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It is not "tone policing". That is an accusation guaranteed to derail any discussion. Nukes and geothermal simply cost more than solar and wind: nukes, many, m

It is not "tone policing". That is an accusation guaranteed to derail any discussion. Nukes and geothermal simply cost more than solar and wind: nukes, many, many times more. Spending a billion dollars gets you N GW of solar or wind, and N/M, M>>1, of others. Generally, if you need a steam turbine to keep working, you will trail behind anything with zero opex. Hydrogen has a plausible place in long-term (i.e. strategic) underground storage, in steel refining and other manufacturing processes, and (as LH2) in the future direction of aviation. It might have other roles, such as an intermediate form when using ammonia. Trying to force it where it is a bad fit adds noise.

tuatoru 4y ago
It ain't the money cost, we have money coming out our ears. It's the time cost. Nuclear takes far too long; geothermal merely takes too long. Same with fancy long-distance HV transmission proposals. Can it be built and commissioned in a year? Do it.
- moloch-hai 4y ago
  Point. We are in a race against global civilization collapse. But the race is, at base, to displace atmospheric carbon release. So displacing more, faster is the measure of merit.
- panick21_ 4y ago
  > Nuclear takes far too long; And yet nuclear is the only tech that has proven to decarbonize a major industrial economy within just a few decades. But of course it takes to long. When in reality it has not been proven that anybody has ever used solar and wind to de-carbonize a major economy. But somehow everybody knows that it is 'fast'. Germany could have literally gone to 100% nuclear within the last 20 years and it would likely have cost them 250 billion $ or less. Reliable energy for 100 years. Almost no cost for the grid because you can just build nuclear plants next to coal plants. > Can it be built and commissioned in a year? Do it. What is this obsession with short term thinking? When you build major long term infrastructure like trains tunnels, you simply don't do it in a year. If France could do something in the 70/80s, finishing nuclear reactors multiple reactors every year. Germany could have done the same and they would be done by now.
  - moloch-hai 4y ago
    ... and would be in the position France is in now, with a fleet of obsolete contraptions that will cost further billions to decommission, and with nothing on the horizon to replace them.
    - panick21_ 4y ago
      France fleet is not obsolete. They can survive for another 40 year easy. Sadly the French 2nd generation pissed away all the great work the first generation did and neglected the fleet they had. They are treating the fleet lie the giving tree. Ironically because the French were so blessed with so many reactors, they were one of the few nations that didn't use their reactors very well. The Germans were actually better at using their reactors. The French since the 90s are just as anti-nuclear as everybody else and they have done everything to destroy the amazing fleet they have, and only now realize how incredibly fucking stupid that was. They even forced the utility to collect money from the nuclear fleet and invest in solar. And they forced the utility to sell of nuclear base load at bargain bin prices and then force them to buy that power back at high prices. And its amazing how anti-nuclear people can look down on France when literally every day they produce green cheap energy for all their people. And they have been saving CO2 for 40+ years, and that is worth more then any CO2 we are saving now. Almost every other country should envy the French position.
      - moloch-hai 4y ago
        Yet, in just a few years all the French reactors will be mothballed because they cost several times as much to operate as buying off the grid.
        panick21_ 4y ago
        Except that will not happen and no French govenrment will be so fucking stupid. Nuclear is providing cheap long term stable power supply and if they stop forcing their nuclear fleet to support solar and fossil (literally things the French government forced them to do) and do proper maintenance French will have cheap carbon free energy for the next 50+ years. Funny how nuclear is so expensive and yet somehow people in France and places that nuclear reactors have mostly cheap power while Germany is spending absurd money prevent their population from feeling an even worse hurt from the policy they have inflicted on them. In total the Germany population over the 50 years has paid way more for energy and getting way worse outcomes. That's a simple fact. Just the cost for the measure Germany has to take now to buffer from this whole Russia fuckup would have been enough to pay for a whole fleet of nuclear reactors for Germany. Instead they are gone spend another 15+ years using coal and gas and then have to manage an incredibly unstable complex grid while having to replace all those wind plants they put up in the next 20-30 years. And the French reactors will still be running and still provide stable carbon free power for a low price.
MagnumOpus 4y ago
> Nukes and geothermal simply cost more They only cost more because of "environmentalists" fighting both new reactors, fuel element transport and waste storage tooth and nail in a way they don't fight coal ash ponds or heavy metal tailing lakes... (The average lifecycle cost of nuclear power at scale in France - where plants were built before anti-nuclear hysteria - is about 7 cents per kWh, same-ish as the cost of solar or wind fleet, and with fewer intermittency problems. Solar might be cheaper in Hawaii and California, but most places are not blessed with 3,000 hours of sunshine a year.)
- moloch-hai 4y ago
  False. As has been explained in detail too many times to count. Please do not try to resurrect old falsehoods.
dgroshev 4y ago
They are more expensive only when compared to a marginal kWh put at time of solar/wind’s convenience into the grid that is stabilised by other means (mostly fossils). Look up how much electricity went up in Texas last time the generation dropped by iirc just ~20%; solar goes to zero every night, and wind regularly dies down across Western Europe for days or even weeks. In those circumstances and without fossils to fall back to, nuclear is infinitely cheaper than solar/wind. We can’t plan our grids or judge the costs according to not just best, but even average scenarios. We have to plan once-in-decades anomalies, the long tail. Non-dispatchable energy sources get exponentially more expensive once you start doing that.
- moloch-hai 4y ago
  The "stable grid" argument is well past its sell-by date. In the future we will need to build out storage. Before there is enough renewable generation to charge storage, building it would be foolish. After, we will need storage, and build it. And, we will always need liquid fuel. As cost for renewables continues exponentially downward, ammonia synthesized at solar farms in the tropics will undercut NG. In the meantime, shortfalls will be filled by burning an ever-decreasing amount of NG. We will need a hell of a lot of electric ammonia synthesis in coming decades.
  - dgroshev 4y ago
    I don't understand why do you think it's "past its sell-by date". The wealthiest country in the world had a statewide blackout when generation dropped really mildly compared to intra-day, intra-month, and intra-season variability of solar/wind, and you just dismiss it? On what basis? If the storage will need to be built out, then your argument about costs is disingenuous in the world without fossils, because those costs are currently masked by fossil generation.
    - moloch-hai 4y ago
      Texas, artificially cut off from the wider grid, exhibited its domestic governance failings once again. This has no wider implications for energy policy than that grid connectivity covers for multiple sins. Need for fossil generation backing will decline naturally as storage is built out, but will take a long time to go to zero. Pretending otherwise makes bad policy. Building storage without renewable capacity to charge it from would be stupid because charging storage by fossil fuel burning would be monumentally stupid.
panick21_ 4y ago
Funny somehow France had green energy decades ago and France had low energy prices for decades. Really crazy how expensive nuclear is. Specially now where you have Germany who spend lots on renewables using many 100s of billions to buffer the impacts of their policies. For that price they could have just transformed to nuclear. Germany could literally have spent the same amount of money over the last 20 and next 5 years and have done what France did in the 70/80s and they would be almost 100% green by now. But nuclear is expensive of course. And of course those reactors would work for the next 80-100 years, but I guess its much better to rebuild wind turbines 4 times over during that time. > in steel refining Far better to use the technology the Boston Metal uses. > in the future direction of aviation Questionable. Either use batteries or just go with full synfuels.
- moloch-hai 4y ago
  France is better known for high taxes than for low energy prices... Maybe there is a connection. No one, anywhere in the world, has ever fielded a nuke not massively propped up by public money. Germany would today be in a much worse position if they had spent what they did on renewables on upgrading their ramshackle old nuke contraptions instead. France, notably, imported power through summer.
  - panick21_ 4y ago
    > France is better known for high taxes than for low energy prices... Maybe there is a connection. No there isn't actually. The French pay high taxes because of their social services. If you actually inform yourself you would know that the cost of the nuclear fleet went on the books of the utility, not the French state and has been paid down by the utility for 40+ years now DESPITE the very low energy prices. > Germany would today be in a much worse position if they had spent what they did on renewables on upgrading their ramshackle old nuke contraptions instead. Germany was actually one of the best operates of nuclear power. Their reactor had amazing uptime. > France, notably, imported power through summer. And the reason is that the Anti-nuclear idiots who were in power in the French state for the last 30 years took cheap green energy for granted and instead of doing the needed maintenance, they forced the utility to invest in solar and support fossil fuel (yes really). And in fact in 2015 the French state literally basically forced threw a law to turn off large parts of the nuclear fleet in 2025. This lead to even more maintenance not being done. This is a case of the French state shooting itself in the foot and taking for granted what their fathers gave to them and them treating the fleet like shit and just believing the magical pixies of renewables would reliably produce 10s of GW of power for them within a few years. Germany is literally spending up to a 500 billion $ on a plan to mitigate all the issues with their energy policy, for that they could literally have built a nuclear fleet 2x the size they needed to be 100% green on nuclear.
kortilla 4y ago
Solar and wind are variable. Putting them in the same category as nuclear without including the storage costs is disingenuous. This is a super basic issue and you tut-tutting with this deeply flawed by oft-repeated talking point is why this comes across as “tone-policing”.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  https://pris.iaea.org/PRIS/CountryStatistics/CountryDetails.aspx?current=FR https://pris.iaea.org/PRIS/CountryStatistics/CountryDetails.... There is not a single reactor on this list with an operation factor (proportion of hours delivering any energy) over 85%. Storage, backup, and overprovision are part of any system. 24/7/365 nuclear is a myth. Once you acknowledge that reality it becomes a calculation of total costs vs. total emissions abated. VRE is about 5x as effective by this metric without even using any strategy other than minor overprovision, existing w2e/hydro, and fossil fuel methane backup, because generating even the mythical 100% green energy starting in 20 years is far worse than generating >80% green energy starting in 2 years. Even if the long term plan is all nuclear (this doesn't work with commercial technology, there's not enough U235) it's still optimal to max out the VRE pipeline first. The VRE will pay back before your nuclear reactor is done just by the money saved on coal and gas.

tuatoru 4y ago

It ain't the money cost, we have money coming out our ears. It's the time cost. Nuclear takes far too long; geothermal merely takes too long. Same with fancy long-distance HV transmission proposals. Can it be built and commissioned in a year? Do it.

moloch-hai 4y ago
Point. We are in a race against global civilization collapse. But the race is, at base, to displace atmospheric carbon release. So displacing more, faster is the measure of merit.
panick21_ 4y ago
> Nuclear takes far too long; And yet nuclear is the only tech that has proven to decarbonize a major industrial economy within just a few decades. But of course it takes to long. When in reality it has not been proven that anybody has ever used solar and wind to de-carbonize a major economy. But somehow everybody knows that it is 'fast'. Germany could have literally gone to 100% nuclear within the last 20 years and it would likely have cost them 250 billion $ or less. Reliable energy for 100 years. Almost no cost for the grid because you can just build nuclear plants next to coal plants. > Can it be built and commissioned in a year? Do it. What is this obsession with short term thinking? When you build major long term infrastructure like trains tunnels, you simply don't do it in a year. If France could do something in the 70/80s, finishing nuclear reactors multiple reactors every year. Germany could have done the same and they would be done by now.
- moloch-hai 4y ago
  ... and would be in the position France is in now, with a fleet of obsolete contraptions that will cost further billions to decommission, and with nothing on the horizon to replace them.
  - panick21_ 4y ago
    France fleet is not obsolete. They can survive for another 40 year easy. Sadly the French 2nd generation pissed away all the great work the first generation did and neglected the fleet they had. They are treating the fleet lie the giving tree. Ironically because the French were so blessed with so many reactors, they were one of the few nations that didn't use their reactors very well. The Germans were actually better at using their reactors. The French since the 90s are just as anti-nuclear as everybody else and they have done everything to destroy the amazing fleet they have, and only now realize how incredibly fucking stupid that was. They even forced the utility to collect money from the nuclear fleet and invest in solar. And they forced the utility to sell of nuclear base load at bargain bin prices and then force them to buy that power back at high prices. And its amazing how anti-nuclear people can look down on France when literally every day they produce green cheap energy for all their people. And they have been saving CO2 for 40+ years, and that is worth more then any CO2 we are saving now. Almost every other country should envy the French position.
    - moloch-hai 4y ago
      Yet, in just a few years all the French reactors will be mothballed because they cost several times as much to operate as buying off the grid.
      - panick21_ 4y ago
        Except that will not happen and no French govenrment will be so fucking stupid. Nuclear is providing cheap long term stable power supply and if they stop forcing their nuclear fleet to support solar and fossil (literally things the French government forced them to do) and do proper maintenance French will have cheap carbon free energy for the next 50+ years. Funny how nuclear is so expensive and yet somehow people in France and places that nuclear reactors have mostly cheap power while Germany is spending absurd money prevent their population from feeling an even worse hurt from the policy they have inflicted on them. In total the Germany population over the 50 years has paid way more for energy and getting way worse outcomes. That's a simple fact. Just the cost for the measure Germany has to take now to buffer from this whole Russia fuckup would have been enough to pay for a whole fleet of nuclear reactors for Germany. Instead they are gone spend another 15+ years using coal and gas and then have to manage an incredibly unstable complex grid while having to replace all those wind plants they put up in the next 20-30 years. And the French reactors will still be running and still provide stable carbon free power for a low price.

MagnumOpus 4y ago

> Nukes and geothermal simply cost more They only cost more because of "environmentalists" fighting both new reactors, fuel element transport and waste storage tooth and nail in a way they don't fight coal ash ponds or heavy metal tailing lakes... (The average lifecycle cost of nuclear power at scale in France - where plants were built before anti-nuclear hysteria - is about 7 cents per kWh, same-ish as the cost of solar or wind fleet, and with fewer intermittency problems. Solar might be cheaper in Hawaii and California, but most places are not blessed with 3,000 hours of sunshine a year.)

moloch-hai 4y ago
False. As has been explained in detail too many times to count. Please do not try to resurrect old falsehoods.

dgroshev 4y ago

They are more expensive only when compared to a marginal kWh put at time of solar/wind’s convenience into the grid that is stabilised by other means (mostly fossils). Look up how much electricity went up in Texas last time the generation dropped by iirc just ~20%; solar goes to zero every night, and wind regularly dies down across Western Europe for days or even weeks. In those circumstances and without fossils to fall back to, nuclear is infinitely cheaper than solar/wind. We can’t plan our grids or judge the costs according to not just best, but even average scenarios. We have to plan once-in-decades anomalies, the long tail. Non-dispatchable energy sources get exponentially more expensive once you start doing that.

moloch-hai 4y ago
The "stable grid" argument is well past its sell-by date. In the future we will need to build out storage. Before there is enough renewable generation to charge storage, building it would be foolish. After, we will need storage, and build it. And, we will always need liquid fuel. As cost for renewables continues exponentially downward, ammonia synthesized at solar farms in the tropics will undercut NG. In the meantime, shortfalls will be filled by burning an ever-decreasing amount of NG. We will need a hell of a lot of electric ammonia synthesis in coming decades.
- dgroshev 4y ago
  I don't understand why do you think it's "past its sell-by date". The wealthiest country in the world had a statewide blackout when generation dropped really mildly compared to intra-day, intra-month, and intra-season variability of solar/wind, and you just dismiss it? On what basis? If the storage will need to be built out, then your argument about costs is disingenuous in the world without fossils, because those costs are currently masked by fossil generation.
  - moloch-hai 4y ago
    Texas, artificially cut off from the wider grid, exhibited its domestic governance failings once again. This has no wider implications for energy policy than that grid connectivity covers for multiple sins. Need for fossil generation backing will decline naturally as storage is built out, but will take a long time to go to zero. Pretending otherwise makes bad policy. Building storage without renewable capacity to charge it from would be stupid because charging storage by fossil fuel burning would be monumentally stupid.

panick21_ 4y ago

Funny somehow France had green energy decades ago and France had low energy prices for decades. Really crazy how expensive nuclear is. Specially now where you have Germany who spend lots on renewables using many 100s of billions to buffer the impacts of their policies. For that price they could have just transformed to nuclear. Germany could literally have spent the same amount of money over the last 20 and next 5 years and have done what France did in the 70/80s and they would be almost 100% green by now. But nuclear is expensive of course. And of course those reactors would work for the next 80-100 years, but I guess its much better to rebuild wind turbines 4 times over during that time. > in steel refining Far better to use the technology the Boston Metal uses. > in the future direction of aviation Questionable. Either use batteries or just go with full synfuels.

moloch-hai 4y ago
France is better known for high taxes than for low energy prices... Maybe there is a connection. No one, anywhere in the world, has ever fielded a nuke not massively propped up by public money. Germany would today be in a much worse position if they had spent what they did on renewables on upgrading their ramshackle old nuke contraptions instead. France, notably, imported power through summer.
- panick21_ 4y ago
  > France is better known for high taxes than for low energy prices... Maybe there is a connection. No there isn't actually. The French pay high taxes because of their social services. If you actually inform yourself you would know that the cost of the nuclear fleet went on the books of the utility, not the French state and has been paid down by the utility for 40+ years now DESPITE the very low energy prices. > Germany would today be in a much worse position if they had spent what they did on renewables on upgrading their ramshackle old nuke contraptions instead. Germany was actually one of the best operates of nuclear power. Their reactor had amazing uptime. > France, notably, imported power through summer. And the reason is that the Anti-nuclear idiots who were in power in the French state for the last 30 years took cheap green energy for granted and instead of doing the needed maintenance, they forced the utility to invest in solar and support fossil fuel (yes really). And in fact in 2015 the French state literally basically forced threw a law to turn off large parts of the nuclear fleet in 2025. This lead to even more maintenance not being done. This is a case of the French state shooting itself in the foot and taking for granted what their fathers gave to them and them treating the fleet like shit and just believing the magical pixies of renewables would reliably produce 10s of GW of power for them within a few years. Germany is literally spending up to a 500 billion $ on a plan to mitigate all the issues with their energy policy, for that they could literally have built a nuclear fleet 2x the size they needed to be 100% green on nuclear.

kortilla 4y ago

Solar and wind are variable. Putting them in the same category as nuclear without including the storage costs is disingenuous. This is a super basic issue and you tut-tutting with this deeply flawed by oft-repeated talking point is why this comes across as “tone-policing”.

Schroedingersat 4y ago
https://pris.iaea.org/PRIS/CountryStatistics/CountryDetails.aspx?current=FR https://pris.iaea.org/PRIS/CountryStatistics/CountryDetails.... There is not a single reactor on this list with an operation factor (proportion of hours delivering any energy) over 85%. Storage, backup, and overprovision are part of any system. 24/7/365 nuclear is a myth. Once you acknowledge that reality it becomes a calculation of total costs vs. total emissions abated. VRE is about 5x as effective by this metric without even using any strategy other than minor overprovision, existing w2e/hydro, and fossil fuel methane backup, because generating even the mythical 100% green energy starting in 20 years is far worse than generating >80% green energy starting in 2 years. Even if the long term plan is all nuclear (this doesn't work with commercial technology, there's not enough U235) it's still optimal to max out the VRE pipeline first. The VRE will pay back before your nuclear reactor is done just by the money saved on coal and gas.