Comment by epistasis
1 day ago
It would actually cost a lot less to use renewables and storage than a bunch of nuclear.
For a completely decarbinized grid, there are two paths: 1) 100% renewables plus storage, or 2) ~90% renewable plus storage, and 10% nuclear/advanced geothermal.
There's lots of debate about which one would be cheapest. But the true answer depends on how the cost curve of technologies develops over the coming 20 years. (Personally, I think 100% renewables will win because projections of all experts severely overestimate storage and renewables costs, while simultaneously severely underestimating the costs of nuclear. Renewables and storage are always over delivering, while nuclear always under delivers. So I think that trend will continue...)
You won't hear much about this in the popular media though, because they are too afraid of offending conservatives with politically incorrect facts. Sites like Ars Technica cover it though:
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/22092022/inside-clean-ene...
Yes, this is the real answer. Nuclear, which is currently dropping as a percentage of global electricity demand and is now under 10% needs a miracle to reverse that and maybe reach 15% if everything goes well for it.
Meanwhile renewables are surging and every relevant expert suggests they'll dominate the future.
https://ourworldindata.org/data-insights/the-world-is-gettin...
The graph without the relatively flat hydro is even more stark.
The stuff people say about nuclear on this forum is on the level of flat earthism and they seem totally unashamed of this.
Would point to the law of economics which says only renewables can get cheaper with investments? And which law of physics makes renewables work in places, which have little wind and solar?
It's typically called Wright's Law:
https://quickonomics.com/terms/wrights-law/
But it's not a law that applies to all technologies, and it will likely end at some point, but there's at least 1-2 decades of cost decrease left.
There is no law of physics that makes renewables work where there are poor renewable resources, except through transmission, which is usually engineered using several of Maxwell's laws.
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What percentage of the earth's surface have little wind and solar? What percentage of the human population live there?
They have solar farms in Alaska and the Antarctic because it's cheaper than shipping in diesel for 6 months of the year.
And the law of economics making modular renewables cheaper is Wright's Law:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience_curve_effect
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> projections of all experts severely overestimate storage and renewables costs, while simultaneously severely underestimating the costs of nuclear
Does that mean you’re expert-er?
I expect that if I had to put numbers on things, I would be subject to the same biases as everyone else.
Or perhaps not, sometimes not being an "expert" in the traditional sense can remove the biases of an industry. Sci-fi author Ramez Naam had some of the most accurate forecasts in the past by doing the simplest thing possible: looking at the past curve and extending it. That is probably the simple type of projection I would make!
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23185166
The IEA and EIA are two very respectable organizations that make comically bad projections, just absolutely awful. I know I could beat their projections!
Jenny Chase is a highly prominent solar analyst that has some great anecdotes about how wrong solar estimates always are, and she challenges that new analysts face, but I'm having trouble finding the podcast right now... in any case always read the Jenny Chase megathreads on the state of solar or her interviews in order to get some really great insights into what's going on.
In any case the rate of learning in solar tech far exceeds the expectations of most "energy" experts, and also usually exceeds the expectations of even the solar experts.
> Renewables and storage are always over delivering, while nuclear always under delivers
Well no, storage would need another 100x improvement for being usable in a 100% renewable scenario in any country you have any sort of winter.
Say what you want on nuclear but we have example of countries which managed it successfully, for renewables, we still haven't.
It sounds like you're making the usual idiot argument that batteries are the only storage technology and would be used for seasonal storage.
That's not how it would work. There are far better -- orders of magnitude better -- storage options over timescales of many months.
Which is entering emergency reserve territory. Nuclear power CAPEX to build an emergency reserve would seem to be utterly insane.
The easy solution is gas turbines. We already have them and as aviation and maritime shipping decarbonize utilize the same fuel. Whether that is syngas, ammonia or biofuels.
Or earmark the biofuels for grid usage. Today the US produces enough ethanol used as a blend in for gasoline to run the grid without help for 14 days.
As we switch to BEVs repurpose that for grid duties while ensuring the inputs also decarbonize.
I'm not sure I get your comment, France has 2 years worth of uranium ready to use + 5 years of uranium not enriched.
I don't think there's any other form of energy in the country which has a 7 years emergency reserve.
> As we switch to BEVs repurpose that for grid duties while ensuring the inputs also decarbonize.
BEV will make the storage problem worse because they consume more in winter and you can't tell people how to use their own cars.
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