[ya_throw]

Fascinating argument, but unfortunately, we are doomed. That is, unless we go nuclear. Apart from that, there is nowhere near enough energy or resources to maintain our current lifestyle (and that's ignoring the fact that the vast majority of the world's population don't enjoy this lifestyle and very much wish to) in a "renewable" fashion.

[adrianN]

There is absolutely no reason to assume that nuclear energy will be cheaper than wind and solar. For hydrogen production the "base load!!" argument doesn't apply either. You can just produce hydrogen when power is plentiful.

[ya_throw]

There absolutely is - it's called energy returned on energy invested.

[pfdietz]

EROEI of renewables is just fine and is not an argument for nuclear over renewables.

I get the feeling you're reading from a list of debunked pro-nuclear talking points.

[ya_throw]

Just fine, if you're happy with approximately 1/4th the energy output for a given (manufacturing) energy input. And that's for the best case, for certain wind power installations. Solar is the worst, at about 1/15th the energy output for the same energy input (compared to nuclear). [1]

I fail to see how this argument is "debunked". I'd also like to see what other arguments are on my supposed list.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_return_on_investment

[pfdietz]

By 1/4th, do you mean 1/4th of nuclear? Sure, I'm totally happy with that. Once EROI is high enough, further improvement has only marginal effect. If EROI of PV is 10 (say) and nuclear is 40 (say), that just means nuclear is 1/10 - 1/40 or .075 better than PV by this metric. The contribution of this to the cost difference is minor, and is swamped by the other contributions to the cost of nuclear.

[ya_throw]

I don't think you understand how the maths works.

The EROEI of nuclear is 106, by the link I previously provided. The very best solar installations have an EROEI of 7. That means nuclear gives 106/7 = 15x more energy output than solar, for a given amount of manufacturing energy input.

It's a simple ratio calculation, I'm not sure why you decided to subtract the reciprocals of the two numbers.

> Once EROI is high enough

The EROI of solar is 7, which means you get 7 units of energy output for every unit of energy expended in manufacturing. That is a terrible return. In no way is that "high enough". In fact, we shouldn't be bothering with it at all.

[analog31]

Here "lifestyle" means population. We're doomed.