Solar, wind & batteries will power the future. It is a question of when not if. All others will fade into oblivion. So long, and thanks for all the Joules.
This comment adds nothing and presents no argument. And I find this sentiment really hard to understand. Why bet everything on solar? Nuclear technology already exists now. In fact it's existed for quite awhile. We could have gotten rid of coal decades ago, if not for irrational fear. It may already be too late to stop climate change. Why wait another decade or two (or three...) until the kinks in solar are worked out (if they ever are...)?
It's also a bit ridiculous to point out the improvement in solar technology, and ignore everything else. Sure solar technology is improving over time. So is nuclear. And it could probably be improving a lot faster if it got the same level of interest. The major accidents everyone thinks of were all by decades old reactors. We know of much safer ways to do things, and we've learned a lot from those events.
Even coal will improve over time. All that discussion of the coming robot revolution surely applies to coal mining.
Ok, let's find some common ground: we agree current nuclear reactors "could be a lot better". With very finite uranium, coal, and oil deposits on earth these forms of energy generation are only a short-term solution. As an aside, it would also be great to save those energy supplies for a dark and rainy day.
My prediction is based on Econ 101: the cheapest solution will win.
Nuclear reactors (and coal plants) are long-term investment projects with payback over decades. If you're close to the equator, it doesn't even make sense today. And the increasing cost differential between solar and nuclear/coal will mean that zone is expanding towards the poles.
I'm sorry if you're financially or intellectually invested in nuclear, but that's what i think will happen.
Even if you look U-235 alone, we have at least a couple centuries of it using conventional reactor tech, based on the known (explored) deposits, and very conservative estimates of how many more we will discover once existing stock starts to dwindle and prices start going up. Less conservative estimates give it closer to 5-6 centuries.
Now, if we use the tech to its fullest extent - meaning U-238 breeder reactors, rather than conventional U-235 ones - then fuel supply is infinite for all practical purposes. It also by and large solves the nuclear waste problem.
The main problem with nuclear isn't price per watt, it's the upfront cost. It requires a massive initial investment before you start getting anything useful out of it, and it requires an even more massive investment to start deriving benefits from scaling up. Solar, on the other hand, can start with a very small investment, and gradually ramp up, with a smooth curve of decreasing cost as scale increases. That makes it more attractive to private sector.
Nuclear is something that pretty much requires very long term planning and subsidies of the kind that only governments are really capable of, and in the era of democratic governments and nuclear scare among the general public, it's just not happening.
Well, except for countries that don't have to care about public opinion. China, for example, is building a lot of new nuclear plants. They aren't ignoring solar, either, and they're making massive investments there as well - but they're not putting all their eggs in one basket.
I'm happy to hear uranium will last for a long time, gives us a good alternative if the sun ever stopped shining (e.g. massive volcano or asteroid). But it doesn't really change the economics.
China's newly installed solar capacity in 2016 was 34 GW and growing fast, they currently have 20 nuclear reactors under construction with a capacity of 20GW. So solar is quickly outpacing nuclear even in China, and the trend is in solar's favor.
The only saving grace that nuclear has at the moment is the lack of massive battery capacity. Electric cars are quickly changing that, and then it will be game over for nuclear.
I think that potential investors of nuclear reactors see this trend now as well, which is why interest in building new nuclear reactors in market-based economies is quickly fading (of course it depends on latitude at which point in time solar/wind dominance is reached). Quite substantial cost overruns are also typical for nuclear power plants, but rare for solar/wind.
> It's also a bit ridiculous to point out the improvement in solar technology, and ignore everything else. Sure solar technology is improving over time. So is nuclear.
The solar improvements are a lot more demonstrable, the nuclear ones are usually more theoretical due to the time and cost of building new reactors.
>In fact it's existed for quite awhile. We could have gotten rid of coal decades ago, if not for irrational fear.
Unsafe nuclear has existed for quite a while. Safe nuclear has yet to prove it's practical, which includes being cost effective against wind and solar.
> And I find this sentiment really hard to understand. Why bet everything on solar?
Parent mentioned wind and solar, and they didn't exclude others like hydro and tidal where appropriate. That's not betting everything on solar.
>All that discussion of the coming robot revolution surely applies to coal mining.
To a large extent it already has. New mines are human intensive to create, but largely automated after they're online.
This is wishful thinking. Solar, wind and batteries has tons of unsolved problems. And I have serious doubts they will be solved in the next 15-20 years.
I hear news about new "revolutionary" batteries every months for at least 20 years. But still, every device uses the same old batteries.
The biggest problem is that no system can withstand such huge alternations in amounts of generated power. Solar and wind energy isn't available 24/7 and generation can't be rapidly changed to compensate for changes in consumption.
Nuclear power presently produces ~11% of world electricity. Wind + solar can scale to that penetration level even without battery storage and in much of the world wind or solar will already deliver LCOE lower than new-build nuclear. Reaching really high penetration levels depends on presently-unknown economics of large scale storage. (Much how the success or failure of molten salt reactors and every other next-generation nuclear dream is dependent far more on delivered costs than physics.)
EDIT: I see that you were responding to someone who is already sure that storage-backed wind and solar will become the only electricity sources. That's certainly a bolder claim than scaling up to match present-day nuclear penetration levels.
Certainly Wind and Solar can scale to 11%. The question is about the other 89%. A significant chunk of it could be nuclear instead of coal and we would definitely be better off. And make no mistake, you need to choose between coal and nuclear because it'll be a long while before batteries have sufficient capacity to power the grid for days at a time.
> Certainly Wind and Solar can scale to 11%. The question is about the other 89%.
Is it still in question? If you can get to 11% then you can get to 100% with enough geographic distribution and batteries. Wind and solar are now cheaper than coal, even old unsafe nuclear never got to that point.
So may the best one of us win. My most profitable investments have been based on other people's myopia, and it is a far sweeter victory than scoring points in an online discussion forum.
It's also a bit ridiculous to point out the improvement in solar technology, and ignore everything else. Sure solar technology is improving over time. So is nuclear. And it could probably be improving a lot faster if it got the same level of interest. The major accidents everyone thinks of were all by decades old reactors. We know of much safer ways to do things, and we've learned a lot from those events.
Even coal will improve over time. All that discussion of the coming robot revolution surely applies to coal mining.