We were unable to build more nuclear power twenty years ago for the same reason we can't do it now, and it's never too late: it's only against someone's interests
If nuclear were our only option, we would have to go for it. But we now have better, cheaper, faster, more economically efficient carbon free energy sources.
We can do 90% renewable energy, and even 100%, with storage and curtailment. How much we need of each is simply a cost trade off. If we could build nuclear now for less than $100/MWh, it may have a place in this cost optimization problem, but we can't, so it doesn't have a place until nuclear technology catches up to the 21st century.
Who ever claimed that?
>...We can do 90% renewable energy, and even 100%, with storage and curtailment.
That would not be very difficult with current technology. Trying to rely only on intermittent power sources has huge storage requirements due to weather along with daily/seasonal variation. If grid energy storage was a simple problem it would have been done decades ago.
For example, one estimate is that for Germany to rely on solar and wind would require about 6,000 pumped storage plants which is literally 183 times their current capacity:
>...Based on German hourly feed-in and consumption data for electric power, this paper studies the storage and buffering needs resulting from the volatility of wind and solar energy. It shows that joint buffers for wind and solar energy require less storage capacity than would be necessary to buffer wind or solar energy alone. The storage requirement of over 6,000 pumped storage plants, which is 183 times Germany’s current capacity, would nevertheless be huge.
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/144985/1/cesifo1_wp5...
Claims that renewables cannot handle things typically make the stupid assumption that long term variations in demand/supply are to be covered with batteries.
The reason it is super expensive is because these are gigantic civil engineering projects, not only because they are nuclear.
And the reason for that is that we are still building PWR that are 1960s technology.
A modern nuclear reactor should be much, much, much smaller and thus far cheaper and less risky to build
This the core reactor of a Stable Salt Reactor compared to an AP1000 (modern PWR).
https://niklauszbinden.ch/images/nuclearsize.png
> If nuclear were our only option, we would have to go for it. But we now have better, cheaper, faster, more economically efficient carbon free energy sources.
Based on first principle analysis nuclear fuel is basically free, and the actual materials contained in a nuclear reactor is very small and cheap compared to wind or solar of equal power output.
Old style reactors are "suuuuuuuper expensive", but several modern designs may be much less expensive. Older designs were inherently unstable and needed many layers of safety systems to "guarantee" safety. This of course also needed many layers of regulation and validation to make sure it would actually work. The rest of your concerns about completing builds hinge on these same factors.
A modern design that is inherently stable and safe should require a much simpler overall system design. We just have to have the courage to let go of our preconceived ideas about nuclear and allow decisions to be driven by data rather than emotion. Time will tell if we can do that.
We have tried, and we have failed to make it affordable. And I think that it's unlikely that it will ever be affordable, because no matter how advanced the nuclear side of it is, it's still going to be used to boil water and drive a steam turbine for the business end of making electricity.
The thing about renewables and storage is that they cut our the Carnot cycle. All those steam turbines have been super optimized over the past centuries, and our materials science isn't making that process any cheaper any more.
Renewables and storage cut out that thermal process, and therefor have the ability to severely undercut the costs of all thermal process electricity generation. And from the way that cost curves are still falling like a rock, it really looks like they will be cheaper than just the thermal turbines and cooling systems that are required for thermal electricity generation. Which means that no matter how cheap and affordable nuclear becomes (lets say it's absolutely free), the 20th century tech of using steam to make electricity will be too expensive to compete with renewables and storage.
There are very few areas that won't be serviceable by some mixture of renewables, and those that aren't will liked be serviceable by fuels that are generated from renewables (hydrogen, methanol, methane, whatever ends up having the best properties.)
> We just have to have the courage to let go of our preconceived ideas about nuclear and allow decisions to be driven by data rather than emotion. Time will tell if we can do that.
It's funny, because I 100% agree with the words in the sentence, but in the sense that nuclear is only advocated for because of emotional, tribal, and political connections to it (not necessarily all at the same time). When looking at our current technological capabilities, and construction abilities, nuclear is just not a very desirable technology due to its high degree of complexity. It requires high levels of skills that we no longer are very good at: managing extremely complex construction and physical design of large structures, extremely skilled welding, concrete pours, etc. Stuff that we were good at in the 20th century, but no longer.
But we all grew up with the idea that nuclear was the "next" technology on a hierarchy of progression. And then we'd have fusion. And then space travel likely powered by fusion. But when reevaluating that "hierarchy" with actual technological development, I think that the futurists is the past got it wrong, and that all the sci-fi and video games we grew up on missed this one particular aspect of which technologies would win out.
However, while nuclear power is super expensive, it doesn't have to be that way. The problem is that nuclear power costs are not linear with the output. If the only thing you build is 1GW reactors, they will essentially all be one-of-a-kind. They will all run into production issues, the construction will happen so rarely that you won't build an experienced workforce, you will never enter a virtuous cycle to allow for ever decreasing costs.
Contrast that with the naval nuclear reactors. They are being built in New York State [2], at a pace of about 2 per year, using a very static design. The whole thing is so uneventful that most people in New York State are not even aware of that. Each of these reactors produces 210 MW [3]. The cost is classified, but it appears to be of the order of $100MM [4].
So, how can you enter the virtuous cycle? By reducing scale. And this is exactly what this project is about. I for one am rooting for it.
[1] https://www.seia.org/state-solar-policy/california-solar
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knolls_Atomic_Power_Laboratory
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S9G_reactor
[4] https://mragheb.com/NPRE%20402%20ME%20405%20Nuclear%20Power%...
As for naval reactors in particular, that's the first analysis that I have ever seen that puts them at such a low cost, so that's very valuable info, thank! Most of the time people say that nuclear reactors are far more expensive than civilian reactors, but I've never seen numbers out to it. (I'm not a nuclear expert, but try to listen to as many as I can, and naval reactors are most often referred to as super expensive). The other challenges with the naval design is that it uses highly enriched uranium which is 1) extremely expensive, and 2) not likely to ever be in civilian hands. I think that the highly enriched fuel also shifts some of the cost from construction to fuel costs, in that the higher energy density has benefits. Also, I think that the cooling system could potentially be far cheaper for these systems, as they are sitting in coolant, and don't need to worry about overheating local ecosystems. The high cost of modernizing the cooling system for Diablo Canyon is what stopped its owner from pursuing a license extension.
"CBO estimated that the acquisition-cost premium for a nuclear ship would be about $1.1 billion per destroyer, $0.8 billion per LSD(X), and $0.9 billion per LH(X)".
In particular for the last class LH(X) (helicopter carriers, similar to the Wasp class), the reactors would be two A1B used in the Gerald Ford class of aircraft carriers, which generate about 700 MW.
[1] https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/112th-congress-2011-...
It's peculiar how similar a sentiment the pro-nuclear crowd expresses. I wonder whether there's an overlap in patterns of thought between the communities.
It is possible we need to emerge into a lower power intensity world.
A steady buildup of renewables is much more likely to be sustainable politically than a crash program of building nuclear that costs a fortune today and only shows its benefits in more than a decade.
Baseload power is still needed, just as before, but the new source replacing nuclear seems to be gas. This means, unfortunately, that the current trend prioritizing wind and solar power will mean a larger net carbon footprint when we need to reduce it. This is really bad for the future.