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You do know that nuclear power has experienced negative learning by doing throughout its entire life? https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03

You do know that nuclear power has experienced negative learning by doing throughout its entire life? https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0301421510003526 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03014... You don’t get ”free electricity” with absolutely massive handouts to the nuclear industry. Instead renewables and storage are delivering on the ”too cheap to meter” promise.

dporter 1y ago
Renewable power is cheap because it also receives massive government handouts in the form of tax credits.
- ViewTrick1002 1y ago
  Still built at absolutely massive scale around the world without subsidies. With many countries phasing out their renewable subsidies because they aren’t needed anymore. Unsubsidized solar and storage is today in much of the world cheaper than coal and fossil gas. The renewable subsidies stil existing simply add fuel to the already raging fire that is renewable buildout.
  - nandomrumber 1y ago
    What storage? Where? At what price? Where are all these 14 day full load capable storage plants being built? I’m not saying they aren’t, I am saying I don’t see the data.
    - ViewTrick1002 1y ago
      We are at the point in the S-curve where storage goes from nowhere to everywhere in the blink of an eye. Here BESS for $63/kWh installed and serviced for 20 years. https://www.ess-news.com/2025/01/15/chinas-cgn-new-energy-announces-winning-bidders-in-10-gwh-bess-tender/ https://www.ess-news.com/2025/01/15/chinas-cgn-new-energy-an... https://www.ess-news.com/2024/12/09/powerchina-receives-bids-for-16-gwh-bess-tender-with-average-price-of-66-5-kwh/ https://www.ess-news.com/2024/12/09/powerchina-receives-bids... China installed 74 GW comprising 168 GWh in 2024. In increase of 250% compared to 2023. https://www.ess-news.com/2025/01/23/chinas-new-energy-storage-capacity-surges-to-74-gw-168-gwh-in-2024-up-130-yoy/ https://www.ess-news.com/2025/01/23/chinas-new-energy-storag... After hitting a plateau storage is now unlocking massive reductions in fossil gas usage in California: - Gas is down 45% v '23 and 25% v '24 - Batteries up 198% v '23 and 73.4% v '24 https://bsky.app/profile/mzjacobson.bsky.social/post/3lnw3hs7pm22i https://bsky.app/profile/mzjacobson.bsky.social/post/3lnw3hs... In the US in 2025 storage was expected to make up 30% of all grid additions. Before Trump came with his sledgehammer of insanity. https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=64586 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=64586 No one generally expects more than a couple of hours of storage to be needed. But for the fun exercise let’s calculate what spending Vogtles $36.8B on equivalent renewables, as in TWh delivered, and the storage gives. That makes the renewables come out to about $9B. With storage costing $0.063B GWh and having $28B to spend we can build 444 GWh storage. That is the equivalent to running Vogtles two new reactors for 10 days straight. In this calculation we don’t even bother with Vogtles O&M costs compared to near zero for renewables and storage. Do you now understand how incredibly expensive new built western nuclear power is?
    - bryanlarsen 1y ago
      Never, because we don't need 14 days of full load capable storage. Most models say we need about 3 days to get 99.99% coverage with a reasonable amount of overbuild & interconnect.
    - notTooFarGone 1y ago
      why not make it a lifetime of storage if we are here just spouting nonsense numbers. storage for 12 hours and we are 80% there. If you don't like 80% solutions then please don't participate in society as it's only working on those.
- bee_rider 1y ago
  Renewable suffers a little bit from having renewable infrastructure costs considered a new subsidy, while fossil fuel costs are just kind of baked in. If we included the cost of cleaning up fossil fuel byproducts… well, we don’t even know how much it will cost to clean up all that carbon. Then we will have to work out how we bill the international relations cost of having to deal with petrochemical producers…
- EasyMark 1y ago
  that used to be true, but it's not really true any longer; they could even do well without subsidies, but no industry will ever give up free money.
belorn 1y ago
It was promised that by now half the grid of EU should had been operated under green hydrogen. Instead we had yesterday in Sweden news the opening of a freshly new built natural gas power plant as the solution to that intermittence problem. Of course, those natural gas power plants are paid through subsidizes as grid stability is the government responsibility, and thus the bill for that natural gas is put on taxes and connection fees. I have said it before, but in order for me to believe the claims that renewables and storage are delivering in places like europe, you first have to stop investing and building new natural gas power plants. Rather than classify natural gas as "green", as Germany pushed through in EU, we should have laws to prevent new natural gas power plants from being built and existing fleet should be slowly dismantled. If renewables and storage can deliver on the ”too cheap to meter” promise, they should do so in an environment without natural gas being used behind the scene.
- ViewTrick1002 1y ago
  Love how the goalposts magically shifted to ”green hydrogen deployed today!!” even though many grids still don’t even reach saturation from renewables. Storage or green hydrogen is an enormous waste of money in Poland given their grid composition. That renewable buildout leads to larger fossil emissions being wrong is trivial to verify. The UK as one example of many: - Coal has gone from 150 TWh to zero. - Fossil gas from 175 TWh to 85 TWh. - Nuclear from 80 TWh to 40 TWh. Massively decreasing all fossil fueled electricity production of course "extends the life" of these plants. All those plants that were shut down had their "life extended". You can do the same for Denmark, Portugal, California, South Australia and everywhere else. First renewables offset coal followed by cutting into gas usage. After hitting a plateau storage is now unlocking massive reductions in fossil gas usage in California: - Gas is down 45% v '23 and 25% v '24 - Batteries up 198% v '23 and 73.4% v '24 https://bsky.app/profile/mzjacobson.bsky.social/post/3lnw3hs7pm22i https://bsky.app/profile/mzjacobson.bsky.social/post/3lnw3hs... Storage is exploding globally. China installed 74 GW comprising 134 GWh of storage in 2024. Increasing their yearly installation rate by 250%. The US is looking at installing 18 GW in 2025 making up 30% of all grid additions. Well, before Trump came with a sledgehammer of insanity. Storage delivers. For the last bit of "emergency reserves" we can run some gas turbines. First our existing fleet and then when it becomes the most pressing issue to decarbonize we can utilize the solution aviation and shipping settled on. Or just run the gas turbines on biofuels, green hydrogen or whatever. Start collecting food waste and create biogas from it. Doesn't really matter, we're talking single percent of total energy demand. I love how completely insignificant issues becomes blown up to enormous proportions try to force nuclear power into the conversation.
chermi 1y ago
Are you really denying the learning curve based on one paper about France? You don't think maybe there's other confounding factors*? A single survey of a single country isn't counterfactual. Are you really certain that with a relatively fixed design the learning curve wouldn't apply at sufficient scale, all else being equal. The learning curve is one of the most time-tested laws in construction. *Yes, I understand it's inflation adjusted. There are so many possible explanations for the observed negative curve that go beyond the bold, broad claim that learning curve theory doesn't hold in nuclear. In my mind, an (at least) equally reasonable explanation is that the conditions for the learning curve weren't met. (This probably sounds like "no true Scotsman". I admit that the learning curve is a function of scale and relative to mass-production examples, the "signal" for the learning curve is probably weaker to begin with given how many facilities of the same design were actually built.) -Changes in design pull you backward on the curve. There were lots of changes in French design -Unsteady expansion timeline messes with the workforce expertise part of the hypothesis. You want ideally an accelerated or at least constant build rate, not large gaps where the workforce either respecializes in another field or retires. - regulations increase over time. Part of the conditions for the theory are implicitly "all else being equal". -while inflation adjustment partially accounts for this, labor becomes more expensive as gdp per capital increases (see, for example, low skill manufacturing leaving China as it becomes wealthier). I don't know the details, but given the rapid post-war growth, I'm guessing gdp/capital was growing pretty quickly during the French build out For relatively low volume manufacturing, the learning curve effects are probably smaller to begin with, so it's easier to get an effective negative learning rate. With so many confounding factors that violate the premise of theory, I find it rather unscientific to definitively claim the theory is just wrong in an entire industry.
- ViewTrick1002 1y ago
  It also includes the US seeing the same negative learning by doing. We have research on when we have achieved learning effects. > If you look at the data specifically you're going to find learning but for that there's a several requirements: > - It has to be the same site > - It has to be the same constructor > - It has to be at least two years of of gap between one construction to the next > - It has to be constant labor laws > - It has to be a constant regulatory regime > When you add these five you only get like four or five examples in the world. From a nuclear energy professor at MIT in a nuclear power industry podcast, giving an overly positive but still sober image regarding the nuclear industry as it exists today. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDzaSucDg7k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDzaSucDg7k In the meantime renewables and storage have gone from nascent industries to today be the vast majority of all new energy production in TWh and while costing a fraction of new built nuclear power.

dporter 1y ago

Renewable power is cheap because it also receives massive government handouts in the form of tax credits.

ViewTrick1002 1y ago
Still built at absolutely massive scale around the world without subsidies. With many countries phasing out their renewable subsidies because they aren’t needed anymore. Unsubsidized solar and storage is today in much of the world cheaper than coal and fossil gas. The renewable subsidies stil existing simply add fuel to the already raging fire that is renewable buildout.
- nandomrumber 1y ago
  What storage? Where? At what price? Where are all these 14 day full load capable storage plants being built? I’m not saying they aren’t, I am saying I don’t see the data.
  - ViewTrick1002 1y ago
    We are at the point in the S-curve where storage goes from nowhere to everywhere in the blink of an eye. Here BESS for $63/kWh installed and serviced for 20 years. https://www.ess-news.com/2025/01/15/chinas-cgn-new-energy-announces-winning-bidders-in-10-gwh-bess-tender/ https://www.ess-news.com/2025/01/15/chinas-cgn-new-energy-an... https://www.ess-news.com/2024/12/09/powerchina-receives-bids-for-16-gwh-bess-tender-with-average-price-of-66-5-kwh/ https://www.ess-news.com/2024/12/09/powerchina-receives-bids... China installed 74 GW comprising 168 GWh in 2024. In increase of 250% compared to 2023. https://www.ess-news.com/2025/01/23/chinas-new-energy-storage-capacity-surges-to-74-gw-168-gwh-in-2024-up-130-yoy/ https://www.ess-news.com/2025/01/23/chinas-new-energy-storag... After hitting a plateau storage is now unlocking massive reductions in fossil gas usage in California: - Gas is down 45% v '23 and 25% v '24 - Batteries up 198% v '23 and 73.4% v '24 https://bsky.app/profile/mzjacobson.bsky.social/post/3lnw3hs7pm22i https://bsky.app/profile/mzjacobson.bsky.social/post/3lnw3hs... In the US in 2025 storage was expected to make up 30% of all grid additions. Before Trump came with his sledgehammer of insanity. https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=64586 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=64586 No one generally expects more than a couple of hours of storage to be needed. But for the fun exercise let’s calculate what spending Vogtles $36.8B on equivalent renewables, as in TWh delivered, and the storage gives. That makes the renewables come out to about $9B. With storage costing $0.063B GWh and having $28B to spend we can build 444 GWh storage. That is the equivalent to running Vogtles two new reactors for 10 days straight. In this calculation we don’t even bother with Vogtles O&M costs compared to near zero for renewables and storage. Do you now understand how incredibly expensive new built western nuclear power is?
  - bryanlarsen 1y ago
    Never, because we don't need 14 days of full load capable storage. Most models say we need about 3 days to get 99.99% coverage with a reasonable amount of overbuild & interconnect.
  - notTooFarGone 1y ago
    why not make it a lifetime of storage if we are here just spouting nonsense numbers. storage for 12 hours and we are 80% there. If you don't like 80% solutions then please don't participate in society as it's only working on those.
bee_rider 1y ago
Renewable suffers a little bit from having renewable infrastructure costs considered a new subsidy, while fossil fuel costs are just kind of baked in. If we included the cost of cleaning up fossil fuel byproducts… well, we don’t even know how much it will cost to clean up all that carbon. Then we will have to work out how we bill the international relations cost of having to deal with petrochemical producers…
EasyMark 1y ago
that used to be true, but it's not really true any longer; they could even do well without subsidies, but no industry will ever give up free money.

belorn 1y ago

It was promised that by now half the grid of EU should had been operated under green hydrogen. Instead we had yesterday in Sweden news the opening of a freshly new built natural gas power plant as the solution to that intermittence problem. Of course, those natural gas power plants are paid through subsidizes as grid stability is the government responsibility, and thus the bill for that natural gas is put on taxes and connection fees. I have said it before, but in order for me to believe the claims that renewables and storage are delivering in places like europe, you first have to stop investing and building new natural gas power plants. Rather than classify natural gas as "green", as Germany pushed through in EU, we should have laws to prevent new natural gas power plants from being built and existing fleet should be slowly dismantled. If renewables and storage can deliver on the ”too cheap to meter” promise, they should do so in an environment without natural gas being used behind the scene.

ViewTrick1002 1y ago
Love how the goalposts magically shifted to ”green hydrogen deployed today!!” even though many grids still don’t even reach saturation from renewables. Storage or green hydrogen is an enormous waste of money in Poland given their grid composition. That renewable buildout leads to larger fossil emissions being wrong is trivial to verify. The UK as one example of many: - Coal has gone from 150 TWh to zero. - Fossil gas from 175 TWh to 85 TWh. - Nuclear from 80 TWh to 40 TWh. Massively decreasing all fossil fueled electricity production of course "extends the life" of these plants. All those plants that were shut down had their "life extended". You can do the same for Denmark, Portugal, California, South Australia and everywhere else. First renewables offset coal followed by cutting into gas usage. After hitting a plateau storage is now unlocking massive reductions in fossil gas usage in California: - Gas is down 45% v '23 and 25% v '24 - Batteries up 198% v '23 and 73.4% v '24 https://bsky.app/profile/mzjacobson.bsky.social/post/3lnw3hs7pm22i https://bsky.app/profile/mzjacobson.bsky.social/post/3lnw3hs... Storage is exploding globally. China installed 74 GW comprising 134 GWh of storage in 2024. Increasing their yearly installation rate by 250%. The US is looking at installing 18 GW in 2025 making up 30% of all grid additions. Well, before Trump came with a sledgehammer of insanity. Storage delivers. For the last bit of "emergency reserves" we can run some gas turbines. First our existing fleet and then when it becomes the most pressing issue to decarbonize we can utilize the solution aviation and shipping settled on. Or just run the gas turbines on biofuels, green hydrogen or whatever. Start collecting food waste and create biogas from it. Doesn't really matter, we're talking single percent of total energy demand. I love how completely insignificant issues becomes blown up to enormous proportions try to force nuclear power into the conversation.

chermi 1y ago

Are you really denying the learning curve based on one paper about France? You don't think maybe there's other confounding factors*? A single survey of a single country isn't counterfactual. Are you really certain that with a relatively fixed design the learning curve wouldn't apply at sufficient scale, all else being equal. The learning curve is one of the most time-tested laws in construction. *Yes, I understand it's inflation adjusted. There are so many possible explanations for the observed negative curve that go beyond the bold, broad claim that learning curve theory doesn't hold in nuclear. In my mind, an (at least) equally reasonable explanation is that the conditions for the learning curve weren't met. (This probably sounds like "no true Scotsman". I admit that the learning curve is a function of scale and relative to mass-production examples, the "signal" for the learning curve is probably weaker to begin with given how many facilities of the same design were actually built.) -Changes in design pull you backward on the curve. There were lots of changes in French design -Unsteady expansion timeline messes with the workforce expertise part of the hypothesis. You want ideally an accelerated or at least constant build rate, not large gaps where the workforce either respecializes in another field or retires. - regulations increase over time. Part of the conditions for the theory are implicitly "all else being equal". -while inflation adjustment partially accounts for this, labor becomes more expensive as gdp per capital increases (see, for example, low skill manufacturing leaving China as it becomes wealthier). I don't know the details, but given the rapid post-war growth, I'm guessing gdp/capital was growing pretty quickly during the French build out For relatively low volume manufacturing, the learning curve effects are probably smaller to begin with, so it's easier to get an effective negative learning rate. With so many confounding factors that violate the premise of theory, I find it rather unscientific to definitively claim the theory is just wrong in an entire industry.

ViewTrick1002 1y ago
It also includes the US seeing the same negative learning by doing. We have research on when we have achieved learning effects. > If you look at the data specifically you're going to find learning but for that there's a several requirements: > - It has to be the same site > - It has to be the same constructor > - It has to be at least two years of of gap between one construction to the next > - It has to be constant labor laws > - It has to be a constant regulatory regime > When you add these five you only get like four or five examples in the world. From a nuclear energy professor at MIT in a nuclear power industry podcast, giving an overly positive but still sober image regarding the nuclear industry as it exists today. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDzaSucDg7k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDzaSucDg7k In the meantime renewables and storage have gone from nascent industries to today be the vast majority of all new energy production in TWh and while costing a fraction of new built nuclear power.