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Cue the atomic fanatics vs the renewable cult discussion. Has been discussed a thousand times on HN recently and it always seems both are just shouting how the

Cue the atomic fanatics vs the renewable cult discussion. Has been discussed a thousand times on HN recently and it always seems both are just shouting how the other side can not see the obvious superiority of their fav energy source. why cant we have a bit of both? renewable seems very good long term and nuclear is also nice for transition. but I wouldnt want to live next to one of those crappy leaky french reactors.

pydry 3y ago
Isnt this "argument to moderation"?
Kuinox 3y ago
> but I wouldnt want to live next to one of those crappy leaky french reactors. Well both side complain about truth and disinformation, and this affirmation is far from reality.
tstrimple 3y ago
Because our for-profit energy sector has decided not to invest in nuclear, even with government subsidies. This is basic business. Are you as the CEO of an energy company going to invest tens of billions of dollars into a plant that won't be operational for decades or are you just going to stand up more wind farms where you can start realizing a profit the next year? If you want nuclear, you simply cannot have an energy grid dependent on companies who's goal is profit. This is why all of the talk about how great nuclear is simply doesn't matter. The market doesn't support it and we're ruled by the markets.
dale_glass 3y ago
> why cant we have a bit of both? Because they're economically incompatible. Nuclear is very expensive to build, and wants to run 24/7 to offset costs. They also want to run continuously. The problem is that renewables are cheap, but intermittent. So take an economically rational marketplace. I can either buy the same amount of power for $1, or for $2, what do you think I'd choose? $1 of course. Power is power, I don't want to pay more than I must. So any time I can buy renewables for $1, nuclear makes no revenue. This pushes off its payoff into the future. This isn't a good situation to be in. Time goes by, components get older, people get impatient, more renewables keep getting built. Now you're a bank considering a loan for nuclear you think might be paid off in 20 years. Or if renewables keep growing, maybe in 40. Or if they really take off, maybe never. Risking billions that way doesn't sound enticing, now does it? If nuclear made money we wouldn't be seeing these blog posts show up over and over. Money solves many problems and greases many palms. If nuclear was profitable, every other problem would be solvable. Not enough safety? Money can buy that. Too close to people? Money can put a plant further away. Legal problems? Money pays for lawyers. The logical end state of all this seems to be that renewables kill off the profitability of nuclear badly enough that nobody builds it (relatively speaking). Eventually the grid destabilizes and this forces urgent measures to shore things up. The final state I imagine is a very renewable-heavy grid, after a period of chaos in the middle.
- RandallBrown 3y ago
  The average age of nuclear plants in the US is 40 years old. I can't believe that modern nuclear plants wouldn't be dramatically more profitable. Even if they weren't, it would be worth government incentives to prevent grid destabilization as wind and solar take over as the main sources.
  - KennyBlanken 3y ago
    Nuclear plants aren't used for grid stabilization, because they can't be. They take hours to days to change power levels. Fast-responding natural gas plants are used for rapid response to changing load. Hydro (storage or regular) as well. More recently, energy storage systems like the huge system Tesla deployed in Australia. If I had a dollar for every HN commenter that doesn't understand the basics of grids and generation but considers themselves an expert in how awesome nuclear is...
  - dale_glass 3y ago
    > I can't believe that modern nuclear plants wouldn't be dramatically more profitable. I can. First, nuclear doesn't always get cheaper. Chernobyl happened, how do we fix that? Containment building. That costs money. Fukushima happened, how do we fix that? Better backup plans. That costs money. Renewables skip this completely. Second, renewables also benefit from progress, but a lot more. Solar and wind are mass industry production. Each iteration is cheap. Experimentation is cheap and safe and done all over the world. Production is highly amenable towards automation. Nuclear isn't. So we have factories pumping out millions of solar cells, but we don't have factories pumping out millions of nuclear vessels, because nuclear plants are rare, one off projects that don't justify mass production, and are too rare to have a robust industry and lots of competition. > Even if they weren't, it would be worth government incentives to prevent grid destabilization as wind and solar take over as the main sources. Yeah, but there are other options that can be used. Eg, yeah, we can spend decades building nuclear and waiting until it starts to work, or we can do things like improving the grid transmission which works out to simple tasks that are doable much faster and amenable to mass production. Same goes for say, pumped hydro and battery storage. Those things can already be done, and you can start doing it much faster than you'll get nuclear built.
NineStarPoint 3y ago
I feel like most people I know who push Nuclear are already arguing for the use of both, and it’s the renewable side that argues that Nuclear is too dangerous to use or not necessary. Or have you come across a lot of Nuclear proponents arguing that we shouldn’t be using solar energy at all?
- wolfram74 3y ago
  I was very pro nuclear a few years ago, at this point solar is so far up the learning curve and experiences so many economy of scale benefits, it's really hard imagining what kind of regulatory framework would be able to make it economically competitive. We collectively in the form of consumers and governments decide how expensive a thing is, and for 50 years, thanks in part to a lot of coal lobby money, decided nuclear should be more expensive than coal, so we got all the radiation /and/ all the CO2 associated with coal power plants, we can't change that history at this point.
  - Gwypaas 3y ago
    The thing missing from your conclusion is simply combined cycle gas plants. Take an airplane engine, benifiting from that huge industry and add a tiny steam side and you have something way smaller, cheaper and more efficient than any coal plant. Nuclear is a super complicated coal plant regarding how the thermal engine works. Pure steam plants have simply been obsolete the last 30 years, and renewables are making it even worse by outcompeting gas plants.
- runarberg 3y ago
  The author of this article for one is someone who does not believe renewables should coexist with anything. Preferring continued use of coal over expanding renewables: > Possibly, wind, solar, and utility-scale batteries can play some role in consistent electricity. Until that takes place coal, natural gas, and nuclear are the only sources of energy to electricity that provide this benefit for grid stabilization and human longevity. https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/coal-versus-wind-renewables-and-electrical-grids-who-wins-179430 https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/coal-versus-wind-rene...
- 3y ago
aclatuts 3y ago
I feel like the oil industry has astroturfed nuclear energy, and NIMBYs love it because they know there can not be any significant nuclear capacity that will come online until 2030 at the earliest. Which is my biggest problem with pro nuclear arguments.
- runarberg 3y ago
  I don’t think you are wrong. This article in particular is written by a consultant that works for a lobby group who’s largest funders include energy companies with large fossil fuel portfolio, looking at the author’s twitter profile and writing history revels he’s only real concern with coal seems to be that China is doing it but not USA (there is also a bunch of FUD spreading around renewables, climate denialism, and conspiracy theories, including the great reset).
epistasis 3y ago
No, we can't have a bit of both, because despite heroic efforts with tens of billions of dollars being dumped into nuclear since 2008, it hasn't produced. We tried four reactors back then, using a new regulatory process that was supposed to speed construction and reduce costs. Instead, costs and timelines ballooned 3x. Two of the four reactors were abandoned half-way through construction, resulting in rate payers holding the bag for billions of dollars and no Wh delivered to the grid. Executives are being criminally prosecuted for fraud. The other two reactors are supposed to complete late this year, but I don't think any honest person should rely on such timelines when they inevitably slip every single time. Nuclear is not something we can realiably build. We are bad at big construction jobs to begin with. But when you add in training up massive new workforces for extremely specialized welding or concrete pour skills, it's hugely inefficient because we don't know how to utilize this labor effectively. People sit idle for months, waiting for their chance to work. Just a gigantic clusterfuck of logistical (mis)management. And construction productivity has stagnated since the 70s, while manufacturing productivity has gone through the roof. We should use our limited construction capacity to build factories to manufacture things, not spend it on nuclear reactors. $15B spent on solar or battery production facilities will churn out many many GW year after year of additional capacity, whereas it only buys a single GW of nuclear. And that's in the best case scenario where we actually finish the damn reactor...
- scythe 3y ago
  >We tried four reactors back then, using a new regulatory process that was supposed to speed construction and reduce costs. Instead, costs and timelines ballooned 3x. Two of the four reactors were abandoned half-way through construction, resulting in rate payers holding the bag for billions of dollars and no Wh delivered to the grid. These were the Westinghouse AP1000 units to be installed in Georgia and South Carolina, contract beginning in 2008. It's worth noting that four other AP1000 units also from Westinghouse were built and installed in China, beginning construction in 2009 and entering into operation in 2018. The total cost of both systems was slightly more than half the cost of the failed project in South Carolina. >And construction productivity has stagnated since the 70s, while manufacturing productivity has gone through the roof. You seem to be arguing that we shouldn't bother building major projects, but I think this implies the opposite: we need to find ways to fix the construction industry. The US is currently facing a situation where cities can't grow like they used to; growing cities quickly become unaffordable, where by contrast Chicago sustained rapid growth for decades before the Great Depression.
Manuel_D 3y ago
The issue is that nuclear largely makes renewables redundant. Nuclear is just as cheap to run 24/7 as it is to run half the time, unlike fossil fuels. Right now, the way we're using intermittent sources is to shut fossil fuel plants off when renewables are producing and turn them back on when they are not producing. Intermittent sources are essentially supplementing a grid based in fossil fuels. If we use nuclear plants to fill in the gaps in intermittent sources' production curves, then we'd have already built enough nuclear capacity to run the grid without intermittent sources so we'd just run nuclear plants at full capacity and eliminate the need for intermittent sources.

pydry 3y ago

Isnt this "argument to moderation"?

Kuinox 3y ago

> but I wouldnt want to live next to one of those crappy leaky french reactors. Well both side complain about truth and disinformation, and this affirmation is far from reality.

tstrimple 3y ago

Because our for-profit energy sector has decided not to invest in nuclear, even with government subsidies. This is basic business. Are you as the CEO of an energy company going to invest tens of billions of dollars into a plant that won't be operational for decades or are you just going to stand up more wind farms where you can start realizing a profit the next year? If you want nuclear, you simply cannot have an energy grid dependent on companies who's goal is profit. This is why all of the talk about how great nuclear is simply doesn't matter. The market doesn't support it and we're ruled by the markets.

dale_glass 3y ago

> why cant we have a bit of both? Because they're economically incompatible. Nuclear is very expensive to build, and wants to run 24/7 to offset costs. They also want to run continuously. The problem is that renewables are cheap, but intermittent. So take an economically rational marketplace. I can either buy the same amount of power for $1, or for $2, what do you think I'd choose? $1 of course. Power is power, I don't want to pay more than I must. So any time I can buy renewables for $1, nuclear makes no revenue. This pushes off its payoff into the future. This isn't a good situation to be in. Time goes by, components get older, people get impatient, more renewables keep getting built. Now you're a bank considering a loan for nuclear you think might be paid off in 20 years. Or if renewables keep growing, maybe in 40. Or if they really take off, maybe never. Risking billions that way doesn't sound enticing, now does it? If nuclear made money we wouldn't be seeing these blog posts show up over and over. Money solves many problems and greases many palms. If nuclear was profitable, every other problem would be solvable. Not enough safety? Money can buy that. Too close to people? Money can put a plant further away. Legal problems? Money pays for lawyers. The logical end state of all this seems to be that renewables kill off the profitability of nuclear badly enough that nobody builds it (relatively speaking). Eventually the grid destabilizes and this forces urgent measures to shore things up. The final state I imagine is a very renewable-heavy grid, after a period of chaos in the middle.

RandallBrown 3y ago
The average age of nuclear plants in the US is 40 years old. I can't believe that modern nuclear plants wouldn't be dramatically more profitable. Even if they weren't, it would be worth government incentives to prevent grid destabilization as wind and solar take over as the main sources.
- KennyBlanken 3y ago
  Nuclear plants aren't used for grid stabilization, because they can't be. They take hours to days to change power levels. Fast-responding natural gas plants are used for rapid response to changing load. Hydro (storage or regular) as well. More recently, energy storage systems like the huge system Tesla deployed in Australia. If I had a dollar for every HN commenter that doesn't understand the basics of grids and generation but considers themselves an expert in how awesome nuclear is...
- dale_glass 3y ago
  > I can't believe that modern nuclear plants wouldn't be dramatically more profitable. I can. First, nuclear doesn't always get cheaper. Chernobyl happened, how do we fix that? Containment building. That costs money. Fukushima happened, how do we fix that? Better backup plans. That costs money. Renewables skip this completely. Second, renewables also benefit from progress, but a lot more. Solar and wind are mass industry production. Each iteration is cheap. Experimentation is cheap and safe and done all over the world. Production is highly amenable towards automation. Nuclear isn't. So we have factories pumping out millions of solar cells, but we don't have factories pumping out millions of nuclear vessels, because nuclear plants are rare, one off projects that don't justify mass production, and are too rare to have a robust industry and lots of competition. > Even if they weren't, it would be worth government incentives to prevent grid destabilization as wind and solar take over as the main sources. Yeah, but there are other options that can be used. Eg, yeah, we can spend decades building nuclear and waiting until it starts to work, or we can do things like improving the grid transmission which works out to simple tasks that are doable much faster and amenable to mass production. Same goes for say, pumped hydro and battery storage. Those things can already be done, and you can start doing it much faster than you'll get nuclear built.

NineStarPoint 3y ago

I feel like most people I know who push Nuclear are already arguing for the use of both, and it’s the renewable side that argues that Nuclear is too dangerous to use or not necessary. Or have you come across a lot of Nuclear proponents arguing that we shouldn’t be using solar energy at all?

wolfram74 3y ago
I was very pro nuclear a few years ago, at this point solar is so far up the learning curve and experiences so many economy of scale benefits, it's really hard imagining what kind of regulatory framework would be able to make it economically competitive. We collectively in the form of consumers and governments decide how expensive a thing is, and for 50 years, thanks in part to a lot of coal lobby money, decided nuclear should be more expensive than coal, so we got all the radiation /and/ all the CO2 associated with coal power plants, we can't change that history at this point.
- Gwypaas 3y ago
  The thing missing from your conclusion is simply combined cycle gas plants. Take an airplane engine, benifiting from that huge industry and add a tiny steam side and you have something way smaller, cheaper and more efficient than any coal plant. Nuclear is a super complicated coal plant regarding how the thermal engine works. Pure steam plants have simply been obsolete the last 30 years, and renewables are making it even worse by outcompeting gas plants.
runarberg 3y ago
The author of this article for one is someone who does not believe renewables should coexist with anything. Preferring continued use of coal over expanding renewables: > Possibly, wind, solar, and utility-scale batteries can play some role in consistent electricity. Until that takes place coal, natural gas, and nuclear are the only sources of energy to electricity that provide this benefit for grid stabilization and human longevity. https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/coal-versus-wind-renewables-and-electrical-grids-who-wins-179430 https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/coal-versus-wind-rene...
3y ago

aclatuts 3y ago

I feel like the oil industry has astroturfed nuclear energy, and NIMBYs love it because they know there can not be any significant nuclear capacity that will come online until 2030 at the earliest. Which is my biggest problem with pro nuclear arguments.

runarberg 3y ago
I don’t think you are wrong. This article in particular is written by a consultant that works for a lobby group who’s largest funders include energy companies with large fossil fuel portfolio, looking at the author’s twitter profile and writing history revels he’s only real concern with coal seems to be that China is doing it but not USA (there is also a bunch of FUD spreading around renewables, climate denialism, and conspiracy theories, including the great reset).

epistasis 3y ago

No, we can't have a bit of both, because despite heroic efforts with tens of billions of dollars being dumped into nuclear since 2008, it hasn't produced. We tried four reactors back then, using a new regulatory process that was supposed to speed construction and reduce costs. Instead, costs and timelines ballooned 3x. Two of the four reactors were abandoned half-way through construction, resulting in rate payers holding the bag for billions of dollars and no Wh delivered to the grid. Executives are being criminally prosecuted for fraud. The other two reactors are supposed to complete late this year, but I don't think any honest person should rely on such timelines when they inevitably slip every single time. Nuclear is not something we can realiably build. We are bad at big construction jobs to begin with. But when you add in training up massive new workforces for extremely specialized welding or concrete pour skills, it's hugely inefficient because we don't know how to utilize this labor effectively. People sit idle for months, waiting for their chance to work. Just a gigantic clusterfuck of logistical (mis)management. And construction productivity has stagnated since the 70s, while manufacturing productivity has gone through the roof. We should use our limited construction capacity to build factories to manufacture things, not spend it on nuclear reactors. $15B spent on solar or battery production facilities will churn out many many GW year after year of additional capacity, whereas it only buys a single GW of nuclear. And that's in the best case scenario where we actually finish the damn reactor...

scythe 3y ago
>We tried four reactors back then, using a new regulatory process that was supposed to speed construction and reduce costs. Instead, costs and timelines ballooned 3x. Two of the four reactors were abandoned half-way through construction, resulting in rate payers holding the bag for billions of dollars and no Wh delivered to the grid. These were the Westinghouse AP1000 units to be installed in Georgia and South Carolina, contract beginning in 2008. It's worth noting that four other AP1000 units also from Westinghouse were built and installed in China, beginning construction in 2009 and entering into operation in 2018. The total cost of both systems was slightly more than half the cost of the failed project in South Carolina. >And construction productivity has stagnated since the 70s, while manufacturing productivity has gone through the roof. You seem to be arguing that we shouldn't bother building major projects, but I think this implies the opposite: we need to find ways to fix the construction industry. The US is currently facing a situation where cities can't grow like they used to; growing cities quickly become unaffordable, where by contrast Chicago sustained rapid growth for decades before the Great Depression.

Manuel_D 3y ago

The issue is that nuclear largely makes renewables redundant. Nuclear is just as cheap to run 24/7 as it is to run half the time, unlike fossil fuels. Right now, the way we're using intermittent sources is to shut fossil fuel plants off when renewables are producing and turn them back on when they are not producing. Intermittent sources are essentially supplementing a grid based in fossil fuels. If we use nuclear plants to fill in the gaps in intermittent sources' production curves, then we'd have already built enough nuclear capacity to run the grid without intermittent sources so we'd just run nuclear plants at full capacity and eliminate the need for intermittent sources.