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According to widespread chatter on HN and similar forums, nuclear will soon be irrelevant because renewables are becoming so cheap. I assume this is a much more

According to widespread chatter on HN and similar forums, nuclear will soon be irrelevant because renewables are becoming so cheap. I assume this is a much more thoughtful analysis; it would be nice to know, briefly, why this team does not expect this future, since nuclear has its own serious political problems.

acidburnNSA 3y ago
Intermittency and transmission at scale are likely to be exceedingly expensive and impacted by NIMBYism as wind and solar continue to scale towards world scale. Nuclear runs 24/7 and requires a lot fewer wires (since the plants are centralized) and so fits well into those downsides. Of course nuclear has downsides too, obviously, but there's plenty of reason to believe that, if nuclear people can start delivering projects on time and budget, that there's room for a massive expansion of carbon-free 24/7 nuclear power.
- pstuart 3y ago
  Having safe and approved SMRs that could be dropped into every existing coal power plant would be wonderful.
jillesvangurp 3y ago
It has a dose of realism: > Despite this promise, the prospects for the expansion of nuclear energy remain decidedly dim in many parts of the world. The fundamental problem is cost. Other generation technologies have become cheaper in recent decades, while new nuclear plants have only become costlier. I think this is realistic. Current cost of nuclear is unacceptably high. It's simply not competitive. It's a non-starter for commercial use. It can't be done without vast amounts of state support. This might be a fixable problem. But it's going to require something more than just doing more of the same. And that's going to take a lot of time. This decade looks like it's mostly lost already. We maybe get a handful of new reactors online by the end of it. But if it's not under construction already, forget about it. And they'll likely be of the "oops we did it again" variety in terms time and cost budgets. It's not going to make a huge difference either way. People have been talking about small reactors for ages. But those have yet to come online in meaningful numbers and are likely going to take a lot of time before they are being mass produced. We might be in the 2040s by the time that starts having any real impact. If ever. Meanwhile, renewables are coming online by the tens/hundreds of GW per year right now. Increasing every year. And yes there are some challenges with seasonal fluctuations in power output and weather related variations. All solvable with more renewables and storage. The bottom line is that mass production and deployment are working really well in that space. The reality in the next few years is that there are more nuclear reactors heading for end of life than new ones are being built in many countries. Some of those might get an (expensive) overhaul and life extension. But not all of them. I'm not against good solutions in this space. But it has to be at a more competitive cost. An order of magnitude at least.
- katbyte 3y ago
  Is it only not competitive thou because we still allow cheaper options like gas oil and coal to be burned instead? If you banned those and still needed a reliable source of always on power would nuclear still be so uncompetitive?

acidburnNSA 3y ago

Intermittency and transmission at scale are likely to be exceedingly expensive and impacted by NIMBYism as wind and solar continue to scale towards world scale. Nuclear runs 24/7 and requires a lot fewer wires (since the plants are centralized) and so fits well into those downsides. Of course nuclear has downsides too, obviously, but there's plenty of reason to believe that, if nuclear people can start delivering projects on time and budget, that there's room for a massive expansion of carbon-free 24/7 nuclear power.

pstuart 3y ago
Having safe and approved SMRs that could be dropped into every existing coal power plant would be wonderful.

jillesvangurp 3y ago

It has a dose of realism: > Despite this promise, the prospects for the expansion of nuclear energy remain decidedly dim in many parts of the world. The fundamental problem is cost. Other generation technologies have become cheaper in recent decades, while new nuclear plants have only become costlier. I think this is realistic. Current cost of nuclear is unacceptably high. It's simply not competitive. It's a non-starter for commercial use. It can't be done without vast amounts of state support. This might be a fixable problem. But it's going to require something more than just doing more of the same. And that's going to take a lot of time. This decade looks like it's mostly lost already. We maybe get a handful of new reactors online by the end of it. But if it's not under construction already, forget about it. And they'll likely be of the "oops we did it again" variety in terms time and cost budgets. It's not going to make a huge difference either way. People have been talking about small reactors for ages. But those have yet to come online in meaningful numbers and are likely going to take a lot of time before they are being mass produced. We might be in the 2040s by the time that starts having any real impact. If ever. Meanwhile, renewables are coming online by the tens/hundreds of GW per year right now. Increasing every year. And yes there are some challenges with seasonal fluctuations in power output and weather related variations. All solvable with more renewables and storage. The bottom line is that mass production and deployment are working really well in that space. The reality in the next few years is that there are more nuclear reactors heading for end of life than new ones are being built in many countries. Some of those might get an (expensive) overhaul and life extension. But not all of them. I'm not against good solutions in this space. But it has to be at a more competitive cost. An order of magnitude at least.

katbyte 3y ago
Is it only not competitive thou because we still allow cheaper options like gas oil and coal to be burned instead? If you banned those and still needed a reliable source of always on power would nuclear still be so uncompetitive?