By the time any nuclear power expansion plan gets into place exponential growth in photovoltaics and other renewable technologies will have taken over.
Nuclear power would have been a great idea, if we had started at least 10 or 20 years ago. It is unfortunate "environmentalists" did such a disservice to the environment, but we're long past the point of Nuclear being a viable solution.
Photovoltaics have a cap even if the panels are produced for free, simply based on land cost and infrastructure cost. That is also because they are not matchable to the demand curve. As a batch technology (like charging batteries for new electric cars, or powering irrigation) they are great. It for regular on-demand electric use it will always remain an in-fill.
And as electric car batteries lose capacity and need to be replaced, those batteries will still have plenty of storage left for use at home or on the grid.
When batteries get down to $75-$100/kWh capacity, storage will be able to take over much more of the grid. And there are lots of promising flow batteries that can beat lithium ion on price, when it comes to grid-level storage.
2) a) The economics of battery energy storage are effectively a type of arbitrage in time, where you get some fraction of depth-of-discharge over the time in question.
2) b) In the most limiting case, lets assume that battery energy storage is only being used for daily cycling, that the maximum cycle depth is 75%, and that the investor expects to break even in 5 years. In order to be viable at that breakeven time, the price of energy needs to swing by over 0.22 USD/kW-hr over the day (RMS !). Considering that bulk energy is only 0.05 USD/kW-hr now (average!), that's a huge amount of volatility that needs to be exposed to the market.
I suspect that if customers are exposed to that volatility instead, that we will see enough voluntary adjustment on the demand side of the market to prevent 5x swings in price. With that much volatility available, consumers will demand the savings that aggressive time-of-use pricing offers in such a market.
On the other hand, the economics become much more favorable for energy storage in the frequency support market. For example, the market for primary frequency reserve (PFR) operates on 15 minute time scales and faster. Therefore, the time between battery cycles is two orders of magnitude smaller than the bulk storage market. Right now, there is enough PFR on the US grid (via coal-fired steam and gas-turbine power) that the price for PFR is very low. But as renewables continue to displace fossil fuels as a fraction of total power, the price for PFR will start to creep up.
The Chevy Bolt's batteries have been widely reported to cost $145/kWh, see for example [1]. I'm not sure what's excluded from the whole component to get to the price, but it's a point of reference at least.
The full life of various lithium ion batteries is still being studied and will vary with chemistry, but roughly a partial cycle seems to count as a partial cycle in terms of battery life. So if you're only cycling 75% capacity on a day, then you'll make up the extra 25% in longer life. Most studies I've read of lithium ion battery life but the number of cycles at 1000 +/- 200, to maintain "most" of the battery's capacity, which is why I used the conversion factor of 1000. I would believe a 25%-40% swing in practice, in either direction.
Peaker power plants quite frequently operate at over $0.30/kWh, more than 6x the cost of bulk energy. Energy storage is already gaining in this space [2]. Of course, consumers never see $0.05/kWh pricing, averaging $0.12/kWh nationwide, which is why residential solar makes so much sense for so many people. Consumers that choose demand-based pricing are already exposed to price swings on the order of $0.20/kWh in time-of-use plans both on Southern California Edison [3] and PG&E [4].
The speed with which solar and batteries are changing is going to catch a lot of people in the energy industry completely flat-footed.
[1] http://cleantechnica.com/2015/10/05/chevy-bolt-battery-cells...
[2] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-12-22/batteries-...
[3] https://www.sce.com/wps/portal/home/residential/rates/Time-O...
[4] http://www.pge.com/en/myhome/saveenergymoney/plans/tou/index...?
If renewables had had a small percentage of the money thrown at nukes in subsidies and sponsorship, we wouldn't be having this conversation.
In addition, nuclear takes longer to setup, and the most feasible solutions being considered that are supposed to solve nuclear's current problems are all in the prototype stage at best.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421510...
Abstract The paper reviews the history and the economics of the French PWR program, which is arguably the most successful nuclear-scale up experience in an industrialized country. Key to this success was a unique institutional framework that allowed for centralized decision making, a high degree of standardization, and regulatory stability, epitomized by comparatively short reactor construction times.
Drawing on largely unknown public records, the paper reveals for the first time both absolute as well as yearly and specific reactor costs and their evolution over time. Its most significant finding is that even this most successful nuclear scale-up was characterized by a substantial escalation of real-term construction costs. Conversely, operating costs have remained remarkably flat, despite lowered load factors resulting from the need for load modulation in a system where base-load nuclear power plants supply three quarters of electricity.
The French nuclear case illustrates the perils of the assumption of robust learning effects resulting in lowered costs over time in the scale-up of large-scale, complex new energy supply technologies. The uncertainties in anticipated learning effects of new technologies might be much larger that often assumed, including also cases of “negative learning” in which specific costs increase rather than decrease with accumulated experience.
Likewise, battery cost for transport can make it attractive, but that doesn't necessarily make it better for stationary generation. Scale beats everything when it comes to generation.
You may not need scaled installations, but they will still beat out the alternatives in any industry shakeout over the long term. We build large scale factories, farms, ports, airports, roads and retail outlets. These happen because they work. Even if the energy production at scale gave no advantage, all the other advantages of scale means that it wins out in the end.
Nuclear is fantastic for base load, but peak load? Steam bypassing costs as much as generating electricity does, but with nobody wanting to pay for power they didn't use. Technically a good solution, but falls apart economically.
Chernobyl? Fukushima?
The technology has the potential of destroying huge areas for good. Do we want that?
A complex system that is attacked on multiple threat vectors is likely to fail - no matter how many redundandancies are put into safety. I can tell you that from looking at CS/network security.
A complete failure/breach of a big reactor is very costly.
Even Chernobyl isn't destroyed for good, though it's still an expensive mess to clean up. Fortunately, nobody builds reactors with such an idiotic design (a positive void coefficient[1]).
The actual site at Fukushima Daiichi is going to to be a long, expensive cleanup, but that's about the extent of the damage. Concerns about the surrounding area is just radiophobia and an extreme overreaction by the Japanese government. With how incredibly destructive the tsunami was, Fukushima Daini (which was also badly damage by the tsunami) showed us how incredibly safe nuclear power can be.
> can tell you that from looking at CS
More CS people need to study the lesson of incidents like therac-25[2]. It's very important to learn what fail safe means, which is very possible to implement, usually by avoiding as much of that "complex system". I trust the inherent and engineered safety systems of a nuclear reactor much more than I would trust any software project - including my own.
> A complete failure/breach of a big reactor is very costly.
So are fly ash slurry spills. You're holding coal to the same standards, right?
now were just very lucky that there was no full meltdown of the reactor core. Can you claim without flinching that this will never ever happen? I doubt it.
Just look up 'heroes of Chernobyl' - we were very close http://knowledgenuts.com/2014/04/13/when-three-divers-swam-i...
The fact that an accident of similar magnitude happened after Chernobyl sort of invalidates the point that it was all exclusively due to faulty reactor design.
In Germany this assessment led to a full shutdown of all nuclear power plants.
I never said there wasn't. The cleanup is ongoing and will take a very long time, but it still isn't "destroyed for good". At least the caesium eventually goes away. The Pb, Hg, and As in the 1.1 billion gallons of fly ash slurry that the Tennessee Valley Authority spilled[0] over homes and into the Emory and Clinch rivers doesn't have a half life.
> economy and agriculture
The tsunami also did incredible damage to the economy and agriculture of Japan.
> Can you claim without flinching that this will never ever happen?
Absolutely. Even the idiotic RBMK design can be run safely after being modified to fix the void coefficient. I suggest actually reading my link[1] above, which explain in great detail the problems in the design of that reactor. Even with those problems, it took incredible effort[2] to trigger the steam explosion.
> 'heroes of Chernobyl'
I'm give a lot of respect and thanks to those that had to deal with Chernobyl's immediate aftermath and the 600,000 liquidators that were part of the cleanup afterwords. In particular, the 3828 people that cleaned up the worst section of roof in two minute shifts. Their story - in their own words[3] - is something I will never forget.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingston_Fossil_Plant_coal_fly...
[1] http://www.hiroshimasyndrome.com/chernobyl.html
> Tsunami
The tsunami in Japan killed over 15,000 people (with several thousand more missing, likely dead). Radiation from Fukushima Daiichi (or anywhere else) hasn't killed anybody yet, though a handful of unfortunate workers and others in the immediate vicinity may have cancer problems in the future. Hopefully those cases will be treatable, but we won't know for some time.
15,000+ dead seems to indicate some tsunamis are far more dangerous than nuclear power.
> coal dusts
You might want to look again at the contents of fly ash. It's radioactive, full of a long list of heavy metals, with trace amounts of nasty things like dioxins.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/22/science/when-radiation-isn...
Currently we have about 200 years of uranium available for economical extraction. But if we tried to replace all fossil fuels with nuclear, we would be out within a few decades. Then we'd need to move to other non-renewable materials (thorium?) or start mining astroids.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-long-will-glob...
And the mining of uranium looks awfully similar to the mining of coal. (Of course you need far fewer uranium mines for the same amount of energy.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_mining#/media/File:Ara...
As other people have mentioned, that's known 235U.
We have enough domestic 232Th to satisfy our energy needs for a very long time. If we use breeder reactors that can utilize 238U, we also have sufficient availability for well-beyond any reasonably foreseeable future ("many millenia").
Besides, that gives us plenty of time to actually develop other methods of providing energy. Right now every day we fail to deploy nuclear is another day of coal/gas. Even if we used your silly figure of 200 years, it shouldn't take that long to develop a proper solar+batteries replacement (heck, we should have fusion before the 200 years is up).
> mining
There are rare earth mines that we aren't operating right now because it's too expensive to dispose of the Th. In any serious nuclear deployment, the fuel itself would be free (or nearly free).
> far fewer
Comparing U or Th mining to coal mining is silly when you only need to do over 2,000,000x more coal mining.
So assuming we have 20 years of (currently discovered) Uranium, breeder reactors should make that last a theoretical 2000 years at current energy consumption levels.
- mining is pretty much a necessity of life at this point.
- 200 years to come up with solutions to energy production while not turning the planet into an oven sounds pretty good.
Also even if you could get sufficient agreement on the need for more nuclear power plants - which you won't - it would still take way to long to build enough of them to have an impact.
It makes much more sense to invest in renewable energy, the energy grid and research into nuclear fusion.
We have 200 years of uranium left at current rates of consumption. But if we replaced all fossil fuels with nuclear, we'd consume 10 times more per year and we'd only have about 20 years of energy available before needing to move on to a new energy source.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor
"Adherents claim that with seawater uranium extraction, there would be enough fuel for breeder reactors to satisfy our energy needs for 5 billion years at 1983's total energy consumption rate, thus making nuclear energy effectively a renewable energy."
Also as with all things nuclear there are an awful lot of claims and not a lot of known things here. Nuclear somehow always looks much better in theory than it does in practice.
Also, Economically unaccessible today != economically unaccessible tomorrow. Our mining technology gets better all the time, especially if there's price pressure on it. We're accessing deep-sea oil deposits that we weren't able to twenty years ago. (Which the article addresses, but you omitted the key point!!! We have a 60,000 year supply of uranium in the oceans!)
The chief problem with coal isn't pitmining, it's the pollution from burning the stuff.
'Oil is about to run out' predictions have been falling for this for a century now, and continue to make the same error.
There is no economic reason to find resources out beyond a set timeline. So they aren't looking for them, and so the reserves always look like they are going to run out in 30 years.
The actual environmental impact of mines is negligible over the long term, provided the mining is done in a country with good environmental protection in place.
I responded to your claim previously[0]:
> In that 200 years a whole lot more uranium will become available for economical extraction, exactly the same as what happened with oil and natural gas.
Do you have reason to believe this will not happen?
If you're interested in the history of "peak resources" here is a good book about Paul Ehrlich's famous bet with Julian L. Simon:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Bet-Ehrlich-Julian-Earth%C2%92s/dp...
What's kind of amazing is that people don't believe that we will develop a solar powered technique to extract carbon the from the atmosphere and create liquid fuels.
"A New Dawn for Industrial Photosynthesis"
http://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2Fs11120-011-96...
Please edit uncivil language like this out of your comments when posting here. Without that (well, that and the uppercase yelling), this comment would be a fine one.
If you apply the same constraints to wind generation (which is increasingly happening) it looks even worse than nuclear.
There are always grand claims of how cheap nuclear can be, but it has never been seen in practice. Sometimes people even claim that nuclear is cheap by only looking at the operating & maintenance costs, ignoring the true costs of nuclear, which are all upfront.
What type of nuclear constraints could be applied to wind generation? Validation of designs? There's very few turbine designs out there. I can't see how wind could be ever be made more expensive than nuclear, but am open to new data.
If you can't see how regulatory process increase costs, use this thought experiment. You want to build a house. You buy some land for it, and submit the plans for approval. Now spend the next ten years paying an architect to complete forms and submitting them for review. You have to pay the carrying cost of the land and the architects salary. The cost of the building materials for house remains the same. Can you now afford the house?
The amount of solar panels needed for a house (or their share, in some solar farm) is miniscule. It's 4-7 panels. If we want to store excess for night, maybe 10. The batteries fairly small (using lithium, a sufficient battery could hang on the wall. Maybe two tesla power walls would do it). The waste isn't that bad (nowhere near the amount of waste people create yearly in plastic or other landfill garbage).
It's totally doable in first world countries. And it would go a long way in developing countries too, for the same reason cell phones gained popularity faster than landlines, because they require less infrastructure.
Compared to coal, give me batteries any day! And we don't really yet know the full effects of all this cheap natural we're getting through fracking. Though I'm sure fracking is probably better than coal mining, we'll have to wait to see.
And of course you can't expect every country to go fully solar/wind. What you need are integrated, continent wide power grids and alternative energy storage mechanisms like molten sands etc.
It certainly seems more feasible than some feeble attempt to cover the Earth with a reflective surface as a geoengineering measure to counteract global warming.
http://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/Count...
http://www3.epa.gov/climatechange/images/ghgemissions/source...
By going mostly electric for our transportation and nuclear for power generation we could really make a dent in 58% of this pie.
There are people who simultaneous worry a tremendous amount about global warming who will actively protest against nuclear power.
All while an extremely large amount of pollution is being burned all around us. Be reasonable we need a now solution or there wont be a when.