5 ms·

> the costs of PV and onshore wind have become cheaper to deploy What about the additional cost of storage/transmission to make those sources available 24/7?

• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• bobthepanda 2y ago
  nuclear has an opposite but related storage problem to solar and pv; whereas it's hard to reliably predict and line up solar and wind power, it is also generally hard to spin nuclear up and down quickly according to peak power demand as well. one of the first uses of pumped hydro was to store excess power at nuclear stations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludington_Pumped_Storage_Power_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludington_Pumped_Storage_Power... transmission is also an issue at nuclear stations, because no one wants to live near one, and they generate so much power you would probably need additional transmission capacity wherever one was sited anyways.
• pfdietz 2y ago
  Nuclear still loses to PV/wind even with those considerations. And it loses massively if you project those (especially PV) down their historical experience curves. Seriously; do you really think the experts pushing PV/wind have not thought of this? It's been very well addressed.
  • p1mrx 2y ago
    The experts pushing PV/wind generally expect fossil methane to remain on the grid, or significant upgrades to long-distance transmission.
    • pfdietz 2y ago
      Or substitution of e-fuels for the last residual gas use on the grid. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9837910 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9837910
• jes5199 2y ago
  I've seen that analysis - depending on how you model it, solar+wind+batteries is often still cheaper, plus batteries are solar are getting cheaper every year, while nuclear isn't (historically it's been getting slightly more expensive over time). So if it takes a decade to get a nuclear plant approved, even if it's competitive today, it probably won't be in 2034