5 ms·

> let's figure it out Renewables already figured it out. They're already cheaper. Nuclear already lost. Until next-gen nuclear is developed, it's over. They'r

> let's figure it out Renewables already figured it out. They're already cheaper. Nuclear already lost. Until next-gen nuclear is developed, it's over. They're welcome to keep researching it though. Meanwhile, renewables are also getting better, and much faster. And they're already better than nuclear.

barney54 3y ago
Riding a bike is cheaper than driving. Driving a car is dead.
- beretguy 3y ago
  Unless you are in USA because we like to live each in a separate house instead of apartment complex.
  - pgeorgi 3y ago
    I'd want a separate house, too, if my neighbors are Americans.
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  China produces more power from renewables than the entire generation capacity of the UK. You can build more firm generation capacity with solar and batteries than a typical nuclear generator, in a year, at a cheaper price. Hell of a bike. Nuclear has a niche, but it got steamrolled by the S curve of solar, wind, and batteries.
  - tuatoru 3y ago
    Slight amendment: China is installing more wind and solar PV generation capacity this year than the entire generation capacity of the UK. The increment, not the total. Edit: Nuclear power generation in China has, IIRC, tripled in the 21st century. But demand has gone up much more than twentyfold though, and this year we are the crossover point where wind an PV manufacturing and install rates, and transmission line build rates, exceed the growth of demand, so fossil plants can start to be retired there. If nuclear can't be built fast in China, where can it?
    - toomuchtodo 3y ago
      Citation: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/nov/13/chinas-carbon-emissions-set-for-structural-decline-from-next-year https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/nov/13/chinas-carb... > The most striking growth has been in solar power, according to Myllyvirta. Solar installations increased by 210 gigawatts (GW) this year alone, which is twice the total solar capacity of the US and four times what China added in 2020. > The analysis, which is based on official figures and commercial data, found that China installed 70GW of wind power this year – more than the entire power generation capacity of the UK. It is also expected to add 7GW of hydro power and 3GW of nuclear power capacity this year, said the report.
    - dalyons 3y ago
      You won’t get an answer to this. The energy world has changed very quickly in the past few years, and many can’t adjust their opinions to take new data and trends into account.
    - csomar 3y ago
      It would be interesting to see what the consequences of that would be. China solar addition scale is from another fourth dimension. Not only it is massive but it seems to be accelerating too. They added more in PV Solar in 2022 than the whole PV installations of Germany. It seems that the politicians there realize that being dependent on unstable regions (ie: Middle-East) for fuel is not wise. They are not B.S.ing their population with green propaganda and instead going full speed for PV solar and electric vehicles. Edit: I found the 2022 numbers on Wikipedia and got curious what the 2023 outlook is going to be. It is shocking: https://www.rystadenergy.com/news/china-s-solar-capacity-surges-expected-to-top-1-tw-by-2026 https://www.rystadenergy.com/news/china-s-solar-capacity-sur... Their 2023 numbers are double the 2022.
- cyberax 3y ago
  Riding a bike requires you to live in a shoebox-sized apartment. Shoeboxes are dead.
- epistasis 3y ago
  Electricity is fungible.
  - barney54 3y ago
    But not easily storable.
    - somenameforme 3y ago
      Not entirely true. There's all sorts of mechanical storage systems, the most common being artificial hydroelectric and flywheels - spin something really fast and than extract energy from its rotational velocity later. But a practical issue here is that there hasn't really been much motivation to develop this industry, because there's been relatively little critical necessity for high capacity at-scale energy storage.
    - poorlyknit 3y ago
      Just store it by selling it to your neighbor state or country and buying it back when their renewables are at peak :)
    - epistasis 3y ago
      It is very easily storable, and in energy markets that are driven by free markets (rather than utility biases or legislative mandates), storage is one of the biggest investments on the grid: > Installed battery capacity increased from 153 MW in 2019 to 3,518 MW in 2023. Interconnection agreements have been signed for an additional 7,945 MW of battery storage through 2024, allowing batteries to play a growing role in daily power needs in the near future. https://www.dallasfed.org/research/economics/2023/1017 https://www.dallasfed.org/research/economics/2023/1017
- afterburner 3y ago
  Terrible metaphor, obviously. All electricity generating methods are compared in the same way, cost per power generated.
- brianaker 3y ago
  Privileged myopia is certainly is alive in thriving! I say this as someone who bikes their kid around most of the time; I love biking but it is way of life that only a minority of people can make work.
civilitty 3y ago
Next gen nuclear was developed fifty years ago for the Mars program before it was cancelled. See nuclear lightbulb research. It’s taken that long for renewables to get marginally cheaper without solving the base load problem one bit. Meanwhile natural gas has dominated both.
- kibwen 3y ago
  You conveniently remember that nuclear power was unfairly sidelined for decades, and then conveniently forget that solar power was also unfairly sidelined for decades. "By 1986, the Reagan administration had gutted the research and development budgets for renewable energy at the then-fledgling U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) and eliminated tax breaks for the deployment of wind turbines and solar technologies—recommitting the nation to reliance on cheap but polluting fossil fuels, often from foreign suppliers." https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/carter-white-house-solar-panel-array/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/carter-white-hous... Also, "marginally cheaper" can't help but sound like sour grapes; the cost-per-watt of solar has fallen by 500x in the past 50 years (https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/evolution-of-solar-pv-module-cost-by-data-source-1970-2020 https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/evolution-of-...). How many hundreds of times cheaper per-watt is nuclear since then?
  - civilitty 3y ago
    Solar was never “unfairly sidelined” because it was never regulated to death. That’s why it’s gotten cheaper while nuclear has stagnated.
    - epistasis 3y ago
      Why is solar 3x more expensive in the US then, say, Australia? Because it is indeed regulated out of and into existence. Will the utility let you even connect solar to power your house, will the utility charge excessive fixed per-month fees for the privilege, how many hoops will your local municipality make you jump through for permitting, how many weeks or months of delay will there be, how many pointless and useless diagrams will they make you submit, how will a large installer every gain efficiency while dealing with every single city's pointless differences in . Or even, will you silly HOA allow panels, and if so, where and at what visibility?
rr808 3y ago
They are not cheaper. They appeared cheaper for a while when there was a bubble and interest rates are zero. Now wind and solar farm projects are failing.
- jayd16 3y ago
  How is it that nuclear didn't benefit from the same bubble?
  - eru 3y ago
    Mostly red tape. It's much tighter regulated, and takes longer to get any project off the ground.
- r00fus 3y ago
  The problem isn’t due to bubble economics but contractual fixed rates that no longer make sense given post-covid rampant inflation. Higher interest rates make everything more difficult of course - ask the auto or mortgage industries.
- matthewdgreen 3y ago
  I’ve now posted this three times, but I don’t think people on this site are aware of it, since we’re still seeing the same obsolete debate. China built 415 TWh of wind and solar in the first 9 months of 2023 (adjusted for capacity factor), more than the combined total of all 26 nuclear plants under construction. Based on this surge of construction, Chinese emissions are expected to begin a structural decline next year. The debate at this point isn’t about whether renewables will scale: China has already answered that question. There is a very real question about whether the West will be able to keep up. There seem to be a lot of people who want to sit around and fantasize about 1970s-era nuclear tech while our neighbors undergo what is effectively a second Industrial Revolution.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - rr808 3y ago

barney54 3y ago

Riding a bike is cheaper than driving. Driving a car is dead.

beretguy 3y ago
Unless you are in USA because we like to live each in a separate house instead of apartment complex.
- pgeorgi 3y ago
  I'd want a separate house, too, if my neighbors are Americans.
toomuchtodo 3y ago
China produces more power from renewables than the entire generation capacity of the UK. You can build more firm generation capacity with solar and batteries than a typical nuclear generator, in a year, at a cheaper price. Hell of a bike. Nuclear has a niche, but it got steamrolled by the S curve of solar, wind, and batteries.
- tuatoru 3y ago
  Slight amendment: China is installing more wind and solar PV generation capacity this year than the entire generation capacity of the UK. The increment, not the total. Edit: Nuclear power generation in China has, IIRC, tripled in the 21st century. But demand has gone up much more than twentyfold though, and this year we are the crossover point where wind an PV manufacturing and install rates, and transmission line build rates, exceed the growth of demand, so fossil plants can start to be retired there. If nuclear can't be built fast in China, where can it?
  - toomuchtodo 3y ago
    Citation: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/nov/13/chinas-carbon-emissions-set-for-structural-decline-from-next-year https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/nov/13/chinas-carb... > The most striking growth has been in solar power, according to Myllyvirta. Solar installations increased by 210 gigawatts (GW) this year alone, which is twice the total solar capacity of the US and four times what China added in 2020. > The analysis, which is based on official figures and commercial data, found that China installed 70GW of wind power this year – more than the entire power generation capacity of the UK. It is also expected to add 7GW of hydro power and 3GW of nuclear power capacity this year, said the report.
  - dalyons 3y ago
    You won’t get an answer to this. The energy world has changed very quickly in the past few years, and many can’t adjust their opinions to take new data and trends into account.
  - csomar 3y ago
    It would be interesting to see what the consequences of that would be. China solar addition scale is from another fourth dimension. Not only it is massive but it seems to be accelerating too. They added more in PV Solar in 2022 than the whole PV installations of Germany. It seems that the politicians there realize that being dependent on unstable regions (ie: Middle-East) for fuel is not wise. They are not B.S.ing their population with green propaganda and instead going full speed for PV solar and electric vehicles. Edit: I found the 2022 numbers on Wikipedia and got curious what the 2023 outlook is going to be. It is shocking: https://www.rystadenergy.com/news/china-s-solar-capacity-surges-expected-to-top-1-tw-by-2026 https://www.rystadenergy.com/news/china-s-solar-capacity-sur... Their 2023 numbers are double the 2022.
cyberax 3y ago
Riding a bike requires you to live in a shoebox-sized apartment. Shoeboxes are dead.
epistasis 3y ago
Electricity is fungible.
- barney54 3y ago
  But not easily storable.
  - somenameforme 3y ago
    Not entirely true. There's all sorts of mechanical storage systems, the most common being artificial hydroelectric and flywheels - spin something really fast and than extract energy from its rotational velocity later. But a practical issue here is that there hasn't really been much motivation to develop this industry, because there's been relatively little critical necessity for high capacity at-scale energy storage.
  - poorlyknit 3y ago
    Just store it by selling it to your neighbor state or country and buying it back when their renewables are at peak :)
  - epistasis 3y ago
    It is very easily storable, and in energy markets that are driven by free markets (rather than utility biases or legislative mandates), storage is one of the biggest investments on the grid: > Installed battery capacity increased from 153 MW in 2019 to 3,518 MW in 2023. Interconnection agreements have been signed for an additional 7,945 MW of battery storage through 2024, allowing batteries to play a growing role in daily power needs in the near future. https://www.dallasfed.org/research/economics/2023/1017 https://www.dallasfed.org/research/economics/2023/1017
afterburner 3y ago
Terrible metaphor, obviously. All electricity generating methods are compared in the same way, cost per power generated.
brianaker 3y ago
Privileged myopia is certainly is alive in thriving! I say this as someone who bikes their kid around most of the time; I love biking but it is way of life that only a minority of people can make work.

civilitty 3y ago

Next gen nuclear was developed fifty years ago for the Mars program before it was cancelled. See nuclear lightbulb research. It’s taken that long for renewables to get marginally cheaper without solving the base load problem one bit. Meanwhile natural gas has dominated both.

kibwen 3y ago
You conveniently remember that nuclear power was unfairly sidelined for decades, and then conveniently forget that solar power was also unfairly sidelined for decades. "By 1986, the Reagan administration had gutted the research and development budgets for renewable energy at the then-fledgling U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) and eliminated tax breaks for the deployment of wind turbines and solar technologies—recommitting the nation to reliance on cheap but polluting fossil fuels, often from foreign suppliers." https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/carter-white-house-solar-panel-array/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/carter-white-hous... Also, "marginally cheaper" can't help but sound like sour grapes; the cost-per-watt of solar has fallen by 500x in the past 50 years (https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/evolution-of-solar-pv-module-cost-by-data-source-1970-2020 https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/evolution-of-...). How many hundreds of times cheaper per-watt is nuclear since then?
- civilitty 3y ago
  Solar was never “unfairly sidelined” because it was never regulated to death. That’s why it’s gotten cheaper while nuclear has stagnated.
  - epistasis 3y ago
    Why is solar 3x more expensive in the US then, say, Australia? Because it is indeed regulated out of and into existence. Will the utility let you even connect solar to power your house, will the utility charge excessive fixed per-month fees for the privilege, how many hoops will your local municipality make you jump through for permitting, how many weeks or months of delay will there be, how many pointless and useless diagrams will they make you submit, how will a large installer every gain efficiency while dealing with every single city's pointless differences in . Or even, will you silly HOA allow panels, and if so, where and at what visibility?

rr808 3y ago

They are not cheaper. They appeared cheaper for a while when there was a bubble and interest rates are zero. Now wind and solar farm projects are failing.

jayd16 3y ago
How is it that nuclear didn't benefit from the same bubble?
- eru 3y ago
  Mostly red tape. It's much tighter regulated, and takes longer to get any project off the ground.
r00fus 3y ago
The problem isn’t due to bubble economics but contractual fixed rates that no longer make sense given post-covid rampant inflation. Higher interest rates make everything more difficult of course - ask the auto or mortgage industries.
matthewdgreen 3y ago
I’ve now posted this three times, but I don’t think people on this site are aware of it, since we’re still seeing the same obsolete debate. China built 415 TWh of wind and solar in the first 9 months of 2023 (adjusted for capacity factor), more than the combined total of all 26 nuclear plants under construction. Based on this surge of construction, Chinese emissions are expected to begin a structural decline next year. The debate at this point isn’t about whether renewables will scale: China has already answered that question. There is a very real question about whether the West will be able to keep up. There seem to be a lot of people who want to sit around and fantasize about 1970s-era nuclear tech while our neighbors undergo what is effectively a second Industrial Revolution.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- rr808 3y ago