago

Obviously it's impossible to burn fossil fuels to capture carbon and remain carbon-negative. But that doesn't necessarily hold true for nuclear, solar, and wind. It might still be true, but it's plausible.