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US can reach 100% clean power by 2035, DOE finds

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Re: US can reach 100% clean power by 2035, DOE finds

#21

Post by asien »

Appreciate the graph in the article , this time the numbers actually are calculated by engineers from DoE , not by Journalists...

Even if the plan is there , without an “economy of war” and the implication of basically every single American it’s nearly impossible to reach those types of deployment.

Money is not the answer to everything , as pointed we are also going to reach “civilization” types of limits with land and ressource exhaust...

My humble opinion is we should simply consume far less energy and accept a much simpler lifestyle, that would be much easier ...

Re: US can reach 100% clean power by 2035, DOE finds

#22

Post by epistasis »

bjt2n3904 wrote: post #16
mionhe wrote: post #2

At the beginning of the article is says: "But it does not explain how adequate land to reach a 90% clean electricity penetration can be acquired or how reliability will be protected beyond that 90% penetration, stakeholders acknowledged." I'm confused that they can put a time frame on a problem they have no idea how to solve yet.

You'd think what they want is a solution to switch over to renewable energy sources that can meet or exceed current demands at comparative costs. No, they just want to get rid of fossil fuels. It doesn't matter if the new system can meet the demand at all, or how much it will cost. Look at California. Banning lawn mowers and ICE cars. Their power grid can't even support EV charging, and they're sending out notices as…

That does not represent anything in the article.

> Their power grid can't even support EV charging,

This is categorically false, and a ridiculous thing to say.

Re: US can reach 100% clean power by 2035, DOE finds

#23

Post by S201 »

epistasis wrote: post #20
S201 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before the typical "nuclear is too expensive/takes too long to build" comments start: https://whatisnuclear.com/economics.html . Understand why this is the case and how it's entirely reasonable to fix those problems with sufficient will & funding.

That page doesn't really describe how to fix the problems. Nobody really knows, and there's lots of speculations, but if there was an answer it's easily a trillion dollar reward.

> That page doesn't really describe how to fix the problems.

Clearly you didn't actually read it because there's a large section describing exactly how to improve the economics of nuclear construction: https://whatisnuclear.com/economics.html#improving-modern-nu...

Re: US can reach 100% clean power by 2035, DOE finds

#24

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #15
newsclues wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US can build a plant in 13 years. It's a matter of dedication and willingness. And pissing off a minority of vocal opponents. It takes longer because of the crazy regulations driven in part by environmentalists who complained about nuclear for decades while fossil fuels were the only other option. But the USA has the resources, skills, technology and money to do so in a short period of time.

The USA hasn't built a sizable number of reactors for 40 years. We haven't completely lost the skills, but they've sure atrophied. It takes China 10 years to build a reactor, and they've built lots of them in the past 20 years and don't have the regulations you decry. There's no way that the US can do it in anywhere close to the same time frame that China can. It's not just the rules and attitudes about nuclear makin…

Aren't NuScale, Rolls Royce, etc planning to deploy several Gigawatts per year of mini reactors within 5 years?

That could be close to 1% of energy usage per year...

Re: US can reach 100% clean power by 2035, DOE finds

#25

Post by toomuchtodo »

sgu999 wrote: post #8
toomuchtodo wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From reactors built 40 years ago. https://www.reuters.com/article/france-nuclear-edf-idINKBN2A...

It apparently took about a decade or so to go from planning to running most of these power plants...

What does the cost of nuclear vs renewables and storage look like in a decade? The cost curve is what will define success. Nuclear never gets cheaper.

Re: US can reach 100% clean power by 2035, DOE finds

#26

Post by bryanlarsen »

S201 wrote: post #23
epistasis wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That page doesn't really describe how to fix the problems. Nobody really knows, and there's lots of speculations, but if there was an answer it's easily a trillion dollar reward.

> That page doesn't really describe how to fix the problems. Clearly you didn't actually read it because there's a large section describing exactly how to improve the economics of nuclear construction: https://whatisnuclear.com/economics.html#improving-modern-nu...

From the conclusion:

- Multiple hypothetical approaches to reduce nuclear costs are ongoing. No one knows for sure if any of them will work, or which one will work best

And it didn't address the time scale issue at all.

OTOH, solar power has a 5 decade history of 90% cost reductions per decade.

Re: US can reach 100% clean power by 2035, DOE finds

#27

Post by epistasis »

newsclues wrote: post #12
bryanlarsen wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US can't build a nuclear plant in 13 years.

The US can build a plant in 13 years. It's a matter of dedication and willingness. And pissing off a minority of vocal opponents. It takes longer because of the crazy regulations driven in part by environmentalists who complained about nuclear for decades while fossil fuels were the only other option. But the USA has the resources, skills, technology and money to do so in a short period of time.

None of this is correct, the projects have not been stopped due to environmentalists, or regulations, or even willingness. It's just been construction incompetence that caused billions of dollars to be abandoned on a half-finished project at VC Summer. And it's the same construction incompetence that caused Vogtle to be so far behind schedule and so far over budget.

If somebody has regulations to change, it's time to propose them.

Re: US can reach 100% clean power by 2035, DOE finds

#28

Post by toomuchtodo »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #24
bryanlarsen wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The USA hasn't built a sizable number of reactors for 40 years. We haven't completely lost the skills, but they've sure atrophied. It takes China 10 years to build a reactor, and they've built lots of them in the past 20 years and don't have the regulations you decry. There's no way that the US can do it in anywhere close to the same time frame that China can. It's not just the rules and attitudes about nuclear makin…

Aren't NuScale, Rolls Royce, etc planning to deploy several Gigawatts per year of mini reactors within 5 years? That could be close to 1% of energy usage per year...

They should build it then, and be willing to suffer financial penalties if they can’t. Otherwise they’re making empty promises. Watch what someone does, not what they say.

Re: US can reach 100% clean power by 2035, DOE finds

#29

Post by megaman821 »

asien wrote: post #21

Appreciate the graph in the article , this time the numbers actually are calculated by engineers from DoE , not by Journalists... Even if the plan is there , without an “economy of war” and the implication of basically every single American it’s nearly impossible to reach those types of deployment. Money is not the answer to everything , as pointed we are also going to reach “civilization” types of limits with land a…

Did we read the same article? The land usage for wind and solar is about that of golf courses and coal. Getting permits to use the land is the main obstacle.

As for resource constraints, the limiting factor is the speed on which a lithium mines can come online. The bulk of the that being environment reviews and lawsuits.

Americans are just going to have to come to terms with building or mining stuff causes localized environmental damage and other externalities for the communities that live close by. We should weight the pros and cons and move swiftly with whatever the decision is.

Re: US can reach 100% clean power by 2035, DOE finds

#30

Post by roenxi »

epistasis wrote: post #19
carabiner wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China started building 6 new nuclear plants this year: https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Energy/China-greenlights-6-... I guess just like high speed rail, China will leave the US in the dust.

If we were to start that now, it would add only 1% generation capacity, and that's assuming that all projects finish within 13 years (unlikely) and that none of the construction projects are abandoned as unfinishable in any way that makes financial sense (which happened to 50% of the reactors started in the US in the 2000s). There's an assumption that we can simply rebuild what we built in the past, but technology ha…

> ... and in France, and in Finland ...

We might be about to discover that every power policy in Europe has failed, there are a lot of people hoping for a warm winter. I'd be very nervous if their fossil fuel, nuclear, renewable or gas policies were being adopted where I live. There is a serial problem in the west where people aren't taking energy security seriously. If we were, we'd have been building nuclear reactors 13 years ago and we'd be building them now for 13 years in the future.

For this comment, I also looked up the Texas thing [0] from last year to see if there was a solid consensus on what happened yet RE wind energy's contribution. I imagine there must be some Wikipedia edit wars happening over whether to show the 7th on this graph [1] because it makes it look like Wind was pretty useless at stopping people from freezing to death in winter.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Texas_power_crisis

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Texas_power_crisis.png

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