. . . Renewables have their own hard-to-measure and controversial costs. Some concerns are ecological. And for intermittent power to be effective, big advances in battery technology are desired. (And the "Let's Go Brandon" ilk is worried about humans getting "mad cow" disease from wind turbines, or such.)
What I am suggesting is that the pros and cons of both paths be carefully assessed, and expected costs quantified, so that the choice becomes a hard-nosed cold-blooded calculation.
Great.
It’s a seventy year old technology. When are you planning to start, and do those of us who already did that, really need to wait while you catch up?
. . .
Wind and solar are only viable if supported by either fossil gas, or high-grade handwavium.
I am not sure things are as clear-cut as you imply. Nuclear power advocates seem happy to assume the benefits of advanced breeder reactors while defending lower-cost burner reactors
.
You misunderstand me. The future improvements are a ‘nice to have’ possible further improvement. The current technology is vastly superior to any current alternative.
Yet IIUC the widely-touted breeder reactors are not in wide-spread use. (
Bill Gates has a plan for future nuclear reactors: How is that doing?)
The difference is that these newer technologies have been demonstrated at small scale, but not yet scaled up for political reasons; Whereas the anticipated storage technologies have not even been demonstrated, and in many cases their claimed benefits are contrary to what we know about fundamental physics and chemistry.
And advances are an essential to get decent percentages of power demand from wind or solar, while current nuclear technology can achieve this (and does in France, Sweden, and Ontario, for example). As I said above, these are ‘nice to have’, not ‘must have’ technologies.
You seem eager to wave your hands about the imminent arrival of improved reactor designs and even fusion power, while denying the possibility of improved storage, transmission, or other strategies to cope with intermittent power.
Again, you apparently misunderstand my position; Fusion power is a joke, and I refer to it in that vein. Since the 1950s, fusion research has been a few decades from bearing fruit,
and it always will be.
Your "When are you planning to start, and do those of us who already did that, really need to wait while you catch up?" struck me as almost snarky!
Oh, good. At least you got that one. “Almost snarky” was exactly the tone I was trying for.
I am not qualified to perform cost analyses, but I am aware of experts who insist that nuclear power is much more expensive than renewables. True? I have no idea, so you'll have to keep waiting for me to "catch up."
Well, it’s truthy. But not really true.
The cost of a kWh of solar power on a sunny afternoon, or of a kWh of wind power during a breezy morning is likely to be very much lower than the cost of a kWh of nuclear power.
But the cost of solar power at night, or wind power during a calm period, is vastly higher, while the cost of nuclear remains unchanged by weather, or over time. Because you need some method to store the power, or to transmit it over long distances; And because you need more installed capacity to charge your storage facilities, as well as the capacity to supply current demand.
And that additional storage and/or transmission cost is not fixed; The greater the percentage of total power you want to get from renewables, the higher that additional cost goes. Storage to cover nighttime lack of solar power is not adequate to cover both nighttime and then a cloudy day before your next night, and in that scenario, your installed capacity to recharge also goes up.
The cost of wind or solar power is therefore low, if (and only if) it is a small fraction (no more than around 20%) of power used. Getting the other 80%, that’s really expensive, and gets more so at an exponential rate.
Cost to achieve the objective of providing 95-100% of power without burning fossil fuels are very much in favour of nuclear power.
Renewables advocates usually compare the cost of installed capacity, but this is a big lie; A 1GW nuclear plant generates roughly 950MW of electricity over a year, while 1GW of wind turbines will only generate around 300MW, and 1GW od solar panels around 200MW at the absolute best sites for those technologies. If wind turbines cost half as much as nuclear plants per installed GW, then nuclear plants are therefore a cheaper source of power.
And that’s before we get to the massive regulatory burden that is placed only on nuclear power. If the wind and solar industries were required to be as safe as the nuclear industry, than the cost of that level of safety would be absolutely crippling to those technologies. That nuclear power remains cost effective despite this level of regulation is truly impressive.
The cost of running an existing nuclear power plant is tiny. So tiny that up to two thirds of that cost is regulatory compliance. That is, for every dollar spent on uranium assemblies, or the wages of the reactor operators, one or two additional dollars must be spent on paperwork for the NRC. And even so, nuclear plants are competitive with other generating technologies that have FAR lower burdens.
In your opinion, I should apparently reject all opinions of lesser experts and listen only to bilby.
Well, everyone who thinks himself an expert on any subject holds that opinion
But no, you should reject opinions that fly in the face of physical or chemical reality, that ignore the laws of thermodynamics, or that try to hoodwink you by treating installed capacity as though it were able to be supplied 24x7x365.
I find it laughable to heed an "expert" who seems to think that one billion humans would produce as much CO2 as eight billion humans. With opinions as ludicrous as that, I call into question everything you write.
That’s not a position I have claimed.
I have said that one billion humans will produce as much CO
2 ceteris paribus as eight billion,
given eight times as long, and that therefore such drastic population reduction would simply kick the climate change can down the road - if the current population faces disaster in 25 years, the lower one would face the same disaster in 200 years, unless they stop burning fossil fuel. And if we can power civilisation without burning fossil fuel, then the population reduction becomes needless.
All arguments for anything can be made to seem ridiculous if you strip away the nuances, to leave only the straw.
