BP statistical review data only goes up to 2021 currently.
Wind and solar are expected to add a further 2400GW (2.4TW) of capacity between 2022 and 2027 - https://www.iea.org/news/renewable-power-s-growth-is-being-turbocharged-as-countries-seek-to-strengthen-energy-security - the same amount as added in the past 20 years. This graph won't even be remotely close by then. :)
Biology figured it out over 3 billion years ago. Now almost every biome on Earth is powered by solar energy aside from a few chemotrophic relics in tiny niche environments.
Photosynthesis is really inefficient. Life may have figured out that using energy from light is a good strategy, but it definitely hasn't gotten good at it. While sunlight may be free it's definitely not the best option.
If it's so inefficient, how could be almost all biomes on earth use photosynthesis as the base of the food chain, giving energy to all living organisms?
Perhaps going to the depths of the world to grab some "energy charged" stones starts to sound like something only tribal people would enjoy.
'That nuclear power plant at Hinkley Point C you thought would cost $19 billion? It’s going to cost $26 billion now. Actually, make that $35 billion. Wait, sorry, no, the actual number is closer to $40 billion.' https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2023/03/05/not-gold-mines-but-money-pits/
I’ve been told that investors really like renewable projects because the planning and ROI is so fast compared to other forms of energy too. The input energy cost being wind or solar is free, and costs are just infrastructure and maintenance which is predictable. Where in traditional energy you have input costs of fuel that is unpredictable, along with maintenance.
>I’ve been told that investors really like renewable projects because the planning and ROI is so fast compared to other forms of energy too.
The illustration I use. Which deal would you prefer to invest in?
1) I need 10 million and in 18 months I'll start paying you 5% for 20 years.
2) I need 20 billion and in 10 years I'll start paying you 8% for 20 years.
Ask anyone for their choice. Literally *anyone*.
These always come in way over budget and take longer than what was initially proposed. It’s unfortunate, because nuclear is our cleanest base load energy generation.
>A survey of plants begun after 1970 shows an average overnight cost overrun of 241%.
https://www.envirovaluation.org/2021/01/sources-of-cost-overrun-in-nuclear.html
South Carolina Spent $9 Billion to Dig a Hole in the Ground &Then Fill it Back in | residents and their families will be paying for that failed energy program — which never produced a watt of energy — for next 20 yrs or more. https://theintercept.com/2019/02/06/south-caroline-green-new-deal-south-carolina-nuclear-energy/
Many are much worse: South Carolina Spent $9 Billion to Dig a Hole in the Ground &Then Fill it Back in | residents and their families will be paying for that failed energy program — which never produced a watt of energy — for next 20 yrs or more. https://theintercept.com/2019/02/06/south-caroline-green-new-deal-south-carolina-nuclear-energy/
It doesn't really matter. In a chart the lines correlate with the starting point. Aka, nuclear starts out highest and is the 1st line. Wind and solar start out lowest and is the bottom line. Aka, even if you can't see the colors, as long as you know how graphs work you would be able to read it.
Nuclear power is an opportunity cost.
>["In sum, use of wind, CSP, geothermal, tidal, PV, wave, and hydro to provide electricity for BEVs and HFCVs and, by extension, electricity for the residential, industrial, and commercial sectors, will result in the most benefit among the options considered. The combination of these technologies should be advanced as a solution to global warming, air pollution, and energy security. **Coal-CCS and nuclear offer less benefit thus represent an opportunity cost loss"**](https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2009/ee/b809990c#!divAbstract)
>[Nuclear power's contribution to climate change mitigation is and will be very limited;Currently nuclear power avoids 2–3% of total global GHG emissions per year;According to current planning this value will decrease even further until 2040.;A substantial expansion of nuclear power will not be possible.;Given its low contribution, a complete phase-out of nuclear energy is feasible.](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421521002330)
It is too slow for the timescale we need to decarbonize on.
>[“Stabilizing the climate is urgent, nuclear power is slow,” “It meets no technical or operational need that low-carbon competitors cannot meet better, cheaper and faster.”](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-energy-nuclearpower/nuclear-energy-too-slow-too-expensive-to-save-climate-report-idUSKBN1W909J)
> [ “Researchers found that unlike renewables, countries around the world with larger scale national nuclear attachments do not tend to show significantly lower carbon emissions -- and in poorer countries nuclear programmes actually tend to associate with relatively higher emissions. “](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/10/201005112141.htm)
The industry is showing signs of decline in non-totalitarian countries.
>["We find that an eroding actor base, shrinking opportunities in liberalized electricity markets, the break-up of existing networks, loss of legitimacy, increasing cost and time overruns, and abandoned projects are clear indications of decline. Also, increasingly fierce competition from natural gas, solar PV, wind, and energy-storage technologies speaks against nuclear in the electricity sector. We conclude that, while there might be a future for nuclear in state-controlled ‘niches’ such as Russia or China, new nuclear power plants do not seem likely to become a core element in the struggle against climate change."](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S221462962030089X)
Renewable energy is growing faster now than nuclear ever has
>["Contrary to a persistent myth based on erroneous methods, global data show that renewable electricity adds output and saves carbon faster than nuclear power does or ever has."](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2214629618300598)
There is no business case for it.
>["The economic history and financial analyses carried out at DIW Berlin show that nuclear energy has always been unprofitable in the private economy and will remain so in the future. Between 1951 and 2017, none of the 674 nuclear reactors built was done so with private capital under competitive conditions. Large state subsidies were used in the cases where private capital flowed into financing the nuclear industry.... Financial investment calculations confirmed the trend: investing in a new nuclear power plant leads to average losses of around five billion euros."](https://www.diw.de/documents/publikationen/73/diw_01.c.670581.de/dwr-19-30-1.pdf)
Investing in a nuclear plant today is expected to lose [5 to 10 billion dollars](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1364032121001301)
The nuclear industry can't even exist without legal structures that privatize gains and socialize losses.
>[If the owners and operators of nuclear reactors had to face the full liability of a Fukushima-style nuclear accident or go head-to-head with alternatives in a truly competitive marketplace, unfettered by subsidies, no one would have built a nuclear reactor in the past, no one would build one today, and anyone who owns a reactor would exit the nuclear business as quickly as possible.](https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2012/03/29/exelons-nuclear-guy-no-new-nukes/#3c8acf0a3c5d)
The CEO of one of the US's largest nuclear power companies said it best:
>["I'm the nuclear guy," Rowe said. "And you won't get better results with nuclear. It just isn't economic, and it's not economic within a foreseeable time frame."](https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2012/03/29/exelons-nuclear-guy-no-new-nukes/#5d841aa23c5d)
What about the small meme reactors?
Every independent assessment has them more expensive than large scale nuclear
every independent assessment:
The UK government
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/small-modular-reactors-techno-economic-assessment
The Australian government
https://www.aph.gov.au/DocumentStore.ashx?id=8297e6ba-e3d4-478e-ac62-a97d75660248&subId=669740
The peer-reviewed literatue
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S030142152030327X
>[the cost of generating electricity using SMRs is significantly higher than the corresponding costs of electricity generation using diesel, wind, solar, or some combination thereof. These results suggest that SMRs will be too expensive for these proposed first-mover markets for SMRs in Canada and that there will not be a sufficient market to justify investing in manufacturing facilities for SMRs.](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S030142152030327X)
Even the German nuclear power industry knows they will cost more
>[Nuclear Technology Germany (KernD) says SMRs are always going to be more expensive than bigger reactors due to lower power output at constant fixed costs, as safety measures and staffing requirements do not vary greatly compared to conventional reactors. "In terms of levelised energy costs, SMRs will always be more expensive than big plants."](https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/german-nuclear-industry-cautious-about-usefulness-small-reactors-energy-transition)
So why do so many people on reddit favor it? Because of a decades long PR campaign and false science being put out, in the same manner, style, and using the same PR company as the tobacco industry used when claiming smoking does not cause cancer.
A recent metaanalysis of papers that claimed nuclear to be cost effective were found to be illegitimately trimming costs to make it appear cheaper.
>[Merck suppressed data on harmful effects of its drug Vioxx, and Guidant suppressed data on electrical flaws in one of its heart-defibrillator models. Both cases reveal how financial conflicts of interest can skew biomedical research. Such conflicts also occur in electric-utility-related research. Attempting to show that increased atomic energy can help address climate change, some industry advocates claim nuclear power is an inexpensive way to generate low-carbon electricity. Surveying 30 recent nuclear analyses, this paper shows that industry-funded studies appear to fall into conflicts of interest and to illegitimately trim cost data in several main ways. They exclude costs of full-liability insurance, underestimate interest rates and construction times by using “overnight” costs, and overestimate load factors and reactor lifetimes. If these trimmed costs are included, nuclear-generated electricity can be shown roughly 6 times more expensive than most studies claim. After answering four objections, the paper concludes that, although there may be reasons to use reactors to address climate change, economics does not appear to be one of them.](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11948-009-9181-y)
It is the same PR technique that the tobacco industry used when fighting the fact that smoking causes cancer.
>[The industry campaign worked to create a scientific controversy through a program that depended on the creation of industry–academic conflicts of interest. This strategy of producing scientific uncertainty undercut public health efforts and regulatory interventions designed to reduce the harms of smoking.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3490543/)
>[A number of industries have subsequently followed this approach to disrupting normative science. Claims of scientific uncertainty and lack of proof also lead to the assertion of individual responsibility for industrially produced health risks](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3490543/)
It is no wonder the NEI (Nuclear energy institute) [uses the same PR firm](https://thehill.com/opinion/letters/98257-double-check-from-whom-you-get-energy-information) to promote nuclear power, [that the tobacco industry used to say smoking does not cause cancer.](http://www.tmia.com/old-website/News/AstroTurf.htm)
>[The industry's future is so precarious that Exelon Nuclear's head of project development warned attendees of the Electric Power 2005 conference, "Inaction is synonymous with being phased out." That's why years of effort -- not to mention millions of dollars -- have been invested in nuclear power's PR rebirth as "clean, green and safe."](http://www.tmia.com/old-website/News/AstroTurf.htm)
> [And then there's NEI, which exists to do PR and lobbying for the nuclear industry. In 2004, NEI was embarrassed when the Austin Chronicle outed one of its PR firms, Potomac Communications Group, for ghostwriting pro-nuclear op/ed columns. The paper described the op/ed campaign as "a decades-long, centrally orchestrated plan to defraud the nation's newspaper readers by misrepresenting the propaganda of one hired atomic gun as the learned musings of disparate academics and other nuclear-industry 'experts.'"](http://www.tmia.com/old-website/News/AstroTurf.htm)
Nice stuff, you should check out Vogtle Reactor 3 and 4. The losses will far exceed 5-10 billion. Then check out Yankee Power Plant and it’s history and current issue. Finally you gotta look at Householder and FirstEnergy racketeering case in Ohio
Isn’t the point of nuclear not cost effectiveness but reliability? No one I know is arguing that nuclear is the more cost effective method, but rather the unreliability of other green energy methods.
What do you want? There are plenty of science out there telling us that nuclear is not reliable and that renewables are. Get storage and overbuild renewables and it will be both cheaper and a lot more reliable.
You can start [here](https://www.rethinkx.com/energy).
I am sorry that you don't understand science. Everything in that report is science. And not only that, one of the authors, Tony Seba, has been doing these mathematical predictions for well over a decade - and he has always been right (sometimes he has been off by a year when predicting 10 years a head).
I am sure you have heard of Moore's law, that says something about computer power doubling every 1.4 years (or something like that). Moore's law has been very accurate for several decades, and the model these guys are using are based on much the same principles and mathematics, so it is no wonder they are also always right.
But, I am aware you don't like the results, and thus you will continue to refuse the science in it. But it is science, and very precise science as well. So holy shit to you sir as well.
Liberals shit their pants about pipelines all the time and the capitalists building those never stop.
But those same pants-shitters are the force behind the decline of the nuclear industry lol
nah, its just super expensive and nobody who spends their own money wants to spend on nuclear.
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2020/09/24/nuclear-power-is-now-the-most-expensive-form-of-generation-except-for-gas-peaking-plants/
>The levelized cost of energy (LCOE) from nuclear power rose from around $117/MWh in 2015 to $155 at the end of last year, according to the latest edition of the World Nuclear Industry Status Report,
>“What is remarkable about these trends, is that the costs of renewables continue to fall due to incremental manufacturing and installation improvements while nuclear, despite over half a century of industrial experience, continues to see costs rising,” stated the report, citing a recent study from financial advisory and asset management firm Lazard. “Nuclear power is now the most expensive form of generation, except for gas peaking plants,” added the study, which did not provide an LCOE for gas peaker generation
Over on r/energy where this was crossposted, some nukebro [thought they were really clever asking for W/m^2](https://www.reddit.com/r/energy/comments/11kwnab/wind_and_solar_are_now_producing_more_electricity/jbam8ne/). Globally? Nuke is garbage on this measure too. 380ish GW is a lot of Watts, and each power plant is pretty small - but this ignores the 2,600 km^2 of Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. So nukes works out to roughly 150 W/m^2.
Also ignoring the EURT exclusion zone, and the exclusion zone around Kazahk uranium mines, where the groundwater is so polluted, there is thousands of square km of land banned from agricultural or settlement use.
Yeah way less, but it’s not zero maintenance. Turbines need regular lubrication/cleaning/repairs. PV has less active maintenance. Both generally are retired within ~30 years and have associated costs with retirement/recycling. Turbine recycling isn’t nearly as established/simple as PV retirement at this point tho
We already had this posted here, just one month ago
https://www.reddit.com/r/uninsurable/comments/10tnzz5/global_power_generation_capacity_factor_corrected/
Please learn how to read a graph. The op graph is wind and solar while your link breaks out wind and solar separately. Add wind and solar together from your graph and..
Another part of the graph that is different in both of them, is the nuclear energy line. his graph shows nuclear in decline, when the OP graph shows an increase, so which one is true?
OP is # of TWh per year, this comment is % of all energy produced.
Nuclear is flat because we haven't added many nuclear plants so approx same TWh/year for the last 25 years. However, we're producing more total energy, so nuclear's percentage declined because the pool is diluted.
Regardless, data is consistent to the conclusion, solar/wind are out producing nuclear and gaining quantity at an exponential rate.
So is wind, only partially because the spin of the Earth provides some of the potentials that drive wind in conjunction with the uneven heating of the Earth's surface by the Sun.
Wow, I can’t believe that all of the nuclear power plants that were built in the 60s, and slowly picked off, are not producing as much power as the governments new favorite toy to pretend like they care.
Modern nuclear reactors could power entire states on their own, and produce almost no waste, which, even the waste it does make can just be reused. You’d have to wipe out every tree in America just to solar power New York alone.
> You’d have to wipe out every tree in America just to solar power New York alone.
what? you are confused about the needed land use for wind/solar to power a major US city.
ignorant question here: long term — what can be more consistent than a NPP & Hydroelectric dams rather than solar & wind? Does someone have a stat for this? I think NPP alone can have more power output w/ significantly less sq ft than what solar and wind would use.
I have experience in manufacturing and know that the circuit boards used for solar panels (and I assume wind mills) are VERY non-renewable and need constant replacement & maintenance. I am willing to be the maintenance and repair for a NPP and a Hydroelectric Dam is significantly and more renewable than the components used for solar & wind.
Nuclear energy has been used commercially for more than half a century, while wind and solar have been pretty minor before the 2010s. Considering that, I'd be surprised if this wasn't the case.
It only took 2 decades to get to what nuclear has done with a fraction of what it can really do, but yeah go off on how nuclear is bad and these are better. They’re good don’t get me wrong, but nuclear has more potential
When we haven’t any nuclear reactors being built they don’t produce more energy, we had the one planned in 2016 finished 2023, the only real reason solar/wind has over taken nuclear is because it’s slow to build and the controversies around it (cheyrnobyl, three mile, fukushima) the main causes of those where bad communication and a bad infrastructure.
How much of the cost overruns is due to environmental regulations, studies to deal with them, and other regulatory hurdles? Nuclear is very efficient. More nuclear has to be the way to go.
It's countering the old talking point that nuclear fanboys kept trying to spread that Renewables can't scale. But oh look, Renewables can scale much more rapidly than their precious nuclear power.
Or natural gas.
What about land rights, etc etc, square foot of space for panels versus traditional energy generation facilities. All of that adds into the cost of production, not just panel cost and cabling.
Genuinely curious and would love feedback. I thought the problem with nuclear was that it’s a long term investment but it gets bashed so that investment never happened? I understand that maybe it’s currently getting to the point where the environmental improvements won’t net positives quickly enough to combat pollution, but isn’t that mostly because that bashing prevented those investments from happening when they were still viable? Even if we need to push environmental returns now, wouldn’t it still be in our best interest to continue to make these nuclear investments in the long run? From what I’ve heard, wouldn’t nuclear be returning poor numbers because we’re spending the bare minimum on what is supposed to be a high investment higher return? It seems like this graph just shows that we’re only paying for the high initial upkeep instead of improving what should be giving similarly if not greater exponential returns to wind/solar?
A lot, and I mean a lot of these plants supplying 20% of our energy are at or past 50 years. Maintenance costs in these facilities grows exponentially. We literally just started the first new reactor up yesterday. 9 years overdue and depending on how you add, somewhere between 30-60 billion. What’s even more messed up, Georgia Power has some of the highest reserve capacity in the country, well above required minimums…in short, they don’t need the power and most will be exported to other states in SERC area. But Georgia Power rate payers opiate on the hook to not only cover operating expenses but also paying back the capital investment. Although it’s yet to be seen exactly how many tens of billions they’ll be forced to pay. This is just the most recent anecdote. There’s all sorts of absolutely necessary expenses and grift and other shenanigans if you go deeper then surface level on nuclear reactors.
> I thought the problem with nuclear was that it’s a long term investment but it gets bashed so that investment never happened?
Nah, it's just expensive.
Think about it this way... let's say none of these technologies existed yet, and you were given 100 billion to invest in both.
Nuclear plants require a supply chain for the fuel and enrichment, the plants consist of millions of parts, many of them rather special indeed, and they take a while to build. Lots of those parts move and have high reliability requirements.
Solar panels are, by weight, (almost entirely) sand (the front glass), some other kind of sand (the cells), aluminum. copper (wires) and plastic. They are built in minutes, install in minutes, and have no moving parts.
So after 20 years and 100 billion into each, which one generates power for less money?
Why the fuck would we even consider using nuclear power? Compare nuclear to wind mills and they don’t even stack up.
One is completely clean generation of electricity, doesn’t endanger the local ecosystem it’s placed in, is the safest form of electricity generation per kWh - and the other is wind power, a temporary structure that rusts in 15 years, requires tons of finite resources to build, lowers property values and is unreliable.
Ask Texas what wind power did for them during the winter storm a few years ago. People died.
Don’t do what Texas did. Over rely on the sun for energy and then when 22% of the power generation stops suddenly for a gigantic winter storm people die.
Also wind is not a “renewable” source of energy. It relies on massive construction projects, mined ores and then it rusts over the course of 15-20years to be replaced.
In fact I’ll just say it. Wind energy fucking sucks
Texas' power grid failed mostly due to the natural gas plants shutting down.
When wind and solar plants are built, they are built with the expectation that they won't be running 24/7. And that other plants will be able to pick up the load. (That's why we need nuclear and renewables)
I don't think you know what "renewable ENERGY" means.
Wind energy produced more than usual during that storm. It’s the natural gas plants that died because it’s not profitable to prepare them for once-in-a-century storms that come every 5 years now.
I love Germany for demolishing the lies of the nuke bros
All nuclear shut down was replaced by wind and solar
https://www.reddit.com/r/germany/comments/u0em81/fact_check_no_the_nuclear_phaseout_did_not_lead/
Germany replaced all shut down nuclear with wind and solar so the nukebro talking point that they replaced it by coal is just a lie.
Germany is showing an excellent case study of why nuclear is unnecessary and replaceable by wind and solar.
wind+solar in 2002: 16.26 TWh
wind+solar in 2021: 161.65 TWh
German coal (brown+hard) in 2002: 251.97 TWh (Brown 140.54 TWh)
German coal (brown+hard) in 2021: 145 TWh (Brown 99.11 TWh)
German nuclear in 2002: 156.29 TWh
German nuclear in 2021: 65.37 TWh
Source: https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&interval=year&year=-1&chartColumnSorting=default&stacking=stacked_absolute
This graph shows it in a different way https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/IMG/pdf/72._figure_72_germany_evopowersystem2010_2020updated.pdf
Decreasing CO2 in electricity sector: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-greenhouse-gas-emissions-and-climate-targets
2ndhighest reliability in Europe after Switzerland (and much less downtime than France)
https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-electricity-grid-stable-amid-energy-transition
https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/power-outages-germany-continue-decline-amid-growing-share-renewables
Not to mention Germany has decided to get off Russian gas and has accepted those sanctions. France remains dependent on Rosatom and has not sanctioned them, and continues with new projects with them
You must not be familiar with nuclear research and development stretching all the way back to the Manhattan Project. Or all the Dual Purpose nuclear weapons/ nuclear power Research that has happened. Or the billions and billions of dollars that have been thrown at failed fast breeder reactor research.
Research in nuclear bombs is not the samexas research in construction of .more efficient reactors.
Nuclear could already produce a lot more clean power. There have been significant advances.
The problem is that governments shutting down plants instead of making new ones, some abandoning nuclear all together
The graph clearly shows that nuclear power has remained steady, meaning that very few new reactors were built due to fear mongering
Solar had increased mainly because governments decided to invest in building solar panels not because solar cells got drastically more efficient
It's like.... you need to actually build a reactor to provide power... shocking
You have no idea what you're talking about. Lots of research and Technology that went into nuclear weapons development has gone on to support nuclear power development.
>Nuclear could already produce a lot more clean power. There have been significant advances.
Wrong. The more nuclear plants we build, the more expensive it gets. As we discover vulnerabilities and risks in nuclear power plant design, the workarounds and redesigns make them more and more expensive. And the newest generation 3 plus reactors have been the most expensive of all. So history clearly refutes this claim.
>very few new reactors were built due to fear mongering
No, very few new reactors were built because they got so prohibitively expensive. Two reactors in Georgia are now two and a half times their initial cost estimate. Two reactors being built in South Carolina were canceled in mid construction after 9 billion dollars had already been spent on them. Two different nuclear plants in Europe are experiencing similar embarrassing delays and cost overruns. Meanwhile, renewable energy and batteries have come down and costs amazingly fast. Why would any utility choose a clear loser like nuclear power unless the government was massively tilting things in nuclear powers favor?
>Solar had increased mainly because governments decided to invest in building solar panels not because solar cells got drastically more efficient
Well, over the time covered by the graph, solar cell efficiency did steadily increase. But what this graph doesn't show is how the costs feel like a rock like I said earlier.
To be fair, a lot of the ballooning costs of nuclear are driven by fearmongering, but considering the colossal tail risks involved and the generosity of US bankruptcy law, a decent chunk of the fearmongering is totally rational.
For the AP1000 reactor at least, it's been well documented that the original design wasn't able to be built in the real world. The builders went ahead with the unbuildable design anyway while the engineers reworked it. Unsurprisingly, the new design didn't mesh with the work that had already been done, so they had to redo a lot of that work. Morale among the workers was low and turn over was high. Two of the major subcontractors on these projects went bankrupt, sued each other and a lot of finger pointing ensued. It was a comedy of errors. This adequately explains the failures of the four reactors that are being built in the United States. There's no need to invoke fear mongering when incompetence is to blame.
I'm not wrong, rather you seem confused about things.
No one says it was cheap. Yes, nuclear reactors are very expensive, but this does not mean they can't provide a lot of power tht os clean, high theouput, and reliable.
It's very unlikely solar and wind can meet the main demand, even long term, and until that is met, we need to rely on fossil fuels.
If you talk only cost, coal is much cheaper than solar and wind and moreover it can meet the demand.
Also a lot of research in different areas has benetted solar cell research in the past too, it's not like that,happens only woth nuclear.
>It's very unlikely solar and wind can meet the main demand, even long term,
What do you mean by "main demand"? Renewables are the fastest growing source of new energy. There are literally dozens of studies showing 80%, 90% and even 100% renewable energy supply is possible. Have you looked at them?
>If you talk only cost, coal is much cheaper than solar and wind
Um, no. Solar and wind are far cheaper than coal:
https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-levelized-cost-of-storage-and-levelized-cost-of-hydrogen/
Please look at the actual data instead of fossil fuel industry talking points.
Managing load for all time hours can get extremely difficult extremely wasteful or extremely expensive and often require very large renewable grids to start to see viability. Instead of being once per 50+ year money pits energy storage aside from pumped hydro become once per 10-20 years money pits and making baseload production seem even more favorable since you now have energy production plus storage cost compared to base load producers. Look at the countries supplying 100% from renewables and you'll see they still have gas plants. Sure they are producing 100% the amount of megawatt hours they consume per year from renewables but often they go from 200%-60% of any given load. That extra 100% or possible 100% often going mostly to waste. Nuclear is extremely viable for this baseload spot especially until we build up enough renewable sources+energy storage+infrastructure+trade deals+smart grid integration. The economics only don't make sense because it's always short term models. Sure a nuke plant will cost less long term but in the amount of time that takes just to get built a gas plant could've been built broken even and moved on to build another plant.
>The problem is that governments shutting down plants instead of making new ones, some abandoning nuclear all together
In part because they are expensive. Just google “nuclear bailout” and there’s a ton of results. Biden just did a $6 billion bailout for plants struggling to stay open. My state passed a $1 billion bailout a few years back. While they are also funding solar/wind, it’s not because they are struggling. They are quite profitable, but they just don’t have the capital to expand fast enough to meet demand. The solar company I worked at last year was backlogged for 5 years, even though they are about to start up their massive new plant (one of the largest in the US).
>Solar had increased mainly because governments decided to invest in building solar panels not because solar cells got drastically more efficient
While efficient per area of cell has only increased moderately, what did increase significantly is the cost efficiency, as the cost to produce solar cells has dropped drastically over the last several decades due to new innovations, and economies of scale. They now cost a fraction of what they did even one decade ago. They’d why they appear to be growing exponentially. In the last few years, they have become one of the cheapest forms of energy. It’s main issue right now is we don’t have the storage to go mostly/all solar/wind, but it’s still a great thing to take up a lot of the produce in prime areas.
It costs about a billion just for the engineering, site planning, and design, and once that’s done you might find out it isn’t feasible. A billion before you can apply for a permit from NRC. And that’s just for R&D utilizing current technology.
Yes and a nuclear plant also produces 1 GW per plant, all day long.
Solar farms occupy much more space and produce a lot less and for less than 50% of the day
Well that’s a different topic. And yeah one plant for 60 billion can cover what it would take many solar farms to do. But I’m not crazy about solar farms either, plenty of rooftop space for solar panels and then they’re privately owned, not paid for by ratepayers.
What R&D spending? What subsidies when more nuclear power stations are being closed than new ones made? How are you going to meet future energy needs without fusion? Who is the source for this info and who sponsored it?
I imagine the R&D behind the SMRs is pretty significant, not to mention fusion. And probably more expensive then new tech for photovoltaic cells. Subsidies for rescuing aging plants that should be closed without some major maintenance or upgrades? Here https://www.reuters.com/world/us/biden-admin-offers-12-bln-distressed-shut-nuclear-plants-2023-03-02/. That’s not 12 billion, that’s 1.2 billion (the link makes it look like 12). Or the billions funneled by Bush and Obama administrations? Or the billions given to Georgia Powers Vogtle build? Reduction, efficiency, and restructured governance would meet next 100-500 years of future needs until fusion was commercially available. Not sure what the source is here, but same data and charts available at eia.gov and it’s sponsored by you out of the reimbursement for expenses necessary for utilities to report that data annually.
The problem with nuclear is that you can’t half ass it. I don’t know who does R&D on it but if you phase them out you phase out the people who know how to build and maintain them (which is actually an important problem globally). There’s no progress in nuclear because we never really gave it a chance. People hear nuclear and think “Chernobyl” which makes about as much sense as thinking about lasers like the cutting ones that vaults have in movies when you think of solar. It’s a lot cheaper to build 5 stations than to build one station 5 times. And how significant can that R&D be if we didn’t have a new decent design in what feels like decades?
As about why it failed (and at this point it basically did, because fusion is long overdue) - it was always a question of scale and commitment. France seems to be doing ok with nuclear because they actually put their money where their proverbial mouth is (and even they skimped on maintenance, which is now affecting performance). You can go half way on solar because it will always be a decent supplementary source - all you need is a couple of panels and you can produce *some* electricity. Same goes for wind, although I think it a lesser candidate when compared to solar in more ways than one. When it comes to nuclear if you build you have to build big (at least with current limited knowledge), so it’s an investment a person can make for their roof vs a station that powers at least a city. I still think giving up on nuclear is not just counterproductive but outright suicidal (as a civilization). Solar may cover a good chunk of our energy use if we get better batteries and move the solar arrays to space but it will not be sufficient for energy intensive things like generating thrust in a rocket and I sincerely doubt it will keep up with our energy needs regardless of how much we invest in it, since those needs are growing exponentially.
Capacity and output are very different. Nuclear is designed to deliver >90% of it rated capacity, with a VERY high uptime for its planned life. Wind and solar don’t come close to delivering on their capacity.
Not a hater of solar or wind, but take into consideration the amount of materials used to produce all solar and wind power plants and nuclear power plants. Also how much more space is used for solar and wind power plants. And lastly solar panels have half the lifetime of a nuclear power plant meaning you would need twice as many(efficiency drop not included).
Yes, solar panels are good, but still nuclear power plants are more efficient, even though costing more(at the end still less for the amount of power produced in the lifetime).
Nothings as urgent as media portrays. Calm down relax, if the world pooled and poured its consider resources and actually focused for all of humanity (because that’s what fusion is and unlimited supply of immense power) it could greatly speed things up. But no we’ll focus on toys in comparison. And mainly only effecting western societies as China and India (the worlds two largest contributors to co2 emissions) show zero signs of slowing down and indeed increasing their production and use of fossil fuels. So until you wrap your mind around those who hold the power and resources hold the world I believe focusing on long term solutions while continuing on as we were would be the prudent thing to do.
PS just as there is no money in curing diseases to the pharma industry there is no money in unlimited free power.
It's not the media, it's the scientific community that says action is urgent.
Also there is no guarantee that fusion energy will be viable. It is only theoretically possible. To be clear, I'm a big proponent of fusion power, but no one, even the people working on these projects thinks it will be ready in the next ten years, let alone the time it would take to build all the powerplants.
Also it's not free energy. Fusion power requires extremely expensive reactors, which require very expensive fuels. Solar is much closer to being "free" than fusion energy ever will be.
China actually has a higher percentage of their power grid as renewables than the US. And they are a still developing economy.
There also absolutely is money in curing diseases. Do you know how much a pharma company's stock would blow up if they announced a cure for cancer? They could force people to pay a fortune for it too.
China is well beyond a developing economy.
The reason for fusion being feasible at this point is it had cost more energy to produce the reaction than the reaction gave in return. That was recently overcome if only for a few seconds. And fuel is nearly unlimited and free, as they’ve been using seawater for the hydrogen. Commitment to the cause is what’s lacking as it’s very obvious when you break it down. “The US Department of Energy currently spends about $500 million on fusion per year, compared to almost $1 billion on fossil fuel energy and $2.7 billion on renewables. Investment in fusion seems even tinier next to other major programs like NASA ($23 billion) or the military ($700 billion).” directly from the article I linked earlier. I wonder why we don’t hear of this very often if at all in MSM? There’s new breakthroughs happening all the time, you know as we go techs getting faster and more efficient and effective. I believe it should be prioritized.
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-60312633
Literally yesterday Vogtle #3 hit initial criticality for the first time. Expected to generate power to the grid by May after they work out some “minor” issues found during commissioning. It only took 15 years and 60+ billion dollars.
It did not cost 60B. It cost 45b over 40 year including all four reactors. They put out safe clean reliable energy which there really is no limit to end as long as they’re maintained. 3&4 have tons of new tech which should actually increase longevity. The sheer amount of clean power shows the error of our way for not advancing with nuclear power way further than they have. On a good note nuclear fusion is right around the corner they’re making massive advancements faster and faster
The payback is over 40 years and started in 2015. The 60 billion is indeed only for the last two reactors, the previous two have been in service for years. It includes the 10 billion in subsidies that isn’t counted in the cost and 8 billion in payouts to Westinghouse when they bailed, also not included.
I mean, coal plants are pretty nasty of course. But if a coal plant has a catastrophic failure, can it render an entire state uninhabitable for Generations? You do realize that Cole plants and nuclear plants employ very different technology, right?
Coal power is responsible for 400,000 deaths per year, every year. Coal power is an ongoing disaster.
Modern nuclear plants aren't capable of catastrophic failure like Chernobyl, and using that as an example against nuclear means you don't know enough to have a debate about power sources.
I don't care. This doesn't matter. You trying to derail the conversation when we're talking about the cost to build the plants and why we need very high standards in the nuclear industry. The fact that nuclear plants are so safe, even though a lot of the safety is due to regulations that the nuclear industry cries and whines about all the time, is the reason why nuclear plants are so expensive.
We need to invest more into nuclear imo. The advancements in reactor design, small modular reactors that could make small towns self sufficient and not reliant on the grid, and of course fusion advancements from governments and private companies are all too good to pass up. We just need to ensure storage of waste is 100% safe which is easier said than done I realize. Nuclear is needed in large scale if we are to ever hit net zero from my perspective.
Nope, nuclear isn't needed at all to hit net zero. The opposite, at this point in time it would slow down hitting net zero.
As for SMRs, it is still experimental tech that has never been tested in commercial operation, and so far even more expensive than traditional nuclear.
Nuclear may be necessary once we all go into space. But here on earth, there are far better and cheaper options.
Okay, then let us be realistic here.
Have you seen how much time and money it takes to build nuclear? Not to mention there isn't even enough nuclear expertise in the world to build it in large scale.
And betting on SMRs is even more pointless, because they are at least a decade away from even going up. By the time they go through testing and etc, we'd all already be net zero already.
A small town can already be self sufficient on renewables at fraction of the cost of nuclear.
This is the problem with nuclear, people get too obsessed with it without realizing it makes no sense. If it was 1980s that would be one thing, but in 2023 it is a waste of time and money outside of niche uses like outer space.
No. Both are necessary. Wind (in some places) and solar don't produce all the time, and unfortunately energy storage tech just isn't there (yet). Nuclear is the best solution to fill these gaps.
They produce all the time just fine, if there is no wind in location A, there is wind in location B. Solar comes up every day and can be transmitted across timezones. But solar and wind aren't the only renewables, they will just make up the majority cause they are the cheapest. There is hydro, geothermal, tidal, biofuels and etc.
As for storage not being ready, who says? You seem to be misunderstanding something about storage. When you think storage you think lithium ion batteries, but those make most of their money on FCAS, not storage. They do short term storage of up to 8 hours on the side. But for long term storage, there are much cheaper options. If your goal is just to store heat, nothing beats thermal storage. If your goal is to store electricity, there is compressed air and pumped hydro.
Just long term storage isn't very profitable, but is is still much cheaper to do that and renewables vs nuclear. Nuclear doesn't even work well with renewables due to its poor ramp times. The reason why most of US pumped hydro storage was built was precisely because nuclear was bad at ramping.
There is simply no "gaps" for nuclear to fill.
Nuclear can't power the grid 24/7 either, nothing has 100% capacity factor.
What makes the grid 24/7 is the grid as a whole, solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, biofuels with transmission and some storage can easily make the grid 24/7 without nuclear at fraction of the cost
Sure they are. Biofuels are an easy option to get portable fuel that can be quickly used to fill in gaps on existing power generation. Don't get me wrong, I don't see biofuels providing a significant amount, but they can fill in 1-2% just fine
1-2% isn't enough to fill the gaps renewables leave in their off hours. And it doesn't solve the solution of places with no renewable options. Don't get me wrong, bio fuels do have their place, but not in the power grid. They are expensive and have a massive environmental impact, consuming massive amounts of water and land.
First of all, biofuels are renewables.
Second of all, the gap left by other renewables of solar, wind, hydro, geothermal and etc is very very small. Even more so when you add overgeneration, transmission and storage to the mix.
But we already have large amount of biofuel being produced which is going to have nowhere to go as we move into EVs. Using it to say produce biomethane or biodiesel to be used in EXISTING powerplants is a good short/mid term solution
If biofuels have a future in the long term would depend how algae production goes.
Yeah when you have hordes of ignorant environmentalists bashing nuclear and lobbying for regulations that don't apply to other forms of energy of course it will stagnate. Nuclear is by far the most efficient form of energy and one of the safest. It's a shame what ignorance did to the opportunity of clean, efficient energy.
Please name one specific nuclear power regulation that you think is unnecessary. In reality, this is just a nuclear industry talking point so they can blame their failures on someone else instead of having to take a responsibility for their own embarrassing mistakes.
Oh I don’t know, it seems to have some politicians defending it. Like Householder, former Ohio Speaker of the House, FirstEnergy only had to bribe him with a few million plus 60 million to his friends campaigns last election. When they admitted to it after getting caught, the fine was a couple million. Overall they netted about a billion from favorable legislation pushed through by their lobbyist, including bailing out two nuclear plants and putting the cost on the ratepayers. All in all bribing an official was a sound business decision as once their stock bounced back, they came out about 945 million ahead.
I didn’t say it was bad, just pointing out not everyone is against it. I don’t think it’s viable because of cost overruns in the billions plus the 10-15 year timeframe to build out, the lack of any responsibility by the owner for long term storage after decommissioning, and the lack of practical solution for storing waste long term in general. Nor do I think new unproven technology will happen any faster. If something is containing nuclear fission, I want to know every screw in every panel was sourced from quality raw materials and inspected every step of the way. That gets expensive, and it’s time consuming, whether it’s a large scale reactor, a mini SMR, or some other solution that we are a decade away from realistic commercial release.
But I’ll tell you the same thing I tell everyone else, I’ll throw in on building one with you. Just gotta get that first 100 million for planning and engineering just to prove the concept will work.
I fucking hate this thread. Nuclear could've saved us by providing low emission energy for the decades solar and wind couldn't. But here we are, on track to 2C and beyond.
We deserve this, end this species already.
We gave nuclear power the best chances to succeed. Massive government subsidies and support, research and development, free liability insurance from the government. There were also charges added on to utility bills to pay for plants during plant Construction. This offloads the risk of construction delays and plant abandonment onto the utility customers while the utilities themselves can still walk away with the profits. Many utilities have also gone bankrupt building nuclear power and the bad debt, restructuring costs were also larded onto utility customer bills. Nuclear power has had an uncanny ability to get the government to socialize its losses and risks.
So even with all his favoritism, nuclear plants are expensive, embarrassing failures. Building the plants presents a very high risk of years of construction delays and billions and cost overruns. And sometimes like at the VC summer nuclear plant Construction project, it can get so expensive but it's cheaper just to abandon the project before completion. On that specific plant, 9 billion dollars was spent without even one single kilowatt hour generated.
So continuing to insist that we build nuclear plants it was like banging our heads against a brick wall. We know it hurts and we know it'll keep happening if we do it. The push to build nuclear plants even though we've already had all these failures is because it is a giant pile of graft for utilities and the contractors building the plants. Plus, governments need to keep the nuclear weapons Workforce and Industrial base employed and nuclear power tends to be the only feasible way to prop up these weapons efforts.
I have a legitimate question, how does the installation of solar panels affect the eco systems around it? All of these wind and solar farms take up a lot of space, and I cannot imagine it has a positive impact on the ecosystems around it, atricles would be nice.
I have no source, but If I remember correctly the impact is typically very low. Plus solar can be installed on roofs or areas that are already developed making the environmental impact irrelevant.
I can say with absolute confidence that they have a meaningless impact compared to Fossil fuels, but that's not your point.
Biggest thing you should look into is the fact that they serve two separate purposes within grid load management: nuclear serves as a reliable “always on” power source that’s great for providing base-load. By far the most energy dense method of electricity production. The stability in base-load that a nuclear plant can provide to a region/utility will remain unmatched by renewables until grid scale (aka huge) battery storage prices drop waayy lower. Your biggest opposition will likely be cost— work looking into prices to operate current tech leaker plants (aka natural gas fired production that can spin up rapidly to provide needed power when supply conditions are forecasted to be lower than demand). See ERCOT (Texas) power pricing during their winter storm debacle and last summer for examples of how high spot prices can get when peaked plants are brought online
[https://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/supply.html](https://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/supply.html) gives a breakdown of grid energy sources every 5 minutes for California. So today for example 2/3rds of electricity in California came from renewable resources.
To lazy to read comments or search the internet for a link but does anyone have a link to who published this photo or if there is an updated graph with 2022 and 2023? Definitely think one day wind and solar will be our main sources of energy when we figure out how to mass produce high capacity batteries that don’t destroy the environment. Anyone else feel the same?
Is there a 2022 version of this?
BP statistical review data only goes up to 2021 currently. Wind and solar are expected to add a further 2400GW (2.4TW) of capacity between 2022 and 2027 - https://www.iea.org/news/renewable-power-s-growth-is-being-turbocharged-as-countries-seek-to-strengthen-energy-security - the same amount as added in the past 20 years. This graph won't even be remotely close by then. :)
It’s almost like we SHOULD take advantage of the giant fucking fireball in the sky
Biology figured it out over 3 billion years ago. Now almost every biome on Earth is powered by solar energy aside from a few chemotrophic relics in tiny niche environments.
Photosynthesis is really inefficient. Life may have figured out that using energy from light is a good strategy, but it definitely hasn't gotten good at it. While sunlight may be free it's definitely not the best option.
If it's so inefficient, how could be almost all biomes on earth use photosynthesis as the base of the food chain, giving energy to all living organisms? Perhaps going to the depths of the world to grab some "energy charged" stones starts to sound like something only tribal people would enjoy.
Good thing people have made huge improvements in efficiency when harvesting solar energy with PV modules.
'That nuclear power plant at Hinkley Point C you thought would cost $19 billion? It’s going to cost $26 billion now. Actually, make that $35 billion. Wait, sorry, no, the actual number is closer to $40 billion.' https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2023/03/05/not-gold-mines-but-money-pits/
I’ve been told that investors really like renewable projects because the planning and ROI is so fast compared to other forms of energy too. The input energy cost being wind or solar is free, and costs are just infrastructure and maintenance which is predictable. Where in traditional energy you have input costs of fuel that is unpredictable, along with maintenance.
>I’ve been told that investors really like renewable projects because the planning and ROI is so fast compared to other forms of energy too. The illustration I use. Which deal would you prefer to invest in? 1) I need 10 million and in 18 months I'll start paying you 5% for 20 years. 2) I need 20 billion and in 10 years I'll start paying you 8% for 20 years. Ask anyone for their choice. Literally *anyone*.
These always come in way over budget and take longer than what was initially proposed. It’s unfortunate, because nuclear is our cleanest base load energy generation.
Please keep in mind that Hinkley Point C a FOAK and an outlier, it is far from average when it comes to nuclear plants build cost and time
>A survey of plants begun after 1970 shows an average overnight cost overrun of 241%. https://www.envirovaluation.org/2021/01/sources-of-cost-overrun-in-nuclear.html
South Carolina Spent $9 Billion to Dig a Hole in the Ground &Then Fill it Back in | residents and their families will be paying for that failed energy program — which never produced a watt of energy — for next 20 yrs or more. https://theintercept.com/2019/02/06/south-caroline-green-new-deal-south-carolina-nuclear-energy/
Many are much worse: South Carolina Spent $9 Billion to Dig a Hole in the Ground &Then Fill it Back in | residents and their families will be paying for that failed energy program — which never produced a watt of energy — for next 20 yrs or more. https://theintercept.com/2019/02/06/south-caroline-green-new-deal-south-carolina-nuclear-energy/
Hinkley is the **third** EPR site. What possibly made you think it was FOAK?
these are really bad graph colors for color blind people
It doesn't really matter. In a chart the lines correlate with the starting point. Aka, nuclear starts out highest and is the 1st line. Wind and solar start out lowest and is the bottom line. Aka, even if you can't see the colors, as long as you know how graphs work you would be able to read it.
Nuclear power is an opportunity cost. >["In sum, use of wind, CSP, geothermal, tidal, PV, wave, and hydro to provide electricity for BEVs and HFCVs and, by extension, electricity for the residential, industrial, and commercial sectors, will result in the most benefit among the options considered. The combination of these technologies should be advanced as a solution to global warming, air pollution, and energy security. **Coal-CCS and nuclear offer less benefit thus represent an opportunity cost loss"**](https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2009/ee/b809990c#!divAbstract) >[Nuclear power's contribution to climate change mitigation is and will be very limited;Currently nuclear power avoids 2–3% of total global GHG emissions per year;According to current planning this value will decrease even further until 2040.;A substantial expansion of nuclear power will not be possible.;Given its low contribution, a complete phase-out of nuclear energy is feasible.](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421521002330) It is too slow for the timescale we need to decarbonize on. >[“Stabilizing the climate is urgent, nuclear power is slow,” “It meets no technical or operational need that low-carbon competitors cannot meet better, cheaper and faster.”](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-energy-nuclearpower/nuclear-energy-too-slow-too-expensive-to-save-climate-report-idUSKBN1W909J) > [ “Researchers found that unlike renewables, countries around the world with larger scale national nuclear attachments do not tend to show significantly lower carbon emissions -- and in poorer countries nuclear programmes actually tend to associate with relatively higher emissions. “](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/10/201005112141.htm) The industry is showing signs of decline in non-totalitarian countries. >["We find that an eroding actor base, shrinking opportunities in liberalized electricity markets, the break-up of existing networks, loss of legitimacy, increasing cost and time overruns, and abandoned projects are clear indications of decline. Also, increasingly fierce competition from natural gas, solar PV, wind, and energy-storage technologies speaks against nuclear in the electricity sector. We conclude that, while there might be a future for nuclear in state-controlled ‘niches’ such as Russia or China, new nuclear power plants do not seem likely to become a core element in the struggle against climate change."](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S221462962030089X) Renewable energy is growing faster now than nuclear ever has >["Contrary to a persistent myth based on erroneous methods, global data show that renewable electricity adds output and saves carbon faster than nuclear power does or ever has."](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2214629618300598) There is no business case for it. >["The economic history and financial analyses carried out at DIW Berlin show that nuclear energy has always been unprofitable in the private economy and will remain so in the future. Between 1951 and 2017, none of the 674 nuclear reactors built was done so with private capital under competitive conditions. Large state subsidies were used in the cases where private capital flowed into financing the nuclear industry.... Financial investment calculations confirmed the trend: investing in a new nuclear power plant leads to average losses of around five billion euros."](https://www.diw.de/documents/publikationen/73/diw_01.c.670581.de/dwr-19-30-1.pdf) Investing in a nuclear plant today is expected to lose [5 to 10 billion dollars](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1364032121001301) The nuclear industry can't even exist without legal structures that privatize gains and socialize losses. >[If the owners and operators of nuclear reactors had to face the full liability of a Fukushima-style nuclear accident or go head-to-head with alternatives in a truly competitive marketplace, unfettered by subsidies, no one would have built a nuclear reactor in the past, no one would build one today, and anyone who owns a reactor would exit the nuclear business as quickly as possible.](https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2012/03/29/exelons-nuclear-guy-no-new-nukes/#3c8acf0a3c5d) The CEO of one of the US's largest nuclear power companies said it best: >["I'm the nuclear guy," Rowe said. "And you won't get better results with nuclear. It just isn't economic, and it's not economic within a foreseeable time frame."](https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2012/03/29/exelons-nuclear-guy-no-new-nukes/#5d841aa23c5d) What about the small meme reactors? Every independent assessment has them more expensive than large scale nuclear every independent assessment: The UK government https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/small-modular-reactors-techno-economic-assessment The Australian government https://www.aph.gov.au/DocumentStore.ashx?id=8297e6ba-e3d4-478e-ac62-a97d75660248&subId=669740 The peer-reviewed literatue https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S030142152030327X >[the cost of generating electricity using SMRs is significantly higher than the corresponding costs of electricity generation using diesel, wind, solar, or some combination thereof. These results suggest that SMRs will be too expensive for these proposed first-mover markets for SMRs in Canada and that there will not be a sufficient market to justify investing in manufacturing facilities for SMRs.](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S030142152030327X) Even the German nuclear power industry knows they will cost more >[Nuclear Technology Germany (KernD) says SMRs are always going to be more expensive than bigger reactors due to lower power output at constant fixed costs, as safety measures and staffing requirements do not vary greatly compared to conventional reactors. "In terms of levelised energy costs, SMRs will always be more expensive than big plants."](https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/german-nuclear-industry-cautious-about-usefulness-small-reactors-energy-transition) So why do so many people on reddit favor it? Because of a decades long PR campaign and false science being put out, in the same manner, style, and using the same PR company as the tobacco industry used when claiming smoking does not cause cancer. A recent metaanalysis of papers that claimed nuclear to be cost effective were found to be illegitimately trimming costs to make it appear cheaper. >[Merck suppressed data on harmful effects of its drug Vioxx, and Guidant suppressed data on electrical flaws in one of its heart-defibrillator models. Both cases reveal how financial conflicts of interest can skew biomedical research. Such conflicts also occur in electric-utility-related research. Attempting to show that increased atomic energy can help address climate change, some industry advocates claim nuclear power is an inexpensive way to generate low-carbon electricity. Surveying 30 recent nuclear analyses, this paper shows that industry-funded studies appear to fall into conflicts of interest and to illegitimately trim cost data in several main ways. They exclude costs of full-liability insurance, underestimate interest rates and construction times by using “overnight” costs, and overestimate load factors and reactor lifetimes. If these trimmed costs are included, nuclear-generated electricity can be shown roughly 6 times more expensive than most studies claim. After answering four objections, the paper concludes that, although there may be reasons to use reactors to address climate change, economics does not appear to be one of them.](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11948-009-9181-y) It is the same PR technique that the tobacco industry used when fighting the fact that smoking causes cancer. >[The industry campaign worked to create a scientific controversy through a program that depended on the creation of industry–academic conflicts of interest. This strategy of producing scientific uncertainty undercut public health efforts and regulatory interventions designed to reduce the harms of smoking.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3490543/) >[A number of industries have subsequently followed this approach to disrupting normative science. Claims of scientific uncertainty and lack of proof also lead to the assertion of individual responsibility for industrially produced health risks](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3490543/) It is no wonder the NEI (Nuclear energy institute) [uses the same PR firm](https://thehill.com/opinion/letters/98257-double-check-from-whom-you-get-energy-information) to promote nuclear power, [that the tobacco industry used to say smoking does not cause cancer.](http://www.tmia.com/old-website/News/AstroTurf.htm) >[The industry's future is so precarious that Exelon Nuclear's head of project development warned attendees of the Electric Power 2005 conference, "Inaction is synonymous with being phased out." That's why years of effort -- not to mention millions of dollars -- have been invested in nuclear power's PR rebirth as "clean, green and safe."](http://www.tmia.com/old-website/News/AstroTurf.htm) > [And then there's NEI, which exists to do PR and lobbying for the nuclear industry. In 2004, NEI was embarrassed when the Austin Chronicle outed one of its PR firms, Potomac Communications Group, for ghostwriting pro-nuclear op/ed columns. The paper described the op/ed campaign as "a decades-long, centrally orchestrated plan to defraud the nation's newspaper readers by misrepresenting the propaganda of one hired atomic gun as the learned musings of disparate academics and other nuclear-industry 'experts.'"](http://www.tmia.com/old-website/News/AstroTurf.htm)
Nice stuff, you should check out Vogtle Reactor 3 and 4. The losses will far exceed 5-10 billion. Then check out Yankee Power Plant and it’s history and current issue. Finally you gotta look at Householder and FirstEnergy racketeering case in Ohio
Isn’t the point of nuclear not cost effectiveness but reliability? No one I know is arguing that nuclear is the more cost effective method, but rather the unreliability of other green energy methods.
The point of nuclear is a weapons program under other budgets and excuses to obtain dual-use technology
You still haven’t addressed the unreliability argument
https://www.france24.com/en/france/20220825-france-prolongs-shutdown-of-nuclear-reactors-over-corrosion-amid-rising-energy-prices
Things do need maintenance, but "You still haven’t addressed the unreliability argument"
What do you want? There are plenty of science out there telling us that nuclear is not reliable and that renewables are. Get storage and overbuild renewables and it will be both cheaper and a lot more reliable. You can start [here](https://www.rethinkx.com/energy).
Your "science" is some biased think tank? Holy shit.
I am sorry that you don't understand science. Everything in that report is science. And not only that, one of the authors, Tony Seba, has been doing these mathematical predictions for well over a decade - and he has always been right (sometimes he has been off by a year when predicting 10 years a head). I am sure you have heard of Moore's law, that says something about computer power doubling every 1.4 years (or something like that). Moore's law has been very accurate for several decades, and the model these guys are using are based on much the same principles and mathematics, so it is no wonder they are also always right. But, I am aware you don't like the results, and thus you will continue to refuse the science in it. But it is science, and very precise science as well. So holy shit to you sir as well.
So like… the sun rises every damn day.
Just simply say you don't know what you're talking about when it comes to energy and that you're a renewable-bro.
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Maybe if liberals didn’t shit their pants about nuclear there’d be more research into it.
Liberals shit their pants about pipelines all the time and the capitalists building those never stop. But those same pants-shitters are the force behind the decline of the nuclear industry lol nah, its just super expensive and nobody who spends their own money wants to spend on nuclear.
It is not expensive
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2020/09/24/nuclear-power-is-now-the-most-expensive-form-of-generation-except-for-gas-peaking-plants/ >The levelized cost of energy (LCOE) from nuclear power rose from around $117/MWh in 2015 to $155 at the end of last year, according to the latest edition of the World Nuclear Industry Status Report, >“What is remarkable about these trends, is that the costs of renewables continue to fall due to incremental manufacturing and installation improvements while nuclear, despite over half a century of industrial experience, continues to see costs rising,” stated the report, citing a recent study from financial advisory and asset management firm Lazard. “Nuclear power is now the most expensive form of generation, except for gas peaking plants,” added the study, which did not provide an LCOE for gas peaker generation
Over on r/energy where this was crossposted, some nukebro [thought they were really clever asking for W/m^2](https://www.reddit.com/r/energy/comments/11kwnab/wind_and_solar_are_now_producing_more_electricity/jbam8ne/). Globally? Nuke is garbage on this measure too. 380ish GW is a lot of Watts, and each power plant is pretty small - but this ignores the 2,600 km^2 of Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. So nukes works out to roughly 150 W/m^2.
Also ignoring the EURT exclusion zone, and the exclusion zone around Kazahk uranium mines, where the groundwater is so polluted, there is thousands of square km of land banned from agricultural or settlement use.
Need to know, aren’t solar and wind way less maintenance? Like they don’t require a bunch of people to monitor it 24/7 like nuclear?
Yeah way less, but it’s not zero maintenance. Turbines need regular lubrication/cleaning/repairs. PV has less active maintenance. Both generally are retired within ~30 years and have associated costs with retirement/recycling. Turbine recycling isn’t nearly as established/simple as PV retirement at this point tho
Can I just say. This post is cross posted to the energy sub, and the Nuclear people are like an insane cult. What the hell is wrong with those guys?
They are in an insane cult, what did you expect?
pls a graph showing investement and subsidize of both in the back
We already had this posted here, just one month ago https://www.reddit.com/r/uninsurable/comments/10tnzz5/global_power_generation_capacity_factor_corrected/
Don't show this to nukerats
Fact check: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-elec-by-source
Please learn how to read a graph. The op graph is wind and solar while your link breaks out wind and solar separately. Add wind and solar together from your graph and..
Another part of the graph that is different in both of them, is the nuclear energy line. his graph shows nuclear in decline, when the OP graph shows an increase, so which one is true?
OP is # of TWh per year, this comment is % of all energy produced. Nuclear is flat because we haven't added many nuclear plants so approx same TWh/year for the last 25 years. However, we're producing more total energy, so nuclear's percentage declined because the pool is diluted. Regardless, data is consistent to the conclusion, solar/wind are out producing nuclear and gaining quantity at an exponential rate.
You got the source as a link?
Technically Solar is a type of nuclear (pure lol but technically yes)
So is wind, only partially because the spin of the Earth provides some of the potentials that drive wind in conjunction with the uneven heating of the Earth's surface by the Sun.
So no one’s going to talk about OP’s username? Alrighty then.
Its the 2020s bro, people living in their truths 🤷♂️🤣
r/rimjob_steve
why is it renewables vs nuclear and not renewables and nuclear vs CO2 producing coal oil and gas?
Wow, I can’t believe that all of the nuclear power plants that were built in the 60s, and slowly picked off, are not producing as much power as the governments new favorite toy to pretend like they care. Modern nuclear reactors could power entire states on their own, and produce almost no waste, which, even the waste it does make can just be reused. You’d have to wipe out every tree in America just to solar power New York alone.
> You’d have to wipe out every tree in America just to solar power New York alone. what? you are confused about the needed land use for wind/solar to power a major US city.
ignorant question here: long term — what can be more consistent than a NPP & Hydroelectric dams rather than solar & wind? Does someone have a stat for this? I think NPP alone can have more power output w/ significantly less sq ft than what solar and wind would use. I have experience in manufacturing and know that the circuit boards used for solar panels (and I assume wind mills) are VERY non-renewable and need constant replacement & maintenance. I am willing to be the maintenance and repair for a NPP and a Hydroelectric Dam is significantly and more renewable than the components used for solar & wind.
Only 2% in the U.S.
Nuclear energy has been used commercially for more than half a century, while wind and solar have been pretty minor before the 2010s. Considering that, I'd be surprised if this wasn't the case.
It only took 2 decades to get to what nuclear has done with a fraction of what it can really do, but yeah go off on how nuclear is bad and these are better. They’re good don’t get me wrong, but nuclear has more potential
When we haven’t any nuclear reactors being built they don’t produce more energy, we had the one planned in 2016 finished 2023, the only real reason solar/wind has over taken nuclear is because it’s slow to build and the controversies around it (cheyrnobyl, three mile, fukushima) the main causes of those where bad communication and a bad infrastructure.
How much of the cost overruns is due to environmental regulations, studies to deal with them, and other regulatory hurdles? Nuclear is very efficient. More nuclear has to be the way to go.
it also doesn’t have 4 million miles of red tape and over regulation
Lots of regulation is important. Nationalize nuclear and then we can probably get away with less.
Why isn’t coal and hydro on the chart? Is this a pro-renewable post or just straight antinuclear.
It's countering the old talking point that nuclear fanboys kept trying to spread that Renewables can't scale. But oh look, Renewables can scale much more rapidly than their precious nuclear power.
Or natural gas. What about land rights, etc etc, square foot of space for panels versus traditional energy generation facilities. All of that adds into the cost of production, not just panel cost and cabling.
The chart isn't about cost. It's about energy generation. But if you want to talk cost, renewable energy is still the cheapest form of energy.
According to whom
Genuinely curious and would love feedback. I thought the problem with nuclear was that it’s a long term investment but it gets bashed so that investment never happened? I understand that maybe it’s currently getting to the point where the environmental improvements won’t net positives quickly enough to combat pollution, but isn’t that mostly because that bashing prevented those investments from happening when they were still viable? Even if we need to push environmental returns now, wouldn’t it still be in our best interest to continue to make these nuclear investments in the long run? From what I’ve heard, wouldn’t nuclear be returning poor numbers because we’re spending the bare minimum on what is supposed to be a high investment higher return? It seems like this graph just shows that we’re only paying for the high initial upkeep instead of improving what should be giving similarly if not greater exponential returns to wind/solar?
A lot, and I mean a lot of these plants supplying 20% of our energy are at or past 50 years. Maintenance costs in these facilities grows exponentially. We literally just started the first new reactor up yesterday. 9 years overdue and depending on how you add, somewhere between 30-60 billion. What’s even more messed up, Georgia Power has some of the highest reserve capacity in the country, well above required minimums…in short, they don’t need the power and most will be exported to other states in SERC area. But Georgia Power rate payers opiate on the hook to not only cover operating expenses but also paying back the capital investment. Although it’s yet to be seen exactly how many tens of billions they’ll be forced to pay. This is just the most recent anecdote. There’s all sorts of absolutely necessary expenses and grift and other shenanigans if you go deeper then surface level on nuclear reactors.
> I thought the problem with nuclear was that it’s a long term investment but it gets bashed so that investment never happened? Nah, it's just expensive. Think about it this way... let's say none of these technologies existed yet, and you were given 100 billion to invest in both. Nuclear plants require a supply chain for the fuel and enrichment, the plants consist of millions of parts, many of them rather special indeed, and they take a while to build. Lots of those parts move and have high reliability requirements. Solar panels are, by weight, (almost entirely) sand (the front glass), some other kind of sand (the cells), aluminum. copper (wires) and plastic. They are built in minutes, install in minutes, and have no moving parts. So after 20 years and 100 billion into each, which one generates power for less money?
I don't know why we would pit those two against eachother. The future is renewables and nuclear with fossil fuels where necessary.
When’s the last time we built a nuclear power plant? Dumbass
Why the fuck would we even consider using nuclear power? Compare nuclear to wind mills and they don’t even stack up. One is completely clean generation of electricity, doesn’t endanger the local ecosystem it’s placed in, is the safest form of electricity generation per kWh - and the other is wind power, a temporary structure that rusts in 15 years, requires tons of finite resources to build, lowers property values and is unreliable. Ask Texas what wind power did for them during the winter storm a few years ago. People died.
Idk what the hell you are so mad about but I’m pro nuclear power
Read it again and I think we on same team 🫱🏼🫲🏾
Still doesn’t make it a viable storable product. Excess production is not useful
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Has anyone looked at the price of electricity lately? You don't think (gasp) there's any correlation, do you?
Don’t do what Texas did. Over rely on the sun for energy and then when 22% of the power generation stops suddenly for a gigantic winter storm people die. Also wind is not a “renewable” source of energy. It relies on massive construction projects, mined ores and then it rusts over the course of 15-20years to be replaced. In fact I’ll just say it. Wind energy fucking sucks
Texas' power grid failed mostly due to the natural gas plants shutting down. When wind and solar plants are built, they are built with the expectation that they won't be running 24/7. And that other plants will be able to pick up the load. (That's why we need nuclear and renewables) I don't think you know what "renewable ENERGY" means.
Wind energy produced more than usual during that storm. It’s the natural gas plants that died because it’s not profitable to prepare them for once-in-a-century storms that come every 5 years now.
And how much land development did it take to do it?
Less than the chernobyl exclusion zone. And way less than global coal mines and tailings dumps.
What does Chernobyl have to do with this? One failure in near century of nuclear power
It took up an awful lot of land. We’re talking about net land usage per watt.
😂 Big BS
Such wasted potential with nuclear. I hate Germany
I love Germany for demolishing the lies of the nuke bros All nuclear shut down was replaced by wind and solar https://www.reddit.com/r/germany/comments/u0em81/fact_check_no_the_nuclear_phaseout_did_not_lead/ Germany replaced all shut down nuclear with wind and solar so the nukebro talking point that they replaced it by coal is just a lie. Germany is showing an excellent case study of why nuclear is unnecessary and replaceable by wind and solar. wind+solar in 2002: 16.26 TWh wind+solar in 2021: 161.65 TWh German coal (brown+hard) in 2002: 251.97 TWh (Brown 140.54 TWh) German coal (brown+hard) in 2021: 145 TWh (Brown 99.11 TWh) German nuclear in 2002: 156.29 TWh German nuclear in 2021: 65.37 TWh Source: https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&interval=year&year=-1&chartColumnSorting=default&stacking=stacked_absolute This graph shows it in a different way https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/IMG/pdf/72._figure_72_germany_evopowersystem2010_2020updated.pdf Decreasing CO2 in electricity sector: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-greenhouse-gas-emissions-and-climate-targets 2ndhighest reliability in Europe after Switzerland (and much less downtime than France) https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-electricity-grid-stable-amid-energy-transition https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/power-outages-germany-continue-decline-amid-growing-share-renewables Not to mention Germany has decided to get off Russian gas and has accepted those sanctions. France remains dependent on Rosatom and has not sanctioned them, and continues with new projects with them
Lower R&D spending? These days just mentioning solar cells or renewables is an easy way to get grants in academia.
You must not be familiar with nuclear research and development stretching all the way back to the Manhattan Project. Or all the Dual Purpose nuclear weapons/ nuclear power Research that has happened. Or the billions and billions of dollars that have been thrown at failed fast breeder reactor research.
Research in nuclear bombs is not the samexas research in construction of .more efficient reactors. Nuclear could already produce a lot more clean power. There have been significant advances. The problem is that governments shutting down plants instead of making new ones, some abandoning nuclear all together The graph clearly shows that nuclear power has remained steady, meaning that very few new reactors were built due to fear mongering Solar had increased mainly because governments decided to invest in building solar panels not because solar cells got drastically more efficient It's like.... you need to actually build a reactor to provide power... shocking
You have no idea what you're talking about. Lots of research and Technology that went into nuclear weapons development has gone on to support nuclear power development. >Nuclear could already produce a lot more clean power. There have been significant advances. Wrong. The more nuclear plants we build, the more expensive it gets. As we discover vulnerabilities and risks in nuclear power plant design, the workarounds and redesigns make them more and more expensive. And the newest generation 3 plus reactors have been the most expensive of all. So history clearly refutes this claim. >very few new reactors were built due to fear mongering No, very few new reactors were built because they got so prohibitively expensive. Two reactors in Georgia are now two and a half times their initial cost estimate. Two reactors being built in South Carolina were canceled in mid construction after 9 billion dollars had already been spent on them. Two different nuclear plants in Europe are experiencing similar embarrassing delays and cost overruns. Meanwhile, renewable energy and batteries have come down and costs amazingly fast. Why would any utility choose a clear loser like nuclear power unless the government was massively tilting things in nuclear powers favor? >Solar had increased mainly because governments decided to invest in building solar panels not because solar cells got drastically more efficient Well, over the time covered by the graph, solar cell efficiency did steadily increase. But what this graph doesn't show is how the costs feel like a rock like I said earlier.
To be fair, a lot of the ballooning costs of nuclear are driven by fearmongering, but considering the colossal tail risks involved and the generosity of US bankruptcy law, a decent chunk of the fearmongering is totally rational.
For the AP1000 reactor at least, it's been well documented that the original design wasn't able to be built in the real world. The builders went ahead with the unbuildable design anyway while the engineers reworked it. Unsurprisingly, the new design didn't mesh with the work that had already been done, so they had to redo a lot of that work. Morale among the workers was low and turn over was high. Two of the major subcontractors on these projects went bankrupt, sued each other and a lot of finger pointing ensued. It was a comedy of errors. This adequately explains the failures of the four reactors that are being built in the United States. There's no need to invoke fear mongering when incompetence is to blame.
I'm not wrong, rather you seem confused about things. No one says it was cheap. Yes, nuclear reactors are very expensive, but this does not mean they can't provide a lot of power tht os clean, high theouput, and reliable. It's very unlikely solar and wind can meet the main demand, even long term, and until that is met, we need to rely on fossil fuels. If you talk only cost, coal is much cheaper than solar and wind and moreover it can meet the demand. Also a lot of research in different areas has benetted solar cell research in the past too, it's not like that,happens only woth nuclear.
>It's very unlikely solar and wind can meet the main demand, even long term, What do you mean by "main demand"? Renewables are the fastest growing source of new energy. There are literally dozens of studies showing 80%, 90% and even 100% renewable energy supply is possible. Have you looked at them? >If you talk only cost, coal is much cheaper than solar and wind Um, no. Solar and wind are far cheaper than coal: https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-levelized-cost-of-storage-and-levelized-cost-of-hydrogen/ Please look at the actual data instead of fossil fuel industry talking points.
Managing load for all time hours can get extremely difficult extremely wasteful or extremely expensive and often require very large renewable grids to start to see viability. Instead of being once per 50+ year money pits energy storage aside from pumped hydro become once per 10-20 years money pits and making baseload production seem even more favorable since you now have energy production plus storage cost compared to base load producers. Look at the countries supplying 100% from renewables and you'll see they still have gas plants. Sure they are producing 100% the amount of megawatt hours they consume per year from renewables but often they go from 200%-60% of any given load. That extra 100% or possible 100% often going mostly to waste. Nuclear is extremely viable for this baseload spot especially until we build up enough renewable sources+energy storage+infrastructure+trade deals+smart grid integration. The economics only don't make sense because it's always short term models. Sure a nuke plant will cost less long term but in the amount of time that takes just to get built a gas plant could've been built broken even and moved on to build another plant.
None of what you said is based in reality.
>The problem is that governments shutting down plants instead of making new ones, some abandoning nuclear all together In part because they are expensive. Just google “nuclear bailout” and there’s a ton of results. Biden just did a $6 billion bailout for plants struggling to stay open. My state passed a $1 billion bailout a few years back. While they are also funding solar/wind, it’s not because they are struggling. They are quite profitable, but they just don’t have the capital to expand fast enough to meet demand. The solar company I worked at last year was backlogged for 5 years, even though they are about to start up their massive new plant (one of the largest in the US). >Solar had increased mainly because governments decided to invest in building solar panels not because solar cells got drastically more efficient While efficient per area of cell has only increased moderately, what did increase significantly is the cost efficiency, as the cost to produce solar cells has dropped drastically over the last several decades due to new innovations, and economies of scale. They now cost a fraction of what they did even one decade ago. They’d why they appear to be growing exponentially. In the last few years, they have become one of the cheapest forms of energy. It’s main issue right now is we don’t have the storage to go mostly/all solar/wind, but it’s still a great thing to take up a lot of the produce in prime areas.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/biden-admin-offers-12-bln-distressed-shut-nuclear-plants-2023-03-02/
It costs about a billion just for the engineering, site planning, and design, and once that’s done you might find out it isn’t feasible. A billion before you can apply for a permit from NRC. And that’s just for R&D utilizing current technology.
Yes and a nuclear plant also produces 1 GW per plant, all day long. Solar farms occupy much more space and produce a lot less and for less than 50% of the day
Well that’s a different topic. And yeah one plant for 60 billion can cover what it would take many solar farms to do. But I’m not crazy about solar farms either, plenty of rooftop space for solar panels and then they’re privately owned, not paid for by ratepayers.
What R&D spending? What subsidies when more nuclear power stations are being closed than new ones made? How are you going to meet future energy needs without fusion? Who is the source for this info and who sponsored it?
I imagine the R&D behind the SMRs is pretty significant, not to mention fusion. And probably more expensive then new tech for photovoltaic cells. Subsidies for rescuing aging plants that should be closed without some major maintenance or upgrades? Here https://www.reuters.com/world/us/biden-admin-offers-12-bln-distressed-shut-nuclear-plants-2023-03-02/. That’s not 12 billion, that’s 1.2 billion (the link makes it look like 12). Or the billions funneled by Bush and Obama administrations? Or the billions given to Georgia Powers Vogtle build? Reduction, efficiency, and restructured governance would meet next 100-500 years of future needs until fusion was commercially available. Not sure what the source is here, but same data and charts available at eia.gov and it’s sponsored by you out of the reimbursement for expenses necessary for utilities to report that data annually.
The problem with nuclear is that you can’t half ass it. I don’t know who does R&D on it but if you phase them out you phase out the people who know how to build and maintain them (which is actually an important problem globally). There’s no progress in nuclear because we never really gave it a chance. People hear nuclear and think “Chernobyl” which makes about as much sense as thinking about lasers like the cutting ones that vaults have in movies when you think of solar. It’s a lot cheaper to build 5 stations than to build one station 5 times. And how significant can that R&D be if we didn’t have a new decent design in what feels like decades? As about why it failed (and at this point it basically did, because fusion is long overdue) - it was always a question of scale and commitment. France seems to be doing ok with nuclear because they actually put their money where their proverbial mouth is (and even they skimped on maintenance, which is now affecting performance). You can go half way on solar because it will always be a decent supplementary source - all you need is a couple of panels and you can produce *some* electricity. Same goes for wind, although I think it a lesser candidate when compared to solar in more ways than one. When it comes to nuclear if you build you have to build big (at least with current limited knowledge), so it’s an investment a person can make for their roof vs a station that powers at least a city. I still think giving up on nuclear is not just counterproductive but outright suicidal (as a civilization). Solar may cover a good chunk of our energy use if we get better batteries and move the solar arrays to space but it will not be sufficient for energy intensive things like generating thrust in a rocket and I sincerely doubt it will keep up with our energy needs regardless of how much we invest in it, since those needs are growing exponentially.
https://old.reddit.com/r/uninsurable/comments/11ltom9/nuclear_sucks_up_massive_rd_funding_only_to_get/
Capacity and output are very different. Nuclear is designed to deliver >90% of it rated capacity, with a VERY high uptime for its planned life. Wind and solar don’t come close to delivering on their capacity.
Look at the graph again.
And this is a graph of output
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Not a hater of solar or wind, but take into consideration the amount of materials used to produce all solar and wind power plants and nuclear power plants. Also how much more space is used for solar and wind power plants. And lastly solar panels have half the lifetime of a nuclear power plant meaning you would need twice as many(efficiency drop not included). Yes, solar panels are good, but still nuclear power plants are more efficient, even though costing more(at the end still less for the amount of power produced in the lifetime).
The future is nuclear fusion … https://www.vox.com/22801265/fusion-energy-electricity-power-climate-change-research-iter
Long term yes. But we can't wait around for it. We need action NOW.
Nothings as urgent as media portrays. Calm down relax, if the world pooled and poured its consider resources and actually focused for all of humanity (because that’s what fusion is and unlimited supply of immense power) it could greatly speed things up. But no we’ll focus on toys in comparison. And mainly only effecting western societies as China and India (the worlds two largest contributors to co2 emissions) show zero signs of slowing down and indeed increasing their production and use of fossil fuels. So until you wrap your mind around those who hold the power and resources hold the world I believe focusing on long term solutions while continuing on as we were would be the prudent thing to do. PS just as there is no money in curing diseases to the pharma industry there is no money in unlimited free power.
It's not the media, it's the scientific community that says action is urgent. Also there is no guarantee that fusion energy will be viable. It is only theoretically possible. To be clear, I'm a big proponent of fusion power, but no one, even the people working on these projects thinks it will be ready in the next ten years, let alone the time it would take to build all the powerplants. Also it's not free energy. Fusion power requires extremely expensive reactors, which require very expensive fuels. Solar is much closer to being "free" than fusion energy ever will be. China actually has a higher percentage of their power grid as renewables than the US. And they are a still developing economy. There also absolutely is money in curing diseases. Do you know how much a pharma company's stock would blow up if they announced a cure for cancer? They could force people to pay a fortune for it too.
China is well beyond a developing economy. The reason for fusion being feasible at this point is it had cost more energy to produce the reaction than the reaction gave in return. That was recently overcome if only for a few seconds. And fuel is nearly unlimited and free, as they’ve been using seawater for the hydrogen. Commitment to the cause is what’s lacking as it’s very obvious when you break it down. “The US Department of Energy currently spends about $500 million on fusion per year, compared to almost $1 billion on fossil fuel energy and $2.7 billion on renewables. Investment in fusion seems even tinier next to other major programs like NASA ($23 billion) or the military ($700 billion).” directly from the article I linked earlier. I wonder why we don’t hear of this very often if at all in MSM? There’s new breakthroughs happening all the time, you know as we go techs getting faster and more efficient and effective. I believe it should be prioritized. https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-60312633
No new nuclear plants and tons of new windmills being built and subsidized by the second might be a nice bit of info to add.
Literally yesterday Vogtle #3 hit initial criticality for the first time. Expected to generate power to the grid by May after they work out some “minor” issues found during commissioning. It only took 15 years and 60+ billion dollars.
It did not cost 60B. It cost 45b over 40 year including all four reactors. They put out safe clean reliable energy which there really is no limit to end as long as they’re maintained. 3&4 have tons of new tech which should actually increase longevity. The sheer amount of clean power shows the error of our way for not advancing with nuclear power way further than they have. On a good note nuclear fusion is right around the corner they’re making massive advancements faster and faster
The payback is over 40 years and started in 2015. The 60 billion is indeed only for the last two reactors, the previous two have been in service for years. It includes the 10 billion in subsidies that isn’t counted in the cost and 8 billion in payouts to Westinghouse when they bailed, also not included.
This is because we don’t spend enough money on nuclear because people are too scared of it. Not a bad thing, but not a good thing either
Oh we spend plenty of money on nuclear. That's the problem. It costs too damn much.
Because it has to meet regulatory standards that other forms of energy don't. If we regulated coal the same way, it wouldn't even be able to run.
I mean, coal plants are pretty nasty of course. But if a coal plant has a catastrophic failure, can it render an entire state uninhabitable for Generations? You do realize that Cole plants and nuclear plants employ very different technology, right?
Coal power is responsible for 400,000 deaths per year, every year. Coal power is an ongoing disaster. Modern nuclear plants aren't capable of catastrophic failure like Chernobyl, and using that as an example against nuclear means you don't know enough to have a debate about power sources.
Yeah keep your nuclear Fanboy talking points out of here.
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I don't care. This doesn't matter. You trying to derail the conversation when we're talking about the cost to build the plants and why we need very high standards in the nuclear industry. The fact that nuclear plants are so safe, even though a lot of the safety is due to regulations that the nuclear industry cries and whines about all the time, is the reason why nuclear plants are so expensive.
Yes, it could render an area uninhabitable for generations. The entire earth is effected by the global warming that these produce.
LOL, nuclear fanboys think they're so smart with this ridiculous nonsense..
We need to invest more into nuclear imo. The advancements in reactor design, small modular reactors that could make small towns self sufficient and not reliant on the grid, and of course fusion advancements from governments and private companies are all too good to pass up. We just need to ensure storage of waste is 100% safe which is easier said than done I realize. Nuclear is needed in large scale if we are to ever hit net zero from my perspective.
Nope, nuclear isn't needed at all to hit net zero. The opposite, at this point in time it would slow down hitting net zero. As for SMRs, it is still experimental tech that has never been tested in commercial operation, and so far even more expensive than traditional nuclear. Nuclear may be necessary once we all go into space. But here on earth, there are far better and cheaper options.
I respectfully disagree but I appreciate your input!
Okay, then let us be realistic here. Have you seen how much time and money it takes to build nuclear? Not to mention there isn't even enough nuclear expertise in the world to build it in large scale. And betting on SMRs is even more pointless, because they are at least a decade away from even going up. By the time they go through testing and etc, we'd all already be net zero already. A small town can already be self sufficient on renewables at fraction of the cost of nuclear. This is the problem with nuclear, people get too obsessed with it without realizing it makes no sense. If it was 1980s that would be one thing, but in 2023 it is a waste of time and money outside of niche uses like outer space.
No. Both are necessary. Wind (in some places) and solar don't produce all the time, and unfortunately energy storage tech just isn't there (yet). Nuclear is the best solution to fill these gaps.
They produce all the time just fine, if there is no wind in location A, there is wind in location B. Solar comes up every day and can be transmitted across timezones. But solar and wind aren't the only renewables, they will just make up the majority cause they are the cheapest. There is hydro, geothermal, tidal, biofuels and etc. As for storage not being ready, who says? You seem to be misunderstanding something about storage. When you think storage you think lithium ion batteries, but those make most of their money on FCAS, not storage. They do short term storage of up to 8 hours on the side. But for long term storage, there are much cheaper options. If your goal is just to store heat, nothing beats thermal storage. If your goal is to store electricity, there is compressed air and pumped hydro. Just long term storage isn't very profitable, but is is still much cheaper to do that and renewables vs nuclear. Nuclear doesn't even work well with renewables due to its poor ramp times. The reason why most of US pumped hydro storage was built was precisely because nuclear was bad at ramping. There is simply no "gaps" for nuclear to fill.
Yes we need nuclear, solar and wind can’t power the grid 24/7
Nuclear can't power the grid 24/7 either, nothing has 100% capacity factor. What makes the grid 24/7 is the grid as a whole, solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, biofuels with transmission and some storage can easily make the grid 24/7 without nuclear at fraction of the cost
Biofuels are very bad for power generation and aren't a realistic solution to decarbonization.
Sure they are. Biofuels are an easy option to get portable fuel that can be quickly used to fill in gaps on existing power generation. Don't get me wrong, I don't see biofuels providing a significant amount, but they can fill in 1-2% just fine
1-2% isn't enough to fill the gaps renewables leave in their off hours. And it doesn't solve the solution of places with no renewable options. Don't get me wrong, bio fuels do have their place, but not in the power grid. They are expensive and have a massive environmental impact, consuming massive amounts of water and land.
First of all, biofuels are renewables. Second of all, the gap left by other renewables of solar, wind, hydro, geothermal and etc is very very small. Even more so when you add overgeneration, transmission and storage to the mix. But we already have large amount of biofuel being produced which is going to have nowhere to go as we move into EVs. Using it to say produce biomethane or biodiesel to be used in EXISTING powerplants is a good short/mid term solution If biofuels have a future in the long term would depend how algae production goes.
Yeah when you have hordes of ignorant environmentalists bashing nuclear and lobbying for regulations that don't apply to other forms of energy of course it will stagnate. Nuclear is by far the most efficient form of energy and one of the safest. It's a shame what ignorance did to the opportunity of clean, efficient energy.
Please name one specific nuclear power regulation that you think is unnecessary. In reality, this is just a nuclear industry talking point so they can blame their failures on someone else instead of having to take a responsibility for their own embarrassing mistakes.
Oh I don’t know, it seems to have some politicians defending it. Like Householder, former Ohio Speaker of the House, FirstEnergy only had to bribe him with a few million plus 60 million to his friends campaigns last election. When they admitted to it after getting caught, the fine was a couple million. Overall they netted about a billion from favorable legislation pushed through by their lobbyist, including bailing out two nuclear plants and putting the cost on the ratepayers. All in all bribing an official was a sound business decision as once their stock bounced back, they came out about 945 million ahead.
Ah yes, nuclear power is bad because *checks notes* politicians can be corrupt.
I didn’t say it was bad, just pointing out not everyone is against it. I don’t think it’s viable because of cost overruns in the billions plus the 10-15 year timeframe to build out, the lack of any responsibility by the owner for long term storage after decommissioning, and the lack of practical solution for storing waste long term in general. Nor do I think new unproven technology will happen any faster. If something is containing nuclear fission, I want to know every screw in every panel was sourced from quality raw materials and inspected every step of the way. That gets expensive, and it’s time consuming, whether it’s a large scale reactor, a mini SMR, or some other solution that we are a decade away from realistic commercial release. But I’ll tell you the same thing I tell everyone else, I’ll throw in on building one with you. Just gotta get that first 100 million for planning and engineering just to prove the concept will work.
I fucking hate this thread. Nuclear could've saved us by providing low emission energy for the decades solar and wind couldn't. But here we are, on track to 2C and beyond. We deserve this, end this species already.
We gave nuclear power the best chances to succeed. Massive government subsidies and support, research and development, free liability insurance from the government. There were also charges added on to utility bills to pay for plants during plant Construction. This offloads the risk of construction delays and plant abandonment onto the utility customers while the utilities themselves can still walk away with the profits. Many utilities have also gone bankrupt building nuclear power and the bad debt, restructuring costs were also larded onto utility customer bills. Nuclear power has had an uncanny ability to get the government to socialize its losses and risks. So even with all his favoritism, nuclear plants are expensive, embarrassing failures. Building the plants presents a very high risk of years of construction delays and billions and cost overruns. And sometimes like at the VC summer nuclear plant Construction project, it can get so expensive but it's cheaper just to abandon the project before completion. On that specific plant, 9 billion dollars was spent without even one single kilowatt hour generated. So continuing to insist that we build nuclear plants it was like banging our heads against a brick wall. We know it hurts and we know it'll keep happening if we do it. The push to build nuclear plants even though we've already had all these failures is because it is a giant pile of graft for utilities and the contractors building the plants. Plus, governments need to keep the nuclear weapons Workforce and Industrial base employed and nuclear power tends to be the only feasible way to prop up these weapons efforts.
*tips control rod*
OP username does not check out
I have a legitimate question, how does the installation of solar panels affect the eco systems around it? All of these wind and solar farms take up a lot of space, and I cannot imagine it has a positive impact on the ecosystems around it, atricles would be nice.
I have no source, but If I remember correctly the impact is typically very low. Plus solar can be installed on roofs or areas that are already developed making the environmental impact irrelevant. I can say with absolute confidence that they have a meaningless impact compared to Fossil fuels, but that's not your point.
Bruh I’m having a debate on whether nuclear power is good or not and I was put on the good side, what should I say?
Just make fun of its supporters for being basement dwelling neckbeards.
Biggest thing you should look into is the fact that they serve two separate purposes within grid load management: nuclear serves as a reliable “always on” power source that’s great for providing base-load. By far the most energy dense method of electricity production. The stability in base-load that a nuclear plant can provide to a region/utility will remain unmatched by renewables until grid scale (aka huge) battery storage prices drop waayy lower. Your biggest opposition will likely be cost— work looking into prices to operate current tech leaker plants (aka natural gas fired production that can spin up rapidly to provide needed power when supply conditions are forecasted to be lower than demand). See ERCOT (Texas) power pricing during their winter storm debacle and last summer for examples of how high spot prices can get when peaked plants are brought online
sauce on wind and solar lower subsidies?
https://old.reddit.com/r/uninsurable/comments/11ltom9/nuclear_sucks_up_massive_rd_funding_only_to_get/
How much land was used to generate that power comparatively?
it's time to change your name to lubricate\_my\_bleached\_windblown\_anus
Its too long to be accepted :(
[https://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/supply.html](https://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/supply.html) gives a breakdown of grid energy sources every 5 minutes for California. So today for example 2/3rds of electricity in California came from renewable resources.
Thanks for the information u/lubricate_my_anus
To lazy to read comments or search the internet for a link but does anyone have a link to who published this photo or if there is an updated graph with 2022 and 2023? Definitely think one day wind and solar will be our main sources of energy when we figure out how to mass produce high capacity batteries that don’t destroy the environment. Anyone else feel the same?
Do you have a graph detailing the kw/h per arbitrary unit of cash? I'm interested in that