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I think not really. It depends on why you think subsidizing is a good thing. My personal take is that we should subsidize tech to take it from an early stage t

I think not really. It depends on why you think subsidizing is a good thing. My personal take is that we should subsidize tech to take it from an early stage to a production stage as soon as possible. We need better power sources yesterday, not next century. So we can't sit around waiting for some sort of Elon Musk to get really passionate and dump heaps of cash into it. But the assumption there is that once the tech is developed and mature, it'll be good enough to stand on its own. Because if it'll never not be expensive, we're just artifically choosing a power source that's permanently more expensive than the alternatives, and that's an unstable situation. Eventually people will get tired of dumping money into it, or there will be some other urgent matter to throw money at, and then we have a bunch of expensive tech that's falling out of use, and underdeveloped alternatives. Subsidizing nuclear forever also doesn't make any sense economically. Money is fungible. There's no real difference between say, paying $200/month to your power company, or paying $100/month to your power company, and $100 in taxes that ends up going to the power company. The amount you have to spend at the end of the month is the same either way. Now paying $200/month for 5 years so that then your power bill drops to $50/month afterwards, that's a different proposition. So, I support subsidizing solar, wind and storage because I believe that in their perfected, mass produced versions they're cheap and competitive. They just need a push now. I don't support subsidizing nuclear because I believe it'll always be expensive because it's a fundamentally complex technology that's not amenable to mass production and will always lose to brute force mass applications of simpler technologies.

stormbrew 4y ago
The US government makes a steady stream of trillions of dollars appear in order to, among other things, build single use missiles for millions of dollars each and jets that have never seen real combat for billions each. The idea that any durable public work is somehow "too expensive" in the face of that is comically absurd.
- epistasis 4y ago
  Putting aside the wisdom of such massive defense spending, the question is what is the alternate good that could perform the job? If we spend $12B on a 1GW reactor, we have far far better alternatives. A 1GW nuclear reactor has a 90% capacity factor of undispatchable, hard to throttle electricity. At today's prices, thay $12B could instead buy 6GW of solar at 20% capacity factor, and 24GWh of batteries. This combined solar plus storage is more flexible, more responsive, and delivers 30% more overall energy. And this is with a stupid design of splitting the cash to half storage half solar. A smarter design more tailored to the actual demand curve would remove some flexibility but become far cheaper. There's zero reason to build nuclear unless you want to line Bechtel's pockets.
  - towaway15463 4y ago
    Some questions jump out there: What does that amount of solar and storage look like in terms of material used for its construction as well as area occupied once it’s deployed? What current examples do we have of projects at this scale? What is the lifespan of the solar arrays and batteries? What are the operating costs? How many personnel are required for maintenance and day to day operation? What other infrastructure is necessary to support such a deployment? Transmission lines, buildings, monitoring facilities, security, roads, office space, etc. What is the construction timeline for such a project?
    - epistasis 4y ago
      I don't have exact numbers for any of these questions. However, we know that regardless of the inputs in materials or land, the ultimate dollar cost, all in, is cheaper than nuclear. Take the levelized cost of solar for the MWh coinciding with daylight hours, and the levelized cost of storage during the other hours, and nuclear is blown out of the water: https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-levelized-cost-of-storage-and-levelized-cost-of-hydrogen/ https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-... Also, the scale doesn't matter, we have built far more than 6GW of solar, deployed more than 24GWh of storage, but it doesn't have to be at one location for these resources. Solar and batteries scale far better than nuclear, because they can be deployed on smaller installations without nearly as much hassle as nuclear. Or they can be sited at one location.
      - ok_dad 4y ago
        Additionally, part of the bonus of solar+storage vs. large nuclear is that when you spread out your generation into smaller grid sections, then you can reduce the need for large transmission infrastructure that requires maintenance[1]. Distributed software is good, so why not distributed energy generation? Answer: distributed energy generation is great! [1]: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/05/california-finds-pge-equipment-responsible-for-massive-dixie-fire-.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/05/california-finds-pge-equipme...
psd1 4y ago
I agree with your reasoning, but on this tiny rock we call Albion I'm not convinced that renewables will ever be viable for base load. I'm concerned about the tonnage requirement of strategic minerals for battery storage. Supplies for EV batteries are currently choked; we need to scale far beyond that for grid storage. Pumped hydro at the required scale will be a feat of engineering comparable to nuclear engineering. Millions of tonnes of Portland cement will be an input. And renewables are land-extensive; that's an impedance mismatch for us.
- pfdietz 4y ago
  There are many different battery technologies being pursued. Some use uncommon materials, but others are just using elements available in essentially unlimited amounts. There are also means of storing energy in other forms. For example, storage of electrical energy as heat energy in sand could have a round trip efficiency of 54% at a quite reasonable cost. https://arpa-e.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2021-03/07%20Day1-Zhiwen%20Ma_NREL.pdf https://arpa-e.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2021-03/07%20D... (now being commercialized by Babcock & Wilcox.) The big question of storage is not if it's possible, but which of the many options will come out on top.

stormbrew 4y ago

The US government makes a steady stream of trillions of dollars appear in order to, among other things, build single use missiles for millions of dollars each and jets that have never seen real combat for billions each. The idea that any durable public work is somehow "too expensive" in the face of that is comically absurd.

epistasis 4y ago
Putting aside the wisdom of such massive defense spending, the question is what is the alternate good that could perform the job? If we spend $12B on a 1GW reactor, we have far far better alternatives. A 1GW nuclear reactor has a 90% capacity factor of undispatchable, hard to throttle electricity. At today's prices, thay $12B could instead buy 6GW of solar at 20% capacity factor, and 24GWh of batteries. This combined solar plus storage is more flexible, more responsive, and delivers 30% more overall energy. And this is with a stupid design of splitting the cash to half storage half solar. A smarter design more tailored to the actual demand curve would remove some flexibility but become far cheaper. There's zero reason to build nuclear unless you want to line Bechtel's pockets.
- towaway15463 4y ago
  Some questions jump out there: What does that amount of solar and storage look like in terms of material used for its construction as well as area occupied once it’s deployed? What current examples do we have of projects at this scale? What is the lifespan of the solar arrays and batteries? What are the operating costs? How many personnel are required for maintenance and day to day operation? What other infrastructure is necessary to support such a deployment? Transmission lines, buildings, monitoring facilities, security, roads, office space, etc. What is the construction timeline for such a project?
  - epistasis 4y ago
    I don't have exact numbers for any of these questions. However, we know that regardless of the inputs in materials or land, the ultimate dollar cost, all in, is cheaper than nuclear. Take the levelized cost of solar for the MWh coinciding with daylight hours, and the levelized cost of storage during the other hours, and nuclear is blown out of the water: https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-levelized-cost-of-storage-and-levelized-cost-of-hydrogen/ https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-... Also, the scale doesn't matter, we have built far more than 6GW of solar, deployed more than 24GWh of storage, but it doesn't have to be at one location for these resources. Solar and batteries scale far better than nuclear, because they can be deployed on smaller installations without nearly as much hassle as nuclear. Or they can be sited at one location.
    - ok_dad 4y ago
      Additionally, part of the bonus of solar+storage vs. large nuclear is that when you spread out your generation into smaller grid sections, then you can reduce the need for large transmission infrastructure that requires maintenance[1]. Distributed software is good, so why not distributed energy generation? Answer: distributed energy generation is great! [1]: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/05/california-finds-pge-equipment-responsible-for-massive-dixie-fire-.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/05/california-finds-pge-equipme...

psd1 4y ago

I agree with your reasoning, but on this tiny rock we call Albion I'm not convinced that renewables will ever be viable for base load. I'm concerned about the tonnage requirement of strategic minerals for battery storage. Supplies for EV batteries are currently choked; we need to scale far beyond that for grid storage. Pumped hydro at the required scale will be a feat of engineering comparable to nuclear engineering. Millions of tonnes of Portland cement will be an input. And renewables are land-extensive; that's an impedance mismatch for us.

pfdietz 4y ago
There are many different battery technologies being pursued. Some use uncommon materials, but others are just using elements available in essentially unlimited amounts. There are also means of storing energy in other forms. For example, storage of electrical energy as heat energy in sand could have a round trip efficiency of 54% at a quite reasonable cost. https://arpa-e.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2021-03/07%20Day1-Zhiwen%20Ma_NREL.pdf https://arpa-e.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2021-03/07%20D... (now being commercialized by Babcock & Wilcox.) The big question of storage is not if it's possible, but which of the many options will come out on top.