More expensive in what way? "Cost" is what everyone quotes about why nuclear isn't great, but isn't the whole idea behind shelving fossil fuels and switching to alternatives due to downsides that are secondary to cost?
To me, renewables (solar and wind namely) have many more downsides than nuclear. So if we are doing things not because of cost anyway, why not nuclear? What do you fundamentally care about?
The power density of wind and solar is abysmal. You need to cover huge amounts of land with your preferred solution (which doesn't work everywhere) to produce relatively meager amounts of power. You need to have grid-scale storage solutions which are currently not priced in to the costs being quoted. Even if you have that storage solution you need to be significantly over-capacity in terms of production so that storage can actually be filled during peak hours.
Meanwhile, nuclear: requires a fraction of land use (good for ecology), runs continuously (so doesn't need huge storage outlays), can run basically anywhere (reducing transmission costs).
The most important note is that "nuclear" is not entirely encapsulated by existing Gen III reactors. There are many more designs and ideas that are being developed as we speak, whether more interesting (read: safe/efficient) fuel mixes, modular/micro designs, and various other improvements.
"Cost" is a merely a reflection of how much human capital is required to make something happen. I'd much rather spend our human capital on technologies that have the potential to massively increase the energy available to humanity, rather than focusing on tech which we know has strict upper bounds on power output / scalability. Solar and wind is useful in certain areas, but the idea that they can provide the baseload for a decarbonized future is ridiculous to me, unless your starting point is "I don't think humanity needs to consume much more power".
We are in fact doing things soley because of cost, and pretty much only because of cost, because capitalisim. Solar and wind are now cheaper than all alternatives in most situations, so they are rapidly becoming all thats being built. We are doing the cheapest thing, which just so happens to be great for carbon, luckily for us. If we get out of this climate mess it will almost be by accident, because we made solar cheap, not because we chose to do the right thing.
Honestly you need to look into numbers for some of your points, and you'll see the folly. Land usage, its a non issue. For eg, its estimated that if around 1/3rd of the land the US currently uses for corn ethanol was converted to solar, it would power the whole country. And thats existing used land without talking about the insane amount of empty spaces that exist. non issue.
Yes there are new nuke designs that are cool, but they're at least 10-20 years away from deployment at scale, by which time renewables and storage will be much cheaper still, and the transition will be mostly over. Im not anti at all, they're just too late, too slow and too expensive.
I think you need to catch up on developments in the last few years, and re-evaluate what seems ridiculous to you, a lot has changed very quickly. Cheap energy abundance via renewables is now a very likely outcome.
This might be the only way I could have any trust in Nuclear. I heard recently from a journalist that the Fukushima plant paid Yakuza owned newspapers to avoid negative press well before the incident. The technology is great, humans are not.
why? much more expensive, much slower. This reflexive "nukes are the only way" meme amongst technical folk really has gotta die.
More expensive in what way? "Cost" is what everyone quotes about why nuclear isn't great, but isn't the whole idea behind shelving fossil fuels and switching to alternatives due to downsides that are secondary to cost?
To me, renewables (solar and wind namely) have many more downsides than nuclear. So if we are doing things not because of cost anyway, why not nuclear? What do you fundamentally care about?
The power density of wind and solar is abysmal. You need to cover huge amounts of land with your preferred solution (which doesn't work everywhere) to produce relatively meager amounts of power. You need to have grid-scale storage solutions which are currently not priced in to the costs being quoted. Even if you have that storage solution you need to be significantly over-capacity in terms of production so that storage can actually be filled during peak hours.
Meanwhile, nuclear: requires a fraction of land use (good for ecology), runs continuously (so doesn't need huge storage outlays), can run basically anywhere (reducing transmission costs).
The most important note is that "nuclear" is not entirely encapsulated by existing Gen III reactors. There are many more designs and ideas that are being developed as we speak, whether more interesting (read: safe/efficient) fuel mixes, modular/micro designs, and various other improvements.
"Cost" is a merely a reflection of how much human capital is required to make something happen. I'd much rather spend our human capital on technologies that have the potential to massively increase the energy available to humanity, rather than focusing on tech which we know has strict upper bounds on power output / scalability. Solar and wind is useful in certain areas, but the idea that they can provide the baseload for a decarbonized future is ridiculous to me, unless your starting point is "I don't think humanity needs to consume much more power".
in $/kwh.
We are in fact doing things soley because of cost, and pretty much only because of cost, because capitalisim. Solar and wind are now cheaper than all alternatives in most situations, so they are rapidly becoming all thats being built. We are doing the cheapest thing, which just so happens to be great for carbon, luckily for us. If we get out of this climate mess it will almost be by accident, because we made solar cheap, not because we chose to do the right thing.
Honestly you need to look into numbers for some of your points, and you'll see the folly. Land usage, its a non issue. For eg, its estimated that if around 1/3rd of the land the US currently uses for corn ethanol was converted to solar, it would power the whole country. And thats existing used land without talking about the insane amount of empty spaces that exist. non issue.
For storage, solar+24hr storage is now cheaper than new gas, and dropping fast (https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/solar-electricity-e...).
Yes there are new nuke designs that are cool, but they're at least 10-20 years away from deployment at scale, by which time renewables and storage will be much cheaper still, and the transition will be mostly over. Im not anti at all, they're just too late, too slow and too expensive.
I think you need to catch up on developments in the last few years, and re-evaluate what seems ridiculous to you, a lot has changed very quickly. Cheap energy abundance via renewables is now a very likely outcome.
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could do but im not sure what there is to be gained from unnecessarily spending trillions more to decarbonize.
Get private insurance to fully cover nuclear and I'm onboard.
This might be the only way I could have any trust in Nuclear. I heard recently from a journalist that the Fukushima plant paid Yakuza owned newspapers to avoid negative press well before the incident. The technology is great, humans are not.