Comment by ViewTrick1002
1 day ago
Why should we care what refurbishment costs? We know the installation cost. We know the cycle life as per the chosen depth of discharge. We also know the cost of capital.
What we are seeing today is many renewable projects built 20 years ago nearing the of their expected economic life as per their financing are seeing life extensions. They keep producing a valuable product and their loans are paid off making it pure profit.
Renewables don't stop working after 20 years. Just like old nuclear plants don't stop working after 20 years.
Nuclear powers problem is that it takes 20 years to get built. Then it needs to pay off its loans, and recent plants have hade insanely expensive 40 year PPAs attached to them.
Meaning for a project started today we will be paying for the boondoggle until 2085.
Why do you want to make us poorer by wasting money?
> Right now our intercept involves us polluting for decades beyond that nuclear power showing up. I propose doing more of everything low-carbon, including more nuclear.
Why waste money on the option costing 5-10x as much per kWh decarbonized if you truly care about decarbonization?
> Most charging happens overnight. Lots of transport loads will be forced to charge overnight, too. Yes, they have some flexibility to dispatch load, but not enough to substantially hold up a truck for cheaper electricity or shift the time in the day when it is driving.
Until you know, charging wherever you can stop essentially becomes standard? Or just let your home battery charge the car from your daytime rooftop solar?
With battery costs coming down to $50-100/kWh adding a sizeable battery to a house is a trivial cost. We are starting to enter an economic reality where the work done by professional installers is more expensive than the battery itself.
BEV transport and public transport is generally modeled as an inflexible load. But all in all their demand is quite small compared to the rest of society.
In California storage has already brought down fossil gas usage by 43%. But you say we should instead have kept the fossil gas, invested in nuclear power and waited until the 2040s.
It literally does not make sense to waste money on a dead-end technology like nuclear power.
> Why should we care what refurbishment costs? We know the installation cost. We know the cycle life as per the chosen depth of discharge.
Because if we're making an argument purely based on the cost of a cycle on a battery, that's not reasonable. New batteries do not appear in the system for the cost of buying them. Old batteries do not disappear, perfectly recycled for free.
> Renewables don't stop working after 20 years.
I wasn't talking about renewables. Maybe we can extend renewable amortization times as we gain experience.
Amortization is an imperfect tool, but a crucial one to know what stuff really costs. Amortizing batteries over 20 years seems reasonable (many people advocate for 10).
> Nuclear powers problem is that it takes 20 years to get built.
Yes, and if we'd listened to me 25 years ago when I was making this same argument, we'd have more zero-carbon electricity on the grid today. ;) "It'll show up too late" is an argument that's false until it's true.
> Why do you want to make us poorer by wasting money?
OK, and now we have reached another of the kind of comments that I find problematic, so I've stopped reading here.
> Because if we're making an argument purely based on the cost of a cycle on a battery, that's not reasonable. New batteries do not appear in the system for the cost of buying them. Old batteries do not disappear, perfectly recycled for free.
So lets include the costs for decommissioning nuclear plants, dealing with the waste and that the public is on the hook for essentially the entire accident insurance?
> Yes, and if we'd listened to me 25 years ago when I was making this same argument, we'd have more zero-carbon electricity on the grid today. ;)
You seem to not be caught up with what happened 25 years ago? Or are projecting because you can't accept reality?
There was a massive push to build nuclear power alongside a tiny one to build renewables.
The Energy Policy Act of 2005 was a massive handout to the nuclear industry. That is the act that spawned Vogtle, Virgil C. Summer and another 15 now cancelled reactors.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Policy_Act_of_2005
You can read about all the individually cancelled reactors here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_canceled_nuclear_react...
In the meantime Vogtle required handout after handout to get pushed over the finish line and we all know how Virgil C. Summer went. The ratepayers saddled with hiked bills for decades to pay for the boondoggle.
You seem to be living in some completely made up reality were we didn't subsidize the absolute shit out of nuclear power? Because that is what we did.
Everyone is against nuclear power and if only everyone hade listen to you had given even more subsidies 20 years ago it would have gotten built! We need trillions in subsidies!
> OK, and now we have reached another of the kind of comments that I find problematic, so I've stopped reading here.
Love the dodge. If you don't read it doesn't exist. Due to the well known costs of nuclear power what you propose will make us poorer for generations.
What you say is that it is fine to add multiples to our electricity costs because you can't let go of a dead-end technology.
Pure insanity.
> So lets include the costs for decommissioning nuclear plants, dealing with the waste and that the public is on the hook for essentially the entire accident insurance?
Yes. All nuclear power plants pay into trust funds for decommissioning and waste disposal, and that's included in the LCOE.
And re: history: yes, deciding to build nuclear power and then chickening out is even worse than not building nuclear power. I agree.
> Pure insanity.
Are you really upset and that's why you're lashing out? Or is this just your normal way to treat another human you're discussing something with?
Because I would be happy to discuss more with you if you can restrain yourself from doing this. But otherwise, these just lead me to nope out quickly.
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