Can we afford to be afraid of nuclear power?

As a technology, I love nuclear power.

But I don’t think it’s the way to decarbonise the world in the short term. If we look beyond just electricity, to transportation, industry, fertilisers, etc, it’s clear that full decarbonisation will bring with it an enormous amount of flexible load that pairs very well with renewables.

Say you electrify industrial heat. There are already heat batteries in the market that can store enormous amount of heat energy at very high temperatures for a very long time. They can be recharged when there’s excess renewable power on the grid. In fact, it may be the only economical way to electrify industrial heat. If they have to pay the full price of electricity for all their heat it’s probably too expensive.

I’d recommend Tony Seba’s presentations or Marc Z Jacobsens papers for the full picture.

I also think advanced geothermal may end up becoming far more important to solve the crisis. A lot of expertise, workforce and capital can more easily and quickly be transferred from oil and gas sector. The politics around a big shift to geothermal would be far easier, since you won’t have a problem with a huge amount of people worried about losing a job and companies worried of going bankrupt. There’s still high uncertainty in the viability of advanced geothermal but there are good signs that it can be made economical in many parts of the world, if not most. Think what we can achieve if it received a fraction of the investments and subsidies that fossil fuels and nuclear does.

We shouldn’t stop nuclear either though. We can continue what we’re already doing and build where it makes sense.

And maybe in some decades we can replace some renewables with nuclear and free up some land.