Even with current lead times?
If we wait the same number of years, we might have some form of viable long term storage. Or not.
Or you could spend $1 billion/year and end up with probably 15GW of utility solar in the same time frame? Even at a 20% capacity factor instead of a 95% one, you'd be making far more money from Day 1 with solar and since we're not remotely at the saturation point of renewables, every watt generated would still be useful. The right answer to whatever qualms people have about time-of-use / duck curves would be to invest more like $800M/year in generation and $200M/year in storage -- but still -- literal multiples of energy produced with almost zero ongoing costs.
What opportunity cost? What else are you going to spend the money on that gives you non-polluting 24/7 power output rain or shine?
> If you have $15 billion today -- you could tie it up for a decade and you might get a working 1GW reactor in 10 years (though probably more like 15).
The best time to build a nuclear power plant was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.
What we need is to build nuclear power at scale. Doing the same thing repeatedly for years in bound to bring both the construction time and cost down.
> Or you could spend $1 billion/year and end up with probably 15GW of utility solar in the same time frame?
What use is 15GW of solar in northern climes when you cannot use it when you need it and you cannot store it? In Finland solar has no output three months of the year and an additional two months of marginal output. Additional we need power 24/7, especially in winter.
> Even at a 20% capacity factor instead of a 95% one, you'd be making far more money from Day 1 with solar and since we're not remotely at the saturation point of renewables, every watt generated would still be useful.
I must confess I am unsure how the long term economics of renewables will work out. Around here renewables are pushing prices into the negative and increasing volatility.
As a funny aside, 15 GW is the peak power usage in Finland. Adding that much generation capacity would totally saturate the market.
> The right answer to whatever qualms people have about time-of-use / duck curves would be to invest more like $800M/year in generation and $200M/year in storage -- but still -- literal multiples of energy produced with almost zero ongoing costs.
How many GWh of storage can you get for $200M? My guess is far from enough.
We need days at a minimum, weeks for preference. 4 hours is nowhere enough.
The opportunity cost of dollars - nobody is going to spend $15 billion on nuclear when much better investments exist.
> We need days at a minimum, weeks for preference. 4 hours is nowhere enough.
Why in the world would you need that much storage? Obviously Finland + solar aren't 100% compatible given the latitude, but fairly extensive modeling shows a route to 99% renewable Australia with only 5 hours storage:
https://twitter.com/DavidOsmond8/status/1666297529418530816
Change the mix to favor wind resources and you could likely achieve the same in Finland with some modest investments in transmission infrastructure.
We would be in a better and cheaper world if we had built a nuclear-first grid 30 years ago -- but we didn't -- and it just doesn't make sense to try to do so now when much cheaper options exist.
What better investment opportunity? Again, what else are you going to spend the money on that gives you non-polluting 24/7 power output rain or shine?
> Why in the world would you need that much storage?
You ask and answer yourself in the very next sentence:
> Obviously Finland + solar aren't 100% compatible given the latitude
> fairly extensive modeling shows a route to 99% renewable Australia with only 5 hours storage:
There are always geographies that have advantageous positions for electrical generation. Iceland has geothermal, Norway hydro, etc. This does not mean you can generalize.
> Change the mix to favor wind resources and you could likely achieve the same in Finland with some modest investments in transmission infrastructure.
Nah. Just like solar wind is highly variable. Just this week wind production varied between 55 MW and 3,8 GW.
Peak deman is about 15 GW. Subtracing 4 GW of nuclear and 2 GW of hydro, what are you going to do, overbuild current wind capacity 160x?
> We would be in a better and cheaper world if we had built a nuclear-first grid 30 years ago -- but we didn't -- and it just doesn't make sense to try to do so now when much cheaper options exist.
I'm still at a loss off what those better options are.
What better thing can I buy for $15B that gives me access to 1,6GW of generation capability 24/7?