- Multiple hypothetical approaches to reduce nuclear costs are ongoing. No one knows for sure if any of them will work, or which one will work best
And it didn't address the time scale issue at all.
OTOH, solar power has a 5 decade history of 90% cost reductions per decade.
> And it didn't address the time scale issue at all.
The time scale issue is directly related to the cost issue. Costs are so high not due to material costs, but because of the engineering and construction overheads. Standardize the designs, streamline the approval processes and both construction time & costs will decrease.
And to your solar point, until there's a viable way to store the energy that solar produces it's not a solution on its own regardless of how cheap it is. Same goes for any renewable that doesn't have the on-demand characteristic of nuclear.
To be clear: I'm not saying to not use solar. I'm saying to build solar, wind, nuclear, AND whatever else. I honestly don't really care how expensive any of them are anymore because the costs of not stopping carbon emissions will be far higher than the cost of building these renewable/nuclear generating stations.
Reactor designs in China and France are standardised. There are suitability requirements towards the site ofcourse, that is normal
> Extreme heat in Arizona, earthquakes in California, flooding in Florida.
Earthquakes happen everywhere to varying degrees and flooding typically doesn't happen with some warning. I'm not sure about extreme heat being a large problem? If it is, then don't build there. Build elsewhere and then build powerlines to get the power where it's needed. Sure, different areas involve different threats, but you can make a set of designs that work in different areas instead of doing bespoke designs for every one.
> There is no economics of scale when building nuclear plants.
There is to a certain degree. Consider the Vogtle 3 & 4 project. It was hugely over budget in costs and time. Westinghouse went bankrupt during its construction. One (of many) reasons for this was the lack of nuclear construction knowledge left in the US because we stopped building reactors. There are other pending nuclear projects that will now benefit from the knowledge and experience that was re-learned from the Vogtle project. Having an active industry most certainly does bring some economies of scale to life.
The only hope here is that Magnesium-based batteries will become a thing.
EDIT: OK, it seems that I mistook the "mineable lithium deposits" number for the whole lithium available :)
Anyway, unless there is a major technological breakthrough we are looking at few decades of lithium shortages. I expect countries to actually fight wars over lithium they way the US used to fight over oil. So, in the end, building nuclear plants seems more reasonable than building solar and then praying for cheaper batteries.
Lithium is roughly 0.002–0.006 wt% of the earths crust (concentrated in brines to much higher levels of course).
It's no Iron (5% of the earths crust), but it is widely prevalent, and at #33ish most common elements on Earth, it's more about proving reserves of what used to be a niche material, than ACTUAL rarity. Nickel, Zinc, Copper are #23, 24 and #25 for instance, and lead is #36.
We have no shortage of Lead, but mostly because it is a byproduct of Silver mining. It's typical for lead to go for $1/lb.