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Nuclear is a high-capex source of electricity. It doesn’t do well economically in a grid where power if essentially free on sunny or windy days but you need a l

by adrianN 2mo ago

Nuclear is a high-capex source of electricity. It doesn’t do well economically in a grid where power if essentially free on sunny or windy days but you need a lot of backup power for a few hundred hours per year.

disgruntledphd2 2mo ago
> Nuclear is a high-capex source of electricity. It doesn’t do well economically in a grid where power if essentially free on sunny or windy days but you need a lot of backup power for a few hundred hours per year. Fair enough, but it's still incredibly helpful as a source of no-carbon electricity.
boringg 2mo ago
All power projects have to look at economic viability. Every project has different needs and market dynamics. THERE IS NOT A ONE TYPE OF PROJECT WORKS FOR ALL LOCATIONS. Resources mixes vary as do the demands of the power. I can't stress this enough solar and battery dont work everywhere and they dont provide indefinite power quality. Nor does nuclear. They all need to be resourced where appropriate. FWIW - there aren't a lot of grids that have the resource mix you described.
palata 2mo ago
> It doesn’t do well economically Well, economy is fossil fuels. In the world after fossil fuels, we may have to redefine what "economy" means.
- adrianN 2mo ago
  That seems to have very low chances of success.
  - JumpCrisscross 2mo ago
    If it were true there is no point trying to avert climate change. It will literally require global economic collapse, mass death and starvation and a civilisational reset. Fortunately, “economy is fossil fuels” is nonsense, so it actually makes sense to try and address this problem.
    - palata 2mo ago
      > Fortunately, “economy is fossil fuels” is nonsense Is it? The economy is what we produce and consume. The economy grows when we produce and consume more, it shrinks when we produce and consume less. How do we produce stuff nowadays? With fossil fuels. There is not a single object around you that did not require fossil fuels at some point. Economy "does well" when we have easy access to fossil fuels, it doesn't when we don't. We can observe the impact on countries where fossil fuels get harder to get. An example would be Europe, where fossil fuels have been harder and harder to get since 2007 (which corresponds to the global peak of conventional oil). Since then, Europe has been slowing down if you look at physical indicators (like which surface is built or what weight is transported by trucks). GDP is artificial, it's arbitrarily modified to "compensate" for inflation. People in the US love to say that Europe is slowing down because of regulations and laziness and all the smart people moving to the US, but the truth is that it is slowing down because of fossil fuels. To stop destroying the climate, we need to stop using fossil fuels, and therefore we need to redefine what we expect from "the economy", because without fossil fuels there is no way we keep producing and consuming more. But that's not all! Even if there was a way (!), it would not resolve the problem of biodiversity loss. We are currently, measurably living in a mass extinction that is happening orders of magnitudes faster than the one of the dinosaurs. If we don't get food problems because of climate change, chances are that we will because of the mass extinction. Climate change is just one existential problem we are facing. In Europe, we have lost 80% of insects in the last 20 years, and that has NOTHING to do with climate change. Just loss of habitat, which is a consequence of our economy growing (and humans doing what humans do, like tourism and parking lots and cutting trees and overfishing). Climate change will just make that worse, it's just starting. > It will literally require global economic collapse, mass death and starvation and a civilisational reset. This is a certainty if we don't do anything. Now the more we do, the more we preserve. It will still be bad, make no mistake. But there is no such thing as "it's too late to act". The less we do, the worse it gets.
      - adrianN 2mo ago
        Fossil fuels can be replaced for every use case by electricity from carbon-free sources and some chemistry. The price point for replacement of course varies by application. There is no reason to assume that we can't have the same kind of economy we have today without fossil fuels. Some things will naturally become more expensive, but other things might also became cheaper.
  - palata 2mo ago
    If you define "success" as "we prevent climate change", there is zero chance of success. But it is not binary: the less we do, the worse it will get. It's not about whether we "succeed" or not, it's about how bad we let it become.

by adrianN 2mo ago

disgruntledphd2 2mo ago

> Nuclear is a high-capex source of electricity. It doesn’t do well economically in a grid where power if essentially free on sunny or windy days but you need a lot of backup power for a few hundred hours per year. Fair enough, but it's still incredibly helpful as a source of no-carbon electricity.

boringg 2mo ago

All power projects have to look at economic viability. Every project has different needs and market dynamics. THERE IS NOT A ONE TYPE OF PROJECT WORKS FOR ALL LOCATIONS. Resources mixes vary as do the demands of the power. I can't stress this enough solar and battery dont work everywhere and they dont provide indefinite power quality. Nor does nuclear. They all need to be resourced where appropriate. FWIW - there aren't a lot of grids that have the resource mix you described.

palata 2mo ago

> It doesn’t do well economically Well, economy is fossil fuels. In the world after fossil fuels, we may have to redefine what "economy" means.

adrianN 2mo ago
That seems to have very low chances of success.
- JumpCrisscross 2mo ago
  If it were true there is no point trying to avert climate change. It will literally require global economic collapse, mass death and starvation and a civilisational reset. Fortunately, “economy is fossil fuels” is nonsense, so it actually makes sense to try and address this problem.
  - palata 2mo ago
    > Fortunately, “economy is fossil fuels” is nonsense Is it? The economy is what we produce and consume. The economy grows when we produce and consume more, it shrinks when we produce and consume less. How do we produce stuff nowadays? With fossil fuels. There is not a single object around you that did not require fossil fuels at some point. Economy "does well" when we have easy access to fossil fuels, it doesn't when we don't. We can observe the impact on countries where fossil fuels get harder to get. An example would be Europe, where fossil fuels have been harder and harder to get since 2007 (which corresponds to the global peak of conventional oil). Since then, Europe has been slowing down if you look at physical indicators (like which surface is built or what weight is transported by trucks). GDP is artificial, it's arbitrarily modified to "compensate" for inflation. People in the US love to say that Europe is slowing down because of regulations and laziness and all the smart people moving to the US, but the truth is that it is slowing down because of fossil fuels. To stop destroying the climate, we need to stop using fossil fuels, and therefore we need to redefine what we expect from "the economy", because without fossil fuels there is no way we keep producing and consuming more. But that's not all! Even if there was a way (!), it would not resolve the problem of biodiversity loss. We are currently, measurably living in a mass extinction that is happening orders of magnitudes faster than the one of the dinosaurs. If we don't get food problems because of climate change, chances are that we will because of the mass extinction. Climate change is just one existential problem we are facing. In Europe, we have lost 80% of insects in the last 20 years, and that has NOTHING to do with climate change. Just loss of habitat, which is a consequence of our economy growing (and humans doing what humans do, like tourism and parking lots and cutting trees and overfishing). Climate change will just make that worse, it's just starting. > It will literally require global economic collapse, mass death and starvation and a civilisational reset. This is a certainty if we don't do anything. Now the more we do, the more we preserve. It will still be bad, make no mistake. But there is no such thing as "it's too late to act". The less we do, the worse it gets.
    - adrianN 2mo ago
      Fossil fuels can be replaced for every use case by electricity from carbon-free sources and some chemistry. The price point for replacement of course varies by application. There is no reason to assume that we can't have the same kind of economy we have today without fossil fuels. Some things will naturally become more expensive, but other things might also became cheaper.
- palata 2mo ago
  If you define "success" as "we prevent climate change", there is zero chance of success. But it is not binary: the less we do, the worse it will get. It's not about whether we "succeed" or not, it's about how bad we let it become.