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If I was a betting man, I would put money down that Vogtle 4 is the last nuclear reactor that gets built in the US. Solar and batteries are just too cheap for n

If I was a betting man, I would put money down that Vogtle 4 is the last nuclear reactor that gets built in the US. Solar and batteries are just too cheap for nuclear to compete. The world will be installing a terawatt of solar capacity per year soon. *excluding research or military reactors of course.

UberFly 3y ago
I would take that bet. Nuclear tech will also continue to improve.
- stetrain 3y ago
  Nuclear does not seem to be on the mass production curve that solar and batteries are. Even if you could design a reactor that itself can be mass produced at that scale, you still need to do the same with selecting and getting environmental and public safety approval for installation sites and production, transportation, and disposal of the fuel and waste. I'm not against nuclear from a technological perspective, but I just don't see it being economically competitive with effectively printable devices like solar and batteries given the current direction of the cost curves on each.
  - the8472 3y ago
    https://www.statista.com/statistics/1129876/china-nuclear-power-generation-volume/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1129876/china-nuclear-po...
    - stetrain 3y ago
      How do costs compare? What's the site approval process like in China vs the US?
    - _aavaa_ 3y ago
      Compare this graph with more than nuclear, and notice how lagging nuclear is compared to any other renewable. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/solar-energy-consumption https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/solar-energy-consumption
  - fiddlerwoaroof 3y ago
    Nuclear might not be able to compete in the U.S. and Europe, but that’s largely because of a ridiculous regulatory regime and has very little to do with the actual tech.
    - wolverine876 3y ago
      People love to say it, but is there evidence? I've never seen it - which doesn't mean it doesn't exist, but that this claim needs it.
      - Manuel_D 3y ago
        Nuclear was much cheaper in the 1970s and early 80s: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Overnight-Construction-Cost-of-US-Nuclear-Power-Reactors-by-Construction-Start-Date_fig8_292964046 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Overnight-Construction-C... This wasn't just due to regulatory influence, it was also due to economies of scale. But the two are related, more regulation results in fewer builds. Fewer builds reduces economies of scale and thus increases costs. Which results in even fewer nuclear builds, and so on.
        angiosperm 3y ago
        In other words, nuke cost has only ever increased, however much was built.
        Manuel_D 3y ago
        On a per-MW basis nuclear power dropped in cost during the 1950s. See the small blue dots round the late 1950s and early 60s? Compare that with the cluster of red dots.
        wolverine876 3y ago
        Early, low-hanging fruit?
  - throwjnkjk 3y ago
    Slave labor is always cheap. https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/ILAB/images/storyboards/solar/Solar.pdf https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/ILAB/images/storyboar...
  - XorNot 3y ago
    Batteries are nowhere near able to meet any energy storage demands of the grid. The simple question to ask yourself is why do battery installations always get quoted in units of power - GW - and not units of energy, GWH - which is what we actually use? (The answer is: because they're terrible for it. Batteries hold about 3x they're rated power value as energy - which means the 10 GW or whatever someone quotes is good for about 3 hours at that output. Great for grid stability, expensive and useless for long term storage).
    - cesarb 3y ago
      > The simple question to ask yourself is why do battery installations always get quoted in units of power - GW - and not units of energy, GWH - which is what we actually use? For the same reason gas power plants and hydroelectric power plants are quoted in MW units, and not on the size of their fuel tanks or reservoir volume (converted to MWh as appropriate): it's the most important number for balancing the grid. If you have 90 GW of power demand on the grid at a given moment, you need 90 GW of power generation on the grid at that same moment (simplifying a bit, since transmission constraints mean you also need some of that power generation to be at specific places).
      - XorNot 3y ago
        Thus answering the challenge: they're not storage. They're grid stabilization utilities. Because no one expects to run them for more then 30 minutes to an hour while they bring dispatchable generation online. Which means they're irrelevant to the idea of grid scale energy storage, because they don't meaningfully store anything.
        ViewTrick1002 3y ago
        Last year you said they couldn't even meet enough demand for the grid. Now it is 30 minutes to an hour. Next year it will be hours. How does it feel when the Overton windows moves while nuclear is stuck in the past? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window
  - mpweiher 3y ago
    The insane thing is that it is so efficient that it doesn't need to be on that mass production curve to be competitive. It is competitive even in the somewhat insane way we build it now. However, we have a number of companies working on building reactors in factories. Rolls-Royce for example is talking to Ukraine to upgrade some of their old (not sure if already decommissioned) coal plants to nuclear with small, factory-built nuclear reactors.
- ethbr1 3y ago
  For that to happen in the US, (1) we need to focus on more numerous, smaller modular reactors, (2) the NRC needs certification timeliness requirements forced on it (and more funding if there's an actual lack of resources), and (3) specific project requirements need to be frozen before construction (no more up-requiring mid-construction). Modular reactors are the solution to not having enough capital or a long enough timeframe to launch and fund megaprojects at a pace that creates economies of scale anymore, which is exactly the US problem.
  - wolverine876 3y ago
    > NRC needs certification timeliness requirements forced on it That's going to be tough: What happens if the day comes and they don't yet know? They can't just approve it, so just deny it?
    - zdragnar 3y ago
      The government should cover the losses of the investors. Various agencies are constantly missing FOIA deadlines, and often the only way to get them to actually do the jobs they are legally required to do is to sue them in court, asking for both the information and to have court costs covered.
      - wolverine876 3y ago
        Even if you could pass that legislation, which seems very unlikely, that doesn't solve the problem. The employees of the regulators aren't personally liable, and in many respects don't individually control the schedule. The investors also cause delays - and would now have an incentive to do that - and in many cases the/an investor is the government. Also, good luck explaining to taxpayers the $10 billion payout.
        zdragnar 3y ago
        Right, the employees would have to be liable to their bosses. Their bosses would have to be answering up the chain, to congress and the president. Presumably, for a regulatory agency to be held to a deadline, they would need to outline up front (or with reasonable notice) all of the things they would need to know and the inspections they would have to make. Those time tables would have to be defined early on. This is where the idea breaks down. How does a regulator devise a fixed schedule to regulate a novel technology? How do you hold government employees accountable without upsetting powerful interests like politicians and unions, or get staffing funded properly on demand? How do you even get the government to hold itself accountable on something like this when the DOD can't even *complete a clean audit*? We'll probably just keep winging it, badly.
- HDThoreaun 3y ago
  Nuclear has only ever gotten more cost inefficient. What makes you think that will change?
  - Manuel_D 3y ago
    Nuclear was cheaper when more of it was built [1]. Economies of scale make things cheaper. A production run of 40 steam generators is a lot cheaper than 4 steam generators. Proponents of a primarily solar + wind grid are betting on a breakthrough in energy storage. If that breakthrough does not transpire, we'll either have to give up on stopping carbon emissions or use nuclear power. 1. https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Overnight-Construction-Cost-of-US-Nuclear-Power-Reactors-by-Construction-Start-Date_fig8_292964046 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Overnight-Construction-C...
    - sounds 3y ago
      Converting atmospheric CO2 into fuels could contribute to this effort. But bacterial and plant-based fuel production may still be more economical and produce fewer overall emissions than even a solar array and a carbon capture plant.
      - Manuel_D 3y ago
        Converting atmospheric CO2 into hydrocarbon fuels requires hydrogen as an input, so it'd probably be easier to just store the hydrogen directly. Right now, almost all hydrogen is produced through steam reformation [1] which emits CO2. Electrolysis is inefficient and corrosion of electrodes makes it expensive and hard to scale. Capturing atmospheric CO2 is similarly difficult. Carbon Dioxide is at very low concentrations in the atmosphere so it takes a really long time to sequester meaningful amounts of it. Similar issue with biomass: it produces energy very slowly and doesn't have the scale required. There's a reason why plans for a primarily renewable grid assume that compressed air, synthetic ammonia, giant flywheels, or something else will provide storage for orders of magnitude cheaper than batteries: because existing storage systems aren't capable of meeting the storage demands of intermittent generation. Will one of these systems deliver a storage breakthrough? Maybe. But it's not wise to bet the future of your electrical grid on a technological breakthrough that hasn't happened yet. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_reforming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_reforming
- jeffbee 3y ago
  I love the improvement implied by "continue to improve" in the face of all evidence that shows fission is a uniquely impractical source of energy that has done nothing but get more and more expensive.
- grecy 3y ago
  So the first nuke power reactor went live in 1951. In the 72 years since then, in what meaningful ways has "Nuclear tech" improved? It's not cheaper to build. It's not cheaper to operate. It's not cheaper to dispose of the waste. It's not cheaper to decommission. It's not faster to build. ?
gustavus 3y ago
It seems to me that having a couple of nuclear reactors as base load spread throughout the country would be more useful than having a massive spread out battery & solar infrastructure. I mean as an example many companies, especially PG&E can't maintain adequate powerlines, who is banking on the fact that they'll do an even better job when we quintuple the amount of infrastructure and they have to develop a whole new domain of expertise based in battery technology. Not to mention even the supposedly clean, solar and batteries, still have an enormous amount of carbon emissions involved in their supply chain, and need to be replaced on a fairly regular basis.
- dexwiz 3y ago
  Grid level solar has batteries installed on site. The site acts as a power generator that sells energy to PG&E, they don’t manage it themselves. If anything a solar field requires much less operation expertise and staff to manage than a nuclear power plant. And when it goes bad, it might leech some acid and heavy metals into the soil over years, not leave a 10k year radioactive exclusion zone.
- Retric 3y ago
  Nuclear is extremely dependent on long distance power transmission. Nobody wants a reactor in the middle of a city, and 1-5 GW of power needs to be sent long distances before it’s used. Solar on the other hand scales down to 50MW instillations just fine so you can put it near substations etc. Huge solar parks make sense in locations with lots of sunlight and cheap land, but they aren’t the only option just a trade off in terms of transmission costs vs generation costs.
  - HDThoreaun 3y ago
    Chicago is mostly on nuclear and the reactor is quite close to the city, just over the Indiana border.
    - Retric 3y ago
      Closest is Braidwood which is ~60 miles from downtown. NYC has large power plants in Manhattan (East River 1, 2, 6, and 7), Queens (650MW Astoria Energy II power station), and Brooklyn (Narrows 1–1 to 2-8) plus a few more.
internetter 3y ago
One kilogram of uranium-235 (50 cm^3) can theoretically produce about 20 terajoules of energy. One square kilometer of solar panels can theoretically produce the same amount (as 50cm^3 U235) in a day. I'll take this bet. Edit: Tried to edit the edit but somehow deleted the rest of the edit. It was something to the tune of how a big problem with renewables is the fact that peak solar production does not match peak energy consumption, and storage is very difficult, so realistically we'll need a wide variety of energy options to fully transition to renewables. Nuclear is reliable and to some degree adjustable, helping to alleviate the storage issue. Basically, it's my opinion that nuclear works well with other renewable sources, and a full renewable transition will certainly involve more of it.
- echelon 3y ago
  We need two things: - More energy - Energy diversification That includes nuclear, solar, and even more fossil fuels as we wean ourselves off of them. Writing off any form of energy is ideological, not practical.
  - internetter 3y ago
    Agreed minus the fossil fuels bit. It's my belief we should not further scale that infrastructure.
- adonovan 3y ago
  Perhaps I fail to understand, but doesn't this comparison depend on a number of parameters such as the total reactor fuel load and enrichment, the burn rate, the cost of nuclear fuel, the cost of solar PV, the lifetimes of each system, and the relative process efficiencies (notably the cost of decommissioning nuclear)? Otherwise you might as well say a teaspoon (or whatever) of water has as much potential fusion energy as 1 Kg U235 at a fraction of the price. ;-)
  - internetter 3y ago
    Yes, the amount of estimations I made to get to that number is absurd, and very much "best case" with no regard for inefficiencies (both nuclear and solar systems are currently leaving lots on the table).
colmmacc 3y ago
Nuclear power seems like a good option for non-military boats too, like container ships and oil tankers. It's already a very well proven maritime technology.
- hef19898 3y ago
  That was tried, nuclear reactors on civilian ships, and found to be a stupid idea. Too expensive and no real benefit over ship engines. By the way, tha vast majority of military ships and boats are not nuclear powered.
  - davkan 3y ago
    Aside from the environmental benefit right? Don’t lots of large ships burn cheaper fuel higher in pollutants when on unregulated wafers?
    - api 3y ago
      Ships and planes together account for single digit percentages of global fossil fuel use and emissions. It’s almost all cars, trucks, and electric power, so those are the things it makes the most sense to worry about as opposed to things that are much harder to decarbonize and account for less emissions.
      - davkan 3y ago
        Is ship pollution really that negligible?[0] To be clear though the entire world is dependent on trans ocean shipping, it cannot be kneecapped for environmental purposes, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a relevant part of the issue. [0] https://www.transportenvironment.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/The-return-of-the-cruise-June-2023.pdf https://www.transportenvironment.org/wp-content/uploads/2023...
      - pfdietz 3y ago
        And a great deal of what's sent by ship is... fossil fuels!
    - 3y ago
mgaunard 3y ago
Too cheap for "American nuclear" to compete. Chinese nuclear can compete just fine.
- gosub100 3y ago
  [flagged]
- epistasis 3y ago
  Chinese nuclear is not competing very well. There's a minuscule amount of it planned, only like 50GW over the coming decades. This is not even a drop in the bucket compared to what China are doing with batteries, wind, and solar.
  - gambiting 3y ago
    It's 50GW more than anyone else though. There are some nuclear projects in US/UK but I'll eat my hat if they actually get built at all.
    - mpweiher 3y ago
      That's currently changing. The catastrophe of Germany's "Energiewende" has made a lot of countries re-evaluate their nuclear strategy, culminating in the COP28 nuclear pledge.
      - angiosperm 3y ago
        Evidently you missed the news that it turned out to be no catastrophe at all, but just a lot of hand-wringing and pearl-clutching over a clearly hoped-for catastrophe.
        mpweiher 3y ago
        Yeah, evidently I missed the news that after 20 years of Energiewende, Germany has the 2nd most expensive AND the 2nd dirtiest electricity in Europe and that the old plan of "we'll use wind and solar when the wind blows and the sun shines, and when they do not <a miracle occurs>" really worked out perfectly, particularly when the miracle turned out to be "Russian gas" and exploded in our face, causing us to have to buy up essentially all the gas available on the open market at horrible expense after Russia started blackmailing us. Note that "buying up all the gas on the open market" is not a strategy that too many countries can follow at once, hence other countries started to look elsewhere. For example, Japan, who were going to exit nuclear, and are now turning more and more of their old plants back on and have announced they will be building more (!), very specifically to replace reliance on LNG shipments. And yeah, we got really, really lucky with the mild winter of 2022. Apparently not too many other countries think that "luck" is sound energy policy, but YMMV. Also slightly unpopular in the world is our tried and true method of "we'll lower emissions by pushing our economy into recession due to high energy costs". And the constitutional court also took a dim view of trying to hide all the extra costs off the main budget, so the real costs are only now starting to emerge. The farmer demos were probably just the start of the unrest when the pain gets passed onto the population. A population that already now thinks the getting out of nuclear was a mistake: "Sechs von zehn Befragten (59 Prozent) im aktuellen DeutschlandTrend für das ARD-Morgenmagazin halten die Entscheidung der Politik für falsch," https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/deutschlandtrend/deutschlandtrend-3357.html https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/deutschlandtrend/deutschlan... Meanwhile, the coalition that is pushing this through against the voters is now down to 32% in the polls. But you're right, I really should have followed the news more! The Tragedy of Germany’s Energy Experiment https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/08/opinion/nuclear-power-germany.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/08/opinion/nuclear-power-ger... Germany’s Energiewende: A Disaster In The Making https://www.thegwpf.org/publications/germanys-energiewende-a-disaster-in-the-making/ https://www.thegwpf.org/publications/germanys-energiewende-a... Germany’s Energy Disaster 20 Years Later https://www.americanexperiment.org/germanys-energy-disaster-20-years-later/?__cf_chl_rt_tk=bqa4ZDn.PbhF76s.wE3Pcw8CjafP.bMyifjcBEAD5Yw-1703749860-0-gaNycGzNDdA https://www.americanexperiment.org/germanys-energy-disaster-... Germany’s Energy Crisis Dispels Several Myths https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaellynch/2022/08/31/germanys-energy-crisis-dispels-several-myths/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaellynch/2022/08/31/germany... "Much of its problem is self-inflicted and demonstrates the perils of populist but irrational energy policy." You are right, I really should follow the news more!
jillesvangurp 3y ago
> The new 1,114 megawatt (MW) Unit 3 reactor joins two existing reactors It's indeed not a lot. At a great cost. That kind of is the point. Nuclear is very costly. Solar, wind, battery storage, and other cheap alternatives are indeed being rolled out at a plural orders of magnitude larger scale.
- mcint 3y ago
  Nuclear is costly _now_*. It wasn't getting built, for years. There is so much energy to be had from that, and cost learning curves can come down. France's ("small") modular reactors, SMR, they even aim to sell internationally, in their 2030 plan, are a model. To China no less. China also builds nuclear reactors, and we can't fall behind them. I cannot abide an SMR gap.
  - grecy 3y ago
    > China also builds nuclear reactors, and we can't fall behind them I, uh, have some uncomfortable news for you. China are currently building 22 nuclear reactors [1] China installed 230GW of solar and wind in 2023 [2] China has over 40,000kms of High Speed Rail, and continues to expand [3] By any measure, you're falling way behind them. [1] https://www.economist.com/china/2023/11/30/china-is-building-nuclear-reactors-faster-than-any-other-country https://www.economist.com/china/2023/11/30/china-is-building... [2] https://www.asiafinancial.com/china-seen-installing-230-gw-of-solar-wind-power-in-2023-pv https://www.asiafinancial.com/china-seen-installing-230-gw-o... [3] https://www.statista.com/topics/7534/high-speed-rail-in-china/#topicOverview https://www.statista.com/topics/7534/high-speed-rail-in-chin...
    - neither_color 3y ago
      Last I checked they're also outcompeting everyone in new coal plants https://www.npr.org/2023/03/02/1160441919/china-is-building-six-times-more-new-coal-plants-than-other-countries-report-fin https://www.npr.org/2023/03/02/1160441919/china-is-building-...
      - 3y ago
nradov 3y ago
Perhaps, but so far in the US we still don't have any really large battery storage facilities connected to the grid. These will be necessary if want to have reliable base load capacity without building more nuclear or fossil fuel power plants. The largest battery storage facility being built right now only has 2165 MWh of capacity, which is a drop in the bucket relative to demand. https://www.nsenergybusiness.com/projects/edwards-sanborn-solar-and-energy-storage-project/ https://www.nsenergybusiness.com/projects/edwards-sanborn-so... Battery prices keep falling, but the supply chain is still constrained and there are huge expenses involved in building storage facilities that go beyond the cost of the cells. Other storage systems such as pumped hydroelectric or electrolyzed hydrogen may play a role but aren't cheap either.
- epistasis 3y ago
  There's little reason to build massive batteries at one spot, unless you are repurposing an only transmission line. Instead, a good chunk of grid storage is getting deployed right at the generation site of solar (and some wind), which allows more efficient use of that transmission line. Instead, we should be looking for large amounts of total install. However, this still won't happen much until it's actually needed by the grid, which starts to happen at much higher amounts of renewable generation than most states are using. The tech is there, it's being deployed at massive scale where needed, and it's dropping in cost as fast or faster than predicted.
  - Manuel_D 3y ago
    The tech is not here. The scale of grid storage required to fulfill just diurnal storage - let alone days or weeks to offset seasonal variation - is far beyond what batteries can provide. To put this in perspective, the US alone uses 12 TWh of electricity per day. The world uses 60 TWh per day. Both of these figures are going to increase, as poorer countries develop and want amenities like air conditioning. Also, as transportation and industrial processes are electrified. By comparison, global battery production is around 500 GWh per year. Yes, this will increase. But most of that production is going to electronics and EVs, not grid storage. This is why proponents of a primarily wind + solar grid assume that hydrogen, ammonia, compressed air, giant concrete weights, or something else will make energy storage nearly free. Delivering the required storage scale with existing technologies isn't feasible, so people just assume that some other heretofore unproven technology will be orders of magnitude better.
amateuring 3y ago
[flagged]
beanjuiceII 3y ago
I'd bet you will be very wrong
- seb1204 3y ago
  I think you are wrong for the reason parent stated. Safety and regulations for nuclear are just too high to be competitive with modular solar that can scale and has no nuclear waste issue that is still unsolved.
  - beanjuiceII 3y ago
    do you have any info on the chemicals used in creating and disposing solar and batteries that would be involved in comparison?
deleted 3y ago
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tick_tock_tick 3y ago
Batteries haven't gotten cheap; unless we get some crazy breakthrough total wind and solar power production will probably peak within the next 20 years.
- angiosperm 3y ago
  We already had the crazy breakthrough, which is why solar and wind production are on an exponential growth curve.
  - mikeyouse 3y ago
    You don't even "need" crazy battery breakthroughs - you can just build more wind and solar than you need + enough transmission infrastructure so you can deliver it to where it's needed. Of course batteries are getting cheaper regardless.
avalys 3y ago
A little bit silly to compare the price of solar and batteries, which has been driven down due to extensive government subsidy, tax incentives, and massive economies of scale over the past few decades (including production in China), to the current estimated cost of nuclear plants that we have almost no experience building anymore. If we embarked on a sustained plan to invest in nuclear the way we have in solar and wind, nuclear's all-in cost would be far cheaper. I guarantee it.
- dalyons 3y ago
  And I “guarantee” the opposite. Nuclear is fundamentally massive complicated technology that just wouldn’t benefit from cost reductions due to manufacturing scale in the same degree. Solar is so so simple in comparison, that’s why it’s gotten so cheap and will continue to get cheaper. Maybe after 10 years of massively scaled nuke production we get costs down 2-4x . That would be nice but solar is down 30x and still dropping.
  - hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
    Exactly. Furthermore, it's not like we can go back 40 years and make stronger investments in nuclear from back then. The need to decarbonize is so massive right now that it doesn't make sense to invest a ton in technology that will only be "ready" in 2055. By that time renewables (and the storage infrastructure that will be required) will have an insurmountable lead unless large scale fusion becomes viable.
  - 5thaccount 3y ago
    [dead]
- mdorazio 3y ago
  No. The US has subsidized the hell out of nuclear historically [1] and also in recent years [2]. Without subsidies, commercial nuclear development would never have happened in the first place and we would be shutting down plants faster than we already are because of economics. This also excludes all the VC money that has flowed into nuclear startups. [1] https://www.gao.gov/products/emd-79-52 https://www.gao.gov/products/emd-79-52 [2] https://www.energy.gov/articles/doe-establishes-6-billion-program-preserve-americas-clean-nuclear-energy-infrastructure https://www.energy.gov/articles/doe-establishes-6-billion-pr...
arrosenberg 3y ago
You are probably right, but only in the short term. Long term, there will be the political will for projects that require 10-100x our current power production, and nuclear will look attractive again. Alternatively, the renewables curve may flatten before we are fully decarbonized simply because the maintenance and materials don't scale well. Nuclear is expensive up front, but maintenance requires far fewer (albeit more specialized) personnel and way less material per kwh.
- angiosperm 3y ago
  When people want 10-100x our current power production, they will build 10-100x solar and wind, because they are massively cheaper. Nukes have only ever got more expensive. Nukes might make sense on the moon.
  - arrosenberg 3y ago
    Ignores context, diminishing returns, the lack of viable storage options at that scale (or even the current one). Gonna still put my money on the proven tech for 10-100x projects - its a social choice to make it expensive.
    - angiosperm 3y ago
      Right now little is spent on storage because dollars are overwhelmingly better spent building out generating capacity, even in places where noontime generation exceeds demand. When there is a strict excess of renewable generation, it will be time to begin building out storage. We have myriad viable storage options. Costs for storage are still falling fast.
      - arrosenberg 3y ago
        That doesn't make sense, do you have data for that? Best I can find is that we (the US) has the ability to store somewhere around 1% of our generation capacity, rounding up. Here in California we spend absurd amounts maintaining gas plants that only run during high demand periods, despite only having 6.6GW worth of storage for a state using 300 TWh per year. We are only 13% to our 2045 goal, so if it was cost-effective to do, we would already be doing it. Without the storage, all of that day time generation is pointless, we need either gas or nuclear at night anyways, so the cost isn't really affected.
redandblack 3y ago
adding this story as well = https://cleantechnica.com/2023/12/26/solar-panel-prices-down-30-40-in-2023-us-prices-down-15/ https://cleantechnica.com/2023/12/26/solar-panel-prices-down...
hinkley 3y ago
Moreso, solar and wind are too predictable. How Big Things Get Done ranks them up with road construction as top projects that barely go over budget. If you expect to spend $100 million on solar or wind, then it’s probably going to cost <$110 million. Meanwhile other projects could go 2, 3, 7x over budget, time or money or both. Someone who builds a solar array will be able to go directly to build another, not have to lick their wounds and repair their reputation or business.
lopis 3y ago
Another big advantage of solar, and wind to some extent, is that is distributed. It provides resilience to the network. Nuclear produces a lot of power, sure, but it's one big fat single point of failure.
- defrost 3y ago
  If you complete that thought to include both space and time, solar is present only during daylight whereas nuclear is distributed evenly right around the clock. It's less either|or, more swings|roundabouts. A pure solar solution requires (on the order of) 2x excess daylight production and 10 hours of offset storage to buffer against the night (and compensate for energy transfer (daylight power -> storage -> night time power) losses). Solar is great, sure, but there's a long way to go to replace the energy production of fossil fuels, that comes with a lot of reqource mining and waste. Somewhere in the middle is an optimal solution with much solar and wind, a little bit of nuclear OR gas fired OR <somethig steady> and a whole lot of varied storage (battery + gravity + thermal + green gases).
- akira2501 3y ago
  The grid is not a network. It's a large single frequency balanced power distribution machine. It is, in and of itself, _the_ single point of failure, and there are significant tradeoffs in having lots of small capacity generators vs. small amounts of large capacity generators connected to it. There's this cry for absolutism in this thread that's just absurd, on both sides. You want a wide multiplicity of power generation plant sizes and technologies, for what should be, at this point in history, solidly obvious reasons. So, you want lots of Nuclear _and_ Solar. Seeing the two as competing shows just how monopolized our energy markets truly are.
  - angiosperm 3y ago
    They are competing because each dollar is spent either on solar and wind or on something else. That dollar spent on solar or wind gets you much more power than any alternative. The advantage increases every year.
osigurdson 3y ago
Are batteries really too cheap for nuclear to compete?
cyberax 3y ago
> If I was a betting man, I would put money down that Vogtle 4 is the last nuclear reactor that gets built in the US. Solar and batteries are just too cheap for nuclear to compete. On the contrary, solar and wind are _waaaaaay_ too expensive if you actually want your generation to be reliable. Just ask Texas.
- pfdietz 3y ago
  Ah yes, Texas... https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/PT.3.4088 https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/PT.3.4088 “The cost of new nuclear is prohibitive for us to be investing in,” says Crane. Exelon considered building two new reactors in Texas in 2005, he says, when gas prices were $8/MMBtu and were projected to rise to $13/MMBtu. At that price, the project would have been viable with a CO2 tax of $25 per ton. “We’re sitting here trading 2019 gas at $2.90 per MMBtu,” he says; for new nuclear power to be competitive at that price, a CO2 tax “would be $300–$400.” Exelon currently is placing its bets instead on advances in energy storage and carbon sequestration technologies.
throwawaaarrgh 3y ago
I don't know how many times this needs to be said: solar and wind and batteries can't provide consistent enough power, either for current or the growing energy needs, of the US or the world. Alternative power sources are required to maintain energy sufficiency into the future. Period. Ask any company that builds green energy if you don't believe me. What's more ridiculous than this oversight is the idea that the cost of wind, solar, or batteries is somehow never going to go up. News flash: all advanced industrial processes that depend on a global supply chain are subject to price fluctuations.
- pydry 3y ago
  >I don't know how many times this needs to be said Zero. Few people are unaware that the sun doesnt shine at night. It never needed repeating. What theyre less educated about is that pumped storage, hydrogen, batteries, solar/wind anticorrelation and demand shaping are, together, more than capable of accomodating renewable intermittency. What's most ridiculous is that even the most expensive form of viable power storage (hydrogen) is still cheaper when paired with solar or wind than nuclear power is alone. This isnt to say that we should go all in on hydrogen/solar, just that nuclear power's cost is unconscionably high. Indeed, if it werent for the nuclear military's reliance on civilian supply chains and skills it would never get built and the 'environmentalist nuclear' PR offensive of the last ~8 years that resonated with so many people wouldnt have happened.
  - throwawaaarrgh 3y ago
    The energy sector is still private. If green were cheaper, and more reliable, and gave a good return, it would be getting a bigger investment. But it's not, because it's not. Maybe in theoretical-perfect-future-world it's cheaper, but not today.
    - fifilura 3y ago
      This is because the producers are not paying (enough) for the waste they create. Emissions or nuclear waste. Seems like natural they would?
throwaway2037 3y ago
I agree with the spirit of your post, but I would say 10s of GW per year, instead of 1 TW per year. Currently, the US is adding about 10 GW of new solar capacity per year. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2000-_Clean_power_installation_-_wind,_solar,_storage_-_US.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2000-_Clean_power_install...
- MichaelNolan 3y ago
  The 1TW prediction was for the whole world. I’d expect the US to settle somewhere in the high 10s to low 100s by 2030. The US added 23GW in 2023, and is expected to add 37GW in 2024. https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/steo/pdf/steo_full.pdf https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/steo/pdf/steo_full.pdf

UberFly 3y ago

I would take that bet. Nuclear tech will also continue to improve.

stetrain 3y ago
Nuclear does not seem to be on the mass production curve that solar and batteries are. Even if you could design a reactor that itself can be mass produced at that scale, you still need to do the same with selecting and getting environmental and public safety approval for installation sites and production, transportation, and disposal of the fuel and waste. I'm not against nuclear from a technological perspective, but I just don't see it being economically competitive with effectively printable devices like solar and batteries given the current direction of the cost curves on each.
- the8472 3y ago
  https://www.statista.com/statistics/1129876/china-nuclear-power-generation-volume/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1129876/china-nuclear-po...
  - stetrain 3y ago
    How do costs compare? What's the site approval process like in China vs the US?
  - _aavaa_ 3y ago
    Compare this graph with more than nuclear, and notice how lagging nuclear is compared to any other renewable. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/solar-energy-consumption https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/solar-energy-consumption
- fiddlerwoaroof 3y ago
  Nuclear might not be able to compete in the U.S. and Europe, but that’s largely because of a ridiculous regulatory regime and has very little to do with the actual tech.
  - wolverine876 3y ago
    People love to say it, but is there evidence? I've never seen it - which doesn't mean it doesn't exist, but that this claim needs it.
    - Manuel_D 3y ago
      Nuclear was much cheaper in the 1970s and early 80s: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Overnight-Construction-Cost-of-US-Nuclear-Power-Reactors-by-Construction-Start-Date_fig8_292964046 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Overnight-Construction-C... This wasn't just due to regulatory influence, it was also due to economies of scale. But the two are related, more regulation results in fewer builds. Fewer builds reduces economies of scale and thus increases costs. Which results in even fewer nuclear builds, and so on.
      - angiosperm 3y ago
        In other words, nuke cost has only ever increased, however much was built.
        Manuel_D 3y ago
        On a per-MW basis nuclear power dropped in cost during the 1950s. See the small blue dots round the late 1950s and early 60s? Compare that with the cluster of red dots.
        wolverine876 3y ago
        Early, low-hanging fruit?
- throwjnkjk 3y ago
  Slave labor is always cheap. https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/ILAB/images/storyboards/solar/Solar.pdf https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/ILAB/images/storyboar...
- XorNot 3y ago
  Batteries are nowhere near able to meet any energy storage demands of the grid. The simple question to ask yourself is why do battery installations always get quoted in units of power - GW - and not units of energy, GWH - which is what we actually use? (The answer is: because they're terrible for it. Batteries hold about 3x they're rated power value as energy - which means the 10 GW or whatever someone quotes is good for about 3 hours at that output. Great for grid stability, expensive and useless for long term storage).
  - cesarb 3y ago
    > The simple question to ask yourself is why do battery installations always get quoted in units of power - GW - and not units of energy, GWH - which is what we actually use? For the same reason gas power plants and hydroelectric power plants are quoted in MW units, and not on the size of their fuel tanks or reservoir volume (converted to MWh as appropriate): it's the most important number for balancing the grid. If you have 90 GW of power demand on the grid at a given moment, you need 90 GW of power generation on the grid at that same moment (simplifying a bit, since transmission constraints mean you also need some of that power generation to be at specific places).
    - XorNot 3y ago
      Thus answering the challenge: they're not storage. They're grid stabilization utilities. Because no one expects to run them for more then 30 minutes to an hour while they bring dispatchable generation online. Which means they're irrelevant to the idea of grid scale energy storage, because they don't meaningfully store anything.
      - ViewTrick1002 3y ago
        Last year you said they couldn't even meet enough demand for the grid. Now it is 30 minutes to an hour. Next year it will be hours. How does it feel when the Overton windows moves while nuclear is stuck in the past? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window
- mpweiher 3y ago
  The insane thing is that it is so efficient that it doesn't need to be on that mass production curve to be competitive. It is competitive even in the somewhat insane way we build it now. However, we have a number of companies working on building reactors in factories. Rolls-Royce for example is talking to Ukraine to upgrade some of their old (not sure if already decommissioned) coal plants to nuclear with small, factory-built nuclear reactors.
ethbr1 3y ago
For that to happen in the US, (1) we need to focus on more numerous, smaller modular reactors, (2) the NRC needs certification timeliness requirements forced on it (and more funding if there's an actual lack of resources), and (3) specific project requirements need to be frozen before construction (no more up-requiring mid-construction). Modular reactors are the solution to not having enough capital or a long enough timeframe to launch and fund megaprojects at a pace that creates economies of scale anymore, which is exactly the US problem.
- wolverine876 3y ago
  > NRC needs certification timeliness requirements forced on it That's going to be tough: What happens if the day comes and they don't yet know? They can't just approve it, so just deny it?
  - zdragnar 3y ago
    The government should cover the losses of the investors. Various agencies are constantly missing FOIA deadlines, and often the only way to get them to actually do the jobs they are legally required to do is to sue them in court, asking for both the information and to have court costs covered.
    - wolverine876 3y ago
      Even if you could pass that legislation, which seems very unlikely, that doesn't solve the problem. The employees of the regulators aren't personally liable, and in many respects don't individually control the schedule. The investors also cause delays - and would now have an incentive to do that - and in many cases the/an investor is the government. Also, good luck explaining to taxpayers the $10 billion payout.
      - zdragnar 3y ago
        Right, the employees would have to be liable to their bosses. Their bosses would have to be answering up the chain, to congress and the president. Presumably, for a regulatory agency to be held to a deadline, they would need to outline up front (or with reasonable notice) all of the things they would need to know and the inspections they would have to make. Those time tables would have to be defined early on. This is where the idea breaks down. How does a regulator devise a fixed schedule to regulate a novel technology? How do you hold government employees accountable without upsetting powerful interests like politicians and unions, or get staffing funded properly on demand? How do you even get the government to hold itself accountable on something like this when the DOD can't even *complete a clean audit*? We'll probably just keep winging it, badly.
HDThoreaun 3y ago
Nuclear has only ever gotten more cost inefficient. What makes you think that will change?
- Manuel_D 3y ago
  Nuclear was cheaper when more of it was built [1]. Economies of scale make things cheaper. A production run of 40 steam generators is a lot cheaper than 4 steam generators. Proponents of a primarily solar + wind grid are betting on a breakthrough in energy storage. If that breakthrough does not transpire, we'll either have to give up on stopping carbon emissions or use nuclear power. 1. https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Overnight-Construction-Cost-of-US-Nuclear-Power-Reactors-by-Construction-Start-Date_fig8_292964046 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Overnight-Construction-C...
  - sounds 3y ago
    Converting atmospheric CO2 into fuels could contribute to this effort. But bacterial and plant-based fuel production may still be more economical and produce fewer overall emissions than even a solar array and a carbon capture plant.
    - Manuel_D 3y ago
      Converting atmospheric CO2 into hydrocarbon fuels requires hydrogen as an input, so it'd probably be easier to just store the hydrogen directly. Right now, almost all hydrogen is produced through steam reformation [1] which emits CO2. Electrolysis is inefficient and corrosion of electrodes makes it expensive and hard to scale. Capturing atmospheric CO2 is similarly difficult. Carbon Dioxide is at very low concentrations in the atmosphere so it takes a really long time to sequester meaningful amounts of it. Similar issue with biomass: it produces energy very slowly and doesn't have the scale required. There's a reason why plans for a primarily renewable grid assume that compressed air, synthetic ammonia, giant flywheels, or something else will provide storage for orders of magnitude cheaper than batteries: because existing storage systems aren't capable of meeting the storage demands of intermittent generation. Will one of these systems deliver a storage breakthrough? Maybe. But it's not wise to bet the future of your electrical grid on a technological breakthrough that hasn't happened yet. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_reforming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_reforming
jeffbee 3y ago
I love the improvement implied by "continue to improve" in the face of all evidence that shows fission is a uniquely impractical source of energy that has done nothing but get more and more expensive.
grecy 3y ago
So the first nuke power reactor went live in 1951. In the 72 years since then, in what meaningful ways has "Nuclear tech" improved? It's not cheaper to build. It's not cheaper to operate. It's not cheaper to dispose of the waste. It's not cheaper to decommission. It's not faster to build. ?

gustavus 3y ago

It seems to me that having a couple of nuclear reactors as base load spread throughout the country would be more useful than having a massive spread out battery & solar infrastructure. I mean as an example many companies, especially PG&E can't maintain adequate powerlines, who is banking on the fact that they'll do an even better job when we quintuple the amount of infrastructure and they have to develop a whole new domain of expertise based in battery technology. Not to mention even the supposedly clean, solar and batteries, still have an enormous amount of carbon emissions involved in their supply chain, and need to be replaced on a fairly regular basis.

dexwiz 3y ago
Grid level solar has batteries installed on site. The site acts as a power generator that sells energy to PG&E, they don’t manage it themselves. If anything a solar field requires much less operation expertise and staff to manage than a nuclear power plant. And when it goes bad, it might leech some acid and heavy metals into the soil over years, not leave a 10k year radioactive exclusion zone.
Retric 3y ago
Nuclear is extremely dependent on long distance power transmission. Nobody wants a reactor in the middle of a city, and 1-5 GW of power needs to be sent long distances before it’s used. Solar on the other hand scales down to 50MW instillations just fine so you can put it near substations etc. Huge solar parks make sense in locations with lots of sunlight and cheap land, but they aren’t the only option just a trade off in terms of transmission costs vs generation costs.
- HDThoreaun 3y ago
  Chicago is mostly on nuclear and the reactor is quite close to the city, just over the Indiana border.
  - Retric 3y ago
    Closest is Braidwood which is ~60 miles from downtown. NYC has large power plants in Manhattan (East River 1, 2, 6, and 7), Queens (650MW Astoria Energy II power station), and Brooklyn (Narrows 1–1 to 2-8) plus a few more.

internetter 3y ago

One kilogram of uranium-235 (50 cm^3) can theoretically produce about 20 terajoules of energy. One square kilometer of solar panels can theoretically produce the same amount (as 50cm^3 U235) in a day. I'll take this bet. Edit: Tried to edit the edit but somehow deleted the rest of the edit. It was something to the tune of how a big problem with renewables is the fact that peak solar production does not match peak energy consumption, and storage is very difficult, so realistically we'll need a wide variety of energy options to fully transition to renewables. Nuclear is reliable and to some degree adjustable, helping to alleviate the storage issue. Basically, it's my opinion that nuclear works well with other renewable sources, and a full renewable transition will certainly involve more of it.

echelon 3y ago
We need two things: - More energy - Energy diversification That includes nuclear, solar, and even more fossil fuels as we wean ourselves off of them. Writing off any form of energy is ideological, not practical.
- internetter 3y ago
  Agreed minus the fossil fuels bit. It's my belief we should not further scale that infrastructure.
adonovan 3y ago
Perhaps I fail to understand, but doesn't this comparison depend on a number of parameters such as the total reactor fuel load and enrichment, the burn rate, the cost of nuclear fuel, the cost of solar PV, the lifetimes of each system, and the relative process efficiencies (notably the cost of decommissioning nuclear)? Otherwise you might as well say a teaspoon (or whatever) of water has as much potential fusion energy as 1 Kg U235 at a fraction of the price. ;-)
- internetter 3y ago
  Yes, the amount of estimations I made to get to that number is absurd, and very much "best case" with no regard for inefficiencies (both nuclear and solar systems are currently leaving lots on the table).

colmmacc 3y ago

Nuclear power seems like a good option for non-military boats too, like container ships and oil tankers. It's already a very well proven maritime technology.

hef19898 3y ago
That was tried, nuclear reactors on civilian ships, and found to be a stupid idea. Too expensive and no real benefit over ship engines. By the way, tha vast majority of military ships and boats are not nuclear powered.
- davkan 3y ago
  Aside from the environmental benefit right? Don’t lots of large ships burn cheaper fuel higher in pollutants when on unregulated wafers?
  - api 3y ago
    Ships and planes together account for single digit percentages of global fossil fuel use and emissions. It’s almost all cars, trucks, and electric power, so those are the things it makes the most sense to worry about as opposed to things that are much harder to decarbonize and account for less emissions.
    - davkan 3y ago
      Is ship pollution really that negligible?[0] To be clear though the entire world is dependent on trans ocean shipping, it cannot be kneecapped for environmental purposes, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a relevant part of the issue. [0] https://www.transportenvironment.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/The-return-of-the-cruise-June-2023.pdf https://www.transportenvironment.org/wp-content/uploads/2023...
    - pfdietz 3y ago
      And a great deal of what's sent by ship is... fossil fuels!
  - 3y ago

mgaunard 3y ago

Too cheap for "American nuclear" to compete. Chinese nuclear can compete just fine.

gosub100 3y ago
[flagged]
epistasis 3y ago
Chinese nuclear is not competing very well. There's a minuscule amount of it planned, only like 50GW over the coming decades. This is not even a drop in the bucket compared to what China are doing with batteries, wind, and solar.
- gambiting 3y ago
  It's 50GW more than anyone else though. There are some nuclear projects in US/UK but I'll eat my hat if they actually get built at all.
  - mpweiher 3y ago
    That's currently changing. The catastrophe of Germany's "Energiewende" has made a lot of countries re-evaluate their nuclear strategy, culminating in the COP28 nuclear pledge.
    - angiosperm 3y ago
      Evidently you missed the news that it turned out to be no catastrophe at all, but just a lot of hand-wringing and pearl-clutching over a clearly hoped-for catastrophe.
      - mpweiher 3y ago
        Yeah, evidently I missed the news that after 20 years of Energiewende, Germany has the 2nd most expensive AND the 2nd dirtiest electricity in Europe and that the old plan of "we'll use wind and solar when the wind blows and the sun shines, and when they do not <a miracle occurs>" really worked out perfectly, particularly when the miracle turned out to be "Russian gas" and exploded in our face, causing us to have to buy up essentially all the gas available on the open market at horrible expense after Russia started blackmailing us. Note that "buying up all the gas on the open market" is not a strategy that too many countries can follow at once, hence other countries started to look elsewhere. For example, Japan, who were going to exit nuclear, and are now turning more and more of their old plants back on and have announced they will be building more (!), very specifically to replace reliance on LNG shipments. And yeah, we got really, really lucky with the mild winter of 2022. Apparently not too many other countries think that "luck" is sound energy policy, but YMMV. Also slightly unpopular in the world is our tried and true method of "we'll lower emissions by pushing our economy into recession due to high energy costs". And the constitutional court also took a dim view of trying to hide all the extra costs off the main budget, so the real costs are only now starting to emerge. The farmer demos were probably just the start of the unrest when the pain gets passed onto the population. A population that already now thinks the getting out of nuclear was a mistake: "Sechs von zehn Befragten (59 Prozent) im aktuellen DeutschlandTrend für das ARD-Morgenmagazin halten die Entscheidung der Politik für falsch," https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/deutschlandtrend/deutschlandtrend-3357.html https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/deutschlandtrend/deutschlan... Meanwhile, the coalition that is pushing this through against the voters is now down to 32% in the polls. But you're right, I really should have followed the news more! The Tragedy of Germany’s Energy Experiment https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/08/opinion/nuclear-power-germany.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/08/opinion/nuclear-power-ger... Germany’s Energiewende: A Disaster In The Making https://www.thegwpf.org/publications/germanys-energiewende-a-disaster-in-the-making/ https://www.thegwpf.org/publications/germanys-energiewende-a... Germany’s Energy Disaster 20 Years Later https://www.americanexperiment.org/germanys-energy-disaster-20-years-later/?__cf_chl_rt_tk=bqa4ZDn.PbhF76s.wE3Pcw8CjafP.bMyifjcBEAD5Yw-1703749860-0-gaNycGzNDdA https://www.americanexperiment.org/germanys-energy-disaster-... Germany’s Energy Crisis Dispels Several Myths https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaellynch/2022/08/31/germanys-energy-crisis-dispels-several-myths/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaellynch/2022/08/31/germany... "Much of its problem is self-inflicted and demonstrates the perils of populist but irrational energy policy." You are right, I really should follow the news more!

jillesvangurp 3y ago

> The new 1,114 megawatt (MW) Unit 3 reactor joins two existing reactors It's indeed not a lot. At a great cost. That kind of is the point. Nuclear is very costly. Solar, wind, battery storage, and other cheap alternatives are indeed being rolled out at a plural orders of magnitude larger scale.

mcint 3y ago
Nuclear is costly _now_*. It wasn't getting built, for years. There is so much energy to be had from that, and cost learning curves can come down. France's ("small") modular reactors, SMR, they even aim to sell internationally, in their 2030 plan, are a model. To China no less. China also builds nuclear reactors, and we can't fall behind them. I cannot abide an SMR gap.
- grecy 3y ago
  > China also builds nuclear reactors, and we can't fall behind them I, uh, have some uncomfortable news for you. China are currently building 22 nuclear reactors [1] China installed 230GW of solar and wind in 2023 [2] China has over 40,000kms of High Speed Rail, and continues to expand [3] By any measure, you're falling way behind them. [1] https://www.economist.com/china/2023/11/30/china-is-building-nuclear-reactors-faster-than-any-other-country https://www.economist.com/china/2023/11/30/china-is-building... [2] https://www.asiafinancial.com/china-seen-installing-230-gw-of-solar-wind-power-in-2023-pv https://www.asiafinancial.com/china-seen-installing-230-gw-o... [3] https://www.statista.com/topics/7534/high-speed-rail-in-china/#topicOverview https://www.statista.com/topics/7534/high-speed-rail-in-chin...
  - neither_color 3y ago
    Last I checked they're also outcompeting everyone in new coal plants https://www.npr.org/2023/03/02/1160441919/china-is-building-six-times-more-new-coal-plants-than-other-countries-report-fin https://www.npr.org/2023/03/02/1160441919/china-is-building-...
    - 3y ago

nradov 3y ago

Perhaps, but so far in the US we still don't have any really large battery storage facilities connected to the grid. These will be necessary if want to have reliable base load capacity without building more nuclear or fossil fuel power plants. The largest battery storage facility being built right now only has 2165 MWh of capacity, which is a drop in the bucket relative to demand. https://www.nsenergybusiness.com/projects/edwards-sanborn-solar-and-energy-storage-project/ https://www.nsenergybusiness.com/projects/edwards-sanborn-so... Battery prices keep falling, but the supply chain is still constrained and there are huge expenses involved in building storage facilities that go beyond the cost of the cells. Other storage systems such as pumped hydroelectric or electrolyzed hydrogen may play a role but aren't cheap either.

epistasis 3y ago
There's little reason to build massive batteries at one spot, unless you are repurposing an only transmission line. Instead, a good chunk of grid storage is getting deployed right at the generation site of solar (and some wind), which allows more efficient use of that transmission line. Instead, we should be looking for large amounts of total install. However, this still won't happen much until it's actually needed by the grid, which starts to happen at much higher amounts of renewable generation than most states are using. The tech is there, it's being deployed at massive scale where needed, and it's dropping in cost as fast or faster than predicted.
- Manuel_D 3y ago
  The tech is not here. The scale of grid storage required to fulfill just diurnal storage - let alone days or weeks to offset seasonal variation - is far beyond what batteries can provide. To put this in perspective, the US alone uses 12 TWh of electricity per day. The world uses 60 TWh per day. Both of these figures are going to increase, as poorer countries develop and want amenities like air conditioning. Also, as transportation and industrial processes are electrified. By comparison, global battery production is around 500 GWh per year. Yes, this will increase. But most of that production is going to electronics and EVs, not grid storage. This is why proponents of a primarily wind + solar grid assume that hydrogen, ammonia, compressed air, giant concrete weights, or something else will make energy storage nearly free. Delivering the required storage scale with existing technologies isn't feasible, so people just assume that some other heretofore unproven technology will be orders of magnitude better.

amateuring 3y ago

[flagged]

beanjuiceII 3y ago

I'd bet you will be very wrong

seb1204 3y ago
I think you are wrong for the reason parent stated. Safety and regulations for nuclear are just too high to be competitive with modular solar that can scale and has no nuclear waste issue that is still unsolved.
- beanjuiceII 3y ago
  do you have any info on the chemicals used in creating and disposing solar and batteries that would be involved in comparison?

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

tick_tock_tick 3y ago

Batteries haven't gotten cheap; unless we get some crazy breakthrough total wind and solar power production will probably peak within the next 20 years.

angiosperm 3y ago
We already had the crazy breakthrough, which is why solar and wind production are on an exponential growth curve.
- mikeyouse 3y ago
  You don't even "need" crazy battery breakthroughs - you can just build more wind and solar than you need + enough transmission infrastructure so you can deliver it to where it's needed. Of course batteries are getting cheaper regardless.

avalys 3y ago

A little bit silly to compare the price of solar and batteries, which has been driven down due to extensive government subsidy, tax incentives, and massive economies of scale over the past few decades (including production in China), to the current estimated cost of nuclear plants that we have almost no experience building anymore. If we embarked on a sustained plan to invest in nuclear the way we have in solar and wind, nuclear's all-in cost would be far cheaper. I guarantee it.

dalyons 3y ago
And I “guarantee” the opposite. Nuclear is fundamentally massive complicated technology that just wouldn’t benefit from cost reductions due to manufacturing scale in the same degree. Solar is so so simple in comparison, that’s why it’s gotten so cheap and will continue to get cheaper. Maybe after 10 years of massively scaled nuke production we get costs down 2-4x . That would be nice but solar is down 30x and still dropping.
- hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
  Exactly. Furthermore, it's not like we can go back 40 years and make stronger investments in nuclear from back then. The need to decarbonize is so massive right now that it doesn't make sense to invest a ton in technology that will only be "ready" in 2055. By that time renewables (and the storage infrastructure that will be required) will have an insurmountable lead unless large scale fusion becomes viable.
- 5thaccount 3y ago
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mdorazio 3y ago
No. The US has subsidized the hell out of nuclear historically [1] and also in recent years [2]. Without subsidies, commercial nuclear development would never have happened in the first place and we would be shutting down plants faster than we already are because of economics. This also excludes all the VC money that has flowed into nuclear startups. [1] https://www.gao.gov/products/emd-79-52 https://www.gao.gov/products/emd-79-52 [2] https://www.energy.gov/articles/doe-establishes-6-billion-program-preserve-americas-clean-nuclear-energy-infrastructure https://www.energy.gov/articles/doe-establishes-6-billion-pr...

arrosenberg 3y ago

You are probably right, but only in the short term. Long term, there will be the political will for projects that require 10-100x our current power production, and nuclear will look attractive again. Alternatively, the renewables curve may flatten before we are fully decarbonized simply because the maintenance and materials don't scale well. Nuclear is expensive up front, but maintenance requires far fewer (albeit more specialized) personnel and way less material per kwh.

angiosperm 3y ago
When people want 10-100x our current power production, they will build 10-100x solar and wind, because they are massively cheaper. Nukes have only ever got more expensive. Nukes might make sense on the moon.
- arrosenberg 3y ago
  Ignores context, diminishing returns, the lack of viable storage options at that scale (or even the current one). Gonna still put my money on the proven tech for 10-100x projects - its a social choice to make it expensive.
  - angiosperm 3y ago
    Right now little is spent on storage because dollars are overwhelmingly better spent building out generating capacity, even in places where noontime generation exceeds demand. When there is a strict excess of renewable generation, it will be time to begin building out storage. We have myriad viable storage options. Costs for storage are still falling fast.
    - arrosenberg 3y ago
      That doesn't make sense, do you have data for that? Best I can find is that we (the US) has the ability to store somewhere around 1% of our generation capacity, rounding up. Here in California we spend absurd amounts maintaining gas plants that only run during high demand periods, despite only having 6.6GW worth of storage for a state using 300 TWh per year. We are only 13% to our 2045 goal, so if it was cost-effective to do, we would already be doing it. Without the storage, all of that day time generation is pointless, we need either gas or nuclear at night anyways, so the cost isn't really affected.

redandblack 3y ago

adding this story as well = https://cleantechnica.com/2023/12/26/solar-panel-prices-down-30-40-in-2023-us-prices-down-15/ https://cleantechnica.com/2023/12/26/solar-panel-prices-down...

hinkley 3y ago

Moreso, solar and wind are too predictable. How Big Things Get Done ranks them up with road construction as top projects that barely go over budget. If you expect to spend $100 million on solar or wind, then it’s probably going to cost <$110 million. Meanwhile other projects could go 2, 3, 7x over budget, time or money or both. Someone who builds a solar array will be able to go directly to build another, not have to lick their wounds and repair their reputation or business.

lopis 3y ago

Another big advantage of solar, and wind to some extent, is that is distributed. It provides resilience to the network. Nuclear produces a lot of power, sure, but it's one big fat single point of failure.

defrost 3y ago
If you complete that thought to include both space and time, solar is present only during daylight whereas nuclear is distributed evenly right around the clock. It's less either|or, more swings|roundabouts. A pure solar solution requires (on the order of) 2x excess daylight production and 10 hours of offset storage to buffer against the night (and compensate for energy transfer (daylight power -> storage -> night time power) losses). Solar is great, sure, but there's a long way to go to replace the energy production of fossil fuels, that comes with a lot of reqource mining and waste. Somewhere in the middle is an optimal solution with much solar and wind, a little bit of nuclear OR gas fired OR <somethig steady> and a whole lot of varied storage (battery + gravity + thermal + green gases).
akira2501 3y ago
The grid is not a network. It's a large single frequency balanced power distribution machine. It is, in and of itself, _the_ single point of failure, and there are significant tradeoffs in having lots of small capacity generators vs. small amounts of large capacity generators connected to it. There's this cry for absolutism in this thread that's just absurd, on both sides. You want a wide multiplicity of power generation plant sizes and technologies, for what should be, at this point in history, solidly obvious reasons. So, you want lots of Nuclear _and_ Solar. Seeing the two as competing shows just how monopolized our energy markets truly are.
- angiosperm 3y ago
  They are competing because each dollar is spent either on solar and wind or on something else. That dollar spent on solar or wind gets you much more power than any alternative. The advantage increases every year.

osigurdson 3y ago

Are batteries really too cheap for nuclear to compete?

cyberax 3y ago

> If I was a betting man, I would put money down that Vogtle 4 is the last nuclear reactor that gets built in the US. Solar and batteries are just too cheap for nuclear to compete. On the contrary, solar and wind are _waaaaaay_ too expensive if you actually want your generation to be reliable. Just ask Texas.

pfdietz 3y ago
Ah yes, Texas... https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/PT.3.4088 https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/PT.3.4088 “The cost of new nuclear is prohibitive for us to be investing in,” says Crane. Exelon considered building two new reactors in Texas in 2005, he says, when gas prices were $8/MMBtu and were projected to rise to $13/MMBtu. At that price, the project would have been viable with a CO2 tax of $25 per ton. “We’re sitting here trading 2019 gas at $2.90 per MMBtu,” he says; for new nuclear power to be competitive at that price, a CO2 tax “would be $300–$400.” Exelon currently is placing its bets instead on advances in energy storage and carbon sequestration technologies.

throwawaaarrgh 3y ago

I don't know how many times this needs to be said: solar and wind and batteries can't provide consistent enough power, either for current or the growing energy needs, of the US or the world. Alternative power sources are required to maintain energy sufficiency into the future. Period. Ask any company that builds green energy if you don't believe me. What's more ridiculous than this oversight is the idea that the cost of wind, solar, or batteries is somehow never going to go up. News flash: all advanced industrial processes that depend on a global supply chain are subject to price fluctuations.

pydry 3y ago
>I don't know how many times this needs to be said Zero. Few people are unaware that the sun doesnt shine at night. It never needed repeating. What theyre less educated about is that pumped storage, hydrogen, batteries, solar/wind anticorrelation and demand shaping are, together, more than capable of accomodating renewable intermittency. What's most ridiculous is that even the most expensive form of viable power storage (hydrogen) is still cheaper when paired with solar or wind than nuclear power is alone. This isnt to say that we should go all in on hydrogen/solar, just that nuclear power's cost is unconscionably high. Indeed, if it werent for the nuclear military's reliance on civilian supply chains and skills it would never get built and the 'environmentalist nuclear' PR offensive of the last ~8 years that resonated with so many people wouldnt have happened.
- throwawaaarrgh 3y ago
  The energy sector is still private. If green were cheaper, and more reliable, and gave a good return, it would be getting a bigger investment. But it's not, because it's not. Maybe in theoretical-perfect-future-world it's cheaper, but not today.
  - fifilura 3y ago
    This is because the producers are not paying (enough) for the waste they create. Emissions or nuclear waste. Seems like natural they would?

throwaway2037 3y ago

I agree with the spirit of your post, but I would say 10s of GW per year, instead of 1 TW per year. Currently, the US is adding about 10 GW of new solar capacity per year. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2000-_Clean_power_installation_-_wind,_solar,_storage_-_US.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2000-_Clean_power_install...

MichaelNolan 3y ago
The 1TW prediction was for the whole world. I’d expect the US to settle somewhere in the high 10s to low 100s by 2030. The US added 23GW in 2023, and is expected to add 37GW in 2024. https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/steo/pdf/steo_full.pdf https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/steo/pdf/steo_full.pdf