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«The tides are turning in favor of nuclear energy» in their dreams... PV costs are falling exponentially (-10% per year) while nuclear costs remain at best co

by joak 3y ago

«The tides are turning in favor of nuclear energy» in their dreams... PV costs are falling exponentially (-10% per year) while nuclear costs remain at best constant. If you decide today to build a reactor it will be ready in 10-20 years (don't be in the hurry). By the time it start producing it will be competing with plenty of cheaper renewables. During its lifetime (50 years) it will have plenty of time to become obsolete and so expensive. It's like buying a Cray I in the 1980s and get delivered in 2000 just to find that a gaming console has more power than your mammoth computer but at a fraction of the cost. Nuclear is completely doomed.

abfan1127 3y ago
are you comparing PV, or PV + Battery storage?
- crote 3y ago
  PV+storage is already cheaper than nuclear.
  - zdragnar 3y ago
    I would love to see the numbers for this for an existing commercial installation of grid scale. Everywhere I've looked, sufficiently inexpensive storage is either theoretical or using some tech nobody has really built out en masse before. I know there's a few desert installs that do well, but the best places for solar tend to also be the least populated.
- joak 3y ago
  Batteries costs and PV costs are both dropping exponentially. So it doesn't matter much. Once batteries are everywhere who cares when the electricity is produced. Hey btw Vermont Utility plans to installs battery storage at customers' homes because it cheaper than updating the grid https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/09/business/energy-environment/green-mountain-home-batteries.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/09/business/energy-environme...
ETHisso2017 3y ago
A solar industry won't give you the type of engineers and technicians that can be conscripted into a project to vitrify your enemy's capital city though. That's a big minus
- tuatoru 3y ago
  They'd just do it more slowly, with big concave mirrors.
jtriangle 3y ago
Completely doomed, mostly due to artificial constraints. When you dig into why it takes 10-20 years to get one built, you arrive, more or less, at the feet of incompetent regulators, that order changes during construction, after plans are initially approved, and then they can/do order more changes before they'll allow the plant to operate. Now, don't take that as "loose nuclear regulation good", that's not really a solution, what we need is much, much better regulation, so a plant can get approved and then built without interference provided the plan that was approved is followed. And, realistically, once you have that, you can come up with a plant design that you can copy/paste in a bunch of locations, instead of building them as one-off's, and that not only reduces costs significantly, but also improves safety significantly because if one plant has an issue, you can also copy/paste the solution/mitigation/prevention elsewhere.
- epistasis 3y ago
  Having followed Vogtle and Summer very very closely, as I was very eager for e a nuclear renaissance to fight climate change, this story does not hold up. Similarly, the "blame the regulators" game does not work for recent reactors in Finland and France based on the latest design. What it really comes down to is incompetence on the design side and on the production side. As well as not taking the requirements seriously, at least with some of the contractors. The design change story was more true back in the early 80s, but even then it was only part of the story. Good projects finished quickly, in any case, back then. A bigger problem was vastly over ordering nuclear too, in a planning failure. Fundamentally, nuclear construction has to deal with the fact that in advanced economies, labor only gets more expensive and more valuable. And the foundations of big nuclear reactors are massive scale and massive labor coordination. There's so much high skill welding, that needs to be checked so thoroughly, since it needs to last so long. There are some, like Jigar Shah, who think a nuclear industry can be built if leaders emerge who reject the blame game and take accountability onto themselves for actually making a product that utilities want to buy, and doing it on budget and on time. I'm skeptical, after having Westinghouse and the EPCs dash my hopes, and seeing the same failures in Europe at the same time. But I hope I am wrong. However I don't see a single thing in this a16z article to make me think that they will be able to pick and fund those leaders. Let the VCs be the dumb money to find a model that works, then Shah will bring the capital that can really make it scale, IMHO.
GaggiX 3y ago
>Nuclear is completely doomed How do you maintain a nation's baseline? Coal and gas plants or massive battery storage, which raises many questions about environmental impact and resource requirements, hydro is not viable everywhere, is that the future you're hoping for?
- specialist 3y ago
  Advanced geothermal and thermal batteries.
- rcxdude 3y ago
  Baseline supply doesn't need to exist. You just need supply to match demand. Which mix of plants produces that can change dynamically just fine. The 'baseline' idea exists because of nuclear's high fixed costs and low marginal costs. This is also a form of generation which is complemented by dispatchable generation and storage, just the same as renewables, and does not complement renewables usefully at all. So if you wanted to build a grid based on nuclear you'd need to either overbuild it or build lots of storage, just the same as with renewables. And renewables absolutely destroy nuclear on cost.
- epistasis 3y ago
  Battery storage does not raise environmental impact or resource shortages. This is a fabricated story, and holding the industry to a standard that no other industry has ever been held to. As we electrify our cars and trucks, every house is going to end up with 2-7 days of household electricity requirements parked in their garage. Most models show that that alone should be enough to smooth over the daily variability. Using stationary, cheaper battery chemistries opens up an entirely new world of resources too. Battery + solar is already beating out new nuclear on cost, and we have decades of novel development of the techs to bring down costs even more. Unless nuclear can figure out a way to start dropping in cost by 10% every year, and having shorter capital lifetimes so you're not locked into the high initial cost of today for 60 years, it really will be doomed.
Turing_Machine 3y ago
> PV costs are falling exponentially And yet there are plenty of grid-scale nuclear power plants, and very, very few grid-scale solar plants. Weird, huh? > If you decide today to build a reactor it will be ready in 10-20 years (don't be in the hurry) Whereas one can simply wave a magic wand and a grid-scale solar plant will magically spring into existence.
- rcxdude 3y ago
  renewables are already out-generating nuclear in the US, and that number has doubled in the last 10 years, while nuclear power has shrunk slightly. Not exactly a ringing endorsement of nuclear's economics.
  - Turing_Machine 3y ago
    > renewables are already out-generating nuclear in the US "Renewables" aren't suitable for base load, and the figures for "renewables" are generally presented in a deceptive way. 1 watt of solar does NOT replace 1 watt of nuclear, because there is this thing called "night". You need 2 watts, at a minimum, even with storage. More than 2 if the weather is at all cloudy.
specialist 3y ago
> in their dreams... Heh. You made me realize that nuclear revival is the latest mania (catnip) for gold bugs. Just like cryptocurrency, err, I mean "digital assets".
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

by joak 3y ago

abfan1127 3y ago

are you comparing PV, or PV + Battery storage?

crote 3y ago
PV+storage is already cheaper than nuclear.
- zdragnar 3y ago
  I would love to see the numbers for this for an existing commercial installation of grid scale. Everywhere I've looked, sufficiently inexpensive storage is either theoretical or using some tech nobody has really built out en masse before. I know there's a few desert installs that do well, but the best places for solar tend to also be the least populated.
joak 3y ago
Batteries costs and PV costs are both dropping exponentially. So it doesn't matter much. Once batteries are everywhere who cares when the electricity is produced. Hey btw Vermont Utility plans to installs battery storage at customers' homes because it cheaper than updating the grid https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/09/business/energy-environment/green-mountain-home-batteries.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/09/business/energy-environme...

ETHisso2017 3y ago

A solar industry won't give you the type of engineers and technicians that can be conscripted into a project to vitrify your enemy's capital city though. That's a big minus

tuatoru 3y ago
They'd just do it more slowly, with big concave mirrors.

jtriangle 3y ago

Completely doomed, mostly due to artificial constraints. When you dig into why it takes 10-20 years to get one built, you arrive, more or less, at the feet of incompetent regulators, that order changes during construction, after plans are initially approved, and then they can/do order more changes before they'll allow the plant to operate. Now, don't take that as "loose nuclear regulation good", that's not really a solution, what we need is much, much better regulation, so a plant can get approved and then built without interference provided the plan that was approved is followed. And, realistically, once you have that, you can come up with a plant design that you can copy/paste in a bunch of locations, instead of building them as one-off's, and that not only reduces costs significantly, but also improves safety significantly because if one plant has an issue, you can also copy/paste the solution/mitigation/prevention elsewhere.

epistasis 3y ago
Having followed Vogtle and Summer very very closely, as I was very eager for e a nuclear renaissance to fight climate change, this story does not hold up. Similarly, the "blame the regulators" game does not work for recent reactors in Finland and France based on the latest design. What it really comes down to is incompetence on the design side and on the production side. As well as not taking the requirements seriously, at least with some of the contractors. The design change story was more true back in the early 80s, but even then it was only part of the story. Good projects finished quickly, in any case, back then. A bigger problem was vastly over ordering nuclear too, in a planning failure. Fundamentally, nuclear construction has to deal with the fact that in advanced economies, labor only gets more expensive and more valuable. And the foundations of big nuclear reactors are massive scale and massive labor coordination. There's so much high skill welding, that needs to be checked so thoroughly, since it needs to last so long. There are some, like Jigar Shah, who think a nuclear industry can be built if leaders emerge who reject the blame game and take accountability onto themselves for actually making a product that utilities want to buy, and doing it on budget and on time. I'm skeptical, after having Westinghouse and the EPCs dash my hopes, and seeing the same failures in Europe at the same time. But I hope I am wrong. However I don't see a single thing in this a16z article to make me think that they will be able to pick and fund those leaders. Let the VCs be the dumb money to find a model that works, then Shah will bring the capital that can really make it scale, IMHO.

GaggiX 3y ago

>Nuclear is completely doomed How do you maintain a nation's baseline? Coal and gas plants or massive battery storage, which raises many questions about environmental impact and resource requirements, hydro is not viable everywhere, is that the future you're hoping for?

specialist 3y ago
Advanced geothermal and thermal batteries.
rcxdude 3y ago
Baseline supply doesn't need to exist. You just need supply to match demand. Which mix of plants produces that can change dynamically just fine. The 'baseline' idea exists because of nuclear's high fixed costs and low marginal costs. This is also a form of generation which is complemented by dispatchable generation and storage, just the same as renewables, and does not complement renewables usefully at all. So if you wanted to build a grid based on nuclear you'd need to either overbuild it or build lots of storage, just the same as with renewables. And renewables absolutely destroy nuclear on cost.
epistasis 3y ago
Battery storage does not raise environmental impact or resource shortages. This is a fabricated story, and holding the industry to a standard that no other industry has ever been held to. As we electrify our cars and trucks, every house is going to end up with 2-7 days of household electricity requirements parked in their garage. Most models show that that alone should be enough to smooth over the daily variability. Using stationary, cheaper battery chemistries opens up an entirely new world of resources too. Battery + solar is already beating out new nuclear on cost, and we have decades of novel development of the techs to bring down costs even more. Unless nuclear can figure out a way to start dropping in cost by 10% every year, and having shorter capital lifetimes so you're not locked into the high initial cost of today for 60 years, it really will be doomed.

Turing_Machine 3y ago

> PV costs are falling exponentially And yet there are plenty of grid-scale nuclear power plants, and very, very few grid-scale solar plants. Weird, huh? > If you decide today to build a reactor it will be ready in 10-20 years (don't be in the hurry) Whereas one can simply wave a magic wand and a grid-scale solar plant will magically spring into existence.

rcxdude 3y ago
renewables are already out-generating nuclear in the US, and that number has doubled in the last 10 years, while nuclear power has shrunk slightly. Not exactly a ringing endorsement of nuclear's economics.
- Turing_Machine 3y ago
  > renewables are already out-generating nuclear in the US "Renewables" aren't suitable for base load, and the figures for "renewables" are generally presented in a deceptive way. 1 watt of solar does NOT replace 1 watt of nuclear, because there is this thing called "night". You need 2 watts, at a minimum, even with storage. More than 2 if the weather is at all cloudy.

specialist 3y ago

> in their dreams... Heh. You made me realize that nuclear revival is the latest mania (catnip) for gold bugs. Just like cryptocurrency, err, I mean "digital assets".

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]