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I'm a fan of nuclear, and based on proximity [1] the power I get is nuclear. But the chances of the US, or practically anywhere really, building substantial ne

I'm a fan of nuclear, and based on proximity [1] the power I get is nuclear. But the chances of the US, or practically anywhere really, building substantial new nuclear facilities is close to zero. Wind and solar are plentiful, cheap , quick to build, and offer immediate returns. If i have a few billion to invest I'd pick one of these over nuclear. Basically wind and solar don't rely on foreign countries for fuel, are simple to run maintain, replace etc. In the case of wind land use is minimal. Solar can be deployed in already-urban environments. Environmental damage from catastrophic failure is basically zero. Of course there is the storage problem, but there are various potential solutions to that. Pumped hydro, compressed air, hydrogen production, and others. I expect more innovation in this space. Don't get me wrong, nuclear is safe, clean(ish), and provides a good base load. But regulation, planning, costs, and all the other layers make actual building of them very unattractive. I'm not confident they'll ever see the light of day. [1] yeah, I know that's not how it works.

devjab 3y ago
I’m not a fan of nuclear power. I do work in an investment bank that’s currently on the top 10 of organisations for building the most solar plants in Europe, so there is that disclaimer. That’s not why I’m against nuclear power though, I’m against it because of the risk, but I’m not sure that is an issue in a country as large as the US. Depending of course on where you build the plants. If we build one in Denmark, and it went wrong, then our entire country could end up uninhabitable. And I know the plants are very safe, but look at what’s going on in the Ukraine, or how Russia blew up the gas lines recently. Again something that is probably less of an issue within the USA. So I think countries like the US should probably do a nuclear renaissance, while other countries should stick with renewables. I wouldn’t worry so much about the storage issue. We currently build and deploy batteries that are inside shipping containers, effectively solving our storage issues. It should be noted that “our” storage issues aren’t the same as the grids issues, ours is intended to be able to store excess power. Basically you cannot sell power when the grid is full, and currently that means solar plants dump it into nothing. The batteries allow us to store it for months. Of course we also use it to sell power at better prices, but I did say we were an investment bank. Battery tech is only going to improve. It’s sort of ironic that Tesla was so early with some of the storage solutions that other companies actually build today, but sometimes it’s not a good idea to be a first mover I guess? The big push is largely funded by countries like Germany going for full renewables of course, and Tesla didn’t have that at the time.
- Incipient 3y ago
  >I wouldn’t worry so much about the storage issue. We currently build and deploy batteries that are inside shipping containers, effectively solving our storage issues. Sorry but that conclusion is incorrect. Batteries, in their current lithium form, are absolutely not suitable for gridscale storage. They're far too expensive. In Australia a $100 million battery, if it could discharge at an infinite rate, could only meet the demand of a city of 2 million people for about 48 seconds. Lithium batteries are for grid stabilisation - the absorb short term spikes in demand and generation.
- bboygravity 3y ago
  > The big push is largely funded by countries like Germany going for full renewables. Funny that you quote the country with the worse energy policy in the world as a good example to follow. Germany has some of the highest CO2 emissions per capita in the EU, has the highest kWh production price in the EU, imports tons of cheap clean nuclear energy from France to meet depend (exactly because they have renewables and there is no proper affordable storage technology that exists in the real world). They have a chancelor who was/is openly in bed with Putin (Schroder if you want more info) who basically helped the Russians by making Germany dependent on their gas by making Germany switch to non-continuous energy sources (wind / solar, gas falls in for "the battery" that doesnt exist). All on purpose: got a nice "job" at Gazprom afterwards as a reward. Now that the gas lines to Russia are gone Germany is importing natural gas in ships from the US. Very green! To fill in the other gaps they reopened their coal mines and started burning more coal once more. They closed their last nuclear power plant in the past year as well, so there will only be more of that. And that's your good example to follow? I would not invest at your investment bank needless to say.
  - haizhung 3y ago
    Germany is not the country with the highest co2/person in the EU. [1] Where did you get this information from? Further, comparing electricity prices in Germany to France is a moot point, because France has a fixed consumer price and pays the rest using taxes. More further, France is importing more electricity from Germany than Germany is from France. Ironically, because their nuclear reactors are failing. [2] So most of your points are probably false. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions_per_capita https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_... [2] https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/even-crisis-germany-extends-power-exports-neighbours-2023-01-05/#:~:text=Due%20to%20the%20technical%20problems,of%20national%20usage%20by%201%25 https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/even-crisis-germany-....
lucubratory 3y ago
China is building a lot of new nuclear, multiple new nuclear plants every year comparable to coal power plants, so not just more than anywhere else but a large number in absolute terms. Granted, they are also building more renewable power than everywhere else, but they certainly see some significant economic/structural value in nuclear despite having a lot of renewable energy.
- nxm 3y ago
  they are also building a ton of coal powered plants as we speak
  - lucubratory 3y ago
    I said that in my comment. Was it unclear?
- Phurist 3y ago
  Sure, how about we compare building regulations with China as well ? They can get away with a much simpler and also much riskier projects
  - lucubratory 3y ago
    Sure, but there's no evidence that their nuclear power plants are any more likely to fail or less safe than ours ('ours' rhetorically in reference to the West, there are no nuclear reactors in my country).
lrem 3y ago
The problem with storage is that the only method with significant production mileage is pumped hydro. This undoes a few of the stated benefits of renewables. You need to use significant land where you exterminate current nature. Catastrophic failure is a major ecological disaster for a large area… And actually hydro is the second in death toll after coal, isn’t it? Worst of all, you’re limited geographically on where and how much you can put.
- asmala 3y ago
  Hydro is indeed 1-2 orders of magnitude worse than other renewables on a deaths per TWh basis, but still 2-25× safer than all fossil fuels. (Source: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-production-per-twh https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-p...)
  - hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
    Even that statistic vastly overstates the risk of hydro. From elsewhere on the ourworldindata site: > This rate is almost completely dominated by one event: the Banqiao Dam Failure in China in 1975. It killed approximately 171,000 people. Otherwise, hydropower was very safe, with a death rate of just 0.04 deaths per TWh – comparable to nuclear, solar, and wind. The Banqiao Dam failure had much more to do the 1970s Chinese Communist Party incompetence and the Cultural Revolution than anything specific to water power.
- MattGaiser 3y ago
  > And actually hydro is the second in death toll after coal, isn’t it? It appears to be second in death toll among renewables, after biomass. https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy
  - eastbound 3y ago
    They only didn’t count people falling from the roof as cost of solar energy. For a country of 40m inhabitants, it’s about 1 per year, and that’s huge: > Solar: In an average year nobody would die – only every 50 years would someone die. It’s like saying Chernobyl only caused 32 deaths because the other ones were outside the plant.
jvmfjvfjvf 3y ago
Contrary to what you may think, wind and solar are not cheap. Land is very expensive. You would even increase housing costs due to land being used for energy instead of new home construction.
- MattGaiser 3y ago
  Why would there be competition between solar/wind and housing for land? For what reason would you need (or even desire) to locate solar farms and wind turbines on the edge of large cities?
  - jvmfjvfjvf 3y ago
    Wind farms are built on top of land that could be used to build more housing. There's a huge wind farm in the the Bay Area (Altamont Pass) that is used for wind farms that could have been used to build a ton of more houses.
    - MattGaiser 3y ago
      There is plenty of land nowhere near cities if that is your concern. If housing could even be built there at all given the terrain. There are very few on most similar terrain in the Bay Area and there are no wind farms blocking development there. Why haven't houses been built?
      - jvmfjvfjvf 3y ago
        This is not quite true. The biggest American wind farm (Altamont Pass) is right next to Silicon Valley in the Bay Area. The 2-9 ones are between 20-50 miles from cities. You mention these "rural" areas as if nothing would be built there. These areas are typically developed over 10-50 years, just like the Bay Area when that wind farm was built.
- edrxty 3y ago
  This might be a crazy idea, but what if we put the housing underneath the solar? One might even call it putting the solar on top of the houses?
Roark66 3y ago
Finland has just (in last year) commissioned a huge nuclear power plant. It's true it took them 14 years longer than expected (they started in 2005). However, there are places in the world (Japan) where a modern design nuclear power plant is built in 3.5 years. South Korea is very close behind. And it's not just a one off. Japan built 8 new nuclear power plants and South Korea built 13 in last 20 years. These plants are every bit as safe as plants built elsewhere, perhaps even safer as they're new designs. This suggest it is not technology that's holding us(US and majority of EU) back, but bad project management practices. We too could have a new plant built in few years. Add to this SMRs (small modular reactors) which are hopefully becoming available in next 2'years and anyone that can't see nuclear is the only hope for decarbonisation is misinformed. Then take a country like Germany that has recently shut down perfectly working nuclear power plants and opened the first new brown coal burning plant in Europe in a very long time (also they activated many others that were doing very little before). I don't know if this is irony or what, but when "green" efforts make an industrialised country give up nuclear and switch to coal there is something seriously wrong. Also few words on the type of coal they burn there. There are (broadly) two types of coal. There is coal proper (resembles black stone, mined in deep mines, high quality, little sulphur and oil/tar content) and there is lignite. A brown smelly thing that crumbles when you squeeze it leaving a tarry residue everywhere. It's "mined" from just below the surface by gargantuan machines that destroy thousands and thousands of hectares of land leaving a moonscape behind. Why is it used? Because when you build your power plant next to a source of lignite the electricity is really cheap. This kind of "coal" emits a lot more pollutants when burned. This can be mitigated somewhat by using modern tech, but still it should be our last power source choice. Not first. If the people say no to nuclear they'll not get renewable for base load, but lignite burning plants. BTW, CO2 is not really the worst these plants emit. They emit tiny particulates that get in your lungs. Incidence of child asthma is a lot higher near such plants as well as many other diseases.
- __m 3y ago
  Fukushima Daiichi was built in just 5 years and see how that went.
- bugglebeetle 3y ago
  > This suggest it is not technology that's holding us(US and majority of EU) back, but bad project management practices. We too could have a new plant built in few years. The US demolishes any and all of its state capacity anytime a company calls the congressman they bribe to complain that the government doing (insert project here) intrudes on their right to make money. That’s the difference. The Navy has been running nuclear power plants underwater for 50+ years at this point, but having a state organization that builds and maintains energy infrastructure would compete with all the existing energy sector interests, so it can’t be allowed to happen. Contrast this to China, where businesses do not have authority to override the state and this difference is obvious.
madaxe_again 3y ago
Wind? Solar? Coal and gas are even cheaper to build and run, and the lobby is much stronger. Far more likely they’ll open new coal plants than nuclear, wind, or solar - nuclear and renewables are anathema at the polling booth, whereas the status quo is a safe bet. 40% of Americans do not believe in climate change, and the 60% that do include a good chunk who are not yet of voting age, and people who are otherwise unable to vote - and on a district by district basis, only about 35% of districts believe in climate change. So, coal. It’ll be coal.
- hef19898 3y ago
  The cheapest forms of electricity, measured in costs per kWh from project auctions (as in: country A wants plant of whatever form, various companies provide their bids and the cheapest offer, per kWh, wins) are solar and wind. Since 2018 at least, that coal comes usually next is simply the fault of dirt cheap, and wastly under priced, CO2 certificates. And regardless of what politians say, when something is a good investment, somebody does it. Hence the continious growth of solar, wind seems to run into way more hurdles, from regulation over NIMBY to technical issues.
- marssaxman 3y ago
  > Coal and gas are even cheaper to build and run That's not really true anymore: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/levelized-cost-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/levelized-cost-of-energy

devjab 3y ago

I’m not a fan of nuclear power. I do work in an investment bank that’s currently on the top 10 of organisations for building the most solar plants in Europe, so there is that disclaimer. That’s not why I’m against nuclear power though, I’m against it because of the risk, but I’m not sure that is an issue in a country as large as the US. Depending of course on where you build the plants. If we build one in Denmark, and it went wrong, then our entire country could end up uninhabitable. And I know the plants are very safe, but look at what’s going on in the Ukraine, or how Russia blew up the gas lines recently. Again something that is probably less of an issue within the USA. So I think countries like the US should probably do a nuclear renaissance, while other countries should stick with renewables. I wouldn’t worry so much about the storage issue. We currently build and deploy batteries that are inside shipping containers, effectively solving our storage issues. It should be noted that “our” storage issues aren’t the same as the grids issues, ours is intended to be able to store excess power. Basically you cannot sell power when the grid is full, and currently that means solar plants dump it into nothing. The batteries allow us to store it for months. Of course we also use it to sell power at better prices, but I did say we were an investment bank. Battery tech is only going to improve. It’s sort of ironic that Tesla was so early with some of the storage solutions that other companies actually build today, but sometimes it’s not a good idea to be a first mover I guess? The big push is largely funded by countries like Germany going for full renewables of course, and Tesla didn’t have that at the time.

Incipient 3y ago
>I wouldn’t worry so much about the storage issue. We currently build and deploy batteries that are inside shipping containers, effectively solving our storage issues. Sorry but that conclusion is incorrect. Batteries, in their current lithium form, are absolutely not suitable for gridscale storage. They're far too expensive. In Australia a $100 million battery, if it could discharge at an infinite rate, could only meet the demand of a city of 2 million people for about 48 seconds. Lithium batteries are for grid stabilisation - the absorb short term spikes in demand and generation.
bboygravity 3y ago
> The big push is largely funded by countries like Germany going for full renewables. Funny that you quote the country with the worse energy policy in the world as a good example to follow. Germany has some of the highest CO2 emissions per capita in the EU, has the highest kWh production price in the EU, imports tons of cheap clean nuclear energy from France to meet depend (exactly because they have renewables and there is no proper affordable storage technology that exists in the real world). They have a chancelor who was/is openly in bed with Putin (Schroder if you want more info) who basically helped the Russians by making Germany dependent on their gas by making Germany switch to non-continuous energy sources (wind / solar, gas falls in for "the battery" that doesnt exist). All on purpose: got a nice "job" at Gazprom afterwards as a reward. Now that the gas lines to Russia are gone Germany is importing natural gas in ships from the US. Very green! To fill in the other gaps they reopened their coal mines and started burning more coal once more. They closed their last nuclear power plant in the past year as well, so there will only be more of that. And that's your good example to follow? I would not invest at your investment bank needless to say.
- haizhung 3y ago
  Germany is not the country with the highest co2/person in the EU. [1] Where did you get this information from? Further, comparing electricity prices in Germany to France is a moot point, because France has a fixed consumer price and pays the rest using taxes. More further, France is importing more electricity from Germany than Germany is from France. Ironically, because their nuclear reactors are failing. [2] So most of your points are probably false. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions_per_capita https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_... [2] https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/even-crisis-germany-extends-power-exports-neighbours-2023-01-05/#:~:text=Due%20to%20the%20technical%20problems,of%20national%20usage%20by%201%25 https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/even-crisis-germany-....

lucubratory 3y ago

China is building a lot of new nuclear, multiple new nuclear plants every year comparable to coal power plants, so not just more than anywhere else but a large number in absolute terms. Granted, they are also building more renewable power than everywhere else, but they certainly see some significant economic/structural value in nuclear despite having a lot of renewable energy.

nxm 3y ago
they are also building a ton of coal powered plants as we speak
- lucubratory 3y ago
  I said that in my comment. Was it unclear?
Phurist 3y ago
Sure, how about we compare building regulations with China as well ? They can get away with a much simpler and also much riskier projects
- lucubratory 3y ago
  Sure, but there's no evidence that their nuclear power plants are any more likely to fail or less safe than ours ('ours' rhetorically in reference to the West, there are no nuclear reactors in my country).

lrem 3y ago

The problem with storage is that the only method with significant production mileage is pumped hydro. This undoes a few of the stated benefits of renewables. You need to use significant land where you exterminate current nature. Catastrophic failure is a major ecological disaster for a large area… And actually hydro is the second in death toll after coal, isn’t it? Worst of all, you’re limited geographically on where and how much you can put.

asmala 3y ago
Hydro is indeed 1-2 orders of magnitude worse than other renewables on a deaths per TWh basis, but still 2-25× safer than all fossil fuels. (Source: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-production-per-twh https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-p...)
- hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
  Even that statistic vastly overstates the risk of hydro. From elsewhere on the ourworldindata site: > This rate is almost completely dominated by one event: the Banqiao Dam Failure in China in 1975. It killed approximately 171,000 people. Otherwise, hydropower was very safe, with a death rate of just 0.04 deaths per TWh – comparable to nuclear, solar, and wind. The Banqiao Dam failure had much more to do the 1970s Chinese Communist Party incompetence and the Cultural Revolution than anything specific to water power.
MattGaiser 3y ago
> And actually hydro is the second in death toll after coal, isn’t it? It appears to be second in death toll among renewables, after biomass. https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy
- eastbound 3y ago
  They only didn’t count people falling from the roof as cost of solar energy. For a country of 40m inhabitants, it’s about 1 per year, and that’s huge: > Solar: In an average year nobody would die – only every 50 years would someone die. It’s like saying Chernobyl only caused 32 deaths because the other ones were outside the plant.

jvmfjvfjvf 3y ago

Contrary to what you may think, wind and solar are not cheap. Land is very expensive. You would even increase housing costs due to land being used for energy instead of new home construction.

MattGaiser 3y ago
Why would there be competition between solar/wind and housing for land? For what reason would you need (or even desire) to locate solar farms and wind turbines on the edge of large cities?
- jvmfjvfjvf 3y ago
  Wind farms are built on top of land that could be used to build more housing. There's a huge wind farm in the the Bay Area (Altamont Pass) that is used for wind farms that could have been used to build a ton of more houses.
  - MattGaiser 3y ago
    There is plenty of land nowhere near cities if that is your concern. If housing could even be built there at all given the terrain. There are very few on most similar terrain in the Bay Area and there are no wind farms blocking development there. Why haven't houses been built?
    - jvmfjvfjvf 3y ago
      This is not quite true. The biggest American wind farm (Altamont Pass) is right next to Silicon Valley in the Bay Area. The 2-9 ones are between 20-50 miles from cities. You mention these "rural" areas as if nothing would be built there. These areas are typically developed over 10-50 years, just like the Bay Area when that wind farm was built.
edrxty 3y ago
This might be a crazy idea, but what if we put the housing underneath the solar? One might even call it putting the solar on top of the houses?

Roark66 3y ago

Finland has just (in last year) commissioned a huge nuclear power plant. It's true it took them 14 years longer than expected (they started in 2005). However, there are places in the world (Japan) where a modern design nuclear power plant is built in 3.5 years. South Korea is very close behind. And it's not just a one off. Japan built 8 new nuclear power plants and South Korea built 13 in last 20 years. These plants are every bit as safe as plants built elsewhere, perhaps even safer as they're new designs. This suggest it is not technology that's holding us(US and majority of EU) back, but bad project management practices. We too could have a new plant built in few years. Add to this SMRs (small modular reactors) which are hopefully becoming available in next 2'years and anyone that can't see nuclear is the only hope for decarbonisation is misinformed. Then take a country like Germany that has recently shut down perfectly working nuclear power plants and opened the first new brown coal burning plant in Europe in a very long time (also they activated many others that were doing very little before). I don't know if this is irony or what, but when "green" efforts make an industrialised country give up nuclear and switch to coal there is something seriously wrong. Also few words on the type of coal they burn there. There are (broadly) two types of coal. There is coal proper (resembles black stone, mined in deep mines, high quality, little sulphur and oil/tar content) and there is lignite. A brown smelly thing that crumbles when you squeeze it leaving a tarry residue everywhere. It's "mined" from just below the surface by gargantuan machines that destroy thousands and thousands of hectares of land leaving a moonscape behind. Why is it used? Because when you build your power plant next to a source of lignite the electricity is really cheap. This kind of "coal" emits a lot more pollutants when burned. This can be mitigated somewhat by using modern tech, but still it should be our last power source choice. Not first. If the people say no to nuclear they'll not get renewable for base load, but lignite burning plants. BTW, CO2 is not really the worst these plants emit. They emit tiny particulates that get in your lungs. Incidence of child asthma is a lot higher near such plants as well as many other diseases.

__m 3y ago
Fukushima Daiichi was built in just 5 years and see how that went.
bugglebeetle 3y ago
> This suggest it is not technology that's holding us(US and majority of EU) back, but bad project management practices. We too could have a new plant built in few years. The US demolishes any and all of its state capacity anytime a company calls the congressman they bribe to complain that the government doing (insert project here) intrudes on their right to make money. That’s the difference. The Navy has been running nuclear power plants underwater for 50+ years at this point, but having a state organization that builds and maintains energy infrastructure would compete with all the existing energy sector interests, so it can’t be allowed to happen. Contrast this to China, where businesses do not have authority to override the state and this difference is obvious.

madaxe_again 3y ago

Wind? Solar? Coal and gas are even cheaper to build and run, and the lobby is much stronger. Far more likely they’ll open new coal plants than nuclear, wind, or solar - nuclear and renewables are anathema at the polling booth, whereas the status quo is a safe bet. 40% of Americans do not believe in climate change, and the 60% that do include a good chunk who are not yet of voting age, and people who are otherwise unable to vote - and on a district by district basis, only about 35% of districts believe in climate change. So, coal. It’ll be coal.

hef19898 3y ago
The cheapest forms of electricity, measured in costs per kWh from project auctions (as in: country A wants plant of whatever form, various companies provide their bids and the cheapest offer, per kWh, wins) are solar and wind. Since 2018 at least, that coal comes usually next is simply the fault of dirt cheap, and wastly under priced, CO2 certificates. And regardless of what politians say, when something is a good investment, somebody does it. Hence the continious growth of solar, wind seems to run into way more hurdles, from regulation over NIMBY to technical issues.
marssaxman 3y ago
> Coal and gas are even cheaper to build and run That's not really true anymore: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/levelized-cost-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/levelized-cost-of-energy