141–150 of 818 posts
Don't know how germans thought that closing down nuclear plants in favor of natural gas was a good idea, both politically and environmentally
Thinking about it makes me mad. For all their renewable production capacity they still average over 300g of CO2 / kwh with all the gas and coal they burn. All of it, credit to the german green movement trying to save the planet from... Not sure. Even assuming the occasional Chernobyl/Fukushima-level disaster, as terrible as those catastrophes are, nuclear plant accidents are localised and will never threaten mankind…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> ... I'm pretty sure this cost comparison comes down firmly on the side of wind/solar/storage. Storage is the main cost barrier for 100% renewable-powered grids, but this is also an area where technological development is possible. Sure, if you handwave the unsolved-at-scale technical problems with grid energy storage and make a series of generous assumptions about future technology, that's probably true. Nuclear te…
'handwave the unsolved-at-scale' ? All you have to do is look at Australia: https://www.pv-magazine.com/2021/08/10/worlds-largest-grid-f... > Battery rollout: "AGL Energy has committed to build 850 MW of battery-based assets by 2024. To that end, Torrens Island marks the first project to be constructed at the site of a fossil-fuel power plant. It won’t be the last, however, as big batteries are planned for New South…
As much as I detest the pro nuclear shilling, this isn't a valid comparison. 250MWh of storage is only useful for very short term energy arbitrage and isn't a replacement for always-on power.
The real answer is a mix of solar, solar-thermal, wind, storage, and combined cycle plants for the holes (ideally eventually powered by plant-based and solar-cracked hydrogen/methane/etc.). This mix costs a bit more than nuclear does now, but doesn't have the huge massive downsides of total dependency on and subservience to a handful of companies operating out of the five or so countries that are allowed to produce fuel (as well as all the existential risk stuff, concentration of risk to mistakes/attacks, horrible un-accounted externalities and supply chain fragility). It will also likely cost less to build it at a time such that it would still be completed before a nuclear plant which was comissioned now.
Of course that's all moot because the balance *right now* is running existing fossil fuel infrastructure more vs. building solar and not storing the energy. And in this equation, the cost of solar is a tiny fraction of nuclear.
Funny article in that it doesn't discuss lifecycle costs. A side-by-side comparison of the cost of grids powered by nuclear power plant relative to those powered by wind/solar/storage is what I'd expect to see from a 'paper of record' like the NYTimes. Except in some specific cases (Finland, other Arctic regions with long periods of low sunlight) I'm pretty sure this cost comparison comes down firmly on the side of w…
I agree, but: It's 100% impossible to replace the need for gas in the short timespan of five months until the next winter, no matter how much money or resources we throw at the problem. The absolute majority of heating is done with gas and major parts of the electrical grid depend on it. We cannot replace it with renewables in time. We need gas or people will freeze to death in the worst case, there are no alternatives to the LNG imports in the short-term, IMO.
And the countries that can export LNG, including the US, are aware of their strong negotiating position and want long-term contracts.
Europe may not have a choice. :/
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It was always too expensive. It wasnt hippy peaceniks that killed it. It was money. The odd catastrophe didnt help though. Why there is a resurgence of interest now when dirt cheap solar and wind have effectively rendered it a costly relic of the past is somewhat puzzling. I guess PR campaigns like the OP's link are one reason.
It's expensive when you rely on cheap Russian/ME fossil fuels > Why there is a resurgence of interest now when dirt cheap solar and wind have effectively rendered it a costly relic of the past is somewhat puzzling. If cheap solar/wind was enough right now Europe wouldn't be going through an energy crisis.
I just finished Bill Gates' "How to Avoid a Climate Disaster". Very good book, and it makes two points (among many others): - To reduce carbon in the air, getting clean electricity is key. If we can do that, we can more easily reduce emissions from other areas. - There are no paths to clean energy by 2050 without nuclear power.
How many GW of wind, solar, and nuclear can we bring online in the next 28 years?
28 times that, ignoring the shutdowns (I don't actually know how long wind lasts, IIRC nuclear is "about 50-70 years" and PV is "about 30 years"), gives a total of: 5124 GW PV, 2800 GW wind, 218 GW nuclear.
But that's a lower bound for PV, as that's growing with what looks like an approximately exponential long-term trend (since 1992) of 36.5% per year.
While such a growth rate is physically possible to maintain for 28 years even without going into space, given that if we did make so much we wouldn't merely give everyone an American lifestyle but also be able to get the entire human population continuously flying[3], I'm assuming it will turn into a sigmoid before then.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_of_photovoltaics
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_commercial_nuclear_rea...
[3] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=%28105*1.365%5E%2828%2B...
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The primary cost of nuclear is politically driven. I don't know if that matters in a world of actual energy scarcity, I guess we'll be finding out. If you remove liability and the insanity of our current methods of waste storage the costs become outright cheap, especially in an imagined future where there is massive investment into new nuclear infrastructure. By the metrics people use to judge nuclear, hydro would be…
When you say 'primary cost' do you mean construction cost? Again, utility managers will be looking at lifecycle costs, from the cradle (construction) through use (fueling, security, cooling water, maintenance) to the grave (decomissioning). The reason costs are high is not political, it's that the systems involved need to be over-engineered relative to say, a coal-fired power plant, where a breakdown or fire will cre…
Which is not an issue with newer reactor designs, which are no less proven than grid storage.
I will hazard that the problems with nuclear are not technological but political, and the economic problems with nuclear are there because of political reasons. France gets ~75% of its power from nuclear, safely and economically. France inhabits the same physical world as the rest of us, but is different politically. If there were a will, there would be a way. If the environmental movement had paid more attention to…
The high cost of nuclear is due to the inherent complexity of nuclear power plants, and the rise in particular is principally due to a nuclear industry that no longer knows how to construct plants affordably, with increased regulatory compliance a minor contributor.
Source: https://news.mit.edu/2020/reasons-nuclear-overruns-1118
The result of that high cost is that nuclear is a lot more expensive to build than renewables for the same amount of energy. This difference is growing and not shrinking, because the solar and wind industries keep getting better at cheaply rolling out capacity.
Source: https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth
Because most of a nuclear project’s cost is upfront, earned back over the lifetime of the plant, a profitable project has to be able to assume it can outcompete renewables + storage over multiple decades. This already is not the case today, and less so in the coming years. No private business can make these numbers work, so no private business is willing to fund a nuclear plant without subsidies. Renewables however can and are being funded privately to a large degree, because they turn a profit more quickly and can be built in smaller increments.
Subsidies come out of taxes, which means the money can’t be spent on something else. Government budgets are already stressed. Between the choice of a largely privately funded solar/wind/hydrogen/storage path and a mostly government-funded nuclear path governments around the world are choosing the cheaper option.
And yes, there is the public perception of nuclear which doesn’t help. But people are also opposed to solar and wind projects. NIMBY is always a thing. Besides, even if you could convince people of the safety of nuclear energy, the numbers still wouldn’t work out.
There are challenges to rolling out solar and wind at scale with grid redesign and hydrogen storage and distribution, but nuclear at scale has similarly sized problems. TANSTAAFL when it comes to energy production.
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>Except in some specific cases (Finland, other Arctic regions with long periods of low sunlight) I'm pretty sure this cost comparison comes down firmly on the side of wind/solar/storage. Storage is the main cost barrier for 100% renewable-powered grids, but this is also an area where technological development is possible. Why the progress is possible only for Solar and storage and in your opinion not possible for nuc…
Small reactors are not expected to be any cheaper than traditional reactors. They are a better bet right now because the traditional reactors keep getting mothballed in developed nations, and they have some clever technical innovations, but these are not complete game changers. Each decade, nuclear builds also trend towards getting more expensive. Like it or not, it at least partially Fukushima Daiichi that killed th…
And his conclusion was pretty grim. Paraphrasing: If we bet on nuclear for mitigation of climate change, it is inevitable that nuclear accidents will happen more often. Also each accident causes a major setback in peoples minds regarding nuclear safety and the next Fukushima might kill off a lot of progress and the opportunity cost lost would be huge.
I don't know how to argue with this. I personally think nuclear is really safe. If the worst accidents have killed a few hundred and caused premature deaths to at most hundreds of thousands. Compared to the millions of premature deaths PER YEAR for fossil related energy and the possible billions coming from climate change, nuclear is as safe as it gets (I mean probably more PV installers will fall off roofs than get killed by nuclear accidents), but peoples fears might not be surmountable.