Submitted by sunflowerastronaut t3_10hy83k in UpliftingNews
[deleted] t1_j5d56j4 wrote
Reply to comment by sunflowerastronaut in 1st small modular nuclear reactor certified for use in US by sunflowerastronaut
It's not, though. Investing money in nuclear instead of solar/wind is literally a gift to the fossil fuel industry. Solar/wind are cheaper per MWh output (4x cheaper unsubsidized than NuScales pre-construction claimed price estimate) and faster to construct, so for the same amount invested you phase out far more fossil fuels.
Plus you can't even use nuclear plants as economically viable dispatchable power: cost per MWh directly scales upwards as capacity factor drops, because basically all the costs are fixed not variable depending on how often you run it. So if at 90% capacity factor it's $120/MWh (as the Utah NuScale is, pre-sunsidy), at 60% capacity factor it's $180/MWh. Compare to wind and solar at around $30-40/MWh and it's just a bad look.
There's a reason the initial pumped-hydro energy storage plants were built in the US to allow dispatchability of nuclear power... And now that same kind of storage idea can more cheaply be applied to solar/wind. ie, nuclear doesn't actually solve the storage issue in the way that proponents like to claim, so it doesn't even have that going for it.
And nuclear plants have never shown a positive learning curve, where repeated builds decreased costs over time.
It's not even small amounts we are talking about investing, that could be seen as OK for initial demonstrator plants. The Utah project cost estimate is now over $9 billion.
The nuclear industry needs to be allowed to die due to its lack of economic competitiveness.
It's safe, and low-carbon, but a bad use of money/time/workforce/effort.
VerdantCabbage t1_j5dyqo6 wrote
That's completely wrong. It's cheaper because solar and wind produce vastly less electricity than nuclear. And nuclear is safe. Don't get it twisted.
[deleted] t1_j5eiyk1 wrote
That is 100% not true.
According to their own cost estimates, the NuScale plant (Utah site, their first.major one) is going to come in at $89/MWh produced (or $119/MWh pre subsidy). By contrast, according to DoE number wind comes in at $32/MWh US onshore right now, and solar comes in at $20-40/MWh.
This is all per unit of electricity output, ie already adjusted for capacity factor / average output being higher on nuclear.
If you want to discuss it per nameplate capacity, solar is $1/W at 20% capacity factor, wind at $1.5/W for 35% capacity factor, whereas NuScale nuclear is $20/W at 95% capacity factor.
Could also be worth noting that in 2021 globally solar+wind produced more electricity than nuclear, and in the US, wind + solar together produced about 60% as much as nuclear. So this idea even that nuclear currently produces vastly more electricity, or that wind/solar aren't proven at scale, is wrong.
Please don't spout nuclear talking points that are easily falsifiable with a 5 minute google search.
Nuclear is safe, technologically viable, low carbon, but economically completely uncompetitive in most situations compared to solar/wind. And hence the industry should be left to fade away.as we spend our money on the options that phase out fossil fuels quicker and cheaper.
https://www.energy.gov/eere/wind/articles/land-based-wind-market-report-2022-edition
https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy22osti/81325.pdf
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-prod-source-stacked
VerdantCabbage t1_j5fp7jg wrote
And then someone with even less time can come back in and show you that you're wrong. https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/5-fast-facts-about-nuclear-energy
VerdantCabbage t1_j5fploc wrote
Or at the very least. I WAS right. But then technology improved and costs decreased. If that was the case, you could have saved a lot of time and just said that.
[deleted] t1_j5fqmz9 wrote
Sure if you want to say that nuclear was re sensible choice 10 or 20 years ago, I'm fine with that. Even as much as 8 year ago, I was lro nuclear.
But solar costs, wind costs, and storage options have decreased in price so much in the apsr two decades, with more decrease in the horizon (while nuclear hasn't), that it no longer makes sense.
Otherwise I'm not sure what that link is supposed to be contradicting in my post.
VerdantCabbage t1_j5grfvc wrote
It's debunking that wind and solar are more energy efficient than nuclear. It's like in Simcity when you compare coal vs wind and solar. Coal is vastly superior.
[deleted] t1_j5gtzox wrote
"Energy efficient" is an odd term here, though. Energy per area? Sure, fully agree. I never claimed that solar/wind use less land than nuclear (or coal), and almost nobody does. Number might be close if you include coal open pit mine area, but that's a garbage discussion to get into give you then need to discuss full lifecycle mining land use for everything.
I do not think the land use is at all an issue, though. Or an overly important factor, parti ularly in the US context, for choosing your generation source.
For instance, there are about 40 million acres of land in the US right now devoted to corn-ethanol production for energy. Convert that to solar, and you have 8 TWof solar capacity, enough at 18% capacity factor to cover triple the current US electricity demand. Which is sufficient to cover all current demand, all new demand created by electrifying road vehicles, and likely also all demand caused by electrifying heating. (corn ethanol currently makes up about 5% of US motor fuel, by comparison). Probably with energy to spare.
That's literally not even changing the amount of land devoted to "energy production" in the country. Just changing it from corn-ethanol to solar.
Or... Switch it all to agrivoltaics for food production, still be able to power the entire country with it (maybe not including heating), while producing enough grain on that land to also feed a couple hundred million people.
-FullBlue- t1_j5i7dq7 wrote
Your IEEFA source sucks ass, just so you know. It's probably worse than fox news in terms of technical and industry credibility.
[deleted] t1_j5j1q10 wrote
You rather world nuclear news then? Or how about Reuters. Or nuclear engineering international.
That ieefa source is literally just reporting what NuScale is now announcing as the revised price of the project.
You calling out the source rather than actually addressing the content is kind of telling. Reddit, outside of a few energy subs, has an extreme pro-nuclear bias, even when that stance conflicts with reality.
https://world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Further-cost-refinements-announced-for-first-US-SM
https://www.neimagazine.com/news/newsnew-budget-plan-for-nuscale-project-10524935
Properjob70 t1_j5f23fk wrote
🇬🇧 last 12 months. We certainly have more wind & solar to harness. A record 21GW just last month followed by a period where it wasn't windy & we only got 0.7GW out of it.
41% gas underpins this. And we've all (Europe) been walloped by the price fluctuations caused by the geopolitical antics of producers of said gas jacking up the price this side of the pond. Gas is not an energy security friendly fuel. And it still heats a large percentage of homes here.
We're building HVDC interconnects for all we're worth. Hydro & geothermal isn't really a thing here and hydro is mostly built out. Our wood pellet burners (6.5% total 12mths) are disallowed past 2028 so we don't chip up North American virgin forests to supply them.
Nuclear plants provided >16% electricity but each year fewer plants will be around so that has dropped from 9GW to 5GW in a few short years. It ain't cheap but it is secure so policy is aiming at around 10GW by 2035 to assist net zero. SMRs might help buy us 50 years or so while we work out the harder problems intermittent sources bring
[deleted] t1_j5f31ax wrote
Nuclear doesn't mesh well with intermittent sources at all, though.
The only thing it does is provide a base level below which generation will not drop, which is not actually that useful for the way grids operate. What you need for intermittent renewbales is backup sources that can be easily, economically, and quickly ramped up and down to balance demand and supply.
Currently that does mean gas generators, unfortunately. Medium to long term, various storage plants such as pumped hydro, batteries, maybe gravity storage, compressed air storage, maybe hydrogen, etc.
UK has 3.2 GW of nuclear that will be finished (Hinkley C). And 3.2 GW that might be built (Sizewell).
Alongside something like 90 GW of wind power in the pipeline that will produce 6-7x as much annual electricity as those two nuclear projects.
Properjob70 t1_j5f7izj wrote
We're building more solar & gas at pace here - a good thing but over here it'll barely keep up with the ageing out nuclear stations & the woodchip burners going offline by 2028. All those storage things are nearly as far out in adoption as SMRs and we're really going to need them as well as the planned 10GW nuclear.
Mostly, the storage will be able to last hours, maybe days, the HVDC between nations smooths things out. But when that Black Swan weather event happens & blankets most of Europe in a high pressure bubble that kills off the wind for 2 weeks... Not many answers with what we'll have around 2030.
E.g. Lithium batteries are great as instantaneous peakers & grid frequency stability for a few hours - but lower tech solutions like flow batteries are more suited to stationary applications, especially as lithium production hits a pinch point where it's really wanted for Gigafactories for electric vehicles above all else - and transport will pay more.
[deleted] t1_j5f84lu wrote
Nuclear isn't an answer for long term outages of renewables, though, unless you are proposing we just build a 100% pure nuclear grid, overbuilt by a factor of 60% or something to be able to ramp up and down to load follow.
Because in any normal model of nuclear buildout you don't have significant "spare capacity" to bring online to backstop renewable shortages; the plants are designed to run at 90-95% capacity factor. Minimal room to ramp up further.
All the happens if you have a 50% renewable 50% nuclear grid is that if half the renewable generation drops out, you drop to 75% output and the grid collapses into rolling (or long term) blackouts anyways.
Properjob70 t1_j5fa75g wrote
Govt policy here is aiming at around 20-25% nuclear by around the mid 2030s. Three off 3.2GW EPR sites (one under construction, one agreed, one contended) plus one existing AGR.
They are supporting a Rolls Royce version of the SMR in this article but there isn't a policy that includes their use in generation yet given they aren't being built and aren't approved. But I can't see a scenario where SMRs won't come in useful for net zero if we can crack it.
[deleted] t1_j5fcsml wrote
What's the third EPR? I'm only aware of Hinkley and Sizewell.
And for sizewell. While I knownits been approved, I'm still maintaining some skepticism on it actually being built, until construction is significantly underway.
SMRs will be useful for net zero if they come in as economically viable. But right now, that prospect does not seem likely.
Properjob70 t1_j5fezjk wrote
TBH I share your skepticism on Sizewell but it would be a major controversy if it didn't, especially now China has been paid off
EPRs at either Wylfa/Oldbury (April 2022 announcement) plus some as yet unrealised plans from 2021 to build a hybrid wind farm / Nuscale SMRs that is meant to be for generating hydrogen.
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