4 ms·

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 a

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...
      - towaway15463 4y ago
        Even so, when people say that we’ll just spread out this energy generation infrastructure everywhere I still want to know the actual numbers. Are there enough rooftops and vacant lots in LA to provide all the necessary power? What about lower density areas? What about northern climates with lots of snow and rain? There is still maintenance involved, installation costs are likely increased by doing this piecemeal rather than at a single site. Are we assuming all of this will be undertaken by individual homeowners or is it a commercial operation? Leaving it up to individuals seems like it would drastically slow roll out due to a lot of people not being able to afford it or simply being unwilling to have panels. If commercial then the available locations become very limited. These things can’t just be hand waved away.
        labcomputer 4y ago
        So, like, why don't you try to calculate this for yourself? As a pedagogical exercise, I think you'll get much more out of it if you compute the numbers for yourself and play through a bunch of "what if" scenarios. Just to get you started with some ballpark numbers: The solar irradiance at ground level on a sunny day is greater than 1kW/m^2 for about 6 hours per day (google for "AM1.5"). Typical commercial panels have a conversion efficiency of 21-22%. You seem very confident that solar is impossible, so why don't you make some reasonable assumptions and prove it to all of us?
        towaway15463 4y ago
- coryrc 4y ago
  > At today's prices, thay $12B could instead buy 6GW of solar at 20% capacity factor, and 24GWh of batteries. I don't think that can actually be done. The world's largest battery installation is less than 1 GWh AFAICT. OTOH we're not doing great at nuclear either.
  - pfdietz 4y ago
    It doesn't have to all be one giant stack of batteries. Your argument is like saying that we can't add more than (say) 2 GW of nuclear, because that's the size of the largest nuclear power plant.
  - epistasis 4y ago
    What do you mean by "can't be done"? If we can build a 500MWh battery we can build a 1GWh battery by doing the 500MWh battery two times. Similarly if we can build a 1GWh battery we can build also a 24 GWh battery.
    - coryrc 4y ago
      That's the same argument for building nuclear -- we've done projects before, just do it more/bigger. Yet we can't and aren't.
- stormbrew 4y ago
  I don't think this black and white thinking is really useful. There are inhabited places in the world where solar and wind face real challenges to practicality as the sole source of energy. I would be shocked if we're capable of building an amount of storage that will get the city I live in through the winter, for example. Certainly not for cheaper than a natural gas plant, which is the real competition. Frankly, whenever this comes up the handwaving about storage just seems hopelessly optimistic even for places where it is practical, let alone places where you're lucky to get 4 hours of sunlight a day for a bunch of the year. Nothing is ever that simple. If carbon zero is an imperative, then there will sometimes be need for something other than solar and wind, and it will inevitably be "impractically expensive" compared to the carbon emitting sources we're moving away from. It's certainly important to improve the economies of scale of renewables, but doing so is not the goal. Saving money is not the goal. The survival of the human species is the goal, and we aren't going to get there by nickel and diming our way to it.
  - pfdietz 4y ago
    Does your city burn natural gas in the winter? That natural gas is not coming directly from wells, typically; it is stored in underground caverns and pipelines. Hydrogen can be stored just the same way. Power-to-X (where X can be hydrogen or other e-fuels) allows renewables to scale to 100% of the energy needed by society at affordable costs. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9837910 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9837910
    - stormbrew 4y ago
      I mean, nuclear might be expensive, time consuming to build, and difficult but at least we've been doing it for 70 years. It's not clear that projections of long term costs on things we haven't even done at scale are going to be realistic when we try them in the real world. Even if it takes 20 years to build a nuke, that might still be sooner than "power to x" becomes a viable, affordable option for most of the world. This is the weird thing about this argument: it so often rests simultaneously on an argument for practicality and/or cost effectiveness, but literally any criticism is met with a gish gallop of unproven technology. You can't have this both ways. In the end, my central thesis here is just that if you think the be all and end all of this issue is cost effectiveness you are optimizing for the wrong goals and it leaves open a giant window for carbon emitting sources to justify their use when renewables don't work for various local reasons. The thing to be black and white about is carbon emissions. "What energy mix works for place X right now if we try to eliminate carbon emissions asap" is not a decision that's gonna be made on an internet forum.

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...
    - towaway15463 4y ago
      Even so, when people say that we’ll just spread out this energy generation infrastructure everywhere I still want to know the actual numbers. Are there enough rooftops and vacant lots in LA to provide all the necessary power? What about lower density areas? What about northern climates with lots of snow and rain? There is still maintenance involved, installation costs are likely increased by doing this piecemeal rather than at a single site. Are we assuming all of this will be undertaken by individual homeowners or is it a commercial operation? Leaving it up to individuals seems like it would drastically slow roll out due to a lot of people not being able to afford it or simply being unwilling to have panels. If commercial then the available locations become very limited. These things can’t just be hand waved away.
      - labcomputer 4y ago
        So, like, why don't you try to calculate this for yourself? As a pedagogical exercise, I think you'll get much more out of it if you compute the numbers for yourself and play through a bunch of "what if" scenarios. Just to get you started with some ballpark numbers: The solar irradiance at ground level on a sunny day is greater than 1kW/m^2 for about 6 hours per day (google for "AM1.5"). Typical commercial panels have a conversion efficiency of 21-22%. You seem very confident that solar is impossible, so why don't you make some reasonable assumptions and prove it to all of us?
        towaway15463 4y ago
coryrc 4y ago
> At today's prices, thay $12B could instead buy 6GW of solar at 20% capacity factor, and 24GWh of batteries. I don't think that can actually be done. The world's largest battery installation is less than 1 GWh AFAICT. OTOH we're not doing great at nuclear either.
- pfdietz 4y ago
  It doesn't have to all be one giant stack of batteries. Your argument is like saying that we can't add more than (say) 2 GW of nuclear, because that's the size of the largest nuclear power plant.
- epistasis 4y ago
  What do you mean by "can't be done"? If we can build a 500MWh battery we can build a 1GWh battery by doing the 500MWh battery two times. Similarly if we can build a 1GWh battery we can build also a 24 GWh battery.
  - coryrc 4y ago
    That's the same argument for building nuclear -- we've done projects before, just do it more/bigger. Yet we can't and aren't.
stormbrew 4y ago
I don't think this black and white thinking is really useful. There are inhabited places in the world where solar and wind face real challenges to practicality as the sole source of energy. I would be shocked if we're capable of building an amount of storage that will get the city I live in through the winter, for example. Certainly not for cheaper than a natural gas plant, which is the real competition. Frankly, whenever this comes up the handwaving about storage just seems hopelessly optimistic even for places where it is practical, let alone places where you're lucky to get 4 hours of sunlight a day for a bunch of the year. Nothing is ever that simple. If carbon zero is an imperative, then there will sometimes be need for something other than solar and wind, and it will inevitably be "impractically expensive" compared to the carbon emitting sources we're moving away from. It's certainly important to improve the economies of scale of renewables, but doing so is not the goal. Saving money is not the goal. The survival of the human species is the goal, and we aren't going to get there by nickel and diming our way to it.
- pfdietz 4y ago
  Does your city burn natural gas in the winter? That natural gas is not coming directly from wells, typically; it is stored in underground caverns and pipelines. Hydrogen can be stored just the same way. Power-to-X (where X can be hydrogen or other e-fuels) allows renewables to scale to 100% of the energy needed by society at affordable costs. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9837910 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9837910
  - stormbrew 4y ago
    I mean, nuclear might be expensive, time consuming to build, and difficult but at least we've been doing it for 70 years. It's not clear that projections of long term costs on things we haven't even done at scale are going to be realistic when we try them in the real world. Even if it takes 20 years to build a nuke, that might still be sooner than "power to x" becomes a viable, affordable option for most of the world. This is the weird thing about this argument: it so often rests simultaneously on an argument for practicality and/or cost effectiveness, but literally any criticism is met with a gish gallop of unproven technology. You can't have this both ways. In the end, my central thesis here is just that if you think the be all and end all of this issue is cost effectiveness you are optimizing for the wrong goals and it leaves open a giant window for carbon emitting sources to justify their use when renewables don't work for various local reasons. The thing to be black and white about is carbon emissions. "What energy mix works for place X right now if we try to eliminate carbon emissions asap" is not a decision that's gonna be made on an internet forum.