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The first one is going to be expensive, but subsequent plants if they're built will likely be cheaper. The whole point of your article is that standardization and repeated construction of the same design reduces cost, while first-of-a-kind projects are more expensive.

Not every watt of energy is equal. Energy that is produced intermittently, is not interchangeable with dispatch-able energy. Renewable trail-blazers like California and Germany area already saturating the electricity market during peak production hours. The remaining carbon emissions are occurring when renewables aren't producing. That's a gap that only geographically dependent sources like hydro and geothermal, or nuclear are capable of filling. Or fossil fuels, which is what we're mostly using now.

I think you're forgetting storage

>The Australian study makes it clear that there’s far more resource capacity than is required. They modeled only 300-meter plus head heights close to grid connectivity with limited height dams and found 250 times as much capacity in the US as was needed.

https://cleantechnica.com/2019/12/13/a-modest-pumped-storage...

Storage at scales anywhere near what would be required to make any significant impact on fossil fuel use remains unavailable. To put this in perspective, the world uses about 60 TWh of electricity per day. And that's just grid electricity, it doesn't include heating (both for homes and for industry) and fuel.

I guess you didn't read the article, as it directly refutes your claim.

>We found about 616,000 potentially feasible PHES sites with storage potential of about 23 million Gigawatt-hours (GWh) by using geographic information system (GIS) analysis. This is about one hundred times greater than required to support a 100% global renewable electricity system.

Maybe someone on HN can convert 23 million gigawatt hours to terawatt hours and compare it to 60.

I did indeed read the article, and actually read the study it was based on. You can find it here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030626191...

They ran an algorithm over a terrain altitude map to reach this figure. These aren't actual potential sites for hydroelectric stations. Much of these potential pumped hydro sites are in Tibet, which would be prohibitively expensive to carry out any sort of infrastructure project like this. The subset of these sites that are actually accessible for development is considerably smaller.

In short, it's a lot easier to write a paper claiming 23 million GWh of storage than it is to actually build that storage.

How many of these "not really feasible" sites do you think their algorithm identified. They are coming to the conclusion there is 100 or 250x more capacity than required (depending on country).

Do you think their algorithm is so inaccurate that only 1% or less of the sites these researchers identified would actually be suitable for pumped hydro?

Also in short, announcing an on-time, safe, profitable nuclear project is easier than actually executing it.

The sizeable majority of them. These projects entail lots of earth moving and pouring lots of concrete. These are exceptionally difficult things to do in areas without easy access via railways and roads. Which also happens to be the case in mountainous terrain where most potential hydroelectric sites are located.

Even the most successful pumped hydro storage facilities are quite expensive, too. The Bath County facility cost $4 billion for 24 GWh of storage capacity [1]. Fulfilling one day's worth of electricity storage for the United States would cost $2 trillion dollars. And that's assuming that all hydro storage facilities will be as cheap as this. In practice, once the optimal sites are developed we'll have to start building hydro storage in more difficult locations. And large areas of the country without mountainous terrain are still either left without storage, or we'll have to ship large amounts of electricity across the continent and spend yet more money on HVDC lines. And lastly, this is the cost of just storing the energy. We also need to build the actual generation capacity.

These kinds of broad, sweeping statements about how much storage potential exists is analogous to people saying we can just continue to use fossil fuels but plant trees to offset carbon emissions and pointing to a study showing that the US has sufficient landmass to do this. Yes, I'm sure the math behind that kind of very high level, coarse-grained calculation is correct. But actually irrigating that much land and relocating whatever it's currently used for is prohibitively diffuclt.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_County_Pumped_Storage_Sta...

Yes I read the study. That's why I linked to it.

The problem is that in reality the question we need to solve TODAY is global warming and waiting for "subsequent plants" which may or may not come and be finished in decades while renewable energies advance in light speed compared to nuclear technology, the whole issue becomes ridiculous. And it shows. It already makes no sense to build nuclear reactors. It will make less sense with every subsequent year. The only reason states throw actual money on it is because parts required to build a reactor are also needed elsewhere (military). See UK. I can totally understand that but let's be honest about it and not pretend that it's about fighting global warming or "green" tech because nuclear is neither.

Hydroelectric storage plants take about as much time to build as nuclear plants. And they're not cheap, either, costing billions of dollars [1]. The difference is that we'd need to build 4 nuclear plants for each one we currently have to achieve 100% electricity generation. We'd need to build about 400 times as many hydroelectric storage plants than we have right now just to make one day's worth of electricity storage (12.5 TWh vs 25 GWh storage presently).

Nuclear power is responsible for more green energy production than solar and wind combined. I'm really baffled as to how one can convince themselves that nuclear power is ineffective in combating climate change.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_County_Pumped_Storage_Sta...

Good that we don't have to rely on only hydroelectric storage eh? Just like we don't have to rely on solar or wind only.

Nuclear power whitewashing won't make it "green". This Astro-Turf crap is fuelled by ignorance of the dirt this technology leaves behind for future generations and greed of a few remaining participants in this dying industry.

The fact that there is yet more nuclear energy out there than renewable and true green energy is no argument for nuclear energy. At some point we had more horses than cars but that didn't make cars worse. This weird twisting is sickening.

I've shown with those studies above that investment into nuclear doesn't only waste money, it actually harms the fight against global warming. Even giving you an actual local scenario. This is investment into the future instead of the past.

> Good that we don't have to rely on only hydroelectric storage eh? Just like we don't have to rely on solar or wind only.

If scalable alternatives exist, it'd be good to mention what you plan to use and how you plan to scale it.

> Nuclear power whitewashing won't make it "green". This Astro-Turf crap is fuelled by ignorance of the dirt this technology leaves behind for future generations and greed of a few remaining participants in this dying industry.

The entirety of th US's nuclear waste fits in a volume the footprint of a football field and 10 yards high [1]. Alleging that people who disagree with you are part of some kind of conspiracy is not a good way to make your point.

Nuclear power remains the only non intermittent form of carbon free energy generation, besides geographically limited things like geothermal and hydroelectric power.

If nuclear power harms the fight against global warming, why does France (nuclear power leader) have about 1/5th the carbon intensity of electricity then Germany (renewables leader)?

1. https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/5-fast-facts-about-spent-...

Yes: every dollar spent on this instead of building out solar and wind sets back progress fighting global climate disruption. No matter how clever your nuke is, solar and wind cost much less.

Wyoming has some of the US's best territory for wind power extraction. Building wind turbines with that money could proceed immediately and be generating power in only months, without interfering at all with the current use of the land, and with no haggling with residents or regulators over safety now or forevermore.

Solar heating of molten salt reservoirs was tried, and failed because it cost more than photovoltaics. Nukes, howsoever innovative, will certainly cost more than solar heating schemes. Also, containing circulating molten salt turned out to be harder than had been expected. I don't know of any reason why containing radioactive molten salt would be easier or cheaper.

A photovoltaic and wind farm driving heat pumps to boil an underground steam reservoir would be overwhelmingly cheaper and easier to get and keep working, requiring no new tech, if the goal is to provide less interruptible power.

There is really no scenario where this project makes economic sense on its own merits. It has to be driven by unexpressed intentions we can only speculate about. In the past, such intentions have typically involved securing public subsidies.

I think Bill Gates has a fairly balanced view of the energy needs/wants. At least that was my takeaway from reading his most recent book. I could see why we need fission energy even if we eventually find better ways of generating/capturing energy.

BG has always been very clever, but historically that has meant clever at benefiting BG at our expense. PR finesse notwithstanding, I don't expect that has changed.

I don't think he is and taking his book which advertises his investments as a base for argumentation is kinda...fishy.

I linked several studies which clearly demonstrated that investing money in nuclear energy is not only a bad idea financially, it also hurts the fight against global warming because you can spend every $ only once.

Solar and wind are intermittent. We also need green sources of energy that are constant or available on demand.

There are many ways to store energy to suit different scenarios. Gravity with weights or pumped water, flywheels, lithium ion or other types of batteries, heated fluids, to name a few.

You’re not informing anyone of something they don’t already know when you say solar and wind are intermittent.

Solar and wind should be thought of as paired with storage.

I see that you skipped over reading what you replied to. I will leave you to read that, and reply to that, instead.

CSP with molten salt would be cheaper than nuclear with molten salt [0] on a LCOE basis.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23589828