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Nah, the power company likes the profits from nuclear way better.
The secret is that they can bill the ratepayers for all the cost overruns, while keeping the extra profits on the cost-plus construction contract for the shareholders.
(Source: I’m a Georgia Power ratepayer being absolutely reamed for Plant Vogtle 3 and 4, and the Georgia Public Service Commission isn’t doing a single goddamned thing to hold Georgia Power to account or to help people like me.)
If we had an energy system owned by the people and not ran for profits, nuclear would be a viable, and probably even the preferred, option. We do not. We’re probably going to have to fix that to get a practical and reliable clean energy grid.
No, it would just bankrupt the state. Just because something is state owned, doesn’t mean the cost vanishes.
Profits are what is earned after expenses. It wouldn’t bankrupt a state to run energy infrastructure at cost.
You are, of course, correct.
But even so, costs are costs. It doesn’t matter if you’ve achieved communism, and are in a moneyless, stateless existance, you need labor and materials to build nuclear, and labor and materials to maintain it (along with other infrastructure).
And, I’m not anti-nuclear; it does make sense to use sometimes, in some amounts. Its just very very costly for what it provides.
But frankly, even only accounting for current tech, wide spread nuclear just doesn’t make that much sense compared to renewables + storage and large grids interconnects.
If defecit spending is not permitted.
Infrastructure in this country is already so heavily subsidized by the federal government (and state, if you live somewhere that actually cares about your well-being) that we’re already pretty much paying for it all.
What do you do with the waste in that scenario? Who pays for that? Or for insurance?
Really interesting and quite easy to read article. In fact, the french energy policy is to invest in new “little” nuclear plants. I’m not sure our politics will consider these scientifical comments…
They still seem to handwave away the issue of baseload, which is entirely frustrating. As I seem to understand it, it’s just a 1:1 comparison of costs.
They use nebulous phrases like “Flexibility is more important” and point to batteries or energy saving methods getting cheaper, without actually including it in the comparison.
Although if it’s true EU plants were randomly closed from production 50% of the time baseload doesn’t really make a difference I guess.
“Baseload generator” isn’t a useful concept. And grid reliability (which is a useful concept) is thought about. It just doesn’t fit into a soundbite like winddon’tblowsundon’tshine.
Here’s an example of a full plan https://aemo.com.au/en/energy-systems/major-publications/integrated-system-plan-isp/2022-integrated-system-plan-isp
Or a simpler analysis on the same grid: https://reneweconomy.com.au/a-near-100pct-renewable-grid-for-australia-is-feasible-and-affordable-with-just-a-few-hours-of-storage/
For reference, 5kWh home batteries currently retail for about $1300 so this would add <10% to the capital cost compared to recent nuclear projects. Pumped hydro is about half the price per capacity, but a bit more per watt. The former is dropping at 10-30% per year, so by the time a nuclear plant is finished, storage cost would be negligible.
Here’s a broad overview of a slightly simplified model https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-26355-z demonstrating similar is possible everywhere.
Even in the counterfactual case where the ~5% of “other” generation is only possible with fossil fuel, focusing on it is incredibly myopic because the resources spent on that 1% of global emissions could instead be used for the other 70% which isn’t from electricity and has different reliability constraints.
Doesn’t the Australian model ask for a 4-6% fossil or other fuel input? I don’t see how base load, nuclear or other fuels aren’t relevant to discuss, as nucleur is like 4% of global output right now.
Four points:
The profile of other is short spikes 5-100 hours a few times a year.
1 year of delay is equivalent to 20 years of exclusively using fossil fuels for “other”.
It’s not even obvious that adding nuclear reactors would reduce this because they’re so geographically and temporally inflexible. France has 63GW of nuclear capacity, <45GW of average load and 61GW of winter peak load with vast amounts of storage available via interconnect to hydro countries. They still use 5% gas on top of the rest of the “other” (which is about 10-25GW).
5% of other from gas adds about 20g CO2e/kg per kWh to the total. Less than the margin between different uranium sources.
Running 40% of the capacity 10% of the time puts your nuclear energy in the realm of $1-3/kWh. The list of ways of generating or storing 6% of your energy for <$1/kWh is basically endless.
That’s about 4-8TW of capacity worldwide. 1kg of uranium is good for fuelling about 750W of reactor on a 6 year fuel cycle. Loading those reactors would require digging up all of the known and assumed-to-exist uranium immediately.
Nuclear is an irrelevant distraction being pushed by those who know it will not work. You only have to glance at the policy history or donor base of the politicians pushing for it in Sweden, Canada, Australia, UK, Poland, etc etc or the media channels pushing it to see how obvious it is that it’s fossil fuel propaganda.
It is obviously obviously true that it’s a non-solution. It fails on every single metric. All of the talking points about alleged advantages are the opposite of the truth without exception.
I don’t know enough about the topic to have an argument against, just trying to educate myself. I am curious how you would respond to this person in another thread:
https://jlai.lu/comment/1510040
I assume your response would be essentially similar to your previous comment. That we can develop the battery tech and it would be easier just to use fossil fuels as a bridge anyway?
100% renewable energy is not possible on our current electrical grids. We usually use more energy at night where renewable does not cover our peak energy requirements, therefore, as a carbon neutral energy source nuclear covers that peak perfectly.
Nuclear isn’t carbon neutral. How do you think Uranium gets mined/processed/shipped/utilized? The reaction may use/generate no carbon, but the entirety of the logistics of producing nuclear power absolutely does. Saying it’s carbon neutral is a bold faced lie.
If we want to start discussing the material processing effort then it’s going to be pretty hard to call any energy source carbon neutral. The concrete for dams and the steel for windmills don’t appear out of thin air.
alternatively, address the shortcomings of the power grid
Instead of “alternatively” let’s say “in addition”. We’re not going to solve anything with a single solution we need nuclear, we need solar and other renewables, and we need to upgrade the grid. All at the same time.
Precisely this, you can’t fix it, if you do not make an effort.
Profit doesn’t equal good. Renewables take a lot of materials and fabrication to upkeep. Im sure theres more money to be made in renewable than there is in nuclear, that doesn’t imply one is better than the other.
And? Who gives a shit? We need whatever is cleanest.
Nuclear isn’t very clean when we can poison a quarter of the earth with it because we’re too dumb to handle it.
Renewables don’t make money they cost money. They generate revenue because of subsidies and because manufacturing green energy technology is a dirty and extremely lucrative business. The part they dont tell you is that if u wana make solar panels u need to destroy the environment to do it. If u wana build a windmill its millions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of precious minerals strip mined out of the earth. Thats your profit.
This is always the response dumb people trying to sound smart give.
Same for nuclear if we’re being honest
Literally any piece of equipment manufactured today requires “precious minerals strip mined out of the earth.” You’re saying “renewables cause enviromental harm” while ignoring that literally ANY energy source causes environmental harm. WTF is your point?
Every wind turbine requires over 1,500,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms of neodymium, a RARE EARTH METAL!!!
Is simple mathematics now “research”
More profitable AND safer. Humans are too stupid, lazy and bureaucratic to use nuclear.
To be fair though per terrawatt hour nuclear is safer than wind power and only beat in safety by solar.
Not actually safer, per kilowatt hour though.
Ok but how viable are those renewables? In Louisiana, dispite all of our water and river, hydroelectric power is impossible, because the elevation is to gradual. In normal weather new orleans is often cloudy for solar panels on a large scale.
The point I am saying is that cost doesn’t account for a lot of things
The market absolutely accounts for those things.
If renewables are more expensive in your specific area than nuclear, then that makes sense for your area.
This isn’t like choosing a path in a video game. We can do all the things.
What about when the grid is almost entirely renewables? Is nuclear cheaper than just storage? What about storage one it’s already been implemented to the point of resource scarcity?
If we measured the amount of destruction to our environment that fossil fuels cost long-term I bet they’d stop being profitable really quick.
Oil companies knew all about this since at least the 70s, and it was still very very profitable for them.
Turns out humans are selfish.
Who fucking cares about profit, our planet is dying.
The planet is fine, and will be fine after we’ve gone, much like it was fine after the other mass extinctions. What’s dying is the environment that supports human life. Less snappy, granted, but I feel like emphasising that this is our problem and not something we should do for others might be worthwhile.
Do you never get tired of being pointlessly pedantic? Yes, the planet, as in the big rock floating in space, will continue to exist. Thanks.
There’s a point to my pedantry here. Did you read my whole post or just the first few words?
anyone with a basic understanding of economics?
Like either we spend fuck tons of money subsidising nuclear to make it profitable or we can focus on wind and companies will build it themselves because its profitable.
What do you think is more likely: that I don’t understand the basics of how capitalism works? Or maybe that the comment was a criticism of the worship of the “free market,” and considering profit-motive to be the be-all, end-all?
Well considering you’re conflating a market economy with capitalism…
I care. I care that we don’t make a rash decision for a potential short term solution. Why not ramp up solar / wind and other alternatives?
Storage, we have less Lithium than you seem to think, and pumped hydro is not a solution – not that it’s not a universal solution, it’s simply not a solution. Implementation costs more than a nuclear reactor and maintenance and security costs are way, way higher than a nuclear reactor. We, unless you want to adopt a powerless overnight lifestyle, need on-demand power generation. Nuclear is the best, safest, cleanest, most feasible option for that until we remove all precious metals from energy storage technology.
I disagree. Nuclear is too slow costly and a huge security risk for an already unsafe grid. We need energy decentralization in addition to decarbonization. Renewables like solar and wind are 100% the best step.
That’s not difficult. Nuclear is extremely expensive.
With renewables you just sell it to the grid for whatever gas generated electricity is going for. Which is currently still a fucking lot. Thanks Russia.
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Thanks Russia.
Oh, it gets worse. Russia is big on nuclear, they have a whole agency that deals in nuclear in Europe, it’s called ROSATOM.
This is related to other post with the fossil-fuel sponsored ecomodernist girl whining about Greenpeace and nuclear:
Russia lobbied to have the EU include nuclear energy and fossil methane to be included in the “sustainable” taxonomy: https://www.greenpeace.de/publikationen/20220517-greenpeace-report-russland-taxonomie.pdf (PDF)
Russia has a good stranglehold on nuclear energy: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-02-14/russia-s-grip-on-nuclear-power-trade-is-only-getting-stronger and many European powers …compliant to that.
Russia’s nuclear trade with Europe flowing amid Ukraine war https://web.archive.org/web/20221011224411/https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/russias-nuclear-trade-europe-flowing-amid-ukraine-war-90691865
European Union nations are continuing to import and export nuclear fuel that is not under EU sanctions on Russia
Russia’s Grip on Nuclear-Power Trade Is Only Getting Stronger https://www.politico.eu/article/russia-nuclear-power-uranium-plants-europe-imports-germany-sanctions-ukraine-war/
New data show exports in the strategic industry jumped more than 20% last year, as long-term projects boost Russian influence.
Here’s an article in German: https://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/unternehmen/uran-abhaengigkeit-russland-koennte-den-usa-noch-erhebliche-schmerzen-zufuegen-a-cad81a53-4704-4842-a641-1b6191e4add5
It’s even more complicated, but building nuclear now in Europe would mean more dependency on Russian nuclear fuel and nuclear tech.
This includes France, the nuclear postergirl:
French Nuclear Power Crisis Frustrates Europe’s Push to Quit Russian Energy https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/18/business/france-nuclear-power-russia.html
France typically exports electricity, but now it risks blackouts and a need for imported power because of problems at the state nuclear operator.
France accused of funding Putin’s war effort by buying his nuclear fuel https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/12/02/france-accused-aiding-putins-war-importing-russian-nuclear-fuel/
It’s not just complicated, with many limits, but the useless yammer of nuclear-fanboys is just using up air in discourse.
Building more nuclear will not help with with climate warming mitigation. And it has its own problems with climate, as France knows…
(most recent time this happened, again) France to reduce nuclear power generation due to heat wave https://www.laprensalatina.com/france-to-reduce-nuclear-power-generation-due-to-heat-wave/ from a few weeks ago.
Building More nuclear will help with climate warming. None of your links deal with that.
how will it help? the stuff comes online in decades in the future. We need to reduce emissions now.
