this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2023
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The thing that worries me about nuclear power is that it takes something like 7 years to build, and renewables are on a declining cost curve. If you finish building your reactor 7 years from now and you can't compete with other forms of power generation, what do you do with that asset? Nobody will buy it, you can't sell the product. That's not even accounting for the payback period of it either.
I'm just a layman so I'm sure there are nuances I'm missing and I think we need all options on the table when it comes to moving away from fossil fuels. That said it seems like a very risky thing to be investing in to me.
From what I understand, some degree of nuclear power is always going to be necessary. This is because while we tend to think of excess power in the energy grid as being stored away, this in fact is not the case and we only use power as it's actively available. Excess power is wasted. The major downside of renewables is that they're circumstancial. Solar energy is only available during clear days, wind power is only available on windy days, etc. Until we massively improve our energy storage capabilities we're going to need some kind of constant supply of power backing the other ones when they aren't available. Without adequate nuclear energy available, that's going to be fossil fuels. And when compared to coal, oil, and natural gas, nuclear energy is unbelievably better for the environment. The only byproduct is the spent fuel which is dangerous, but we have control over where it ends up which is more than can be said for fossil fuels.
Yeah we need a certain baseline production that will always be on. Power needs fluctuate dramatically throughout the day. Maybe we need 100W in the morning but when people come home from work that jumps to 200W. You need to double your power production.
Nuclear takes a while to start up and slow down, so we just keep it at 100W the whole time. Then we have stuff like natural gas and goal which are great to use during peak times. You can turn it up and down very quickly.
If we want to have a nuclear + renewable system with zero fossil fuel usage then we essentially need better energy storage systems. Which people are working on, thankfully.
German nuclear plants can swing from 700MW to over 1300MW per day. Some nuclear plants can manage two swings per day, and these are OLD designs.
I still don't think that would work as a peaker plant, but it's better than nothing! If they really have improved it more than that it might work, but you are going to need at least one power source that can be meaningfully changed multiple times per day.
You should read this: https://cleantechnica.com/2022/06/28/we-dont-need-base-load-power/
While an interesting article(/ sales pitch), the base load system as a paradigm has been around forever because it works very well and is safe. Perhaps we won't need it in the near future. However, fundamentally, you don't control the sun and you don't control the wind. It could be cloudy for an extended period of time and there could be an extended period of time with a low amount of wind. What are you going to do? Article talks about geothermal, hydropower, etc and while those are great the reality is that not every place in the world can reliably harvest large amounts of geothermal or hydropower power. Wind and solar is more or less the only constant renewable.
Nuclear may be more expensive relative to renewables but it has a potential to be much more reliable. You can create a nuclear power plant and you know it will pump out xxxMW consistently. You can rely on that. I believe you could even get a majority of power from wind & solar. But getting rid of that base load is very risky unless our tech significantly changes. Granted, it probably will in the near future, so I'm not discounting that base-load paradigm perhaps could become a thing of the past.
For example with cheap and effective energy storage, you can just build large amounts of wind and solar and store all the excess. At that point, you would have a reliable source of power to handle any peak demand. Just as of today, it is needed practically speaking.
Renewables are reliable though over a long enough time frame. Offshore wind is very predictable and you can count on the sun shining in plenty of places. Solar still generates when cloudy though at a reduced output.
The problem with base load is what to do when it's very windy and sunny. You can't just turn off a nuclear plant for practical and financial reasons so nuclear isn't compatible with renewables + storage.
Ideally governments the world over will start to mandate storage construction on a massive scale, with the methods being dictated by the resources available. Pumped hydro is great where the terrain has big changes in elevation, molten salt storage is great for desert climates, etc.
We're moving rapidly to EVs too. I wish we'd get ahead of the game just once and build in a small amount of grid storage per EV, with compensation to the owner for making the capacity available.
The trick with the economics of nuclear is that building it is the main cost, once the plant is operable the cost is much lower than other sources. So by the time you have a working plant, you might as well use it to get value out of it since you have already paid for it.
And the reason nuclear isn't on a decline cost curve is due to the lack of investment monies. Nuclear didn't get the same level of RND like renewables did over the last decade.
The one I’m interested in is the “mini” reactors. They can build them in a fraction of the time. And from what I’ve read they appear to generally be “safer”, but it’s always hard to tell with all the bullshit we all get peddled.
I’m all for renewables and had hoped they’d have been more implemented by now, but here we are…
They're essentially vaporware. Where did you get the idea that they have a role to play?
Most likely we are never going to be 100% renewable. All (except maybe hydro...) current exploitable renewables are inherently unstable. Take solar for example, it's only available during the day. Or wind power, where it is difficult to predict how much energy will be produced at any given time.
Using nuclear as a supplement to renewables is probably the cleanest solution we have. If the renewables aren't producing enough power, let nuclear fill in the deficit.
The other choice is to build lots and lots of grid energy storage.
A lot of that is because a) protests, formalities, FUD and b) lack of scale (each plant is built as one of a kind). Same for price.
With a bigger scale the construction and prices would lower significantly (as with anything done at scale), but for that we have too much populism, fear and emotional driven propaganda and gullible voters. Nuclear power always had the potential to fix the humanity energy needs relatively simply, it's sad how we got to this point.
Do you really think giant energy corporations give a shit about what people think? If nuclear made financial sense we would be building new nuclear, and damn the protestors. This idea that protesters and NIMBYs are the only thing standing in the way of a glorious nuclear future is absolute nonsense.