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Just remember that a huge part of the current excess cost is in part: (a) because nuclear power is the only energy technology for which the full lifecycle cost

by grej 4y ago

Just remember that a huge part of the current excess cost is in part: (a) because nuclear power is the only energy technology for which the full lifecycle costs have to be fully accounted for upfront. No one is accounting for the disposal costs of solar panels in their initial capital expenditure, for example. (b) The build costs in terms of energy of wind and solar are comparably high. They are raw material and energy hungry and have a much lower energy return on investment and require a much larger geographic footprint. Plus their use without adequate baseload generation will necessitate a large additional requirement for raw materials to create energy storage. Much if not all of wind and solar’s cost advantages will likely evaporate in an environment where they are no longer subsidized by very cheap fossil fuels.

croes 4y ago
Maybe (a) is because solar panels are less dangerous than nuclear waste.
- ryoshu 4y ago
  we need to account for the danger of disposal/long term storage of the dead batteries for solar as well. But I'm not sure what the calculation for that is vs. nuclear waste.
  - adrianN 4y ago
    Batteries can be recycled. They contain expensive metals in high concentrations, recycling makes financial sense.
    - dieselgate 4y ago
      They can be recycled but it doesn’t appear we’ve had to deal with this much on an industrial scale - yet. Electric car batteries may be better off being “reused” for less demanding tasks after they’ve hit their usable limit for vehicle use. Of course they’ll need to be recycled eventually. This isn’t my domain so I’m very open to new information. In regards to recycling lead acid batteries the work seems horrendous, for more information check out the lead poisoning cases from Florida workers at Gopher Resource in Tampa.
      - adrianN 4y ago
        Obviously you'd want to reduce, reuse, recycle in that order. But it's not surprising that we don't have a large lithium battery recycling industry yet, since we don't have all that many big lithium batteries on the market yet.
  - croes 4y ago
    The difference is that you usually store garbage to protect people from it. With nuclear waste, however, you also have to protect the waste from people like ISIS & Co. It's cheaper to store something in such a way that you can't just trip over it. But it's something else to store it in a way that you can't reach it even if you know where it is.
  - dieselgate 4y ago
    My impression of solar in the western US, at least, is most solar arrays do not charge batteries. They are linked up to the power grid instead and solar owners are payed back a percentage of what they’ve contributed. Im personally an advocate of battery banks (And have them in a boat and rv) but it seems if every single family home had a battery bank there’d be a large surplus of energy created but not always used (aka it doesn’t scale well). If anyone has information otherwise I’m all ears this isn’t my domain
cycomanic 4y ago
That would be nice arguments if they would actually be true. a) typically nuclear plants don't have to include all life cycle cost into their calculations. Insurance is essentially not included (no insurance is willing to cover nuclear disaster), storage costs are not included to the full extend (partly because we actually don't know the cost, storage for these amounts of time is unprecedented) b) is also falso both wind and solar have significantly lower ROI on energy than nuclear. A wind turbine has a break even (when you have produced more energy than it took to build it) after 18-24 month or so https://www.researchgate.net/publication/222703134_Meta-Analysis_of_Net_Energy_Return_for_Wind_Power_Systems https://www.researchgate.net/publication/222703134_Meta-Anal....
- belorn 4y ago
  No energy plant need to include insurance that cover disaster. People living downstream of a hydro electric dam have to pay their own insurance, and in the end it will still be the government that pick up the bill when people and homes are lost to catastrophic flooding. Mining raw material also produce a lot of waste, including radioactive waste, much which will never be safe for humans. Those are generally stored for an indefinite time in pools or just in piles near the mines, with a sign warning people of the toxic material. There will be no one to pay the bill for waste storage except governments when the mining company close down. This is why drinking water near old (or new) mines is a exceptional bad idea.
  - cycomanic 4y ago
    That's not true, the operator of a windfarm definitely needs to have insurance (or be liable otherwise) for a possible accident that can happen (i.e. A rotor falling off and hitting a car), the thing about nuclear power plants (and hydro) is that generally the risks are so high that nobody wants to insure it. You seem to argue that because others are doing bad things it's OK for nuclear? I don't think that is a very good argument.
    - belorn 4y ago
      Offshore windfarms have zero insurance against environmental damages caused by changes in the water environment, nor does windfarms or PV farms has insurance against forest fires. If we want to be technical correct, nuclear plants and hydropower plants do have some insurance, for example if employees are harmed during work. What all power plants share is the inability to insure against risk that is direct to society at large. It not that the risk is high (which it isn't), but rather that in case of accident there isn't anything other than governments that could step in and take the cost. > You seem to argue that because others are doing bad things it's OK for nuclear? No, that is a bad faith interpretation. If we want power plants to pay insurance against risk that is place on society, then such requirement should be technology neutral. If we have historical evidence of harm to either society or the environment, directly connected to a method of producing energy, then producers using that method should pay a tax to government that represent the risk. Be that hydro, nuclear, fossil fuels, wind farms, PV, a battery farm or what have you. Quantify the risk and let researcher, experts and historians argue how much each specific plant should pay.

by grej 4y ago

croes 4y ago

Maybe (a) is because solar panels are less dangerous than nuclear waste.

ryoshu 4y ago
we need to account for the danger of disposal/long term storage of the dead batteries for solar as well. But I'm not sure what the calculation for that is vs. nuclear waste.
- adrianN 4y ago
  Batteries can be recycled. They contain expensive metals in high concentrations, recycling makes financial sense.
  - dieselgate 4y ago
    They can be recycled but it doesn’t appear we’ve had to deal with this much on an industrial scale - yet. Electric car batteries may be better off being “reused” for less demanding tasks after they’ve hit their usable limit for vehicle use. Of course they’ll need to be recycled eventually. This isn’t my domain so I’m very open to new information. In regards to recycling lead acid batteries the work seems horrendous, for more information check out the lead poisoning cases from Florida workers at Gopher Resource in Tampa.
    - adrianN 4y ago
      Obviously you'd want to reduce, reuse, recycle in that order. But it's not surprising that we don't have a large lithium battery recycling industry yet, since we don't have all that many big lithium batteries on the market yet.
- croes 4y ago
  The difference is that you usually store garbage to protect people from it. With nuclear waste, however, you also have to protect the waste from people like ISIS & Co. It's cheaper to store something in such a way that you can't just trip over it. But it's something else to store it in a way that you can't reach it even if you know where it is.
- dieselgate 4y ago
  My impression of solar in the western US, at least, is most solar arrays do not charge batteries. They are linked up to the power grid instead and solar owners are payed back a percentage of what they’ve contributed. Im personally an advocate of battery banks (And have them in a boat and rv) but it seems if every single family home had a battery bank there’d be a large surplus of energy created but not always used (aka it doesn’t scale well). If anyone has information otherwise I’m all ears this isn’t my domain

cycomanic 4y ago

That would be nice arguments if they would actually be true. a) typically nuclear plants don't have to include all life cycle cost into their calculations. Insurance is essentially not included (no insurance is willing to cover nuclear disaster), storage costs are not included to the full extend (partly because we actually don't know the cost, storage for these amounts of time is unprecedented) b) is also falso both wind and solar have significantly lower ROI on energy than nuclear. A wind turbine has a break even (when you have produced more energy than it took to build it) after 18-24 month or so https://www.researchgate.net/publication/222703134_Meta-Analysis_of_Net_Energy_Return_for_Wind_Power_Systems https://www.researchgate.net/publication/222703134_Meta-Anal....

belorn 4y ago
No energy plant need to include insurance that cover disaster. People living downstream of a hydro electric dam have to pay their own insurance, and in the end it will still be the government that pick up the bill when people and homes are lost to catastrophic flooding. Mining raw material also produce a lot of waste, including radioactive waste, much which will never be safe for humans. Those are generally stored for an indefinite time in pools or just in piles near the mines, with a sign warning people of the toxic material. There will be no one to pay the bill for waste storage except governments when the mining company close down. This is why drinking water near old (or new) mines is a exceptional bad idea.
- cycomanic 4y ago
  That's not true, the operator of a windfarm definitely needs to have insurance (or be liable otherwise) for a possible accident that can happen (i.e. A rotor falling off and hitting a car), the thing about nuclear power plants (and hydro) is that generally the risks are so high that nobody wants to insure it. You seem to argue that because others are doing bad things it's OK for nuclear? I don't think that is a very good argument.
  - belorn 4y ago
    Offshore windfarms have zero insurance against environmental damages caused by changes in the water environment, nor does windfarms or PV farms has insurance against forest fires. If we want to be technical correct, nuclear plants and hydropower plants do have some insurance, for example if employees are harmed during work. What all power plants share is the inability to insure against risk that is direct to society at large. It not that the risk is high (which it isn't), but rather that in case of accident there isn't anything other than governments that could step in and take the cost. > You seem to argue that because others are doing bad things it's OK for nuclear? No, that is a bad faith interpretation. If we want power plants to pay insurance against risk that is place on society, then such requirement should be technology neutral. If we have historical evidence of harm to either society or the environment, directly connected to a method of producing energy, then producers using that method should pay a tax to government that represent the risk. Be that hydro, nuclear, fossil fuels, wind farms, PV, a battery farm or what have you. Quantify the risk and let researcher, experts and historians argue how much each specific plant should pay.