Hardloper wrote:
Fat hurts wrote:
Among my liberal activist friends, we are split on the matter.
Some think nuclear needs to be dead and buried because we don't have a solution for nuclear waste.
Others, like me, are more practical and say that nuclear needs to keep going until we can build out solar, wind, and batteries.
But it really doesn't matter because the economics of nuclear mean that new facilities won't get built and old ones will eventually be retired.
New ones *are* being built. And you accept that renewables will get cheaper, but ignore the fact that nuclear will also get cheaper, especially if we pursue it. Like anything the cost goes down with scale.
Furthermore, analyses that "prove" renewables are cheaper usually only look at $ per kWh and leave out the cost of the necessary storage and transportation which is expensive and relies on a lot of improvement in battery technology.
I would love for nuclear to get cheaper and safer but we are a long way from that if ever. It deserves research dollars but it's not a solution we can count on any time soon.
No new coal or nuclear plants are on the drawing board in the US. There is one nuclear plant under construction in Georgia that may or may not be completed.
I'm not leaving out the cost of batteries or any other cost. Overall, wind,solar, and battery (WSB) solutions are cheaper than nuclear, gas, and coal in most of the US.
WSB systems are expected to continue their rapid cost decline. That's the part that many studies leave out.
Over the next 10 years we can replace all generating capacity with WSB. It will be far cheaper and result in 4 times the total generating capacity. In other words, on sunny or windy days we will have lots and lots of excess power to do things like water desalinization and direct carbon capture.
So you get more power for a cheaper price. Once the infrastructure is in place, electricity cost becomes so cheap you don't even need to meter it any more. Electricity becomes essentially free. Private homes would not even get an electricity bill, but maybe you would pay a small flat fee for maintenance of the grid.
All this can be done for less than 1% of GDP.