[pfdietz]

The analysis I've seen doesn't support the position we should also be deploying nuclear. We come out ahead rolling out renewables and storage as fast as possible, driving these technologies down their experience curves. Any new nuclear added will likely close early when it can't even make an operating profit.

[JumpCrisscross]

> We come out ahead rolling out renewables and storage as fast as possible, driving these technologies down their experience curves

We don’t have storage technology to absorb a 2% year-long grid-wide output decrease [1]. That means overbuilding or, more practically, sticking with natural gas. If we aren’t building nuclear, then continuing to build gas plants is the right move.

[1] https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=61943

[pfdietz]

Sure we do. It's e-fuels like hydrogen. Yes, the round trip efficiency sucks, but for year-long storage the cost of inefficiency is very low (compared to system capital cost), because there are so few charge-discharge cycles.

A simple cycle gas turbine might be $0.6/W, vs. $10/W for a new nuclear power plant. So we can back up the grid with these turbines for a very small fraction of the cost of building nuclear power plants to power the grid.

[JumpCrisscross]

> It's e-fuels like hydrogen. Yes, the round trip efficiency sucks, but for year-long storage the cost of inefficiency is very low

This is still pie in the sky technology. Particularly given the frequencies, magnitudes and durations we’re considering. At that point SMRs become topical.

> we can back up the grid with these turbines for a very small fraction of the cost of building nuclear power plants to power the grid

Absolutely. If we’re okay with gas being a core energy source for the foreseeable future, we shouldn’t build nuclear. (And for countries without safe access to gas, coal.)

[pfdietz]

> This is still pie in the sky technology.

4% of the hydrogen production in China is by electrolysis now. Electrolysers there are below $300/kW.

You object to this because it's not available, then you point to SMRs, which don't exist now except on slides. And given NuScale's recent disappointments one should not expect the rosy promises of their (or other) SMRs to come true or find much of a market.

> Absolutely. If we’re okay with gas being a core energy source for the foreseeable future, we shouldn’t build nuclear. (And for countries without safe access to gas, coal.)

The gas would be hydrogen. Hydrogen + batteries are nicely complementary and enable renewables to undercut new construction nuclear even for supplying baseload power.

[JumpCrisscross]

> You object to this because it's not available, then you point to SMRs, which don't exist now except on slides

Right. Long-term large scale hydrogen manufacturing and storage (presumably as ammonia) is not a thing, not to the tune of several percentage points of primary generation. This is speculative, like SMRs.

> Hydrogen + batteries are nicely complementary and enable renewables to undercut new construction nuclear even for supplying baseload power

The math doesn’t work with current technology. Not at that scale. (The lithium alone would be orders of magnitude more than what is forecast to be needed for EVs.)

[pfdietz]

Hydrogen storage would be underground. Very cheap and more efficient than using ammonia.

If underground storage is not available (lack of proper geology), the scheme could be synthesis of methanol, with oxyfuel combustion (Allam cycle) using oxygen from electrolysis, and with the CO2 stored for recycling to produce methanol. The CO2 and oxygen would be stored as refrigerated liquids.

> (The lithium alone would be orders of magnitude more than what is forecast to be needed for EVs.)

I don't believe this is true, not even close. The US has more than a quarter of a billion motor vehicles. A Tesla has about 70 kWh of storage and about 10 kg of lithium, so that's 17 TWh of storage. An optimal "synthetic baseload" for the US from wind and solar might use 6 hours of battery storage (and e-fuels). US average power production is about 500 GW, so six hours is about 3 TWh of batteries. Even if you multiply that a bit to assume less transmission and need for peaking storage it's still not "orders of magnitude" more than for EVs.) All this is even assuming Li-ion batteries would be used for stationary storage instead of the Na-ion batteries now coming on the market.

Were you assuming many days or weeks of batteries would be needed? That's the beauty of also using e-fuels; the batteries can be reserved for the short term storage they're truly suited for.

[goatlover]

Nuclear energy is a lot more dense, therefore requiring less land, and doesn't depend on the sun or wind. It also doesn't depend on future breakthroughs in storage and transmission.

[pfdietz]

Compute please how much the land for a PV field will cost, vs. how much the PV equipment to go on it will cost. Do this for prime farmland, which might be $20K/acre, then do it for west Texas rangeland, which might be $1K/acre.

There is plenty of land. If the cost of land ever became a serious constraint on renewables, renewables will be so cheap they will have already relegated all other energy sources to museums.

As for future breakthroughs: solar and wind could be rolled out with existing storage, but of course improvements are welcome. But turn this around: investment in nuclear requires believing that such improvements won't occur. If they do, your nuclear investment is totally screwed. It won't even make back operating costs. Do you think betting the improvements won't occur is a reasonable bet? Do you think nuclear is going to get financing from hard nosed business types with that hanging over it?

Maybe you're just suggesting continued investment in nuclear R&D, in case all the renewable and storage technologies suddenly hit a brick wall. R&D has a low bar to justify it, so that's not a hard case to make.

[hackerlight]

Cost declines have made storage viable already:

https://reneweconomy.com.au/batteries-smash-more-records-as-...

Global storage production is 1TW/h per annum now and will increase to 4TW/h by 2030, while also being cheaper.