Re:Japan to invest on nuclear energy in major policy shift
by PaulHoule on Thursday December 22, 2022 @09:46AM
(#34093758)
It is more that nuclear hasn't been competitive against natural gas in places that have natural gas since 1980.
Betting on renewables + batteries in 2022 is like betting on the fast breeder reactor in 1955. There certainly is going to be development in batteries and other forms of storage in the next decade but we don't know where the minerals will come from, we'll have more grid scale batteries catch on fire, face more challenges siting solar farms because, as a major land use, they could affect endangered species, etc.
There will be progress there but remember that decarbonization is not just replacing the current electricity grid but it also involves replacing gas appliances with electric appliances, using electricity for heat in buildings (probably with heat pumps), electric cars (that people will want to charge at night and thus require more grid storage as well as competing for battery materials), replacing industrial uses of energy, synthesizing e-fuels for aviation and other special applications, etc.
Nuclear as we know it faces two problems: (1) the steam turbine and heat exchangers of the LWR are enormous such that an LWR would have a hard time competing even if the heat was free, (2) every country other than Russia has built LWRs sporadically and faced terrible project management problems; China is catching up with Russia with their Hualong One (4 completed in the past 2 years, 12 under construction now.) Long term the industry has to get rid of the water to get the temperature up so the powerset can be made more economical and you can use the heat for industrial applications such as thermochemical hydrogen, with the big plus that a reactor without a moderator can get roughly 50x the energy out of a pound of natural uranium than LWR.
Betting on renewables + batteries in 2022 is like betting on the fast breeder reactor in 1955. There certainly is going to be development in batteries and other forms of storage in the next decade but we don't know where the minerals will come from, we'll have more grid scale batteries catch on fire, face more challenges siting solar farms because, as a major land use, they could affect endangered species, etc.
There will be progress there but remember that decarbonization is not just replacing the current electricity grid but it also involves replacing gas appliances with electric appliances, using electricity for heat in buildings (probably with heat pumps), electric cars (that people will want to charge at night and thus require more grid storage as well as competing for battery materials), replacing industrial uses of energy, synthesizing e-fuels for aviation and other special applications, etc.
Nuclear as we know it faces two problems: (1) the steam turbine and heat exchangers of the LWR are enormous such that an LWR would have a hard time competing even if the heat was free, (2) every country other than Russia has built LWRs sporadically and faced terrible project management problems; China is catching up with Russia with their Hualong One (4 completed in the past 2 years, 12 under construction now.) Long term the industry has to get rid of the water to get the temperature up so the powerset can be made more economical and you can use the heat for industrial applications such as thermochemical hydrogen, with the big plus that a reactor without a moderator can get roughly 50x the energy out of a pound of natural uranium than LWR.