New research shows renewables are more profitable than nuclear power

Chasing profit is how we got here. This shouldn't be the basis of the decision. If it's the only thing we can use to drag conservatives along though, I guess it'll have to do.
- It's not about chasing profit though, it's about getting to net zero as quickly as possible using finite resources. Any money that goes to nuclear could be going to renewables, which would get us there more quickly.
  
  This article is about profitability, not cost to net zero. They are very different things. It also ignores the cost of scale, go all in on say solar today and that doesn't make more panels available, the increased demand would raise prices and suddenly its not so profitable.
  Nothing is as simple and easy as people want it to be.
  
  Any money that goes to nuclear could be going to renewables, which would get us there more quickly.
  That's a false dilemma. Nuclear and renewables provide different things, so they shouldn't be compared directly in an "either or" comparison, and certainly not on cost. Nuclear power provides a stable baseline, so you don't have to rely on coal/gas/diesel powered generators. Renewables cheaply but opportunistically provide power from natural sources that may not always be available but that can augment the baseline. The share of renewable energy in the mix is something engineers should figure out, not "the market".
  Also, monetary cost shouldn't be the only concern. Some renewables have a societal cost too, for example in the amount of land that they occupy per kWh generated, or visual polution. I wouldn't want to live within the shadow flicker of a windmill for example.
- Seriously. By this logic fossil fuels are cheaper, thus better!
  This is how we get garbage like carbon credits, trying to capture the cost to the environment in dollar amounts is just more symptoms the fallacy of using economics in lieu of physics.

Yeah no shit. We already knew nuclear was not profitable, but it’s clean & makes tons of power, so it’s a good deal for everyone that isn’t a business & wants cheap & clean energy.
- I'd love for you to see the Uranium and Thorium mines in Canada and tell me how clean that looks to you.
  
  Uranium and thorium mines are just as clean as the rare earth metal mines needed for PV cells. This is kind of a moot point. We need carbon free energy now and solar, wind, hydro, and nuclear are all part of the mix of solutions needed. There are many considerations currently being made to determine which technologies should be used in what locations.
  
  Make sure to compare with a West Virginia mountaintop-removal coal mine.
- The point of this research is that renewable are cheaper. So why would we invest our money in the more extensive option?
  
  Government isn’t business. It should not be chasing a profit margin. The decisions should be around sustainability, ecological friendliness, and robustness against failure
  
  Don't confuse profit with capital
- Define "clean"
  
  Nuclear should be the only non renewable power we use at scale. Oil makes sense for emergency situations (it's portable and is stable forever) and where energy density is most important (like aircraft, for now). Coal can fuck right off.
  
  In my opinion clean is anything that doesn't emit out of smokestacks.
  Also in this case it doesn't emit out of smoke stacks while the sun's down and the wind's not blowing.
  Dams are terrible for the environment so hydro is out. Nuclear is cleaner than hydro.
  
  cleaner* than fossil
  
  people say "clean" when they mean "doesn't produce greenhouse gasses". Nuclear power is absolutely not "clean". Waste sites will need to be monitored for like a thousand years to prevent everything from natural disaster leakage to terrorist aquisition of nuclear materials. The reality is a new powerplant is just the 5% down payment on a nuclear waste mortgage.

The question has always been what does one do when the renewables aren't providing enough power (ex: nights, etc). The current solution is natural gas. It would be a big improvement if we would use a carbon-free source like nuclear instead.
- Pumped-storage hydroelectricity is an old and proven method for load balancing intermittent power sources. Would like to see more of that as geography permits.
  
  The "as geography permits" part is a big obstacle, unfortunately.
  
  That will not remotely cover baseline loads and is not without significant efficiency loss due to the pumping phase.
- According to the article, the researchers concluded that nuclear reactors are not a good fit for that role.
- The growing idea is to just have a shit load of renewables, everywhere. The wind is always blowing somewhere, and the sun shines through the clouds. If you have a ridiculous excess total capacity then even when you're running at limited capacity you could still cover the demand. Basically, most of our renewable infrastructure would actually be curtailed or offline a lot of the time.
  
  And that opens up opportunities for energy intensive industries like aluminium or hydrogen production to run whilst there's an excess of energy
- Here's an example of what can be done with 5 hours of storage. 5 hours is a 25% participation rate of V2G where the participants offer a third of their battery capacity.
  https://reneweconomy.com.au/a-near-100pct-renewable-grid-for-australia-is-feasible-and-affordable-with-just-a-few-hours-of-storage/
  If going with the (false) assumption that nuclear can hit 100% grid penetration, it would take decades to offset the carbon released by causing a single year of delay.
  The lowest carbon "let's pretend storage is impossible and go with 100% nuclear" would still start with exclusively funding VRE.
  
  Lol at trying to pass that link off as a valid, unbiased source.
- consumers may also help reduce system costs by adapting their electricity consumption to the availability of renewable energy
  From the linked paper. They mention some other options for storage like batteries (plenty of environmental issues there though) but based on the quoted text I have a hard time taking this seriously if they actually expect people to change their behavior.
  
  Plug in car. Press the "I would like to only pay $100/yr to fuel this please" button.
  Later when you leave for work press the "I would like the house to be cool when I get home and also want to pay half as much for AC" button.
  Buy the 1.5m wide water heater that stores 10kWh of hot water and lasts a week between heatings rather than the 70cm one that lasts a day.
  Such an unconscionable burden.
  
  I think innovation at the consumption end is going to help a lot. On Technology Connections I saw an electric induction stove that could be powered from a regular socket. It had a battery that would trickle charge throughout the day and then use the batteries to power the induction cooktops, as well as a couple of plugs. If widely deployed and in other appliances, with a little smarts that could provide power leveling at the home level.
  Another solution would be adding some intelligence to water heaters. Have a temperature control valve on the output where you set the temperature, and program the water heater get to 160-180°F when electricity is cheap. This would be a thermal battery that would easily level out demand for electricity for heating water.
  Or you could do thermal storage by heating a house very warm/cold prior to a large cold snap/heat wave, and letting it coast down/up to a temperature instead of heating/cooling a lot during the cold/hot weather. He's got a video on this technique here
  
  "Not enough power from renewables? Just turn off your fridge for a few days and you'll be fine!"
  Honestly that sentiment has strong "blame the consumer" vibes that seems to pervade climate arguments.
  Sure, people can reduce consumption, but at best its a stopgap, not a solution.
- We have to start looking at personal renewables more? Each home could have their own small windmill or solar panel. Let's point in that direction.
  
  Those potentially have the same issue. The solution to filling the gaps in production from renewable sources is not necessarily more panels or more windmills, it's having energy storage somewhere to keep surplus energy when it's being produced (e.g. during the day, or when the wind is blowing) available to be used when it's not.
  So in your example, each home could also have its own battery bank. Or, a larger battery bank could be placed somewhere on the electricity grid.
  
  What makes you think personal renewable are going to be more efficient than large scale renewables? The sun doesn't magically shine in the middle of the night on personal homes, the wind doesn't magically blow only in residential areas...
- Nuclear is a terrible fit for peaker plants, that's not how it works. If it isn't selling energy at as close to 100% of the time as is feasible it's losing money.
- While I agree completely, it is troublesome that you, BombOmOm, are saying this... :/ username checks no fly list out.
  
  Sometimes, a kinetic response is the only reasonable reaction. ;p Asking nicely doesn't stop a Russian war of conquest.
- Nuclear is not, and cannot be, a gap coverage solution. Due to xenon/iodine poisoning and decay heat management you need to keep a reactor critical as long as possible to be economical. That's independent of the problem of keeping the water hot that fossil fuel generators share. You can't just turn a reactor on and off.
  
  It can provide a baseload though where solar can provide extra power during the heat for places where the summer and days are the power intensive part, rather than winter and nights. You still need a short-term stop gap as the sun sets but it's still hot out, but even if that was just powered by NG it would be a huge step forward. Adding greener energy storage options to store extra power nuclear or wind could generate overnight would be better.
  Btw, could a small percent of nuclear reactors be turned on/off seasonally, potentially transporting fuel between the north in the winter and the south in the summer?
  
  Keep the reactors running to avoid that issue. As long as they are providing enough power when the renewables aren't, we successfully cut out natural gas from the power grid.
  
  Columbia station load follows within a certain range set by nearby hydro. It can be done. The economics aren't even that bad, as fuel is one of the cheaper inputs to the reactor.
- The best solution is having EVs plugged into the grid at night. VTG is the easy solution to peaker needs.
  
  Then you are getting into the issue of the power company eating up your charge cycles on your EV battery. Who pays for the fact that my battery now has half the design lifetime due to constant cycling because it's feeding the grid?
- The renewables-only crowd is just ignorant about this simple fact.
  The future of energy will be dominated by solar and nuclear power. With hydro, geothermal and wind playing supporting roles, depending on geography.
  The only question is, how much fossil fuels do we burn until then?
  Those who oppose nuclear are really just in favour of burning fossil fuels in the interim. But the inevitable switch to nuclear will come as fossil fuels are depleted.
  Nature has given us the atom as the most dense and durable way to store energy. That will never change.
  
  Typical energy density of ore in a new uranium mine burned in an LWR is about the same of coal.
  All of the economic/not too damaging stuff together would power the world for about 3 years.
- at night perhaps they could sleep

Profitability is so much not the point here and also, there's no reason for different energy production sources (especially ones that are base power vs incidental power) to be in conflict. Do both of them.
- We don't have to like it but unfortunately profitability is by far the number one driver for...well everything. So little is accomplished by way of altruism. People are greedy. The best way to successfully incentivize climate action is for environmentally friendly actions to become the most profitable and be advertised as such.
  So I agree with you that both options should be used. But I disagree that profitability is not the point. Money is always the point and always has been.
  
  Price of energy is key to the success of every economy.
- Yeah exactly. None of it is profitable if you can't meet instant demand changes at any time of day. Build the nukes to meet full demand needs and supplement them with "more profitable" options for redundancy.
  
  None of this is profitable if you can meet demand power at will either.
  It's just a scarcity game that those in power use to keep things ticking along.
  What is infrastructure to most, is a tuned revenue machine to a very few.
  The purpose of a system can be determined by its output, and it's working quite well in that aspect.
- There is, actually, a conflict. Renewables are more dynamic in production. You can turn them on and off quickly, you can scale them quickly too. You can't do that with nuclear plants. Baseload is not a goal, it's a limit. That's why the nuclear energy sector is friends with the coal sector.
  Example of Nuclear-Coal friendship from Poland: https://twitter.com/stepien_przemek/status/1642908210913853442
  Example of Nuclear-Coal friendship from the USA: https://www.energyandpolicy.org/generation-now-inc/
  A deeper understanding here: "The duck in the room - the end of baseload" https://jeromeaparis.substack.com/p/the-duck-in-the-room-the-end-of-baseload
  
  Baseload is not a goal, it’s a limit.
  I would love to know what oil company you heard that from, since it's absolutely not true. You can both turn them off quickly (faster, in fact, than LNG or Coal), start them up quickly (sub minutes) and change production quickly. These have all been features since 1960's era reactors, and we're around 10 generations past them.

K, but this isn't about profits. This is about not destroying the environment, which nuclear can help with (you know if nobody bombs the plant)
- But it's also about cost. Nuclear is far more expensive upfront, more expensive to maintain, and more expensive to decommission. Cheap, agile renewables will be an easier option for the vast majority of the planet
  
  We would be really stupid to worry about money when trying to save the planet. But, what did I know, I'm just some guy on the internet
- Everything is about profits. Otherwise we wouldn't even be in this mess.
- Ah, yes, love my last vacations in chernobyl

That's not difficult. Nuclear is extremely expensive.
With renewables you just sell it to the grid for whatever gas generated electricity is going for. Which is currently still a fucking lot. Thanks Russia.
- Thanks Russia.
  Oh, it gets worse. Russia is big on nuclear, they have a whole agency that deals in nuclear in Europe, it's called ROSATOM.
  This is related to other post with the fossil-fuel sponsored ecomodernist girl whining about Greenpeace and nuclear:
  Russia lobbied to have the EU include nuclear energy and fossil methane to be included in the "sustainable" taxonomy: https://www.greenpeace.de/publikationen/20220517-greenpeace-report-russland-taxonomie.pdf (PDF)
  Russia has a good stranglehold on nuclear energy: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-02-14/russia-s-grip-on-nuclear-power-trade-is-only-getting-stronger and many European powers ...compliant to that.
  Russia's nuclear trade with Europe flowing amid Ukraine war https://web.archive.org/web/20221011224411/https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/russias-nuclear-trade-europe-flowing-amid-ukraine-war-90691865
  European Union nations are continuing to import and export nuclear fuel that is not under EU sanctions on Russia
  Russia’s Grip on Nuclear-Power Trade Is Only Getting Stronger https://www.politico.eu/article/russia-nuclear-power-uranium-plants-europe-imports-germany-sanctions-ukraine-war/
  New data show exports in the strategic industry jumped more than 20% last year, as long-term projects boost Russian influence.
  Here's an article in German: https://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/unternehmen/uran-abhaengigkeit-russland-koennte-den-usa-noch-erhebliche-schmerzen-zufuegen-a-cad81a53-4704-4842-a641-1b6191e4add5
  It's even more complicated, but building nuclear now in Europe would mean more dependency on Russian nuclear fuel and nuclear tech.
  This includes France, the nuclear postergirl:
  French Nuclear Power Crisis Frustrates Europe’s Push to Quit Russian Energy https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/18/business/france-nuclear-power-russia.html
  France typically exports electricity, but now it risks blackouts and a need for imported power because of problems at the state nuclear operator.
  France accused of funding Putin's war effort by buying his nuclear fuel https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/12/02/france-accused-aiding-putins-war-importing-russian-nuclear-fuel/
  It's not just complicated, with many limits, but the useless yammer of nuclear-fanboys is just using up air in discourse.
  Building more nuclear will not help with with climate warming mitigation. And it has its own problems with climate, as France knows...
  (most recent time this happened, again) France to reduce nuclear power generation due to heat wave https://www.laprensalatina.com/france-to-reduce-nuclear-power-generation-due-to-heat-wave/ from a few weeks ago.
  
  Building More nuclear will help with climate warming. None of your links deal with that.

Nah, the power company likes the profits from nuclear way better.
The secret is that they can bill the ratepayers for all the cost overruns, while keeping the extra profits on the cost-plus construction contract for the shareholders.
(Source: I'm a Georgia Power ratepayer being absolutely reamed for Plant Vogtle 3 and 4, and the Georgia Public Service Commission isn't doing a single goddamned thing to hold Georgia Power to account or to help people like me.)
- Yeah, but think of the poor corporations.

Stop all the hate for nuclear. It's just a way for the fossil fuel industry to cause infighting among those of us who care about the climate. If we can make energy free or close to it, we should. The closer everything comes to being free the better.
- People pushing nuclear is a way for fossil fuels industry to keep us reliant on them for the next 20 years while we build power plants.
  
  More than that as we will need to pay them to maintain storage which they won't be keen to do without tons of government and tax payer assistance

Nuclear is the future. Stop trying to deny it. We should all be running it by now this shit was made like 60 years ago. But no, we'll just eat smog I guess. Damn my feeds are kind of depressing today.
- Fission is today. Fusion is the future.
  
  It blows my mind we are avoiding this? You want jobs? Clean stable energy? Its fucken here dude. Just build some plants. They only need to be properly maintained to avoid disaster. If we truly are an intelligent species that should be easy as hell.
- No its not, anyone thats actually gone over the basic numbers knows this. Nuclear power is expensive to build, takes decades to start and takes a lot of highly skilled workers. Wind is cheaper per MW, more profitable, buildable in 6 months, can be put in even remote areas, does not require highly skilled workers for normal operation and is more carbon efficient.
  
  We should probably use both. How much mw/hr does wind produce compared to nuclear? Once nuclear is up and running what are the continual costs and what are the benefits? Theres a lot more to ask here than just "what is more profitable". Your points on winds' adaptability is good as well as your points on timeframe. But I don't think a single energy source is the actual answer. I'm thinking we supplement these energy sources with each other and that would bring us completely off fossil fuels.

More profitable AND safer. Humans are too stupid, lazy and bureaucratic to use nuclear.
- To be fair though per terrawatt hour nuclear is safer than wind power and only beat in safety by solar.
  Source
- Not actually safer, per kilowatt hour though.

- Helium is the only element in the periodic table that is non renewable.
- That sounds like "pie in the sky":
  The problem with fusion reactors is exactly the containment of the plasma and avoiding that it dissipates its heat through light emission.
  If that was solved we would be better off doing fusion with plasma rather than fission, since even deuterium (a heavier form of hydrogen atoms because it has 1 neutron in the nucleous) can simply be extracted from the water and the H+H fusion reaction releases more energy than any fission reactions (and, funilly enough, would produce the much rarer helium, that's needed for those reactors of yours).
  
  The problem with fusion reactors is exactly the containment of the plasma and avoiding that it dissipates its heat through light emission.
  That's one problem. Neutron embrittlement is another.

Until we are able to sort out the cost/tech to make a green-sourced grid (such that the role of utilities is to capture surpluses from when the sun shines and the wind blows and sell it back when transient sources aren't producing) nuclear is going to be an important part of a non-carbon-producing energy portfolio.
Already it's cheaper to bring new solar and wind online than any other sort of electrical production; the fact that those are transient supply sources is the last major obstacle to phasing carbon fuels entirely out of the grid. If nuclear can be brought safely online it could mean pushing the use of fossil energy entirely into use cases where energy density is critical (like military aviation)

Who fucking cares about profit, our planet is dying.
- anyone with a basic understanding of economics?
  Like either we spend fuck tons of money subsidising nuclear to make it profitable or we can focus on wind and companies will build it themselves because its profitable.
  
  What do you think is more likely: that I don't understand the basics of how capitalism works? Or maybe that the comment was a criticism of the worship of the "free market," and considering profit-motive to be the be-all, end-all?
- I care. I care that we don't make a rash decision for a potential short term solution. Why not ramp up solar / wind and other alternatives?
  
  Storage, we have less Lithium than you seem to think, and pumped hydro is not a solution -- not that it's not a universal solution, it's simply not a solution. Implementation costs more than a nuclear reactor and maintenance and security costs are way, way higher than a nuclear reactor. We, unless you want to adopt a powerless overnight lifestyle, need on-demand power generation. Nuclear is the best, safest, cleanest, most feasible option for that until we remove all precious metals from energy storage technology.
- The planet is fine, and will be fine after we've gone, much like it was fine after the other mass extinctions. What's dying is the environment that supports human life. Less snappy, granted, but I feel like emphasising that this is our problem and not something we should do for others might be worthwhile.
  
  Do you never get tired of being pointlessly pedantic? Yes, the planet, as in the big rock floating in space, will continue to exist. Thanks.

Its a relatively recent development however since the panels and turbines got quite a bit cheaper. Nowadays solar/wind ends up fairly similar and Nuclear is about 3x the price (with gas being more and coal being nearly 7x more). That is only some of the story as you need some storage as well but it doesn't end up in favour of Nuclear. 15 years ago Nuclear was a clear win, its just not anymore the price of Solar come down fast.
- If you include the full costs of the nuclear programs including the various subsidies, wind has been cheaper for decades, possibly since before nuclear was a thing.

If we measured the amount of destruction to our environment that fossil fuels cost long-term I bet they'd stop being profitable really quick.
- Oil companies knew all about this since at least the 70s, and it was still very very profitable for them.
  Turns out humans are selfish.

This is such a weird thing to research because a government (or governments) can directly or almost directly control what is profitable in a society based upon what is needed.
- not really, while the government can do stuff like incentivize this only shifts the cost somewhere else
  
  Check out the farm bill, or ethanol in gasoline, or various other things. They also can disincentivize things, outright ban things, and add untold cost to competing stuff in order to make yours more profitable than theirs.
  The research done here had to be within the existing regulatory environment, which is not a fixed constraint at all but rather a product of government and industry actors.
  And all of that is just talking about more indirect controls commonly applied in neoliberal leaning countries, some countries directly control how much things cost and how much overhead there is.
  
  Government can just take over and control whatever it wants. With no business allowed to operate the cost and therefore profit don't matter

If we had an energy system owned by the people and not ran for profits, nuclear would be a viable, and probably even the preferred, option. We do not. We're probably going to have to fix that to get a practical and reliable clean energy grid.
- No, it would just bankrupt the state. Just because something is state owned, doesn't mean the cost vanishes.
  
  Infrastructure in this country is already so heavily subsidized by the federal government (and state, if you live somewhere that actually cares about your well-being) that we're already pretty much paying for it all.
  
  Profits are what is earned after expenses. It wouldn't bankrupt a state to run energy infrastructure at cost.
- What do you do with the waste in that scenario? Who pays for that? Or for insurance?

Gotta love anti nuclear activists getting more and more desperate. You're being decarbonised. Please do not resist.
- I would love to be decarbonised, but unfortunately i dont have the patience to wait 2 decades for it to happen.
  
  How long do you think it takes to build renewables? It's been about 20 years since most countries have started implementation and no country is 100% reliant on renewable energy or could store even a night's energy needs without generation.
- Decarbonised by a stagnant and expensive industry that's friends with coal? Unlikely.
  
  https://i.imgur.com/4z837gc.png
  nuclear energy is stagnant and decaying.
  
  nuclear energy is stagnant and decaying.
  Do you think you may be confusing the cause with the effect?

What about when the grid is almost entirely renewables? Is nuclear cheaper than just storage? What about storage one it's already been implemented to the point of resource scarcity?
- No, nuclear is always more expensive in real world conditions. Places with mostly renewables plus in-fill from batteries and transient gas generation are a lot cheaper than nuclear. eg. South Australia.
  
  But transient gas generation produces much more ghgs than nuclear, and when accounting for the ghg potential of metanen and normal pipeline leakage, it is even more damaging than coal.
- 1kg of lithium produces about 10kWh of storage for 15-20 years. 3-12 hours of storage is plenty for a >95% VRE grid.
  1kg of uranium produces about 750W for 6 years.
  There are about 20 million tonnes of conventional lithium economically accessible reserves (and it has only been of economic interest for a short time).
  There are about 10 million tonnes of reasonably assured accessible uranium (not reserves, stuff assumed to exist). It has had many boom/bust cycles of prospecting.
  Lithium batteries are not even being proposed as the main grid storage method.
  
  Cobalt is the difficult one, especially with the child workers mining it.

Profit doesn't equal good. Renewables take a lot of materials and fabrication to upkeep. Im sure theres more money to be made in renewable than there is in nuclear, that doesn't imply one is better than the other.

- Ecofanatics just deny any source that says nuclear is good anyway, especially RTE. You make a good sum up though.

I wonder how this determination is affected by the boondoggle that is the public funding of nuke plant construction with huge overruns paid for by consumers.
- It's getting close to the point where even if you are handed one it's more cost effective to build a wind farm and let it sit.
  A MWh of wind is about $33 and O&M for a MWh of nuclear is about $30.

- When you demand free insurance from someone they get to set the risk profile.
  Tell you what. You put up collateral equal to the value of any nearby city and everything in it, and you can stop ALARA.
  Also even with that it's still bullshit. Nuclear had a higher negative learning rate before ALARA and is still horrifically expensive outside the US.
  Also the suggestion that wind and solar aren't subject to more extreme regulation on potential harms is even more ridiculous.

100% renewable energy is not possible on our current electrical grids. We usually use more energy at night where renewable does not cover our peak energy requirements, therefore, as a carbon neutral energy source nuclear covers that peak perfectly.
- alternatively, address the shortcomings of the power grid
  
  Instead of "alternatively" let's say "in addition". We're not going to solve anything with a single solution we need nuclear, we need solar and other renewables, and we need to upgrade the grid. All at the same time.
  
  Precisely this, you can't fix it, if you do not make an effort.
- Downvoted cause you are technically correct. Technical problems are not solved by downvotes and good will.
- Solar isn’t the only renewable energy, and not even the only one you can install per household. Geothermal never stops, can be installed in your lawn, and has almost zero maintenance. Wave generation and offshore wind farms also provide round the clock energy.
  
  Geothermal power is a lot easier in (say) Iceland than in places with less volcanism.
  
  Geothermal never stops, can be installed in your lawn, and has almost zero maintenance
  If you're talking residential geothermal, that won't generate electricity for your home. It can be used for HVAC and water heating though. It isn't zero maintenance, and for most people it is pretty expensive (because they don't have enough land to use the cheaper method for laying the pipes in the ground. Also, call it what it is - Ground-sourced heat pump. Average install price is $30k-$70k.
  In many latitudes Air-sourced heat pumps are much much less expensive and perform nearly as well.
  I'm hopeful to see cheap to purchase, install, and maintain Ground-sourced heat pump (residential Geothermal) but its not hear yet.
- Yeah I've heard rivers stop flowing at night, it's never windy at night, the ocean is still at night etc
- Nuclear isn't carbon neutral. How do you think Uranium gets mined/processed/shipped/utilized? The reaction may use/generate no carbon, but the entirety of the logistics of producing nuclear power absolutely does. Saying it's carbon neutral is a bold faced lie.
  
  If we want to start discussing the material processing effort then it's going to be pretty hard to call any energy source carbon neutral. The concrete for dams and the steel for windmills don't appear out of thin air.

Oh shit, can you imagine if you don't exclude all the fckn costs your fckn process causes you might fckn be mire expensive? Really? Surprise?
- Like the free insurance, or the free loans, or the underfunded decomissioning and waste management, or the unremediated mines?
  Or is it the storage and grid redundancy required to meet peak load with a generator that runs at constant output and shuts down for months at a time?

Everyone seems to be focused on electricity production, but ammonia production (ie nitrogen fixation) for fertilizer is often overlooked. Right now it is accomplished mostly with natural gas. If we're supposed to do it instead with wind and solar, we're going to have to rely on simple and inefficient electrolysis of water to generate the hydrogen needed for the Haber process. Nuclear power plants have the advange of producing very high temperature steam, which allows for high temperature electrolysis, which is more efficient.
When you consider our fertilizer needs, it becomes clearer that nuclear power will have to play the predominant role in the transition away from fossil fuels.
- No on all fronts.
  The only reactor designs with any sort of history don't produce steam at high enough temperature for the sulfur cycle and haber process.
  The steam they do produce costs more per kWh thermal than a kWh electric from renewables with firming so is more economic to produce with a resistor.
  Mirrors exist. Point one at a rock somewhere sunny and you have a source of high temperature heat.
  Direct nitrogen electrolysis is better than all these options. It's had very little research but the catalysts are much more abundant than hydrogen electrolysers and higher efficiencies are possible.
  Using fertilizer at all has a huge emissions footprint (much bigger than producing it). The correct path here is regenerative agriculture, precision fermentation and reducing the amount of farmland needed by stopping beef. Nitrogen electrolysis is a good bonus on top of this.
  
  One way or another, I'm pretty sure that we need fertilizer. What is the source of GHG if the fertilizer is produced without natural gas or other fossil fuels?
- Yes, we're definitely going to have to set up more nuclear power plants specifically to make fertilizer. Nuclear heads are literally brain dead
  
  Fertilizer which they can't make because the steam isn't hot enough.
  Every single pro nuclear argument is a fractal of terrible ideas and gaslighting.

Really interesting and quite easy to read article. In fact, the french energy policy is to invest in new "little" nuclear plants. I'm not sure our politics will consider these scientifical comments...
- They still seem to handwave away the issue of baseload, which is entirely frustrating. As I seem to understand it, it's just a 1:1 comparison of costs.
  They use nebulous phrases like "Flexibility is more important" and point to batteries or energy saving methods getting cheaper, without actually including it in the comparison.
  Although if it's true EU plants were randomly closed from production 50% of the time baseload doesn't really make a difference I guess.
  
  "Baseload generator" isn't a useful concept. And grid reliability (which is a useful concept) is thought about. It just doesn't fit into a soundbite like winddon'tblowsundon'tshine.
  Here's an example of a full plan https://aemo.com.au/en/energy-systems/major-publications/integrated-system-plan-isp/2022-integrated-system-plan-isp
  Or a simpler analysis on the same grid: https://reneweconomy.com.au/a-near-100pct-renewable-grid-for-australia-is-feasible-and-affordable-with-just-a-few-hours-of-storage/
  For reference, 5kWh home batteries currently retail for about $1300 so this would add <10% to the capital cost compared to recent nuclear projects. Pumped hydro is about half the price per capacity, but a bit more per watt. The former is dropping at 10-30% per year, so by the time a nuclear plant is finished, storage cost would be negligible.
  Here's a broad overview of a slightly simplified model https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-26355-z demonstrating similar is possible everywhere.
  Even in the counterfactual case where the ~5% of "other" generation is only possible with fossil fuel, focusing on it is incredibly myopic because the resources spent on that 1% of global emissions could instead be used for the other 70% which isn't from electricity and has different reliability constraints.

So first off, the source of this article being pv-magazine makes me immediately skeptical about unbiased reporting. This part really gets me though:
The availability of this electrical source is also questioned in view of the increasingly frequent droughts expected in the coming years, causing, in particular, low river flows and therefore associated problems of cooling power plants.
And availability is not a problem with renewables then? If not the central problem? Hydroelectric is probably the most reliable of the renewables, but then we have the aforementioned problem of low river flows. Droughts could even affect pumped hydro: a much-touted solution to availability problems with wind and solar. For crying out loud, present both sides of the argument fairly! /end rant
At any rate, I can get on board the idea that in terms of adding new generating capacity, renewables may be the most competitive option at the moment? They have come a long way in a short time, though they still face major challenges on the energy storage front.
But in terms of getting away from existing fossil fuel-based power generation, is nuclear not an attractive option? The infrastructure is already there, and would essentially have to be largely abandoned as sunken assets by power utilities switching to something like wind or solar right?
Consider your average coal plant. It is a centralized heat source powering steam turbines connected to large generators and a giant transformer station feeding power out over a network of high voltage transmission lines.
What is a nuclear plant then? It is a centralized heat source powering steam turbines connected to large generators and a giant transformer station feeding power out over a network of high voltage transmission lines. I'm thinking at least some of the existing hardware could be repurposed for nuclear to leverage what already exists? Am I wrong?
- Droughts could even affect pumped hydro: a much-touted solution to availability problems with wind and solar. For crying out loud, present both sides of the argument fairly! /end rant
  Pumped hydro doesn't consume nearly as much water as a thermal generator. Especially if you cover the reservoirs. It also gives you an emergency backup.
  Would you prefer:
  Option A where you immediately have no power when the river gets low,
  Or option B where you still have power after the river gets low, but can also choose to give up the ability to have some of your power at the end of a week long cloudy period in exchange for water?
  
  Good point. I am not opposed to pumped hydro or other such schemes for storing energy. Nuclear itself tends to be employed for base load power generation and is not especially good at following demand variability. Having supply side variability (from solar, wind, etc.) makes matters worse, of course, and necessitates even more storage. But one way or another, it will be needed, and pumped hydro tends to scale better than say battery farms.
  I wonder about option B. As it stands where I live at least, there is not much wiggle room in terms of getting people to use less power in the event of a shortage. For example, the local utility has offered free programmable thermostats in exchange for giving them the ability to control power usage in the event of a shortage, but I understand uptake of the program has been low thus far. I suspect in that scenario, they would have to bring fossil fuel power generation online.
  Where I live is not in a drought-prone area at least, but it is also not suitable for pumped hydro given the geography. There was talk in the local news recently about a compressed air storage system that may get built nearby our natural gas plant. This juxtaposition makes some sense when you think about it, since it is a site that already features well-established grid hookups, so they can piggyback on that. The province as a whole is generating something like 60% nuclear, 32% renewables (mostly hydro), and 8% fuels. Recently, there was a major refurbishment of some of the nuclear reactors and it came in on budget and ahead of schedule, so the argument that anything nuclear must automatically involve cost overruns is perhaps no longer true, though good lord we have seen some epic ones in the past, particularly after the utility was privatized.

Is simple mathematics now "research"

That's pretty damn cool to hear.
I wish my country (Germany) hadn't crash-shutdown the nuclear power plants we still had after Fukushima and instead shut down the coal/gas ones but eh... at the time, I even agreed with them, but that was at a time when climate disasters were far less prominent on everyone's minds. That now renewables are starting to pull ahead in most things is amazing.
A big problem to solve now will be how to swap the majority of the world away from coal/gas.

Profit 😵

Ok but how viable are those renewables? In Louisiana, dispite all of our water and river, hydroelectric power is impossible, because the elevation is to gradual. In normal weather new orleans is often cloudy for solar panels on a large scale.
The point I am saying is that cost doesn't account for a lot of things
- The market absolutely accounts for those things.
  If renewables are more expensive in your specific area than nuclear, then that makes sense for your area.
  This isn't like choosing a path in a video game. We can do all the things.

If you want profit, why not pick coal or natural gaz?
I mean really?
- You know why. denying reality doesn't erase it
- If you want to waste all your money, why not pick nuclear?
  
  Electricity should be expensive for all the benefits it brings

And? Who gives a shit? We need whatever is cleanest.
- Also renewables.
  Also incorrect. We need whatever reduces total cumulative emissions the most.
  A solar panel today does a lot more than a nuclear reactor in 2045. And installing 5W of solar (which will average 1W) today only costs you the opportunity to build 0.15W of nuclear (which will average 0.12W).
- Nuclear isn't very clean when we can poison a quarter of the earth with it because we're too dumb to handle it.

Renewables don't make money they cost money. They generate revenue because of subsidies and because manufacturing green energy technology is a dirty and extremely lucrative business. The part they dont tell you is that if u wana make solar panels u need to destroy the environment to do it. If u wana build a windmill its millions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of precious minerals strip mined out of the earth. Thats your profit.
- This is always the response dumb people trying to sound smart give.
- Same for nuclear if we're being honest
- Literally any piece of equipment manufactured today requires "precious minerals strip mined out of the earth." You're saying "renewables cause enviromental harm" while ignoring that literally ANY energy source causes environmental harm. WTF is your point?
  
  The point is. Renewable energy isnt there yet. Hydro electric is the best we have. If you want to replace a gas or coal fired grid. You cannot do it with 100% renewable energy. The only tech we have that can replace fossil fuel grids is nuclear power. I'm not saying its the only way. I'm saying its the only thing that works at this time unless something happens to radically reduce energy demand and the type of radical reduction required simply isnt gonna happen. As for the profit. Windmills dont make money. They cost money. They are more expensive to maintain than the energy they produce. 2.5-5m USD to build one. They cost 1.3m USD give a few thousand per megawatt of electricity producing capacity. Maintenances costs can range around 45-50k annually. Land costs. Business overhead. Etc. You go thru that to produce 1-3 MW of electricity.... Thats not enough to do much of anything. And u cannot suddenly demand a huge spike of energy from a windmill farm like you can from coal or gas or nuclear. Solar same thing. Sun not shining? No power.
  My point overall is these are not good cost effective alternatives to current energy production. They are expensive and inefficient alternatives to what we have. Are they greener? Yes they are but under the current technology. Green energy doesn't get the job done that HAS to get done.
- Every wind turbine requires over 1,500,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms of neodymium, a RARE EARTH METAL!!!!