[lmm]

And how does that compare to the business-as-usual shutdowns of solar (every night, cloudy days, winter as a whole) which unlike nuclear are highly correlated between separate plants?

If storage is cheap enough then solar will be an important part of the mix. But unless you have the right geography for geothermal or hydro (which probably means flooding a bigger area than the chernobyl exclusion zone before you've even started, but leaving that aside), nuclear is still the only viable option for clean, reliable baseline power. It's not an either/or, we should be building both.

[runarberg]

I heard somewhere that the base load of power is an mostly an outdated concern at this point. As more homes get solar and offload their excess power back into the grid during the the daytime. Reducing the baseload to negative.

https://www.nrdc.org/experts/kevin-steinberger/debunking-thr...

[lmm]

You have to read these partisan pieces carefully. When they say "a mix of renewables and natural gas can x", they actually mean "natural gas can x" - but burning natural gas emits CO2. And a 30% wind grid in Texas worked out right until it didn't (the media blamed it all on lack of "winterization" which may be the immediate cause, but the fact is that the high wind mix meant the grid was having to work a lot harder and is one of the biggest underlying causes).

For all that article's efforts to quibble with definitions, the fact is that a grid that is all or mostly renewables (except for hydro and geothermal, which are great for the places that are suitable for them, but not available everywhere) will have blackouts. Lots of things can be demand-managed but lots of things can't. If you want electricity to be available 24/7 then the grid absolutely does need to "overpay" for generators that are available 24/7 (and sure, nuclear plants have unexpected shutdowns like anything else, but those outages are going to be uncorrelated with each other), and whether you call that "baseload" or some other term is neither here nor there.

[runarberg]

Agreed. Natural gas is not a feasible alternative to coal and oil on its own as the greenhouse emissions are simply to high. However, a natural gas power plant that runs only when demand calls for it and renewables (+ stored renewables) are unable to supply is not an end of the world scenario (which our current climate trajectory certainly is).

I’m even hopeful of a future where these natural gas plants will have carbon capture employed. But you are right, as it stands natural gas power plant is not a solution to the climate crisis.

[Flocular]

That is just to show that nuclear isn't a magical always-on power source that some of the pro-nuclear folks make it out to be. Also: we can install twice the capacity in MW for solar and still have money left over to put into a smarter grid or storage compared to nuclear.

[robocat]

No.

Firstly, you talk about $ per capacity in MW, however solar capacity factor is 20%. Only use a levelized cost per MWh.

Secondly, solar needs storage which you think is trivial, but which turns out to be wayyyy more expensive than the solar panels. Some reports[1] only compare short-term (peaker generation) for storage. Nuclear is expensive, but battery storage is far more expensive to cover daily or longer load variation (non-peaker). That report mentions in a footnote a levelized cost of storage of crazy high $1613/MWh to $3034/MWh.

[1] https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-...

[Flocular]

No, the original plot was in MWh. But even for LCOE wikipedia (citing lazard) shows the same 3xfactor between solar/wind and nuclear: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levelized_cost_of_electricity

[robocat]

I strongly disagree with your point “we can install twice the capacity in MW for solar and still have money left over to put into a smarter grid or storage” because you appear to be making up numbers - what is your reference to sources?

You used MW in that comment - your new comment is not clarifying whether you made a mistake or what your actual point is.

LCOE is an averaged cost/MWh, which is absolutely inappropriate to use when discussing whether nuclear is expensive or not, because LCOE ignores usage patterns (which you obviously know, but are hand-waving away as “money left over”). From your Wikipedia link: “One of the most important potential limitations of LCOE is that it may not control for time effects associated with matching electricity production to demand” and “To ensure enough electricity is always available to meet demand, storage or backup generation may be required, which adds costs that are not included in the LCOE”.

Finally, almost any plot that uses “installed capacity” is deceptive by design: because capacity factors make solar/wind appear 5x better, which is not a trivial difference on a graph. Instantaneous capacity is usually not relevant (except during “peaker” loads).

[mgfist]

The big con for a solar/battery grid isn't the cost, it's the raw materials. We need an absurd amount of copper/lithium/cobalt etc.. and we need to be mining orders of magnitudes more than we do now.

[runarberg]

That is not a proven fact. We probably need more silicon for the solar cells. But there is nothing about lithium ion batteries which makes them our only good choice for storing energy from renewables. Gravity is probably our best energy storage at present, there is also nickle metal hydrade for home storage, and in the near future we are probably gonna be looking at molten salt batteries (e.g. calcium-antimony liquid-metal batteries) for large scale storage. We are probably only gonna need to mine the lithium and cobalt for our consumer electronics (including electric cars). For public transit systems that can’t connect to the power grid for some reason, there is always hydrogen fuel-cells.

So no, we are not going to be needing an absurd amount of any one mineral (except maybe silicon) as they all have alternatives which quite often are even better then lithium and cobalt.

[pfdietz]

Silicon is the second most abundant element in the Earth's crust. Pick up a random rock and it will average 26% silicon. There is absolutely not ever going to be a shortage of the element silicon.

[winkeltripel]

But the storage costs for winter are on the order of 100x the power generation. Solar does not contribute to baseload, so it's just a waste of effort, talent, and resources.

[p_l]

Except for quite a lot of places, we need to put 10-20x times the capacity plus storage system.