Days before President Donald Trump returned to the Oval Office and took actions to stall the transition to clean energy, a disaster unfolded on the other side of the country that may have an outsize effect on the pace of the transition.
A fire broke out last Thursday at the Moss Landing Energy Storage Facility in California, one of the largest battery energy storage systems in the world. The fire raged through the weekend, forcing local officials to evacuate nearby homes and close roads.
Battery storage is an essential part of the transition away from fossil fuels. It works in tandem with solar and wind power to provide electricity during periods when the renewable resources aren’t available. But lithium-ion batteries, the most common technology used in storage systems, are flammable. And if they catch fire, it can be difficult to extinguish.
Last week’s fire is the latest and largest of several at the Moss Landing site in recent years, and I expect that it will become the main example opponents of carbon-free electricity use to try to stop battery development in other places.
that’s just nonsense.
France auditors recently put out a report in which they criticized the high cost of their nuclear program and requested a moratorium for new projects in other countries.
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/france-far-ready-build-six-new-nuclear-reactors-auditor-says-2025-01-14/
well yes at 70% of its energy supply, France probably has too much nuclear now that renewables are cheaper. They are a massive outlier in that regard. This is not about making nuclear the one single energy source everywhere, but to provide a baseline load for stability and to reduce grid infrastructure upgrades like storage and new connections to distributed solar and wind farms. The article also says they hope to export their nuclear expertise to countries who are interested in nuclear, so they clearly do believe in the technology.
But the issue is, it’s too expensive to build. And the small reactor startup project is also not producing power and seems to be built on hype
too expensive compared to what?
SMRs specifically are a new developing technology. I suppose it’s possible they are all hype, but with many big tech firms investing in them to power datacenters, I tend to think there’s a good chance they’ll work out in the end. China’s first SMR will be up and running soon, so I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what happens.
Renewables + Storage + Grid.
Yeah, I don’t think it’s good to sink so much money in this, we could build more renewables instead. But you’re right, we will see
again in France specifically I agree pivoting to more renewables makes sense because they already have an abundance of nuclear. But if we look at the earth as a whole, renewables don’t work everywhere, they take up a lot of space, and will require a TON of storage to provide reliable power during peak and off-peak usage. If you actually factor in all that grid storage and distributed infrastructure needed for renewables the overall cost difference to nuclear is not nearly as bad as the usual LCOE calculations make it seem since 100% of nuclear’s cost is baked in up front.
Where do renewables not work? I’d say they work at even more places, because you don’t need such a developed infrastructure to set it up. Everyone can wire up a small solar farm after a few hours of YouTube, i wouldn’t trust myself with reactor maintenance.
Nuclear also needs storage for peaks. You don’t want to have to build enough nuclear for peak production which then gets shut down all the time, driving up your LCOE. You want your expensive plant to run all the time. Also you need storage if you have an unplanned maintenance, because then you lose a relevant percentage of production with little to no warning.
And storage is getting cheaper and better every year. The bigger issue would be a grid that can shovel power from one end of a continent to the other in case of adverse weather.
We need less space for solar to power the world than we use for golf courses right now, so I’d say landuse is a non issue. Because you can use roofs and such even less.
the sun doesn’t shine and wind doesn’t blow consistently everywhere. especially in winter the farther you get from the equator.
of course, but even if we put solar on every rooftop in the world that won’t solve our energy demands.
I never said you should. from the beginning I said we need nuclear for the baseline which will help reduce the need for grid storage. yes, some grid storage will be needed.
so would nuclear if we actually did it and improved regulatory inefficiencies.
land use isn’t an issue in rural places, but it absolutely is in more densely populated places near cities and datacenter hubs. The world is not homogenous.
Of what I’ve read about French recent problematic projects, the high cost there was due to French bureaucracy, organizational mess and probably corruption, not due to anything about technology itself.
One should factor that in always. Building roads in Russia is so expensive definitely not because of anything unclear with the technology or the climate.
But the technology requires this amount of bureaucracy, else you get big problems. I trust physics, but i don’t trust humans. Especially if they can get money by skimping on security. The risks with renawables (except dams) are way smaller.
Solid rebuttal, good job 👍
I put as much effort into my rebuttal as you did in your initial comment. If you want an actual conversation, by all means begin any time you like.
I already did. New nuclear isn’t economically viable.
rebuttal: yes it is.
great conversation! feel free to add any context, reasoning, or citations to support your opinion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source#Capital_costs
lol this is such lazy bullshit. god forbid you actually have to type more than one sentence to explain your position.
yes, nuclear has a high startup cost, this is known. that does not automatically mean it’s not economically viable.
Read the rest of the article, focus on the LCOE section. I’m not here to hold your hand.
Alternatively, just admit you don’t know what you’re talking about and we’ll leave it there.
The main argument for nuclear is not its individual cost, neither for remewables. The main argument is that we need to rid ourselves of fossil fuels.
When planning for a future global energy system w/o fossil fuels, nuclear power has a key role to play as the most reliable source of clean, dispatchable electricity. This allows it to punch far above its equivalent capacity by massively reduce the need for expensive grid scale storage solutions.
Source 1: IEA (2019), Nuclear Power in a Clean Energy System, IEA, Paris https://www.iea.org/reports/nuclear-power-in-a-clean-energy-system, Licence: CC BY 4.0
Source 2: NEA (2019), The Costs of Decarbonisation: System Costs with High Shares of Nuclear and Renewables, OECD Publishing, Paris https://www.oecd-nea.org/jcms/pl_15000
this will be my last reply only to reply specifically to LCOE since you put so much effort into finally typing some kind of semblance of an actual argument. Yes, nuclear is expensive (partly because we haven’t been DOING it), we have already covered that. I assume the unstated premise you are operating on is that we can supply our entire energy needs with cheap renewable, but that is NOT the case, especially as we use more computing and electrified transportation in the future.
Renewable energy sources are all geographically limited. Solar and wind takes up a lot of space and are are highly variable, so they require lots of grid storage as stated already (did you factor grid storage into your cost analysis?). I’m not even arguing against them, by all means we should be using them as much as possible. But we need to be realistic about their limitations and true LCOE.
Also the cost of nuclear can be greatly reduced by directly replacing coal plants with them where all the grid connections already exist. You can’t do that with solar or wind.
So your entire premise that nuclear isn’t viable because renewables are cheaper is a non-sequitur. The choice isn’t between renewables or nuclear, the choice is between renewables and coal. In that context, nuclear is absolutely economically viable because we know coal is not.
I have read plenty and know what I’m talking about, but I’m not here to participate in lopsided conversations. I know a sea lion when I see one, and I look forward to your arrogant 5-word disrespectful reply.
edit since a citation was requested:
https://www.mackinac.org/blog/2022/nuclear-wasted-why-the-cost-of-nuclear-energy-is-misunderstood