7 ms·

It takes too long to build, though. Because everyone is sitting around bitching about how it takes too long to build instead of building it. "The best time to

It takes too long to build, though. Because everyone is sitting around bitching about how it takes too long to build instead of building it. "The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago."

rmason 4y ago
It takes too long to build primarily because opponents tie things up with lawsuits and challenges. Federal research money is available for competitors but not nuclear. One Utah Senator tried to for something like fifteen years to get money to build a modern thorium reactor sample plant. He never succeeded but there was plenty of money for things like Solyndra. Thankfully thorium research has become so attractive that it's now attracting private money but we've lost a couple of decades.
pydry 4y ago
I know, right? Why build a solar farm in 6 months or a wind farm in a year when you can spend five times as much and have a nuclear plant ready in 10-15 years?
- otikik 4y ago
  In 6 months you don't even have the permission for building a wind farm (or a solar farm). Source: https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/2022/10/15/solar-farm-update-we-finally-have-planning-permission/ https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/2022/10/15/solar-farm-...
  - benj111 4y ago
    I suppose it's how you define 'build'. If I build an IKEA bookcase, do I time the build from when I throw the instructions away, or when my significant other decides to buy it between mouthfuls of meatballs?
  - kmeisthax 4y ago
    If you think the NIMBYism for renewables is bad, imagine trying to build a nuclear plant in your backyard. In fact, the majority of problems with nuclear being slow to build boil down to "the NIMBYs wont have it". This is probably a place where nuclear and renewable advocates could come together and fight back against the NIMBYs who would rather you just built more coal plants next to the poors. Because NIMBYism is just lower-case c conservatism with extra steps.
    - bombcar 4y ago
      NIMBY can be solved with enough money and willpower; we don't have that right now. It can also be reduced or solved by telling people outside "the area" they don't get a say.
      - benj111 4y ago
        What's "the area" for nuclear power though? The hypothetical radioactive cloud could travel a few hundred miles in the wind...
        kmeisthax 4y ago
        If your only concern is radiation exposure, coal plants actually emit more radiation than nuclear. And that's deliberate, everyday emissions, not the accidental once-in-a-decade megaevents like Fukushima or Chernobyl.
        Schroedingersat 4y ago
        Please do share the total cumulative activity of all bioacumulative elements present in all non-filtered fly ash ever released and compare it to the Cs137 that Sellafield poured into the ocean as part of normal operation in 1975 or the Kr 85 that La Hague releases on an average year.
        benj111 4y ago
        I was replying to >It can also be reduced or solved by telling people outside "the area" they don't get a say. The area that gets a say, should surely be the area impacted by it. Further. Whataboutism, comparing it to a rapidly obsoleting technology doesn't seem reasonable.
- Manuel_D 4y ago
  Because the solar farm is going to saturate the energy market on sunny days, and fail to produce energy at night and on cloudy days. There's diminishing returns on intermittent energy sources once peak production is saturated. Comparing intermittent sources of electricity to dispatchable sources of energy is comparing apples to oranges.
  - pydry 4y ago
    It's insane to fret about saturating the energy market when 40% of electricity is produced by gas on a sunny day and electric car drivers are gagging for differential pricing tariffs. Intermittent electricity produced now is worth more than baseload in 14 years later.
    - amanaplanacanal 4y ago
      Exactly. Worry about saturating when we are actually close to that happening.
      - Manuel_D 4y ago
        It's not just close to happening, it already is happening in Australia and Hawaii: https://solarbuildermag.com/policy/grid-saturation-lessons-from-australia-and-hawaii/ https://solarbuildermag.com/policy/grid-saturation-lessons-f...
        amanaplanacanal 4y ago
        So don’t build more solar in those locations. That’s not an excuse for other places where this is not the case.
        Manuel_D 4y ago
        Right, but then how do you displace the remaining fossil fuel use? It's only a matter of time until the "other places" are also saturated. How do you get from 40-50% decarbonized energy to zero? The solution is non-intermittent energy generation. Hydro and geothermal are great for places that have the right geography and geology. But nuclear is the only other non-intermittent form of decarbonized energy we have*. * Some would point to biomass, but I don't consider them decarbonized: the biomass could have been a carbon sink if it wasn't burned. It's emissions by virtue of opportunity cost. An it's not a very scalable form of energy anyway.
oliwary 4y ago
That does not mean the second best time is to start now though! The second best time to start could be never, assuming that renewables and storage will become significantly cheaper and more efficient in the next decades, which does not seem unlikely.
- propagandist 4y ago
  The law of diminishing returns suggests that it's unlikely.
  - danhor 4y ago
    The law of diminishing returns has thus far been wrong on battery and renewables. Previous estimates often were wrong due to assuming a slowdown. Not to say it can't or won't happen, but unlikely isn't the word I'd use. The last two years were weird, especially regarding batteries due to prices increasing, but I'd put that on Covid and the resulting mess. Especially as solar & wind is already cheaper than everything else by far, so the critical part is batteries which is a broad field with a huge increase in relevance & research over the past few years. The chances are pretty good, but of course a slowdown could still happen.
    - XorNot 4y ago
      Chemical batteries are nowhere near suitable for providing sustained load to the grid, and never will be. What's happened is they're now cheap enough that for fast dispatch load levelling applications, you can install them where instead you'd have to consider bringing a whole powerplant online inefficiently. In the next 100 years, I predict no overnight load is going to be handled by installed grid batteries as part of a major energy grid: it'll only ever be backup capacity to make smooth the small scale variations of renewables (i.e. a cloud blowing over a solar farm briefly).
      - stubish 4y ago
        Right now, household batteries are being installed by those that can afford them (and the prices dropping). They are enough to handle overnight load. And electric vehicles are becoming popular, usually with double or more capacity, which will replace the household batteries. The uptake is high and will only get higher because it saves people money. Even people who can't afford a household batteries themselves will be able to get one installed, as the cost saving will allow someone else to profit. So grid batteries are easily able to provide sustained load to the grid, by simply pricing power from the batteries higher than power direct from the generator. Household batteries kick in because it saves people money, and turns out you need very little grid storage at all to handle overnight load. The trick is handling black swan events, such as extended periods without wind or ash/dust blocking sun, across the entire grid area (usually solved by making the grid bigger, such as connecting to neighboring countries).
didericis 4y ago
There's a company named Thorcon building a modern nuclear salt reactor in Indonesia that's actually doing it in what seems like a legitimately safe, scalable, cheap, easily reproducible way using shipyard/ship manufacturing techniques. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qtJE7VmyoU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qtJE7VmyoU
godelski 4y ago
> "The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago." But the second best time is now.
culi 4y ago
The average lifetime of a nuclear reactor is also ~40 years. Sure maybe some of those were early closures due to political pressure, but it's still a big challenge. Not only do you have to convince the public now, but also every 40 years or so Everyone's saying "we should've started building nuclear 20 years ago" but the thing we really should've started 20 years ago is heavy investments in our education system
Turing_Machine 4y ago
> It takes too long to build, though. Compared to purely imaginary renewables that do not actually exist at grid scale, you mean.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  How many net GW of new renewables were added in the past year? How many net GW of new nuclear were added in the year with the highest addition?
  - Turing_Machine 4y ago
    > How many net GW of new nuclear were added in the year with the highest addition? There were six (6) new reactors > 1 Gw connected to the grid this year, totaling 7.4 Gw capacity, and eight (8) new reactor construction starts, totaling 9.7 Gw capacity. There were zero (0) new solar plants > 4 Gw (which you realistically need to be equivalent to a 1 Gw nuke) brought online in this year. In fact, there weren't even any > 1 Gw (equivalent to a 250 Mw nuke) brought online. And no, putting a few solar panels on your roof isn't going to replace grid scale generation stations when it comes to running an industrial civilization. It's a fantasy akin to Mao's idea that people were going to be smelting iron in small furnaces in their back yard.
    - Schroedingersat 4y ago
      Hahah. Nice mental gymnastics. Utility solar doesn't exist unless it's all in one place and industrial machinery explodes if a joule of energy that comes fron a residential roof powers it. You're really hunting for somewhere to move those goalposts to now. Are you going to answer the question or are you going to cry victim?
      - Turing_Machine 4y ago
        I made a (provably) true statement, namely that grid-scale renewables largely do not exist. You tried to change the subject to something else. Sorry, you don't get to do that. I don't owe you any of my time to discuss a different topic of your choosing, especially not when (based on our previous encounter) you: 1) don't understand the difference between power and energy 2) don't understand the difference between energy storage and energy production and 3) are rude and abusive.
Schroedingersat 4y ago
The best time to invest in wind and solar instead of wasting time and money on nuclear was before fission was discovered. The second best time is now.

It takes too long to build, though. Because everyone is sitting around bitching about how it takes too long to build instead of building it. "The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago."

rmason 4y ago

It takes too long to build primarily because opponents tie things up with lawsuits and challenges. Federal research money is available for competitors but not nuclear. One Utah Senator tried to for something like fifteen years to get money to build a modern thorium reactor sample plant. He never succeeded but there was plenty of money for things like Solyndra. Thankfully thorium research has become so attractive that it's now attracting private money but we've lost a couple of decades.

pydry 4y ago

I know, right? Why build a solar farm in 6 months or a wind farm in a year when you can spend five times as much and have a nuclear plant ready in 10-15 years?

otikik 4y ago
In 6 months you don't even have the permission for building a wind farm (or a solar farm). Source: https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/2022/10/15/solar-farm-update-we-finally-have-planning-permission/ https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/2022/10/15/solar-farm-...
- benj111 4y ago
  I suppose it's how you define 'build'. If I build an IKEA bookcase, do I time the build from when I throw the instructions away, or when my significant other decides to buy it between mouthfuls of meatballs?
- kmeisthax 4y ago
  If you think the NIMBYism for renewables is bad, imagine trying to build a nuclear plant in your backyard. In fact, the majority of problems with nuclear being slow to build boil down to "the NIMBYs wont have it". This is probably a place where nuclear and renewable advocates could come together and fight back against the NIMBYs who would rather you just built more coal plants next to the poors. Because NIMBYism is just lower-case c conservatism with extra steps.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    NIMBY can be solved with enough money and willpower; we don't have that right now. It can also be reduced or solved by telling people outside "the area" they don't get a say.
    - benj111 4y ago
      What's "the area" for nuclear power though? The hypothetical radioactive cloud could travel a few hundred miles in the wind...
      - kmeisthax 4y ago
        If your only concern is radiation exposure, coal plants actually emit more radiation than nuclear. And that's deliberate, everyday emissions, not the accidental once-in-a-decade megaevents like Fukushima or Chernobyl.
        Schroedingersat 4y ago
        Please do share the total cumulative activity of all bioacumulative elements present in all non-filtered fly ash ever released and compare it to the Cs137 that Sellafield poured into the ocean as part of normal operation in 1975 or the Kr 85 that La Hague releases on an average year.
        benj111 4y ago
        I was replying to >It can also be reduced or solved by telling people outside "the area" they don't get a say. The area that gets a say, should surely be the area impacted by it. Further. Whataboutism, comparing it to a rapidly obsoleting technology doesn't seem reasonable.
Manuel_D 4y ago
Because the solar farm is going to saturate the energy market on sunny days, and fail to produce energy at night and on cloudy days. There's diminishing returns on intermittent energy sources once peak production is saturated. Comparing intermittent sources of electricity to dispatchable sources of energy is comparing apples to oranges.
- pydry 4y ago
  It's insane to fret about saturating the energy market when 40% of electricity is produced by gas on a sunny day and electric car drivers are gagging for differential pricing tariffs. Intermittent electricity produced now is worth more than baseload in 14 years later.
  - amanaplanacanal 4y ago
    Exactly. Worry about saturating when we are actually close to that happening.
    - Manuel_D 4y ago
      It's not just close to happening, it already is happening in Australia and Hawaii: https://solarbuildermag.com/policy/grid-saturation-lessons-from-australia-and-hawaii/ https://solarbuildermag.com/policy/grid-saturation-lessons-f...
      - amanaplanacanal 4y ago
        So don’t build more solar in those locations. That’s not an excuse for other places where this is not the case.
        Manuel_D 4y ago
        Right, but then how do you displace the remaining fossil fuel use? It's only a matter of time until the "other places" are also saturated. How do you get from 40-50% decarbonized energy to zero? The solution is non-intermittent energy generation. Hydro and geothermal are great for places that have the right geography and geology. But nuclear is the only other non-intermittent form of decarbonized energy we have*. * Some would point to biomass, but I don't consider them decarbonized: the biomass could have been a carbon sink if it wasn't burned. It's emissions by virtue of opportunity cost. An it's not a very scalable form of energy anyway.

oliwary 4y ago

That does not mean the second best time is to start now though! The second best time to start could be never, assuming that renewables and storage will become significantly cheaper and more efficient in the next decades, which does not seem unlikely.

propagandist 4y ago
The law of diminishing returns suggests that it's unlikely.
- danhor 4y ago
  The law of diminishing returns has thus far been wrong on battery and renewables. Previous estimates often were wrong due to assuming a slowdown. Not to say it can't or won't happen, but unlikely isn't the word I'd use. The last two years were weird, especially regarding batteries due to prices increasing, but I'd put that on Covid and the resulting mess. Especially as solar & wind is already cheaper than everything else by far, so the critical part is batteries which is a broad field with a huge increase in relevance & research over the past few years. The chances are pretty good, but of course a slowdown could still happen.
  - XorNot 4y ago
    Chemical batteries are nowhere near suitable for providing sustained load to the grid, and never will be. What's happened is they're now cheap enough that for fast dispatch load levelling applications, you can install them where instead you'd have to consider bringing a whole powerplant online inefficiently. In the next 100 years, I predict no overnight load is going to be handled by installed grid batteries as part of a major energy grid: it'll only ever be backup capacity to make smooth the small scale variations of renewables (i.e. a cloud blowing over a solar farm briefly).
    - stubish 4y ago
      Right now, household batteries are being installed by those that can afford them (and the prices dropping). They are enough to handle overnight load. And electric vehicles are becoming popular, usually with double or more capacity, which will replace the household batteries. The uptake is high and will only get higher because it saves people money. Even people who can't afford a household batteries themselves will be able to get one installed, as the cost saving will allow someone else to profit. So grid batteries are easily able to provide sustained load to the grid, by simply pricing power from the batteries higher than power direct from the generator. Household batteries kick in because it saves people money, and turns out you need very little grid storage at all to handle overnight load. The trick is handling black swan events, such as extended periods without wind or ash/dust blocking sun, across the entire grid area (usually solved by making the grid bigger, such as connecting to neighboring countries).

didericis 4y ago

There's a company named Thorcon building a modern nuclear salt reactor in Indonesia that's actually doing it in what seems like a legitimately safe, scalable, cheap, easily reproducible way using shipyard/ship manufacturing techniques. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qtJE7VmyoU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qtJE7VmyoU

godelski 4y ago

> "The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago." But the second best time is now.

culi 4y ago

The average lifetime of a nuclear reactor is also ~40 years. Sure maybe some of those were early closures due to political pressure, but it's still a big challenge. Not only do you have to convince the public now, but also every 40 years or so Everyone's saying "we should've started building nuclear 20 years ago" but the thing we really should've started 20 years ago is heavy investments in our education system

Turing_Machine 4y ago

> It takes too long to build, though. Compared to purely imaginary renewables that do not actually exist at grid scale, you mean.

Schroedingersat 4y ago
How many net GW of new renewables were added in the past year? How many net GW of new nuclear were added in the year with the highest addition?
- Turing_Machine 4y ago
  > How many net GW of new nuclear were added in the year with the highest addition? There were six (6) new reactors > 1 Gw connected to the grid this year, totaling 7.4 Gw capacity, and eight (8) new reactor construction starts, totaling 9.7 Gw capacity. There were zero (0) new solar plants > 4 Gw (which you realistically need to be equivalent to a 1 Gw nuke) brought online in this year. In fact, there weren't even any > 1 Gw (equivalent to a 250 Mw nuke) brought online. And no, putting a few solar panels on your roof isn't going to replace grid scale generation stations when it comes to running an industrial civilization. It's a fantasy akin to Mao's idea that people were going to be smelting iron in small furnaces in their back yard.
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    Hahah. Nice mental gymnastics. Utility solar doesn't exist unless it's all in one place and industrial machinery explodes if a joule of energy that comes fron a residential roof powers it. You're really hunting for somewhere to move those goalposts to now. Are you going to answer the question or are you going to cry victim?
    - Turing_Machine 4y ago
      I made a (provably) true statement, namely that grid-scale renewables largely do not exist. You tried to change the subject to something else. Sorry, you don't get to do that. I don't owe you any of my time to discuss a different topic of your choosing, especially not when (based on our previous encounter) you: 1) don't understand the difference between power and energy 2) don't understand the difference between energy storage and energy production and 3) are rude and abusive.

Schroedingersat 4y ago

The best time to invest in wind and solar instead of wasting time and money on nuclear was before fission was discovered. The second best time is now.