5 ms·

While these are reasons to be suspicious, they do not counter a single point she made in her article. Her logic and her facts were solid. If they're not, I'd l

While these are reasons to be suspicious, they do not counter a single point she made in her article. Her logic and her facts were solid. If they're not, I'd love to see a take down of that. But I see no problem with anything she wrote, I remain convinced nuclear is the only rational energy source left, and all this fear mongering about nuclear is causing us to slowly kill ourselves.

lanstin 4y ago
If we had started a serious decarbonization 20 yeats ago, sure, but solar is now so cheap and easy that it will be harder for large scale nuclear to ramp up in time to matter. Maybe those container nuclear plants and maybe the last 20% of base capacit by 2040. But slowing solar in deference to nuclear would prolong the era of high atmospheric carbon.
- nomel 4y ago
  > so cheap and easy I think this is a little misleading, unless there' a good story for storage and long distance power transmission, which I haven't seen yet.
  - dools 4y ago
    China’s doing amazing work on long distance transmission using high voltage DC: https://youtu.be/rThkjp-bp8M https://youtu.be/rThkjp-bp8M
- Aloha 4y ago
  I think we could build 100 plants in under a decade - it takes us being willing to build them assembly line like, meaning no more 'designed for the site' plants.
  - philipkglass 4y ago
    The EPR and AP1000 reactor designs were supposed to be the end of "designed for the site" reactors, and they were. The same designs get built at different geographic locations. The problem is that they're no better at meeting cost and schedule targets than older reactor designs. They're still late and over budget. Can small modular reactors like those designed by NuScale do better? Maybe. But we're not going to find out sooner than 2030, which is when NuScale plans to have its first plant operational: https://www.nuscalepower.com/en/about https://www.nuscalepower.com/en/about
- jabl 4y ago
  How about we stop this ridiculous nuclear vs. renewables culture war, while fossil fuels are laughing all the way to the bank? Yes, we should build more solar (and even as a 'nuke bro', seeing solar prices drop at the rate they have is one of the genuinely positive news in the otherwise pretty dystopic climate change discourse), we should build more nuclear, we should build wind, we should build more hydro (though not that much potential left), we should build transmission, we should build storage.
- tonyarkles 4y ago
  > but solar is now so cheap and easy that it will be harder for large scale nuclear to ramp up in time to matter There's still the storage and base load problem. But I am 100% with you that we shouldn't slow solar in deference to nuclear; what we should be doing is mapping out what we want our next generation energy mix to look like (solar, wind, pumped storage, nuclear, geothermal, etc) on a regional basis, stop fucking around and arguing about it, and just get on with building it. I live in an area (Canadian prairies) where max energy consumption lines up with with minimum solar and wind production (-40C in December on a calm night). Even during the day, those calm bitterly cold days only have about 8 hours of sunlight from a sun that barely comes over the horizon. We're starting to build solar, we've had wind for a while, but even though we've committed to building SMR Nuclear, we're still in a situation where we've got coal and natural gas plants that are approaching EOL and they'll likely be replaced/retrofitted to burn more fossil fuels because we won't have any sufficiently reliable baseload ready.
  - bryanlarsen 4y ago
    The Canadian prairies have fabulous solar production, even in the winter time. They also have a good amount of wind. And BC has tons of hydro. So build out enough renewables to supply BC when the sun is shining, maybe even enough to pump some water uphill, and then have BC hydro supply the prairies at other times.
    - tonyarkles 4y ago
      So I’m looking at this from the perspective of completely eliminating fossil fuels from my home. Not just electricity, but heating as well. I want solar to win, but here’s the numbers I get from looking at December/January this year (my bills don’t quite line up cleanly on month boundaries): 863 m^3 of natural gas -> ~9100 kWh of heating energy Assuming (generously) that I can get a COP of 3, even though that’s unrealistic at the miserable temperatures we had over the last few months, that’s ~3000 kWh for electric heat pump heat. Electricity was about 745kWh for the month, so 3750kWh total between heat pump heating and electricity. https://www.cer-rec.gc.ca/en/data-analysis/energy-markets/market-snapshots/2018/market-snapshot-which-cities-have-highest-solar-potential-in-canada.html https://www.cer-rec.gc.ca/en/data-analysis/energy-markets/ma... shows 3.5kWh/mo/m^2 for December and 4.4kWh/mo/m^2 for January. Let’s go with January to be generous. 3750kWh/mo / 4.4kWh/mo/m^2 = 852 m^2 = 9170 sq.ft. of solar required to cover both my electricity and heating needs. If I look at just electricity it’s a lot easier. 745 / 4.4 = 169m^2 = 1800 sq.ft. which is essentially the same footprint as the house. Heating completely kills it though and is, I suspect for most people, an even larger source of carbon than their electricity use. At least looking at those two bills, there’s an $88 carbon tax charge on the natural gas bill and only $8 on the electrical bill.
- munk-a 4y ago
  Both certainly have their place and the balance has definitely shifted from where it was thirty years ago - renewables are much more competitive now but I think Nuclear has a pretty critical role to play when it comes to surge capacity.
matthewdgreen 4y ago
The fossil fuel industry is not funding pro-nuclear arguments because they want to see 50% of their business lost to nuclear. They are not worried about losing huge profits to nuclear because from a purely economic perspective nuclear is not cost-competitive with fossil fuels. Hence it doesn’t pose a major threat, absent massive government-subsidized build-outs (which aren’t remotely on the table now.) The fossil fuel industry is funding pro-nuclear PR because they realize that renewables do pose a major economic threat to their business in the short term, since they are now cost-effective enough to replace vast chunks of their business (even if not 100% of it.) Pro-nuclear (and coincidentally anti-renewable) PR is the most efficient way to protect their business. If they can convince the public [incorrectly] that the best way to decarbonize rapidly is to abandon/block renewable build-outs because “nuclear is the only way” then they’ve paid enormous dividends to their shareholders. If your response to the above is “these random technical points are correct, what’s the problem”, then the problem is: those random technical points are largely a distraction from the important questions of how we decarbonize quickly. The fossil fuel industry understands this perfectly, because they have a lot of skin in the game.
- robbintt 4y ago
  Can you share the details about renewables being cost competitive with oil?
  - robbintt 4y ago
    chat.openai.com claims it is true, albeit without specific sources: Yes, there is a significant amount of data and research that supports the increasing competitiveness of renewable energy compared to oil. Here are a few examples: The International Energy Agency (IEA) reported that in 2020, the average global cost of producing electricity from solar photovoltaic (PV) systems was lower than the cost of producing electricity from new fossil fuel plants, including coal and natural gas. A recent study by the consultancy firm Lazard found that the cost of utility-scale solar and wind energy in the United States has fallen significantly in recent years, and is now cheaper than the cost of power generated from coal and natural gas in most regions of the country. The US Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) reported that the levelized cost of energy (LCOE) for wind and solar energy in the United States has fallen by more than 50% over the past decade, and is projected to continue to decline in the future. According to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), the cost of solar PV and wind energy has declined by over 80% and 60%, respectively, since 2010. IRENA also found that renewable energy is now the cheapest source of new power generation in many countries, including Brazil, China, India, Mexico, and the United States. These are just a few examples, but they demonstrate the trend of declining costs for renewable energy and increasing competitiveness with oil and other fossil fuels.
anigbrowl 4y ago
https://www.agilitypr.com/pr-news/public-relations/how-to-create-a-pr-marketing-funnel/ https://www.agilitypr.com/pr-news/public-relations/how-to-cr... Nuclear should be a part of decarbonization, and you can search my comment history here to see I've said so for a long time. But the breezy 'I was misinformed!' tone of this article is PR because it dismisses rather than engages with criticisms of the nuclear industry. For contrast, consider that British Nuclear Fuels used the Irish Sea as a dumping ground for nuclear waste through the 1970s, becoming a significant bone of contention between the UK and the Republic of Ireland: https://cdn.thejournal.ie/media/2012/11/filedownload31607en.pdf https://cdn.thejournal.ie/media/2012/11/filedownload31607en.... Though practices have since changed and risks appear to have been mitigated, the substack article just ignores the uncomfortable reality of past abuses which should inform policy assessments. When someone tells a just-so story, even if you agree with it - in fact, especially then - you should question whether it's purpose is to educate or to manipulate.
Beldin 4y ago
> While these are reasons to be suspicious, they do not counter a single point she made in her article. True. > her logic and her facts were solid. I came to a somewhat different conclusion after reading that article: I felt it was sufficiently blatant, manipulative, and simply wrong that no one would fall for that. Ah well.
erpellan 4y ago
It takes a decade to bring a nuclear plant online, at astronomical cost. Instead, why not take that money and start building wind turbines, solar PV and grid-scale batteries? They can start generating (ie. delivering ROI) in a matter of months, be constructed incrementally and are cheaper per KWH.
- Accujack 4y ago
  Newer designs (existing reactors use 1970s technology) are cheaper and faster to build. Look up the concept of "Small Modular Reactors".
  - acdha 4y ago
    If Wikipedia isn’t missing some examples, there’s exactly one of those operating now in Russia. That seems like we might need more data points before proclaiming them cheaper and faster in the present tense. I’m totally on board for building more but it doesn’t seem like this is a solved problem yet.
timerol 4y ago
> I also learned that batteries cannot be recycled. That seems factually incorrect, and the anti-renewables paragraph was the thing that jumped out at me most, though the author claims not "to say that we should abandon renewables altogether, but to illustrate that all energy generation carries an environmental cost, and no solution is perfect."

lanstin 4y ago

If we had started a serious decarbonization 20 yeats ago, sure, but solar is now so cheap and easy that it will be harder for large scale nuclear to ramp up in time to matter. Maybe those container nuclear plants and maybe the last 20% of base capacit by 2040. But slowing solar in deference to nuclear would prolong the era of high atmospheric carbon.

nomel 4y ago
> so cheap and easy I think this is a little misleading, unless there' a good story for storage and long distance power transmission, which I haven't seen yet.
- dools 4y ago
  China’s doing amazing work on long distance transmission using high voltage DC: https://youtu.be/rThkjp-bp8M https://youtu.be/rThkjp-bp8M
Aloha 4y ago
I think we could build 100 plants in under a decade - it takes us being willing to build them assembly line like, meaning no more 'designed for the site' plants.
- philipkglass 4y ago
  The EPR and AP1000 reactor designs were supposed to be the end of "designed for the site" reactors, and they were. The same designs get built at different geographic locations. The problem is that they're no better at meeting cost and schedule targets than older reactor designs. They're still late and over budget. Can small modular reactors like those designed by NuScale do better? Maybe. But we're not going to find out sooner than 2030, which is when NuScale plans to have its first plant operational: https://www.nuscalepower.com/en/about https://www.nuscalepower.com/en/about
jabl 4y ago
How about we stop this ridiculous nuclear vs. renewables culture war, while fossil fuels are laughing all the way to the bank? Yes, we should build more solar (and even as a 'nuke bro', seeing solar prices drop at the rate they have is one of the genuinely positive news in the otherwise pretty dystopic climate change discourse), we should build more nuclear, we should build wind, we should build more hydro (though not that much potential left), we should build transmission, we should build storage.
tonyarkles 4y ago
> but solar is now so cheap and easy that it will be harder for large scale nuclear to ramp up in time to matter There's still the storage and base load problem. But I am 100% with you that we shouldn't slow solar in deference to nuclear; what we should be doing is mapping out what we want our next generation energy mix to look like (solar, wind, pumped storage, nuclear, geothermal, etc) on a regional basis, stop fucking around and arguing about it, and just get on with building it. I live in an area (Canadian prairies) where max energy consumption lines up with with minimum solar and wind production (-40C in December on a calm night). Even during the day, those calm bitterly cold days only have about 8 hours of sunlight from a sun that barely comes over the horizon. We're starting to build solar, we've had wind for a while, but even though we've committed to building SMR Nuclear, we're still in a situation where we've got coal and natural gas plants that are approaching EOL and they'll likely be replaced/retrofitted to burn more fossil fuels because we won't have any sufficiently reliable baseload ready.
- bryanlarsen 4y ago
  The Canadian prairies have fabulous solar production, even in the winter time. They also have a good amount of wind. And BC has tons of hydro. So build out enough renewables to supply BC when the sun is shining, maybe even enough to pump some water uphill, and then have BC hydro supply the prairies at other times.
  - tonyarkles 4y ago
    So I’m looking at this from the perspective of completely eliminating fossil fuels from my home. Not just electricity, but heating as well. I want solar to win, but here’s the numbers I get from looking at December/January this year (my bills don’t quite line up cleanly on month boundaries): 863 m^3 of natural gas -> ~9100 kWh of heating energy Assuming (generously) that I can get a COP of 3, even though that’s unrealistic at the miserable temperatures we had over the last few months, that’s ~3000 kWh for electric heat pump heat. Electricity was about 745kWh for the month, so 3750kWh total between heat pump heating and electricity. https://www.cer-rec.gc.ca/en/data-analysis/energy-markets/market-snapshots/2018/market-snapshot-which-cities-have-highest-solar-potential-in-canada.html https://www.cer-rec.gc.ca/en/data-analysis/energy-markets/ma... shows 3.5kWh/mo/m^2 for December and 4.4kWh/mo/m^2 for January. Let’s go with January to be generous. 3750kWh/mo / 4.4kWh/mo/m^2 = 852 m^2 = 9170 sq.ft. of solar required to cover both my electricity and heating needs. If I look at just electricity it’s a lot easier. 745 / 4.4 = 169m^2 = 1800 sq.ft. which is essentially the same footprint as the house. Heating completely kills it though and is, I suspect for most people, an even larger source of carbon than their electricity use. At least looking at those two bills, there’s an $88 carbon tax charge on the natural gas bill and only $8 on the electrical bill.
munk-a 4y ago
Both certainly have their place and the balance has definitely shifted from where it was thirty years ago - renewables are much more competitive now but I think Nuclear has a pretty critical role to play when it comes to surge capacity.

matthewdgreen 4y ago

The fossil fuel industry is not funding pro-nuclear arguments because they want to see 50% of their business lost to nuclear. They are not worried about losing huge profits to nuclear because from a purely economic perspective nuclear is not cost-competitive with fossil fuels. Hence it doesn’t pose a major threat, absent massive government-subsidized build-outs (which aren’t remotely on the table now.) The fossil fuel industry is funding pro-nuclear PR because they realize that renewables do pose a major economic threat to their business in the short term, since they are now cost-effective enough to replace vast chunks of their business (even if not 100% of it.) Pro-nuclear (and coincidentally anti-renewable) PR is the most efficient way to protect their business. If they can convince the public [incorrectly] that the best way to decarbonize rapidly is to abandon/block renewable build-outs because “nuclear is the only way” then they’ve paid enormous dividends to their shareholders. If your response to the above is “these random technical points are correct, what’s the problem”, then the problem is: those random technical points are largely a distraction from the important questions of how we decarbonize quickly. The fossil fuel industry understands this perfectly, because they have a lot of skin in the game.

robbintt 4y ago
Can you share the details about renewables being cost competitive with oil?
- robbintt 4y ago
  chat.openai.com claims it is true, albeit without specific sources: Yes, there is a significant amount of data and research that supports the increasing competitiveness of renewable energy compared to oil. Here are a few examples: The International Energy Agency (IEA) reported that in 2020, the average global cost of producing electricity from solar photovoltaic (PV) systems was lower than the cost of producing electricity from new fossil fuel plants, including coal and natural gas. A recent study by the consultancy firm Lazard found that the cost of utility-scale solar and wind energy in the United States has fallen significantly in recent years, and is now cheaper than the cost of power generated from coal and natural gas in most regions of the country. The US Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) reported that the levelized cost of energy (LCOE) for wind and solar energy in the United States has fallen by more than 50% over the past decade, and is projected to continue to decline in the future. According to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), the cost of solar PV and wind energy has declined by over 80% and 60%, respectively, since 2010. IRENA also found that renewable energy is now the cheapest source of new power generation in many countries, including Brazil, China, India, Mexico, and the United States. These are just a few examples, but they demonstrate the trend of declining costs for renewable energy and increasing competitiveness with oil and other fossil fuels.

anigbrowl 4y ago

https://www.agilitypr.com/pr-news/public-relations/how-to-create-a-pr-marketing-funnel/ https://www.agilitypr.com/pr-news/public-relations/how-to-cr... Nuclear should be a part of decarbonization, and you can search my comment history here to see I've said so for a long time. But the breezy 'I was misinformed!' tone of this article is PR because it dismisses rather than engages with criticisms of the nuclear industry. For contrast, consider that British Nuclear Fuels used the Irish Sea as a dumping ground for nuclear waste through the 1970s, becoming a significant bone of contention between the UK and the Republic of Ireland: https://cdn.thejournal.ie/media/2012/11/filedownload31607en.pdf https://cdn.thejournal.ie/media/2012/11/filedownload31607en.... Though practices have since changed and risks appear to have been mitigated, the substack article just ignores the uncomfortable reality of past abuses which should inform policy assessments. When someone tells a just-so story, even if you agree with it - in fact, especially then - you should question whether it's purpose is to educate or to manipulate.

Beldin 4y ago

> While these are reasons to be suspicious, they do not counter a single point she made in her article. True. > her logic and her facts were solid. I came to a somewhat different conclusion after reading that article: I felt it was sufficiently blatant, manipulative, and simply wrong that no one would fall for that. Ah well.

erpellan 4y ago

It takes a decade to bring a nuclear plant online, at astronomical cost. Instead, why not take that money and start building wind turbines, solar PV and grid-scale batteries? They can start generating (ie. delivering ROI) in a matter of months, be constructed incrementally and are cheaper per KWH.

Accujack 4y ago
Newer designs (existing reactors use 1970s technology) are cheaper and faster to build. Look up the concept of "Small Modular Reactors".
- acdha 4y ago
  If Wikipedia isn’t missing some examples, there’s exactly one of those operating now in Russia. That seems like we might need more data points before proclaiming them cheaper and faster in the present tense. I’m totally on board for building more but it doesn’t seem like this is a solved problem yet.

timerol 4y ago

> I also learned that batteries cannot be recycled. That seems factually incorrect, and the anti-renewables paragraph was the thing that jumped out at me most, though the author claims not "to say that we should abandon renewables altogether, but to illustrate that all energy generation carries an environmental cost, and no solution is perfect."