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Well, I largely think that NIMBY is still at play. If you are a senator you have nothing to gain with a nuclear reactor in your district. Compare this to Japan

Well, I largely think that NIMBY is still at play. If you are a senator you have nothing to gain with a nuclear reactor in your district. Compare this to Japan that doesn't have ridiculously cheap natural gas, and yet is still doubling down on nuclear despite Fukushima and constant protest. I think renewables are amazing and have a long way still to go, but I look at the current energy mix and it's hard to see a 100% renewables grid in our lifetime with foreseeable technology.

AlanSE 4y ago
If you take the climate science seriously, then you really must accept net-zero by 2050. After that, maybe net-negative. Assuming you're an educated person, the question we must ask is if natural gas is viable to fill in the gaps from renewables in 2050. Given the net-zero requirement, that means a natural gas plant that puts its CO2 emissions back in the ground. That can make sense with direct carbon-capture and storage, but the problem is high capital costs totally undermine the low capacity factor which is why we use it today. If we go natural gas CCS vs nuclear in 2050, maybe it's a tossup, but they're BOTH poorly suited for the job, if we're talking about solar at >50%. Daily storage will be solved fairly well by then, and seasonal energy storage will be the challenge. But nuclear is baseload. There are interesting ideas like running nuclear to heat a vat of salt which is used as a means of energy storage so that it would work in a grid with lots of renewables. But that's peak smoothing over several days. Seasonal thermal storage has been written about but is basically crackpot stuff. So I've kind of come around to seasonal storage of green hydrogen. The technology is at least focused on the right problem. Duration of storage and energy density arguments favor chemical energy, and low capital costs per nameplate capacity are the primary driver.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  Solar electricity is a cheaper and less mining intensive source of heat than nuclear thermal energy. Burning green hydrogen is also largely not going to be needed outside of emergency conditions. Capturing the many thousands of twh per year of waste stream methane is essential anyway and can easily cover what hydro and a few hours of battery cannot.
spopejoy 4y ago
> Well, I largely think that NIMBY is still at play Citation needed? The argument that "those gosh-darn environmentalists ruined nuclear" have been countered repeatedly by simply focusing on the huge economic headwinds facing any nuclear project, while renewables gallop into an ever-cheaper future. Even making the claim that environmental activism resulted in overaggressive regulation is hard to back up, since agencies like the NRC and IAEA are made up of mainly nuclear industry figures who are hardly anti-nuke.

AlanSE 4y ago

If you take the climate science seriously, then you really must accept net-zero by 2050. After that, maybe net-negative. Assuming you're an educated person, the question we must ask is if natural gas is viable to fill in the gaps from renewables in 2050. Given the net-zero requirement, that means a natural gas plant that puts its CO2 emissions back in the ground. That can make sense with direct carbon-capture and storage, but the problem is high capital costs totally undermine the low capacity factor which is why we use it today. If we go natural gas CCS vs nuclear in 2050, maybe it's a tossup, but they're BOTH poorly suited for the job, if we're talking about solar at >50%. Daily storage will be solved fairly well by then, and seasonal energy storage will be the challenge. But nuclear is baseload. There are interesting ideas like running nuclear to heat a vat of salt which is used as a means of energy storage so that it would work in a grid with lots of renewables. But that's peak smoothing over several days. Seasonal thermal storage has been written about but is basically crackpot stuff. So I've kind of come around to seasonal storage of green hydrogen. The technology is at least focused on the right problem. Duration of storage and energy density arguments favor chemical energy, and low capital costs per nameplate capacity are the primary driver.

Schroedingersat 4y ago
Solar electricity is a cheaper and less mining intensive source of heat than nuclear thermal energy. Burning green hydrogen is also largely not going to be needed outside of emergency conditions. Capturing the many thousands of twh per year of waste stream methane is essential anyway and can easily cover what hydro and a few hours of battery cannot.

spopejoy 4y ago

> Well, I largely think that NIMBY is still at play Citation needed? The argument that "those gosh-darn environmentalists ruined nuclear" have been countered repeatedly by simply focusing on the huge economic headwinds facing any nuclear project, while renewables gallop into an ever-cheaper future. Even making the claim that environmental activism resulted in overaggressive regulation is hard to back up, since agencies like the NRC and IAEA are made up of mainly nuclear industry figures who are hardly anti-nuke.