Can someone much smarter than me opine on why nuclear is not lumped into the 100% clean energy category?
That's a large part of the reason that it likely won't be a part of the future mix. Because no investor groups want to "put their money on it". Nuclear is expensive to build out, it needs investment. The problem is that everyone sees the shit show that Vogtie has become. Also, energy investors can see what's happened to nuclear in places like Iowa where it almost seems as though every guy able to even get a USD100,000 loan has gotten a group of his buddies together and slapped up some windmills. (Seriously, have you ever driven through Iowa lately?) Anyway, what investor group wants to put up the USD4 Billion to compete against all that? Harsh reality is that, assuming all they care about is generating more money, there are better places for their money to go. That's why we need government investment.
I've been saying for a while, we've reached the point where if we want nuclear to be a part of the future mix, government is going to have to step up in a big way. You could argue that the problem with Vogtie was that the government was unrealistic in expecting private industry to be able to pull that off with the provided level of assistance. (And yes, that also implies that private industry was just as unrealistic in believing they could pull that off without additional assistance.)
It's not expensive, financially, compared to Solar and Wind.
But it is expensive politically. For whatever reason, Nuclear is toxic in the public's eye. To shift public opinion is not going to be cheap.
Some Nuclear plants were stopped before starting their energy generation due to the public opinion shifting against them.
> government is going to have to step up in a big way.
We have agreement on that but how that's done is difficult.
Let's remove all regulations for everyone. Wind, solar, nuclear, everyone. A nuclear plant is still going to run you north of USD1 Billion. Not only that, but you won't start seeing any return for 5 to 10 years. And that's doing everything in a headlong rush, on the cheap, with no regard for safety. Now someone would need to come up with that money.
Contrast this with throwing up windmills. You need, (again, no more regulations here), around 500 g's. You start generating income on that outlay inside of a year. Worse, because the prices are so low, enterprising people who would never have been able to compete in the energy markets before, all of a sudden are able to slap up windmills too. It can just snowball into a free for all. What happened in Iowa was a bit more controlled than that, but you still ended up with runaway growth in wind generation capacity. And now their nuclear plant is literally closing down. It can't even compete. One nuclear plant can out generate one windmill. But if everyone and his mother is gonna try to get a piece of the wind generation pie on their family's farm, well, that's an awful lot of windmills.
We've got to get serious and look at the energy markets in a realistic fashion. Iowans are not anti-nuclear hippies, they just don't want to get a bill for 15 cents a kWh instead of the bill for 2 cents a kWh. I don't blame them. Yeah, go wind, and fill in the gaps with whatever fossil fuel generation you have. It's cheaper for you. But we've got to get realistic about that fact and have government either pay for nuclear outright, or put it's finger on the scale like it ended up doing with Vogtie. Basically, telling consumers that you have to use the energy from the nuclear plant, you have to pay the higher price, and you're not allowed to switch away from it.
Like you said, that was not popular, but it is what it is. Those are the choices, we can't soft pedal this stuff anymore if we're serious about a carbon free future.
Even if there is a a few years until actually being fully operational. It is still a better use of capital, providing the situation you described (no regulations for everyone). Which, to me, would remove the substitutes to solar.
A nuclear power plant has lower upkeep than the 20-30 year lifespan of wind and solar. This is a large cost you aren't including.
Small nuclear is uneconomical the last time I ran the numbers but mid to large scale is.
1 GW Nuclear power plant uses less land, less resources in materials and labor, and is more durable considering the maintenance/upkeep. If you compared that to solar or wind, using the most economical price point, it wouldn't even come close.
But Nuclear has major problems, since your situation isn't realized, an investor could lose 100% of their investment just to be used as a political scapegoat. You don't see that often with Wind and Solar.
So, given the current environment, yes, Wind/Solar are more economical but give no regulations and no substities, Nuclear would be the most economical.
Per-megawatt, it might not cost more but:
1. The upfront investment is high. I can build a 1MW solar installation, or 10MW, or 100MW. Our smallest nuclear plant is around 500MW.
2. It will take many years to build.
3. It will take even longer to fully pay itself off.
Nuclear is fine if you have a massive amount of capital and know the market won't change in the next 50 year. But no rational actor in the energy market is about to bet on that stability when solar is a much more nimble investment that's cost-competitive.
Living only expecting things to go right means that cities don't need to worry about backups and hardened networks.
It's when things go wrong that you end up with an HBO series a few decades later.
Say that to France. Stop buying the propaganda. HBO series has warning signs. Chernobyl and Fukushima were grossly mismanagement and ignored the glaring issues. France has never had the problem.
With some notable high profile exceptions people don't go into things with the intention of completely screwing them up.
Which is why I provide France as a counter-example. They aren't mismanaging the potential issues. It's a solvable problem and France is continually demonstrating it.
If we started actually calculating wind and solars true cost (ex. backup power by coal, oil, nuclear) then it too would be extremely expensive.
If we added the cost of decommissioning which isn't added to solar and wind but to nuclear then that would increase the price even more.
also known as 'who cares, we won't be here'
edited to add links
[1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-does-the-us-...
[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2019/05/31/new-map-...
Chernobyl was hampered by design flaws [1] that can be pretty well avoided these days, and it's not like light water reactors are the only / best option, either.
[1] https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1986-08-23-mn-15781-...
I'm personally comfortable with the idea of nuclear power, but I don't really begrudge people who aren't too much. It's all moot anyway; for providing base load, natural gas is going to be the hands down winner for awhile. I could be mistaken on this point, but I'm under the impression that they're both cheaper and faster to get going, and easier to decommission.
You can be as smart and careful as you like, and still get bitten by something you had no idea was a possibility. If you're building a wind turbine, there's likely to be a reasonable limit to how catastrophic that totally unanticipated problem might be. If you're building a nuclear plant, the stakes are a lot higher.