Nuclear is too late. Five years to get permits and five years to build? Perhaps that's optimistic. Hinkley Point C is taking fifteen from announcement to scheduled completion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_C_nuclear_power_... , and that's right next to its two nuclear siblings.
The problem of the current industry are well understood and Hinkley is a perfect example.
However I am talking about something broader then that. Even 5 years ago people would say 'nuclear is to late' solar and wind are gone solve us.
This has been going on since the 1970 when environmentalist turned against nuclear.
Solar and Wind are ALWAYS just around the corner and nuclear is 'not needed' somehow it still tiny.
Nuclear to be effective will need some regulatory and government changes but my real point is that if the whole technical intelligence plus the environmentalist are solar/wind cheerleaders the carbon producers are the one laughing themselves to the bank.
The US and EU have been decommissioning a few older nuclear power plants early because just operating let alone building them is not cost effective.
People talk about base load power like it's a good thing, but it's the opposite demand varies a lot over the day and you want to be able to ramp up and down quickly. You can do this with nuclear, but it pushes costs up even higher.
There is some regional differences and areas with a lot of dispatchable hydro don't care nearly as much. Still nuclear needs to be under 6c/kwh to be viable as base load power or be able to ramp up and down with demand while staying fairly cheap and it can't do either when you look at total lifetime costs.
In the US it it has more to do with how the utilities are regulated. For example, solar/wind get production tax credit when the produce energy that is not needed.
We could go into a long debate about how political management of these market hide many of the costs and so on
> People talk about base load power like it's a good thing, but it's the opposite demand varies a lot over the day and you want to be able to ramp up and down quickly. You can do this with nuclear, but it pushes costs up even higher.
Many modern nuclear plants designs you would build are actually able to load follow. Even in that situation some amount of base-load exists. A nuclear plant actually doesn't cost that much more if you have to run it while demand is low, the fuel cost does not matter in nuclear.
Even worse with solar and wind these things are even worse, you have variability on the demand and the supply side.
> There is some regional differences and areas with a lot of dispatchable hydro don't care nearly as much.
Yeah but that is a fantasy. Hydro is already largely build out all over the world and there is not nearly enough for most dense population centers.
> Still nuclear needs to be under 6c/kwh to be viable as base load power or be able to ramp up and down with demand while staying fairly cheap and it can't do either when you look at total lifetime costs.
6c/kwh is realistic, maybe a little more. But nobody can compete against gas. However against solar/wind and batteries it would easily compete.
Not being perfect does not mean the smart grid/solar/wind/battery approach is cheaper or better in any way. In fact is makes every problem harder, specially in terms of regional differences.
The designing for load following does not directly cost that much more, but it quickly pushes up average kWh costs through the roof while adding a lot of thermal stress.
Nuclear has become a political issue in the US, and these kinds of decisions can be political, not done for economic or safety reasons as one might have hoped.
As an example, the California Public Utilities Commission, decided to shut down Diablo Canyon even though PG&E says in regards to the Diablo Canyon power plant:
>...At 2.78 cents per kilowatt-hour, DCPP’s average production costs are lower than all other forms of electricity, but are higher than the national average of 2.19 cents per kilowatt-hour for nuclear power
(Doesn't bother PG&E, the CPUC will let them increase the rates.)
Advocates do a disservice when they ignore the realities of capacity factors. As Bill Gates said in an interview: "…They have this statement that the cost of solar photovoltaic is the same as hydrocarbon’s. And that’s one of those misleadingly meaningless statements. What they mean is that at noon in Arizona, the cost of that kilowatt-hour is the same as a hydrocarbon kilowatt-hour. But it doesn’t come at night, it doesn’t come after the sun hasn’t shone, so the fact that in that one moment you reach parity, so what? The reading public, when they see things like that, they underestimate how hard this thing is. So false solutions like divestment or “Oh, it’s easy to do” hurt our ability to fix the problems. Distinguishing a real solution from a false solution is actually very complicated." https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/11/we-need...
Gates is investing in 4th gen nuclear and energy storage companies so he is putting his money where his mouth is.
China is investing a lot of money in solar (maybe more than the US), but they don't pretend that will solve all the problems of producing power and we shouldn't either. China plans to have 1400 GW of nuclear power by 2100, so they also realize that decarbonizing energy production will require a multi-faceted approach.
Do you have a source for that? According to wikipedia it would look to be at least 50% higher than that:
>...Nuclear power contributed 3% of the total production in 2015, with 170 TWh,[5] and was the fastest-growing electricity source, with 29% growth over 2014.[6] Nuclear generation increased again in 2016 to 213 TWh, a 25% increase,[7] and in 2017 to 246 TWh, a 15% increase.[8] China ranks fourth in the world in total nuclear power capacity installed, and third by nuclear power generated.
Don't remember... I looked it up the other day as a data point in a discussion of the lack of nuclear power penetration in the market. (I was arguing against the popular idea that the limiting factor on nuclear is the cost of those liberal treehugger regulations, by pointing out that neither Russia nor China have significantly more, despite their disdain for environmentalism.) I was kind of shocked by the numbers, actually. Russia and the US are basically equal in nuclear output percentage-wise, but China lags far behind.
If my numbers were dated even a few years, China is probably doing better, due to current crash efforts to scale up nuclear power. Still, 3% isn't exactly huge market penetration.
