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I'm pro whatever is cheapest and fastest. Which just isn't nuclear. For every GW of nuclear coming online, there are hundreds of wind and solar GW coming online
by jillesvangurp 4y ago
I'm pro whatever is cheapest and fastest. Which just isn't nuclear. For every GW of nuclear coming online, there are hundreds of wind and solar GW coming online. An order of magnitude more power in an order of magnitude less time. And things are getting cheaper and faster still. Fifteen years from now that will be a lot cheaper and faster. Any plan that does not take that into account is not a great plan. And my problem with many of these nuclear startups is that they don't seem to do that. They are reluctant to talk about cost because it's a weakness and a problem for which they have no solution.
We're in a weird transition phase where gas/coal generation still exists and matters but have obvious financial challenges that are getting worse very quickly. Courtesy of the Russians, everybody is well aware of that now and can look forward to some really steep energy bills in the next year. But investors have been voting with their feet long before that happened as this has been quite obvious for a while now. Coal plants have been shutting down in many countries mainly for cost reasons and with a few exceptions (China, India), very few countries are building new ones. And now that cheap Russian gas is not an option, gas plants just got a lot more expensive to operate and they were already too expensive before that. Basically, that's an industry that is experiencing a rapidly accelerating collapse. It won't take until 2050 for that to be completed.
The only remaining debate is how soon we'll turn the remaining plants off. That's mostly a function of production capacity for solar and wind generation and energy storage solutions. More investment is flowing into that industry every year and we're seeing massive sustained growth there for decades in term of new capacity coming online every year. It's a super profitable industry to be in and a lot of those profits are getting reinvested in more and even better stuff. Lots of countries have been revising their already ambitious plans to become carbon neutral to be even more ambitious as they find themselves beating their own expectations of just a few years ago on this front. Ten years from now, a lot of countries will get the vast majority of their power from renewables and the remaining ones will be busy figuring out how to get in on the action.
Nuclear is getting lots of attention and investment obviously. But planned new capacity does not add up to mattering much at all over the next fifteen years. A few GW here and there vs. hundreds of GW in the next few years alone. And it takes that long to plan more nuclear plants and there are very little signs of countries warming up to that notion. A lot of those nuclear startups you mentioned won't hit volume production (if they survive long enough) before most countries have shut down all their remaining coal and gas plants. Which in Germany would be around 2035 according tot he latest plans. And those plans don't seem to involve any nuclear. Of course, that timeline might be accelerated due to recent events..
- wil421 4y agoMy state is building 2 new reactors and they will be the first to be built in the US in 30 years. Despite Westinghouse going bankrupt and a utility company in South Carolina deciding they don’t want to be a part of it, construction continues. Unit 3 will hopefully be fueled this year and start making power next year. Unit 4 will be a few years. You can’t produce power at night with solar and the wind is not always blowing. Nuclear is what will get us off coal and gas if we combine it with renewable energy. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vogtle_Electric_Generating_Plant https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vogtle_Electric_Generating_P...
- pfdietz 4y agoVogtle 3/4 are coming in very expensive. Much more CO2 emission would have been avoided by spending that money to build PV and wind. Vogtle 3/4 also were greenlighted back in an environment when it wasn't clear PV would get so cheap so quickly. When it became clear how cheap renewables would become, it was obvious that initial decision was bad. The other nuclear build in the US, V. C. Summer, reached the point where they had spent the initial estimate but found the cost had doubled. At that point, it was as if they were asked to make the initial decision again, but now against much cheaper wind and solar. The reluctant conclusion was that continuing made no economic sense. It made no economic sense at Vogtle either, but politicians forced it to continue (the execs in SC were revenge prosecuted for stopping the gravy train.)
- wil421 4y agoThere is no path to clean energy without nuclear. If you don’t have nuclear you are going to burn coal and gas. Germany invested heavily on renewables and is having similar issues. The costs overruns are being eaten by the huge Co-Op Georgia Power, they pay for overruns but the other stakeholders will lose their share. If you stop building reactors for 30 years it’s going to be an extremely massive undertaking only a government can handle. It will be up to the governments to subsides the costs.
- pfdietz 4y ago