Who Killed Nuclear Energy? The absurd cost to build this technology and the emergence of much more cost-effective and emission-free alternatives. It's as simple as that. It wasn't the tree-huggers or a big conspiracy.
And the absurd cost to maintain nuclear power plants. Also, they have other bad effects on the environment like heating up rivers. It's a real problem this year in Europe at least. It's really hot this summer and there's not much rain, so there is not enough water in rivers for cooling, so more and more plants need to be shut down.
Yes, it’s interesting to watch consensus switch over to pro-nuclear again. I’m not only referring to power generation by the way.
In terms of global warming I’m still conflicted myself. It’s a complex topic. Going nuclear probably would be a pragmatic last minute band-aid if it had been applied 20 years ago. Now I’m not so sure anymore. Future plants will also likely meet more wars and other shocks to the system. You only have to read about current fears surrounding Zaporizhzhia.
Green energy and changing consumption patterns might be the safest solution at this point.
My thinking boils down to this question. What if storage, smart grids, and conservation don’t pan out? Batteries may reach some practical limits and not end up being feasible for global grid scale storage.
Would we rather live in a world where we grind out building more nuclear capacity, one with rolling blackouts in the OECD, or runaway climate change?
> What if storage, smart grids, and conservation don’t pan out?
The worst case is they end up more expensive than we'd like. There is no chance they won't work out in the sense of not working at all.
So, it's just a financial risk. If one is talking about financial risks, one must look at the chance nuclear construction will be much more expensive than promised (for example, in the estimates used to compare renewables and nuclear). This risk historically has been very real.
> The worst case is they end up more expensive than we'd like. There is no chance they won't work out in the sense of not working at all.
Smart grid tech could easily fail to be able to deal with the complexity of balancing lots of dynamic demand and output. It could simply be too hard to do that with software in real time needing to react to signals over a great distance in real time.
As for batteries, they could be too expensive, clusters large enough for over night power could be dangerously fire prone, or we could have problems with lithium supply/recycling/disposal.
>If one is talking about financial risks, one must look at the chance nuclear construction will be much more expensive than promised
Yes, of course it might be. But it may turn out to be much cheaper if we settle on a few well understood designs and stamp them out largely in factories. I'm not advocating for going all in, just getting the ball rolling as a contingency.
If renewables live up to their promise and batteries deliver in the next 10 years then I'll be celebrating along with everyone else. However I think it makes some sense to build some new nuclear plant designs now just in case renewables and batteries take longer to mature than expected.
Nuclear can't even walk and chew gum, though. The recent attempts to build new reactors (or finish old mothballed partially completed ones) in the US have been fiascos. In France, the efforts have gone from bad to worse. Hypothetical potential problems of renewables pale in comparison to actual failures of nuclear.
At this point, nuclear is very sick, and is going to require very large infusions of resources just to stop the industry from decaying away, never mind improve. All this isn't helped by the clear perception of this situation. Why would the best young people go to work in the nuclear industry now?
It's not so much consensus as what will keep the fossil fuel players in business as long as possible. Both in delaying renewables and finding a new monopoly to fuck everyone with.
Except they aren't cheaper than nuclear in any way. Nuclear power has a big cost to get started, it's a fact, but then a reactor, especially a modern one, can continue to function for nearly a century. If you factor that, the cost is risible given the benefit that nuclear power gives you.
Talking about renewable, how much does it cost to remain without energy? We take it for granted, but it's not, especially these day. Without energy we cannot work, the whole economy stops. I live in Italy and it's becoming pretty much a disaster. Companies close because the energy price is not sustainable and they will lose money if they operate. Does still nuclear seem expensive? We are talking about loosing hundreds of millions of euros every day, something that will pay the construction of a nuclear plant in a week. All of that because people voted against nuclear power plants, and we are in this situation. Now this winter when we will not have enough gas to heat our houses we well thank them for saving us from the enormous risk of nuclear power.
It turns out this is not the case. Many nuclear reactors in the US have been shut down because they couldn't even make an operating profit. The remaining reactor at Three Mile Island was cash flow negative for the last six years it was in operation.
As I see (but I'm not from the US) you also have energy shortage problems. Granted, not as we have in Europe, but the problem still is starting to appear. How much does it cost a company that doesn't produce because it has no energy or the energy is too expensive to be economical?
Also the main alternative to nuclear are fossil fuels, that have order of magnitude of cost higher than nuclear, only that it's not payed now but it will be payed by future generation: the cost of climate change, that cannot even be quantified (while the cost of nuclear, even if high, can!).
Lastly, fossil fuels are not only bad for the environment, but for the fact that oil companies are involved, and with their power they control the economy. Usually nuclear power plants are run by government own companies (and thus the country doesn't depend on others for the energy)
Electricity demand in the US has been flat for the last decade. There's no shortage. We are seeing increases in the price of natural gas though. The solution to that is add more renewables.
Except it's not an absurd cost to build. In South Korea LCOE of nuclear is less than half that of solar, at approximately $0.05/kwh. In most of the world, the cost of nuclear power has remained constant or decreased adjusted for inflation since the 60s, only in the US has the cost skyrocketed. This suggests a political issue, not a technological one.
They can be made so for similar cost to nuclear in at least two distinct ways.
An aluminium rod with a cross section of a few square metres is enough for global power needs, PV is cheap enough that the resistance loses don't alter that equation even antipodally. Take a while to mine that much aluminium, but it also takes a while to make even one reactor.
The batteries we need to build anyway for the electric cars (or the hydrogen production, storage, and fuel cells if we decide to go back to those) are the same scale we need for grid storage, and it makes sense to repurpose car batteries as grid batteries before full refurbishment. Last I checked the cost for batteries was close to, IIRC slightly better than, equivalent nuclear.
Wind and solar, combined with various kinds of storage, can be used to supply "synthetic baseload", and likely at a cost less than doing so with new nuclear.
Shhh, don't disturb the pro-nuke narrative with 'facts'. Elsewhere in this thread they try to blame regulations. US regulations don't apply in China and Russia, but they can't make it economic either.
I'm happy with NRC. I think they are doing their job. I'd rather NRC be too conservative than have a Fukushima or Chernobyl event.
But nuclear is just technology. There is no fundamental reason for nuclear technology to not be 10 times or 100 times cheaper. In particular the naval nuclear reactors appear to be quite inexpensive. And keep in mind, they are designed to be able to work in conditions of combat (hopefully they won't need to). If someone were to just build them on land, they could be cheaper still.
I (along with almost all pro-nuke guys) am not pro-expensive-nukes. I'm pro-cheap-nukes. But refusing to even consider nukes is a perfect way to never get cheap nukes.
Oh, and by the way, I'm really happy that solar and wind are cheap and getting cheaper. Solar energy generation has increased by about 20% or more every year for the last decade (except for one year). I really think the trend will continue.
The idea that investing in nuclear technology is taking away money from renewables is just silly. In 2021 more than $100 billion were invested in renewables in the US. The investments in nuclear are simply insignificant compared to that.
China is planning to build 150 reactors by 2035, and has not then doubled the nuclear share in a decade, so economic or not, there's evidently some appeal there.
To put it in numbers (actual production per year, not capacity) [1] [2]:
China nuclear 2010: 75 TW/h
China nuclear 2021: 408 TW/h (+333 TW/h)
Worldwide nuclear: 2768 => 2800 (+32 TW/h)
China solar 2010: 0.7 TW/h
China solar 2021: 327 TW/h (+326 TW/h)
Worldwide solar: 34 => 1033 (+999 TW/h)
Luckily, nuclear doesn't really care about solar, since they complement each other perfectly (wind is a different story and it is already much bigger than nuclear).
However, China is a country that is pretty much perfect for nuclear: Little unnecessary regulation, no green party, expertise in nuclear technology, and excellence in constructing large scale construction projects.
So if nuclear is getting overtaken by solar even in China, then I don't see how it will be able to compete in the west against wind and solar.
The annual increase in renewable generation in China is now many times that of the annual increase in nuclear generation. Starting at 2010 leads to an underestimate of the renewables' current velocity advantage over nuclear there.
The article suggested that the west should "compete with the two leaders in global nuclear construction: Russia and China"
to "not only decarbonize, but bring greater prosperity to the world".
So I wanted to show that even if the west emulated China by slashing regulation, outlawing the greens, and dramatically increased our skill at huge construction projects, we still would focus far more on renewables than on nuclear.
(I ignored Russia, because they produce most of their electricity with fossil fuels, and only 18% with nuclear, which is probably not something the west wants to emulate [1]).
This technology definitely isn't flawless.