4 ms·

Fission is expensive - there is unlikely to be a world where everything is nuclear. There might be more of it, but the price point might not be great. Storage

Fission is expensive - there is unlikely to be a world where everything is nuclear. There might be more of it, but the price point might not be great. Storage has lots of options, for example, batteries, pressure, gravity (incl. underground). Things like shipping could run perhaps on other fuels and planes will be on high energy density fossil fuel (or synthetic) for a while (at least long haul).

vlovich123 3y ago
There’s nothing intrinsically expensive about fission. It’s all regulatory, a not insignificant amount of which is driven by hypothetical rather than realized fears. And what a movement of goal posts. When people said that renewables were too expensive and we should direct research R&D dollars to nuclear, the issue was nuclear safety. Now that renewables are cheap after 2 decades of substantial R&D investment, the argument is “why invest in nuclear - renewables are cheaper”. But renewables are still only cheaper because they’re not being asked to do base load replacement. So from that perspective renewables are still more expensive because storage costs are excluded. And from that perspective it still doesn’t matter because it’ll take forever to build enough generation and storage capacity for renewables that in the same time we could be dropping a bunch of nuclear GW power plants all over the place. Even today fission and renewables have very similar generation prices. And no, it’ll be a long time before batteries are a solution to the energy density needs for grid scale solar to truly allow replacement and shuttering of fossil fuel plants (automotive electrification is going to eat up a huge amount of battery manufacturing capacity world wide).
- RandomLensman 3y ago
  You can look at the cost trajectories of various energy production technologies through time - the one for fission does not look encouraging. Interesting that you see costs for fission and renewable as very similar. Data I have seen has huge differences.(https://www.inet.ox.ac.uk/publications/no-2021-01-empirically-grounded-technology-forecasts-and-the-energy-transition/ https://www.inet.ox.ac.uk/publications/no-2021-01-empiricall...) Where did I advocate batteries as only storage? There are many options. I might potentially be better to put more money into fusion rather than chase fission for anything beyond materials, medical, research, and weapons applications.
  - yeknoda 3y ago
    The fact it is historically not encouraging is exactly why it should be encouraging for the future.
    - RandomLensman 3y ago
      If things don't move on costs for significant periods of time that is typically not a good sign for future cost reductions in the same technology.
      - yeknoda 3y ago
        Space launch costs? Lol
        RandomLensman 3y ago
        I'd say that is making my point.
        vlovich123 3y ago
        Huh? Space costs didn’t go down because it was being applied in the wrong places on the wrong things. Yet the right investment by Musk applied in the right way caused space costs to plummet (well technically it started off with the Xprize trying to stimulate that space although not sure if that had any real effect). Why do you think that nuclear is some special snowflake of a technology that doesn’t get cheaper the more we do it? We don’t really build very many nuclear plants in an effective way and the only licensed design in America is a design from the 70s. SMNRs are an interesting idea worth exploring. I think molten salt would be too. The government should be pushing many players to design plants and put them through testing and then qualify some of them and commit to building like 500 of a given design and make sure each subsequent plant is built with the first design + learnings from the previous design that can reduce cost.
        RandomLensman 3y ago

vlovich123 3y ago

There’s nothing intrinsically expensive about fission. It’s all regulatory, a not insignificant amount of which is driven by hypothetical rather than realized fears. And what a movement of goal posts. When people said that renewables were too expensive and we should direct research R&D dollars to nuclear, the issue was nuclear safety. Now that renewables are cheap after 2 decades of substantial R&D investment, the argument is “why invest in nuclear - renewables are cheaper”. But renewables are still only cheaper because they’re not being asked to do base load replacement. So from that perspective renewables are still more expensive because storage costs are excluded. And from that perspective it still doesn’t matter because it’ll take forever to build enough generation and storage capacity for renewables that in the same time we could be dropping a bunch of nuclear GW power plants all over the place. Even today fission and renewables have very similar generation prices. And no, it’ll be a long time before batteries are a solution to the energy density needs for grid scale solar to truly allow replacement and shuttering of fossil fuel plants (automotive electrification is going to eat up a huge amount of battery manufacturing capacity world wide).

RandomLensman 3y ago
You can look at the cost trajectories of various energy production technologies through time - the one for fission does not look encouraging. Interesting that you see costs for fission and renewable as very similar. Data I have seen has huge differences.(https://www.inet.ox.ac.uk/publications/no-2021-01-empirically-grounded-technology-forecasts-and-the-energy-transition/ https://www.inet.ox.ac.uk/publications/no-2021-01-empiricall...) Where did I advocate batteries as only storage? There are many options. I might potentially be better to put more money into fusion rather than chase fission for anything beyond materials, medical, research, and weapons applications.
- yeknoda 3y ago
  The fact it is historically not encouraging is exactly why it should be encouraging for the future.
  - RandomLensman 3y ago
    If things don't move on costs for significant periods of time that is typically not a good sign for future cost reductions in the same technology.
    - yeknoda 3y ago
      Space launch costs? Lol
      - RandomLensman 3y ago
        I'd say that is making my point.
        vlovich123 3y ago
        Huh? Space costs didn’t go down because it was being applied in the wrong places on the wrong things. Yet the right investment by Musk applied in the right way caused space costs to plummet (well technically it started off with the Xprize trying to stimulate that space although not sure if that had any real effect). Why do you think that nuclear is some special snowflake of a technology that doesn’t get cheaper the more we do it? We don’t really build very many nuclear plants in an effective way and the only licensed design in America is a design from the 70s. SMNRs are an interesting idea worth exploring. I think molten salt would be too. The government should be pushing many players to design plants and put them through testing and then qualify some of them and commit to building like 500 of a given design and make sure each subsequent plant is built with the first design + learnings from the previous design that can reduce cost.
        RandomLensman 3y ago