5 ms·

Renewables really aren't that cheap unless you view them entirely in isolation. Sun doesn't shine all night and wind doesn't blow continuously, it needs to be v

Renewables really aren't that cheap unless you view them entirely in isolation. Sun doesn't shine all night and wind doesn't blow continuously, it needs to be viewed with storage to represent a complete picture. Rooftop solar is more expensive than nuclear due to the zero economies of scale, residential storage is staggeringly expensive, and utility scale solar + storage only became less expensive than nuclear power a couple of years ago. Solar and wind both have significant sovereignty issues. The entire solar supply chain is in China where they're heavily subsidized so the PRC can corner the market -- and substantially all the rare earths in wind turbines come from China. Generally recycling costs aren't considered and at least in the west there's no plan to recycle at least the fiberglass in turbine blades, leaving them to be buried. I'm all for renewables but the way they're positioned is unrealistic. Nuclear is only expensive because of the way it's built in the US, relying on the few locations made available (if any) to build basically fully customized installations. If we copy-pasted reactors onto sites that suit them it would be very competitive, don't take my word for it. Jigar Shah who headed the DOE loans program said the exact same thing during his term. If we're being pedantic, nuclear is renewable too thanks to seawater extraction. There's a practically unlimited amount of uranium in the ocean and the rock underneath it.

ViewTrick1002 1y ago
Which is why I also added that the costs for storage are absolutely plummeting? What problem are you solving? The final bit of emergency reserves? > Solar and wind both have significant sovereignty issues. The entire solar supply chain is in China where they're heavily subsidizes so the PRC can corner the market -- and substantially all the rare earths in wind turbines come from China. This seems like hand wringing over a nothing burger? Compare the dynamics with fossil fuels: If the fossil fuel supply chain is disrupted we get an energy crisis within weeks. What happens if the renewable supply chain is disrupted? Well.... all existing installations keeps working for decades and in the meantime we need to figure out an alternative. After a couple of years our emergency reserves would start to work harder due to old installations aging out but the impact would be near zero. > Nuclear is only expensive because of the way it's built in the US, relying on the few locations made available (if any) to build basically fully customized installations. If we copy-pasted reactors onto sites that suit them it would be very competitive, don't take my word for it, Jigar Shah who headed the DOE loans program said the exact same thing during his term. Which is of course why all western reactors are struggling with cost. You do know that modular reactors has been a talking point for the nuclear industry since the 1950s? That is what the industry generally bounces to when large scale projects balloon in cost. They just never deliver. https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-forgotten-history-of-small-nuclear-reactors https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-forgotten-history-of-small-nuc... But somehow if we magically handout another trillion in tax money to the nuclear industry they will fix it this time!! > If we're being pedantic, nuclear is renewable too thanks to seawater extraction With the minor caveat that you can't even drive the pump from the electricity final electricity you get out due to the volumes involved. I love how the solution to horrifically expensive new built nuclear power is an even more economically infeasible technical solution. Or you know, just diversify renewable supply chains?
- arcticbull 1y ago
  > This seems like hand wringing over a nothing burger? Compare the dynamics with fossil fuels: I'm not comparing to fossil fuels, so it's not really relevant. > Or you know, just diversify renewable supply chains? That's happening about as fast as seawater extraction. There's good reasons why, at least for wind the extraction and processing of rare earths is an environmental catastrophe and only China is willing to pay the environmental price. Regardless fuel costs for nuclear plants are roughly zero, about $0.0015/kWh, and there is more than enough uranium on land. And of course reprocessing spent fuel is a totally viable solution; most of France's uranium is closed loop. The entirety of the cost is in building and financing, which can be solved with policy changes.
  - ViewTrick1002 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - arcticbull 1y ago
      > Nuclear power is irrelevant in our energy systems today. I dunno, it's been producing 20% of US power for decades. Same as renewables. Seems relevant. > For the nuclear supply chain we still have not been able to sanction the Russian industry. 12% come from Russia. [1] > So now suddenly we are hand wringing about rare earth extraction consequences. You seem to change topics faster than I can follow. I feel like environmental implications are relevant to discuss, and I think the topic is relevant. > You do know that the uranium supply is also extremely nasty? Sure, but you need very little of it due to energy density, and reprocessing is a viable alternative as demonstrated by France. They have a 96% recovery rate. [2] > And now suddenly seawater extraction did not matter? It didn't matter in my original post either which is why it's under "if we're being pedantic." [1] https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/nuclear/where-our-uranium-comes-from.php https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/nuclear/where-our-uraniu... [2] https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/frances-efficiency-in-the-nuclear-fuel-cycle-what-can-oui-learn https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/frances-efficiency-in-t...
      - 1y ago
ZeroGravitas 1y ago
Lazard has retrofit household rooftop solar at roughly the same cost as nuclear. Those are US numbers, Australian rooftop solar is 3 or 4 times cheaper. And Lazard separately lists Commercial and Industrial rooftop solar which is much cheaper.
dreamcompiler 1y ago
Rooftop PV in the US now costs around $3/watt including BOS (balance of system) and labor. This means an average 6kW home installation is less than $20k -- without storage. (This does not include government subsidies. Where they're still available the price decreases further.) Yes home storage adds more money but a grid-tied PV installation without batteries is very useful in many parts of the country: Using the grid as your "battery" at night, a $20k investment can make your net electricity cost zero or even negative. A vast number of US homeowners have installed such a system and are very happy they did so.
- dzhiurgis 1y ago
  Thats kinda crazy given panels are something like $0.15/watt. Literally only 5% of your total quote.
  - dreamcompiler 1y ago
    It used to be that panel cost was the most important factor in PV system cost. Now the panels are nearly free and everything else determines the system cost.
- arcticbull 1y ago
  $20,000 for a 6kW system with a 15-20% capacity factor that lasts 20 years means you're going to generate a total of 157,000kWh. That's 12.7c/kWh. Before factoring in anything that might happen to it, including damage, cleaning, replacing your inverter. That is not cheap electricity -- the LCOE of nuclear is 9-15c/kWh. That's within spitting distance of Vogtle before you add storage. Sure the panels may last 30 years, so you can juice the numbers and maybe you live in the middle of Nevada so you can get the upper end of the capacity factor but I mean, my estimate assumes nothing happens to those panels before the year 2055. My estimate also doesn't include financing costs for your car-sized purchase or any changes to your insurance premiums. If you add a PowerWall for $15,000 that lasts 10-15 years, that doubles the cost despite increasing the capacity factor of the system, once again assuming you have zero issues with it until 2040. > A vast number of US homeowners have installed such a system and are very happy they did so. I'd do it myself and I'd be happy too, because it's neat, but that doesn't mean I'm getting a good deal or that residential solar is a cheap way to get electricity. I suspect the people who are happy with their financial decision don't understand the difference between opex and capex, and aren't factoring in the opportunity cost of their $20-35,000 investment. If you invest $20,000 in bonds at 5% for 20 years you have $53,000 -- or in the S&P 500 at 9% you have $112,000. Historically electricity prices have grown closer to 2% per year.
rainsford 1y ago
> ...and utility scale solar + storage only became less expensive than nuclear power a couple of years ago. That's an awkward way to try to frame "solar is cheaper than nuclear" as a negative for solar power. Why should anyone care when solar became cheaper than nuclear? If you're looking at different alternatives in the year 2025, the relevant fact is which is cheaper now. All the more so since the cost for solar power, even counting the cost of storage, has been dramatically decreasing over time so the advantage is likely to be even better in the future. > Nuclear is only expensive because of the way it's built in the US... I honestly like the idea of nuclear power, but it seems goofy to do cost comparisons between solar and wind power being deployed right now and some hypothetical version of nuclear power we don't and might never have. I imagine nuclear power probably could be cheaper if we changed everything about how we designed, built, and maintained nuclear plants. I also imagine that level of investment and tolerance for policy change with other power generation sources could produce equally significant cost decreases. China's growing lead in the renewable power supply chain, material recycling, rare earth materials, etc, are all examples of challenges with renewable power than can probably be solved with time and money. Shouldn't our utopian future version of nuclear power be compared against a future where we make similar investments in changing how we approach renewable power to solve all those problems?

ViewTrick1002 1y ago

Which is why I also added that the costs for storage are absolutely plummeting? What problem are you solving? The final bit of emergency reserves? > Solar and wind both have significant sovereignty issues. The entire solar supply chain is in China where they're heavily subsidizes so the PRC can corner the market -- and substantially all the rare earths in wind turbines come from China. This seems like hand wringing over a nothing burger? Compare the dynamics with fossil fuels: If the fossil fuel supply chain is disrupted we get an energy crisis within weeks. What happens if the renewable supply chain is disrupted? Well.... all existing installations keeps working for decades and in the meantime we need to figure out an alternative. After a couple of years our emergency reserves would start to work harder due to old installations aging out but the impact would be near zero. > Nuclear is only expensive because of the way it's built in the US, relying on the few locations made available (if any) to build basically fully customized installations. If we copy-pasted reactors onto sites that suit them it would be very competitive, don't take my word for it, Jigar Shah who headed the DOE loans program said the exact same thing during his term. Which is of course why all western reactors are struggling with cost. You do know that modular reactors has been a talking point for the nuclear industry since the 1950s? That is what the industry generally bounces to when large scale projects balloon in cost. They just never deliver. https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-forgotten-history-of-small-nuclear-reactors https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-forgotten-history-of-small-nuc... But somehow if we magically handout another trillion in tax money to the nuclear industry they will fix it this time!! > If we're being pedantic, nuclear is renewable too thanks to seawater extraction With the minor caveat that you can't even drive the pump from the electricity final electricity you get out due to the volumes involved. I love how the solution to horrifically expensive new built nuclear power is an even more economically infeasible technical solution. Or you know, just diversify renewable supply chains?

arcticbull 1y ago
> This seems like hand wringing over a nothing burger? Compare the dynamics with fossil fuels: I'm not comparing to fossil fuels, so it's not really relevant. > Or you know, just diversify renewable supply chains? That's happening about as fast as seawater extraction. There's good reasons why, at least for wind the extraction and processing of rare earths is an environmental catastrophe and only China is willing to pay the environmental price. Regardless fuel costs for nuclear plants are roughly zero, about $0.0015/kWh, and there is more than enough uranium on land. And of course reprocessing spent fuel is a totally viable solution; most of France's uranium is closed loop. The entirety of the cost is in building and financing, which can be solved with policy changes.
- ViewTrick1002 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - arcticbull 1y ago
    > Nuclear power is irrelevant in our energy systems today. I dunno, it's been producing 20% of US power for decades. Same as renewables. Seems relevant. > For the nuclear supply chain we still have not been able to sanction the Russian industry. 12% come from Russia. [1] > So now suddenly we are hand wringing about rare earth extraction consequences. You seem to change topics faster than I can follow. I feel like environmental implications are relevant to discuss, and I think the topic is relevant. > You do know that the uranium supply is also extremely nasty? Sure, but you need very little of it due to energy density, and reprocessing is a viable alternative as demonstrated by France. They have a 96% recovery rate. [2] > And now suddenly seawater extraction did not matter? It didn't matter in my original post either which is why it's under "if we're being pedantic." [1] https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/nuclear/where-our-uranium-comes-from.php https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/nuclear/where-our-uraniu... [2] https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/frances-efficiency-in-the-nuclear-fuel-cycle-what-can-oui-learn https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/frances-efficiency-in-t...
    - 1y ago

ZeroGravitas 1y ago

Lazard has retrofit household rooftop solar at roughly the same cost as nuclear. Those are US numbers, Australian rooftop solar is 3 or 4 times cheaper. And Lazard separately lists Commercial and Industrial rooftop solar which is much cheaper.

dreamcompiler 1y ago

Rooftop PV in the US now costs around $3/watt including BOS (balance of system) and labor. This means an average 6kW home installation is less than $20k -- without storage. (This does not include government subsidies. Where they're still available the price decreases further.) Yes home storage adds more money but a grid-tied PV installation without batteries is very useful in many parts of the country: Using the grid as your "battery" at night, a $20k investment can make your net electricity cost zero or even negative. A vast number of US homeowners have installed such a system and are very happy they did so.

dzhiurgis 1y ago
Thats kinda crazy given panels are something like $0.15/watt. Literally only 5% of your total quote.
- dreamcompiler 1y ago
  It used to be that panel cost was the most important factor in PV system cost. Now the panels are nearly free and everything else determines the system cost.
arcticbull 1y ago
$20,000 for a 6kW system with a 15-20% capacity factor that lasts 20 years means you're going to generate a total of 157,000kWh. That's 12.7c/kWh. Before factoring in anything that might happen to it, including damage, cleaning, replacing your inverter. That is not cheap electricity -- the LCOE of nuclear is 9-15c/kWh. That's within spitting distance of Vogtle before you add storage. Sure the panels may last 30 years, so you can juice the numbers and maybe you live in the middle of Nevada so you can get the upper end of the capacity factor but I mean, my estimate assumes nothing happens to those panels before the year 2055. My estimate also doesn't include financing costs for your car-sized purchase or any changes to your insurance premiums. If you add a PowerWall for $15,000 that lasts 10-15 years, that doubles the cost despite increasing the capacity factor of the system, once again assuming you have zero issues with it until 2040. > A vast number of US homeowners have installed such a system and are very happy they did so. I'd do it myself and I'd be happy too, because it's neat, but that doesn't mean I'm getting a good deal or that residential solar is a cheap way to get electricity. I suspect the people who are happy with their financial decision don't understand the difference between opex and capex, and aren't factoring in the opportunity cost of their $20-35,000 investment. If you invest $20,000 in bonds at 5% for 20 years you have $53,000 -- or in the S&P 500 at 9% you have $112,000. Historically electricity prices have grown closer to 2% per year.

rainsford 1y ago

> ...and utility scale solar + storage only became less expensive than nuclear power a couple of years ago. That's an awkward way to try to frame "solar is cheaper than nuclear" as a negative for solar power. Why should anyone care when solar became cheaper than nuclear? If you're looking at different alternatives in the year 2025, the relevant fact is which is cheaper now. All the more so since the cost for solar power, even counting the cost of storage, has been dramatically decreasing over time so the advantage is likely to be even better in the future. > Nuclear is only expensive because of the way it's built in the US... I honestly like the idea of nuclear power, but it seems goofy to do cost comparisons between solar and wind power being deployed right now and some hypothetical version of nuclear power we don't and might never have. I imagine nuclear power probably could be cheaper if we changed everything about how we designed, built, and maintained nuclear plants. I also imagine that level of investment and tolerance for policy change with other power generation sources could produce equally significant cost decreases. China's growing lead in the renewable power supply chain, material recycling, rare earth materials, etc, are all examples of challenges with renewable power than can probably be solved with time and money. Shouldn't our utopian future version of nuclear power be compared against a future where we make similar investments in changing how we approach renewable power to solve all those problems?