[mikece]

"[Wind and solar are] even close to being competitive with the marginal costs of running the coal and nuclear plants we already have."

Is that still true without incentives, green grants, rebates, and tax credits? Because without all of that and with mountains of red tape nuclear still produces energy at the lowest cost, and without emitting any CO2.

[throwaway5752]

Are you sure about that? You should look at the fortunes of the engineering groups McDermott, CB&I, and Shaw and how the cost overruns associated with the Westinghouse contributed to so much trouble for those EPC companies and Toshiba. Nuclear has two big problems: difficulty with costs of constructing new plants and currently completely externalized storage of spent fuel. The latter is poorly defined and understood, even though some people would like to give the appearance otherwise.

[08-15]

The cost for dealing with the spent fuel isn't externalized. The problem is that the government promised to deal with the waste, charged a fee for doing so, forbade utilities from dealing with the waste themselves (Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982), and then... did nothing.

That little bit of waste can be dealt with, and comparatively cheaply. Think about it, you can produce 8TWh of electricity, sell it for maybe $400M, and you only have to deal with one ton of waste. That's not a big deal, but doing it is illegal.

Don't blame the industry for a dysfunctional government.

[Gibbon1]

> Don't blame the industry for a dysfunctional government.

The Utilizes got exactly what they wanted from the government in this case. Complete externalization of the problem for a nominal fee. The government also capped their liability so they could buy insurance. No insurance, no financing.

[credit_guy]

> Complete externalization of the problem for a nominal fee.

If you call $750MM/year a nominal fee, your definition of nominal is maybe a bit non-standard?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Waste_Policy_Act#Nucle...

[pjc50]

What's the total liability for the maximum area of land rendered unusable by a nuclear plant accident?

[gdhbcc]

Less than a Dam

[ape4]

This is my favourite comment of the day

[throwaway5752]

Someone has to deal with it, and everyone I've read who is a publicly recognized expert in the field says it is actually a hard problem. So blame government if you want, but ultimately someone is accountable for it and it's externalized cost until that is address by whomever.

[08-15]

So I guess Dr. Charles E. Till is not an expert or at least not publicly recognized?

And while "the waste problem" is arguably unsolved thanks to government incompetence, currently the waste is being managed by the utilities. So far, no cost has been externalized.

"Oh yeah, maybe now, but future generations!" Maybe future generations will elect a government that gets out of the way of engineers trying to solve the problem.

[throwaway5752]

IFR isn't easy or solved. Seems like government is the only one funding Gen IV breeder reactor research, as well as Argonne National Lab and Dr. Till's work there, so I think government is doing their part. Until it's solved it isn't. When the facts change, I will change my mind.

[08-15]

Both Moltex Energy and Elysium Industries are developing fast waste burners, and both are privately funded. Neither operates in the USA, though, because that's where the government gets in the way. The US government defunded the IFR project completely back in 1994. (It was too close to building a demonstration plant.)

> I think government is doing their part

This incompetent government declared in 1987 that there is exactly one solution to "the waste problem", and that's Yucca Mountain, categorically ruling out any sane solution (i.e. recycling). Now even Mt. Yucca isn't funded anymore. What part is this government doing exactly?

> When the facts change, I will change my mind.

Bullshit. You will continue to claim that the cost of waste disposal, which is implied to be approximately infinite, was externalized, when in fact it's neither.

[tefferon]

is there any reason why we can't conceivably jettison nuclear waste out of orbit?

[imtringued]

Because there is no need to. The radioactive material wasn't a problem before it was dug out of the soil. It's not a problem if it returns to where it came from. The problem is that most government try to find an idiotic central storage location instead of simply distributing the spent fuel over many locations.

[mantoto]

Oh yeah sounds easy until someone digs it out again and puts it in a bomb.

Or it leaks and reaches our water...

No risk there never has been.

[tlb]

Yes. Launch vehicles sometimes fail. They may explode, or they may not make it all the way to orbit and have to re-enter. Either way, this would scatter the radioactive material over a wide area.

[wainstead]

Indeed, to your point:

https://www.nytimes.com/1989/10/10/science/groups-protest-us...

[tofflos]

Not according to the article.

Unsubsidized solar and wind are both listed as $40 while coal and nuclear are listed as $34 and $29 respectively. The article also mentions that increased solar and wind necessitates batteries but doesn't list a price for those.

> "In the case of both utility-scale solar and onshore wind power, this rate has dropped to about $40 per megawatt hour..."

> "With government subsidies, the average costs of onshore wind ($28 per megawatt hour) and utility-scale solar ($36/MWh) are roughly equivalent to those of coal and nuclear generation ($34/MWh and $29/MWh, respectively)"

> "Third, in order to be able to use more wind and solar power, we’ll need to improve our ability to store that power"

[bjourne]

For nuclear and coal, the costs are for continuing to operate existing plants - not building new ones. Plants from the 70's and 80's will require extensive repairs and upgrades and if you factor in those costs, wind and solar becomes cheaper.

[bjourne]

Almost all recent cost studies put the cost of wind and solar far below the cost of new nuclear power. See f.e:

"The cost of generating solar power ranges from $36 to $44 per megawatt hour (MWh), the WNISR said, while onshore wind power comes in at $29–$56 per MWh. Nuclear energy costs between $112 and $189."

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-energy-nuclearpower/nucle...

"Onshore generation costs, at the upper bound installed cost of $2,000/kW, vary from $101/MWh at 6m/s, down to $55/MWh at 9m/s.

At the median cost of $1,600/kW, the corresponding figures are $80/MWh and $44/MWh.

At the lower-bound installed cost of $1,200/kW and a wind speed of 6m/s, the generation cost is $59/MWh, falling to $38/MWh at 8m/s.

... Apart from gas, wind now has no other competitor among fossil-fuel sources. There have been no new nuclear developments, leaving the UK price for its Hinkley Point C power station as a benchmark, at around $130/MWh in 2017 money."

https://www.windpowermonthly.com/article/1455361/tipping-poi...

"According to the US Energy Information Agency, the average nuclear power generating cost is about $100 per megawatt-hour. Compare this with $50 per megawatt-hour for solar and $30 to $40 per megawatt-hour for onshore wind."

https://thebulletin.org/2019/08/the-false-promise-of-nuclear...

See also: https://www.lazard.com/media/450784/lazards-levelized-cost-o... and https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation..... In the last report the cost for advanced nuclear is estimated to between $75.1 - $81.2/mWh and to $38.9 - $72.9/mwH for onshore wind.

[pyrale]

Are your numbers factoring the cost of building energy storage, or a plant using a pilotable energy ?

[NeedMoreTea]

It's typical HN that the top comment is both wildly incorrect and completely uncited. So thanks for providing some necessary context.

Worth adding that after this year's round of UK offshore auctions, wind power comes in cheaper than new gas and under a quarter of heavily subsidised nuclear. Despite subsidy and six proposed plants, the only certain remaining nuclear is Hinkley C. Five of the others have had participants withdraw, go bankrupt in one case (Moorside under Westinghouse-Toshiba), and the final remaining UK proposed nuclear - Sizewell C looks increasingly unlikely. Depends on the package and strike prices I suspect as it's an exact copy of Hinkley. EDF (behind Bradwell B, Hinkley and Sizewell using a Chinese reactor design) are busy accumulating a Shenzen style reputation for worker conditions and suicides at Hinkley. Even the majority right wing UK media has noticed enough to report conditions.

The next auction round of offshore wind licences should see it easily come in under existing gas.

[trianglem]

Yes, the dream team would be a combination of renewable and nuclear.

[hannasanarion]

No it wouldn't, because nuclear isn't reactive enough to produce energy to match the extreme afternoon demand curves when solar capacity drops and demand jumps.

To account for those rapid jumps in non-renewable demand, you need an energy source that can ramp up really fast on short notice, like hydrocarbon fire.

[lostapathy]

Apparently this is less true for newer reactors, or older reactors with upgrades. I'm not an expert, but https://www.powermag.com/flexible-operation-of-nuclear-power...

Even if reactors aren't as fast to react as a gas peaking plant is, perhaps batteries will soon be able to bridge that gap. The economics of batteries change greatly if you only need them to carry the load for tens of minutes for reactors to ramp up, vs needing to carry the load until the sun shines again.

[nerpderp82]

The power supply and the energy supply will not have a single solution. It is analogous to the levels of caching in a Von Neumann cpu. L1 will capacitors, L2 batteries, bulk storage is pumped hydro and other GWh energy stores.

The duck curve is a smoke screen and should only exist for a region that doesn't have solar to the west of it. Those solar farms in CA should be feeding users a timezone over to the east.

Any source can then feed into those stores, wind, solar, hydro.

If your power solution is involves hydrocarbons, it should be a closed cycle.

[audunw]

> like hydrocarbon fire.

Or batteries and other storage methods. It looks like battery solutions could get cheap enough in the next 10-20 years to smooth things out and take care of storage for a few hours (see for instance http://news.mit.edu/2018/metal-mesh-membrane-rechargeable-ba... .. Donald Sadoway has some good talks on YouTube)

But yeah, for days that happen to have less wind/solar, I think the best thing is just keep gas power plants around. The CO2 impact for that will be minimal, the power plants are already built, and over time you could replace the fuel with synthetic gas made from renewables, which would basically be another energy storage mechanism. Cheaper renewable gas is something we need to make the world sustainable anyway.

The only unsolved problem is seasonal variations in colder climates. But those areas could import more trash and burn it (for both electricity and heat), like Sweden does. Norway has a ton of hydroelectric power, and is building more HVDC power lines to other areas of Northern Europe which will help with that area. Not sure what the solution for North America is though. But it's not nuclear. Having a nuclear power plant idle for half a year is the exact opposite of what you want. The plant is expensive and the fuel is cheap - if you build it you want it to run 24/7.

[akvadrako]

No, the battery solution is currently about 10000x too expensive. Even building a 1 day battery for each geographical region would be thousands of trillions of dollars.

Only some unexpected breakthrough could make it feasible.

[femto]

AGL in Australia is looking to turn disused coal mines into pumped storage.

https://www.agl.com.au/about-agl/media-centre/asx-and-media-...

[NullPrefix]

> the extreme afternoon demand curves when solar capacity drops and demand jumps

Does the hourly schedule variate day by day or can it be predicted?

If you can predict when and how much power you will need to produce then it can be ramped up slowly, I assume.

[hannasanarion]

"ramping up slowly" isn't an option when the demand curve is changing quickly, because there's nowhere for that extra energy to go. Energy storage isn't really feasible, so all the electrical grids in the world need to match supply to demand 1:1 in real time.

There are electrical dispatchers who are monitoring grid supply 24/7 and instruct plants on how much they are responsible for generating on a minute-by-minute basis.

[dredmorbius]

An alternative to storage is dispatchable demand. This would require high-load activities or uses which can be rapidly cycled.

Storage batteries, pumped storage, and CAES are examples of this, though simple raw thermal banking (hot water heating, typically) is an excellent way to suck up excess Joules or GWh.

1 GWh is roughly the energy required to heat a pool of water 1 hectare * 1 m by 86 degrees Celsius. This scales to multiple GWh by increasing area, depth, or both. Conversion to steam is also possible, though that requires more engineering (pressure is A Thing). Substrates such as molten salt have a lower heat capacity per unit mass, but can be heated to far greater temperatures.

Storage at the scale of entire US generating capacity for multiple weeks using molten salt thermal storage, even accounting for Carnot cycle efficiency losses (about 20-50% depending on specifics, 30% is a good ballpark) is actually a tractable-scale concept. Existing petroleum storage facilities are roughly comperable in size, though molten salt would require somewhat more robust facilities and insulation.

Whilst it doesn't have the net efficiencies of pumped hydro (exceeding 90% round-trip storage efficiency), pumped hydro lacks sufficient developable sites, and has significant environmental impacts.

[nerpderp82]

> Energy storage isn't really feasible

You couldn't be more Dam wrong.

[dredmorbius]

Doesn't scale. Not enough sites.

Mind, where it does work, it's phenomenally effective, efficient, and responsive.

There are a few sites at which seawater-based systems might be possible, in which the ocean forms the "lower reservoir". These are dependent on suitable terrain. Matching terrain to consumption patterns is difficult: the Netherlands and much of Britain are sorely lacking. Some of the best potential sites are along the Balkan coast in Serbia and Croatia. Chile's Atacama Desert, along the Pacific coastline, is nearly ideal geographically, but is far from most use (North America, Europe, Asia). Portions of the US West Coast might be suitable, though would all but certainly face major political resistance for environmental impacts.

And: working with seawater is complex from an engineering standpoint: it's corrosive and sea life has a pronounced tendency to foul large-scale water-handling systems, though this may be tractable. There've been several pilot projects, though those have since been decomissioned, excepting Rance in France, designed as a tidal power plant, though capable of working as a pumped-hydro facility.

[dredmorbius]

The demand can be generally predicted for at least several days in advance based on weather. This affects both generating capacity (incident solar, wind) and loads (hours of daylight, heating or cooling load). The process isn't perefect, but converges on experience the closer to present you are. Factors such as predictable human activities (workday, workweek, and seasonal factors) also enter in.

The events you may have noted in news of "negative energy prices" are often failures of prediction -- unexpectedly high availability (more sun or wind), and unexpectedly low demand. Though "pay to take my power" sounds good, it's actually a sign of mismanaged resources.

There are occasional incidental factors -- sudden demand, or more often, equipment or transmission failures which require bringing additional capacity online, or shedding load to prevent under-voltage (and hence: over-amperage), or underfrequency. Grid power frequency is generally 60Hz in the US, 50Hz in the UK, and just for grins, both in Japan, on separate and noninterdependent grids, which made generation capacity loss following the Tohoku earthquake/tsunami and Fukushima incident all the more critical. Loss of synchronisation or deviation by more than a very small fraction from the nominal frequency is considered a Very Bad Thing. Viz the recent UK blackouts.

[tofflos]

The Nordic system operators are in the early stages of transitioning from a reactive to a predictive process. The schedule does vary from day to day but there isn't anyone there that doesn't believe it can't be predicted with an accuracy that is more safe, and economical, than the current reactive process.

You can read more about it at http://nordicbalancingmodel.net.

[ianai]

So make a big enough nuclear plant for those peaks.

[NullPrefix]

Too expensive. Bigger capacity means bigger costs up front and runtime.

[ianai]

How much more expensive? How much more capacity?

I’d rather have way too much nuclear power than rely on any fossil fuels. If anything, energy demand seems posed to always increase.

[namibj]

AFAIK it's about Xenon poisoning.

[NullPrefix]

Xenon

[FullyFunctional]

Or deploy storage to make the curve smoother

[Scoundreller]

You mean I can “bank” A/C in the form of ice???

[namibj]

Well, ammonia coolers offer cheap storage in the form of liquid ammonia. This applies to both absorption and compressor coolers.

[mprovost]

...or hydro.

[The_rationalist]

Source for the latency of nuclear concerning spikes in electrical demand? > 70% of France electricity is made from nuclear and they don't seem to have the issue you claim.

[bryanlarsen]

Half of that 30% are natural gas peaker plants.

[08-15]

You're a victim of a common misconception. Nuclear reactors can ramp up and down as quickly as the control rods move. Check out the Borax experiments (from shutdown to full power in seconds) and the TRIGA reactor (from shutdown to gigawatts and back to shutdown in milliseconds).

What can't ramp quickly is the steam turbine connected to the reactor, but that's more of a design decision than a technical limitation. The German nuclear plants ("Konvoi" series) can in fact ramp faster than the German gas turbine plants, because that was a design requirement.

[grecy]

> Yes, the dream team would be a combination of renewable and nuclear

So long as you don't care how to dispose of the nuclear waste. But we'll be dead by then anyway, so who cares right.

[lostlogin]

If you’re factoring in subsidies for wind and solar, those for nuclear and coal need to be considered too. Also, nuclear might be low CO2, but getting the fuel and disposing of it is part of the equation too.

[cma]

>Is that still true without incentives

Are you sure you are accounting for Nuclear's extreme incentives? Nuclear as an industry gets its liability capped to around $12.6 billion, whereas there are plausible trillion dollar accident scenarios. It is as if you got free insurance and only had to pay insurance on paying the deductible.

The law was passed in 1957 partly because we wanted to subsidize nuclear proliferation and used byproducts from plants for weapons.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%E2%80%93Anderson_Nuclear...

[mantoto]

We still have areas in Germany where you have to test your deer meat.

Who is paying for that? Guess who is not paying for

[reallydontask]

Is nuclear completely without subsidies?

Also some of the red tape, for nuclear, is there for a reason.

[sunstone]

All of the externalities of nuclear power are subsidized.

[keanzu]

Mountains of red tape don't exist in the communist dictatorship of China yet they haven't broken ground on a new plant since 2016 [1]. There are fundamental economic problems with nuclear that prevent it from being the power solution we all hoped it would be.

[1] https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612564/chinas-losing-its-...

[akvadrako]

Then why does France have cheaper electricity than most of its neighbors?

[pjc50]

Because they built a huge number of reactors with state subsidy and then stopped?

France is also having trouble with life extension due to cracked reactor vessels, and is unable to build new capacity cheaply - Flamanville is in project management trouble, like Hinkley Point C, and is projected to have higher energy costs than the existing reactors.

And nuclear power is ironically suffering its own climate change effects, it's dependent on cool water: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-electricity-heatwa...