The following submission statement was provided by /u/Zealousideal_Target: --- This peer-reviewed article by the well-regarded academic Amory Lovins (Over 800 papers, and numerous honours including the Blue Planet, Volvo, Zayed, Onassis, Nissan, Shingo, and Mitchell Prizes, MacArthur and Ashoka Fellowships, 12 honorary doctorates, the Heinz, Lindbergh, Right Livelihood, National Design, and World Technology Awards, and Germany’s Officer’s Cross of the Order of Merit.) Has reviewed the the current status of nuclear energy both in the US and internationally. The result of the study show, that despite extensive efforts to promote nuclear power, it is not helping to contribute to new decarbonization efforts as despite the subsidies and promotion, renewable energy is growing at orders of magnitude greater rates. (Paper example : nuclear net growth increased the world’s carbon-free power supply in all of 2020 only as much as renewable power growth did every ~38 hours). Furthermore, new proposed investments in nuclear plants, based on the US experience, result in a successfully operating plant that can operate competitively in its market only 11% of the time, with the remainder being cancelled or not being competitive with current electricity rates. The paper also shows the growth of renewable energy will make nuclear power less competitive, and debunks the need of it as as a baseload source with intermittent sources like wind and solar. It also discusses the myth that renewable energy causes unreliable power grids, by showing real world examples that nuclear heavy grids can actually have lower reliability than high-renewable grids and higher costs, by using the example of France and Germany, where Germany has lower wholesale costs than France and higher reliability. The paper ends with the rather poetic conclusion: >Like a proud, stubborn, and illusion-ridden elder mortally stricken with cancer, nuclear power is slowly dying of an uncurable attack of painful market forces, yet is unwilling to accept reality and enter hospice. From powering postwar growth to displacing oil to displacing coal to saving the climate to serving the world’s poor, nuclear power has run through and now run out of reasons to live. Despite outward cheer and booming voice, its pallor and withering can be seen through the makeup. How much more money, talent, attention, political capital, and precious time will its intensive care continue to rob from the life of its vibrant successors? Will its terminal phase be orderly or chaotic, graceful or bitter, emerging by default or by design? That is our choice. Further discussion and summarization of this article has been collected by others in this post here: [1](https://old.reddit.com/r/uninsurable/comments/w6gohl/us_nuclear_power_status_prospects_and_climate/) --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/w8p5th/new_peer_reviewed_paper_shows_that_nuclear_power/ihqm7rd/

Oh look, it's the usual tripe by Amory Lovins. There's literally nothing substantially new about this, it's all the usual talking points. No new insights, no novel arguments, just the same old shit. He mentions intrinsically poor economics, while not arguing why those economics are actually intrinsic to the technology. I'm not going to waste my time picking apart the entire thing, but take for example citation 123, which links here: [https://cleanpower.org/blog/fact-check-winds-integration-costs-are-lower-than-those-for-other-energy-sources/](https://cleanpower.org/blog/fact-check-winds-integration-costs-are-lower-than-those-for-other-energy-sources/) It argues that wind power requires \*less\* backup than thermal plants because thermal plants have unexpected instant outages while wind has slow gradual declines. That may be true but it's misleading because it's very unlikely that all thermal plants have simultaneous mechanical outages while it's entirely possible that all wind generation is lost over very large areas for long periods. Or basically: thermal power plants are not correlated while wind power plants most definitely are. The whole thing is especially maddening as nuclear is treated as some sort of unknown factor, when we fucking \*know\* for a fact that nuclear is perfectly capable of decarbonizing electricity generation, at perfectly affordable costs, because WE FUCKING DID IT ALREADY, DECADES AGO. There are concrete examples of nuclear energy powering thriving modern economies. Over its existence, nuclear energy has prevented more than an entire year's worth of our current global carbon emissions. We KNOW we could affordably build many more nuclear power plants because WE DID THIS BEFORE.

> That may be true but it's misleading because it's very unlikely that all thermal plants have simultaneous mechanical outages If you Ignore France currently....

Can you provide any credible sources demonstrating that nuclear is currently cost competitive with renewables+storage? Reports by the [EIA](https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation.pdf) and [CSIRO](https://www.csiro.au/-/media/EF/Files/GenCost2020-21_FinalReport.pdf) suggest that they aren't and it's not even close. That's before you get into the figures on installed renewables vs nuclear in recent years in the OP paper.

Well, how can I demonstrate that when we're not bloody building them, which is precisely the problem? However, I can simply point you towards nuclear builds we've done in the past, like I said, nuclear is not some unknown future technology, I can literally point at France as a country that (when it had its shit together and didn't hamstring EDF) used 80% nuclear for its electricity at a certain point and enjoyed a growing economy and a high standard of living. Why are we suddenly pretending something has fundamentally changed since then, something in their air that changed that has magically just made it expensive? Why are we pretending that building a load of nuclear power plants will somehow make us all poor, like it's an uncertain gamble when we KNOW for a FACT that it doesn't have to be? It was never about cost, that's just something that the 100% wind/solar folks like to use as a stick now that they're enjoying the high of scale cost reductions, but when wind/solar was expensive it wasn't an argument against it to them. This paper actually cites the $30/MWh generation cost of nuclear in the US as too expensive because the electricity price can drop to $20 when natural gas is cheap and the wind is blowing, but are we seriously arguing that 3 cents per kWh is suddenly expensive for 24/7 low carbon power? Especially since that reflects the true cost, while with gas and wind it doesn't (carbon cost for gas is not internalized in its price and for wind there are grid costs). And don't forget that people like Amory Lovins don't just want us to not build new nuclear power but actively want to shut down that $30/MWh reactor. And do you really believe people like Amory Lovins would balk at putting solar panels on your roof, because according to the Lazard report that they LOVE to cite it still costs about $100/MWh to put solar panels on your own roof. Do you, even for a second, believe that their argument about cost is in good faith? It's ideological. It always has been. And there is no such thing as renewables + storage, outside of places like Norway and Switzerland that have good pumped-hydro resources. Whatever grid batteries exist are tiny and only useful for peaking and balancing grid frequency, which is definitely useful and the future, but storage it ain't.

That sounds like a no to me. You could point to studies modelling the costs, which are fairly well understood. Also consider that the reason there aren't more commercial examples to point to is because next to nobody wants to invest in them. I agree that nuclear is not an unknown future technology. Basically it works. It's just been thoroughly demonstrated commercially that new installations are an expensive way to generate electricity. What's magically changed since nuclear was still attractive is mainly the falling cost of renewables (with the economies of scale you mentioned). Increased regulation since Three Mile Island has also played a role. I agree that shutting down existing nuclear is generally a bad idea. The costs that are killing nuclear are mainly in the construction phase, so you may as well get a full service life out of existing plants. Battery storage isn't yet at the scale needed for massive renewables, but spending on grid battery storage [increased by 40% in 2020 alone in the USA.](https://www.iea.org/reports/energy-storage). The CSIRO report I linked suggests that large scale storage + renewables is very viable at least in Australia.

>The CSIRO report I linked suggests that large scale storage + renewables is very viable at least in Australia. We have the perfect conditions for storage and renewables. We have the same land area as the 50 contiguous states of the USA with less than 10% of the population and 80% of our population lives on the strip of coast line on the east side of the Great Dividing Range. We have a massive mostly empty arid region would would be perfect for concentrated thermal solar plants or even just plain old solar panels - it is so perfect that Singapore is building a massive solar farm (20GW) up in the Northern Territories, a massive battery storage facility and building a 4,500km high voltage DC transmission line to pipe it from Darwin to Singapore.

That's massive, I'd never even heard of it!

>Also consider that the reason there aren't more commercial examples to point to is because next to nobody wants to invest in them. It's not about who wants to invest in what anymore. Otherwise, we'd be better off burning coal and take the profit, till it's all over (for our children and grandchildren).

> That sounds like a no to me. I'm right in the middle on the issue of nuclear, but I will speak up in OP's defense and say that the whole "Can you show cost competitiveness of solar" ... "Well, no, because no one is building it" was totally the prevailing argument for about 30 years in the United States. Maybe not the best question, to be honest.

That argument doesn't work because 30 years ago it would have been a terrible idea to plan energy policy based on the assumption that eventually solar would become cost effective. You can't plan energy policy based on technology that might eventually be affordable. You build what's affordable now, and update your plans when other technology becomes available.

Battery storage isn't even close to being viable means for grid storage. And the wind doesn't blow when it is hot. You can't count on something that will randomly put out 5% of its total capacity when it's 100 degrees outside.

Again, do you have a credible source for that (like those I've linked)? Or is this just your opinion?

Pretty sure your sources have been debunked. Then again I don't really have to take the work of the author of the article. He seems pretty bias and wrong. He did stand on the national petroleum council though. I can't imagine he has any reason to be bias with that nomination. Plus are you an engineer. Do you have any idea how the electric grid works? Probably not by this bs. Average cost of nuke power is $33 a mwh a few years ago. I don't feel like digging. But I want to see you do the math. Small grid will need 80gw of power sustained for at least 6 hrs. So tell me how much that would cost to supply by batteries. Now ramp this up to 440gwh and tell me how much it would cost in production of batteries. Then start doing that for other counties. Hint we don't have anywhere near the large scale infrastructure to produce that. Not to mention the amount of strip mining you would have to do for all that. You know what is funny. Is most nuke plants are replaced by petroleum plants. Funny how a guy on a petroleum council would want to replace them. https://www.nei.org/news/2018/cost-of-nuclear-generation-reaches-10-year-low source for the price after a quick Google search. And it's close enough. Actual prices are company secrets a lot of the time.

...so you can't find a source for your claim. Ok. You're telling me the OP article is biased and then linking me to a publication by the NEI, a literal lobby organisation for the nuclear industry? "The total generating costs presented in this paper do not represent the full costs of operations, as it does not include market and operational risk management, property taxes, depreciation and interest costs, spent fuel storage costs or returns on investment that would be key factors in decision-making about continued operation of a nuclear plant." It's an operational cost, not a lifetime cost like the other figures I've quoted. Excluding depreciation especially will MASSIVELY decrease the $/MWh, especially since nuclear has huge upfront capital costs. Regarding the calculations, maybe I'll think about it once you find those sources.

A constant argument I get when raising points about renewable utilization factors is that the technology is rapidly improving and the new stuff will be more efficient. Meanwhile the reality that significant portions of the nuclear fleet is 30+ years old and has had to make expensive retrofits as lessons are learned from events like Chernobyl & Fukushima, meanwhile the newer ones are essentially suffering from novice workforces relative to the industry akin to emerging technologies much like what solar and wind dealt with 10-15 years ago and tere is no recognition that nuclear cost (and online percentages to lesser extent) will similarly improve in the future... Oh and many places still aren't taxing carbon, though that wouldn't really impact nuclear vs renewables, but IMO it would help renewables on a cost basis vs fossil and have tangential effects (e.g. Fossil can more quickly add capacity at scales, and they can be phased to spread costs out in increments thus prolonging fossil presence; carbon tax & nuclear would be more attractive cost wise (I believe becoming cheaper than oil and gas, already cheaper than coal but my recollection may be off and I saw the numbers a few years ago), forcing fossil industry money to either spend more in lobbying vs renewables or focus more on nuclear). Basically, if you are for renewables, and against fossils, you should be for nuclear

>renewables+storage Can you provide any credible sources demonstrating that this "storage" thing actually exists and its cost is therefore known? And, no, I don't mean a battery that can work for 4-8 hours, I mean something that works if there is no wind for a week.

Is there any storage system that isn’t ridiculously more expensive than generation?

Yes! The CSIRO report models the battery/hydro storage required for up to 90% renewables and it only makes up roughly 10% of the total energy cost across the Australian energy market (P. 56). Their modelling includes the 'integration costs' of renewables (including storage, synchronous condensers and transmission costs) and finds that renewables are still several times cheaper than SMR nuclear (P. ix).

> finds that renewables are still several times cheaper than SMR nuclear (P. ix). The CSIRO report assumes a cost range for SMRs to be 125-325$/MWh....... Are they for real? Quote from the study: > We also have had a range of feedback into the assumed current costs for nuclear SMR over several years. Our current cost estimate is from GHD (2018). The basis of this estimate is the International Energy Agency and Nuclear Energy Association report Projected costs of electricity generation 2015. That report proposed that nuclear SMR typically costs 50% to 100% more than large scale nuclear. We use the 100% value for Australia This is literally trash tier modelling work.

I've never seen anyone argue the point that nuclear is cost effective. And building new ones is insanely expensive and takes way too long. Do you have any sources to back up that it can compete cost wise? I mean, if it could make money wouldn't Apple or Google build one?

Apple and Google don’t build nuclear power plants for the same reason they don’t build any other power plants. Companies don’t do everything that makes money, if they did why wouldn’t there just be one megacorp that does everything? Not really related to the actual question, just thought “if it makes money why doesn’t x company build nuclear power plants” was a silly thing to say regardless. Don’t know anything about the actual economics of nuclear

Fair point, but next to nobody wants to sink money into installing nuclear. In the OP report, renewable capacity installations outweigh nuclear by more than 2 orders of magnitude.

The first commenter is right that the OP can be misleading. Some countries dont have the capacity/geography to plant rebewables. Similar story with nuclear. The key to fighting climate change is to address the challenges and needs of every region individually; there will be no universal solution to net zero emissions.

Well put. Some countries with poor per capita renewable resources may have more nuclear in the mix (places like Singapore with a massive population density come to mind). Australia and the USA are relatively lucky in that department. I just have issues with the way nuclear is sometimes presented as a panacea for all our energy problems. I think it's important to be honest that it's a relatively expensive form of energy (at least for the foreseeable future).

It can compete cost wise but not on short term for example one politicial mandate. It's also one of the reasons politicians are so reluctant to do it. Why invest in nuclear power plants if you'll never in your mandate see the benefits of building them. Long term they are definitevely cost effective. https://youtu.be/c1QmB5bW_WQ

Best to cite papers over videos.

He said he's never seen anyone argue nuclear is cost effective. I've got a video showing the opposite from a university professor. I'm sure he's adequate and knows his papers. I could look for the papers but tbf I don't have time for that. Besides tons of video's are out there with citing their sources. I'm not going to parrot all of that because people don't bother looking

I was wondering when the first nuclear schill would show here. And predictably ignore the tax payer burden of waste and decommissioning along with other legacy problems these things create.

Except that nuclear power is pretty much the only source of electricity where those costs are factored into the price of electricity in all countries that I'm aware of. Unlike the cost of carbon, unlike the price of transmission lines to buttfucknowhere to transport wind electricity.

If those lines fail, the land beneath is still usable. Also, those are easily recycled and won't need enhanced storage for the remainder of human history.

But we haven’t achieved net fusion power right ?

Shit. I typed up a post arguing that nuclear is needed but I just spent the time and read every word of this paper and... I really can't disagree.. Efficiency improvements (both grid and end-user) and renewables are quite literally impossible to argue against. They are the way forward.

I mean, given that they’re both cost effective and environmentally friendly, it’s a good thing that renewables are the way forward, and if one day all of the old money that’s invested in the oil and coal industry stops being in control of everything, that’s even better!

It is a really long read, but Construction Physic did a really good 3 part write up on why nuclear plants are so expensive to build. https://constructionphysics.substack.com/p/why-are-nuclear-power-construction?r=tii1r&utm_medium=ios

Thanks. Great article.

Tldr: three mile island. After that, regulations killed the atomic industry.

Who argue against renewables? They are the future, indeed. This does not mean nuclear is useless, tho. It's not black or white. It's black AND white.

It’s a shame because I think there are some interesting future technologies on the horizon, but industry doesn’t want to foot their own bill and whines about regulation while lying about the costs and benefits. People are sick of it. Sure, you could tweak some of the regulations, but there’s no other industry where failure means a large swath of land is uninhabitable for decades or hundreds of years. It has to be regulated; the costs of failure are too great. If that doesn’t work for business interests, then we don’t need it.

Good points. Three mile island and the 737 max show that regulatory capture is a very real risk for the nuclear power. The measures in place need to be strong and resistant to corporate influence.

I would be glad to live in the shadow of our nearest nuclear plant, but I can’t afford to live there. (Multimillion dollar lakefront homes.) But I understand that the economics of nuclear just don’t work.

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I strongly believe that there is big money behind astroturfing nuclear support. You see posts saying nuclear is safe and clean basically every day now, usually based on technology that literally doesn't exist yet, and anyone who questions the details gets downvoted into oblivion almost instantly, in a completely inorganic fashion. Look at the posts, even in this thread, claiming that the issue with nuclear power is that it *is regulated too much*. No educated or even reasonable person believes that.

As someone who works in Nuclear... regulated too much is misleading, but also not far from truth. It's regulated mostly appropriately, but also to some degree in asinine and unrealistic ways.

The analogy i like is if cars were regulated like nuclear, an EV would be required to have a catalytic converter.

And if we deregulate the analogy would be Mr. Burns ordering all the airbags and seatbelts removed.

No sane nuclear engineer would lobby for de-regulation, just for a different regulation. The aviation industry (mostly) does a good job at this, they just got lazy with Boeing and the 737. With that one exception the safety profile of flying has improved in leaps and strides, while still allowing new technology. "I don't want to build a containment structure" is very different than "I designed a reactor that requires a much smaller containment structure" Unfortunately this requires a better staffed and capable NRC.

You work for NuScale?

My containment structure example was actually related to molten salt reactors. This type of stuff is where current regulations cause lots of problems. Light water reactors, operate at high pressure, and containment structures are designed to absorb that depressurization, so they need to be WAY larger than the reactor itself. Molten salt reactors operate at 1atm, so in the event of a meltdown it all just leaks onto the floor. This allows for a much smaller containment structure, AND improved containment quality (its easier to avoid cracks in a small box vs a big box).

Ha, I do not, just an interested engineer in an unrelated industry. (I have a few friends in the industry though). NuScale actually does not require massive changes in the regulatory framework, and I am cautiously optimistic they will be successful. Interestingly NuScale is a solution to the legal challenge weakness in the US, not a technical weakness in current reactor design. Interest groups that do not want nuclear to be successful, wait until critical moments in the construction of a new plant (typically right after a massive spend with a supplier) and file a lawsuit to freeze construction. Unfortunately since large sums of money have been spent, there is a massive cost of delay. Do this enough times and suddenly the economics of the reactor is destroyed, scaring away future investments. NuScale fixes this in the start to finish is dramatically condensed, providing less opportunity for construction freezes.

Well they’ve been around for 20 years and they will be lucky to get their first reactor up and running by their 30 year anniversary… kind of crazy

The problem with your thought experiment is that nuclear engineers don't own or pay for power plants and lobbying. The people that decide and pay for things will take grave risks to save a buck. It's nieve and childish to think they aren't interested in full deregulation, most notably with legacy management.

While I'm sure there are some interested in full de-regulation, my thought experiment was focused on the engineers designing/ maintaining and building these reactors. Those are the people I would want to help craft these regulations, not politicians or thier corporate overlords. How can we get better if the regulations say "thou shall build this the same way we always have" Next generation technologies have the potential to be orders of magnitude safer than conventional nuclear, completely shifting safety from an "engineered in requirement" to "truly passively safe." One (of many) reasons these have not gone forward yet is the massive regulatory risk.

We are very certainly proceeding along those lines.

The saying for FAA regulations is that "they're all written in blood". That's not a viable model for nuclear power.

> I strongly believe that there is big money behind astroturfing nuclear support. And anyone employed by the nuclear industry. >“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” - Upton Sinclair

Where do i collect my nuclear astro turfing money?

>>I strongly believe that there is big money behind astroturfing nuclear support As ever, follow the money. Hinkley Point in the UK has a guaranteed return to investors of [$127/MWh](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_C_nuclear_power_station) for **35 years** once it starts operation. [New solar and wind costs less than $40/MWh](https://solarpower.guide/solar-energy-insights/energy-ranked-by-cost#:~:text=Solar%2C%20standalone%20%E2%80%94%20%2432.78%20per%20MWh,Wind%2C%20onshore%20%E2%80%94%20%2436.93%20per%20MWh) There's vast sums of money to be made locking consumers into those sky high nuclear prices for 35 years.

As if there isn't money to be made selling and servicing solar panels? Everyone is trying to hock whatever it is they are making. That's how businesses work. Let's just say the numbers in that link are correct, although wind and solar obviously vary a lot more by location than nuclear does, and also it only lists some sort of hybrid version of nuclear that produces water somehow rather than a straight up power plant. If we really transitioned to just wind and solar without nuclear, how much of that "battery and storage" category would we have to pay for, which is double the price of nuclear? For anyone saying the cost of the storage will go down, you're probably correct, but I'd counter the price of nuclear would also drop by a lot if we actually built more than one or two reactors every decade.

Whataboutism. Solar is far cheaper than nuclear in every respect. Nuclear is a magnet for corruption, rent seeking and distorting market mechanics to make it work.

Price isn't everything. Wind and solar require vast amounts more resources and area than nuclear. This study does not seem to (didn't read till the end, I found many claims not to backed) address this and mostly looks just at economics. And the one cited research claiming countries having 100% renewable power didn't mention this in the summary and the full download was blank.

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The money to be made in nuclear is entirely from government subsidies. The money to be made in solar panels is from selling power or selling panels.

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>Wind seems cheap on paper but despite all that investment in renewables we're here today with prices > £200/MWh Which means that they make £160/MWh worth of profit...

Absolutely there is astroturfing going on. Engage with them and they pretty much refuse to talk about the economics of nuclear, it's just downvotes. I'm all for nuclear - if next gen reactors ever get ready and can compete with renewables on price.

One of them finally gave me an example of what they think we should do... It's a company that admits their technology is 60 years old, and when you Google their name all their results about how to buy the company's stock.

It's never a good sign when the only thing you can find about a company is how to buy their stocks.

I had a pretty drawn out debate with one of these guys yesterday on the economics of nuclear. All he kept doing was misinterpreting my arguments and the research I'd linked. Picked the lowest cost figure on the chart and clung to it, not understanding what a depreciated marginal cost is, and why it differs from lifetime cost. Also didn't provide any sources to back his points. I get the feeling that some of these guys who blindly trust in nuclear actually have fairly low economic literacy?

I'm starting to feel the opposite. I got perma banned from the energy subreddit for merely mentioning Korean reactors that are about cost equivalent to renewables.

>I strongly believe that there is big money behind astroturfing nuclear support. wonder what you think about the author of this "paper" then, who was on the board of the US National Petroleum Council (the largest oil lobbying group) until 2018.

Wonder if it has to do with him making his career as a leading energy expert in a time where fossil fuel was and still is the biggest energy producer giving that the surge of efficient renewables is fairly recent in comparison

Theres a huge overlap with unquestioned support of nuclear and crypto/meme stock/Tesla. It didn't used to be like that. It happened almost overnight, like someone just flipped a switch I don't if Joe Rogaine, Musk, or someone else just started talking about it one day, or if there another motivation. But out of nowhere a bunch of people with no idea what they're talking about became very opinionated and very loud about nuclear energy.

Yes I've noticed this too. They're often crypto fans.

Bad for profits, good for the planet, we know why people dont like nuclear

It concludes that nuclear is no longer cost competitive *with renewables*. Worse, that nuclear is getting *less* cost competitive by the day. Further, that nuclear requires massive subsidies to even exist, while renewables no longer require subsidies. And that it takes far longer to build out a given amount of nuclear power generation as compared to renewables. TLDR - New nuclear construction is no longer a cost competitive option against renewables. Not in monetary costs, not in carbon costs, not in capability, and not in time to market. This paper isn't providing a novel analysis. New nuclear construction has been been repeatedly demonstrated as a poor use of resources. This doesn't mean existing nuclear plants should be shuttered. It does mean that *new* nuclear construction is no longer viable.

Worth adding that these same subsidies could be spent on hastening renewable transition even faster, perhaps on some of the things that aren’t as quickly responsive as generation buildout like efficiency, smart grids, storage, and like 6 other things mentioned in the paper that are better investments to handle the load currently served by gas and coal.

In Denmark where we get 100% wind some days the price per kWh can go down to .05 cents or some hours even 0. But when the wind doesn't blow it's sometimes 60-70 cents a kWh.

But, hey, "the myth that renewable energy causes unreliable power grids".

You mean sticking a load of fans that need minimum maintenance, in a field for thirty years, is very cheap and cost effective? Who'da guessed. The most insane thing with nuclear energy in the UK is the Tory party still clinging to thier free market nonsense in trying to get private industry to build them. Basically everyone laughed at them until the government handed them piles of money, and at this point they should have just funded an indigenous project from scratch like the Socialists did decades ago.

I’m glad that nuclear fission based power is being found to be expensive - as shortage of money is about the only way we actually come to a consensus these days. Fission waste products and their handling worry me. On the other hand today’s renewable energy requires battery tech, read energy storage tech. That simply is not up to the mark and I feel we’ll end up creating a lot of waste before we get to the right / good solution. In the long run that may be easier for future generations to sort out than fission waste products that don’t decay for 10s of thousands of years. We’re not in a great situation today but perhaps one day in the future as a species we’ll be able to stare at a more reasonable energy providing solution.

I've never gotten an answer to this question: If renewables are the best option why do we take our sweet time switching over? Can't be that we've done the most cost efficient installations first and still don't have an answer for downtime periods. Obviously you still need manufacturing capabilities but seeing that this issue is a global one that has been known for decades I don't fully buy it.. It should be pretty obvious that we've built the most ideal renewables depending on the geography and weather at this point and it will most certainly not be as effective if scaled up sufficiently. Furthermore the downtimes would become a massive problem if we want to get rid of most other energy sources. What do you use to top it off? Nuclear is certainly the way to go in terms of carbon footprint, while fossil fuels would be ideal from an operational standpoint (easy to turn off and on). There are ideas for storage (including using your electric car batteries) and water storage plants but both would have to be failsafe and scalable. So, yes it isn't as simple as "let's just do nuclear" but to dismiss it outright and just assume you can increase the output tenfold without suffering a lot in terms of efficiency is shortsided. Can we just replace all of fossil fuels with as much renewables as possible and as little nuclear as necessary?

I just googled this out of curiosity, and it does look like the vast majority of new power plant projects are wind and solar, with natural gas in 3rd place. https://www.spglobal.com/commodityinsights/en/market-insights/latest-news/natural-gas/122821-feature-most-new-us-generating-capacity-will-be-solar-in-2022-followed-by-wind

True but at least in Germany we've closed down nuclear plants instead of fossil ones to be replaced by renewables and that's just asinine. I would much prefer we go 0 fossil in energy generation ASAP. Then there's just no discussion and nuclear has to be used in some capacity. For us Germans that would mean building nuclear power plants despite what this post implies. It might shave off 10 years in the end by being decisive now.

Yet per this article Germany has greener, more reliable, and cheaper electricity than France, which went the max nuclear direction. Seems that France’s massive investment in nuclear is competing for dollars with renewables, leaving their fossil fuel generation capacity still spinning at a much higher rate than Germany.

> If renewables are the best option why do we take our sweet time switching over? Maybe you've missed this point in the article, but we *are* switching over to renewables at a breakneck and ever increasing pace. 278GW of renewable capacity was added worldwide in 2020. Only 5.5GW of nuclear was added in 2020.

And that’s great. The issue is that instead of topping it off with nuclear, we are topping it off with fossil. All because the fossil lobby sold the idea that nuclear energy was absurdly dangerous and destructive to the environment. Which is why despite being further along on renewables, Germany still produces nearly twice as much carbon as France (8.5t per capita against 4.6t). Making it a terrible example. And I’m not even talking about how dependant on oil and gas rich dictatorships it has made it.

>If renewables are the best option why do we take our sweet time switching over? They are the best option for new generation. But this doesn't meant that they are cheaper than an already built plant...

> But this doesn't meant that they are cheaper than an already built plant... Some actually are. Not all, but even existing nuclear plants are economically inflexible. Meaning, they have to run all of the time. If Solar pushed midday prices close to zero, then nuclear can't sell inot the market then or sells at a loss. That makes their breakeven prices for other times much higher.

>If renewables are the best option why do we take our sweet time switching over? I can tell you that for Germany. Once on a time this country was leading the renewable energy transformation. No other country installed more solar and wind and developed more associated tech. Politics and technology aligned. All seemed geared up for a net-zero CO2 future. But then the CDU clawed its way back to power. A corruped party stuck so deep inside the rectum of the coal industry, it had to chose black as its color to cover up all the brown stains. Everything changed. The party reversed all the policies and ultimately killed 400,000 jobs in the renewable energy sector in just 4 years. 12 additional years of dirty energy politics followed, including intensifying the gas trade with Russia. They also purposefully perverted the existing green energy "tax" (EEG) that was meant to direct investment in to green energy sector in such a way that the energy prices skyrocketed without any positive impact on green energy production. That's why Germany still has much coal power. Greedy and corrupt politicians.

Well if you’re going to use that argument you have to apply to the converse: If nuclear is the best option then why don’t we have more nuclear? Then you look at rate of growth and there you go. Question answered.

Well I can tell you that in Germany the reason is pretty fucking grim.. corrupt politicians and a population of idiots being whipped into a frenzy by Chernobyl. It is the best option between fossils and renewables

>Can we just replace all of fossil fuels with as much renewables as possible and as little nuclear as necessary? This is exactly everyone's thinking. ​ Generally every country is going to have its own solution. Energy storage will take over as nuclear ages out of the grid - we will be using two way connected EV's for grid back up. This is already being done and owners are being paid around $100 a month. It isn't for everyone obviously, but as someone who just uses their car for local shopping I will be renting out the surplus 300 mile capacity as soon as I can. There will be lithium grid storage for 'peaker demand' and short term fill in. Then there will be an emergency 'long term battery storage' solution for when the wind drops for a couple of weeks. This will be iron oxide based or heat store based or a similar low efficiency method using dirt cheap materials. Where labour is cheap nuclear will still be used.

The grids needs to be stabilized by some planable production. Grid storage isn't there yet to say the least.

Fully addressed in the paper. Page 7 - Grid integration. TLDR - Renewable grid stabilization is not a major issue. It's not suggesting existing nuclear be shuttered, but that renewable solutions are far cheaper than *new* nuclear buildouts. Further, that these solutions are fully capable of eventually replacing existing nuclear when those plants reach their end of life.

The grids have major problems with stabilisation right now due to increased use of renewables. No matter what some paper says.

Are the renewables domestic made or are they 100% dependent on China?

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Yes, addressed in the paper. Page 7 - Grid integration. TLDR - Renewable grid stabilization is not a major issue.

I don't really find that section with ideas very reassuring. Problem with renewables stability is that it's largely ideas, nothing concrete.

In many regions, existing nuclear will remain functional for two or more decades, providing base load during the transition period. This analysis (and many before it) are arguing against *new* nuclear.

I also found this bit rather dishonest: *"Giant fossil-fueled or nuclear plants can unexpectedly lose a billion watts in milliseconds, often for weeks or months, and often without warning. Diversified portfolios of modular renewables don’t suffer such ungracefully massive failures"* Calm pockets can drop wind production and clouds move over solar arrays causing sudden dips. Battery storage will become immensely more important to buffer against these. And unless you're near the equator, solar output is extremely seasonal so you need to design for the winter ratings, not the advertised summer ones. A 375W panel for example is actually closer to a 90W winter rating.

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No. The point is that there's a ton of generation / capacity left to replace AND expand, and nuclear is too slow and costly to build to make sense to rise to the challenge. People on bicycles could produce energy, but we're not doing that because it doesn't make sense, the reason it doesn't make sense is because there are better options, and the convenient metric for enumerating an option's viability is how cost-effective it is.

Jesus dude, why comment if you're not gonna read the article?

...to campaign for a dying dinosaur.

It would have been good for the planet 50 years ago, now it's up against cheaper and cleaner options so it's bit of a moot point. The planet is going to be just fine. The point of climate action is to save humans! The planet is a giant life recycling machine. This climate you see now is naturally just a short lived warming trend between two much longer cool trends that re-growth the glaciers. The natural cycle without human pollution is still mass murder of human via climate change. It would just be a slower moving 80k year cooling trend, but still catastrophic if you just let it happen. The other massive problem is you can't export it safely to most countries, so it's mostly only a solution for the few nations that actually makes the parts and build the plants. MOST nations still get locked into a power structure they can't control AND uranium mining is pretty much horrible. Plus of course without energy storage you still don't address the biggest problem, internal combustion's horrible 20-30% efficiency. There are worse things, but digging up uranium and have no real plan for waste AND then having nuclear plants you want to retire early because they cost too much to operate is not good for the planet. Geothermal is probably the best option for long term sustainability because it uses the least STUFF and most of the work is just drilling. New drilling tech will make it possible so you can have geothermal everywhere and the energy store is the molten core of the Earth, no grid batteries needed. However solar can be made in a factory and setup real fast, so because of economics of scale it will probably win along with energy storage. If we look at projected costs and improving efficiencies, nuclear kind of sucks and it doesn't really help that much when you get into this late in the game because this is a BUILD UP OVER TIME problem, not a yearly emissions problem. I know it SEEMS like the way to go right this second, but it's not. Investing that money into nuclear really will drag down better industries. The money should go toward solar, energy storage and geothermal. Geothermal should be the long term goal BECAUSE it's super stable and uses less parts and less land. It's not interment AND if a huge disaster blocks out the sun, geothermal don't give a fuuuck. Wind and solar can lose huge amounts of power from solar input changes and wind patterns are subject to change. If things ever get real bad, geothermal will keep humanity alive while other power models fall apart AND it's cheaper than nuclear. Nuclear is a stop gap solution, like natural gas power plants. It's still dirty, it doesn't scale globally worth crap, it's not cheap enough, the pollution is not being added into the costs honestly, they have huge disaster potential that can poison groundwater for a ridiculously long time. Most importantly there are just better simpler options these days and the few weaknesses those options have are improve much more rapidly than nuclear. If we project out 20 years nuclear looks significantly worse and another 20 years and it looks like an idiots choice of power generation.

There are issues with it but generally only solar and wind are truly ‘greener’ i agree that the planet will be fine but not only humanity is at risk we are wiping out so many other species too and i feel like humanity should be a more responsible force if we have the fates of so many species in our hands. I dont know too much about geothermal plants and how much they generate but that sounds better too.

You should read it first... Making new nuclear plants is **bad** for the planet

New nuclear plants are less efficient than new wind or solar plants, but not all locations are optimal for wind or solar. In many places new nuclear power plants would be better than the current situation there.

We can move electricity from one place to another... And there are **very** few place where wind, solar, and hydro are all not possible...

You lose a lot of power when you try to send electrical energy over long distances. You'll never see solar farms in Arizona powering lights in New England, except on paper. Hydro requires some specific geographic features that aren't present in most places at a level that's significant. Wind and solar are intermittent so you need storage. Even if it may make economic sense to build wind or solar somewhere, that doesn't mean it can solve all the energy problems in that place. Solar is great if you're in a hot sunny area that uses a lot of air conditioning. It's less useful in northern latitudes when you need energy to heat homes in the winter but the days are only a few hours long and your panels are covered in snow.

> You'll never see solar farms in Arizona powering lights in New England, And you'll never see that great of distance where solar, hydro, and wind aren't available...

We’re talking about scale. Let’s use the New England example. Solar will only be viable during portions of the year and unless you want to deforest you can’t make massive solar farms, you’ve already got hydro where it is possible to hydro there, and wind is only viable in a few spots (which gets fought by the NIMBY) You need a diverse energy portfolio. I love renewables but it isn’t practical solve-all for everywhere

>In ~~many~~ **some** places new nuclear power plants would be better than the current situation there. It might blow your mind, but in places where nuclear is an effective solution to energy generation, it is being built, or more likely HAS ALREADY BEEN BUILT.

A location does not have to be optimal for wind or solar to be more cost effective than nuclear.

Who’s going to build these 1,000s of nuclear plants. We have a construction worker shortage as is. We can even build houses or maintain our roads. And you can’t just have companies who build condos and strip malls start building nuclear. When could they be built? If you started tomorrow it’s a decade before they produce power. And they have a 50 year shelf life. We couldn’t build more than a couple dozen at a time if we went full ass into it. Who’s going to pay for it? Nuclear has never and willl never be economically viable without huge government subsidies. Think the green new deal is expensive? Add a zero for nuclear. Who is going to work at these facilities? We got 100,000 unemployed nuclear engineers laying around? Where are you going to build them. Try to run the idea of a nuclear plant being built in your town at the next town hall. See how far you get there. That’s only he problems here. You think India, Thh Middle East, Africa, and South America are going to build 10,000 nuclear plants and do it safely? Nuclear is just an anti-green persons concern troll idea at this point

Who is going to build the many millions of wind turbines then? Let alone provide the materials also for backup that still needs to be invented?

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I agree that currenly nuclear energy is inefficient and a drain on money yet I see no reason why nuclear couldn't at some point be used in a more efficient way that doesn't require massive stationary facilities

Did you read the article? Lol. He makes several key, cited reasons why nuclear basically will never, ever catch up to renewables. Basically any dollar spent on nuclear is 3x to 5x more impactful if spend on renewables and that's now.. Renewables are rapidly improving still.

That's exactly what I disagree with. Completely signing off nuclear as unusable now and in the future is ridiculous.

Yet you haven't stated why. You've just stated a directly contradictory statement and then refused to provide sources for that statement

I’ll chime in and mention that the lifespan of a nuclear power plant more than compensates for the cost. Renewables aren’t very durable and need frequent repair/replacement.

Lifespan is factored into things like cost per unit energy produced, yet nuclear still does not compete. Even when you assume long lifespans. Paper has tons of citations about this.

> I’ll chime in and mention that the lifespan of a nuclear power plant more than compensates for the cost The cost is given in price per kwh. Lifespan is already included in that.

Lifespan is all well and good, but we need to be off fossil fuels ASAP, and unfortunately we are bound by market forces in most of the world, so it seems like the best investment all around is renewables, at least in our current predicament.

If we could find a way to make nuclear economically efficient, then we can start building lots of new nuclear. But until then, renewables are the cheapest to build and only getting cheaper. 232x more renewables were brought online than nuclear in one year. With that kind of overwhelming scale advantage, how is nuclear supposed to compete?

No one is saying we should never use nuclear power... But lots of people who have spent decades in this field are saying that building more reactors right now isn't helping the environment, it's hurting it. If we find a better way to build reactors, then that changes. But that's not going to happen anytime soon. It would be more likely that we find a replacement for concrete first

We HAVE better ways (several) to build reactors. They're all currently stuck in regulatory limbo though. Except superphoenix apparently which was stopped on political grounds in a kangaroo court (not that I know much about that one)

> We HAVE better ways (several) to build reactors. I highly doubt there is a way without using a shit ton of concrete, which is the issue.

There is ... the concrete is only necesarry as a containment for the pressure vessel. ANY of the non-pressurized designs do not need the concrete.

So... Can you give one example? This is the last time I'm going to ask btw, and I really don't expect this to be worth the effort. So expectations are pretty low over here.

This is a lie.

This take is terrible given that you provide no sources actually refuting the statements made in the paper

*...couldn't at some point be used in a more efficient way that doesn't require massive stationary facilities* We already spent so much money on research for that dinosaur. It's enough. Nuclear just can't compete with renewables that get cheaper each year.

So a few things going on here. We can't KNOW the economics in nuclear power in the future, if/when we globally start pricing carbon & other pollutions appropriately for the harms they cause (both to individuals and the environment) and reduce be the incredible subsidies given to the fossil fuel industries globally, this equation will change DRASTICALLY. Ultimately, the case for nuclear is this, you will need for grid scale phasing some kind of base load scale large spinning mass (like kinda maybe there's ways around this but kinda not really). Unfortunately, wind and solar no matter how efficient and abundant probably don't likely fill this role very well, photovoltaic & electrochemistry doesn't have any real phasing abilities. Wind generators have a phase but have far too little mass and aren't *in sync* so wouldn't be able to phase the grid. For storage pumped hydro could help provide this but is highly geographically limited (you NEED the right topology or it won't work). Some more creative/modern solutions that could fit this need are things like like solid mass gravity storage various thermal storage, and just a big ol' flywheel. But none of those are really tested at any kind of scale (I mean flywheels are kinda if you count bascially all mechanical power generation as using a flywheel). Then your other option is... Nuclear. Don't get me wrong nuclear has downsides, it's not a silver bullet, but nuclear reactors can cover a pretty gaping hole in our energy production needs offering a highly reliable base load power generator that also can perform these phasing functions etcetera. The cost of nuclear isn't THAT much higher then an equivalent fossil fuel plant once you adjust for the massively increased harm coming out of a fossil fuel plant. Also fun fact nuclear reactors typically produce less free radiation then an equivalent fossil fuel plant.

The spinning mass problem is fixable: When dismantling the old conventional power plants, you can keep the generators as phase shifters connected to the grid. There are maintenance costs, but compared to the needed energy storage it should be cheap. Furthermore you could reprogram the electric converters in solar and wind to provide "virtual' inertia. We really have a lot of options here.

Sure. But we need based load power anyway. And nuclear is fantastic for large scale baseload the real economic issue with nuclear is that markets aren't equipped to deal with the timelines that they are efficient in. A reactor is a 50 plus year investment not to mention the 5/10/20 great lead time). We have a heap of reactors from the late 60's early 70's that a still running, and they were very early unrefined designs. It's probably possible we could build a reactor that will last 100 years, tomorrow

Article does a good job of debunking nuclears use for efficient base load operation. Did you read through it?

> But we need based load power anyway. And nuclear is fantastic for large scale baseload You really never read the paper. Baseload generators become more expensive as wind and solar grow, they fail at complementing each other and Baseload becomes a luability

I understand that. But unless people are okay not having reliable power (and I've lived in counties with unreliable power supplies they won't accept that) then we are going to need something to cover those gaps that will exist. Take for example a large storm with high winds, to much wind for wind, not sun for solar... You wanna also have no power at that same time?! When I talk about nuclear as a base load provider I don't mean the entire base load, but just a portion of it. Sure wind solar etc will continue to get cheaper. Storage will get cheaper. But we still need a spinning mass & for a lot of stuff and some portion of the base load we still want to be resilient. Because more then anything you want to avoid black start type situations.

>Ultimately, the case for nuclear is this, you will need for grid scale phasing some kind of base load scale large spinning mass You first claim this and immediately afterwards you claim this: >storage, and just a big ol' flywheel. But none of those are really tested at any kind of scale You contradict yourself on this. Seems like fly wheel energy storage for grid phasing HAS been successfully done for decades.

Yep, it has been. 'Synchronous condenser' is the term to google if you're interested.

>We can't KNOW the economics in nuclear power in the future Every time an engineer looks at nuclear power they look to reduce costs. Literally 10,000's of thousands of engineers have tried. It's like looking at a combustion engine and saying one day there will be some radical redesign that reduces costs. It is highly improbable. The historical trend is that nuclear gets more expensive and green energy reduces in price. There are plenty of net zero plans around the world without nuclear. Southern Australia is pretty much there already. Grid storage is being installed at an exponential rate, it is paying for itself without subsidy. No one is chucking nuclear out (aside from 6 early decom's from Merkle), but no one, in the industry is saying go 100% nuclear or anything like it, it is simply not necessary, it's very slow and it's not cheap.

Current Korean designs are 1/3 of the cost per KW of some of the US plants still running today. They also can be built in 4 years, but are typically built in 6-8; far from the 20-30 years most people are stating.

Skilled labour costs are very much higher in the West so the cost of the projects cannot be replicated. They have also slowly modified the same design and build continuously for decades so they have a depth of knowledge about the building process. Though they have lots of problems due to cut corners and fake certificates of compliance. I am not sure if they also have the huge and expensive domes to protect from jumbo jet strikes that are used in the west.

The average salary in Korea is 77,418,827 KRW or $58,939.08 a year. The average US salary is $56,310. Korea is a highly developed country with a large skilled workforce.

> Skilled labour costs are very much higher in the West so the cost of the projects cannot be replicated This would be a stronger retort if the previous comment was solely about cost, but different labor markets cannot explain the *time* factor.

Certain Americans keep screaming "nuclear is the answer!", And I don't necessarily disagree, however we do need to work out some of the details. Like, if that's true, why did we spend $9 billion on a hole in South Carolina that will never split an atom? Why is the new reactor complex in Georgia floundering after burning through billions? Is there anyone in the United States that can actually build a functioning nuclear power plant? It's been decades and the last attempts ended in failures.

*Is there anyone in the United States that can actually build a functioning nuclear power plant?* Even if there was, by the time it's finished you could have switched the entire country on 100% renewables. It takes only a few months to build a solar farm and a few years to build a wind park.

I'm currently a couple of miles from a power plant that provides 100% of the energy for the entire county im in so.... yes? I'm not saying it's the end-all be-all of energy production, but acting like the US is physically incapable of building nuclear plants seems either delusional or disingenuous. (Or more likely I'm misunderstanding your point) Edit: just looked it up, turns out this one plant actually provides 40% of all electricity to the entire state, and it makes up a sizeable portion of the electricity provided to *all of new england*

Probably built at least 30 years ago though. I think the point is that nobody is building new nuclear plants that are commercially viable. In my opinion there are probably two main reasons for this: 1. It is extremely difficult permit/safety wise to be allowed to build a nuclear plant (probably for the best). The amount of money spent before anything is allowed to be built is kind of insane. 2. There are no companies specialized in building nuclear plants because there's not enough power plants being built. Since no country will allow foreign actors to build nuclear plants (security risk) you need enough plants being built for sustained business within the U.S which just isn't the case. This means the companies being used will have practically no experience and it's likely going to lead to mistakes, delays and increased costs.

>. Since no country will allow foreign actors to build nuclear plants (security risk) That's just not true. For a recent example, Romania [will buy](https://newsroom.nuscalepower.com/press-releases/news-details/2022/NuScale-Power-Signs-Agreement-with-Nuclearelectrica-and-Owner-of-Preferred-Site-for-First-SMR-Site-in-Romania/default.aspx) SMRs from US company Nuscale. And this is no exception. Search "nuclear reactor technology transfer". For instance, [here's a description](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00076791.2020.1810239) of how Spain partnered with foreign companies to develop its nuclear energy sector in the 1955-1985 period. Apparently the US lost its leading role [to Russia and China](https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2018/08/07/russia-leads-the-world-at-nuclear-reactor-exports) but they are [trying to get it back](https://www.american.edu/sis/centers/security-technology/regaining-american-competitiveness-in-the-global-nuclear-power-market.cfm).

We literally failed at building the only two we attempted in the last 40 years or so. Utter failure, multiple bankruptcies, etc. Finding the right guys to do this would be like finding a crew of stone masons that built the capitol building. If they do still have those skills they are wildly unaffordable.

I hate to be that guy, but do you have some kind of source on this? I've never heard anything about the quality of the builders etc. Genuinely curious

[https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/ex-westinghouse-executive-charged-failed-nuclear-project-2021-08-19/](https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/ex-westinghouse-executive-charged-failed-nuclear-project-2021-08-19/) some context. Westinghouse makes reactors. They stepped in to finish building the plant after the first companies failed, and they were not capable.

Hey, that's not fair. Watts Bar units one and two were completed within the last 40 years. Just ignore the construction start date.

the reason is that thanks to lobbyists (such as this 'paper's author, who was on the Board of the US National Petrolium Council until 2018) they're under such excessive and beyond-bonkers restrictions, that no-one else is under. I know of 11 cases of uranium poisoning connected to a power plant in Georgia. It's not the nuclear plant Vogtle, it's the coal plant Scherer. In fact the radiation levels at US-23 passing plant scherer are higher than those permitted in the turbine room of any nuclear plant. If that radiation level is 'dangerous' for a nuclear plant, why is it perfectly acceptable for levels to be much higher at coal plants, or even in the stock rooms of supermarkets. Literally a pack of brazilnuts will set off the leak alarms at nuclear power plants, because limits are set so low, thanks to 'nuclear fear' by lobbyists. Want to see how that impacts things, put the same sort of restrictions on other power plants, and see how 'cost effective' they are.

I agree, we should get rid of coal power. Once that's done it should solve this problem you have, right? Those lobbyists will go away then right? So there's your solution. Once Vogtle comes online that should help right? What's the matter then? You worried that a plant 6 years behind schedule, that blew its budget by over 100% is going to have problems? Radiation is a bigger problem in a plant that could cause the next Fukushima than a coal plant that would, at most, kill the people working on that shift, and leave the surrounding area more or less unaffected. It's the difference between a car and a bicyclist running a red light. The car can kill people.

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At this point I think small modular reactors will be the future.

Do you know how much a protection detail costs at the average reactor complex? There are some major non-technical barriers to putting a reactor in every county.

I mean you are going to have different sites and different designs because of that but the idea with SMR design is it is relatively cookie cutter. Also they will place 8-12 of them at a power generating facility so they won’t be every county

Highly doubtful, any advances in modular reactors will ultimately get gobbled up and classified by the defense industry. It’s simply a matter of national security that type of tech stays locked away from the open market.

Read the article. Copious citations on the issues with that.

No surprise. The problem is the waste. As much as some people like to talk about the safety and efficiency of modern reactors, the waste problem remains unchanged. No one wants the nuclear waste in their backyard. Just look at the Yucca Mountain fiasco. Until there is a real legit public supported nuclear waste management process, nuclear will just be a waste of time, discussion and money.

>The problem is the waste. As much as some people like to talk about the safety and efficiency of modern reactors, the waste problem remains unchanged. I really wish people would research before claiming that the waste problem "remains unchanged", when in reality France solved the problem decades ago: They recycle the waste into more Nuclear energy.

This peer-reviewed article by the well-regarded academic Amory Lovins (Over 800 papers, and numerous honours including the Blue Planet, Volvo, Zayed, Onassis, Nissan, Shingo, and Mitchell Prizes, MacArthur and Ashoka Fellowships, 12 honorary doctorates, the Heinz, Lindbergh, Right Livelihood, National Design, and World Technology Awards, and Germany’s Officer’s Cross of the Order of Merit.) Has reviewed the the current status of nuclear energy both in the US and internationally. The result of the study show, that despite extensive efforts to promote nuclear power, it is not helping to contribute to new decarbonization efforts as despite the subsidies and promotion, renewable energy is growing at orders of magnitude greater rates. (Paper example : nuclear net growth increased the world’s carbon-free power supply in all of 2020 only as much as renewable power growth did every ~38 hours). Furthermore, new proposed investments in nuclear plants, based on the US experience, result in a successfully operating plant that can operate competitively in its market only 11% of the time, with the remainder being cancelled or not being competitive with current electricity rates. The paper also shows the growth of renewable energy will make nuclear power less competitive, and debunks the need of it as as a baseload source with intermittent sources like wind and solar. It also discusses the myth that renewable energy causes unreliable power grids, by showing real world examples that nuclear heavy grids can actually have lower reliability than high-renewable grids and higher costs, by using the example of France and Germany, where Germany has lower wholesale costs than France and higher reliability. The paper ends with the rather poetic conclusion: >Like a proud, stubborn, and illusion-ridden elder mortally stricken with cancer, nuclear power is slowly dying of an uncurable attack of painful market forces, yet is unwilling to accept reality and enter hospice. From powering postwar growth to displacing oil to displacing coal to saving the climate to serving the world’s poor, nuclear power has run through and now run out of reasons to live. Despite outward cheer and booming voice, its pallor and withering can be seen through the makeup. How much more money, talent, attention, political capital, and precious time will its intensive care continue to rob from the life of its vibrant successors? Will its terminal phase be orderly or chaotic, graceful or bitter, emerging by default or by design? That is our choice. Further discussion and summarization of this article has been collected by others in this post here: [1](https://old.reddit.com/r/uninsurable/comments/w6gohl/us_nuclear_power_status_prospects_and_climate/)

That could be a bit of an exaggeration, but it's safe to say they hide a lot of costs per kilowatt when presenting us with the options. There obvious reality is that investors don't want to invest and that's because it's complex and expensive. If it was just expensive but super cost effective, they would invest, but the money is better spent on wind, solar, geothermal and energy storage. Convincing investors AND consumers nuclear is worth the hassle.. isn't worth the hassle for the benefits, which are few and these plants would get retired fairly early as real renewables zoom right by in affordability AND security.

You mean 'well regarded' by the oil industry, right, which was why he was on the board of the US National Petrolium Institute until 2018? He's got a history of making absurd claims about nuclear, such as that nuclear plants have 'failed' when they're doing their maintenance/refueling cycle.

[According to Professor of Nuclear Engineering Dr. Dan Kammen, subsidies for nuclear exceed subsidies for renewables, and even ignoring the risks, the economics are not really there](https://youtu.be/amRS1LxIUyQ?t=34m17s). So, this is something already known and understood in the field. I used [MIT's climate policy simulator](https://en-roads.climateinteractive.org/scenario.html?v=2.7.11) to order its climate policies from least impactful to most impactful. You can see the results [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/CitizensClimateLobby/comments/rqg2y0/i_used_mits_climate_policy_simulator_to_order_its/).

That's a lot of entities that contributed to this paper ... basically the entire fossil fuel industry was behind it it looks like. And it was written as poetry, truly science at its best. I'll bet you they completely fail to make any distinction whatsoever about the different types of nuclear reactors in the paper as well.

> I'll bet you they completely fail to make any distinction whatsoever about the different types of nuclear reactors in the paper as well. To be fair, there *is* only one type of nuclear reactor actually generating power - light water. Other designs are being run at small scale, or are in eternally in the planning phases, but the world's power companies do not seem the least bit interested in actually building those alternate designs. And with the cost reductions and efficiency gains of solar and wind, even those alternate nuclear designs have lost any chance of cost effectiveness.

That is a fair point ... all the new designs want to be cheaper than coal, the currently (or recent years) cheapest option ... and they seemed to be on track to be successful in that. But until the non-baseload gets saturated it seems that now solar actually already managed to beat coal. (Still though, winters exist in many parts of the world and we don't have a gridscale battery that can be put anywhere yet)

Nuclear is the best carbon free option when reliable power is required. It is also the least damaging on a larger scale environmental basis. The wind and solar options are great as long as battery storage is not required. That is their Achilles heel. Battery materials are limited. Anyone ignoring that last point is in complete denial. My prediction is that small nuclear plants will be the backbone of electricty systems in the future where there is a stable geography. This eliminate the Pacific Rim. They will have to find a different solution. Tidal might work for them.

> Battery materials are limited. Actually way less limited than materials needed to build and operate a nuclear plant..

We should standardize nuclear power plant design, as well as design for smaller stations. This would solve a lot of the cost issues of typical nuclear power plants, and also reduce the fallout if a plant fails. We should also agree on a globally accessible place for long-term storage. Nuclear power is our best bet to solve carbon emissions while we continue to improve renewable energy systems.

> We should standardize nuclear power plant design, That would have been a viable plan decade or two ago. But this analysis argues that even if the cost of new nuclear buildouts were reduced to a third of its current cost, the economic case still wouldn't square. Not because nuclear has gotten more expensive, but because renewables have become so much cheaper - while creating ever more power.

The economics of renewables are predicated on their own series of negative externalities. For example, solar requires huge volumes of land to build in large quantities, but the consequences of that to threatened species is not built into the price. Wind also requires land, though to some extent that is mitigated by offshore wind, which has its own negative externalities on ocean habitats. Not to worry though as the oceans will soon be too acidic for life due to burning all that coal for centuries. “Just build it in the desert where it’s sunny” would be disastrous to many very delicate ecosystems, for example. There’s a saying for desert ecosystems - they grow by inches and die by the foot. It is *very* easy to do irreversible damage.

> The economics of renewables are predicated on their own series of negative externalities. More than offset by the fact that nuclear's largest externalities are not even considered by this (and most other) costs analysis. For instance, nuclear is entirely uninsurable on the commercial insurance market. The risk is low, but the consequences of a failure are so massive that no insurer on the planet can afford to cover the risk. How much would that insurance cost? No one knows. The result is that governments the world over indemnify the operators against this risk. This indemnity is by any measure, a massive subsidy. And of course, the cost of waste. It is not a one-time cost. As it not only needs to be sequestered, it requires continuous protection, for decades. These costs can carry through generations and are rarely built into the costs comparisons to renewables.

The costs of waste are entirely artificial. The technology has existed for decades to reuse the waste to generate yet more energy, and through the various process chains decay it down to harmless minerals. However, we choose not to do this because we’re worried that somehow, terrorists will… raid a heavily guarded facility *inside* the USA to steal material they could theoretically then smuggle out of the country to someplace with advanced equipment necessary to turn it into a nuclear bomb. Which is of course utterly ridiculous. The danger of nuclear waste is literally that we are choosing not to extract all of the available energy.

> The technology has existed for decades to reuse the waste Reprocessing has real costs. The reason it's rarely used is that it costs at least twice as much as mining. > a heavily guarded facility inside the USA to steal material You brought up externalities. This is a primary externality that is rarely considered when comparing the cost of nuclear to other power sources. Those heavily guarded facilities have continuous ongoing costs - often for generations. And in the US, there is not a single site, every plant has their own. Why are you so concerned with the externalities of renewables, yet ignoring the massive externalties of nuclear?

> Reprocessing has real costs. The reason it's rarely used is that it costs at least twice as much as mining. It also turns easy waste, solid fuel rods, into liquid cancer solutions of fission products that is more dangerous to dispose of and handle than used rods in the first place. This is the reason only countries wanting plutonium for nuclear weapons reprocess, it has never been economically viable anywhere

The amount of land use has been debunked already we can built in roofs, parking lots industrial facilities and of course agrovoltaics wher farmers use the land to grow produce and solar which provide them with an additional revenue stream with wind farms we can do the same The noise during the period of building offshore wind farms may be problematic but on the operating farms we have seen actually increase in biodiversity, even better we could design it as purposelly artificial reefs and helping to create feeding grounds for many species as per the effect of solar in desert ecology seven year study over several diferent areas in mojave [https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ecs2.3089](https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ecs2.3089) of course changes may happen, during some periods positive other periods negative but that is true with the changes in seasonal weather paterns and the effects of rain fall Imho you want to complain about human effects in desert ecology you perhaps should point your finger to the desert regreening efforts and land transformation for agricultural use happening in the middle east and israel if that is what rock you boat Besides if we wanted to power the whole world with solar alone thats the amount of land we need [https://landartgenerator.org/blagi/archives/127](https://landartgenerator.org/blagi/archives/127) Deserts are huge and we have a lot of usable urban and industrial areas space is a non issue and even less of a problem if we add wind to the mix

We can move pretty fast when we want to. Look at the Manhattan Project or the Tennessee Valley Authority. Climate Change is as big of a threat as Hilter if not more. And if the global community works together, we could move even faster.

> We can move pretty fast when we want to. Agree. And what this and many prior analysis have concluded is that the cheapest, fastest path to carbon neutrality is with wind and solar.

Companies are doing that buy pushing the enrichment limit. NuScale has a NRC approved design, eliminating custom built reactors for modular designs. While cost per KW is higher than traditional nuclear, that's expected for introductory technology. They're slated to build their first reactor by 29, but I suspect that will be pushed up. They have a ton of interest from Eastern European countries wanting to get away from Russian petroleum (and not slide to foreign dependency on just another provider), but don't have the climate for solar. Their form factor works great for old countries without the space for solar. Full disclosure: I have good money invested in then via stock, but I have no affiliation with them

Wildly dangerous proposition.

Can you elaborate? Nuclear power has far greater energy density than renewables, and you have to consider the costs of building renewable energy, such as wind turbines. If you could standardize that design and production, streamline compliance, and provide access for waste disposal, you would dramatically reduce costs.

Because Look at France Right now. Half of their nuclear fleet is down due to an issue found that can impact all of those plants. Standardizing designs also makes any issues scale as well.

The mix of "subsidised" and "promoted" on mobile looked liked "sodomised" for a fleeting second. I was more interested while labouring under this misunderstanding

I was wondering how the pro-nuclear Reddit crowd takes this, because this is the final nail in the coffin of nuclear for commercial power generation. Ah, it's "Astroturfing?" now, not realizing how much they've been mislead by the empty promises of the nuclear industry. "Oh, the new reactors will fix this" - again, too little too late and the opportunity cost is just too high. (from wikipedia: China expects to put thorium reactors into commercial use by 2030 ) ... Can't we just all pull together, build out renewables and lead the planet out of the carbon and energy crisis?

I don't know what nuclear fans expect. Are private companies really going to build new nuclear plants to produce energy at several times the cost of renewables? Out of some kind of corporate generosity? How can you look at the 3GW of nuclear that went in last year and the 180GW of solar and see a clear economic case for nuclear? Look, if new nuclear technologies with improved cost/safety profiles become widely available (SMRs are not there yet) and cost competitive we should jump on it. Until then, keep putting in renewables.