[LanguageGamer]

Somewhat tangential, but wikipedia has good article on the cost of different energy sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source

The cost of nuclear energy has been flat for decades, but the cost of sources like solar has been plummeting. Nuclear doesn't have much of change without some technological break through.

[nabla9]

Nuclear and renewables are not 1:1 match or comparison.

Nuclear provides steady source of electricity 24/7.

If you want same from renewable, you must add the cost of energy storage and the cost of overcapacity.

[epistasis]

Same for nuclear though, a steady source of power is not a good fit for our energy use. You have to start building thermal or battery storage, or do specialized more-expensive designs that can operate at variable power, or get customers to shift their load.

[nabla9]

Exactly my point. Repeating first line of my comment above for added effect:

"Nuclear and renewables are not 1:1 match or comparison.

Different energy sources for different requirements. You want a good mix, not bad mix. Things like periodical negative electricity prices (in Europe) increase the net cost of energy. Excessively high night-time electricity is also harmful (industries, and many other uses require 24/7 energy).

[xenspidey]

Just make hydrogen during off-peak hours and get the hydrogen powered vehicles up and running.

[epistasis]

Same goes for renewables, but the electrons are cheaper and easier to get on the grid!

[xenspidey]

Off-peak hours for solar is also when there is no sun, so no. Wind isn't constant either. We need a constant 24/7 source of uninterruptible energy.

[epistasis]

Important to define the "peak" part of "off-peak" here. Is it peak production, peak differential between supply demand, etc.

Mid-day is off-peak for solar in many markets, and they curtail their output so that they don't oversupply. As there is more solar built, more and more will be curtailed.

Both nuclear and solar would need a hydrolysis system that was economical even if not run 24x7 in order to utilize their supply-demand mismatches. This is the biggest road block to hydrogen production with the GWh of "free" electricity that we could currently be generating in the spring in California, but currently just don't use.

[bryanlarsen]

We don't need a constant source, we need a source that can supply a variable load.

[brutt]

Sun shines 24x365x4B at this planet, but some solar panels are in shade for some time. World network of solar panels can power this world 24x7.

[throw0101a]

> Same for nuclear though, a steady source of power is not a good fit for our energy use.

This is completely wrong. There is a certain level of electrical production that is needed 24/7:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_load

As the data for the province of Ontario (Canada) shows, nuclear plants are very good at this (click on "Supply"):

* http://www.ieso.ca/power-data

* http://www.ieso.ca/Power-Data/Supply-Overview/Transmission-C...

As I mentioned in another comment, Ontario could stand to build another 2500-3000MW with of nuclear to deal with the base load, and the variable demand could then largely be dealt with using hydro-electric.

[dv_dt]

http://www.ceem.unsw.edu.au/sites/default/files/uploads/publ...

https://www.zdnet.com/article/why-baseload-power-is-doomed/

[throw0101a]

Looking at Ontario's numbers, I see no way in getting 11,000MW of renewal power to replace nuclear connected to the grid, regardless of how many interconnects are set up to other jurisdictions (especially the population is concentrated in the south, and so there's be a high concentration of connections).

Ontario has quite a few turbine farms itself, spread over a reasonable wide area, and even then variability is high:

* http://www.ieso.ca/localContent/map/default.htm

And given that weather systems travel west-to-east, any neighbours are going to have lulls at roughly the same time as Ontario.

Perhaps in other jurisdictions things can work out, but I see it as a non-starter here.

[credit_guy]

The technological breakthrough may be possible.

As other people mentioned here, it looks like the problem now is that the experience of building nuclear reactors was lost, so we are in a Catch-22 situation right now: if you want to build experience you need to just build reactors, but they are not economically viable without experienced builders.

The problem is that all current reactors are of the 1 GW size. For the last few decades the world has been building about 1 or 2 per year outside of China.

The solution is small nuclear reactors. For very large machines there is a dis-economy of scales. It was more expensive to build a Saturn V rocket than to build 20 rockets that are 20 times smaller each. In fact it was 3 times more expensive (about $180MM/ launch for Saturn V vs $3MM for Titan II)

Similarly, it's quite likely that it will be much cheaper to build 20 reactors of 50 MW each than it is to build a 1 GW reactor. And this is exactly what small nuclear reactors hope to achieve. For example NuScale estimates it will cost them $3 BN to build a 600 MW power plant [1] using small modular reactors.

[1] https://www.nuscalepower.com/benefits/cost-competitive

[TrowthePlow]

Isn't that basically the whole point of the recent ITER news? Swapping from fission to fusion and getting a 10x gain power in to out? I know it's been slow going and still will be, but it's still progress

[throw0101a]

> The cost of nuclear energy has been flat for decades, but the cost of sources like solar has been plummeting.

Does the cost of solar et al take into account the capacity factor?

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacity_factor

Solar is barely able to be used 30% of the time, and wind maybe touches 40% reliability. Meanwhile nuclear hardly ever drops below 80%, and is usually above 90%.

I live in Ontario, Canada, and we have quite a few nuclear plants, and they deliver very reliable power (click on the "Supply" tab):

* http://www.ieso.ca/power-data

We're 61% nuclear, and 25% hydro(-electric):

* http://www.ieso.ca/en/Power-Data/Supply-Overview/Transmissio...

IMHO, if we build another ~2500MW of nuclear, then that would completely take care of our base load, and the daily fluctuations could be handled by hydro.