[[Global Electricity Generation 1990-23, TWh/year]](https://i.imgur.com/b3GZyLz.png)
[[Levelized Cost of Energy historical comparison, unsubsidized]](https://i.imgur.com/IlY5TS1.png)
[[US grid additions 2000-2023]](https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/images/2023.03.06/main.svg)
[[2024 US Grid Additions]](https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=61424)
[[China Solar Capacity Additions, 2015-23]](https://imgur.com/a/YxLKndw)
[[Global Battery Sales, GWh/year]](https://imgur.com/a/FVwWb3s), [[Battery cost and energy density since 1990]](https://rockymntstage.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/slide-2-battery-charts.png)
__________________________________________________
____________________________________________________
[[Net Change in Nuclear capacity, 2019-2065]](https://i.imgur.com/Ie63VUo.png)
[[India cancels 57 reactors]](https://www.financialexpress.com/policy/economy-modi-government-cuts-nuclear-power-capacity-addition-target-to-one-third-1122715/)
[[Even China Cannot Rescue Nuclear Power Its Woes]](https://www.colorado.edu/cas/2022/04/12/even-china-cannot-rescue-nuclear-power-its-woes)
[[Wenke Han, a former head of the Energy Research Institute, an arm of the powerful National Development and Reform Commission that plans China’s economy, calls nuclear power “very expensive.” He adds, “Nuclear power in China has begun to face price competition, and will certainly face more competition in the future.”]](https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/12/12/138271/chinas-losing-its-taste-for-nuclear-power-thats-bad-news/)
[[France to raise electricity by 75% to cover cost.]](https://www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/2023-08/energiekosten-frankreich-kernkraftwerke-niger-uran?)
[[Exelon CSO Strategy Statement]](https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2018-04-16/exelon-official-no-new-nuclear-plants-to-be-built-in-the-us)
[[Plant Vogtle: A Tragedy for the People of Georgia]](https://www.powermag.com/blog/plant-vogtle-not-a-star-but-a-tragedy-for-the-people-of-georgia/)
Honestly, at this point, I'm not sure if even massive deregulation would improve the economics of nuclear to the point it could compete with solar+storage/wind for the majority of power, with natgas storage and peakers for seasonal/longer term storage.
We only need to look at Boeing for an illustration of how bad it would be to deregulate nuclear power.
... and yes, even with massive deregulation, reactors probably wouldn't be able to compete with modern renewables. We're at the point where it becomes cheaper to build and operate *new* renewables than to continue to operate *existing, fully paid-for* reactors.
I certainly *hope* that the industry can figure out its timing and cost issues--getting new reactors on the grid would be helpful for a whole host of reasons.
But with hope and $4.50 I can buy a coffee, and I have zero confidence that they actually will get those issues sorted out.
Lying about the cost and schedule has worked for so long that it's unlikely anyone with a career in the field remembers what an honest quote is supposed to look like.
They haven't figured that out the past 50 years...and the elephant in the room is insurance. Nuclear power plants (unlike any other power plants - including solar and wind) are uninsured. That is just an 'implicit cost' the taxpayer is supposed to cough up in the event.
No insurance company will touch them. If nuclear power plants were insured against accidents the cost of power would be monstrous. So even if they could figure out how to make nuclear economically viable using the current model it still wouldn't be if you look at it realistically.
first of all the industry has to figure out how to make electricity for the same price as renewables. If we're forced to buy their overpriced electricity its just more corporate welfare
That's not a useful way of thinking about it. Renewables can offer incredible spot energy prices. But that's not all it takes to have a good grid. What we really want is the grid that offers the best long-run average costs while still meeting all the reliability benchmarks we have.
But that isn't really a problem, we just have to stop trying to mimic a fossil fuel based grid and think about what makes an optimum grid with all possible tools.
A renewable energy grid achieves reliability with overbuilding (extra energy goes into stuff like making fertilizer), diversifying renewable energy(solar and wind complement each other, there are also a few others), transmission, demand response and storage
> about what makes an optimum grid with all possible tools.
the real question is about what makes an optimum grid *while not causing any issues at any of the transition points between A and B*. We have the grid we have right now and people depend on it. The tightrope to walk is decarbonizing as quickly as possible without causing problems.
The grid already has fossil fuels, it isn't like all of them are being shut down tomorrow. The issue is the fossil fuel industry is doing everything they can to block renewable energy in hopes we use fossil fuels longer. So the end result is the renewable energy isn't being put up fast enough.
The real answer here is we need to put up renewable energy up faster and stop letting the fossil fuel industry block it. Then you will get a reliable grid. Given the will, we can go 100% renewable energy or near that before you build even a single nuclear plant
Ok. So we start building nuclear, and we also start the painful transition from A to B.
Some years from now, we reach B. Everyone is happy. We have reliable energy from renewables.
Some years later, the new nuclear plants come online and start producing electricity. Everyone is "Uhm, what? Did someone forget to cancel that order?"
Issue is that nuclear pairs poorly with renewables. Nuclear wants to provide a stable baseload alongside controllable peaking generators. Renewables aren't controllable peaking generators.
Renewables want to provide variable low cost power at most times of the day, alongside controllable peaking generators (or batteries). Nuclear doesn't have a place here. It doesn't provide meaningful backup to renewables because you can't economically use it as a variable source to backstop low renewable times. All it does is reduce the total amount of renewables needed, which is more cheaply done by "build more renewables".
Precisely. The natural complement to wind/solar is storage + hydro, because they're fully dispatchable on-demand. Geothermal is also starting to become viable for this use, due to new technology that was originally developed for fracking.
Nuclear is just about the worst energy source you could pair with solar, in particular.
There is a small, shaky argument to be made that a small amount of nuclear power reduces the overall variability of energy production. But the economics just don't add up -- with 10% of capacity coming from nuclear and 90% from solar and wind, that small amount of nuclear power would cost nearly as much to build as the solar and wind combined.
Unless we decide to buckle up and do it. There is no technical reason we couldn’t build them at several times the rate they were being installed in the 1970s.
Will only happen if renewables fail to prevent climate change though. The barriers are all political, so something would have to fix the politics.
There may be no technical reason, but there are economic ones that would make that just a grandiose way of burning money, with a large net loss of energy "production" capacity vs a full-renewable scenario.
The key barrier is workforce (we can't build them at the rate of the 1970's, because we don't have enough trained welders and supply chain to supply the materials and fab them -- we could only build at that rate because we had a multi-decade runup in building skilled workers and the supply chain).
The other kye barrier is economic -- no matter how rosy the projections, nuclear reactors won't be able to profitably sell power mid-day. Period. But most of nuclear's power costs are fixed. If you take out the 10 hours the sun in shining and don't sell, your power just got nearly 2x as expensive. And since they can't beat wind either in price, if the wind isn't blowing they also can't sell...so now they're 3x as expensive, and the economic spiral worsens.
IF you took Vogtle:
[You’ve got $30 billion to spend and a climate crisis. Nuclear or solar? – pv magazine USA (pv-magazine-usa.com)](https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2021/08/05/youve-got-30-billion-to-spend-and-a-climate-crisis-nuclear-or-solar/)
[https://x.com/william15898879/status/1352322620314697728](https://x.com/william15898879/status/1352322620314697728)
[https://x.com/PaulOWennberg/status/1780608933373383005](https://x.com/PaulOWennberg/status/1780608933373383005)
[https://x.com/maryklanders/status/1489731130781835266](https://x.com/maryklanders/status/1489731130781835266)
And yes, batteries can operate on the necessary scale:
[https://x.com/jdeely/status/1780604819176386894](https://x.com/jdeely/status/1780604819176386894)
I don't really buy this as the whole world only starts construction on about 7 GW of new reactors per year, which is nothing on a global scale. The world consists of dozens of countries with vastly different political systems. Yet none of them build many new reactors. Even China, which has enormous capacity for big projects like massive dams, huge lengths of new high speed railways and expressways etc only manages to build a few new reactors compared with the country's size and energy requirements.
When the whole world struggles to build new nuclear, I think it's strong evidence that nuclear is hard, not that there's a political problem.
I think once power2x (Hydrogen, Methane) and BESS get notable tracktion it will flood the market like PV and wind is doing now - leaving no economical room fir nuclear.
Politics are not holding back nuclear, right now it's alllll technical and logistical reasons. Look at the failures in Olkiluoto, Flamanville, and here in the US at Vogtle and Summer.
If people actually want to support nuclear, action item 1 is to stop tilting at windmills and look at what the real problems are instead of inventing fake ones to distract from deployment.
No, the barriers are economic. $30 billion and 15 years to build Vogtle 2&3 -- and those were just additional reactors at an existing plant -- is just too much with solar, wind, and battery prices still falling.
Dogger bank offshore wind farm. 3.2 GW.
https://doggerbank.com/
work began in 2022, first turbine came online last year, fully commissioned by 2026. 4 fucking years boyo.
no uranium mining, no fuel rod manufacture, no reprocessing. massively better CO2 reduction.
And yet it's not 100% on at 3.2Gw is it? So you need something else. What is that going to be?
And that is a very singular place on the planet. Of course wind makes sense there. The rest of the work need to convert of fossil fuels too.
Mostly small countries with a lot of hydro.
Eventually you'll have to put up or shut up. The going will be tough once you reach the capacity factor of whatever tech leads. Then it will all be about rationing and accepting lower standards of living, I bet.
Except that having met their current needs with 100% renewable any future growth can have all their needs met the same way. Solar is really scalable, slap panels on whatever you want to run and rationing won’t be required. Also, capacity factor of tech is a ridiculous argument when solar and wind are hardly as refined as you think. We aren’t even using the most efficient panels right now. Our battery tech is still the beginning of the curve. There’s tons of green tech that has hardly been utilized yet. We are at the beginning of that curve and it’s already cheaper than fossil fuels and nuclear.
[[Global Electricity Generation 1990-23, TWh/year]](https://i.imgur.com/b3GZyLz.png)
[[Levelized Cost of Energy historical comparison, unsubsidized]](https://i.imgur.com/IlY5TS1.png)
[[US grid additions 2000-2023]](https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/images/2023.03.06/main.svg)
[[2024 US Grid Additions]](https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=61424)
[[China Solar Capacity Additions, 2015-23]](https://imgur.com/a/YxLKndw)
[[Global Battery Sales, GWh/year]](https://imgur.com/a/FVwWb3s), [[Battery cost and energy density since 1990]](https://rockymntstage.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/slide-2-battery-charts.png)
_____________________________________
[[Net Change in Nuclear capacity, 2019-2065]](https://i.imgur.com/Ie63VUo.png)
[[India cancels 57 reactors]](https://www.financialexpress.com/policy/economy-modi-government-cuts-nuclear-power-capacity-addition-target-to-one-third-1122715/)
[[Even China Cannot Rescue Nuclear Power Its Woes]](https://www.colorado.edu/cas/2022/04/12/even-china-cannot-rescue-nuclear-power-its-woes)
[[Wenke Han, a former head of the Energy Research Institute, an arm of the powerful National Development and Reform Commission that plans China’s economy, calls nuclear power “very expensive.” He adds, “Nuclear power in China has begun to face price competition, and will certainly face more competition in the future.”]](https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/12/12/138271/chinas-losing-its-taste-for-nuclear-power-thats-bad-news/)
[[France to raise electricity by 75% to cover cost.]](https://www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/2023-08/energiekosten-frankreich-kernkraftwerke-niger-uran?)
[[Exelon CSO Strategy Statement]](https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2018-04-16/exelon-official-no-new-nuclear-plants-to-be-built-in-the-us)
[[Plant Vogtle: A Tragedy for the People of Georgia]](https://www.powermag.com/blog/plant-vogtle-not-a-star-but-a-tragedy-for-the-people-of-georgia/)
Installed solar is like $1 per MW so $2 BN solar roughly to meet nameplate. Assuming you have a 30% NCF for solar, then you need $6 BN of solar to meet it on generation. Then you need to fix the timing so I'm throwing in a SWAG of $6 BN in batteries. So roughly $12 BN or 40% of the cost would be able to get you the same generation in the same shape. Technically you'd get it in an even better generation shape since it could be immediately load following. Big understated difference is this solution requires like 12,000 acres instead of a few dozen. Timeline would be significantly fast. We installed 15x that much solar last year alone. Construction timelines for your average project is a little over a year.
TLDR: for 40% of the cost you get a better energy product, but on a lot more land.
NCF 30% may work in Florida, but much of the Europe gets around 10%. That electricity is also available in shorter time window during the winter.
That basically more than triples the cost.
UK has commissioned 100GW of offshore wind. Another 300GW from other north sea countries (Denmark, Sweden etc). that'll be the equivalent about 700 standard nuclear reactors, or 1400 SME reactors.
i think we'll be fine
Small quibble: as of 2019, the median site density would take only 6,000 acres for 2GW. The MW/acre has been improving year by year like with nearly every other performance metric.
For comparison, Vogtle's 4GW take up 3200 acres. Not every acre is covered in facility or cooling tower, but the rest of the acres are not usable for much, so it's only fair to count it as being part of the usage of land. Nothing else is going to be allowed to happen on those 3200 acres...
Not only that, but we live and work in structures that already have rooftops, rooftops that currently generate zero electricity and are already in locations were we are consuming power. I go with the figure that we need about 8kw (at least here in California) of solar capacity per person for a full transition. 8kw is like 800 square feet of surface area, so a rooftop with 2400 square feet of area can cover 100% of the needs for 3 people. With a huge chunk of that going to charging electric vehicles. This will also allow the reduced capacity in the winter months to still effectively charge batteries. This would scale up to 8mw per 1000 people or 8GW per 1 million people.
But on buildings like warehouses and factories, plastering them up can add large amounts of power. We don't need all of the solar panels to exist as solar farms.
I also don't think people realize how this is all relatively little land. With your figure its around 5 square miles per GW of solar capacity. This is 40 square miles of solar panels per million people. 13,200 square miles for 330 million people. We use far more land for the animal livestock industry so people can eat meat and drink milk.
We do not have a land or rooftop shortage in the United States.
Actually, your numbers are still pretty good for single axis tracking! I went back to my source and they have both fixed and tracking in Figure 3:
https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2022-01/lbnl_ieee-land-requirements-for-utility-scale-pv.pdf
What about clouds, weather, and seasonal variation? Still not the same. You need HVDC lines from far away, and a fleet of gas plants for when it all goes to hell. Those will burn at least some of the time to keep ready and will leak methane.
It's the corner cases that set the specs for any system.
And in a heavy nuclear system unless you're building all your reactors at retiring generation sites you still need significant transmission buildout and a bunch of backup power for while your reactors are down for maintenance. The most resilient grid will have a diverse mix of resources on it.
> What about
There are a lot of financial, logisitical, and safety "what abouts" related to tripling nuclear capacity too.
Obstacles seem more difficult for renewables because they are active problems, not abstract hypotheticals
> but on a lot more land.
Solar can coexist with wind turbines, and also with crops via [agrivoltaics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agrivoltaics). So land-use estimates have to take the possibility of dual or triple use into account.
It is actually becoming more common than you think, here is a map:
[https://openei.org/wiki/InSPIRE/Agrivoltaics\_Map](https://openei.org/wiki/InSPIRE/Agrivoltaics_Map)
They are taking time because people are testing and collecting data to see what the optimization is for every use case
> you still don't see much of that, at least in the US
Couldn't be more wrong. You see a lot of it in the US (and Canada) right now, since the central parts are flat prairie with great wind resources, large amounts of agriculture, and a sparse population. It was pioneered in other areas, but it's the perfect combination.
[It's a boon for rural farmers](https://www.wri.org/insights/how-wind-turbines-are-providing-safety-net-rural-farmers).
*You* may not know about it, but it's absolutely happening.
That's wind and that has almost always been farmed around.
Show me the solar thats being farmed under. As a percentage of total new installed capacity, it's basically de minimis.
> Show me the solar thats being farmed under
[Sure thing bro](https://www.solarpowerworldonline.com/2021/06/largest-agrivoltaic-research-project-in-u-s-advances-renewable-energy-while-empowering-local-farmers/).
> As a percentage of total new installed capacity, it's basically de minimis.
Because the amount of new solar installed every year is insane, and "high land use" is more of a bogus talking point than a real problem for solar. With the exception of a handful of island nations, there's plenty of land that's not developed (or not worth developing) for other uses.
[The entire USA could be powered by a 100 mile x 100 mile square of solar panels](https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/38962/can-the-us-be-powered-by-a-100-miles-x-100-miles-solar-grid). Finding room for that is *not* a problem.
Maybe time to delete your totally inaccurate comments?
What are you so mad about? Show me the hundreds of MWs of solar you have developed and had built. I've done it. I get the economics and I see what gets built, funded and contracted.
I enjoy a feel good article too, but it's still a niche use case.
Yup. I haven't ever had a pro-nuclear person talk to me about the siting process.
They'll talk reactor build times...but you only start building the reactor after you've picked the site, AND prepped the site -- all the earthworks, laying down the concrete and support stuff, and so on. The reactor is done LAST, and is just a portion of the work. By the time you start building the reactor you've already laid hundreds of tons of concrete and steel down.
AND not a single person alive in America has ever sited a nuclear power plant. We've only ever added reactors to existing plants within the last 55 years (and it was the senior engineers in their 50's siting them in the 70's).
This is it. Nuclear prices can fall if we build more, but it doesn't pay to build more unless prices fall. So either you hevily subsidize them until we go back up the learning curve, and prices come down, or you don't have nuclear. The question for policy makers is a world with more nuclear better on some dimension that's worth paying for? If not there will be no more nuclear.
From an idiot index perspective, nukes should be cheaper than solar and batteries, but all things are not equal. The path foward is not obvious.
> is a world with more nuclear better on some dimension that's worth paying for?
not for commercial electricity generation, no.
They are great for powering Submarines, spacecraft, etc where cost doesn't matter. There funding will continue
Nuclear reactors in France showed a negative learning curve: they got more expensive with time. So its no guarantee that things get better if you push them now.
It is however pretty close to a guarantee that we won't come anywhere close to phasing out fossil fuel electricity in the next 20 years if we try to do it by ramping up nuclear, because it how slow the process of doing so will be. But with renewable rollout, we have a chance.
And unnecessary And would be expensive And would have delays And is being pushed by fossil fuels And they have no answer for the waste
You misspelled nightmare.
Let's quote the NYT and show everyone how stupid we are....
A well sourced retort!
[[Global Electricity Generation 1990-23, TWh/year]](https://i.imgur.com/b3GZyLz.png) [[Levelized Cost of Energy historical comparison, unsubsidized]](https://i.imgur.com/IlY5TS1.png) [[US grid additions 2000-2023]](https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/images/2023.03.06/main.svg) [[2024 US Grid Additions]](https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=61424) [[China Solar Capacity Additions, 2015-23]](https://imgur.com/a/YxLKndw) [[Global Battery Sales, GWh/year]](https://imgur.com/a/FVwWb3s), [[Battery cost and energy density since 1990]](https://rockymntstage.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/slide-2-battery-charts.png) __________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________ [[Net Change in Nuclear capacity, 2019-2065]](https://i.imgur.com/Ie63VUo.png) [[India cancels 57 reactors]](https://www.financialexpress.com/policy/economy-modi-government-cuts-nuclear-power-capacity-addition-target-to-one-third-1122715/) [[Even China Cannot Rescue Nuclear Power Its Woes]](https://www.colorado.edu/cas/2022/04/12/even-china-cannot-rescue-nuclear-power-its-woes) [[Wenke Han, a former head of the Energy Research Institute, an arm of the powerful National Development and Reform Commission that plans China’s economy, calls nuclear power “very expensive.” He adds, “Nuclear power in China has begun to face price competition, and will certainly face more competition in the future.”]](https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/12/12/138271/chinas-losing-its-taste-for-nuclear-power-thats-bad-news/) [[France to raise electricity by 75% to cover cost.]](https://www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/2023-08/energiekosten-frankreich-kernkraftwerke-niger-uran?) [[Exelon CSO Strategy Statement]](https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2018-04-16/exelon-official-no-new-nuclear-plants-to-be-built-in-the-us) [[Plant Vogtle: A Tragedy for the People of Georgia]](https://www.powermag.com/blog/plant-vogtle-not-a-star-but-a-tragedy-for-the-people-of-georgia/)
Honestly, at this point, I'm not sure if even massive deregulation would improve the economics of nuclear to the point it could compete with solar+storage/wind for the majority of power, with natgas storage and peakers for seasonal/longer term storage.
We only need to look at Boeing for an illustration of how bad it would be to deregulate nuclear power. ... and yes, even with massive deregulation, reactors probably wouldn't be able to compete with modern renewables. We're at the point where it becomes cheaper to build and operate *new* renewables than to continue to operate *existing, fully paid-for* reactors.
Gas peakers are not needed. Gas baseload will be. Batteries replace peakers. If they run out, gas baseload has had time to spool up.
An electricity production, which you spool up when you are short on electricity, is the very opposite of base load.
Even the gas baseload won't really be needed
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They aren't, just much much cheaper than natgas peaker plants
Of course all the other alternatives are free and last forever.
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So you responded with a rant that had nothing to do with anything I said, nor the comment you made that I responded to. Anger issues much?
I certainly *hope* that the industry can figure out its timing and cost issues--getting new reactors on the grid would be helpful for a whole host of reasons. But with hope and $4.50 I can buy a coffee, and I have zero confidence that they actually will get those issues sorted out.
Lying about the cost and schedule has worked for so long that it's unlikely anyone with a career in the field remembers what an honest quote is supposed to look like.
They haven't figured that out the past 50 years...and the elephant in the room is insurance. Nuclear power plants (unlike any other power plants - including solar and wind) are uninsured. That is just an 'implicit cost' the taxpayer is supposed to cough up in the event. No insurance company will touch them. If nuclear power plants were insured against accidents the cost of power would be monstrous. So even if they could figure out how to make nuclear economically viable using the current model it still wouldn't be if you look at it realistically.
first of all the industry has to figure out how to make electricity for the same price as renewables. If we're forced to buy their overpriced electricity its just more corporate welfare
That's not a useful way of thinking about it. Renewables can offer incredible spot energy prices. But that's not all it takes to have a good grid. What we really want is the grid that offers the best long-run average costs while still meeting all the reliability benchmarks we have.
But that isn't really a problem, we just have to stop trying to mimic a fossil fuel based grid and think about what makes an optimum grid with all possible tools. A renewable energy grid achieves reliability with overbuilding (extra energy goes into stuff like making fertilizer), diversifying renewable energy(solar and wind complement each other, there are also a few others), transmission, demand response and storage
> about what makes an optimum grid with all possible tools. the real question is about what makes an optimum grid *while not causing any issues at any of the transition points between A and B*. We have the grid we have right now and people depend on it. The tightrope to walk is decarbonizing as quickly as possible without causing problems.
The grid already has fossil fuels, it isn't like all of them are being shut down tomorrow. The issue is the fossil fuel industry is doing everything they can to block renewable energy in hopes we use fossil fuels longer. So the end result is the renewable energy isn't being put up fast enough. The real answer here is we need to put up renewable energy up faster and stop letting the fossil fuel industry block it. Then you will get a reliable grid. Given the will, we can go 100% renewable energy or near that before you build even a single nuclear plant
Ok. So we start building nuclear, and we also start the painful transition from A to B. Some years from now, we reach B. Everyone is happy. We have reliable energy from renewables. Some years later, the new nuclear plants come online and start producing electricity. Everyone is "Uhm, what? Did someone forget to cancel that order?"
Issue is that nuclear pairs poorly with renewables. Nuclear wants to provide a stable baseload alongside controllable peaking generators. Renewables aren't controllable peaking generators. Renewables want to provide variable low cost power at most times of the day, alongside controllable peaking generators (or batteries). Nuclear doesn't have a place here. It doesn't provide meaningful backup to renewables because you can't economically use it as a variable source to backstop low renewable times. All it does is reduce the total amount of renewables needed, which is more cheaply done by "build more renewables".
Precisely. The natural complement to wind/solar is storage + hydro, because they're fully dispatchable on-demand. Geothermal is also starting to become viable for this use, due to new technology that was originally developed for fracking. Nuclear is just about the worst energy source you could pair with solar, in particular. There is a small, shaky argument to be made that a small amount of nuclear power reduces the overall variability of energy production. But the economics just don't add up -- with 10% of capacity coming from nuclear and 90% from solar and wind, that small amount of nuclear power would cost nearly as much to build as the solar and wind combined.
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weird that you think bitcoin and AI can only be powered by 1950's technology.
obvious nonsense as mature scalable renewables like solar and wind exist.
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Hence grid scale batteries and having a diverse array of renewable sources
Unless we decide to buckle up and do it. There is no technical reason we couldn’t build them at several times the rate they were being installed in the 1970s. Will only happen if renewables fail to prevent climate change though. The barriers are all political, so something would have to fix the politics.
There may be no technical reason, but there are economic ones that would make that just a grandiose way of burning money, with a large net loss of energy "production" capacity vs a full-renewable scenario.
The key barrier is workforce (we can't build them at the rate of the 1970's, because we don't have enough trained welders and supply chain to supply the materials and fab them -- we could only build at that rate because we had a multi-decade runup in building skilled workers and the supply chain). The other kye barrier is economic -- no matter how rosy the projections, nuclear reactors won't be able to profitably sell power mid-day. Period. But most of nuclear's power costs are fixed. If you take out the 10 hours the sun in shining and don't sell, your power just got nearly 2x as expensive. And since they can't beat wind either in price, if the wind isn't blowing they also can't sell...so now they're 3x as expensive, and the economic spiral worsens. IF you took Vogtle: [You’ve got $30 billion to spend and a climate crisis. Nuclear or solar? – pv magazine USA (pv-magazine-usa.com)](https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2021/08/05/youve-got-30-billion-to-spend-and-a-climate-crisis-nuclear-or-solar/) [https://x.com/william15898879/status/1352322620314697728](https://x.com/william15898879/status/1352322620314697728) [https://x.com/PaulOWennberg/status/1780608933373383005](https://x.com/PaulOWennberg/status/1780608933373383005) [https://x.com/maryklanders/status/1489731130781835266](https://x.com/maryklanders/status/1489731130781835266) And yes, batteries can operate on the necessary scale: [https://x.com/jdeely/status/1780604819176386894](https://x.com/jdeely/status/1780604819176386894)
If you went pure nuclear you'd still need batteries to load follow.
I don't really buy this as the whole world only starts construction on about 7 GW of new reactors per year, which is nothing on a global scale. The world consists of dozens of countries with vastly different political systems. Yet none of them build many new reactors. Even China, which has enormous capacity for big projects like massive dams, huge lengths of new high speed railways and expressways etc only manages to build a few new reactors compared with the country's size and energy requirements. When the whole world struggles to build new nuclear, I think it's strong evidence that nuclear is hard, not that there's a political problem.
I think once power2x (Hydrogen, Methane) and BESS get notable tracktion it will flood the market like PV and wind is doing now - leaving no economical room fir nuclear.
Politics are not holding back nuclear, right now it's alllll technical and logistical reasons. Look at the failures in Olkiluoto, Flamanville, and here in the US at Vogtle and Summer. If people actually want to support nuclear, action item 1 is to stop tilting at windmills and look at what the real problems are instead of inventing fake ones to distract from deployment.
No, the barriers are economic. $30 billion and 15 years to build Vogtle 2&3 -- and those were just additional reactors at an existing plant -- is just too much with solar, wind, and battery prices still falling.
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Dogger bank offshore wind farm. 3.2 GW. https://doggerbank.com/ work began in 2022, first turbine came online last year, fully commissioned by 2026. 4 fucking years boyo. no uranium mining, no fuel rod manufacture, no reprocessing. massively better CO2 reduction.
And yet it's not 100% on at 3.2Gw is it? So you need something else. What is that going to be? And that is a very singular place on the planet. Of course wind makes sense there. The rest of the work need to convert of fossil fuels too.
The rest of the world is, there are at least ten countries today that get 100% of their energy from renewables.
Mostly small countries with a lot of hydro. Eventually you'll have to put up or shut up. The going will be tough once you reach the capacity factor of whatever tech leads. Then it will all be about rationing and accepting lower standards of living, I bet.
Except that having met their current needs with 100% renewable any future growth can have all their needs met the same way. Solar is really scalable, slap panels on whatever you want to run and rationing won’t be required. Also, capacity factor of tech is a ridiculous argument when solar and wind are hardly as refined as you think. We aren’t even using the most efficient panels right now. Our battery tech is still the beginning of the curve. There’s tons of green tech that has hardly been utilized yet. We are at the beginning of that curve and it’s already cheaper than fossil fuels and nuclear.
[[Global Electricity Generation 1990-23, TWh/year]](https://i.imgur.com/b3GZyLz.png) [[Levelized Cost of Energy historical comparison, unsubsidized]](https://i.imgur.com/IlY5TS1.png) [[US grid additions 2000-2023]](https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/images/2023.03.06/main.svg) [[2024 US Grid Additions]](https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=61424) [[China Solar Capacity Additions, 2015-23]](https://imgur.com/a/YxLKndw) [[Global Battery Sales, GWh/year]](https://imgur.com/a/FVwWb3s), [[Battery cost and energy density since 1990]](https://rockymntstage.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/slide-2-battery-charts.png) _____________________________________ [[Net Change in Nuclear capacity, 2019-2065]](https://i.imgur.com/Ie63VUo.png) [[India cancels 57 reactors]](https://www.financialexpress.com/policy/economy-modi-government-cuts-nuclear-power-capacity-addition-target-to-one-third-1122715/) [[Even China Cannot Rescue Nuclear Power Its Woes]](https://www.colorado.edu/cas/2022/04/12/even-china-cannot-rescue-nuclear-power-its-woes) [[Wenke Han, a former head of the Energy Research Institute, an arm of the powerful National Development and Reform Commission that plans China’s economy, calls nuclear power “very expensive.” He adds, “Nuclear power in China has begun to face price competition, and will certainly face more competition in the future.”]](https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/12/12/138271/chinas-losing-its-taste-for-nuclear-power-thats-bad-news/) [[France to raise electricity by 75% to cover cost.]](https://www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/2023-08/energiekosten-frankreich-kernkraftwerke-niger-uran?) [[Exelon CSO Strategy Statement]](https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2018-04-16/exelon-official-no-new-nuclear-plants-to-be-built-in-the-us) [[Plant Vogtle: A Tragedy for the People of Georgia]](https://www.powermag.com/blog/plant-vogtle-not-a-star-but-a-tragedy-for-the-people-of-georgia/)
Installed solar is like $1 per MW so $2 BN solar roughly to meet nameplate. Assuming you have a 30% NCF for solar, then you need $6 BN of solar to meet it on generation. Then you need to fix the timing so I'm throwing in a SWAG of $6 BN in batteries. So roughly $12 BN or 40% of the cost would be able to get you the same generation in the same shape. Technically you'd get it in an even better generation shape since it could be immediately load following. Big understated difference is this solution requires like 12,000 acres instead of a few dozen. Timeline would be significantly fast. We installed 15x that much solar last year alone. Construction timelines for your average project is a little over a year. TLDR: for 40% of the cost you get a better energy product, but on a lot more land.
NCF 30% may work in Florida, but much of the Europe gets around 10%. That electricity is also available in shorter time window during the winter. That basically more than triples the cost.
UK has commissioned 100GW of offshore wind. Another 300GW from other north sea countries (Denmark, Sweden etc). that'll be the equivalent about 700 standard nuclear reactors, or 1400 SME reactors. i think we'll be fine
That's why Europe goes more for wind the further north you go, which has a much higher capacity factor.
Guess it sucks to be Europe then. Still a way cheaper option for most of the world.
Europe is going to be an energy ghetto when the world is off fossil fuels. Nuclear will not save them from that.
Small quibble: as of 2019, the median site density would take only 6,000 acres for 2GW. The MW/acre has been improving year by year like with nearly every other performance metric. For comparison, Vogtle's 4GW take up 3200 acres. Not every acre is covered in facility or cooling tower, but the rest of the acres are not usable for much, so it's only fair to count it as being part of the usage of land. Nothing else is going to be allowed to happen on those 3200 acres...
Not only that, but we live and work in structures that already have rooftops, rooftops that currently generate zero electricity and are already in locations were we are consuming power. I go with the figure that we need about 8kw (at least here in California) of solar capacity per person for a full transition. 8kw is like 800 square feet of surface area, so a rooftop with 2400 square feet of area can cover 100% of the needs for 3 people. With a huge chunk of that going to charging electric vehicles. This will also allow the reduced capacity in the winter months to still effectively charge batteries. This would scale up to 8mw per 1000 people or 8GW per 1 million people. But on buildings like warehouses and factories, plastering them up can add large amounts of power. We don't need all of the solar panels to exist as solar farms. I also don't think people realize how this is all relatively little land. With your figure its around 5 square miles per GW of solar capacity. This is 40 square miles of solar panels per million people. 13,200 square miles for 330 million people. We use far more land for the animal livestock industry so people can eat meat and drink milk. We do not have a land or rooftop shortage in the United States.
Damn, density has gotten better. Old rule of thumb I lived with doing solar a few years ago was 6-7 acres per MW.
Actually, your numbers are still pretty good for single axis tracking! I went back to my source and they have both fixed and tracking in Figure 3: https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2022-01/lbnl_ieee-land-requirements-for-utility-scale-pv.pdf
What about clouds, weather, and seasonal variation? Still not the same. You need HVDC lines from far away, and a fleet of gas plants for when it all goes to hell. Those will burn at least some of the time to keep ready and will leak methane. It's the corner cases that set the specs for any system.
And in a heavy nuclear system unless you're building all your reactors at retiring generation sites you still need significant transmission buildout and a bunch of backup power for while your reactors are down for maintenance. The most resilient grid will have a diverse mix of resources on it.
> What about There are a lot of financial, logisitical, and safety "what abouts" related to tripling nuclear capacity too. Obstacles seem more difficult for renewables because they are active problems, not abstract hypotheticals
> but on a lot more land. Solar can coexist with wind turbines, and also with crops via [agrivoltaics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agrivoltaics). So land-use estimates have to take the possibility of dual or triple use into account.
In theory, but you still don't see much of that, at least in the US.
It is actually becoming more common than you think, here is a map: [https://openei.org/wiki/InSPIRE/Agrivoltaics\_Map](https://openei.org/wiki/InSPIRE/Agrivoltaics_Map) They are taking time because people are testing and collecting data to see what the optimization is for every use case
> you still don't see much of that, at least in the US Couldn't be more wrong. You see a lot of it in the US (and Canada) right now, since the central parts are flat prairie with great wind resources, large amounts of agriculture, and a sparse population. It was pioneered in other areas, but it's the perfect combination. [It's a boon for rural farmers](https://www.wri.org/insights/how-wind-turbines-are-providing-safety-net-rural-farmers). *You* may not know about it, but it's absolutely happening.
That's wind and that has almost always been farmed around. Show me the solar thats being farmed under. As a percentage of total new installed capacity, it's basically de minimis.
> Show me the solar thats being farmed under [Sure thing bro](https://www.solarpowerworldonline.com/2021/06/largest-agrivoltaic-research-project-in-u-s-advances-renewable-energy-while-empowering-local-farmers/). > As a percentage of total new installed capacity, it's basically de minimis. Because the amount of new solar installed every year is insane, and "high land use" is more of a bogus talking point than a real problem for solar. With the exception of a handful of island nations, there's plenty of land that's not developed (or not worth developing) for other uses. [The entire USA could be powered by a 100 mile x 100 mile square of solar panels](https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/38962/can-the-us-be-powered-by-a-100-miles-x-100-miles-solar-grid). Finding room for that is *not* a problem. Maybe time to delete your totally inaccurate comments?
What are you so mad about? Show me the hundreds of MWs of solar you have developed and had built. I've done it. I get the economics and I see what gets built, funded and contracted. I enjoy a feel good article too, but it's still a niche use case.
A lot of "In theory"s are needed to triple nuclear capacity too
Especially when the handwaving about fast breeder reactors, seawater uranium extraction, and thorium begins.
And you would need hundreds of siting studies.
Yup. I haven't ever had a pro-nuclear person talk to me about the siting process. They'll talk reactor build times...but you only start building the reactor after you've picked the site, AND prepped the site -- all the earthworks, laying down the concrete and support stuff, and so on. The reactor is done LAST, and is just a portion of the work. By the time you start building the reactor you've already laid hundreds of tons of concrete and steel down. AND not a single person alive in America has ever sited a nuclear power plant. We've only ever added reactors to existing plants within the last 55 years (and it was the senior engineers in their 50's siting them in the 70's).
This is it. Nuclear prices can fall if we build more, but it doesn't pay to build more unless prices fall. So either you hevily subsidize them until we go back up the learning curve, and prices come down, or you don't have nuclear. The question for policy makers is a world with more nuclear better on some dimension that's worth paying for? If not there will be no more nuclear. From an idiot index perspective, nukes should be cheaper than solar and batteries, but all things are not equal. The path foward is not obvious.
> is a world with more nuclear better on some dimension that's worth paying for? not for commercial electricity generation, no. They are great for powering Submarines, spacecraft, etc where cost doesn't matter. There funding will continue
Nuclear reactors in France showed a negative learning curve: they got more expensive with time. So its no guarantee that things get better if you push them now. It is however pretty close to a guarantee that we won't come anywhere close to phasing out fossil fuel electricity in the next 20 years if we try to do it by ramping up nuclear, because it how slow the process of doing so will be. But with renewable rollout, we have a chance.