Because the public has been anti nuclear energy for the past 4 decades.
> And one big difference is the renewables are actually built, while the fission projects never make progress.
Nuclear energy regulations are an absolute nightmare and make building anything virtually impossible.
You're not necessarily wrong with your point, but man the world would've been so much cleaner if we didn't abandon nuclear energy 40 years ago. Now that we've lost all expertise and have neglected research, yes it's very hard for nuclear energy to make a huge resurgence.
The odd catastrophe didnt help though.
Why there is a resurgence of interest now when dirt cheap solar and wind have effectively rendered it a costly relic of the past is somewhat puzzling.
I guess PR campaigns like the OP's link are one reason.
> Why there is a resurgence of interest now when dirt cheap solar and wind have effectively rendered it a costly relic of the past is somewhat puzzling.
If cheap solar/wind was enough right now Europe wouldn't be going through an energy crisis.
It's an oil/gas crisis, not an electricity crisis - that one went away when the days started getting longer.
If nuclear power depends on lowering the safety regulations to be economically viable, it is not economically viable, at least for now.
Take for example the infamous Flamanville third reactor: it could be opened by 2014, but "nightmare" regulations detected flawed components. A year later, regulations detected faults in cooling valves. Three years later, the secondary cooling systen didn't meet regulations. A year later, a failure in steam pipes delayed more the opening, literally more than 100 defective welds. All of the delays combined more than tripled the costs, but to me they sound valid requirements.
Per kwh fossil fuel disasters have killed more people and have caused more damage to the environment. Compare the public reactions to the Three Mile Island Accident vs the BP oil spill.
Subsidizing solar and wind 40 years ago, in the amount nukes got, would have brought us to the present efflorescence of miraculously cheap renewable energy 30 years ago, and we would not today be facing imminent climate disaster and ocean ecosystem collapse.
Instead of saying to welders "Learn nuclear grade welding, develop a valued expertise and you are going to have a safe, well paying job for the next 30 years". We told them "this is the last reactor we're gonna do, do the bare minimum and find something else, your job is gone anyway".
Instead of saying to your graduates "Study nuclear and you are going to work in building/managing reactors and provide carbonless energy to your country" we told them "If you study nuclear, all you are going to do is dismantle old reactors we don't want to see anymore".
And surprise: 25 years later we have a very hard time properly building and maintaining reactors. And that is the consequence of the opening authorisation regulations.
Industries rise and fall. Coal is largely being phased out (in Europe), so coal miners are expected to lose their jobs and certainly their sons are not going to be miners. Of course they sang the same tune "we need guaranteed and well paid jobs for the next 30 years, and then for our youth", but sadly no industry is free from falling.
If nuclear power cannot teach their people to weld properly, they cannot exist. If their plan is to wait for the state to send them fully formed, the plan is flawed. It's like tomorrow Google or Facebook cries because MIT isn't teaching how to harvest data properly.
(plausible, adj.: superficially fair, reasonable, or valuable but often specious.)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31759753
? One of the projects has a plan to get p-11B closer to working. It didn't seem immediately stupid. It would be great to have a system that doesn't depend on unobtainium.
Maybe in 50 years we will be able to take down the wind turbines, or explore the Kuiper Belt at length.
Nuclear provides the so called base load (the minimum level of electricity demand required). To replace base load with renewables + energy storage requires so much CAPEX and battery manufacturing that you don't have money to fill gaps between caseload needs and renewable energy production.
> has built
But enough?
Global battery manufacturers have invested so much that they can take total battery capacity to more than 5,500 GWh by by 2030. US would need something like 3000 Gwh of energy storage to replace the base load. (within days, then few weeks). It would would be insane misuse of resources.
Nuclear is the most cost effective way to achieve base load.
It cannot be cancelled soon enough.
Your article links to capacity not effective production when customer needs it. The issue with electricity production resides in being able to reliably produce electricity when customer needs it, not when planet aligns for [insert preferred electricity production method].
It's great to say "I can produce 100Gw of green electricity", but if I ask you "Give me 30GW now" and you tell me "Best I can do now is 5GW, there are clouds in the sky", I'll kindly ask you to shut up about your "100GW capacity".
As the recent price hikes in Europe have shown, the prices paid by customers is dictated by the cost of the most expensive megawatts. Solar and wind have not suddenly become pricier, but gas has. And as a consequence, prices paid by customers have increased proportionally.
Batteries might seem like a good answer, but basic physics shows us that it is not remotely doable on a large scale, if we want to guarantee reliable supply. The energy density simply isn't there.
California is building battery storage at a rate of ~2500MW/year. There are ZERO physics problems standing in the way of this. And there is considerable innovation in fixed batteries like iron-air flow batteries, ones that exist and aren't just VC scams like most of the nuclear stuff.
https://www.energy-storage.news/california-utility-pge-propo...
The US produced 4 10^9 MWh in 2017 [1]
That's roughly 11 10^6 MWh / day or 11 10^12 Wh /day
So to power 50% of the US for half a day, we need : 11 10^12 Wh /day * 0.5 day * 0.5 = 2.75 10^12 Wh = 275 10^10 Wh
The energy storage of a Lithium Ion battery is roughly 270 Wh / kg [2], let's round this up to 275, I am feeling nice here.
This means we need : 275 10^10 Wh / 275 Wh / kg = 1 * 10^10 kg of Lithium Ion batteries. That's 10 million tons of batteries
The total reserve of lithium for the whole world are roughly 20 million tons [3]
The US cannot claim half the total worldwide lithium reserve to give batteries for half a day for half their population. It does not work like this.[1] https://www.eesi.org/papers/view/energy-storage-2019 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery [3] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1253739/lithium-reserves...
Also, I didn't realize that Li-ion batteries were the only conceivable energy storage technology.
1) You don't know how little lithium is contained in a li-ion battery cell; and
2) You don't know that li-ion is less than half the global battery market.
275 10^10 Wh are needed as per my comment above and there is 160g of Lithium in a battery per kWh of capacity [1]
275 10^10 Wh = 275 10^7 kWh => 275 10^7 kW * 160 g / kWh = 45375 10^7 g = 453 750 tons
This is far less than half the resources of the planet, but it's still a non negligible 1/40. To power half the American, for half a day, assuming that we willing to mine all the Lithium on earth, and assuming we don't need Lithium anywhere else the supply chain (hello solar panels !), and disregarding that the rest of the batteries are also using some valuable metals / rare earth (We will still need those 20 millions tons of batteries, that part is correct, they just won't be made of Lithium alone !)As you can see, Lithium-Ion batteries are not remotely sustainable if they aim to help replace the baseline production that is currently provided by fossil/nuclear with intermittent renewable. They can only be considered at the top of the curve to help renewable manage the peak power, where their ability shine and where the total needs are far, far lower.
Other battery type do exist, I am willing to admit that, but grand parent projects all involve Lithium Ion batteries....because the other types are even less economically practical (more loss, less energy density, ...).
Rechargeable batteries (Lithium Ion or otherwise) are perfectly fin to store intermittent energy. They just aren't remotely practical to run an entire country off their output, which is why we leverage "natural batteries" aka: fuel (plutonium, oil, coal or otherwise).
[1] https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-much-lithium-li-ion-vehic...
So, your concern trolling about battery materials is misplaced.
There is no need for a storage "center". Energy will be stored wherever convenient. Utilities will build out zero-opex storage so they can drop NG opex.
Many different storage technologies will be used. The cheapest ones will eventually be identified and used more. But anhydrous ammonia and hydrogen are certain despite being far from cheapest, because of other merits.
Right now the overwhelming majority of utility storage is pumped hydro, using existing hydro power reservoirs. I expect various gravity methods, including pumped hydro, to continue to dominate. New pumped hydro will not consume watersheds.
(But Energy Vault, NRGV, is strictly a scam.)