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We have nuclear power. We don’t need these absurdly expensive and complex solutions to harvest solar power or wind. We should use that money to build more nucl

We have nuclear power. We don’t need these absurdly expensive and complex solutions to harvest solar power or wind. We should use that money to build more nuclear reactors and develop new designs. It’s a proven, reliable and inexhaustible source of energy.

pydry 4y ago
Nuclear power is 5x more expensive than solar and wind. Hell, if you used wind turbines to synthesize gas at ~50% efficiency and burn that to generate electricity at ~60% efficiency it would still be about 10-20% cheaper than nuclear power. https://theecologist.org/2016/feb/17/wind-power-windgas-cheaper-and-greener-hinkley-point-c-nuclear-plant https://theecologist.org/2016/feb/17/wind-power-windgas-chea...
- seventytwo 4y ago
  Why is nuclear so expensive?
  - himlion 4y ago
    Because of complexity, safety requirements and disposal of spent material.
    - hedora 4y ago
      If that's true, why is coal cheap? It releases way more radiation than nuclear, and kills > 100x more people per kWh on average. Nuclear is expensive because of politics.
      - Schroedingersat 4y ago
        So we should add safety requirements to fossil fuels, then they'll be even more obsolete. You're not making a great argument for your trustworthiness "not letting us poison the world and directly kill millions is unfair and political" is at least a rare piece of honesty, but hardly a compelling argument.
  - cassepipe 4y ago
    Because it is the only industry that is legally obliged to take into account almost all of its negative externalities, that is waste management and potential accidents.
    - pydry 4y ago
      If it did that it would actually be even more expensive. The disaster liability cap in America means plants need insurance that pays out up to $300 million but no more. Fukushima cost ~$800 billion, so they are essentially subsidized by the general public to the tune of 99.97% of what is probably their "real" insurance costs. So no, we are measurably on the hook for more negative externalities than we are for solar/wind.
      - ch4s3 4y ago
        A “subsidy” that has never been paid. You’d be hard pressed to find a reactor with its backup power in the basement in the US, and especially not on the coast.
        pydry 4y ago
        >A “subsidy” that has never been paid. Free insurance is a subsidy. Pretending that it isnt is dishonest. Japan paid $0 in 2010 and by 2012 an $800 billion bill came due. Recent nuclear legislation has focused on extending the legal life of aging plants. Nuclear power is getting more dangerous in America not safer. It ought to be a moot point anyway given the extreme cost of nuclear power without the subsidy.
        ch4s3 4y ago
        Japan’s accident was entirely preventable and a similar scenario couldn’t happen at any facility in the US. Needing to build an ice wall to contain radioactive water pumped in from the ocean was a huge portion of the cost and truly unique.
        4y ago
  - robocat 4y ago
    Apart from externalities, there are two other common reasons why commenters make wind/solar look wayyy cheaper than it is. 1: Commenters don’t compare like-for-like energy production, instead they often compare using the nameplate capacity e.g. compare construction cost of a 1GW nuclear plant with a 1GW solar plant. The right thing to compare is GWh produced. Capacity factor converts GW to GWh, and the capacity factor for nuclear is about 90% and for solar is about 15%[1]. Therefore the equivalent of a 1GW nuclear plant is 6GW of installed solar. 2: Commenters ignore the cost of systems needed to provide power in winter on windless dark nights. The real cost of wind/solar needs to include the necessary energy storage (batteries or pumped hydro or stored chemical energy or whatever). Some of that can be overcome by installing overcapacity (e.g. install 3x as much GW solar to cover aircon usage in early evening in Texas). Nuclear is very good at providing power at all times. Storage is very expensive - usually doubles or triples the cost of the wind/solar installation. The need for storage goes up as our dependency on wind/solar power increases. By ignoring the above, solar/wind can look 5x to 10x cheaper than a fair comparison with nuclear. Many commenters are not interested in facts or numbers - they pick heavily biased numbers to make the argument they want to (usually that nuclear = bad). A worked example of wind versus nuclear using chemical storage that shows 10% difference in cost: https://theecologist.org/2016/feb/17/wind-power-windgas-cheaper-and-greener-hinkley-point-c-nuclear-plant https://theecologist.org/2016/feb/17/wind-power-windgas-chea... even with their obvious biases towards wind, and comparing against the crappy Hinkley-C, they are really struggling to show wind is cheaper. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/799330/global-solar-pv-installation-cost-per-kilowatt/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/799330/global-solar-pv-i...
    - Schroedingersat 4y ago
      > 1: Commenters don’t compare like-for-like energy production, instead they often compare using the nameplate capacity e.g. compare construction cost of a 1GW nuclear plant with a 1GW solar plant. The right thing to compare is GWh produced. Capacity factor converts GW to GWh, and the capacity factor for nuclear is about 90% and for solar is about 15%[1]. Therefore the equivalent of a 1GW nuclear plant is 6GW of installed solar This is captured by net capacity and LCOE. LCOE of new solar is rapidly approaching MCOE of existing nuclear. > Commenters ignore the cost of systems needed to provide power in winter on windless dark nights. The real cost of wind/solar needs to include the necessary energy storage (batteries or pumped hydro or stored chemical energy or whatever). Some of that can be overcome by installing overcapacity (e.g. install 3x as much GW solar to cover aircon usage in early evening in Texas). Nuclear is very good at providing power at all times. Storage is very expensive - usually doubles or triples the cost of the wind/solar installation. The need for storage goes up as our dependency on wind/solar power increases. This is captured by total system cost. While they're about on par (or favouring nuclear in europe) right now, today's optimistic renewable price is tomorrow's pessimistic. Storage is about to do what PV did in the 2010s, and anyone being forced to pay for a half working AP-1000 or EPR in 2030 rather than 2x the net production in PV panels made of sand and a battery array made of rust all hooked together with aluminum for their utility money is rightfully going to be extremely angry.
- mrtranscendence 4y ago
  Doesn’t burning methane seem a bit unfortunate when it comes to climate change?
  - pydry 4y ago
    Not especially. It's carbon neutral. In general there's no point, it's just an illustrative example of the horrendous economics of nuclear power. It might be a good idea to generate some gas if we one day have wind/solar producing >100% of consumption and all the batteries/pumped storage are fully charged. That'd be a nice problem to have, truth be told. Currently, wind and solar rarely produce more than current demand, ever. Natural gas averages about 40% of our electricity supply and rarely if ever goes to zero even on the sunniest windiest days. Every MWh produced by wind or solar is just another MWh where we dont have to burn gas.
    - hedora 4y ago
      Methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. Current systems leak enough to make it infeasible in the mediun term.
      - ben_w 4y ago
        The chemical process for turning H2 into methane doesn't have to be the final act, similar processes can make longer chain hydrocarbons. But right now, even though I learned about this over 22 years ago in my GCSEs, I think most people only even know about the Sabatier process because Musk wants to use it on Mars for ISRU.
- argiopetech 4y ago
- tsimionescu 4y ago
  Nuclear power is definitely nowhere near 5x more expensive than solar in space, which is what this article is proposing.
goodpoint 4y ago
..and it's vulnerable to climate change, not to mention war and social unrest.
- 504error 4y ago
  No, newer nuclear reactor designs are in essence "meltdown proof", and extremeley safe. Unfortunately nuclear is regulated to death in the U.S. so it is extremeley expensive to build new plants or even improve existing ones.
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    > newer nuclear reactor designs are in essence "meltdown proof", and extremeley safe. > Unfortunately nuclear is regulated to death in the U.S. so it is extremeley expensive These are the same fact. The second the regulators relax is the same second that corners get cut and limits get pushed because 'reactor designs are in essence "meltdown proof"'. That attitude is exactly how the five colossally stupid things that have to happen all at once to cause a meltdown start individually becoming regular occurrences -- after that it's just a matter of reactor hours before enough of them coincide with some other improbable event. See the shutdown of Korea's fleet while forged documents were investigated for one of many examples. Or Fukushima.
puchatek 4y ago
Can you please respond to the comments below? I'm tired of ppl. bringing up nuclear and then ducking the debate

pydry 4y ago

Nuclear power is 5x more expensive than solar and wind. Hell, if you used wind turbines to synthesize gas at ~50% efficiency and burn that to generate electricity at ~60% efficiency it would still be about 10-20% cheaper than nuclear power. https://theecologist.org/2016/feb/17/wind-power-windgas-cheaper-and-greener-hinkley-point-c-nuclear-plant https://theecologist.org/2016/feb/17/wind-power-windgas-chea...

seventytwo 4y ago
Why is nuclear so expensive?
- himlion 4y ago
  Because of complexity, safety requirements and disposal of spent material.
  - hedora 4y ago
    If that's true, why is coal cheap? It releases way more radiation than nuclear, and kills > 100x more people per kWh on average. Nuclear is expensive because of politics.
    - Schroedingersat 4y ago
      So we should add safety requirements to fossil fuels, then they'll be even more obsolete. You're not making a great argument for your trustworthiness "not letting us poison the world and directly kill millions is unfair and political" is at least a rare piece of honesty, but hardly a compelling argument.
- cassepipe 4y ago
  Because it is the only industry that is legally obliged to take into account almost all of its negative externalities, that is waste management and potential accidents.
  - pydry 4y ago
    If it did that it would actually be even more expensive. The disaster liability cap in America means plants need insurance that pays out up to $300 million but no more. Fukushima cost ~$800 billion, so they are essentially subsidized by the general public to the tune of 99.97% of what is probably their "real" insurance costs. So no, we are measurably on the hook for more negative externalities than we are for solar/wind.
    - ch4s3 4y ago
      A “subsidy” that has never been paid. You’d be hard pressed to find a reactor with its backup power in the basement in the US, and especially not on the coast.
      - pydry 4y ago
        >A “subsidy” that has never been paid. Free insurance is a subsidy. Pretending that it isnt is dishonest. Japan paid $0 in 2010 and by 2012 an $800 billion bill came due. Recent nuclear legislation has focused on extending the legal life of aging plants. Nuclear power is getting more dangerous in America not safer. It ought to be a moot point anyway given the extreme cost of nuclear power without the subsidy.
        ch4s3 4y ago
        Japan’s accident was entirely preventable and a similar scenario couldn’t happen at any facility in the US. Needing to build an ice wall to contain radioactive water pumped in from the ocean was a huge portion of the cost and truly unique.
        4y ago
- robocat 4y ago
  Apart from externalities, there are two other common reasons why commenters make wind/solar look wayyy cheaper than it is. 1: Commenters don’t compare like-for-like energy production, instead they often compare using the nameplate capacity e.g. compare construction cost of a 1GW nuclear plant with a 1GW solar plant. The right thing to compare is GWh produced. Capacity factor converts GW to GWh, and the capacity factor for nuclear is about 90% and for solar is about 15%[1]. Therefore the equivalent of a 1GW nuclear plant is 6GW of installed solar. 2: Commenters ignore the cost of systems needed to provide power in winter on windless dark nights. The real cost of wind/solar needs to include the necessary energy storage (batteries or pumped hydro or stored chemical energy or whatever). Some of that can be overcome by installing overcapacity (e.g. install 3x as much GW solar to cover aircon usage in early evening in Texas). Nuclear is very good at providing power at all times. Storage is very expensive - usually doubles or triples the cost of the wind/solar installation. The need for storage goes up as our dependency on wind/solar power increases. By ignoring the above, solar/wind can look 5x to 10x cheaper than a fair comparison with nuclear. Many commenters are not interested in facts or numbers - they pick heavily biased numbers to make the argument they want to (usually that nuclear = bad). A worked example of wind versus nuclear using chemical storage that shows 10% difference in cost: https://theecologist.org/2016/feb/17/wind-power-windgas-cheaper-and-greener-hinkley-point-c-nuclear-plant https://theecologist.org/2016/feb/17/wind-power-windgas-chea... even with their obvious biases towards wind, and comparing against the crappy Hinkley-C, they are really struggling to show wind is cheaper. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/799330/global-solar-pv-installation-cost-per-kilowatt/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/799330/global-solar-pv-i...
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    > 1: Commenters don’t compare like-for-like energy production, instead they often compare using the nameplate capacity e.g. compare construction cost of a 1GW nuclear plant with a 1GW solar plant. The right thing to compare is GWh produced. Capacity factor converts GW to GWh, and the capacity factor for nuclear is about 90% and for solar is about 15%[1]. Therefore the equivalent of a 1GW nuclear plant is 6GW of installed solar This is captured by net capacity and LCOE. LCOE of new solar is rapidly approaching MCOE of existing nuclear. > Commenters ignore the cost of systems needed to provide power in winter on windless dark nights. The real cost of wind/solar needs to include the necessary energy storage (batteries or pumped hydro or stored chemical energy or whatever). Some of that can be overcome by installing overcapacity (e.g. install 3x as much GW solar to cover aircon usage in early evening in Texas). Nuclear is very good at providing power at all times. Storage is very expensive - usually doubles or triples the cost of the wind/solar installation. The need for storage goes up as our dependency on wind/solar power increases. This is captured by total system cost. While they're about on par (or favouring nuclear in europe) right now, today's optimistic renewable price is tomorrow's pessimistic. Storage is about to do what PV did in the 2010s, and anyone being forced to pay for a half working AP-1000 or EPR in 2030 rather than 2x the net production in PV panels made of sand and a battery array made of rust all hooked together with aluminum for their utility money is rightfully going to be extremely angry.
mrtranscendence 4y ago
Doesn’t burning methane seem a bit unfortunate when it comes to climate change?
- pydry 4y ago
  Not especially. It's carbon neutral. In general there's no point, it's just an illustrative example of the horrendous economics of nuclear power. It might be a good idea to generate some gas if we one day have wind/solar producing >100% of consumption and all the batteries/pumped storage are fully charged. That'd be a nice problem to have, truth be told. Currently, wind and solar rarely produce more than current demand, ever. Natural gas averages about 40% of our electricity supply and rarely if ever goes to zero even on the sunniest windiest days. Every MWh produced by wind or solar is just another MWh where we dont have to burn gas.
  - hedora 4y ago
    Methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. Current systems leak enough to make it infeasible in the mediun term.
    - ben_w 4y ago
      The chemical process for turning H2 into methane doesn't have to be the final act, similar processes can make longer chain hydrocarbons. But right now, even though I learned about this over 22 years ago in my GCSEs, I think most people only even know about the Sabatier process because Musk wants to use it on Mars for ISRU.
argiopetech 4y ago
tsimionescu 4y ago
Nuclear power is definitely nowhere near 5x more expensive than solar in space, which is what this article is proposing.

goodpoint 4y ago

..and it's vulnerable to climate change, not to mention war and social unrest.

504error 4y ago
No, newer nuclear reactor designs are in essence "meltdown proof", and extremeley safe. Unfortunately nuclear is regulated to death in the U.S. so it is extremeley expensive to build new plants or even improve existing ones.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  > newer nuclear reactor designs are in essence "meltdown proof", and extremeley safe. > Unfortunately nuclear is regulated to death in the U.S. so it is extremeley expensive These are the same fact. The second the regulators relax is the same second that corners get cut and limits get pushed because 'reactor designs are in essence "meltdown proof"'. That attitude is exactly how the five colossally stupid things that have to happen all at once to cause a meltdown start individually becoming regular occurrences -- after that it's just a matter of reactor hours before enough of them coincide with some other improbable event. See the shutdown of Korea's fleet while forged documents were investigated for one of many examples. Or Fukushima.

puchatek 4y ago

Can you please respond to the comments below? I'm tired of ppl. bringing up nuclear and then ducking the debate