> A nuclear fission world will never happen due to the economics of it.
I'm not sure why this keeps being said. France's prices for electricity are cheaper than Germany. In fact they are cheaper than most European countries [0]. Nuclear does have a lot of upfront costs, but they are cheap to run once built. But the construction price will never drop if we stop building. Doing so has already made prices go up.
What really matters is 1) can the company that made the plant make a profit? 2) If we need to subsidize to make 1=yes then is that price cheaper than the cost of not doing it (cost by economic damage done by increased CO2 during that period).
But the irony of this is that your argument is very similar to that which many have made about solar.
I expect the same thing will happen when fusion becomes a thing. In reality it is all about the S curve.
Questions I really have never gotten an answer I find satisfactory with regards to nuclear. What's the long term storage costs for spent fuel rods? Is this factored into the price? Is post plant cleanup factored into generation costs (we're paying for a nuclear plant closing nearby in our electric bills now on top of generation costs)? Can we possibly reuse those spent fuel rods for something else useful? Can we prevent disasters like Fukishima? Can we prevent every single disaster?
Thorium reactors aren't currently economically viable. Molten salt reactors come with their own downsides but are safer from what I understand, but honestly can't say for sure. Fusion reactors would be base case scenario as far as I understand but aren't currently viable.
We already had one problem by not thinking about long term negatives, I don't want to replace one problem for another, far bigger, far longer term problem. Nuclear problems tend to last longer than carbon problems, disasters like Chernobyl will cost money for literally generations even with it's new cap as it will be constantly needing to be replaced. Solar has it's own problems with messy pollution on creation, wind seems cleanest long term, storage for renewables will probably end up being some type of multi-lake hydro as the "battery" in places where it's viable. Maybe underground aquifers where evaporation is an issue?
I'm all for nuclear in places that already have radiation issues, i.e. space, moon. But I really want to avoid contamination of the only planet we can currently live in as a species.
I'll do my best to answer. I've worked on rad shielding, but that is a different side. If acidburnNSA (a reactor scientist) shows up, ask him, he frequents nuclear posts. These will be basic answers so I hope they help and I'll expand on them if you want to follow up, but there's a lot to cover just in the first paragraph.
> What's the long term storage costs for spent fuel rods?
Not too much. Frankly because the quantity is low. This is one of the things people don't realize, while the waste is highly contaminated there's REALLY small quantities. We're talking about less than a coke can of waste per person per year. (that's not per reactor, that's ALL reactors) It is expensive though. The cost of nuclear is from construction and decommissioning. Operating costs are extremely low.
> Is this factored into the price?
Yes (mostly)
> Is post plant cleanup factored into generation costs (we're paying for a nuclear plant closing nearby in our electric bills now on top of generation costs)?
Yes (mostly)
Mostly means that it is supposed to be factored in. But those are of course estimates. I'll also be honest that sometimes people cheat.
> Can we possibly reuse those spent fuel rods for something else useful?
They already are. 17% of France's electricity is from recycled nuclear. That's not 17% of France's nuclear energy, that's 17% of TOTAL energy. Additionally most of these materials are used for a lot of other things. A lot goes to medical.
> Can we prevent disasters like Fukishima?
Yes, actually Fukushima is a great example of how to prevent disasters like Fukushima. The reactors that didn't fail had their backup generators on higher ground. There were also better safety factors and I'm over simplifying things, but the reactors that failed had sub par safety factors. We've had much better designed reactors for awhile, but that's a longer conversation and extremely convoluted (you'll commonly see it expressed simpler, but nothing is simple).
> Can we prevent every single disaster?
No. Such a notion is really unrealistic. I'd rephrase it as "Can we reduce danger to an acceptable risk?" Which I'd say the answer is yes. I'd even say we've been there for awhile. Nuclear fission is, next to hydro, the safest form of electricity we have, even when you include predictions of future deaths from past events (Chernobyl and Fukushima).
> (an implied one) Can we reduce environmental damage from meltdown events?
Yes! Actually this is super interesting. Chernobyl has turned into a really big nature preserve. Wildlife is thriving there. It is interesting to also look at radiation maps of Japan [0]. For context to this map, all measurements are in nSv (1e-9Sv). 1Sv within a year equates to a 5.5% increase in chance of cancer over your lifetime. But 20mSv is the max allowed dosage to a radiation worker. You'll notice that the vast majority of places is WELL below the 20mSv mark. Max value I found was 8,528nSv/hr (82528nSv/hr1e-9(Sv/nSv)24(hrs)*365(days) = 74.7mSv/yr). The point of this last part isn't to say something like "oh well humans can live here hur dur dur", but rather to illustrate why Fukushima is turning into a nature preserve. But I do also want to acknowledge that many people did lose their homes and have been permanently displaced. Again, I believe that we should be honest.
> Thorium reactors...
This is a convoluted subject. I'll leave it for another post. There's (a lot of) potential but we definitely need to do more research and testing.
> Fusion reactors...
Are a completely different beast. They don't have the same radiation concerns. Their waste product is mostly Helium (a resource we are in short supply of). While fission and fusion are both nuclear based there are more differences than similarities (including power output, by orders of magnitude). Think like the difference between nuclear and coal. Both heat water to turn turbines (this is how almost all electricity is generated actually), but they're very different in most aspects.
> We already had one problem by not thinking about long term negatives...
Honestly this is why I'm PRO nuclear. Sure it has negatives, and I'm not going to try to deny them. If we're considering human lives then consider that coal kills an order of magnitude more Americans per year than have ever died from Chernobyl (several orders when you consider the world). We also have to consider the places that have become uninhabitable because of mining and other things that humans have done. Everything has negatives, I think we're just more aware of nuclear's (fission's). It is about the exchange of good and bad and if we net more good than bad. It is also about comparing to our other options. (If we're in a negative sum game we are trying to get the least negative, but we're still getting negative utility) I won't dive into this because it seems you're aware of this. It is honestly complicated and a difficult subject. It takes a lot of research. But there's a saying "When it comes to nuclear, those that know the most fear the least." There's a reason that the majority of climate researchers are pro nuclear, there's a reason the UN Climate Committee endorses nuclear.
> I really want to avoid contamination of the only planet we can currently live in as a species.
I'm with you there. 110%. We're hundreds of years from being able to live somewhere else. We must do everything we can to protect THIS planet.
Again, I'm happy for a follow up and I will do my best to answer.
> Chernobyl has turned into a really big nature preserve. Wildlife is thriving there.
To give this more perspective:
For the last several years, I have spent many months each year in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. Most of that time is not in Pripyat, or at the extant plants being decommissioned, it's in the nature areas throughout the zone.
My observations: birds are rare. I've seen an eagle once, and some other smaller birds occasionally. In Pripyat, I've never seen a bird. Insects are also rare - I once saw a swarm of flies inside a building at the Duga Radar facility, but never any bees, cockroaches, or other insects. Not even mosquitoes. I've seen moose, once. Horses several times (Mongolian horses been introduced to the area post-disaster). There are foxes, but they're often the same foxes I see time and time again. Dogs are probably the most common animal, I would estimate I've seen 30 - 50 different dogs, always hanging around where humans are. The catfish in the cooling pond canals are enormous, and plentiful.
Although parts of the Exclusion Zone are exceptionally green, such as Pripyat itself, much of the zone has a feeling of unhealthiness. Infamous areas such as the Red Forest remain too high in radiation to spend any amount of time in. The areas around the cooling ponds (which are large enough to appear like lakes) look like what you imagine an environmental catastrophe would look like - grey and barren.
I see more wildlife in any major city - and would be reluctant (and that's an understatement) to call wildlife "thriving".
Aside:
As you point out, human lives lost were relatively few. However, this place will be an ongoing disaster for many thousands of years to come. There will be ongoing huge expenses (the most recently installed containment structure will only last another century). Reactor four needs to be contained for thousands of years, and the other reactors will require another sixty years to be decommissioned.
And after all that, the main danger, deep inside the debris of reactor four, will remain an enormous danger to the planet for any foreseeable future.
In general, the radiation levels throughout the Exclusion Zone are low, comparable to many cities. I have many scheduled visits upcoming, the next being in August.
BTW, I'm not taking a stance here on pro or anti-nuclear, just trying to add some context from someone who has seen this place, up close, many times.
Wikipedia claims that biodiversity in the exclusion zone is pretty good.[1] Are you part of a science team observing wildlife, or what brings you to the area so frequently?
Thank you for your comment. I haven't been to the area but have just read. Similar to what the other user commented. I don't want to call you a liar but I definitely see some differences in point of view (between your comment and other things I've read). But since you spend much time there maybe you can expand on some of the nuances that one might not be aware of when just reading reports.
Perhaps the "good news" reports get more attention? You can find reports that agree with my observations. There's not a consensus on this - perhaps due to lack of evidence.
My comments are based upon observations of several years of visiting, and speaking with scores of people that work/live in the Exclusion Zone. Anecdotally, large Animal sightings of things like Moose are rare enough that even people who have visited hundreds of times, over decades, will stop, get very excited, take photos, and then chat about the last time it happened.
Edit: this report agrees with what I have found (in real life)
"All major taxonomic groups investigated (i.e., birds, bees, butterflies, grasshoppers, dragonflies, spiders, mammals) displayed reduced population sizes in highly radioactive parts of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone."
> Anecdotally, large Animal sightings of things like Moose are rare enough that even people who have visited hundreds of times, over decades, will stop, get very excited, take photos, and then chat about the last time it happened.
Isn't this what should be expected? Even in ordinary wilderness like Maine or Canada where moose are indigenous, you could spend a year in the woods and never see one.
I spend a lot of time outdoors and while I partially agree with you it was the comment about birds and insects that piqued my interest and suggested that maybe what I read wasn't all there was. Because while larger animals may hide, insects and birds don't.
Thank you for taking the time to write this up. I really want to be pro nuclear because it's already on the planet and it's the best solution for space travel that I can think of, I'm just really concerned like you correctly surmised about the major disasters. Like you pointed out it always seems to be human error or something that should have been avoided. To be completely fair most of the reasons I've got concerns about nuclear are the same concerns I have about fossil fuels, when things go bad, they go really, really bad and a lot of that seems to depend of the type of reactors we've built. Something that softened me a lot on nuclear was watching a movie on a nuclear test facility where they discussed testing different types of reactors. I have realized that there even were different types. Thanks so much for the info.
To address your concern you have to think about accumulation. I addressed this in some of the other comments but I'll try to tie it all in here.
When considering cleanup, there are only two events (that I'm aware of) that weren't covered by insurance: Chernobyl and Fukushima (3 mile was substantially under the maximal payout from insurance). Another user commented how they found data suggesting that the cleanup for Fukushima was 200bn. When I looked for cleanup for the total disaster (including tsunami damage) it was more than double that. When looking at natural disasters even just looking at the damage to the US in just the last year we easily went over that 200bn in cost. It is a damned if we do, damned if we don't problem. But something to look at is that even including these disasters, there have been fewer human lives lost per kWhr than (almost) any other energy source, which includes solar and wind (took me for surprise when I found out, and I already knew it was really safe. Hydro is super safe though). Climate aside, it is extremely safe. Something also to note is that much of the irradiated areas from Fukushima are now livable and more space is becoming so every year (really most places you can safely live in, but we have pretty strict standards for public rad limits. Most places there you would be under nuclear worker upper limits, which is below detectable increase in cancer rates). It isn't this "these areas are unlivable for thousands of years" scenarios that you hear. People live in areas where we had the stupid idea of dropping bombs. The difference with nuclear is that cost of damage is both temporarily and physically local, so it is much more obvious than more abstract concepts like pollution (or the 200k that die a year in the US by coal ash).
I actually think about the energy problem as a negative sum game. Hopefully one day we'll get to a positive sum game where we can make the planet better, but right now it is about doing the least damage (until we learn to terraform in a major way). When you put it in this perspective you realize that all options end up having a net negative utility, but that doesn't mean we should just give up. We need to do the best that we can till we can play a different game (a positive sum one. And we will get there). But until then we have to remember that we're humans and bad at understanding risks. So we have to use the right tools, and when looking at the evidence I think the vast majority of those that do agree.
Like I said, I want to be honest. Nuclear isn't going to save the world, I'm not sure fusion is going to either. But we have to play the game and do the least damage we can until we can play a positive sum game. Until then, no matter what we do, we do some form of damage.
There's also a few common misnomers that I want to address. People point out France reducing their nuclear load, from >80% to 50% in 2025. I honestly see this as something we should emulate. Nuclear is there for load balancing. Load balancing (see Duck Curve) is the reason we still use coal for our grid. It is all about a well diversified energy portfolio and meeting the specific criteria of where you need to provide power to. The other thing is people say that it is nuclear vs solar or nuclear vs renewables. This is laudable. We want renewables. We encourage them. It is nuclear vs fossil fuels or (the closest argument I can make) nuclear vs betting on new batteries being developed in time (which to mean "in time" means a few decades ago).
I'll leave you with a saying that is often repeated: "When it comes to nuclear, those that know the most fear the least." And I ask anyone that has concerns to not just talk to random strangers on the internet, but ask nuclear physicists why they do what they do.
And as for space travel, I did some work in that area. I'm not actually convinced that fission is the answer. If anything, maybe a stop gap, but a potentially dangerous one at that (rockets still frequently explode).
And again, I'm MORE than happy to address concerns, at least ones that I know the answers to. I speak out not because I am pro-nuclear, but pro-Earth. Frankly the reason we need nuclear is because we needed to be investing in renewables and battery tech substantially more decades ago. Until then, we can't take high risk gambles without a backup in place.
It seems you missed the whole characterization of nothing is 100% safe. At some point there has to be an acceptable loss. Or rather, we have to try to do the least damage. But yes, people will die. But because we have electricity, more people will live.
I'd been unaware of Banqiao until a few years ago. Its scale overwhelms me. And yet the chain of institutional, engineering, and circumstancial events triggering it offer a huge set of cautionary lessons to nuclear advocates. I recommend reading the history closely.
Today, and for another 300 years, Fukushima and Chernobyl have effectively no inhabitants.
Zhumadian city, inundated by the Banqiao disaster, is home to over 7 million souls.
Once dam breaks cease being raging floods, life resumes, for those not fully extinguished, in a matter of weeks or years. Not centuries.
And the factors in assessing, avoiding, mitigating, alerting, and responding to risks are all remarkably similar to those of nuclear installations, save the very long-tail disasters.
The US has seen few major dam failures, though several have ocurred. Johnstown (1889) saw by far the most deaths, 2,200 (it spurred creation of the Red Cross and massive reforms to liability law), but see also the St. Francis (431 souls) and Teton (11) failures, and near misses or ongoing risks at Oroville, Isabella, Glen Canyon, among others.
Elsewhere, there are the cases of Vajont (2000+), Machchu (5500+), and others.
Again, the failures largely accrued from institutional hubris, engineering insufficience, lack of domain knowledge (often deliberate ignorance or denial), poor overall management, lack of disaster preparation, drilling, or readiness, communications breakdown (see Banqiao's comms loss), and inadequate resonse in light of imminent or present threat.
None of these are domain-specific to hydraulic civil engineering or absent from nuclear engineering projects.
Hinckley Point C in the UK has a contract for £92.50MWH [1]. Given that some other operators have pulled out suggests that isn't overly high, but as wind is currently getting priced in the mid £50s then yes it is expensive. Further, nuclear isn't a particularly good match for renewables because it isn't as dispatchable as other options.
> Further, nuclear isn't a particularly good match for renewables because it isn't as dispatchable as other options.
I do want to remind you: no one that is pro-nuclear is anti-renewable. I'd say that if they are pro-nuclear they are very likely pro-renewable. The thing though is that you're drastically over simplifying the energy problem. Battery technology just isn't there yet (they just have nowhere near the energy density, even the most advanced batteries are dwarfed by the energy density of basic fossil fuels[0]). Until then we have to face the duck curve. So what are our choices? Natural gas, coal, nuclear. Take your pick. We need energy sources that can be throttled up and down and can produce continual amounts of energy. Renewable just can't do this without batteries, and batteries aren't there. So it isn't that we don't want renewables, it is that we have picked nuclear vs fossil fuels.
Hey, I wouldn't put myself in the Anti nuclear camp. Its just the costs, they're high and increasing.
My point about nuclear not being dispatchable is that if wind is going to be the cheap backbone, then any expensive generation has to find a niche that works around that. Nuclear doesn't have that niche.
I seem to be taking a longer view than you, maybe in the 20 - 30 year time frame you're right. But in that sort of time frame is it even worth trying to start building a new nuclear power station? Where after all the politicking you've spent 10 years before you've even broken ground.
> Its just the costs, they're high and increasing.
This is only because of economies of scale (China is building many nuclear reactors and they seem to be fine).
Also no one ever factors storage / higher grid costs / backup generation into costs of renewables. When people use such double standard no wonder nuclear seems uneconomic!
> I seem to be taking a longer view than you, maybe in the 20 - 30 year time frame you're right. But in that sort of time frame is it even worth trying to start building a new nuclear power station?
EDIT: I misread your point, but I will leave this here as it seems to me important point anyway
In this time frame there is not even a _talk_ about having renewables backed by storage / carbon neutral backup generation (because that would be lol expensive with current tech). So you're proposing majority generation being fossils fuels? I thought climate change was important or something.
We _might_ get there with battery tech, but
1) nuclear will benefit from load balancing grid scale storage as well
2) in the meantime we will burn fossil fuels, alright?
It probably is part, but not all of the problem, people want safe reactors, that isn't cheap.
To answer your point 2. There isn't going to be a nuclear plant to step in anyway, they're such long term projects. If you plonk down a nuclear power station now, fine. But in 20 - 30 years you're going to have new nuclear power stations in a landscape that is hopefully already dominated by solar and wind, and nuclear just doesn't fit around renewables (which are cheaper when the winds blowing/suns shining) well enough to succeed.
Your point 1 is potentially good for nuclear, if it raises the usage factor. Nuclear's economics are based on running 24/7 but you can't do that with renewables.
>To answer your point 2. There isn't going to be a nuclear plant to step in anyway,
To this same point, what is? We don't live in a world of magic. We can't just plop down magical battery systems that don't even exist. Those are also 10-20 years out, from being invented, let alone built. Your argument is moot unless you provide an alternative that can be built right now. If you actually have one, I'm sure every pro-nuclear person would support it. Because our alliance isn't with nuclear, it is with the Earth.
> has to find a niche that works around that. Nuclear doesn't have that
>> Until then we have to face the duck curve. So what are our choices? Natural gas, coal, nuclear. Take your pick.
I'm not sure if you read that part, so I am quoting myself. I'm getting to the fact that renewables aren't constant energy producers (major part of my post. Pretty much the only part actually).
> seem to be taking a longer view than you, maybe in the 20 - 30 year time frame you're right.
I mean... my whole point is about combating climate change. I'm definitely thinking much longer than 20-30 years.
> But in that sort of time frame is it even worth trying to start building a new nuclear power station?
> I seem to be taking a longer view than you,
These comments seem to be in contention. I'll let you resolve it before I respond any more.
Re long term, I mean I'm thinking of how I can see the grid ideally looking, not in the transitional phase we are in now. Sure if we plonked down a nuclear reactor now, that would be good, absenting cost, but it isn't going to be ready now, or in 10 years, so we need to be looking at what the grid will be looking like, and I hope by that point the grid will be well on the way being green so this power station will be competing against wind and solar, not coal and gas.
Re renewables not being constant. That's my point, and nuclear isn't flexible enough to take advantage. You can make the case for £100mwh batteries because they can step in instantly, nuclear can't, and also, when the winds blowing that's always going to be cheaper, so the massive fixed costs of nuclear get amortized over less and less MWHs.
I think you're not understanding battery tech then. While fossil fuels suck, they just have massive energy densities. Even the most advanced research batteries don't even come close to the energy density of the least efficient fossil fuels (this is why we use fossil fuels in the first place).
> Re renewables not being constant. That's my point, and nuclear isn't flexible enough to take advantage.
I am utterly confused by this comment.You can vary the output from a nuclear reactor. To over simplify it: rods go in, gets less hot, less power; rods go out, gets more hot, more power. You can load balance. This can be done all day, all season, and in any climate (this latter part is actually extremely important and the whole reason why we need diversified energy portfolios). Solar only powers during the day. Wind only powers when it is windy (most wind is morning and evening when there are shifting temperatures).
I am ALL for renewables. But we just have to be real. Batteries aren't there yet and we don't expect them to be there for a few decades. We needed to stop climate change a decade ago. While we should continue investing in new technologies, we have to also start fixing the problem NOW. If it takes 10 years to build something, well then you better start yesterday. But we can't wait 10 years for a new innovation (that might not even come) and then start building (all the while burning fossil fuels in the mean time).
That's the trade off. Wait and burn fossil fuels, or do what we can to get off them now and build better stuff as new technology is created. I for one would like to act NOW.
To me the trade of is build a wind farm in a couple of years to replace that coal fired power station, or build a nuclear power station in a couple of decades to replace it.
From a cost perspective wind is cheaper, it's in place years earlier, both those thing then lead to over sizing it for when the winds weak, but then you've got masses of cheap electricity when the wind blows, lets make hydrogen, or some other inefficient but good enough electric storage medium. By now that nuclear power station is probably built, but it can't compete against wind when the winds blowing, and it still has to compete against the hydrogen power plant when it's not.
We've seen countless times how 'good enough' wins in tech. I'm saying wind and some (however crappy) storage medium is good enough. Yes its JavaScript rather than Smalltalk or Lisp, yes essays could be written about how X is better, but it works, and if it doesn't there are a dozen lower cost, lower risk, quicker things to try than building a nuclear power station.
> To me the trade of is build a wind farm in a couple of years to replace that coal fired power station, or build a nuclear power station in a couple of decades to replace it.
Then I understand the confusion. Let me explain. Wind's output isn't constant over the course of a day. Even worse, wind is not constant over the course of a year. (The same goes for solar)
So what do you do when outputs are low and demand is high? (A common occurrence) You use a fuel. Those are batteries, fossil, or nuclear. Those are the choices (hydrogen isn't there yet, nor is it actually 0 emissions since in production they use CH4 not H2O). Batteries do not have enough capacity to get us through moderate stretches of low activity, which is why we haven't gotten rid of fossil fuels. We need to be able to store energy. I don't know how many times I have to say this, but it isn't nuclear vs wind (I LOVE wind! I WANT more wind!). It is the fueled sources we are arguing about. And we can't pretend that we don't need fuel (unless we're willing to relocate massive amounts of people and entire nations).
The best batteries come nowhere near the storage capacity of the worst fossil fuels (all are dwarfed by nuclear).
This debate isn't about "best" vs "good enough" it is "not enough" vs "enough". We can't do it with just renewables alone. We need fuel. And it isn't all about the costs you see. A lot is the costs you don't see, which is why we're so desperate right now (we needed to fix climate change a decade ago, we can't wait another decade or two for batteries to catch up).
So in principle I agree with everything your saying. But the difference is that the facts just don't agree with your perception.
Hydrogen can be made from H2O, and abundant cheap electricity, which you would get from over building renewables to cover the lulls, because it is variable.
You say we can't wait a decade or 2. To return to Hinckley Point C, it was announced in 2010, a nuclear licence was granted in 2012. Construction is due to begin this year, it is planned to start actually generating somewhere between 2025 and 2027. Do we have time for that? That's 15 years minimum, how many wind turbines could you build in that time? You could build both, but then the turbines risk cannibalising the market for nuclear before its even built, and then you're betting that none of the energy storage technologies are going to pan out. Yes hydrogen is a long shot, and lithium batteries probably won't be cheaper, or compressed air, or bio fuels, or CO2 to methane, and cars probably won't end up getting used for smart storage, and the smart grid probably won't take off. But saying none of them will work? And then look at the price curve for wind and solar, what will they cost in 15 years time?
If we had the nuclear power stations now, fine, but they aren't here now, they're 15 years away. In 15 years we can build a lot of solar and wind thats getting cheaper and cheaper and we can try a lot of energy storage mechanisms too.
And investors are going to be thinking the same, so they won't want to front the money, so it's up to government, but that adds bureaucracy, time, cost and somewhere in there a recession or a government that can't justify spending billions for jam tomorrow, so funds get cut, etc, etc, etc.
I entered this thread saying cost was the issue. Even if we ignore that, the political battles over such a long time frame are massive. Over and above the battles to make the case for fighting climate change. 'Greens' aren't even united on the issue, let alone a nation, over a generation.
So to me the unproven storage bet is the better bet.
> Hydrogen can be made from H2O, and abundant cheap electricity, which you would get from over building renewables to cover the lulls, because it is variable.
"Can" and "are" are very different things though. You've been continually talking about price and the economics being above most other factors. The reason methane is used is economic. Those that tell you that hydrogen is being done with water are selling snake oil. But even using methane it is still expensive, difficult, and dangerous (no one wants to be riding in a vehicle with tens of thousands of PSI under their feet).
To your other point, I agree. It sucks. I'm not going to act like we can just make nuclear plants appear. Building any major infrastructure takes a long time.
> So to me the unproven storage bet is the better bet.
My position is only slightly different. I'm also betting on the unproven storage. But we can't have a high risk portfolio. We should definitely invest in risky avenues, but we also need to invest in blue chips.
The argument here is "We don't have good enough batteries and we don't know when we get them. Let's fund them more. But also in the mean time let's use current technology to make sure that we have some fallback. Because having no fallback is going to leave us in a worse position."
This is a negative sum game. We don't come out positive in either scenario (at least not till we can do real terraforming). We've pushed the buck down the road for too long. Now the game is risk minimization and reduction.
We have very similar positions. We have the same goal. You talk about how we're not unified, well I only see that because it is easier to focus on the differences in positions. But it really looks to me that we have more similarities than difference. So if you want unity, then let's recognize that.
Renewable hydrogen to cover the last 10-20% would be much cheaper than using nuclear to cover that last 10-20%. We are not using renewable hydrogen now because CO2 emissions have not be sufficiently penalized, but if that happened new nuclear would still not have a place at the table.
There's no way to make enough batteries for 100% renewable grid, everyone on the planet would need an electric car sized battery, which means you'd need 10000 gigafactories iirc.
Which is why I suggested 50% nuclear, 50% renewable. That's still about 100x more renewable than we have today
It's not just batteries. It's batteries, and transmission, and pumped hydro, and dispatchable demand, and overproduction w. hydrogen to soak up the excess, and burning hydrogen in turbines for very rare long lulls.
The cost optimized system will exploit most or all of these, and have no place for expensive baseload sources. Nuclear with its current cost structure and cheap renewables simply don't fit well together.
"everyone on the planet would need an electric car sized battery"
This is basically what we're aiming for (in the west at least) anyway, with EVs?
Are you saying we don't have the materials to do it? Or we don't have the factory capacity for it?
Batteries can be made from a variety of materials, and we supply near enough 1 car per person in the west, so batteries should be doable?
Id hope some combination of said car batteries, continent spanning grids, smart appliances would get us most of the way there.
The biggest flaw with this model is what happens on cloudy, still weeks? I guess some kind of waste to energy, wood, and bio gas, hydrogen power station would be less expensive than a nuclear reactor.
I can't speak for the person you're responding to, but
> Are you saying we don't have the materials to do it?
Yes. At least without substantially expanding mining operations.
> Or we don't have the factory capacity for it?
We're NOWHERE near that kind of production level.
> The biggest flaw with this model is what happens on cloudy, still weeks? I guess some kind of waste to energy, wood, and bio gas, hydrogen power station would be less expensive than a nuclear reactor.
Not if we price in carbon emissions.
I also have to mention that there are plenty of places that people live where it is almost always cloudy and almost never windy (at the same time). I will keep saying this: we need diversified energy portfolios. The key though, is we don't want any of those sources producing emissions, or to at least minimize them as much as possible (we're playing a negative sum game here)
> Obviously though yes, those places with no wind, sun or other resources. Nuclear will have a place.
And the unfortunate part is that those places hold a fair amount of the world's population. We're not asking for nuclear in places that are sunny and windy. We don't need it there. We're asking for it in places that aren't.
Suppose we want to get rid of all carbon sources, and minimize the amount of energy storage required due to the high cost.
Is it possible to minimize storage with nuclear? Yes, in theory, you spec the fixed generation amount for the peak demand and then have excess supply the rest of the time. Inefficient, but it works. This is clearly not the optimal mix however.
Is it possible to minimize storage with solar? No. It doesn't generate at night, that requires an enormous amount of energy storage to overcome, pure solar is a fail.
Is it possible to minimize storage with wind? Yes, but you have to match the peak demand with the minimum wind output. That's going to explode costs even worse than pure nuclear. Combining wind with storage to smooth out the load might be better, but by the time that's cost effective, so would using a smaller amount of storage to smooth the day/night load for nuclear and reduce the amount of generating capacity you need there too. Also, wind is not the cheapest generating technology to begin with (solar is cheaper).
So what happens if we combine them?
Solar plus wind is better, but still problematic. Wind generates at night, except when it doesn't. On a still night you could have to survive the whole night almost entirely on stored energy, but if you need almost as much storage capacity as for pure solar then you might as well make use of it every night and take advantage of the cheaper generation from solar than wind.
Wind + nuclear doesn't seem especially interesting either. The problem with wind in general is that its output varies randomly and doesn't track demand whatsoever, so you end up needing a large amount of storage proportional to the amount of wind generation you have. And wind isn't that cheap and storage is really expensive.
But solar + nuclear is excellent. The demand for electricity is higher during the day, which is when solar generates. Solar doesn't generate at night, but nuclear does. So you spec enough nuclear generation for the minimum nighttime load and use solar to both handle the higher daytime load and charge up the much smaller amount of energy storage you need to handle just the baseload-to-peak load differential in the few hours between when solar stops generating and people go to sleep, instead of the whole demand for the whole night.
You can also then price electricity higher during the night, which makes perfect sense when the solar that generates only during the day is the cheapest generation technology, and then nuclear pays for itself by beating solar+storage on cost for twelve hours a day while allowing you to cut your required solar generating capacity more than in half for the other twelve hours.
> Is it possible to minimize storage with solar? No. It doesn't generate at night, that requires an enormous amount of energy storage to overcome, pure solar is a fail.
A grid dominated by solar means power at night will cost 2-3 times day time rates. And demand for it will drop sharply.
Demand only drops if it becomes more expensive than it is already. If the difference is that solar during the day becomes super cheap then you don't get a reduction in demand during the night, you get more demand during the day.
That doesn't reduce the amount of nighttime generation capacity you need at all, unless people can shift demand from nighttime to daytime, which they largely can't. Most of the things that run at night either have to run 24 hours or have to run at night because you need light when it's dark and heat when it's cold.
Worse so, if demand for electricity drops at night that doesn't mean that people are going to go to sleep. That means they are going to use cheaper alternatives to make light. That has bigger consequences in emissions.
My worry would be people continuing to use carbon sources to generate more heat than light. With LED lights as efficient as they are, nobody is going to replace them with lanterns. The real trouble is if people don't replace their existing oil and gas furnaces with electric heat pumps, because that's something we need to happen but also has the disadvantage of requiring an initial capital expenditure. Adding higher nighttime electrical costs on top of that would not be helpful.
I'm speaking from the UK where demand peaks are morning and evening and we don't have sun, so wind is the good match.
The problem is you're proposing a grid structure that I don't think is politically achievable. Solar is cheaper, so why not cover 100% during the day, wind is cheaper, that starts covering the night time, then suddenly your nuclear is uneconomic. And while you're spending the decades getting that power station built you're also having to explain why you aren't building out solar and wind to cover demand.
> Solar is cheaper, so why not cover 100% during the day
Because you still need something to cover the night, but if the thing that covers the night also generates during the day with minimal incremental cost, there is no cost benefit in unnecessarily duplicating that capacity again.
> wind is cheaper, that starts covering the night time
Except when it doesn't, and that's the problem. You have a huge wind farm that generates 50GW when the wind is blowing but only 5GW when it's still, and you have 25GW of minimum load at all times. On the night when you average 5GW generation for twelve hours, where does the other 240GWh of power come from? Your options are "build a peak 250GW wind farm instead so it never generates less than 25GW" (completely hopeless) and "build 240GWh of energy storage" (ouch) which then prices wind out because it's cheaper to use the batteries you need for a still night on every night and charge them with solar instead, and cheaper still to build 25GW in nuclear capacity.
> And while you're spending the decades getting that power station built you're also having to explain why you aren't building out solar and wind to cover demand
Because you are building them too. We can do two things at the same time.
Under your plan you'd build a 25MW nuclear power plant which covers the night, and along with 25MW of solar covers the 50MW daytime demand, correct?
the problem is solar is cheaper, so its profitable for someone to build 50MW of solar. so Nuclear covers night, now at twice the price. But wind is cheaper, so build 25MW of wind, maybe 50% of the time the wind doesn't blow, so nuclear only covers that, so it's now twice as expensive again. Now batteries are cheaper, so what's the role for that nuclear plant now? Would you invest in nuclear in that potential situation?
"Because you are building them too. We can do two things at the same time"
If it takes you 5 years to build the 25MW of solar, but the nuclear takes 15 years, theres a 10 year gap between solar build out finishing and nuclear being ready to take over from that coal plant. What do you do? 10 years of burning coal? or continue building solar so your covering as much demand as you can? But then why retire all that solar when the nuclear plant comes online?
> the problem is solar is cheaper, so its profitable for someone to build 50MW of solar.
That's not how that works. The unit cost of generation is inconsequential compared to the fixed cost, so you don't stop generating at any point and you just take the market price whatever it is.
Suppose nuclear needs to average $10/MWh to meet costs but solar can do $8/MWh during the day. Then as long as nuclear can get $12/MWh at night, it can match solar on price during the day and still cover costs. And solar + storage can't beat $12/MWh at night while the storage costs much more than $4/MWh. So then it's unprofitable to build the other 25MW in solar capacity because it would only get undercut on price during the day by nuclear which can make up the difference at night.
And it's the same thing for wind or anything else. Once you have 25GW of nuclear generation, nobody is ever going to be able to undercut it on marginal cost -- they'll never stop generating power and selling it for the market price, even if it would cause the plant operators to yield negative overall returns, because selling for an unprofitable market price is still less of a loss than getting nothing. And since everyone knows that ahead of time they don't bother to build a bunch of unprofitable wind turbines and that doesn't happen to begin with.
> If it takes you 5 years to build the 25MW of solar, but the nuclear takes 15 years, theres a 10 year gap between solar build out finishing and nuclear being ready to take over from that coal plant. What do you do? 10 years of burning coal? or continue building solar so your covering as much demand as you can? But then why retire all that solar when the nuclear plant comes online?
There is no hope of replacing the entire grid with solar in five years time. The production capacity for that doesn't exist, and would be unprofitable to create because once you've replaced the entire grid with solar all those new panel factories you just paid to build would go idle.
What actually happens is that you add solar as fast as you can and it's still not enough, and you add nuclear at the same time and if we're lucky then together they're enough.
Because there is a "real cost" to running a nuclear plant that can be arbitrarily inflated. If you factor in stuff like "one major disaster every twenty years" or "waste storage for 10,000 years", of course the calculation is different than if you assume "no disasters" and "we'll deal with it later".
It also very much depends on the regulatory environment that these reactors are built in. Perhaps forty years ago it would've been possible to build reactors economically in the US, but after Chernobyl/Fukushima any new reactor would likely face far more intense scrutiny.
What is the point of this comment? It is very loaded. Are you talking about fear? Because all evidence shows that nuclear is the safest next to hydro power (yes, even more than solar). Like I just don't know how to interpret your point.
I guess the point was that externalities like those risks (however small) are not part of the price customers pay. Instead those are footed by the taxpayer when something happens. That likely distorts the real cost of hydro-electric and coal as well.
Japan’s leaders hope to restore for human habitation more than 100 cities, towns and villages scattered over hundreds of square miles. The government has allocated more than $15 billion for this work.
In December, the government said the estimated cost of decommissioning the plant and decontaminating the surrounding area, as well as paying compensation and storing radioactive waste, had risen to 21.5 trillion yen ($187bn), nearly double an estimate released in 2013.
(Interestingly, Wikipedia claims that the insurance policies that applied to Fukushima Daiichi specifically excluded accidents caused by earthquake/tsumani.)
Of course, with insufficient insurance coverage, when faced with a major accident the company owning the plant will just declare bankruptcy and leave the tax payer to pay for the mess.
So we have another case of "privatize the profits, socialize the losses", which IMHO is one of the biggest problems with nuclear energy, and is effectively a subsidy that keeps the price artificially low.
> So a nuclear accident in the US is only insured up to ~$13 billion?
Yes, and we've never come anywhere near paying that out. So I'd call that not just a win, but a highly profitable business.
> Of course, with insufficient insurance coverage, when faced with a major accident the company owning the plant will just declare bankruptcy and leave the tax payer to pay for the mess.
>So we have another case of "privatize the profits, socialize the losses", which IMHO is one of the biggest problems with nuclear energy, and is effectively a subsidy that keeps the price artificially low.
Except this isn't what's happening. Because we have privatized the losses. Hence the insurance. But we have also always socialized the losses from natural disasters, frankly because natural disasters affect a society and not a singular organization.
> In December, the government said the estimated cost of decommissioning the plant and decontaminating the surrounding area, as well as paying compensation and storing radioactive waste, had risen to 21.5 trillion yen ($187bn), nearly double an estimate released in 2013.
> (Interestingly, Wikipedia claims that the insurance policies that applied to Fukushima Daiichi specifically excluded accidents caused by earthquake/tsumani.)
So it looks like the whole earthquake event was over $400bn (real dollars)[0]. So that's almost half. (And we're referencing Wikipedia, so we're not diving into the numbers too far). Side note: this makes that event more expensive than Chernobyl.
But here's something to consider. Look again at that table and look at what is happening in recent years. In 2017 the US spent over $200bn on natural disasters that are directly linked to climate change. These events are just becoming more common and only a small part of the cost that we are paying for increasing the planet's temperature. Over the last decade we've (the US) paid for several Fukushimas. These are all being paid by the taxpayers too.
Yes, nuclear accidents are costly (they are also extremely rare and getting more rare) but are they more costly than what happens if we don't use them? In either case we're taking a gamble, there's just no other way to put it. But which horse are you going to put your money on?
Your link is about residential prices, not about the cost to build the reactors.
There are two key questions: 1) what was the subsidy level for construction of the French generation of reactors, and 2) can we do this again?
That second question is of course the most important one, and the answer seems to be a resounding and hard no, at least if the French are constructing it, based on their recent attempts.
South Korea is also cited as another country that may have figured out how to build reactors cheaply. However recent news is that it was all cartels and corruption and there's likely massive amounts of fraud.
That leaves what, Canada and Russia? Canada I kind of trust, and Russia not at all. CANDUs were pretty great, but we can't exactly order more of them now.
It seems that the age of the Rankine cycle's efficiency is coming to an end, at least in terms of cost effectiveness. Even natural gas uses a combined cycle to compete these days, as new tech finally usurps what has been the champion for over a century.
I'm not sure why this keeps being said. France's prices for electricity are cheaper than Germany. In fact they are cheaper than most European countries [0]. Nuclear does have a lot of upfront costs, but they are cheap to run once built. But the construction price will never drop if we stop building. Doing so has already made prices go up.
What really matters is 1) can the company that made the plant make a profit? 2) If we need to subsidize to make 1=yes then is that price cheaper than the cost of not doing it (cost by economic damage done by increased CO2 during that period).
But the irony of this is that your argument is very similar to that which many have made about solar.
I expect the same thing will happen when fusion becomes a thing. In reality it is all about the S curve.
[0] https://1-stromvergleich.com/electricity-prices-europe/