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Comment by melling | Hacker News Reader

10 years ago people said nuclear power plants take 10 years

Battery technology is NOT on any kind of exponential curve.

We’ve been waiting decades for the promise of renewable energy. Time is running out quickly.

100 million barrels of oil a day and 40% of electric power generated from coal.

I get that no one likes to admit they were wrong, but it’s 2022 and not 1985. All that squandered time means we’re unlikely to avoid serious climate issues

UPDATE

Just to be crystal clear: Battery technology is NOT on any kind of exponential curve.

People who are telling us to wait because they think they’re improving exponentially are sending us past the point of no return

View on HN

What do you mean? 10 years ago all the nuclear proponents were arguing against renewables because they are too expensive supposedly. Now they are cheaper they make up new bogus arguments. Nuclear has had 70 years of massive subsidies (even excluding military spending) is still more expensive with lots of unsolved problems, but you say its the solution because renewables&storage are not reducing prices fast enough? Have a look at the price curves for solar, wind and batteries I can tell you only 3 of them are exponential price reduction curves and nuclear is not one of them.

So we waited for the renewables and lost another decade. Solar and wind are up to perhaps 10% global usage?

Maybe we can get it to 25% by 2030?

Hopefully we can stop building coal plants. Incredible emissions. 40% of global electricity…

And Germany is restarting

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/19/world/europe/germany-russ...

If your target is 2030 that's not enough time to permit and construct a single conventional nuclear power plant in North America. The permitting process alone typically runs 5 years or more before ground is even broken on construction.

Yeah, yeah, I heard all this 10 years ago. I imagine you’ll be saying the same thing in 2030 when coal usage will be about 35% of global electricity.

I'm not sure I follow you here. It takes 12+ years to permit and construct a nuclear power plant in North America. This isn't a matter of opinion but of observed reality. They take on average 7 years to build with a 5+ year long permitting process before ground is broken. So unless you're proposing the government imminent domain a bunch of reactors into existence I don't understand what we're even talking about?

That the best time to start building a nuclear plant was 12 years ago. The second best is _now_.

No, we can build double the capacity if we build wind and solar now and the wind and solar will reduce or CO2 emissions while the nuclear plant is still in the planning/building phase, why should we build nuclear?

Double of zero is still zero.

Do you have an actual argument? Offshore wind has a capacity factor of 60% that is close to nuclear power plants. If you locally distribute your generation, the chances of power falling to zero goes to zero.

And completely shuts down about once a month.

I'm sure we can deal with a 30% electricity deficit that happens randomly with a few days notice. We can shut down unimportant things like residential power. No one really needs lightbulbs every day of the month after all.

Do you know what a capacity factor is? Do you understand how overprovisioning works and why we would also need it with nuclear power (at a much higher price)? Do you have any numbers to back up your once a month claim and 30% deficit or are you just making stuff up?

Yes.

Maybe permitting shouldn't take 5 years?

Maybe not. Between NIMBY groups and the political polarization around climate change I think we can all pretty vividly imagine what Twitter would look like 60 seconds after draft legislation to this effect was proposed.

Why did you wait? A poor country like Brazil is already 80% renewable for electricity. You cannot buy pure gasoline at the pump. It's mixed with a minimum of renewable ethanol, and that minimum has been going up every year for over a decade. Almost all cars run on pure ethanol and some consumers choose to never use petrol based fuel for their car. Diesel is not pure either. It's mixed with biodiesel by law and that percentage goes up every year.

If a poor country can achieve this, there is nothing stopping much richer countries.

You didn't lose a decade due to renewable capabilities. You lost a decade due electing the wrong politicians, influenced by big oil.

Carter installed solar panels on the White House. Reagan removed them two years later. It's nonsense like that that resulted in your lost decades. While other countries were already racing ahead.

> renewable ethanol

Is it really renewable? (I don't know, but I assume biofuels are only viable with massive fertilizer subsidies. Also, I hope "renewable" doesn't mean "let's cut down the Amazon rainforest and wait 200 years for it to grow back".)

You get a new crop 2x a year as opposed to waiting 180 million years for new fossil fuels, so yeah, it's really renewable. As far as net carbon, I'd like to see the math but since plants take carbon out of the air it's far closer to carbon neutral than burning fossil fuels.

Cutting down the Amazon to power cars would indeed be foolish but the same folks protecting the Amazon are the same folks pushing renewables. Likewise, the current president turned a blind eye to deforestation while pushing for more fossil fuels. For the time being if you want to protect the Amazon it's the renewables folks you need to get behind.

Does battery technology need to be on an exponential curve? We already have electric car batteries that can power your home for a good long time. Note that a battery for a home is cheaper as there is no weight restriction, unlike with a car. You can use old refurbished batteries that are no longer suitable for cars.

On the grid scale, a pumped hydro facility can provide energy storage for thousands. Energy storage is technologically a solved problem, it’s just not equally distributed yet.

I’d like to see a cost estimate in both dollars and land area for pumped hydro.

> 10 years ago people said nuclear power plants take 10 years

More like they said five, then ten after five years ahf passed.

>Battery technology isn’t on any kind of exponential curve.

Thats simply false, and a weird thing to fabricate. The very idea discredits the rest of a person's assessment of tech.

https://news.mit.edu/2021/lithium-ion-battery-costs-0323

> I get that no one likes to admit they were wrong,

This is some extremely strong projection. J'accuse

Where do you see an exponential curve?

The article doesn’t discuss any exponential decrease for a reason. And most of the “dramatic drop” looks like it happened in the first 10 years

Time is running out.

Ok, here's one with a log scale so you can clearly see the exponential trend line

https://spectrum.ieee.org/chart-behind-the-three-decade-coll...

“Between 1991 and 2018, the average price of the batteries that power mobile phones, fuel electric cars, and underpin green energy storage fell more than thirtyfold”

THIRTY FOLD ISNT EXPONENTIAL.

Please reevaluate the plan. It likely contains a lot of optimism and a few required miracles

> THIRTY FOLD ISNT EXPONENTIAL.

A * exp(b * t) = A / 30 => b = - log( 30 ) / t

As far as I can see a thirty fold decrease does fit into any exponential curve if you have the right rate constants or times, so I don't really get what you mean with that.

The data is right there, it's on an exponential cost decrease. Very weird to be pointed directly at the data and deny that it says exactly what it says.

You say that "nobody likes to be proven wrong" but I in fact do like to be proven wrong. The "nobody" appears to only apply to yourself.

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