U.S. Is Set to Launch a $6B Effort to Save Nuclear Plants

Until the nuclear regulators retire, nothing much will be approved in USA. They are out of touch with the nation.

About five years ago I took the time to model and understand power demand for an all-electric fleet. The answer is simple: We need to be able to produce AND transport twice the power we are able to produce today. One way to put it is that we need to duplicate our current energy production systems, both in capacity and distribution. That is a massive undertaking, one which nuclear would make much simpler.

The serious setback I was referring to above has to do with what might happen as more and more full electric vehicles are deployed before the grid and excess power generation capacity is there to support them. This I have not modeled.

If I had to guess, I would say that there will come a point in time where the deployed fleet of electrics will over-burden the system. Lacking any sort of intelligent planning (we have none whatsoever), this is likely to lead to a few things. One of them would be that electricity prices will double or triple. Lacking sufficient generation capacity we will have no choice but to burn more fuel (coal, whatever) in order to generate power. However, there's a limit. Our current plants and distribution network cannot produce and transport twice the power.

What happens then? You can't build power plants instantly. They take time. Solar is great, yet it is unreliable and requires massive over-building (you need over seven times the peak power generation out of a solar installation in order to match the output of a nuclear power plant). In other words, to match the output of a 1 GW nuclear power plant you have to, at a minimum, build a 7 GW photovoltaic solar farm.

What happens? Well, as electricity becomes expensive and rolling blackouts and other nice things start to become more and more part of daily lives electric vehicles might not be seen in the same light. In fact, the cost of operating electric vehicles will likely increase significantly during this period. In addition to that, it is very likely additional taxes will be levied on electric cars in order to have owners of these vehicles pay their fair share of what it will take to support their ability to drive such vehicles.

In many ways those owning electric vehicles today live in a fantasy they are not paying for. They use a large amount of excess energy available to them only because we have not reached that point in time where our energy grid starts to tap out.

If our ruling class has our best interest at heart (and had a clue) the goal would not be electrification of our transport systems by 2030, but rather a doubling of our power generation and distribution capacity by 2030. Do this and electric vehicle ownership will naturally grow tremendously because electricity would be cheap.

One other point. And this one is truly counterintuitive to anyone who hasn't stopped to think critically: Anyone who wants a clean energy future (including cars) has to support producing as much oil as possible and lowering oil prices as far as they will go.

Why?

In case the answer isn't obvious: As mentioned before, we need to double our power generation and distribution system. We need to do that quickly (25 years). The obvious question is: How much will that cost? Well, anyone who understand construction at that scale likely knows one thing: Fuel/oil prices drive costs. Without truly inexpensive oil, fuels, lubricants, etc. we are not going to be able to double our electric infrastructure. We cannot afford to do so. And that is the foundation of apparent ideological contradiction. If you want clean energy you have to support oil and fossil fuels for the next 20 to 30 years. In fact, without becoming enthusiastic supporters of expanding the supply of oil (to lower costs) you likely can kiss your electric car future goodbye.