4 ms·

> In contrast, we have several technologies in hand that are going to see a 10x-100x reduction in cost, and even at current prices are competitive or the market

> In contrast, we have several technologies in hand that are going to see a 10x-100x reduction in cost, and even at current prices are competitive or the market leader: wind, solar, and batteries. Isn't it a bit crazy to assume such a huge drop in costs? The same thing was done with nuclear: electricity too cheap to meter. Only it never materialized. Also, wind and solar are cheap, but they lean on fossil fuels for random dispatch. Basically we produce as much wind and solar as the weather permits, then top it up with gas or coal. But what is the cost of providing base load via renewables+batteries right now (and if it's competitive then why aren't there more such installations, apart from a few unusually sunny places). Don't get me wrong, a future with 100% renewable, cheap energy sounds great, but I think nuclear getting cheaper is no more optimistic than banking on a 10-100x price drop for renewables and batteries.

epistasis 3y ago
The difference is that wind, solar, and batteries have a history of getting 10x cheaper, and they are continuing on that trend. And the way that these tech curves work is that we will see a slowing of the decrease in prices before it stops, and we haven't seen that yet. A 10x fall in solar and at least a 5x fall in the cost of batteries is baked in at this point, even if the tech curves started to slow today. Nuclear never had that trend of getting cheaper. And the only person that said anything about it being too cheap to meter was probably talking about fusion instead of fission, and would have been even more wrong than about fission. (It was said by Lewis Strauss, who was recently depicted/demonized in the movie Oppenheimer). People continually underestimate solar/wind/batteries, as in the actual industry analysts that make predictions always underpredict, every year, year after year after year. If you want to know the future of solar, find the most optimistic prediction you can, and go bigger, and you'll be a better forecaster than the rest of the industry. I don't know if electricity will ever be too cheap to meter, that sort of overpromising is what the nuclear industry does, not what the renewable industry does. (And I'm not in the renewables industry, just an interested observer.)
- rich_sasha 3y ago
  > A 10x fall in solar and at least a 5x fall in the cost of batteries is baked in at this point, even if the tech curves started to slow today. I'm sorry, what does this mean? Yes, solar and batteries got much, much cheaper, and I agree, it might continue in that path, but to assume it will... I just don't see the rationale, not in general and not in your post.
  - epistasis 3y ago
    I would assume that anybody on HN would be familiar with Moore's Law. The more general idea is Wright's Law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience_curve_effects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience_curve_effects And if they slow down, it's going to be gradual, not a sudden "oh we just finished the last of the innovation yesterday, we are done now" stop. Many people assumed that nuclear would have a positive learning curve, but instead it has turned out to have a negative learning curve, where it got more expensive the more it was built. In general, every body underestimates the advancements and installations of solar and battery to a degree that is nearly comical. It's incredibly consistent in the underestimation. If I could figure out the right trade to capitalize on that, I'd be much richer...
    - rich_sasha 3y ago
      To me this is sadly a lot of wishful thinking and extrapolation. It might happen, but to assume it will is madness to me. Especially given all of solar panels, wind turbines and batteries being material-heavy and requiring a non-diminishing amount of labour per installation. By contrast, if you increase transistor density, you don't need to use more silicon. All such estimates are backwards-looking, and it's true, historically people assumed much lower growth rates. But equally, if you assume this rate of cost decrease as infinitum, well, global warming is solved and we can out our feet up. There are plenty of things that got cheaper, then didn't. Cars, laptops, phones, healthcare... I admit it's a common trope to simply take some number N~10 and claim renewable energy will inevitably become Nx cheaper. It just seems delusional to me to take it as a fact.
bb88 3y ago
> The same thing was done with nuclear: electricity too cheap to meter. Only it never materialized. When I worked for a power company as a teenager, they saw the one nuclear power plant they owned as a lead weight around their necks. If you wanted to keep it running, there was investment required to upgrade it to new regulations. If you didn't want to keep it running, that was a multi-year decommissioning project, for which there would be no profit, only a major cost center. Nuclear regulations are no joke, and like the airline regulations, the electrical safety code, etc, they're written in blood. What worked in the 1950s, won't work today, since we know more about all the ways a nuclear plant can fail.
- throw0101d 3y ago
  > When I worked for a power company as a teenager, they saw the one nuclear power plant they owned as a lead weight around their necks. The problem is that they had one plant. If they had a dozen then knowledge could be amortized between them (see France, Japan, Canada-Ontario: all fairly standardized designs). Part of the problem in with US nuclear: a whole bunch of one-offs, with little-to-no economies of scale to leverage.
  - bb88 3y ago
    I don't know. Regulations require labor. And there's no amount of economies of scale that's going to overcome that. Just to get started there's years of understanding the regulations. Then there's the super high levels of security needed. The super high levels of monitoring needed to run the reactor, etc, etc. People say "Nuclear" because TINA (There is no alternative). But given what's going on with this plant, even if they can recoup the $35B in 20 years, given the risk and the debt load on the company, I wouldn't be surprised if they cancelled it before it went online. And generally, after watching enough documentaries about nuclear power plant disasters, I think I don't want to live anywhere near one. Truth is the first casualty during an accident.

epistasis 3y ago

The difference is that wind, solar, and batteries have a history of getting 10x cheaper, and they are continuing on that trend. And the way that these tech curves work is that we will see a slowing of the decrease in prices before it stops, and we haven't seen that yet. A 10x fall in solar and at least a 5x fall in the cost of batteries is baked in at this point, even if the tech curves started to slow today. Nuclear never had that trend of getting cheaper. And the only person that said anything about it being too cheap to meter was probably talking about fusion instead of fission, and would have been even more wrong than about fission. (It was said by Lewis Strauss, who was recently depicted/demonized in the movie Oppenheimer). People continually underestimate solar/wind/batteries, as in the actual industry analysts that make predictions always underpredict, every year, year after year after year. If you want to know the future of solar, find the most optimistic prediction you can, and go bigger, and you'll be a better forecaster than the rest of the industry. I don't know if electricity will ever be too cheap to meter, that sort of overpromising is what the nuclear industry does, not what the renewable industry does. (And I'm not in the renewables industry, just an interested observer.)

rich_sasha 3y ago
> A 10x fall in solar and at least a 5x fall in the cost of batteries is baked in at this point, even if the tech curves started to slow today. I'm sorry, what does this mean? Yes, solar and batteries got much, much cheaper, and I agree, it might continue in that path, but to assume it will... I just don't see the rationale, not in general and not in your post.
- epistasis 3y ago
  I would assume that anybody on HN would be familiar with Moore's Law. The more general idea is Wright's Law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience_curve_effects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience_curve_effects And if they slow down, it's going to be gradual, not a sudden "oh we just finished the last of the innovation yesterday, we are done now" stop. Many people assumed that nuclear would have a positive learning curve, but instead it has turned out to have a negative learning curve, where it got more expensive the more it was built. In general, every body underestimates the advancements and installations of solar and battery to a degree that is nearly comical. It's incredibly consistent in the underestimation. If I could figure out the right trade to capitalize on that, I'd be much richer...
  - rich_sasha 3y ago
    To me this is sadly a lot of wishful thinking and extrapolation. It might happen, but to assume it will is madness to me. Especially given all of solar panels, wind turbines and batteries being material-heavy and requiring a non-diminishing amount of labour per installation. By contrast, if you increase transistor density, you don't need to use more silicon. All such estimates are backwards-looking, and it's true, historically people assumed much lower growth rates. But equally, if you assume this rate of cost decrease as infinitum, well, global warming is solved and we can out our feet up. There are plenty of things that got cheaper, then didn't. Cars, laptops, phones, healthcare... I admit it's a common trope to simply take some number N~10 and claim renewable energy will inevitably become Nx cheaper. It just seems delusional to me to take it as a fact.

bb88 3y ago

> The same thing was done with nuclear: electricity too cheap to meter. Only it never materialized. When I worked for a power company as a teenager, they saw the one nuclear power plant they owned as a lead weight around their necks. If you wanted to keep it running, there was investment required to upgrade it to new regulations. If you didn't want to keep it running, that was a multi-year decommissioning project, for which there would be no profit, only a major cost center. Nuclear regulations are no joke, and like the airline regulations, the electrical safety code, etc, they're written in blood. What worked in the 1950s, won't work today, since we know more about all the ways a nuclear plant can fail.

throw0101d 3y ago
> When I worked for a power company as a teenager, they saw the one nuclear power plant they owned as a lead weight around their necks. The problem is that they had one plant. If they had a dozen then knowledge could be amortized between them (see France, Japan, Canada-Ontario: all fairly standardized designs). Part of the problem in with US nuclear: a whole bunch of one-offs, with little-to-no economies of scale to leverage.
- bb88 3y ago
  I don't know. Regulations require labor. And there's no amount of economies of scale that's going to overcome that. Just to get started there's years of understanding the regulations. Then there's the super high levels of security needed. The super high levels of monitoring needed to run the reactor, etc, etc. People say "Nuclear" because TINA (There is no alternative). But given what's going on with this plant, even if they can recoup the $35B in 20 years, given the risk and the debt load on the company, I wouldn't be surprised if they cancelled it before it went online. And generally, after watching enough documentaries about nuclear power plant disasters, I think I don't want to live anywhere near one. Truth is the first casualty during an accident.