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This, it's mostly an economic challenge. We need clean energy that is cheap. Not clean energy that is more expensive. It's important for clean energy to be che

This, it's mostly an economic challenge. We need clean energy that is cheap. Not clean energy that is more expensive. It's important for clean energy to be cheap because that creates an economic incentive for people to invest in switching. The good news with renewable energy and battery storage is that we're basically there. Texas which produces lots of oil also produces lots of clean energy. Because oil refineries require a lot of energy to refine their fuel. And of course using your own product at a premium when clean renewables do the same job would be madness. Think about it, the very companies that are expecting others to buy and burn their fossil fuel are investing (heavily) in renewable energy because that's cheaper than using their own cheap supply of oil and gas for the same purpose. It's more lucrative to sell that than to use it for them. That's why records are being broken with amounts of solar, wind, and battery coming online on a regular basis. It's cheaper. So, people do more of it as fast as they can scrape the funding together to do it. Fusion if it happens at all is probably going to be really expensive for quite some time. Nuclear has the same problem. Clean but just super expensive. And slow to plan and execute. You need to decide decades in advance that you need it in order to have it ready. Most reactors coming online this year (hint: not a lot) were planned when solar and wind were still expensive (1-2 decades ago). In other words, they probably did not take into account current price levels of new clean energy. In terms of profitability these things are kind of dead on arrival. Fusion faces the exact same challenges. It's not completely hopeless. But we need 1-2 orders of magnitude reduction of cost per energy generated this way.

baq 2y ago
> This, it's mostly an economic challenge. We need clean energy that is cheap. Not clean energy that is more expensive. Cheap and expensive in dollar terms is meaningless. Dollars are numbers in computers. Joules and watts are real. What I can agree with we need good enough EROI energy and then adjust the policies regarding fusion, nuclear and fossil joules, watts and their related numbers in computers.
- jillesvangurp 2y ago
  You are right with the policy shift. But I would suggest to stop throwing good money after bad money instead until the sector massively improves its accuracy of numbers it does publish on such things like budgets and timelines for new projects. Because most of the numbers coming out of the nuclear sector for this are too good to be true. To put it mildly. It's tempting to use more harsh language here. Like "fabricated nonsense" or "a scam". And some people do. Probably the biggest challenge for nuclear proponents aside from demonstrably high cost, overruns, wildly optimistic timelines, etc. for past projects is the credibility of their predictions about cost for future ones. The lower those predictions, the smaller the chance that those are anything more than wishful thinking mixed with a lot of hopium and based on very flawed assumptions. When cost overruns in nuclear projects are routinely measured in hundreds of percents, something is very wrong. It would be nice to get that down to two digit percentages. That would still be terrible but a lot better than the industry norms for this. Especially compared to renewable projects. This credibility challenge is a large part of the reluctance of investors to fund new efforts in this space. Most of the projects that actually still happen feature governments and tax payers taking most of the risk. Which makes it more likely that the huge budget gaps get funded rather than resulting in investors cutting their losses and bailing. If you want numbers, look at numbers of GW coming online for nuclear, wind, solar, and energy storage projects. There's a stark difference there. Renewables are outpacing nuclear at such a pace that you could legitimately wonder why to bother with such projects at all.
  - natmaka 2y ago
    > Renewables are outpacing nuclear at such a pace that you could legitimately wonder why to bother with such projects at all. Indeed, especially as renewable will more and more eat into nuclear 'baseload', lowering its load factor and therefore raising its total production cost. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udJJ7n_Ryjg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udJJ7n_Ryjg
PaulHoule 2y ago
"Clean" is arguable for fusion. A fusion reactor is going to create and consume large quantities of tritium, which is difficult to control because it is an isotope of hydrogen and hydrogen can go right through metals. It might not really be a problem but it is always going to be in the paper that somebody detected tritium around a reactor. Also, because fusion reactors produce large quantities of neutrons, you could put U238 or Th232 into the blanket and breed either Pu239 or U233. Back in the 1980s some engineers thought that a hybrid fusion-fission system could have better economics that either alone if you used the bred fuel in thermal reactors. Those materials could just as well be used to make bombs, although, unlike a fast breeder cycle, a fusion reactor doesn't require plutonium processing technology in order to work. --- As for solar and wind being "cheap" don't believe the hype. I mean, it is cheap if you don't mind that it is only available when the sun shines and when the wind blows. You see estimates for solar + storage that are deceptive and thought-stopping like Case 17 of [1] (an hour and a half of storage is significant, but it is not comparable to the 24 hour service that fossil fuels and nuclear can provide.) I haven't seen a detailed analysis of the generation + transmission + storage costs of a 100% renewable system published in the last decade. If you try a back of the envelope calculation it usually winds up worse than Case 9 from that report, except that Case 9 is optimistic because (so far) it always costs a lot more than you estimate to build a nuclear plant. [2] [1] https://www.eia.gov/analysis/studies/powerplants/capitalcost/pdf/capital_cost_AEO2025.pdf https://www.eia.gov/analysis/studies/powerplants/capitalcost... [2] to get some sense of how bad the problem is you need: (a) to get through the night (12 hours of storage? still might beat AP1000...) and (b) get through extended periods of bad weather (2 weeks of storage?) and (c) get through the winter (overbuild solar 2-3x? otherwise 6 months of storage?)
- pfdietz 2y ago
  Handling the general problem is made much easier with e-fuels to handle very long term storage and rare outages. The cost can be estimated and isn't that high, even if the round trip efficiency of storage with e-fuels is not very good. BTW, the battery cost estimates there in that link seem very high, not reflecting the recent collapse in LFP prices from China.
- ZeroGravitas 2y ago

baq 2y ago

> This, it's mostly an economic challenge. We need clean energy that is cheap. Not clean energy that is more expensive. Cheap and expensive in dollar terms is meaningless. Dollars are numbers in computers. Joules and watts are real. What I can agree with we need good enough EROI energy and then adjust the policies regarding fusion, nuclear and fossil joules, watts and their related numbers in computers.

jillesvangurp 2y ago
You are right with the policy shift. But I would suggest to stop throwing good money after bad money instead until the sector massively improves its accuracy of numbers it does publish on such things like budgets and timelines for new projects. Because most of the numbers coming out of the nuclear sector for this are too good to be true. To put it mildly. It's tempting to use more harsh language here. Like "fabricated nonsense" or "a scam". And some people do. Probably the biggest challenge for nuclear proponents aside from demonstrably high cost, overruns, wildly optimistic timelines, etc. for past projects is the credibility of their predictions about cost for future ones. The lower those predictions, the smaller the chance that those are anything more than wishful thinking mixed with a lot of hopium and based on very flawed assumptions. When cost overruns in nuclear projects are routinely measured in hundreds of percents, something is very wrong. It would be nice to get that down to two digit percentages. That would still be terrible but a lot better than the industry norms for this. Especially compared to renewable projects. This credibility challenge is a large part of the reluctance of investors to fund new efforts in this space. Most of the projects that actually still happen feature governments and tax payers taking most of the risk. Which makes it more likely that the huge budget gaps get funded rather than resulting in investors cutting their losses and bailing. If you want numbers, look at numbers of GW coming online for nuclear, wind, solar, and energy storage projects. There's a stark difference there. Renewables are outpacing nuclear at such a pace that you could legitimately wonder why to bother with such projects at all.
- natmaka 2y ago
  > Renewables are outpacing nuclear at such a pace that you could legitimately wonder why to bother with such projects at all. Indeed, especially as renewable will more and more eat into nuclear 'baseload', lowering its load factor and therefore raising its total production cost. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udJJ7n_Ryjg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udJJ7n_Ryjg

PaulHoule 2y ago

"Clean" is arguable for fusion. A fusion reactor is going to create and consume large quantities of tritium, which is difficult to control because it is an isotope of hydrogen and hydrogen can go right through metals. It might not really be a problem but it is always going to be in the paper that somebody detected tritium around a reactor. Also, because fusion reactors produce large quantities of neutrons, you could put U238 or Th232 into the blanket and breed either Pu239 or U233. Back in the 1980s some engineers thought that a hybrid fusion-fission system could have better economics that either alone if you used the bred fuel in thermal reactors. Those materials could just as well be used to make bombs, although, unlike a fast breeder cycle, a fusion reactor doesn't require plutonium processing technology in order to work. --- As for solar and wind being "cheap" don't believe the hype. I mean, it is cheap if you don't mind that it is only available when the sun shines and when the wind blows. You see estimates for solar + storage that are deceptive and thought-stopping like Case 17 of [1] (an hour and a half of storage is significant, but it is not comparable to the 24 hour service that fossil fuels and nuclear can provide.) I haven't seen a detailed analysis of the generation + transmission + storage costs of a 100% renewable system published in the last decade. If you try a back of the envelope calculation it usually winds up worse than Case 9 from that report, except that Case 9 is optimistic because (so far) it always costs a lot more than you estimate to build a nuclear plant. [2] [1] https://www.eia.gov/analysis/studies/powerplants/capitalcost/pdf/capital_cost_AEO2025.pdf https://www.eia.gov/analysis/studies/powerplants/capitalcost... [2] to get some sense of how bad the problem is you need: (a) to get through the night (12 hours of storage? still might beat AP1000...) and (b) get through extended periods of bad weather (2 weeks of storage?) and (c) get through the winter (overbuild solar 2-3x? otherwise 6 months of storage?)

pfdietz 2y ago
Handling the general problem is made much easier with e-fuels to handle very long term storage and rare outages. The cost can be estimated and isn't that high, even if the round trip efficiency of storage with e-fuels is not very good. BTW, the battery cost estimates there in that link seem very high, not reflecting the recent collapse in LFP prices from China.
ZeroGravitas 2y ago