148
A massive battery fire in California could cast a dark shadow on clean energy expansion
(www.fastcompany.com)
this post was submitted on 26 Jan 2025
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Technology
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it's a bit rich. "opponents of carbon-free electricity" are suddenly opposed to burning things huh?
anyway, there is actually a way to reduce our need for batteries AND fossil fuels. Nuclear.
Of course they're conveniently ignoring refineries catching fire or even gas station explosions. That seem to be regular events.
New nuclear is dead in the water, there’s just no economic argument for building it.
that's just nonsense.
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.
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
I stopped reading there.
Drop the attitude and provide sources to back up your claim like I did or quit wasting my time.
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
I really don’t get this. Nuclear isn’t dispatchable. It never was and never will be. You have to create heat from the fission reaction, use that to turn water into steam, and use the steam to drive turbines to generate electricity.
All of that takes time to ramp up which makes nuclear non-dispatchable. Compare it with a battery or pumped hydro where you can get power flowing anywhere from milliseconds to seconds.
Furthermore, nuclear is so expensive that it makes no economic sense to build new nuclear that would run as close to 24/7 as possible, let alone as a dispatchable source.
So this begs the question, did you already know this?
This statement is false.
Source: EnergyEducation.ca (Provided by the University of Calgary)
Either you don't know what you're talking about, or are actively deceptive. I sincerely hope it is the prior. As such, I suggest that you educate yourself on the topic before commenting further to avoid spreading disinformation.
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.
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.
No they are not. There is toxic waste, there are environmental risks, everything basically.
Especially hydroelectric energy is a very small version of the Dyson sphere by its impact on the ecosystems involved. Renewable, but sure as hell not green.
While nuclear energy uses, ahem, nuclear fuel, which is not very renewable, and nuclear waste needs some time to calm down, but it's very green.
Wind energy impacts birds.
Tide energy, well, impacts everything that functions well when it's not collected.
Anyway, one can just integrate stats of losses from nuclear energy and from the rest and see that they are not.
Yeah, not gonna write a big reply to this.
If your that strict, nothing is green. Its about minimizing the impact. And you forgot to mention the mining of uranium.
Please compare the impact to housecats, cars and agriculture.
Hydroelectric energy is worse than burning coal. It's not being strict, it's being adequate.
Housecats are a catastrophe, cars - not so much, agriculture - modern agriculture can have little impact for very good output.
We started with nuclear energy which is greener than solar panels and wind turbines. It still is.
[Citation required]
All are way bigger than windturbines. And the biggest is habit loss, which is mainly driven by agriculture.
If citations are required for my truisms, then citations are also required for your bullshit.
So - you start first, cause I'm lazy.
Modern intensive agriculture is better for this particular kind of damage than hydroelectric energy, wind turbines and solar panel farms.
Not using facts, but using logic:
Space where wind turbines work becomes dangerous (as in uninhabitable) for a lot of life, not just birds being killed or their migrations affected by disorientation, but also seeds carried by wind. Same with solar panels - plants need sunlight, animals need plants, soil needs plants. Same with hydroelectric energy - by changing whole watersheds it incurs such enormous damage to existing ecosystems that a Chernobyl or two every decade is better, and humans don't bother much about creating and maintaining new ones.
While with modern agriculture one may make a lot of things closed from the surrounding environment, occupying only space.
Yeah, you're lazy and wrong,
https://pure.iiasa.ac.at/id/eprint/6784/1/RR-03-05.pdf, Fig 8
True
You mean pulling stuff out of your ass?
Not true
Wtf?
Wtf???
Start bringing some sources
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.
Don't forget hydro, look at Norway, it's pretty far away from the equator but has almost 100% renewables. Island as well. There are suboptimal locations, but in the end there is no country which can't use renewables for all electricity needs.
All rooftops should be enough but parking lots and agrarsolar would be also solutions. So even if we only use solar (which we don't ) it should be possible.
Renewables create a base load, the problem are demand peaks following overcast days. And there npps don't help.
Maybe, but not fast enough. We need the power immediately and battery are already in the steep part of their growth phase. We can't spend several decades learning how to do it right. Then we could also just wait for fusion.
Then we use power lines like we do already. Most power plants right now are also not in cities, so I don't understand the argument. Would you also want to build the npps in/near cities?
everywhere that can use hydro already has. you can't just create new rivers to dam up, so that isn't an option to address our growing electricity needs.
yes I was mistaken about that, point acknowledged.
this is not uncontested, plenty of people disagree.
we have been saying this for decades and I guarantee you we will still be saying in in another decade. Also, renewables aren't fast to connect to the grid either. The more we spin up the bigger the backlog will be connecting new installations to the grid.
luckily we have a whole planet of people with various interests and expertise. Like it or not, there are going to be people working on nuclear, you can't just wave a wand and make them all work on solar or wind. it would be extremely short sighted to outright eliminate one potential clean source of energy when we are so far behind on the issue.
longer power lines means more efficiency losses, and the more you plan to roll out renewables to 100% the more inefficiencies there will be. as previously stated, connecting large brand new renewable installations to the grid is expensive and also takes a long time.
But you always have a combination of several renewable sources which can power these countries.
Yeah, i know. Time will tell.
Sorry but that is just not true. The growth of solar has almost been logarithmic and the installed capacity was almost non-existent two decades ago. That just doesn't compare to the snails pace of nuclear.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_of_photovoltaics
Also, it's not about people, but money. Every euro spent on some tech bro nuclear startup could be used to install real capacity instead.
Yeah, theoretically true, but what distances are we talking about? To get electricity from the suburbs in the city center should be trivial. It gets more difficult if we have to cross countries, but high voltage DC solves that issue pretty well. We could power europe from solar installed in the Sahara ^^