[Scea91]

1) Increased investment in nuclear energetics should bring the cost down

2) 2x cost for these attributes does not seem particularly bad to me.

3) I am not aware of any production ready options that have been deployed at scale somewhere. I know there are a lot of ideas however. If you have time can you please point me to the most promising ones? I am genuinely interested.

[bildung]

Nuclear is way too expensive, it essentially has lost. It will certainly will play a part for decades, but e.g. wind turbine parks are already at the same price level and have none of the disadvantages of nuclear. Plus several wind parks in a grid work just fine as base load providers, see e.g. https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.475...

[belorn]

Nuclear is more expensive than building a combination of wind turbine parks and natural gas plant. That is a fact.

People theorize that nuclear could be more expensive than a grid that relies on over capacity wind turbine parks in combination with thermal or hydro batteries, but no country has gone that route yet. We have countries that are almost 100% nuclear and we have a bunch that are a mix between wind/solar which falls backs to fossil fuels when needed.

The cost of running a energy grid is the total cost, not individual megawatts being produced in isolation.

Ban fossil fuels and the real costs comparison between clean energy becomes apparent.

[acidburnNSA]

The intermittency is the one thing nuclear does better than wind. Nuclear can run 24/7 for multiple years on one fuel load on a tiny land footprint with very few raw materials. No other low-carbon source can do that.

[bildung]

But real world nuclear plants seldomly run for years. I just posted links in another comment, nuclears capacity factor in France (the country with a high nuclear buildout) is about 72%, while that of wind is about 50%. The nuclear plants in France routinely have to be shut down / throttled during the summer heat - just at the times of high energy demands.

[acidburnNSA]

In the US the nuclear capacity is over 90% across 100 plants. Just because France chooses to curtail doesn't mean they have to. Wind cannot be higher than the wind itself. The characteristic of coming on and off when you want is called being dispatchable.

In the us northwest there's a fairly regular 2-week wind outage across a 4 state area each winter.

[kragen]

It's unavoidable that if you get almost all of your power from some source, but demand varies, you will have a lower capacity factor for that source, unless you have utility-scale power. France does indeed have to curtail nuclear power plant output, because they get almost all their electrical power from nukes, and they don't have big enough resistors to burn up the excess electrical energy that would be produced otherwise. The US has a higher nuclear capacity factor because it gets most of its power from other sources.

> This characteristic is called being dispatchable.

While I mostly appreciate your contributions to this conversation as being informative, a dispatchable plant is one that you can turn on and off to respond to demand, not one that cannot be higher than the wind itself.

[acidburnNSA]

If we do get serious about intermittent renewable scale-ups without fracked gas backup we will have to build giant energy storage systems that the nukes will be able to feed into just like the solar PV and wind.

Additionally, nukes can be used for district heating, seawater desalination, hydrogen production, and lots of other non-electric things when the electricity demand is low by using steam bypass techniques.

Regarding correction: I meant to say that but thank you for pointing out that it made no sense as written. I have edited accordingly.

[hokkos]

You are completely wrong on your numbers, in France in 2018 nuclear has a capacity factor of 71% and wind of 21,1%

https://bilan-electrique-2018.rte-france.com/eolien/

Also there is currently no offshore wind park, as only offshore would approach the 50% capacity factor, but they won't, they will be in the 43% as estimated by renewables.ninja

Throttling nuclear power happens only a few days in the summer, once every few years, with only a few percent because it only impact a few reactor on some rivers for environmental norms, during the lowest electricity usage of the year.

[bildung]

> in France in 2018 nuclear has a capacity factor of 71%

Which is the same number I wrote?

[hokkos]

This is what I said, I was talking about the ludicrous 50% capacity factor for onshore wind.

[crdoconnor]

Nuclear has shown no particular inclination to come down in price whereas renewables have.

It's just not cost effective without both massive implicit and explicit government subsidies.

Renewables are cost effective now and will only become more so.

[acidburnNSA]

They're cost effective when the sun is shining or wind is blowing but are strongly tied to increased high carbon fracked natural gas otherwise. When batteries are used the Energy Return on Investment drops below what's necessary to sustain industrialized civilization (around 5:1).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esr.2019.100399

[bildung]

Even without including cost overruns and decomissioning, wind energy costs the same per kilowatt of capacity[0,1].

And the actually produced energy as share of capacity (= the capacity factor) is way better than most think. For the nuclear plants in France it currently is just over 70%, while it is about 50% globally for offshore wind parks [2,3]

[0] http://www.windustry.org/how_much_do_wind_turbines_cost

[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-edf-nuclear-epr/frances-e...

[2] http://css.umich.edu/factsheets/wind-energy-factsheet

[3] https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/IMG/pdf/20170912wnisr2017...

Edit: Changed phrasing because it apparently sounded like the 50% capacity factor also referred to France.

[hokkos]

You are completely wrong on your numbers, in France in 2018 nuclear has a capacity factor of 71% and wind of 21,1%

https://bilan-electrique-2018.rte-france.com/eolien/

Also there is currently no offshore wind park, as only offshore would approach the 50% capacity factor, but they won't, they will be in the 43% as estimated by renewables.ninja

The price of the MWh of offsore park will be from 44 to 150€/MWh, where EDF is forced to sell its nuclear at 42€/MWh, average price of wind in 2020 93€/MWh.

[bildung]

I'm a bit confused where we disagree? You posted the same capacity factor for nuclear. Here is a real world example of a Danish wind farm averaging 47.7% over 7 years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horns_Rev_Offshore_Wind_Farm#H...

[hokkos]

I disagree that current onshore wind in France is not 50%, only 21%; also maybe you were comparing the low capacity factor of French nuclear because it is used for load following and curtailed in summer because it is scaled for winter usage using restive heating. And comparing it to offshore with intermitttent power, not dispatchable in the best location. Totally misleading.

[kragen]

It sounds like you confirmed their nuclear capacity factor ("just over 70%") and pointed out that French wind farms have a lower capacity factor (21.1%) than wind farms on average. I don't think that constitutes evidence that they are "completely wrong on [their] numbers".

[hokkos]

Price and capacity factor where completely wrong for wind, also current wind subsidies are about 93€/MWh.