6 ms·

The problem with nuclear is that it likes to be big, which means big capital-intensive projects and therefore a slow iteration time. Even if there are some thin

by api 2y ago

The problem with nuclear is that it likes to be big, which means big capital-intensive projects and therefore a slow iteration time. Even if there are some things that are superior about nuclear, like land and raw resource use, it's going to get run over by a fast-iterating solution with small minimum capital investment. At this point solar+batteries is a cheaper option in almost all locations except perhaps places with low levels of sunlight combined with high demand, like maybe very high Northern latitudes.

EcommerceFlow 2y ago
Yup exactly. Why go through all that headache, which has existed with Nuclear since day 1, when we could just mass produce solar and plop it down on the infinite empty desert land out west.
- beembeem 2y ago
  1) There isn't infinite desert land that can be used. 2) You still need firm, dispatchable power. Batteries are a bridge, not the only solution.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - tuna74 2y ago
    Batteries are the solution. The sun is pretty stable (not very firm unfortunately, but I don't see how that relates to electricity).
    - beembeem 2y ago
      Firm refers to the generation profile of the power source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dispatchable_generation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dispatchable_generation Batteries are not cost or resource efficient for winter where I live. Less than 8 hours of sunlight is not enough to heat a house during the day let alone night. There simply isn't enough solar generation even when overprovisioned to last.
      - BobaFloutist 2y ago
        How often/much do you realistically need to heat a house with high, quality, modern insulation? Does your house have triple-paned windows, a vestibule for each entryway, well insulated walls, attic, and roof, etc? Also if we're talking about heating, there's also the possibility of geothermal heat pumps, which seem to work everywhere, and while they have a high one-time capital cost but I'm pretty sure can more or less keep trucking along providing unbelievably cheap heat pretty much forever - even if you have to replace components, you probably won't ever have to redig the shaft again, which is a huge factor in the cost.
        beembeem 2y ago
        > a house with high, quality, modern insulation? How much is society willing to spend collectively to upgrade our housing stock for this? Not to mention triple-paned windows are not standard by any sufficiently large builder on new construction. Double-paned? Certainly. Geothermal is great. But in an already built city, it's not feasible to install quickly. There is also a lack of legal framework or precedent in place to heat multiple properties from a single source. I tried very hard to obtain a quote for this and it was well over 50k for a single family home, and nobody would actually do it because of the big city I live in. Want a heat pump too? That's another 25k. Throwing down 100k up-front is not a reasonable request to a typical homeowner.
        BobaFloutist 2y ago
        It's not a reasonable request to a typical homeowner, but if we're looking at a path to a society-wide greener tomorrow, it's worth looking at. I wonder how much upgraded insulation and geothermal heat pump(/district heating) could be paid for by the cost to build a new nuclear power plant - or even by the difference in cost to build that power plant versus to get sufficient solar and batteries to, in combination with the insulation, generate comparable temperature control.
        epistasis 2y ago
        It's less "spend" as it is "invest". The problem with investment is the cost of capital. But if we're thinking of spending massive amounts of money for nuclear, capital must be very cheap indeed, and we absolutely must consider instead investing that in reducing our need for as much energy. Geothermal is also a great shift for natural gas utilities. Delivery of weak heat sources to heat pumps is being explored in many areas. Nuclear is the equivalent of throwing down 100k on a house for a massive custom-drilled ground-source heat pump solution. So in these difficult areas, we need to consider the alternatives.
    - chickenbig 2y ago
      > Batteries are the solution. Batteries aren't the solution to seasonal variation, are they? Discharging once a year means the batteries either need to be ultra-cheap or the electricity they provide would be very expensive. Batteries provide easy access and relatively efficient round trips, but at a high capital cost. For me it is somewhat mysterious that wind/solar proponents view hydrogen (and methane/ammonia) as an unnecessary competing technology.
  - pfdietz 2y ago
    > 1) There isn't infinite desert land that can be used. There is far more desert land than we would need. It doesn't have to be infinite for it not to be a significant constraint. > Dispatchable power Batteries + burning e-fuels in turbines or fuel cells
  - Qwertious 2y ago
    1) yes there is 2) nuclear also needs dispatchable power, it doesn't work well if it needs to constantly ramp up and down. Batteries are vital to full nuclear for this exact reason.
- jahnu 2y ago
  The best argument for new nukes I heard was to drop in replace coal furnaces in existing thermal coal power plants in china. https://www.volts.wtf/p/nuclear-perhaps https://www.volts.wtf/p/nuclear-perhaps
pstuart 2y ago
Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) were supposed to address this concern. Unfortunately even with this strategy it doesn't seem to be able to compete cost-wise in the market. I hope that can be worked out, as I think we'd be well-served by having as many eggs in our energy basket as possible.
- api 2y ago
  SMRs are still huge compared to putting $10k worth of solar panels on a house. They also require a lot of big expensive infrastructure like reprocessing facilities, expensive safety-escorted transportation, secure facilities, etc.
  - pstuart 2y ago
    Yes those things are true; albeit the apple to oranges comparison of a home setup vs community baseload provider. One of the compelling deployment cases is to revamp existing coal fired plants with SMRs, which would be a huge win in addressing climate change. None of this is meant to disparage or dismiss solar and other renewables; it's meant to be complementary.
    - api 2y ago
      What I was really getting at was the effect that low incremental cost has on the evolution of the technology. A technology with low incremental unit cost can evolve very rapidly, while high unit cost capital-intensive technologies are slow to evolve. Which will win? Some technologies are inherently high unit cost and capital-intensive. Aerospace is a classic example, and it's why we're still flying on 1970s-tech airplanes and why rockets are just now becoming reusable. Aerospace advances at a crawl because each unit is so expensive.
pfdietz 2y ago
And "land and raw resource use" is just a backhanded way to imply cost, used because the actual cost doesn't favor nuclear at all.

by api 2y ago

EcommerceFlow 2y ago

Yup exactly. Why go through all that headache, which has existed with Nuclear since day 1, when we could just mass produce solar and plop it down on the infinite empty desert land out west.

beembeem 2y ago
1) There isn't infinite desert land that can be used. 2) You still need firm, dispatchable power. Batteries are a bridge, not the only solution.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- tuna74 2y ago
  Batteries are the solution. The sun is pretty stable (not very firm unfortunately, but I don't see how that relates to electricity).
  - beembeem 2y ago
    Firm refers to the generation profile of the power source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dispatchable_generation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dispatchable_generation Batteries are not cost or resource efficient for winter where I live. Less than 8 hours of sunlight is not enough to heat a house during the day let alone night. There simply isn't enough solar generation even when overprovisioned to last.
    - BobaFloutist 2y ago
      How often/much do you realistically need to heat a house with high, quality, modern insulation? Does your house have triple-paned windows, a vestibule for each entryway, well insulated walls, attic, and roof, etc? Also if we're talking about heating, there's also the possibility of geothermal heat pumps, which seem to work everywhere, and while they have a high one-time capital cost but I'm pretty sure can more or less keep trucking along providing unbelievably cheap heat pretty much forever - even if you have to replace components, you probably won't ever have to redig the shaft again, which is a huge factor in the cost.
      - beembeem 2y ago
        > a house with high, quality, modern insulation? How much is society willing to spend collectively to upgrade our housing stock for this? Not to mention triple-paned windows are not standard by any sufficiently large builder on new construction. Double-paned? Certainly. Geothermal is great. But in an already built city, it's not feasible to install quickly. There is also a lack of legal framework or precedent in place to heat multiple properties from a single source. I tried very hard to obtain a quote for this and it was well over 50k for a single family home, and nobody would actually do it because of the big city I live in. Want a heat pump too? That's another 25k. Throwing down 100k up-front is not a reasonable request to a typical homeowner.
        BobaFloutist 2y ago
        It's not a reasonable request to a typical homeowner, but if we're looking at a path to a society-wide greener tomorrow, it's worth looking at. I wonder how much upgraded insulation and geothermal heat pump(/district heating) could be paid for by the cost to build a new nuclear power plant - or even by the difference in cost to build that power plant versus to get sufficient solar and batteries to, in combination with the insulation, generate comparable temperature control.
        epistasis 2y ago
        It's less "spend" as it is "invest". The problem with investment is the cost of capital. But if we're thinking of spending massive amounts of money for nuclear, capital must be very cheap indeed, and we absolutely must consider instead investing that in reducing our need for as much energy. Geothermal is also a great shift for natural gas utilities. Delivery of weak heat sources to heat pumps is being explored in many areas. Nuclear is the equivalent of throwing down 100k on a house for a massive custom-drilled ground-source heat pump solution. So in these difficult areas, we need to consider the alternatives.
  - chickenbig 2y ago
    > Batteries are the solution. Batteries aren't the solution to seasonal variation, are they? Discharging once a year means the batteries either need to be ultra-cheap or the electricity they provide would be very expensive. Batteries provide easy access and relatively efficient round trips, but at a high capital cost. For me it is somewhat mysterious that wind/solar proponents view hydrogen (and methane/ammonia) as an unnecessary competing technology.
- pfdietz 2y ago
  > 1) There isn't infinite desert land that can be used. There is far more desert land than we would need. It doesn't have to be infinite for it not to be a significant constraint. > Dispatchable power Batteries + burning e-fuels in turbines or fuel cells
- Qwertious 2y ago
  1) yes there is 2) nuclear also needs dispatchable power, it doesn't work well if it needs to constantly ramp up and down. Batteries are vital to full nuclear for this exact reason.
jahnu 2y ago
The best argument for new nukes I heard was to drop in replace coal furnaces in existing thermal coal power plants in china. https://www.volts.wtf/p/nuclear-perhaps https://www.volts.wtf/p/nuclear-perhaps

pstuart 2y ago

Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) were supposed to address this concern. Unfortunately even with this strategy it doesn't seem to be able to compete cost-wise in the market. I hope that can be worked out, as I think we'd be well-served by having as many eggs in our energy basket as possible.

api 2y ago
SMRs are still huge compared to putting $10k worth of solar panels on a house. They also require a lot of big expensive infrastructure like reprocessing facilities, expensive safety-escorted transportation, secure facilities, etc.
- pstuart 2y ago
  Yes those things are true; albeit the apple to oranges comparison of a home setup vs community baseload provider. One of the compelling deployment cases is to revamp existing coal fired plants with SMRs, which would be a huge win in addressing climate change. None of this is meant to disparage or dismiss solar and other renewables; it's meant to be complementary.
  - api 2y ago
    What I was really getting at was the effect that low incremental cost has on the evolution of the technology. A technology with low incremental unit cost can evolve very rapidly, while high unit cost capital-intensive technologies are slow to evolve. Which will win? Some technologies are inherently high unit cost and capital-intensive. Aerospace is a classic example, and it's why we're still flying on 1970s-tech airplanes and why rockets are just now becoming reusable. Aerospace advances at a crawl because each unit is so expensive.

pfdietz 2y ago

And "land and raw resource use" is just a backhanded way to imply cost, used because the actual cost doesn't favor nuclear at all.