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There has been plenty of noteworthy pushback against renewable energy has been significant, even for offshore wind farms that would have minimal view impact. P

There has been plenty of noteworthy pushback against renewable energy has been significant, even for offshore wind farms that would have minimal view impact. Pushback against new infrastructure is high in general, causing society to lean on inefficient and dirty sources of energy. We need more modern nuclear reactors, renewables and storage since neither can load follow like hydroelectric dams or combined cycle natural gas can.

klabb3 4y ago
If you wanna put the tinfoil hat on, having a political flamewar between renewables and nuclear is so ideal for fossil fuel companies that it almost looks deliberately architected. Nuclear proponents are rarely if ever against renewables on principle, but rather claim they aren’t delivering on their promises. The environmentalists OTOH have been radicalized to be opposed to nuclear in a dogmatic way, are entirely against improving it by lifting research bans etc. The “nuclear is not economically viable” argument seen in recent years is dishonest from the majority of critics; they were against nuclear before and will be in the future, independent of economics and regional viability of wind & solar. Meanwhile, coal, gas and oil are doing absolutely splendid – even countries with a strong environmentalist ethos can easily be convinced to expand their fossil fuel dependencies during a crisis, when their citizens can’t afford to heat their homes in the winter.
- seanw444 4y ago
  That's a great point. Those that generally fall on the "just trust the science, bro" side are also the ones saying "nuclear isn't as effective right now, so let's avoid it like the plague" and "think of the long term!" It has always baffled me. This flamewar being pushed by fossil fuel companies makes perfect sense.
  - matthewdgreen 4y ago
    The problem with this analysis is not that it’s wrong: the existence of a zero-sum nuclear/renewables “argument” is absolutely a huge benefit to the legacy fossil fuels industry. The problem is that right now it’s renewables and not nuclear that pose the most direct threat to fossil industry profits. Given current prices and dropping costs/watt of solar and wind, those sources are going to extinguish a lot of fossil competition in a relatively short period through exponential increase in deployment - and delaying an exponential “knee” can mean years of additional profit. Whereas right now there’s really no path to a massive nuclear rollout, and the costs don’t compete with fossil sources even if we decided to push harder.
    - ETH_start 4y ago
      The costs of solar/wind are being severely under-estimated: "True cost of using wind and solar to meet demand was $272 and $472 per MWH" https://web.archive.org/web/20220916003958/https://files.americanexperiment.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/The-High-Cost-of-100-Percent-Carbon-Free-Electricity-by-2040-in-Minnesota.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20220916003958/https://files.ame... Nuclear is in reality the most promising substitute for fossil fuels.
      - Schroedingersat 4y ago
        Have you got any modelling with a tiny shred of credibility that doesn't triple count various costs that agrees with that figure?
    - moloch-hai 4y ago
      Coal loves nukes. They know coal is doomed, but each nuke plant start is a guaranteed 10-20 year continuance of the coal contract. The cost of that amount of coal would build enough solar to cover for the prospective nuke. Not then building the nuke frees up enough money to construct that much solar several times over. An important reason for the gangbusting success of solar and wind is that they build incrementally. Build some, and it starts producing immediately. Build more, get more, in a virtuous cycle. There is precious little room for graft, because anybody can cost it on a napkin: N turbines x $per, M square meters of panel x $per. Nukes, meanwhile, leave unlimited room for graft: nobody knows how much anything ought to cost, and actually finishing the job means cutting off everybody's gravy train. There is really no fixing this: nukes are well established as an unlimited graft pipeline.
      - klabb3 4y ago
        > gangbusting success of solar and wind I think this is an objective overstatement, just 10% of 2021 global electricity production came from wind and solar combined, and these are supposedly “easy to scale incrementally”, “simple technology that can be manufactured quickly anywhere” and have had major subsidies in relation to their market cap. Then you have the intermittence issue, which is worse than dispatchable like hydro & nat gas, but isn’t factored in. Lastly you have the regional variations in wind and sunshine which makes it impossible to say how it performs unless you know the regional conditions. Often you hear success stories from places like South Australia or the Danish coast or something, which is similarly honest to car commercials driving on empty mountain roads. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for developing and expanding renewables, especially in areas where the sun or wind is strong, but if I put myself in the shoes of fossil fuel lobbyists, current wind & solar is kind of a perfect nerfed pretend-enemy in regions of influence, such as say Germany.
- canadianfella 4y ago
- jcampbell1 4y ago
  The political flame war doesn’t matter. I have a lot of capital allocated towards natural gas, but none to nuclear because the math doesn’t work (see the duck curve). Nuclear is dead on arrival because there is no industry demand for additional base load, regardless of whether it comes from uranium or coal.
  - bscphil 4y ago
    > Nuclear is dead on arrival because there is no industry demand for additional base load, regardless of whether it comes from uranium or coal. What if there is a political demand for phasing out existing coal / gas plants, thereby necessitating new plants to provide base load from some other source?
    - jcampbell1 4y ago
      Intermittent renewables displace the need for any base load. Every solar panel or wind turbine installed makes the economics of nukes worse. Nukes are in no way are a substitute for gas turbines. That is as silly as thinking a locomotive can be used for pizza delivery.
      - klabb3 4y ago
        > Intermittent renewables displace the need for any base load. When you talk about wind and solar you have to specify the region, because it differs wildly. As someone who has watched exactly those ideas fail to the point of crisis in north-central Europe, I truly hope you’re talking about some other unrelated place. Note that there is not only the daily cycle, but the seasonal one, in particular in cold regions. Baseload usually refers to the lowest demand during the day, so in those terms the baseload changes dramatically over the year. This is something that nuclear can adjust to perfectly fine.
- Panzer04 4y ago
  I'm not sure I agree with that assessment. Many environmentalists (those primarily concerned with global warming) are all for nuclear, but realistically nuclear does not play very well with renewables (nuclear wants 100% output all the time, renewables need a peaker complimentary service). Arguably, many nuclear proponents are , at least from my perspective, coming from right-wing groups and the like who previously didn't care about fossil fuels and didn't like renewables. Of course that's just a faction, but IMO it's a significant factor in the renewal of calls for nuclear - muddying the waters and delaying everything (as nuclear is so good at nowadays) At this point in time nuclear will take forever to come online, costs more than renewables, is harder to scale up than renewables, etc. Any company can toss together a factory that spits out turbines, solar panels and batteries without facing onerous regulations and massive liability risk. Renewables are just much more friendly to private sector actors - incremental capital investment, politically safe, etc.
  - LorenPechtel 4y ago
    But if you accept a bit of carbon emission from the peaker plants it can play reasonably well with solar in warm climates. You can also make some uses of renewables demand-dependent. Consider desalinization--uses a lot of power. Let's redesign our desalinization plant a bit: Put in a big seawater holding pond, it must be several hundred feet above the actual plant. Now, make the pumps considerably bigger than you need. When the grid has extra energy you use that energy to run the pumps and fill up the pond. When the grid doesn't have extra energy the pumps turn off. The actual plant works on pressure, not power (it's a glorified version of the reverse osmosis system a lot of us have under our kitchen sink--and note that the kitchen sink systems don't even plug in at all.) So long as there's water in the pond it's happy, power use is low. Thus you can run your plant 24/7 off an intermittent supply of power. This isn't the only heavy use situation where intermittent supply isn't a big handicap. What you need is a power grid that broadcasts (probably down it's wires) realtime information as to what the electric rate is and the users set their machinery up to optimize for that.
- imtringued 4y ago
  >The “nuclear is not economically viable” argument seen in recent years is dishonest from the majority of critics No, that is a result of betting all eggs on monolithic designs. Most of the costs are fixed costs.
fulafel 4y ago
Nuclear can load-follow fast enough to balance renewables. See eg http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2021/ph241/lecroy2/ http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2021/ph241/lecroy2/

klabb3 4y ago

If you wanna put the tinfoil hat on, having a political flamewar between renewables and nuclear is so ideal for fossil fuel companies that it almost looks deliberately architected. Nuclear proponents are rarely if ever against renewables on principle, but rather claim they aren’t delivering on their promises. The environmentalists OTOH have been radicalized to be opposed to nuclear in a dogmatic way, are entirely against improving it by lifting research bans etc. The “nuclear is not economically viable” argument seen in recent years is dishonest from the majority of critics; they were against nuclear before and will be in the future, independent of economics and regional viability of wind & solar. Meanwhile, coal, gas and oil are doing absolutely splendid – even countries with a strong environmentalist ethos can easily be convinced to expand their fossil fuel dependencies during a crisis, when their citizens can’t afford to heat their homes in the winter.

seanw444 4y ago
That's a great point. Those that generally fall on the "just trust the science, bro" side are also the ones saying "nuclear isn't as effective right now, so let's avoid it like the plague" and "think of the long term!" It has always baffled me. This flamewar being pushed by fossil fuel companies makes perfect sense.
- matthewdgreen 4y ago
  The problem with this analysis is not that it’s wrong: the existence of a zero-sum nuclear/renewables “argument” is absolutely a huge benefit to the legacy fossil fuels industry. The problem is that right now it’s renewables and not nuclear that pose the most direct threat to fossil industry profits. Given current prices and dropping costs/watt of solar and wind, those sources are going to extinguish a lot of fossil competition in a relatively short period through exponential increase in deployment - and delaying an exponential “knee” can mean years of additional profit. Whereas right now there’s really no path to a massive nuclear rollout, and the costs don’t compete with fossil sources even if we decided to push harder.
  - ETH_start 4y ago
    The costs of solar/wind are being severely under-estimated: "True cost of using wind and solar to meet demand was $272 and $472 per MWH" https://web.archive.org/web/20220916003958/https://files.americanexperiment.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/The-High-Cost-of-100-Percent-Carbon-Free-Electricity-by-2040-in-Minnesota.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20220916003958/https://files.ame... Nuclear is in reality the most promising substitute for fossil fuels.
    - Schroedingersat 4y ago
      Have you got any modelling with a tiny shred of credibility that doesn't triple count various costs that agrees with that figure?
  - moloch-hai 4y ago
    Coal loves nukes. They know coal is doomed, but each nuke plant start is a guaranteed 10-20 year continuance of the coal contract. The cost of that amount of coal would build enough solar to cover for the prospective nuke. Not then building the nuke frees up enough money to construct that much solar several times over. An important reason for the gangbusting success of solar and wind is that they build incrementally. Build some, and it starts producing immediately. Build more, get more, in a virtuous cycle. There is precious little room for graft, because anybody can cost it on a napkin: N turbines x $per, M square meters of panel x $per. Nukes, meanwhile, leave unlimited room for graft: nobody knows how much anything ought to cost, and actually finishing the job means cutting off everybody's gravy train. There is really no fixing this: nukes are well established as an unlimited graft pipeline.
    - klabb3 4y ago
      > gangbusting success of solar and wind I think this is an objective overstatement, just 10% of 2021 global electricity production came from wind and solar combined, and these are supposedly “easy to scale incrementally”, “simple technology that can be manufactured quickly anywhere” and have had major subsidies in relation to their market cap. Then you have the intermittence issue, which is worse than dispatchable like hydro & nat gas, but isn’t factored in. Lastly you have the regional variations in wind and sunshine which makes it impossible to say how it performs unless you know the regional conditions. Often you hear success stories from places like South Australia or the Danish coast or something, which is similarly honest to car commercials driving on empty mountain roads. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for developing and expanding renewables, especially in areas where the sun or wind is strong, but if I put myself in the shoes of fossil fuel lobbyists, current wind & solar is kind of a perfect nerfed pretend-enemy in regions of influence, such as say Germany.
canadianfella 4y ago
jcampbell1 4y ago
The political flame war doesn’t matter. I have a lot of capital allocated towards natural gas, but none to nuclear because the math doesn’t work (see the duck curve). Nuclear is dead on arrival because there is no industry demand for additional base load, regardless of whether it comes from uranium or coal.
- bscphil 4y ago
  > Nuclear is dead on arrival because there is no industry demand for additional base load, regardless of whether it comes from uranium or coal. What if there is a political demand for phasing out existing coal / gas plants, thereby necessitating new plants to provide base load from some other source?
  - jcampbell1 4y ago
    Intermittent renewables displace the need for any base load. Every solar panel or wind turbine installed makes the economics of nukes worse. Nukes are in no way are a substitute for gas turbines. That is as silly as thinking a locomotive can be used for pizza delivery.
    - klabb3 4y ago
      > Intermittent renewables displace the need for any base load. When you talk about wind and solar you have to specify the region, because it differs wildly. As someone who has watched exactly those ideas fail to the point of crisis in north-central Europe, I truly hope you’re talking about some other unrelated place. Note that there is not only the daily cycle, but the seasonal one, in particular in cold regions. Baseload usually refers to the lowest demand during the day, so in those terms the baseload changes dramatically over the year. This is something that nuclear can adjust to perfectly fine.
Panzer04 4y ago
I'm not sure I agree with that assessment. Many environmentalists (those primarily concerned with global warming) are all for nuclear, but realistically nuclear does not play very well with renewables (nuclear wants 100% output all the time, renewables need a peaker complimentary service). Arguably, many nuclear proponents are , at least from my perspective, coming from right-wing groups and the like who previously didn't care about fossil fuels and didn't like renewables. Of course that's just a faction, but IMO it's a significant factor in the renewal of calls for nuclear - muddying the waters and delaying everything (as nuclear is so good at nowadays) At this point in time nuclear will take forever to come online, costs more than renewables, is harder to scale up than renewables, etc. Any company can toss together a factory that spits out turbines, solar panels and batteries without facing onerous regulations and massive liability risk. Renewables are just much more friendly to private sector actors - incremental capital investment, politically safe, etc.
- LorenPechtel 4y ago
  But if you accept a bit of carbon emission from the peaker plants it can play reasonably well with solar in warm climates. You can also make some uses of renewables demand-dependent. Consider desalinization--uses a lot of power. Let's redesign our desalinization plant a bit: Put in a big seawater holding pond, it must be several hundred feet above the actual plant. Now, make the pumps considerably bigger than you need. When the grid has extra energy you use that energy to run the pumps and fill up the pond. When the grid doesn't have extra energy the pumps turn off. The actual plant works on pressure, not power (it's a glorified version of the reverse osmosis system a lot of us have under our kitchen sink--and note that the kitchen sink systems don't even plug in at all.) So long as there's water in the pond it's happy, power use is low. Thus you can run your plant 24/7 off an intermittent supply of power. This isn't the only heavy use situation where intermittent supply isn't a big handicap. What you need is a power grid that broadcasts (probably down it's wires) realtime information as to what the electric rate is and the users set their machinery up to optimize for that.
imtringued 4y ago
>The “nuclear is not economically viable” argument seen in recent years is dishonest from the majority of critics No, that is a result of betting all eggs on monolithic designs. Most of the costs are fixed costs.

fulafel 4y ago

Nuclear can load-follow fast enough to balance renewables. See eg http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2021/ph241/lecroy2/ http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2021/ph241/lecroy2/