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Comment by L_Rahman | Hacker News Reader

Would not be a hacker news climate thread without someone jumping in immediately with nuclear.

I am not opposed to the technology in a meaningful way but the problem is that the conditions in which nuclear can thrive - regulatory scheme, public perception of climate change risk, long time horizon infrastructure development, $$$ - non nuclear renewables easily outcompete.

I wonder how the nuclear folks think about this. The tech doesn’t exist in a numerical vacuum of efficiency and dollars per watt. It lived inside a complex ecosystem within which it doesn’t really seem competitive.

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I don't think they think about it at all. My university had a strong nuclear research program and I took some classes from the professors in the field. It's clearly really hard, to the point that even PhD level intellects can only do it when they're hyperfocused on the nuts and bolts of the physics. I think even beyond that, maybe for national security reasons, people in the nuclear industry don't get outside their bubble much. I'm sure if any of them took a weekend of genuinely trying to understand why it wasn't cost-competitive they'd understand it better than me, but then they'd fall behind in their 'real' research. So they lobby for more state support without ever questioning why they need it.

Right now wind+solar account for less than 1% of global electric generation.

I'm highly skeptical that prices can remain low as that scales out to 10-40% of electric generation, given constraints on things like rare earth metals. There is also the issue of equipment wearing out relatively quickly compared to conventional/nuclear plants.

SMRs, built using mass production rather than one-off construction, and possessing safety qualities far beyond current reactors, will be necessary to provide safe, reliable, clean and cheap energy alongside "renewables", IMNSHO.

Less than 1%? Not true in the slightest.

In the US alone, wind and solar (including rooftop) produce approximately 11% (about 53GW average) of electrical energy given the very latest data (last 12 months rolling) from: https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.ph... (and this should be updated today)

The US consumes about 485GW average electricity, compared to the world total of 2485GW average. So approximately 1/5th.

So US solar + wind ALONE is at least 2% of global electric generation (50GW/2485GW > 2%), twice your claim (again, this is just the solar and wind in the US compared to world total electricity). I suspect your figures are far outdated (not uncommon in this field...).

EDIT: This is still using old data (2018), but it shows that 7.5% of global electricity energy (again, energy, not mere nameplate power) comes from solar+wind: https://yearbook.enerdata.net/renewables/wind-solar-share-el...

To me it is pretty simple. I look at places like Germany and Denmark and see how natural gas is booming. I then compare that to nations with a lot of nuclear. Nuclear is expensive, take a long time to build, and can not compete with the price of using a combination of renewables and fossil fuels. It is however the only current example of energy grids that work without fossil fuels.

My political interest in the topic is exclusively in not having fossil fuels being burned for power and heat. The economics of combining renewables and fossil fuels only works to a point, as illustrated by the energy grid of Germany and Denmark. Both countries now need to go to over capacity and battery technology to further reduce fossil fuel usage, and for about the same reason that nuclear has problem competing, battery technology and overcapacity cost too much.

As more countries in EU reach the same point we get fewer countries that need to buy during periods of overcapacity (as show by negative prices). This reduces the interest in building more renewables, and it becomes more attractive to stay at 100% renewable at peak conditions and have fossil fuels picking up everything when its not at peak. This is a typical example of a local maximum and a Nash equilibrium. Any action that goes towards 100% renewables at peak condition are competitive and any action that goes beyond 100% during peak conditions are noncompetitive. Such countries then get stuck, with the problematic consequences that fossil fuels continue to burn.

1$/watt capital costs and 2.5c/kwhr. This blows every other competitor out of the water. I was stunned when I started to research the economics of 4th gen. It's going to win in the end.

If Greenpeace only knew the damage they did back in the 80's and 90's... Granted that nuclear power back then was primitive and dangerous.

You are absolutely right. Most of the innovative projects are putting up shop in less developed countries exactly for this reason. Once proven there the regulatory hindrances in the west will disappear because for industrial purposes nothing else will be able to compete.

MSRs can produce thermals in excess of 2000C which is enough for most smelting operations. This will increase efficiency almost twofold. This will mean all smelting operations will move to areas where the technology can be employed. Because of the economic incentives there will be countries with emerging economies (and already are, see Indonesia) that will take advantage.

This will take a decade or two to percolate but the writing is on the wall. Failing to react to it will only make dinos out of the countries unwilling to change.

They didn't. The nuclear industry failed to innovate themselves out of increasing costs. It is regulatory bodies that set the requirements, not Greenpeace, and those requirements are based on risk calculations.

It could be that the industry is just dysfunctional. But it could also be that nuclear tech is just way harder in the real world than what some people seem to think.

The nuclear industry is still wearing the ball and chain of solid fuels. Everything wrong with nuclear energy is due to that single engineering faux pas. Oak Ridge ran an MSR for 5 years. It would be tragic if it couldn't be mended but it can. I'm 100% sure that Gen 4 will dominate energy generation within 2 decades. I'd put money on that.

I'd take the other side of that. Fifty bucks?

I meant as an investment. I'd see more return than 1:1.

Fair enough, hope you're right!

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