Comment by epistasis
20 hours ago
Or LACE, or Lazard's "Cost of Firming Intermittency" or whatever metric you want...
The systematic bias against renewables and irrational exuberance around nuclear is true across all of those metrics.
Even people that make their living on renewables underestimate how quickly it gets cheap. Jenny Chase, famous for pointing out that people underestimate the pace of solar technology, also underestimates solar technology.
And the skepticism of batteries is similar. I can't tell you how many nuclear advocates have said in past years that grid-scale batteries are impossible because of "physics." Yes literally "physics" that they can't quite seem to cite.
It's just a continual shifting of goal posts as people's systematic bias against batteries are again and again disproven by actual deployments and costs.
> Yes literally "physics" that they can't quite seem to cite.
Those arguments typically assume Li-ion batteries will be used for seasonal storage, which is a completely clown argument.
I've yet to see any serious engineer make the argument that Li-ion batteries will be used for seasonal storage. I've more often seen it used as a straw man argument against renewables.
I've seen the argument made plenty of times. Even nuclear engineers from MIT basically made this argument!
You can say anyone who makes this argument isn't serious, but that sounds like a No True Scotsman argument.
I've seen "just slap a battery onto a steel mill to make it work with solar." So what? People on every side are saying dumb things. The required restructuring of the grid makes wind + storage + peaker plants + solar not so dominant as you picture it. Some countries can have it cheaper without nuclear, some can't.
> Some countries can have it cheaper without nuclear, some can't.
From what I've seen, some countries have renewables comparable to nuclear for baseload power, at least for now, but in no country is new construction nuclear cheaper.
Those countries where nuclear does best will be energy ghettos in the post fossil age, as they will be competing with countries (typically sunny places closer to the equator) with cheap renewables.