News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Experts Urge U.S. To Continue Support for Nuclear Fusion Research. Parent comment

Re:Experts Urge U.S. To Continue Support for Nuclear Fusion ... by dv_dt on Friday December 14, 2018 @07:14PM (#18686092)
Here's an integration problem. Lets compare a project to put 100MW of power coming online from renewable vs nuclear spread over 10 years. In the Renewable case we put 10MW online per year every year and start producing power, in the nuclear case, we finish the plant after 10 years and start producing power. How much carbon do we offset in the two scenarios after 10 years?

For bonus points, even if the cost were exactly the same per unit of power, do a cost analysis of which costs more to implement under the different project timelines, using different financing scenarios?

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Experts Urge U.S. To Continue Support for Nuclear Fusion ... by DennisP on Friday December 14, 2018 @07:46PM (#18686273)
Seems to me the obvious solution is to build wind/solar as fast as we can, while also building nuclear because by the time wind/solar reaches enough market penetration where variability is a problem, the nuclear will be ready.

We should also spend a lot of money working on storage solutions, but with the planet at stake it doesn't seem smart to put all our eggs in that basket.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Experts Urge U.S. To Continue Support for Nuclear Fusion ... by dv_dt on Friday December 14, 2018 @07:57PM (#18686310)
Grid scale storage solutions are already commercially viable in may areas power provisioning, and have a crossover market in auto battery development. Companies are already bidding projects with renewable+storage mixes at costs already even to lower than nuclear. There is no reason to wait - structuring for nuclear is just a huge financial drag.

https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/lightsource-sol...

https://www.energy-storage.news/news/jp-morgan-buys-into-10....

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Experts Urge U.S. To Continue Support for Nuclear Fusion ... by DennisP on Friday December 14, 2018 @10:25PM (#18686856)
Those articles don't have numbers on how much energy they store. So far I haven't seen any that could get through a windless night. Recently I ran the numbers on Tesla's big battery project, and for that much storage it cost significantly more than nuclear.

Costs are going down, but MSRs look a lot cheaper than conventional nuclear too, so if we're going to look to the future let's do it with both.

[ Parent | on HN ]