4 ms·

Nuclear plants use very little raw materials relative to the amount of power the produce. When built at scale, nuclear plants have been delivered at prices arou

Nuclear plants use very little raw materials relative to the amount of power the produce. When built at scale, nuclear plants have been delivered at prices around $1-2 billion dollars per GW of capacity. The cheapest form of carbon-free energy really depends on what the objective is: small reductions in a mostly fossil-fuel grid? Or total replacement of fossil fuels? Renewables are great for the former: you can throw up some solar panels or wind turbines and reduce a chunk of fossil fuels use. But once you try to start delivering significant portions of the energy grid through intermittent sources the surplus energy starts to get wasted, and the effectiveness drops.

Schroedingersat 4y ago
Nuclear is roughly equal to wind on a modular foundation if you account for the fact that the tower and foundation outlast the nacelle. The "$2/GW" nuclear reactors were all built by state run agencies with opaque budgets and in France's, Japan's, and South Korea's cases have all proved wildly unreliable in addition to having opaque public subsidy on top of the very large visible subsidies in the supply chain and finance. If you think it's possible to match the prices China reports that megaprojects cost, I'd like to see any examples of projects in the global north with auditable accounting matching their figures in hydro, or highways, or rail, or ports or... basically anything. In mediocre to good areas with something like the PEG racking system solar uses about the same raw material than nuclear already and it's almost all sand. By the time a new nuke came online this will be far less. Both are recyclable. 12 hour storage adds negligible mass and can easily cover daily variation. Intermittent power without storage can easily feed dispatchable loads like EV charging, chemical feedstock and heat production. These vastly exceed non-dispatchable electricity and can be used for virtual seasonal storage. There are only a small handful of areas best served by nuclear, and most of them have hydro or nuclear already. There's a narrow niche where nuclear is optimal: Grid electricity between 50% and 80% penetration in the 50% of areas where hybrid CSP + e-fuel backup isn't better. This niche is rapidly shrinking and could easily be gone by the time one is built. More carbon can be removed faster and with fewer resources by throwing renewables at the other 10 or so TW of fossil fuels currently being burnt. Until those resources are committed, new nuclear just delays things.
- Manuel_D 4y ago
  > Nuclear is roughly equal to wind on a modular foundation if you account for the fact that the tower and foundation outlast the nacelle. Except intermittent sources also need storage. They also need long distance transmission lines to bring power from remote areas of generation to places of demand (whereas you can just place nuclear plants next to areas of demand). This is a common pattern in renewables discussion: laser focus on generation and ignoring the fact that wind and solar have storage and transmission requirements that other energy sources don't have. > The "$2/GW" nuclear reactors were all built by state run agencies with opaque budgets Nope, do more research. These were all built in the US with public cost history. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peach_Bottom_Nuclear_Generating_Station https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peach_Bottom_Nuclear_Generat... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browns_Ferry_Nuclear_Plant https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browns_Ferry_Nuclear_Plant https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byron_Nuclear_Generating_Station https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byron_Nuclear_Generating_Sta... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/McGuire_Nuclear_Station https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/McGuire_Nuclear_Station https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_C._Cook_Nuclear_Plant https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_C._Cook_Nuclear_Plant https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Point_Energy_Center https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Point_Energy_Center https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkey_Point_Nuclear_Generating_Station https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkey_Point_Nuclear_Generat... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkansas_Nuclear_One https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkansas_Nuclear_One https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Lucie_Nuclear_Power_Plant https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Lucie_Nuclear_Power_Plan... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Anna_Nuclear_Generating_Station https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Anna_Nuclear_Generatin... > 12 hour storage adds negligible mass and can easily cover daily variation 12 hours of storage for the world is 30,000 GWh. This is 70-100 times the global battery production output. "Negligible mass" is going to have to see a hundredfold increase in som extraction industries. By comparison, nuclear already produces 20% of the US's electricity hand about a tenth of the world's electricity. A tenfold increase is much more manageable than a hundredfold increase. > Intermittent power without storage can easily feed dispatchable loads like EV charging, chemical feedstock and heat production. These vastly exceed non-dispatchable electricity and can be used for virtual seasonal storage. If you're going to tell chemical industries and metallurgy plants that they'll have to cease production for part of the year when renewables are producing lower than average output, then that has to be factored into your costs. If the price of steel and ammonia goes up because they can't run their plants as usual, then that cost is ultimately borne by consumers. You can't just use load shifting as part of the plan and ignore the costs of load shifting. "Virtual seasonal storage" amounts to "tell industries to shut off during winter". And no, heat production is not non-dispatchable unless you're okay with people freezing to death.

Schroedingersat 4y ago

Nuclear is roughly equal to wind on a modular foundation if you account for the fact that the tower and foundation outlast the nacelle. The "$2/GW" nuclear reactors were all built by state run agencies with opaque budgets and in France's, Japan's, and South Korea's cases have all proved wildly unreliable in addition to having opaque public subsidy on top of the very large visible subsidies in the supply chain and finance. If you think it's possible to match the prices China reports that megaprojects cost, I'd like to see any examples of projects in the global north with auditable accounting matching their figures in hydro, or highways, or rail, or ports or... basically anything. In mediocre to good areas with something like the PEG racking system solar uses about the same raw material than nuclear already and it's almost all sand. By the time a new nuke came online this will be far less. Both are recyclable. 12 hour storage adds negligible mass and can easily cover daily variation. Intermittent power without storage can easily feed dispatchable loads like EV charging, chemical feedstock and heat production. These vastly exceed non-dispatchable electricity and can be used for virtual seasonal storage. There are only a small handful of areas best served by nuclear, and most of them have hydro or nuclear already. There's a narrow niche where nuclear is optimal: Grid electricity between 50% and 80% penetration in the 50% of areas where hybrid CSP + e-fuel backup isn't better. This niche is rapidly shrinking and could easily be gone by the time one is built. More carbon can be removed faster and with fewer resources by throwing renewables at the other 10 or so TW of fossil fuels currently being burnt. Until those resources are committed, new nuclear just delays things.

Manuel_D 4y ago
> Nuclear is roughly equal to wind on a modular foundation if you account for the fact that the tower and foundation outlast the nacelle. Except intermittent sources also need storage. They also need long distance transmission lines to bring power from remote areas of generation to places of demand (whereas you can just place nuclear plants next to areas of demand). This is a common pattern in renewables discussion: laser focus on generation and ignoring the fact that wind and solar have storage and transmission requirements that other energy sources don't have. > The "$2/GW" nuclear reactors were all built by state run agencies with opaque budgets Nope, do more research. These were all built in the US with public cost history. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peach_Bottom_Nuclear_Generating_Station https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peach_Bottom_Nuclear_Generat... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browns_Ferry_Nuclear_Plant https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browns_Ferry_Nuclear_Plant https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byron_Nuclear_Generating_Station https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byron_Nuclear_Generating_Sta... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/McGuire_Nuclear_Station https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/McGuire_Nuclear_Station https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_C._Cook_Nuclear_Plant https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_C._Cook_Nuclear_Plant https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Point_Energy_Center https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Point_Energy_Center https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkey_Point_Nuclear_Generating_Station https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkey_Point_Nuclear_Generat... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkansas_Nuclear_One https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkansas_Nuclear_One https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Lucie_Nuclear_Power_Plant https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Lucie_Nuclear_Power_Plan... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Anna_Nuclear_Generating_Station https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Anna_Nuclear_Generatin... > 12 hour storage adds negligible mass and can easily cover daily variation 12 hours of storage for the world is 30,000 GWh. This is 70-100 times the global battery production output. "Negligible mass" is going to have to see a hundredfold increase in som extraction industries. By comparison, nuclear already produces 20% of the US's electricity hand about a tenth of the world's electricity. A tenfold increase is much more manageable than a hundredfold increase. > Intermittent power without storage can easily feed dispatchable loads like EV charging, chemical feedstock and heat production. These vastly exceed non-dispatchable electricity and can be used for virtual seasonal storage. If you're going to tell chemical industries and metallurgy plants that they'll have to cease production for part of the year when renewables are producing lower than average output, then that has to be factored into your costs. If the price of steel and ammonia goes up because they can't run their plants as usual, then that cost is ultimately borne by consumers. You can't just use load shifting as part of the plan and ignore the costs of load shifting. "Virtual seasonal storage" amounts to "tell industries to shut off during winter". And no, heat production is not non-dispatchable unless you're okay with people freezing to death.