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Comment by PragmaticPulp | Hacker News Reader

> While the reliability and 24-hour availability of power from a reactor is part of their appeal, the fact that the plants cannot easily be shut down and restarted means that they sometimes operate at a loss when there is ample supply on the market. That, he said, makes the DOE support program one of the only ways to keep some nuclear plants online as a carbon-free resource.

This is an interesting economic quirk I hadn’t thought about.

Solar energy is inherently variable as the sun rises and sets but also with weather changes. Nuclear is the opposite of variable, as it can’t be turned up or down quickly. Energy storage continues to be one of the big gaps in our clean energy strategy.

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Solar is awesome in that yield scales with load peaks.

The problem with nuclear is an example of why deregulation was stupid. As a society of electricity consumers, we are sitting on lawn chairs on a railroad track with an electric train approaching us. It's obvious to anyone with a pulse that electric cars are ramping up and will displace the current fleet, and equally obvious that that operating model (plug in your car at night) will increase base load requirements.

So because we've detached planning from electrical generation and distribution, we have 50 different sets of cartels optimizing for short term returns on the spot market. The various electrical shit-shows in California and Texas are like failed-state levels of dysfunction. North of NYC, electrical supply rates are up 50% because we turned off a massive reactor complex and replaced it with volatile natural gas. We're decommissioning nuclear at a point in time just before we need it, environmentalists were bought by gas extraction people and Wall St. accounting is very bad at dealing with capital assets with 50-100 year lifecycles.

If you think about it the "energy storage" problem is absurd. Installing millions of inefficient distributed battery cells in potentially millions of buildings, for want of adequate electrical generation is beyond dumb, and the scale of waste and wasted value is staggering. It is solely a byproduct of a market designed to maximize producer profit.

> Solar is awesome in that yield scales with load peaks.

This might be true in California but peak in Poland and many other places is after sun sets.

And in some places in winter. And in some places in summer. Sometimes by HUGE multiples that operate inversely with the availability of solar power. For long periods that batteries struggle store power for.

Its a problem here in the US too, though probably to a lesser degree. South facing solar is the most efficient in total energy produced, but it starts to drop off just as A/C loads start to accelerate toward their peak.

West facing panels help, but the ROI isn't as good without variable energy pricing.

> We're decommissioning nuclear at a point in time just before we need it, environmentalists were bought by gas extraction people and Wall St.

It’s insane that the environmentalist movement is inadvertently supporting the fossil fuel industry due to their traditional stance on nuclear. Modern civilisation requires reliable base load and nuclear seems like the only viable option which satisfies both the reliability and globally accepted environmentally sustainable goals.

The environmental movement is 9/10ths feelings, and 1/10th science. A lot of environmentalists just don't like rural people so they do things like rail on and on about pickup trucks whilest on a plane bound for a European vacation. That three eyed fish on the Simpsons probably resulted in thousands of deaths due to the environmental folks choosing coal over nuclear. The goal is good vibes, not results.

> A lot of environmentalists just don't like rural people so they do things like rail on and on about pickup trucks

What? I don't think there are many environmentalists who "don't like rural people" and have a problem with pickup trucks used where they're appropriate ( like on a farm). In a country like the US, they're often abused as a suburban vehicle, which is a preposterous waste which deserves railing on against.

The beauty of attacking a caricature of an environmentalist is that you can be as judgemental as you want about a fictional judgemental person.

You can then safely lump that caricature in the same bucket as people with actual policy proposals, and ignore the latter outright.

You may change my view today, but I have yet to meet a person who is passionate about pickup truck use, who will also decry air travel as a similar waste. I'm sure people like that exist, but I bet a lot of them don't use computers.

I'm right here thank you very much

Here as well. I'm even against SUVs which are the environmentally unfriendly car of choice here in Germany.

I applaud all of you for consistency in your opinions. I don't do either myself if it matters. (This applies to the sibling comments as well)

There's a reason why US produce over 2x CO2 per capita than EU, and cheap flights like Ryanair are extremely heavy used here.

Hello! I use computers too much and decry air travel as massive waste as well as pickups. I've done so for a long time and most of my friends agree, and also use computers a lot.

Yep, the vast majority of trucks I see in my city are spotless and probably only used for commuting. It's far less environmentally and financially costly to drive around town with a car, but for whatever reason a lot people think that commuting in a truck is cooler so that's what they burn their money on. Some absurd percent of 4x4 vehicles, like 90%, have never been driven off road.

Conversely, there's a lot of overlap between environmentalists and people who like to go outside and get off the beaten path. Driving in remote areas a lot pretty much necessitates having a truck. I've never heard any animosity from environmentalists towards truck owners who actually use their truck for truck things.

Ahhh yes, the "for my cause and values it's OK and worth it, but for yours, not so much".

Even in this example alone you neglected to consider the number of trucks that are used to tow something. Say you need (or want!) to tow a heavy trailer once a month or every other month. Should you buy one vehicle that can do this, and then use it to commute 90% of the time, or should you buy two vehicles, and let one sit around unused most of the time?

Now what about the person that needs to haul some things? Surely a small trailer + SUV is superior to a truck? Not so fast: gotta store that trailer and be comfortable with it. My guess is for 95% of people, a truck for utility purposes is far superior.

Finally, newer trucks are actually surprisingly efficient. I just got 22mpg 360 miles round trip in my full ton pickup truck. Been shopping for minivans, aside from the rare hybrid minivan, they only get around 26mpg on highway.

> Should you buy one vehicle that can do this, and then use it to commute 90% of the time, or should you buy two vehicles, and let one sit around unused most of the time

Or maybe rent a vehicle if it's only for towing once every other month.. Unless renting costs upwards of 1k, it'd be many years before buying makes sense for usage once every other month.

In these types of conversations someone always brings up the idea of renting a vehicle instead of owning one that can do what you want to do "once a month". Renting a truck or SUV that can tow a decent amount of weight is expensive, if you can find it, and the friction of finding, renting, insuring, picking up, loading the truck, unloading, dropping off, dealing with things when you ding the vehicle, means you mostly won't do that activity. Once a year, rental makes sense. Once a month, nope.

This is where local swap or friend groups come in - there's certainly value being "The Guy With A Truck" if you're regularly lending it to people you know who need to do their one monthly thing.

e.g. I have a small fiesta - that's (nearly) perfect for my general use case, which is me commuting on my own, maybe a friend or two going out for lunch or whatever.

But a friend down the road has a jeep, I borrow that for camping (when I'm not going with them anyway) - same with "bulk" costco trips, or stopping by a landscaping store for garden stuff.

That makes it easier for him to justify keeping the jeep, especially as I'm not the only person who regularly takes advantage of it, while keeping costs down (I pay in gas and beer, no rental corporation skimming profits off the top).

Even regular cars get to the point of renting being too expensive vs. buying. Quite regularly.

I've been using carnextdoor.com.au for years when ever my motorbikes weren't enough to get around.

But if you're renting a car even for 1-2 days a week, it quickly cost as much it would have had for running costs and purchasing a car outright. The numbers below are all AUD.

I'm about to pick up a new Ute (Dmax XTerrain) thats going to cost $238 per week over 5 years for finance. With running costs on top of that I'm budgeting for $400 per week.

That's a rental car for 1.5-2 days.

Carnextdoor and rentals made sense when I didn't need a car weekly, just monthly. The new Ute is relatively inexpensive to run (4 cylinder turbo diesel), it's big, big compared to cars from Europe, not big for the US I'm sure.

But for me it definitely made sense to get a 4x4 that services all my needs rather than a 4x4 and another small car.

Admittedly I go camping a lot so my needs are a little different. And I have dogs now so going camping on my motorbikes isn't much of an option now.

Those are terrible mileage numbers for a modern gas vehicle, let's be clear. I recently averaged 37mpg with a 200hp VW in Comfort mode on a trip up and down CA 101.

Pretty dang good for an 8500lb vehicle with a 14,500lbs towing capacity! Again, better than owning two special purpose vehicles.

I guess I wasn't clear, but what I meant by "using trucks for truck things" I meant things you can do with a truck but not a car. Towing, moving construction supplies around, and other such tasks are all valid reasons to own a truck since you can't practically do that with a car.

On the other hand, commuting through a city can be done just as well or better by a car in every sense. 22mpg is terrible mileage compared to a modern car and the fact that it seems good reinforces my point of how wasteful it is to commute in a truck.

Is it really that common to need to haul/tow stuff? I live in Europe, and the only people I know who need this regularly are tradespeople. Most people I know don't even have a car at all!

Also, 22mpg efficient. You gotta be kidding me. You should getting at least 35mpg before you can call yourself efficient. A Vauxhall Zafira (MPV) can do 41mpg. A smart car can do 67mpg.

Depends. Come live out west on some acreage, own a tractor, build stuff, etc. Pretty easy to end up in the place where it makes sense. All my neighbors have large trucks and a "legitimate" reason for them, as long as you consider living the life you want to live on the size of property you want to have, legitimate.

I’m not opposed to people living the life they want to live, but I do feel like environmental concerns should be figured in, and energy usage prioritised to the areas you care most about rather than just “it doesn’t matter how much energy I use if I’m doing something I want to do”

100% in agreement. Fuel should be much more expensive and should find remediation efforts as well as investigating / building out alternatives. The problem that I struggle with is that disproportionately harms poor people. I can afford to fill my tank at 10 bucks a gallon, my mom with a 35mpg Honda who commutes to her job from a suburb can’t.

The real problem is energy production. So completely asinine to push for fleet electrification while base load is provided by coal and natural gas.

> The problem that I struggle with is that disproportionately harms poor people

I think the answer here is more general support for the poor. Progressive taxation, public transport, etc. That's politically difficult in the US of course. But it's surely the solution.

> The real problem is energy production.

That and energy consumption. IIRC the US consumes ~2x the energy per capita compared to Europe. Yes, we need greener production, but we could also do a lot by reducing consumptions.

Climate change disproportionately harms poor people. Environmental degradation in general disproportionately harms poor people.

Everything disproportionately harms poor people. It's practically the definition. To be poor is to have little power. So for any X you have less to bring to bear to avoid it.

Great, as long as you pay for the externalities of your choices.

They make you feel safer because you're in a bigger vehicle and higher off the road. Ironically they tend to roll more easily so are often more dangerous.

Very few people use them for "going off the beaten path" and would faint if you suggested them taking their freshly waxed lift kit truck down a dirt road where gravels flung back might hit their gorgeous paint job lol. Yeah I live in Texas and I know this as a fact. 90% of truck owners in the USA don't need a truck (no I'm not talking about commercial trucks so don't "whatabout" that)

The embedded energy of a second vehicle won't be made up for in a 10-20mpg improvement, except in very very niche cases.

The lifetime amount of fuel/electricity used by a vehicle generally accounts for only half of the total energy. The other half is in it's manufacturing and disposal/recycling.

And there's additional lost efficiency than just the mileage, because you're using twice the embedded energy and presumably aren't doubling the amount of driving you're doing.

Maybe rentals or sharing schemes work in some cases, but they present their own inefficiencies, like less than perfect allocation, and transferring vehicles back and forth for each switch.

But for the majority of cases, it's much more environmentally friendly to own one single vehicle that meets all of your needs, even if it's relatively inefficient.

The most efficient vehicle for any particular person is usually the one that's already been built. (Which is why cash for clunkers was actually a bailout with negative environmental impacts, despite its branding of improved efficiency.)

Why not? both cars will last roughly twice as long. Meaning if you can live with owning your cars twice as long there should be no extra embedded energy needed. (And one of the cars could even be an electric one you charge using ample solar powet

Because you're sitting on that embedded energy, at the opportunity cost of someone else not being able to use it.

So it's additional supply of both material and embedded energy that otherwise could go to someone else, or wouldn't need to be spent until you were sending you old car off to be salvaged.

There's a time value to it as well, just like with amortized financials.

Think of it this way: if everyone used that strategy, we'd have twice as big of a vehicle market, requiring twice as much material and energy.

Even if you expect each vehicle to last twice as long, it all has to be paid for with capital costs up front. Both your cash out of pocket, as well as manufacturing capacity and energy/resource extraction.

You might get effective use efficiency of 50% for twice as long, but the overall cost in dollars, energy, and emissions is much greater because of amortization.

I don't disagree really.

They focus on ideal outcomes over what we can realistically accomplish - I've had plenty of discussions where people just ignore the trillions in infrastructure we have baked into steel and concrete, as well as people habits and lifestyle - folks honestly seem to think that with enough political will you can just turn all of that off in 2-5 years.

As with everything in society, we didn't get here overnight, and turning a vast ship takes time.

It would be super easy to turn off all fossil fuels. Just flick the switch and make do with what electricity generation is left. The question is just how much we're willing to pay. Taking most of civilization offline is a bit much to ask, obviously, so flicking the switch is off the table. That said, we could probably do it in less than 5 years of wartime effort.

You made my point for me.

I would gladly join a more scientific environmental movement but I haven't found one. And I looked

This is just a completely imaginary attack on people you oppose. A textbook example of a "strawman argument".

The problems of pollution, climate change, etc are real. The science is clear.

Please don't make up an imaginary bad actor who has bad motivations for why they want to solve or improve some of these problems. This is a rhetoric device designed to distract people from the problems and solutions by getting them to dislike, distrust or hate the people trying to help.

Sorry but this is one of the least productive and silliest comments I’ve seen on here for a long time…

>nuclear seems like the only viable option which satisfies both the reliability and globally accepted environmentally sustainable goals.

Hydro?

Hydro is great, but is very limited in terms of viable locations.

Hydro causes massive environment destruction, takes up a large amount of area (typically the most agriculturally productive area at that), and can't just be thrown down anywhere.

> It’s insane that the environmentalist movement is inadvertently supporting the fossil fuel industry due to their traditional stance on nuclear.

The environmentalist movement, anti-nuke section, had little to nothing to do with the downfall of nuclear power. It was always and only economics, nothing else contributed to this. Nuclear is very complicated and thus very expensive, and this has nothing to do with regulations. Everything about generating power from nuclear is just expensive. If there was any opportunity to turn a profit with nuclear power, and I mean even the slightest margin of profit, you could not keep investors away, nor prevent nuclear power plants being built in every county in the country. There is a false narrative that supporters of nuclear energy seem to insist on perpetuating, which is that if the idiots would stop being so irrationally afraid of nuclear, we could have cheap, clean energy. This is a completely false position. The scardies have nothing to do with it. It is all and only economics that is killing nuclear power, and nothing else whatsoever enters into it.

Yep. Seems to be just a convenient excuse to hate on environmentalists, when nuclear power is just too damn expensive (and also takes too long to build), especially today when there are cheaper alternatives.

I was all for nuclear power myself before I started seeing how infeasible it was to get us to carbon neutral with them. I'm still fine with any new nuclear power plants that want to be built but it looks like pretty much no one wants to invest in them anymore anyway.

"The cost of generating solar power ranges from $36 to $44 per megawatt hour (MWh), the WNISR said, while onshore wind power comes in at $29–$56 per MWh. Nuclear energy costs between $112 and $189."

"Capital flows reflect that trend. In 2018, China invested $91 billion in renewables but just $6.5 billion in nuclear."[1]

"Nuclear power plant construction costs—mainly materials, labor, and engineering—rose by 185 percent between 2000 and 2007. More recently, costs have been increasing even faster: In mid-March, Progress Energy informed state regulators that the twin 1,100 MW nuclear plants it intends to build in Florida would cost $14 billion, which “triples estimates the utility offered little more than a year ago.”

Jim Harding, former direc tor of power planning and forecasting for Seattle City Light, estimates that nuclear plants constructed today would provide electricity at between 12 and 17 cents per kilowatt-hour. To put this cost into perspective, the average U.S. electricity price in 2006 was 8.9 cents per kWh, and well-placed wind turbines can produce electricity for less than 5 cents per kWh."[2]

"Study claims that investment in a new 1GW nuclear power plant leads to average losses of approximately 4.8 billion euros." [3]

[1]: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-energy-nuclearpower/nucle...

[2]: https://www.americanprogress.org/article/10-reasons-not-to-i...

[3]: https://www.pv-magazine.com/2019/07/24/nuclear-a-poor-invest...

Cost is not everything though - Nuclear also produces extremely consistent and reliable power. That in it of itself can be a double edged sword in that if we do not have a way to store the excess then it is "wasted" in some ways. But it also has big advantages in certain situations. If there is a decent sized natural disaster or war or some other thing that temporarily interrupts solar or wind power then the increased cost of nuclear power becomes much more attractive. Those situations may be rare but I still maintain we are best off with many different sources working simultaneously.

Again, I have no problem with new nuclear plants being pursued, and there are some benefits to it that solar and wind do not (namely consistency, like you said). But the investment just isn't there in a significant amount. Without people willing to put the money into it, they're not going to be built.

When money is not an obstacle, new nuclear plants are built. I expect US Navy will continue to commission and operate nuclear-powered fleet until bovines return.

Sadly, unless our future energy requirements have been vastly underestimated, economics is also going to make commercial-grade fusion unattainable. Like fission, it's development ultimately requires the vast sums only wealthy nations can provide. But even once fusion is achieved beyond breaking even, only those same wealthy nations will be able to pay, more likely massively subsidize, before any fusion power plant could dream about existing.

This is why I think society should abandon centralizing power generation and require all structures to generate they're own green power. While massively less efficient than centralized power generation and distribution, with clean energy generation like solar & wind, and necessary optimizations such as more efficient climate control, we can afford to be less efficient.

I hear people say this but I also almost never meet environmentalists who are super against nuclear power. Most will say they of course prefer something extra clean like solar or geothermal but nuclear is usually the sort of middle of the road option in those circles. And many of the less idealistic I have met also think it is our only real solution.

> The problem with nuclear is an example of why deregulation was stupid.

There was never a deregulation that happened. In fact deregulation is what's needed to revive nuclear power. Competition in the power market is illegal in most states.

I think the residents of texas that had no power for days, or $15k residential bills would disagree with you. In fact, my co-worker in MN had their natural gas rates go up a very noticable jump this year due to losses the company had in texas (and having to buy gas at super inflated peak rates when many texas pumping stations had to power down, since they weren't winterized to save some money.)

The parent you are responding to is talking about deregulation in a different context and with a different purpose. Regulation and deregulation are both broad terms and talking about one does not requisite jumping to a different topic. Doing so just means we'll fight all day because you can find examples on both sides where they had disastrous effects. We need to be more nuanced than this. I'll also argue that the parent should be more specific to avoid these types of responses too.

Can you elaborate on what nuclear regulations were lifted and how that contributed to the Texas power outage? This isn't rhetorical, I'm genuinely curious.

Nuclear regulations had nothing to do with it. Texas had very few regulations for oil/gas and for power plant winter weatherization hence the grid failed. Overall the grid is fine, but it can't handle a freak winter weather event like that, and it still can't. It has handled many summer heat events just fine (I know I've lived here for almost 15 years). Regulations are the obvious factor that lead to the failure, ERCOT has been warned (and in turn warned the politicians) about the dangers multiple times and the politicians will not pass legislation and money to fix the issue.

I can tell you in New York, utilities were compelled to divest from power production. Your state may vary.

Similar to the charter school scam, the scrappy upstarts bonded out lots of debt to buy up power plants and subsequently became a powerful lobby to keep their cartel tight.

Some of the remaining municipal energy co-op utilities were exempted from deregulation, and all of them have lower cost structures.

I know Massachusetts is a similar story, not sure about others.

What is the charter school scam? Kids actually learning to read and do math? Giving parents a choice?

Take the money from public education and fund vouchers. Those vouchers aren't going to get you into the good private school, you'll need money on top of the voucher for that. They get you in the school that prepares your for life in prison. https://time.com/101440/new-orleans-charter-schools-shouldnt...

This is in stark contrast to the charter schools in NYC which are far better than all but the best regular public schools.

If you look at the economic backgrounds and general location of students you will find that is the true predictor of educational outcomes (on average) rather than whether that child is at a charter or public school.

That doesn’t really hold for the success academies or the charters in Harlem. A lot of these charter schools mainly serve low income families.

Floating tax exempt bonds, skimming the cream with building construction/rehab and fees, and then using the different vehicles to monetize building deprecation. Then you hire young and dumb teachers as cheaply as possible and keep costs down with turnover.

Most of them are structured like real estate syndicates. It’s basically like building a strip mall or franchise hotel, except you have a captive customer and can leave the local taxpayer holding the bag. The educational mission is mostly a secondary concern. There are exceptions.

What do you mean by captive customer? My understanding was that they were all about “parent choice”, so parents can choose to send their kids to either charter schools or public schools, and the schools only get federal money proportionate to the number enrolled. Presumably parents would not tend to keep their kids in a school with high teacher turnover.

N.b. I don’t have kids, so this is mostly academic for me, no pun intended

Charter schools are private and per child offer no education advantages over public school. There are -plenty- public schools that achieve better results. The idea that there is something inherently wrong with public education is a myth pursued by the elite (read top 0.1%) to persuade the general public to do away with the public education system so that only private schools will exist and they can prevent the public from becoming too educated and questioning the status quo and with the added advantage of lowering their tax bills.

Charter schools aren't a scam. They improve the ability of children to learn.

Nuclear power hasn't been deregulated, but grid generation and planning for the large part has.

As a result of that deregulation, the grid is often optimizing for cost, instead of reliability, which can lead to problems. Saving 5% on your power bill is great, but it's less great if the consequence is, say, not having any power one week of the year.

18 states isn't a majority but it's more than "never happened"

>environmentalists were bought by gas extraction people

In the US, opposition to nuclear energy is more like opposition to homeless shelters - people don't want the plants near them. I don't think environmentlists are that powerful politically as to significantly impact the trajectory of nuclear power policies in the US, otherwise, they would have the power to significantly impact climate change policies too.

Besides, what I have seen is that environmentalists are pretty divided in term of nuclear energy. There are strong opponents like green peace and Sierra clubs, there are strong supporters and there are many who are ambivalent. This further reduces their political power as a group.

I think nuclear energy supporters should stop blaming environmentalists as they are pretty much non-factor if they want nuclear power.

There's tons of FUD about nuclear waste, including with respect to environmental impacts. I think environmentalists have been coming around to nuclear, but I'm pretty sure that's a more recent development. At least my perception circa 10 years ago was that environmentalists were largely (if not overwhelmingly) opposed to nuclear. Certainly for a long while, environmentalists worked (perhaps unwittingly) with the fossil fuel industry to promote personal responsibility and lifestyle campaigns ("everyone needs to go vegan", "we just need more recycling", "get rid of SUVs", etc) rather than substantial energy reforms (like nuclear or carbon tax).

I don't think nuclear waste is a key factor, but cost overrun is. Source: https://www.vox.com/2016/2/29/11132930/nuclear-power-costs-u...

Environmentalists are not against Nuclear generally - they are just against the shitty ways governments have stored the waste in the past. When a government cheaps out and ships the waste to some far off pacific island and does not invest as much as it should building a proper containment setup and then it all leaks into the ocean it becomes a big problem for everyone and then environmentalists are of course pissed. When done properly I would guess the majority would be relatively fine with it (although they may still prefer cleaner options).

Greenpeace's take on nuclear power [1]:

> Nuclear power is dirty, dangerous and expensive. Say no to new nukes. > > Nuclear energy has no place in a safe, clean, sustainable future. Nuclear energy is both expensive and dangerous, and just because nuclear pollution is invisible doesn’t mean it’s clean. Renewable energy is better for the environment, the economy, and doesn’t come with the risk of a nuclear meltdown.

The Sierra Club's [2]:

> The Sierra Club continues to oppose construction of any new commercial nuclear fission power plants. Further, the Sierra Club supports the systematic reduction of society's dependence on nuclear fission as a source of electric power and recommends a phased closure and decommissioning of operating commercial nuclear fission electric power reactors.

[1] https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/fighting-climate-chaos/issues...

[2] https://www.sierraclub.org/policy/energy/nuclear-power

> It's obvious to anyone with a pulse that electric cars are ramping up and will displace the current fleet, and equally obvious that that operating model (plug in your car at night) will increase base load requirements.

It strikes me that transitioning to electric cars could become less viable the more we rely on renewables+batteries, as grid scale battery storage could hugely exacerbate shortages of battery materials.

Though on the other hand grid batteries would also spur more research into battery tech which could change the game for both grid & mobile batteries.

It seems like a huge gamble commiting to grid storage in the hopes of big innovations down the road instead of doubling down on baseload nuclear.

You have identified why grid-scale storage will not depend mainly on the kind of battery technology needed for cars.

We just make it expensive to plug-in at night for the average joe so they plug-in during the day, at the office etc?

If you’re a courier or something you’re exempt.

> Solar is awesome in that yield scales with load peaks.

No, this is the opposite of what is true. In most places, load peaks in the evening, just as the sun sets.

Looking up the data [1], the more nuanced answer is that load peaks in in the evening in the fall, winter, and spring. Only in the summer does solar energy match load.

1. https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=42915

If anyone wants another example, this has data for Australia [1]. Power usage consistently peaks in the late afternoon, typically as everyone ends work for the day [2][3]. Unsurprisingly, this is also around when the price spikes.

[1] https://aemo.com.au/en/energy-systems/electricity/national-e...

[2] https://i.imgur.com/60kGlIR.png

[3] https://i.imgur.com/nRjBjeN.png

It's worth pointing out AEMO's demand is for the grid, and residential solar typically does not show up on the grid. OpenNEM[1] uses estimates of residential solar to approximate the full load.

[1]: https://opennem.org.au/

This is exactly what I wanted to say, and have been for the last several years.

The issue is no states, cities, population want to issue permits to build them. Its political to the point no one will touch it.

Its also an accounting misunderstanding. Nuclear power has huge fixed costs and negligible variable costs. If a station costs $1B/yr that's 3mil/day to keep running. If network power is cheap today and the plant will only make 2mil it is making a loss only if you distribute the fixed across evenly, its contribution margin still makes it worthwhile to run on those days as you aren't saving much money by turning it off.

There are cases where electricity prices go negative, and nuclear plants must pay to put power on the grid: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_pricing#Electricity

Smaller plants combined with energy storage seems like it would help here. When prices go negative store the extra energy until prices also go back up.

If energy storage solutions were sufficient, there wouldn't be any negative priced energy!

Obviously, everyone who can store energy maxes out their battery banks during these times of negative-cost energy. The reason why prices are negative is because the sum of market participants still has a shortage of storage.

We have a shortage of storage because the amount of energy our grid uses is on a behemoth scale, barely comprehensible. Dozens-of-GW-hr pumped hydro stations fill up their storage to the brim on a constant basis.

Energy storage has gotten a lot better in the last few years, just as solar and other things have. Most of the plants in the US are decades old.

That said, I'm not saying it'll completely solve the problem- just increase efficiency and reduce the problem.

If you can make it work you'll be a very rich person, tedivm. I encourage you to aggressively pursue this opportunity.

We have a shortage of storage because it takes a long time to build out that much capacity. Until intermittent sources represent a much bigger piece of the pie, a renewable dollar has been much better spent on generating capacity.

As the fraction of capacity increases, the need for storage starts to rise. So, now we see big storage projects breaking ground, to come on line in the next few years. The amount of storage finally built will be astonishing to contemplate.

Energy storage is expensive. Nuclear is expensive. Solar and wind are cheap. If we are going to need energy storage regardless (we will), then why not combine it with the cheapest sources rather than the most expensive?

There's another factor in the equation that you're not considering. "How much battery storage". The equation is finding an optima on a(cost of nuclear) + b(cost of renewables) + c(cost of storage). Restricting the equation to just aN + c_NS vs bR + c_RS is rather absurd (only something laypeople do and not something people in the energy community do). But in that case we can easily see that c_N << c_R, since nuclear provides a baseline storage. This brings us back to using the systems to complement one another (aN + bR + cS). After all, the goal is to get zero emission energy at the cheapest value, not energy at the cheapest value.

I did consider it, I work in the energy industry after all. But even your equation over simplifies things considerably. Things like cost over time (batteries are likely to get much cheaper in the future, whereas solar and nuclear are not likely to decrease much), and deployment characteristics (much easier/cheaper for the grid to add small incremental solar+wind+storage deployments over time then to add large individual nuclear deployments once or twice a decade)

I am fully supportive of using whatever technology that gets us to a zero carbon grid as quickly as possible. And right now the most advanced research in this area is suggesting that renewables + storage is our best bet.

Why is solar not likely to decrease much? If the historical experience curve continues there's still room for a factor of several decrease in its cost.

It would not be surprising if costs for storage fell much more than photovoltaics, over the next decade, and for the same reasons as for the latter.

In fact, cost of storage is expected to fall over the next following decade or two. Problem is, we needed to start solving climate 50 years ago. We don't have time to wait another 10 to 20 years. We now are forced to go the unoptimal route and more expensive.

Storage costs are plummeting already.

But because generating capacity is now so cheap, we can afford expensive storage construction. Storage typically has very low operating cost, but is just now expensive to build. So, it will be cheaper to build storage later, but anything built this year will continue operating.

Solar is already dirt cheap, and there is not much more juice left to squeeze. We might get a little bit more cost reduction over the next decade, maybe somewhere in the 10-50% range, but this isn't much compared the multiple hundreds of % that we saw over the last two decades. Also, at least in the short term, we are seeing some increases in cost due to supply chain and inflation issues.

You're just repeating the assertion there. What fundamentally prevents the cost of solar from falling even more? This cost has to come from some irreducible input. Materials? Energy? Labor? Which is it?

As for cost of delivered energy from solar, there is a final reduction that can still be obtained even if the cost/watt were to plateau immediately: extension of the lifespan of the system. This could be obtained by, over time, identifying and addressing all the degradation modes of the components of the system.

Predicting the future is hard. You are asking a question that pretty much no one has a good answer to (at least no one who is being honest). Are permitting fees an irreducible input? Probably not. Are lawyers fees an irreducible input? Maybe but unlikely. Are project developer salaries an irreducible input? I have no idea.

But I also think you are mis-applying a mental model about the cost of manufactured goods to the cost of solar plant development. In a competitive free market, the cost of manufactured goods should eventually be reduced to a sum of their inputs plus any profit.

But solar development is inherently an exercise in value capture. The project developers are trying to capture as much value as possible for their investors. The only thing that matters is that solar stays competitive in the energy market. As long as that happens, someone somewhere in the value chain can try and capture more value as other costs decrease. For example, what is stopping land owners from raising rents for solar projects? Right now, land is relatively cheap because there is not a lot of competition for it. But there are only so many parcels that are near transmission lines with good geographical features, and I fully expect land prices to increase as solar penetration increases. But this is really just a guess.

If you are interested in current project cost breakdowns, figure 30 in this report does a pretty good job[1]. Module costs were the primary driver of cost reductions in the last 20 years. But they now account for only 40% of total project costs. So even if module prices fell by 50%, that would only result in a 20% decline in total project cost. While a 20% drop in prices would be nice, I don't think it really changes the math much with respect to nuclear (the math is already overwhelmingly in favor of solar).

Also, I do agree that the average lifespan of these systems are going to be much longer than 20 years and that has not been priced in. But I don't think that is going to really change things anytime soon. Financial models and risk models are incredibly crude instruments. Using them to model even 5 to 10 years in the future is already extending them well beyond what they were designed for. But we have to put an end date on these models because at some point every project is going to cease to exist. And 20 years is what the banks like, so that is what we use.

[1] https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy21osti/77324.pdf

I was asking you to justify your statement. You don't get to make such an assertion then hide behind "prediction is hard" when asked to justify it.

I will note that there have been past attempts to call a floor in the cost of PV, for example the period from 2002-2007. That was not the floor.

Current cost breakdowns are nice, but don't show that costs can't be further reduced.

> For example, what is stopping land owners from raising rents for solar projects?

What stops them is the enormous quantity of land that's available. In the US, for example, land can be < 1% of the cost of a utility-scale PV installation.

I did justify my statement, but I will say it again. Solar project development is an exercise in value capture. As long as solar is cheap enough to compete in energy markets (which is currently the case), when some development costs go down, someone else in the value chain will try and find a way to increase their slice of the pie to try and compensate.

A good analogy is landlords. Why do they raise rents instead of decrease rents? Because they want to profit, and because their costs increase over time due to inflation, and because the market will let them.

Here is another fun one. What happens if/when interests rates go up? We are at record low rates, and most solar projects are debt financed? How will higher rates impact project costs? The obvious answer there is that costs will go up.

> In the US, for example, land can be < 1% of the cost of a utility-scale PV installation.

As I mentioned, that is the case now, but it will likely not be in the future. The number of sites close to existing transmission lines, with good geographical features requiring minimal grading, low flood risk, low wildfire risk, low hurricane risk, etc... are going to diminish quickly as saturation increases. And when it comes to land, costs can go from reasonable to painful real quickly.

I am certainly rooting for costs to go down, as I think that is better for humanity. But I am not betting on it. Why do you think they are going to go down? I don't think you have made a good case for lower costs other than that is what has happened in the past.

You make a good point about nuclear potentially requiring less storage since it (in theory) provides a constant power. Unfortunately, whilst nuclear power tends to be constant while it is on, it still goes down a lot either for servicing (planned or unplanned) or because of lack of cooling water (a problem that's going to get much worse due to climate change). Worse when there is a lack of cooling water it tends to affect lots of nuclear plants simultaneously (eg France).

So in total, Nuclear is just as reliant on grid inter-connectors as solar/wind to perform optimally.

The difference is that solar/wind are sooooo much cheaper you can now build solar/wind/interconnectors/storage and still come in cheaper than nuclear. No country in the world ever figured out how to build out nuclear power efficiently and in the last ten years the decline in solar/wind/storage costs has been astronomical.

That's why Nuclear is going nowhere. If we were to give storage plants subsidies at a level with what nuclear receives, there wouldn't even be a discussion about this.

If you have 30 reactors, maybe 3 are going down due to maintenance or other random reason. 90% capacity factor.

If wind doesn't blow over Europe, you can have 15% overall capacity factor.

Fortunately no one is suggesting we go 100% wind.

Wind, solar, biomass, geothermal, hydro, storage. Plus some nuclear if it is already built. That is what folks are recommending. If new build nuclear can compete, then great. But right now it can't, and models show we can get there without it.

>...it still goes down a lot either for servicing (planned or unplanned) or because of lack of cooling water

Unclear what you are basing that on. Nuclear energy has by far the highest capacity factor of any energy source and its not even close:

https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/nuclear-power-most-reliab...

>...The difference is that solar/wind are sooooo much cheaper

The levelized cost for residential rooftop solar is higher than nuclear, but that cost doesn't matter?

https://www.lazard.com/perspective/lcoe2020

https://www.statista.com/statistics/493797/estimated-leveliz...

Modern society is dependent on 100% reliable power. Even that relatively small blackout in Texas caused:

>...At least 246 people were killed directly or indirectly,[3] with some estimates as high as 702 killed as a result of the crisis.[4]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Texas_power_crisis

If we were to rely just on solar and wind, the low capacity factor would likely require massive grid storage. The only large scale grid storage we have at this point is pumped hydro and that isn't scalable. For example, one estimate is that for Germany to rely on solar and wind would require about 6,000 pumped storage plants which is literally 183 times their current capacity.

https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/144985/1/cesifo1_wp5...

If making more grid storage was cheap and easy, we would have built it decades ago.

Overbuilding could alleviate some of this, particularly the natural variations in seasonal energy output, but obviously this would be a multiplier to the cost and it won't get more power from solar at night, etc.

As Bill Gates said in an interview: "…They have this statement that the cost of solar photovoltaic is the same as hydrocarbon’s. And that’s one of those misleadingly meaningless statements. What they mean is that at noon in Arizona, the cost of that kilowatt-hour is the same as a hydrocarbon kilowatt-hour. But it doesn’t come at night, it doesn’t come after the sun hasn’t shone, so the fact that in that one moment you reach parity, so what? The reading public, when they see things like that, they underestimate how hard this thing is. So false solutions like divestment or “Oh, it’s easy to do” hurt our ability to fix the problems. Distinguishing a real solution from a false solution is actually very complicated."

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/11/we-need...

Gates is investing in 4th gen nuclear and energy storage companies so he is at least putting his money where his mouth is. The goal should be to decarbonize the electrical grid while maintaining the reliability we depend upon.

The cost of solar is now much better than hydrocarbon. And cost is still in free fall.

We don't have storage because we have not needed storage. Now that we are starting to need storage, storage is being built out. It will take time to build out, but the scale will be astonishing because the demand for it is very predictable and stable.

Gates is investing in nukes because it can be very profitable to make them. Not so much, using them. But there will always be pigeons.

>The cost of solar is now much better than hydrocarbon.

Kind of misleading to make a blanket statement like that since it obviously depends on what you are comparing. Consumer rooftop solar was, is, and will likely continue to be much more expensive than hydrocarbon. Solar at noon in Arizona in July is cheaper. Solar at 3:00 AM in Arizona in July doesn't exist. Solar + storage is right now pretty comparable to hydrocarbon prices.

>We don't have storage because we have not needed storage.

With daily and seasonable variations in demand and the need to shut down plants for maintenance, storage would always have been preferred to having to generally over build and running peaker plants, etc. So if it was cheap or easy, we would have built a lot more of it already. Though grid storage is absolutely needed to scale up intermittent sources.

>...It will take time to build out, but the scale will be astonishing because the demand for it is very predictable and stable.

Hope so.

>...Gates is investing in nukes because it can be very profitable to make them.

That is an uncharitable interpretation.

Imputing profit motive to perhaps the most revenue-oriented, monopolistic businessman of the past half century is uncharitable? Really?

> Solar and wind are cheap

They're cheap on sunny windy days. On a cold frosty night solar and wind are very expensive.

And that's why you add storage. The cost of storage need not be that low to push new nuclear entirely out of the picture.

https://model.energy/

> If we are going to need energy storage regardless (we will)

Why? Couldn't we just go all in on nuclear?

A couple of reasons:

- You'll need to manufacture terawatt hours of batteries anyway to replace all the internal combustion cars on the road, regardless of whether you charge those cars with nuclear electricity or renewable electricity.

- Nuclear power plants make for very expensive peak generating resources. They're only affordable for covering the minimum ("baseload") demand that is always there on the electrical grid.

Consider demand on California's CAISO grid. On a hot summer day like 2019-08-15 air conditioning pushes the peak demand over 44 gigawatts. On the same day, the early predawn load is 20 gigawatts lower at 24 gigawatts. And on a cool day like 2022-02-06, the minimum demand is down to 16 gigawatts while the whole day average is well below 23. You can use the date picker to look at "Demand trend" for different days here:

http://www.caiso.com/todaysoutlook/pages/index.html

Only ~16 gigawatts of generating output will definitely get consumed all the time, but you still need to plan for those hot days that need 44+ gigawatts. It's theoretically possible to build 45 GW of reactors and use the full capacity for just a few hours a year, but that's very expensive. It's much more economical to have only 16 GW of reactors and use other electricity sources to meet higher demand, but that's bad for the climate when "other sources" includes fossil fueled power plants like it currently does. Nuclear plus storage would be much more affordable than using 100% nuclear without storage, and it would be cleaner than using fossil fuel peakers.

Let's design system that disincentivizes reliability and be surprised that reliable systems aren't probitable. Amazing.

Why can’t they just discharge surplus electricity into the ground or something?

Just turn on the crypto mining rigs when the price is wrong

Or that

Folding at home en masse

or maybe a small datacenter next to every nuclear plant that is doing some fancy modeling to further improve nuclear power plants?

You can't "just" put 1GW of power into the ground, that energy is conserved and is still going to do something (quite a lot of somethings, in fact)

Eh, you could dissipate it by boiling ~20M^3 water per second. That's about the same as this river: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_Teme#/media/File:Ludlow_...

Since power plants are already in the business of boiling water, I imagine that if it were a simple case of bypassing turbines and allowing the water to be cooled without generating electricity they would do so. Or perhaps such a solution is in fact feasible, but negative energy prices were not a practical problem when current plants were built

Even if it’s dispersed over a wide area deep underground?

I have no expertise in this area so I don't really know, but i imagine dispersing 1GW of power over a wide area deep underground presents substantial challenges of its own

I think the answer is to use surplus energy to make and store hydrogen. The combine that with implementation of hydrogen powered vehicles in the large transport sector (trains and long haul trucks) would be a good way to store and make use of energy without building massive energy storage devices. Battery electric is already a bad fit for those sectors, since the heavy batteries significantly reduce useful transportation weight and long charging times mean expensive delays in moving goods. It would also help build out hydrogen distribution networks, which could be strategically installed at transportation hubs and along strategic routes to start, which then could be utilized by local transportation, making them more viable using hydrogen where battery electric isn’t as feasible (local buses and delivery trucks that can refill hydrogen in a few mins to run with minimal downtime).

They said blockchain/NFTs were a solution in search of a problem, and I think I've found that problem.

The article addresses that:

“The high operating and maintenance costs of running a reactor can make them uneconomical in some markets”

And “sometimes they operate at a loss”

They’re specifically talking about operational costs and excluding upfront costs.

In the US, most of the pumped hydro energy storage was built during the nuclear build out (because of the operating characteristics you note above). While chemical energy storage is growing quickly in the US, pumped hydro energy storage remains dominant.

Pumped hydro is great, but we are in a situation where most obvious pumped-hydro stations have been already turned into pumped-hydro. The remaining areas have political / water issues, or insufficient geography.

Chemical storage doesn't seem like it'd operate anywhere close to pump-hydro scale, but chemical storage will be a component of frequency-regulation, and maybe anything involving 30-minutes or less of storage. This is still useful, but pumped hydro is so much bigger than all other forms, that its hard to imagine an adequate replacement moving forward.

CAES looks promising. Still smaller than pumped hydro, but there's more geography that works with it.

You commit a common error. While on-river hydro (including pumped) is rather limited, the potential resource for off-river pumped hydro is enormous.

http://re100.eng.anu.edu.au/global/

Globally there's about 9,000 gigawatt hours of pumped hydro, annually we produce about 1388.85 TWh worth of Ammonia (mostly for fertilizer) so chemical storage of electrical energy as green hydrogen/ammonia has a fairly clear growth path.

> Nuclear is the opposite of variable, as it can’t be turned up or down quickly.

It's not as clear cut. Cold start up and shut down of nuclear reactors take time, but there's lot of in between and nuclear still has quite a lot of flexibility: for instance, you can quickly modulate the power output down to 50% without special considerations (you can also go lower, but then it starts using the uranium quicker[1]), or you can even go off while staying hot and in pressure, which means only the fission divergence needs to be redone, this is usually done during the week-end.

And keep in mind that modern (= high yield) fossil plants also have limited flexibility: a supercritical coal plant takes a lot of time to warm up, and so does a CCGT.

[1]: or more precisely, since the power is controlled by top-down control rods, you end up burning uranium in the bottom more than in the top, which means replacing the fuel earlier.

It's a bit more nuanced than that. Nuclear plants can alter their output by more aggressively cooling the reactor. This wastes heat, but can be used to curb electrical output in a pinch. But it doesn't reduce operating costs like running a gas plant for reduced hours. The overwhelming majority of nuclear power's cost lies in construction, and reducing output doesn't result in any savings.

>>the fact that the plants cannot easily be shut down and restarted means that they sometimes operate at a loss when there is ample supply on the market

>This is an interesting economic quirk I hadn’t thought about.

this "quirk" should be a non-issue with a functioning energy market. if renewables are flooding the market with cheap electricity, but only during the day, and there's a massive deficit during the night, then the deficit would cause prices to go up and make the remaining generating capacity (natural gas, nuclear) more profitable.

> but only during the day, and there's a massive deficit during the night

Only if you assume the demand stays constant, but it doesn't; Demand is usually the highest when PV output is also the highest, the middle of the day when everybody is at work, using all kinds of electricity drawing machines.

It also would heavily advantage power plants that could turn on and off quickly to only produce power when the cost of that power is high.

Especially if these plants produced a lot of pollution that was also not accounted for.

Based upon the UK's National Grid Data (https://grid.iamkate.com/) I would disagree with you - It seems that peak demand lies at about 6PM, and solar peaks about 11:30AM - This leads to a significant increase in fossil fuel consumption around this time

The UK is a curious example to use for this, afaik a big part of that "peak demand" is people starting up their electric tea kettles in a phenomenon known as TV pickup [0]

For contrast, here are the stats for Germany [1] and the consumption peaks during the day contrast very well with the night consumption.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_pickup

[1] https://www.agora-energiewende.de/en/service/recent-electric...

> Demand is usually the highest when PV output is also the highest

Not quite, the mismatch in timing between solar generation and energy demand has been called the "duck curve" [1][2]. Peak demand is normally in the evening when people are done with work [3].

[1] https://www.energy.gov/eere/articles/confronting-duck-curve-...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_curve

[3] https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=42915

> Demand is usually the highest when PV output is also the highest

In California, demand peaks are around 6-8pm, well past the peak of solar production. This disparity has a name, the "Duck Curve". You can view the near real-time power demand on the CAISO[1] website. Your region may have a similar way to see live demand.

[1] http://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/default.aspx

Not really, the peak is around 6PM when people get home from work, turn on all their lights, tvs, appliances, etc. This will change as well with the push to fully electrify residential homes, which would mean very heavy electricity usage in the evening for heating, electric stoves for cooking, electric dryers, and electric cars being plugged in.

https://www.e-education.psu.edu/ebf483/node/534

Precisely!

Look at ~2001/02 -- ENRON...

My energy bill went from $100/mo to over $1,000/mo for NO REASON..

My power was shut off in february because my regular energy bill literally went up 10X during that period (no change in use) -- and I was ~25 and it was the first downturn, and while I owned my house - I had to borrow money from parents to pay the fucking power bill due to enron shenanigans... (san jose ca, so not even super cold/winter conditions)

Look at fuel prices right now - same fuckery about today: When the war started and fuel went to $90/barrel - the gas pump first time ever went to $3/gallon...

Look at fuel prices today $92/barrel --

$5.19 at the pump.

Yeah - FN BS.

And then when you try to go self-sufficient with EV, PV, & Batteries, the state of California attempts to pass legislation to tax your PV array. Goofy.

I haven't done much research about enron so I'm not going to comment on it, but your remark about "same fuckery about today" does not seem to check out. If you plot out spot crude and gasoline prices[1], you'll see they track pretty closely starting from when records began (1990s). Also, if you dump out the data and calculate the ratio of gas prices to crude prices (after converting 42 gal = 1bbl), you see it remains pretty steady across the years. For the latest available data the ratio was 1.267, and the average for all available data is 1.222. That's higher, but definitely not in line with the numbers you claim.

[1] https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_pri_spt_s1_d.htm

Read this about 2001 enron BS:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000%E2%80%9301_California_ele...

20X increase in energy costs at that time

---

ELI5:

While you're speaking that SPOT crude remains relativistic constant/regular over time, may you please explain if this is true, what the cost increases at the pump are directly related to?

When I began driving, the spot price tracking you mention was the same, but the pump price was $.99/gallon for gas...

So, I admit I do not have an understanding of the reasons behind the price at the pump, but shouldn't that price match the same graph?

If not, please ELI5 how it now apparently costs 5X the cost to deliver gas to the pump?

Shouldnt any company be seeking economies at scale and more efficient everything - especially in OIL/GAS where they are really reliant on compute for the future success of their industry and the power of compute is 10,000X more powerful today than in 1990?

Yet - the pump always goes up...

(I'll go ahead and you're going to excuse it as "the cost of doing business/expenses have gone up)

If true, then why isn't toilet paper $50/roll? Trees are not going to replenish themselves at the same rate as our consumption... so shouldn't toilet paper be super expensive?

What is your opinion on the following video on the origins of oil and the origin of the term "Fossil Fuel" coined by Rockefeller:

https://youtu.be/vdSjyvIHVLw

>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000%E2%80%9301_California_ele...

1. your own article lists multiple non-eron related reasons for the crisis

2. AFAIK energy markets are the norm. state regulators might regulate the rates that retail customers pay, but the utilities are buying the electricity from the free market. Therefore the supply/demand dynamic when it comes to prices should already be factored in, which was why I was confused it was initially brought up.

>While you're speaking that SPOT crude remains relativistic constant/regular over time, may you please explain if this is true, what the cost increases at the pump are directly related to?

helpful page from eia.gov: https://www.eia.gov/petroleum/gasdiesel/

>When I began driving, the spot price tracking you mention was the same, but the pump price was $.99/gallon for gas...

obvious question: were you in the same state? taxes are baked into the gas price, so if you moved from texas to california, it wouldn't be surprising that your gas price went up for no reason.

>So, I admit I do not have an understanding of the reasons behind the price at the pump, but shouldn't that price match the same graph?

I went a step further and compared crude oil prices to retail gas prices (available from https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_pri_gnd_dcus_nus_w.htm), and found that the ratio hovers at around 2, with that ratio being higher in the 80s/90s than today. While there's some fluctuation, it's nowhere close to the amounts implied by your anecdotes. Speaking of which, I find your anecdotes impossible to substantiate. Which state did you live in? When was "the war"?

>If true, then why isn't toilet paper $50/roll? Trees are not going to replenish themselves at the same rate as our consumption...

I'm not sure where you're getting that conclusion from, but pulpwood trees are effectively farmed. The growth cycles are longer than something like corn, but they're still planted/replenished at approximately the same rate they're cut. The deforestation stories you hear are largely from developing countries cutting down forest for development purposes.

I think we are in 50/50 agreement: you have 50% the knowledge that I have, I have 50% the knowledge you have:

Thus, I am happy to capitulate and learn from your insights as well.

But the ratio doesnt take into many factors such as inflation and actual wage-buying-power

So while the maths ratio sounds small... the Human ratio is much greater based on the buying power of a dollar-vs-salary of the avg buyer...

so while it may seem one-way, the reality for the buyer is much different...

Here is an anecdote:

My GF has worked at The French Laundry for several years...

The top rest in the world according to some...

She lives in Sonoma Ca and it costs her $5.19 per gallon of gas. She drives an modern car with good gas mileage.

She pays $70 to 3/4 fill her car and travels ~30 miles one way to commute to a job at the top restaurant in the world which pays her $12/hour.

The bill says "Service Included" which leads guests to believe that "TIP IS INCLUDED" -- and so people that pay $75,000 for a meal (including wine) often DONT TIP...

Because they believe that "Service" == "Tip" NOPE.

The point is, that her commute costs her ~half a weeks actual pay to pay for fuel.

The point being that we THINK that the ratio --> relation to buying power has been constant, or even better these days with higher wages, the reality in the wallet is not such.

Even with a great job, at one of the best companies in the world (supposedly) -- She still struggles with just filling her car with gas.

Fuck big oil.

I agree. And I think that framing it as quirk(not by the OP but by the gentleman in the article) is disingenuous and being used to push for what just looks like more subsidies for private energy companies. It's hard to read the following and not feel a bit rankled.

>"Matt Crozat, senior director of policy development for the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), said the industry is "encouraged" by the creation of the credit program, but is still pushing for more permanent economic support."

The Nuclear Energy Institute looks like it's an just industry trade group that likely retains some powerful lobbyists.

> what just looks like more subsidies for private energy companies

I don't think there's a future where "energy policy" (a euphemism for subsidies/lobbying/permitting) ceases to exist.

If nuclear power is the least-worst of the industry trade groups, it should count for something.

However, it might behoove us to consider the wisdom in allowing the whims of "energy policy" to vaporize twenty-year, $10 billion infrastructure projects.

For basically every big factory it is not easy to stop and startup again. For example for a large metal melt factory it would take a year to shutoff and another year to startup. For large oil production facilities it takes at least one year to halt operations. That's why they have these huge silos. Thosr factories are build with constant production in mind. Same thing for container ship logistics. A complex system that can take years to startup. Currently visible everywhere.

Having broadly-deployable (i.e. few geographic limitations), toggle-able, economically-productive ways to burn power that are carbon neutral or negative is the real solution.

There's no reason prices should ever be negative... except for a lack of power sinks. If there were intermittent hydrogen production facilities, or direct air capture of carbon + a carbon market that rewarded that, the intermittency accounting quirk would correct itself.

Those are probably good ideas but they're still not necessarily the cheapest options. They'll have capital costs to pay off over time like anything else, and if they only run half the time then the capital cost is doubled for the amount of output you get.

> direct air capture of carbon + a carbon market that rewarded that

That could be nice. Maybe if the DOE money helped with capital to build a direct air carbon capture system. Then the nuclear plants can sell credits to oil/gas based energy companies similar to how like Tesla sells its credits to other car manufacturers.

The problem isn't even shifting daytime generation to night; that is somewhat doable with energy storage. In Europe at least (and I assume much of the rest of the world) the problem is shifting summer production to winter.

UK demand in winter is nearly 2x higher than summer (and will grow even more with switching gas heating to heat pumps), at the same time solar output is ~10% of that at summer. Wind energy is higher but is unpredictable and in very cold snaps (when demand is greatest) tends to result in very low wind output.

This problem is the biggest one to solve (and not sure how solvable it is). In essence it's possible to smooth out daily output with renewables, but annual output is very difficult. You are talking TWhs of storage requirement.

Hydrogen solves that problem. The round trip efficiency is poor, but for seasonal storage efficiency doesn't matter very much.

We have lots of "solutions" (e.g., conventional batteries, flywheels, pumped hydro, etc), the critical question is cost. Where are the proven economical, grid-scale deployments of hydrogen storage? Last I checked, they were in their infancy, so while I'm rooting for it, characterizing hydrogen as a solution is facile.

There exist underground hydrogen storage caverns already. One was referenced elsewhere in the comments (supplying hydrogen to industrial users in the gulf states.) So, the technology exists. The major block for green hydrogen storage was the cost of electrolysers, but that is crashing now as well: China is selling alkaline electrolysers for under $300/kW. The hydrogen would be used in combined cycle plants. Hydrogen-burning combustion turbines have been available for 30 years.

You might be misled by the apparent absence of installations for hydrogen grid storage, but understand that as long as natural gas is being used, it makes little sense to use hydrogen instead. That doesn't mean hydrogen can't work, it just means that natural gas (without CO2 charges) is for the moment cheaper.

I'm aware of some storage caverns and have no doubts that the technology works, but everything I'm aware of suggests it's experimental with respect to the economics.

Experimental technology does not get billion-dollar orders.

Factories for iron-air storage are being built today, to start supplying grid-scale storage in 2023. Everybody knows the demand is there and will remain there, so there is plenty of capital for anything known to work. But it takes time to build out.

After costs shake out, build-out will concentrate on the cheapest alternatives, but everything already built will still work, and still be used, because the cost is capital cost. It will be a long time before the storage market is saturated and storage providers have to compete on prices.

It will be ready and waiting when the economic incentives needed to put it into place are there. These incentives by all evidence will be less than what would be needed to put nuclear into its place.

BTW, if you object to hydrogen on these grounds, you must also object to nuclear on these grounds, and more strongly. This is especially the case if you imagine a nuclear powered world economy. You need to imagine a jump in technology more radical than for hydrogen storage -- either massive scale up of seawater uranium extraction (many orders of magnitude, from gram scale to megaton scale) or use of breeder reactors instead of burner reactors.

If you want proven tech, methane isn't much worse efficiency.

We don't need to switch summer production to winter if we keep improving grid inter-connectors. We will still need a lot more storage though. And insulation.

Grid interconnection adds strategic risk, particularly for small countries. This is Europe's problem, particularly. It will be West Africa's, and South America's. China is building a submarine cable to South America for winter solar, but you may be sure they are also stockpiling coal for when the cable fails.

They all need enough storage to not need interconnection, and then rely on interconnection to reduce cost and drawdown from storage.

How does that work? Are you connecting Europe to Africa? Even Spain has a large winter/summer swing in insolation.

Most European connections to Africa have been cancelled as a consequence of massive photovoltaic cost reductions enabling local placement and overbuilding to compete. A few projects connecting Spain to African generation remain.

Probably the most effective use for African solar energy production will be synthesis of hydrocarbons to be delivered by supertanker to high latitudes in winter, and for aircraft fuel.

Right. Which means that transmission in Europe cannot be anything other than an ineffective solution to seasonal variation in solar generation. The seasonal variation in solar energy available to the European grid will be large, and one either uses storage to deal with that, has extremely large amounts of demand that could be dispatched on a seasonal basis, or just wastes most of the summer production. What would end up happening instead would be the excess and otherwise curtailed production would create an irresistible force driving something -- like hydrogen production -- to soak up that otherwise wasted output.

IIRC, newer nuclear designs use the control rods to control the speed of the reaction, as opposed to purely being a safety measure.

Interesting. I was under the impression that the control rods were always used to regulate the reaction. How were they used chiefly as a safety measure? Similarly what was used for controlling the rate of reaction when the primary purpose of the rods were purely for safety?

I don't know the details.

What I do know is that the older reactors weren't really the type that could "spin up" or "spin down". Control rods always existed on nuclear power plants, even the oldest designs.

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In any case: "Connecting" those rods up to a computer so that the reaction can get hotter or run cooler would be the basis for variable power output.

>would be the basis for variable power output.

This has been done literally forever. Why do you think nuclear plants run at 100% capacity 24/7?

> Why do you think nuclear plants run at 100% capacity 24/7?

The primary reason would be economic. Fuel costs IIRC are really low but capital-expenses (especially safety engineering / politics / convincing the people nearby that the plant is safe) is so costly.

When you have cheap-fuel but expensive machines, it makes sense to run closer to 100%. If you have expensive fuel but cheap machines (ex: Gas turbines), it makes sense to run in a "peaker" fashion.

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That being said: I've heard that older nuclear plants are "baseload" designs, in that they _CANNOT_ turn off or feasibly regulate their power output.

I mean, they obviously "can" turn off, they all have control rods for safety. But they're clearly not using them to regulate the power output.

>But they're clearly not using them to regulate the power output.

No, you heard wrong. They're often the last or second to last type of plant that's called upon to alter supply to match demand, but they don't run 100% 24/7.

They want to run them nearly 100% 24/7 for economic reasons though. Also what is the effect of regulating with control rods on the fuel, does it have an impact on how often the fuel needs to be changed?

>does it have an impact on how often the fuel needs to be changed

Yes, fissonable elements in the fuel are consumed in a manner that's proportional to output. So if you run at 25% output your fuel needs to be changed (example) every 4 years, if you run at 100% output your fuel needs to be changed every year.

But it is not 100% proportional, for example, 15% of the plant's output is required simply to run the plant's accessories. So it is advantageous to run at 100% output if you can.

Another comment in this thread, I can't find it now, said that lower output past a certain level did lead to having to change the fuel faster. I don't know who's correct but it feels strange that this would be a linear relationship, these kinds of things don't tend to work like that.

I recall reading that the fuel is 1/3 of the operating expenses, but I could be misremembering.

About 28% as of 2018[1], but there have been some advancements since then. Half of that cost is enrichment and fabrication, and disposal is a factor too. It costs a lot less to fuel nuclear plants than coal plants, but maintenance is more costly for nuclear. Pricing in externalities or requiring scrubbers makes coal FAR more expensive. Natural gas is really cheap right now so that is largely what is undercutting Nuclear for base load power. It's worth noting that historically natural gas production/use has been far more dangerous than nuclear and far less scrutinized by regulators.

[1]http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2018/ph241/wang-k2/

Most nuclear power plants in the US fleet are not variable-output for design reasons. Mostly, both the reactor (see my other comment about neutron poisoning) and turbines are designed for safe operation at a fixed output and cannot operate at "partial" power for extended periods (in the turbines I think the problem is vibration and how it interacts with the bearing designs). A lot of this basically comes from these reactors having been designed without the benefit of computer modeling (everything had to be hand-calculated around a specific target output), newer designs based on computational modeling and optimization techniques achieve much larger safe/sustainable power ranges. Unfortunately we have very few reactors of modern design in the US.

I'm not an expert but my general understanding is that neutron poisoning is the big issue. Most reactors are designed around a careful balance of operating temperature and radiation field to mitigate neutron poisoning by the fuel, and operating outside of that balance will cause the problem to become progressively worse until the reaction is no longer self sustaining. So reactors have a "design power" and they can operate outside of that design power only for limited periods of time, while transitioning in and out of operation. Operating outside of the design power for too long causes thermal output to get lower and lower until the reactor just needs to be shut down while the operators wait out the half-life of the short-lived fuel products that cause poisoning, and then they can start it up again. I think this can be weeks so it's carefully avoided.

You are right about the (mostly Xenon-induced) neutron poisoning being a important design factor, but there's still quite a lot of margin you can use to modulate power (reducing boric acid concentration in water is the key factor here, so it will works better when the fuel has been renewed recently than just before you need to refuel).

I can hear the confusion in your writing and am thinking the same thing as you. The comment you're replying to seems almost artificial. The words refer to nuclear power but there's no sense of any understanding behind them.

Well, I'm a programmer and will openly admit it! I have zero training in nuclear power!

Disclaimer - I only took one reactor course 17 years ago.

The rods soak up neutrons. the reactor is designed so that its power would increase if the rods weren't there. The rods are what keeps the k == 1 (basically how the neutrons change in time. K == 1 is no change).

So don't think of the rods as a throttle valve in your car, i.e. this throttle angle corresponds to this much torque and therefore power. The rods are best thought of as controlling the rate of change of reactor power.

This is why the reactor is built so that the neutrons increase when fully withdrawn - because you have to start it! If the reactor is being started, the rods are withdrawn until the power wanted is achieved. Then the rods are lowered.

Note this is a far more complicated problem; this is a very serious operation because at the very start, except for your neutron starter, you only have "prompt" neutrons that can very quickly cause an increase of power. Once the reactor has stabilized the "nuclear waste" inside it releases non-prompt neutrons that are part of the neutron budget and are easier to control.

So, while waste in the reactor is being accumulated and while the fuel burns up, the position of the rods to achieve stable power changes! Furthermore these changes are different in different parts of the reactor so each rod is individually changed (actually I think there are two sets of rods, not all of them are individually actuated)

I have a degree in Nuclear engineering, although I haven’t been practicing in a while. Your explanation is accurate and well described.

> actually I think there are two sets of rods, not all of them are individually actuated

commercial reactors have 5-10 “banks” arranged symmetrically, although only a subset of those are typically used during power operations [1], so you weren’t far off. Rods are rarely controlled individually, the only case that comes to mind is for identifying and then limiting the reactivity in a “leaker” fuel bundle (one where the cladding has been breached by a foreign object, so it is leaching contamination into the coolant - this is undesirable but expected).

[1]: edit for more information: PWRs and BWRs differ substantially here:

PWRs primarily use boric acid in the coolant to limit reactivity at the beginning of a fuel cycle, which is diluted out over the course of the cycle. One bank of rods is used for fine reactivity control. This gives them a generally even power distribution across the reactor.

BWRs primarily use their control rods, so start the fuel cycle with substantially more inserted. A significant part of designing the fuel layout for a cycle is also designing the control rod patterns to be used over the cycle, to control excess reactivity while maximizing fuel use. Power distribution across the reactor can vary wildly, so it’s a much more challenging engineering problem.

I just remembered I actually have a detailed visualization illustrating (modeled) power distribution in a BWR. You can easily see where control rods are inserted and how that has shifted the power around. https://www.kmr.me/posts/coremap/#content

Yes, it's used heavily in France (with nuclear >70% of production it's a necessity there)

I'm not a nuclear reactor engineer etc, though it was my understanding that control rods in nuclear reactor have always been used to moderate the reaction to control power output, as well as being a critical safety component.

See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_rod

Those are called "load-follow" designs. Not "newer designs". They are almost as old as the discovery of fission itself.

American nuclear submarines use them, as does France's power generating reactors.

>Nuclear is the opposite of variable, as it can’t be turned up or down quickly.

As far as electrical output is concerned, nuclear power is just as variable as any other turbine based power generation system. Just divert the steam away from the turbines and you are no longer making electricity. Therefore, through creative plumbing, you could easily adjust the amount of power generated by controlling how much steam is going to the turbine. The issue is that while you are diverting steam, you are wasting money by running the reactor.

I wonder if someone made a machine that did carbon removal whose only inputs is power AND there was a bounty paid to remove carbon if you could install them onsite at power plants to deal with this

That will happen, but it will be driven mainly from solar arrays.

A nuclear reservation is generally a good place to lay out solar and wind arrays, whether the plant itself still operates or not.

Great idea if it worked at all decently - any excess power could go directly toward removing atmospheric carbon. Or some other environmental process that is beneficial. Water purification? Climate modeling datacenters?

You don't have to actually remove carbon with excess power. In fact that would be bad environmentally since all you accomplish is removing carbon but you still have process inefficiency. Your statement is globally equivalent to doing something that would be done anyway but is tolerant to interruptions. There are power consumers that can do this and they have a power preferential rate (i.e. they're willing to shut down when the power company calls).

Also, what you're saying can be done by, for example, electrolysis of water to make hydrogen. I'm currently working on fuel cells that can be operated in reverse; that is they generate electricity from fossil fuels when needed (at very high efficiency) but absorb excess electricity by producing hydrogen.

Really what you're proposing is accomplished more efficiently by stored energy. The problem is that we've tapped out the easy ways to redistribute load, or store energy decades ago.

Lots of things the government pays for though is not supposed to be hugely profitable - no one questions why we have Fire departments for example and they are a huge "loss" when everyone is just sitting around.

The power not stored though is of course still just a problem in general for efficiency sake - I wonder if there is something we could pair with nuclear plants that would use the otherwise wasted energy to accomplish something productive.

A fully nuclear grid would require some battery storage for this reason. Large nuclear plants aren't that great at load leveling.

To be honest, a full anything grid would be a terrible idea. There's not a one size fits all energy solution. Different regions have different demands. They have different advantages and disadvantages. We also don't want to put all our eggs in one basket for energy security reasons.

There are some geographical exceptions - Norway literally does not need anything else other than hydro.

I actually really like Japans system they had to inadvertently invent - the north part of the country and south operate on different power standards ( I believe the phase? ). This led to them building MASSIVE insanely high voltage DC to DC connections between the two grids so one side could still supply the other with power. But the other plus is that ( I believe ) one side can also not take the other out or draw too much power. China is investing heavily in super high voltage long distance power transfer and I suspect the US could do the same and use it to connect different areas of the country. Also much lower transmission losses.

The US has gigantic wind resources down the middle that could help power the coasts if transmission was there.

A fully nuclear grid probably wouldn't make sense. France has a 60-70% nuclear electricity grid and manages just fine. Some of their reactors use grey rods which can be inserted into the core which have less effect than the normal control rods but don't distort the shape of the reaction as much as a partially inserted rod.

With a capacity factor of about 70% [1]. Compared to for example the US at 93.7%. That difference of 23% has to be taken out over the top of the already high cost of nuclear, which as we can see here still lose money at the higher level.

[1]: https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-pr...

France has all sorts of problems and their grid would break regularly if they couldn't import energy during the Summer when their cooling water sources get too hot and they have to shut down all their reactors.

More specifically, the water become too hot to be released in a river without impacting the bio-environment, not all plants have this issue.

That's a completely separate issue. It would also be common to all thermoelectric powerplants placed in the same locations.

All sources of power can have engineering challenges. Like the recent Texas blackouts where equipment related to the gas supply stopped due to the cold weather.

"It would also be common to all thermoelectric powerplants placed in the same locations."

Common, but not the same. Nuclear power work efficiency (30-40%?) is typically lower than a gas turbine plant (60%?). So electrical watt for electrical watt, the nukes need far more cooling water.

Hu, a fully nuclear grid would be built to support the highest demand, and plants would be giving energy away when there is a surplus (or actually what would probably happen is that people would design plants that can economically load follow). So, that surplus could go into various liquid fuel's, or whatever.

Its something I've said before, you overbuild nukes, and use the excess capacity for water desalination, jet fuel production, CO2 recapture, or any other energy intensive process which creates a product that can be easily stored.

Nuclear energy is basically free once you have built the plant.

I agree - if having TOO MUCH power is the thing we are saying is a disadvantage of Nuclear that sounds like a pretty damn good problem to have. We just need to find some new creative ways to use that excess power.

Maybe an interesting way to do this would be to give "power" grants to local students or universities - applications could be sent in with proposals and test projects and then those who are accepted would get access to free power during excess times and maybe also some kind of warehouse like workspace / nearby location. Could be a huge educational benefit and drive innovation.

We already know what to do with excess power: capture carbon, electrolyse hydrogen, synthesize ammonia, kerosene, and methane, and refine aluminum; and charge storage systems. It takes time and capital to build all of those out: capital that nuke plant construction and refurbishing compete for.

It is a much, much better use of capital to build the others out, and the solar and wind, than to spend the money trying to bring those ramshackle contraptions out of retirement.

The last sentence is quite far from true.

It used to be not-too-dishonest when compared to coal, but always was compared to hydro. Now we have solar and wind, besides.

Nuclear reactions can be modulated quickly, they just aren't designed to and are prevented from doing so due to red tape. It's economically tricky because the fixed costs of a nuclear plant mean you don't want to underutilize it now, but you can make them variable.

Not just storage, but transmission. From what I understand were far from a plant on the east coast being able to fill needs on the West. Interstate and international transmission lines would solve a lot of problems easier than more storage.

We already have pretty good long distance transmission lines (HVDC lines are commonly used today in both remote areas and in undersea lines, there's even a 53 mile long line from SF to Pittsburgh under the Bay). But there's always going to be some point at which it's more economical to build up local power generation along distances. We really don't want to be pumping gigawatts over fire prone areas, for example.

We are going to need to figure out how to handle more intense seasonal weather in the south east US. Florida has already done a decent job hardening their transmission lines and making sure their grids can stand up to cat 5 storms (the way they weathered Irma was incredible, compared to Maria in Puerto Rico just weeks later) but transmission lines are easier to replace than generators.

You need both, because long-distance transmission is subject to interruption.

Then, transmitted power is cheaper, but storage serves when transmission drops. The effect is amplified when transmission is from or through another country.

As power autarky and energy stability is a major backbone of economic and defense capabilities a mere billion here or there should be absolutely worth it. You need an energy source mix in the end, and this is part of that.

It's a big headache and one of the most annoying things about armchair energy planners who think solar can solve everything. It should surprise nobody that energy planning is very difficult.

Which is why most countries turning to intermittent renewables are using gas as backup, and why without massive energy storage (TWh), we're screwed using those.

Wouldn't this mean pairing with wind/solar is a natural fit? I don't really see a big issue if we could have a holistic plan.

Capitalism has difficulty with holistic plans. Carbon taxes and credits help retrofit, if you can get them enacted.

I'm of the impression that molten salt reactors address this by storing thermal energy in the molten salt for later use?

If there were any, yes, in principle. Attempts at molten-salt storage (which would be even more useful for solar) have run into corrosion and leakage problems.

Bitcoin mining ftw

Wait, are you saying that people were lying in all those cryptocurrency threads when they told us that “excess electricity” doesn’t exist?

Shocking.

Nuclear power plants are not "carbon free." They have significant operational needs (indirect emissions), making them of the most expensive sources of electricity available today, and by some estimates their indirect carbon footprint is enormous. Think about how many people have to be involved in their operation, versus the operation of a solar farm.

People like to make noise about the impact of mining the materials needed for solar. Well, what about the impact of mining and refining uranium?

Their cost of construction per GW is not competitive with wind and solar - it's typically thousands of euros per kw. Whereas wind and solar can go from construction to energy production (and carbon paypback) on a timescale of months, nukes take years to build.

How much of that economic cost is tied up in regulations and NIMBYism?

>Well, what about the impact of mining and refining uranium?

I'd be willing to wager significant money that on a MW for MW basis, the environmental impact is higher for solar just due to the energy density alone.

> People like to make noise about the impact of mining the materials needed for solar. Well, what about the impact of mining and refining uranium?

While I agree with you in general, the amount of uranium needed to run a power plant should be orders of magnitude smaller than is necessary to build and equivalent solar farm

Amount of uranium 235, maybe. Amount of ore and environmental degradation, no.

But I do worry about the 8g/m^2 of cadmium mounted on top of houses some of which will burn down.

> Nuclear power plants are not "carbon free." They have significant operational needs (indirect emissions), making them of the most expensive sources of electricity available today, and by some estimates their indirect carbon footprint is enormous

The United Nations Economic Commission For Europe released a report in 2021 on the life cycle emissions (including construction, operation, and decommissioning) of various power generation options and found nuclear to be the lowest overall at 5.5 gCO2eq/kWh [1].

[1] https://unece.org/sites/default/files/2021-10/LCA-2.pdf

Estimates of nuclear put the carbon footprint between 15-50gCO2/KWh, compared to about 450gCO2/KWh for gas

Both uranium mining and renewables mining have issues - I'm not going to debate or compare them because I don't know enough about the topic but due to the energy density of uranium I wouldn't be surprised if nuclear was better overall

Cost is the real issue - the cost and timescales of nuclear reactors are massive issues, and they are significantly worse short-term investments than wind and solar.

However, energy storage is not a solved problem, so until it is nuclear is not competing with wind and solar - it is competing with gas and coal, to which it has advantages in almost every category (excluding cost)

> Nuclear power [...] indirect carbon footprint is enormous

Do you have sources for this? I completely concur that nuclear energy is too expensive, problematic and by now much too late to help with the climate crisis, but from what I found it is quite competitive with wind and solar in total CO2 emissions per kwh of energy (the numbers I found were all between 5 and 25 gram Co2/kwh for these three, compared to >500 for any fossil alternative).

This makes sense to me since turbines and panels also need to be manufactured, transported and installed, after all...

I agree they must be taken into account, but the obvious counter is to take the cost of energy storage into account for solar/wind, which currently weakens its position significantly.

Long term that cost will go down, but it's always going to make the calculation much less simple than it seems at first glance, solar might be the cheapest form of power at the moment, but it's not the cheapest single source to run an electricity grid by a wide margin.

It gets much easier to think about if you picture the solar and wind owned by parties A, and storage and long-distance transmission by parties B. Then, it is just a matter of responding to spot price. The capital expenditure by A and B combined is less than for refurbishing existing nuke plants, never mind building new ones.

Interestingly, there is work being done to extract uranium from seawater, which while more expensive that mining at the moment, is starting to prove to be economically viable for certain reactors.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_mining#Seawater_recove...

I see research from 2012 showing it's 10x the price of current methods but maybe the price could come down and then.... the usual nothing useful that ever comes of Nuclear research.

They could store it in the form of digital energy (Bitcoin). With that you're able to capture what would otherwise be wasted energy.

"The gas, which would otherwise have been burned off, is instead routed to a bitcoin processor.

For years, oil and gas companies have struggled with the problem of what to do when they accidentally hit a natural gas formation while drilling for oil. Whereas oil can easily be trucked out to a remote destination, gas delivery requires a pipeline. If a drilling site is right next to a pipeline, they chuck the gas in and take whatever cash the buyer on the other end is willing to pay that day. But if it’s 20 miles from a pipeline, drillers often burn it off, or flare it. That is why you will typically see flames rising from oil fields.

The process reduces CO2-equivalent emissions by about 63% compared to continued flaring.."

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/15/conocophillips-is-selling-ex...

And how do you convert back bitcoin into electricity ? How do you turn money into energy ? Can the FED print some money to fill back the empty oil fields ?

Pay poor people to turn cranks on magnets. Efficiency losses of only 99.9% /s

I'm not advocating for "use excess energy to mine bitcoin", but you don't need to convert it back into energy--the theoretical nuclear plant is calibrated so its power output is equal to the max power demand and any excess due to lower-than-max demand is channeled to bitcoin mining.

This is a good use of bitcoin.

A better solution would be to interconnect the electricity grid with neighbouring grids. With sufficient size, time-dependent peaks and troughs would be smoothed out.

That is unlikely to work unles you're transmitting far enough to enter different timezones.

Super high voltage DC transmission lines are the new hotness in China right now - they could pair perfectly with this.

You're right, if the bitcoin is mined anyway. I'd argue that things like cryptocurrency, social media, Youtube, government spying, are best shutoff and the carbon kept underground.

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