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Nuclear power is the best climate-change solution

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Re: Nuclear power is the best climate-change solution

#291

Post by empthought »

fsflover wrote: post #275
sfifs wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear is socially and therefore politically non-viable because (1) When nuclear accidents happen, they suddenly overturn the lives of a LOT of commoners all at once as opposed to slow and creeping and often "statistically determined" impact of other energy tech (2) technocrats have consistently failed to demonstrate the ability to create organisations that over the long term prioritize safety and the ability to pre…

Planes are socially and therefore politically non-viable because (1) When flight accidents happen, they suddenly overturn the lives of a LOT of commoners all at once as opposed to slow and creeping and often "statistically determined" impact of cars (2) technocrats have consistently failed to demonstrate the ability to create organisations that over the long term prioritize safety and the ability to prevent accidents…

Except plane casualties happen to the people actively opting into air travel; an individual choice can mitigate one's exposure to air travel risk. Not so nuclear accidents.

Re: Nuclear power is the best climate-change solution

#292

Post by ojosilva »

stavros wrote: post #281
ojosilva wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what I tell them pro-nuclearists, who mostly, in my circles, tend to be engineers or tech-savy minds with a better-is-better mindset: Nuclear is the mainframe. Let's just concede, for the sake of argument: the hands-down better, more reliable tech. Renewables is the distributed. Worse but worse-is-better [1]. Setup and investment is incremental. Take down and/or upgrading is also simpler. There's huge tractio…

I generally agree with you, though I don't understand why we can't just do both. People seem to have a very "one or the other" mindset. Also, it's fine to be pro-nuclear (I am too), but it's not fine to be anti-renewables (or anti-nuclear).

Because strategy A beats both B and A+B. It's either VHS or Betamax, not both. And this again has to do with worse-is-better. A+B could be wise in certain scenarios, but it's unrealistic as it requires double effort in all fronts, generates market uncertainty due to doubious messaging and no immediate gains in time or costs.

Re: Nuclear power is the best climate-change solution

#293

Post by pydry »

mrjangles wrote: post #283
pydry wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grid scale batteries have become cost effective in the last two years. It'll take time to build out capacity but it'll take more time AND cost to build new nuclear plants.

This is something people get confused about. Grid scale batteries are definitely not cost effective or in existence. The media does their best to obfuscate this. What has been built around the places are battery packs to absorb dangerous power fluctuations caused by windmills. They destroyed the grid in South Australia a few years ago, and Elon Musk famously went in and installed batteries (maybe that is what you are…

I'm thinking of battery backed solar farm in Hawaii that cost around $70/MwH and supplied about 1/5th of the power for the island. There's a few new projects in California/Nevada/Colorado that are allegedly costing around $30-40MwH (although I'm skeptical of how much storage they have for that price).

Either way, conservatively speaking, $50-60/MwH for battery backed wind/solar on the mainland seems fairly doable. Prices will likely keep dropping too.

By contrast, in the UK Hinkley Point C is being paid $124/MwH guaranteed for 20 years. It doesn't exist because it's a cost effective way of supplying green energy that's for sure, but it does bolster the nuclear economy. The military do like to hire nuclear technicians and buy parts for PWRs in nuclear subs, etc. and somebody has to pay for these things. Rate payers, I guess.

Re: Nuclear power is the best climate-change solution

#294

Post by tim333 »

Trouble is nuclear costs go up, solar goes down: graph https://www.ncwarn.org/wp-content/uploads/Solar-Nuclear_grap...

Batteries etc are falling too, so project ahead so solar seems to win out. Which is good news really as we've had nuclear for decades and it still hasn't stopped developing countries burning fossil fuels and probably never will. On the other hand if solar costs like a quarter that of fossil it'll probably take over.

(article graph came from https://www.ncwarn.org/2010/07/solar-and-nuclear-costs-the-h...)

Re: Nuclear power is the best climate-change solution

#295

Post by ghouse »

mrjangles wrote: post #278
7952 wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you are talking about is the marginal cost of producing an extra kWh of electricity. That does vary between different sources. For nuclear, solar and wind it is exceptionally low. For gas and coal it is higher due to fuel costs and market volatility (see gas prices now). A further factor is how quickly a generator can turn on, maintenance costs, and fuel efficiency. Also, different locations have better grid con…

While it's nice to believe that through the magic of the market, everything just evens out, a simple thought experiment easily shows this isn't the case. Take the simplest case and ignore CO2 and carbon tax for now. The base power stations have to be sufficient to supply the whole power grid when the wind doesn't blow, and the sun doesn't shine. Ok, so now imagine what happens if we simply remove all the solar panels…

> Because government regulation doesn't allow fixed power plants to charge a fixed yearly fee. If the government did allow this then the market would indeed price everything correctly.

In the US, in most markets (except ERCOT/TX), it's the opposite of what you say. Government regulation _requires_ either the market operator or load serving entity to contract for capacity (as opposed to energy). PJM, which operates the largest market in the US, runs an annual auction for capacity. Incredibly, due in part to subsidies offered to the natural gas industry, existing nuclear power plants have not cleared in the auction. [0, 1]

[0] https://insidelines.pjm.com/pjm-successfully-clears-capacity...

[1] https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights...

Re: Nuclear power is the best climate-change solution

#296

Post by ghouse »

mrjangles wrote: post #283
pydry wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grid scale batteries have become cost effective in the last two years. It'll take time to build out capacity but it'll take more time AND cost to build new nuclear plants.

This is something people get confused about. Grid scale batteries are definitely not cost effective or in existence. The media does their best to obfuscate this. What has been built around the places are battery packs to absorb dangerous power fluctuations caused by windmills. They destroyed the grid in South Australia a few years ago, and Elon Musk famously went in and installed batteries (maybe that is what you are…

> Grid scale batteries are definitely not cost effective or in existence.

California has more than 1.5 GW of utility-scale chemical batteries interconnected to it's grid with another 1 GW anticipated to enter service by the end of the year. Most of these batteries can sustain full output for four hours. This is in addition to the more than 3.0 GW of pumped hydro "batteries."

1 GW is roughly the output of one nuclear power plant.

Source: I develop power plants in the western US.

Re: Nuclear power is the best climate-change solution

#297

Post by cinntaile »

pydry wrote: post #293
mrjangles wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is something people get confused about. Grid scale batteries are definitely not cost effective or in existence. The media does their best to obfuscate this. What has been built around the places are battery packs to absorb dangerous power fluctuations caused by windmills. They destroyed the grid in South Australia a few years ago, and Elon Musk famously went in and installed batteries (maybe that is what you are…

I'm thinking of battery backed solar farm in Hawaii that cost around $70/MwH and supplied about 1/5th of the power for the island. There's a few new projects in California/Nevada/Colorado that are allegedly costing around $30-40MwH (although I'm skeptical of how much storage they have for that price). Either way, conservatively speaking, $50-60/MwH for battery backed wind/solar on the mainland seems fairly doable. Pr…

These numbers are way off though, maybe those are just the cells? If we look at the 2021 estimates by the National Renewable Energy Labs for utility scale 4h batteries [0] We get cost estimates of 250 $/kWh for the high case, 200 $/kWh for the middle case and 150 $/kWh for the low case by 2030. [0] https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy21osti/79236.pdf.

Re: Nuclear power is the best climate-change solution

#298

Post by pydry »

cinntaile wrote: post #297
pydry wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm thinking of battery backed solar farm in Hawaii that cost around $70/MwH and supplied about 1/5th of the power for the island. There's a few new projects in California/Nevada/Colorado that are allegedly costing around $30-40MwH (although I'm skeptical of how much storage they have for that price). Either way, conservatively speaking, $50-60/MwH for battery backed wind/solar on the mainland seems fairly doable. Pr…

These numbers are way off though, maybe those are just the cells? If we look at the 2021 estimates by the National Renewable Energy Labs for utility scale 4h batteries [0] We get cost estimates of 250 $/kWh for the high case, 200 $/kWh for the middle case and 150 $/kWh for the low case by 2030. [0] https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy21osti/79236.pdf .

That seems to be the cost of the physical batteries, not the price the grid would pay the farm for.

Re: Nuclear power is the best climate-change solution

#299

Post by coryrc »

pydry wrote: post #253
coryrc wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grid stability/storage, plus sunk costs. Say it's a cold cloudy day with no wind and it's been so for a week. You'll need the capacity of that coal/nuclear plant those days. And let's say every other day of the year solar and wind make enough power. So who pays the extremely high fixed cost of the nuclear and coal plant so it's available that one week you need it? No one wants to, so they're shutting them down. The p…

Grid scale batteries have become cost effective in the last two years. It'll take time to build out capacity but it'll take more time AND cost to build new nuclear plants.

Those batteries only have a few hours of storage at max power, they're for solving the duck curve not a week-long supply shortage (let alone seasonal fluctuations). If we got the Midwest on heat pumps, how you planning to keep places heated when there's a week of blizzard? Right now we have no plan for addressing the occasional bad week besides overbuilding natural gas. That's worse than keeping our nuclear running and expanding, but the solar and wind is subsidized but not the natural gas. The way the market for power works, bidding on a daily or hourly basis, doesn't account for seasonal variation. The solar and wind builders are off the hook on blizzard week but get subsidized enough to run the reliable plants out of business the rest of the year.

Re: Nuclear power is the best climate-change solution

#300

Post by [deleted] »

coryrc wrote: post #299
pydry wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grid scale batteries have become cost effective in the last two years. It'll take time to build out capacity but it'll take more time AND cost to build new nuclear plants.

Those batteries only have a few hours of storage at max power, they're for solving the duck curve not a week-long supply shortage (let alone seasonal fluctuations). If we got the Midwest on heat pumps, how you planning to keep places heated when there's a week of blizzard? Right now we have no plan for addressing the occasional bad week besides overbuilding natural gas. That's worse than keeping our nuclear running a…

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