Comment by shkkmo
1 year ago
Electricity from nuclear is neither limitless nor free. While we would have been much better off (in terms of global warming) if we had not hobbled nuclear power generation decades ago, at this point it's cheaper and faster to build out solar and wind than nuclear.
The part I hate about the math used in this argument, is that really we should be working with a goal of much cheaper energy production, to enable other green technology.
Yeah, if you use standard new construction capacity planning in some cases solar + wind wins. If you target a much lower average/maximum cost per GW (and higher consumption) nuclear wins.
Things like EVs, electric furnaces for recycling, greener chemical plants and carbon capture mechanisms all become more viable with consistently cheap electricity.
> Yeah, if you use standard new construction capacity planning in some cases solar + wind wins. If you target a much lower average/maximum cost per GW (and higher consumption) nuclear wins.
I'd love to see your sources for this. To the best of my knowledge it isn't even close and solar is several times cheaper that nuclear. They used to be more comparable a decade or two ago, but solar costs have dropped dramatically since then.
Mostly the viability studies in the French reactor program.
It heaviy depends on how you set up the comparison. If you look at most current energy markets and say "how can I make money with these rules" the answer is almost always build a small amount of renewables. If you say, how should a government invest to retire coal power and achieve a low and stable energy cost, then nuclear can be viable (in some places).
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Keep in mind that solar and wind alone can't power a single city. You need something to compensate, something like coal/natgas or storage. The amount of storage you need, depends on geography and local weather conditions. If your storage comes short, even a bit, the amount of conventional power stations you need to keep the lights on is exactly the number if power stations you would have to operate if you never had invested into wind or solar in the first place.
This is usually missing in typical cost calculations for solar or wind.
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> To the best of my knowledge it isn't even close and solar is several times cheaper that nuclear.
Only if we build reactors in the modern way rather than like the French did in the 1970s. (The reasons why its so much more expensive are complex, but mostly a regulatory ratchet and an tolerance for risk so low that if applied to the rest of life we'd close down parks as too dangerous)
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>If you target a much lower average/maximum cost per GW (and higher consumption) nuclear wins.
It loses every way. Its LCOE is 5x higher. The PR campaign to save it was about neither its cost nor the environment but economically buttressing the nuclear military industrial complex.
It's SO much more expensive in fact that it's actually cheaper to use wind/solar to electrolyze hydrogen, store it underground in a salt cavern and burn that to generate electricity.
>Things like EVs
Things like EVs are even less suited to nuclear power because they dont need constant power and can charge while electricity is cheap. Ditto electric heating.
> while electricity is cheap
Electricity is cheap mostly when there is more base load than demand; i.e. at night. I don't think you can have that concept if you want to remove base load and just make electricity when the weather lets you.
The problem with the whole nuclear vs. renewables argument is that we don't have the luxury of choosing anymore. We need a huge amount of carbon-free electricity right now, not just to meet current demand but to actively decarbonize our industry.
The only reason we can realistically get to net zero with batteries and renewables is because we export our polution abroad by having China produce everything. And we then ship it back to us using incredibly carbon-intense modes of transportation.
If we had to onshore all that production and actually count it towards our own emissions we'd have no hope of meeting our climate goals with solar panels and wind power.
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