
Study: Cheap gas, not renewables, caused nuclear woes (2018) - throw0101a
https://www.utilitydive.com/news/mit-cheap-gas-not-renewables-caused-nuclear-woes/514310/
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acidburnNSA
Cheap gas is also the primary driver behind flattening carbon emissions in the
USA. As we switch from coal (820 gCO₂-eq/kWh) to fracked gas (490 gCO₂-
eq/kWh), our carbon emissions could fall by a lot.

But gas is a a climate wolf in climate sheep's clothing. The end destination
(490) is wholly incompatible with all the IPCC low-carbon scenarios that
actually mitigate climate change. So we're kind of lulled into a false sense
of success as we shut down vast quantities of coal (yay) but also actually low
carbon nuclear (11 gCO₂-eq/kWh) (boo) and replace it directly with gas.

(And I do mean directly. When Indian Point shut down in NY earlier this year,
NY subtracted 1016.1 MW of low-carbon nuclear capacity and added 1016.1 MW of
high-carbon fossil gas [1]!)

We need carbon pricing so we actually add market value to things that are
actually low carbon. Shutting down nuclear to replace with gas is so
backwards.

[1] See "capacity of electric power plants" spreadsheet from here:
[https://www.eia.gov/electricity/data.php](https://www.eia.gov/electricity/data.php)

~~~
throw0101a
> _Shutting down nuclear to replace with gas is so backwards._

As a now-deleted comment observed, gas wells often mean methane methane leaks
as well. Methane is 84x worse than CO2 for global warming:

* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_potential](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_potential)

There's a growing move towards new (HFO-1234yf [1]) refrigerants (for AC/HVAC)
because a lot of the current ones (R-134a, Freon [2]) aren't good for climate
change. We went to the current ones to fix the problem of the old ones (R-12
[3]) with the o-zone layer.

* [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2,3,3,3-Tetrafluoropropene](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2,3,3,3-Tetrafluoropropene)

* [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1,1,1,2-Tetrafluoroethane](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1,1,1,2-Tetrafluoroethane)

* [3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dichlorodifluoromethane](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dichlorodifluoromethane)

~~~
mrfusion
But methane is also short lived in the atmosphere. I worry battling methane
and co2 at the same time is dividing the efforts.

~~~
aaaxyz
The shorter lifetime is taken into account when measuring its global warming
potential in CO2 equivalent. In absolute terms, atmospheric methane is
responsible for about half as much radiative forcing as CO2, so it's is
crucial to battle methane emissions just as much.

------
mtooth
When I saw the Greenland study on HN[1] last night, all I could think is how
much more worse does it have to get before we refocus on building fission
plants and doubling-down on fusion research investment?

Unfortunately the economics of natural gas make it a steep hill to climb even
if the politics and public sentiment changed on nuclear. To me, fission really
seems like the only rational solution to the climate crisis that we can
implement starting tomorrow.

We probably do need either carbon taxes or heavy fission plant construction
subsidies (easier to implement than carbon tax and most of the negative
economic incentive is the capital-intensive upfront costs - nuclear is
significantly cheaper than gas at the 35-40 year plant life mark).

1:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24165395](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24165395)

~~~
User23
This isn’t the first time Greenland’s glaciers have receded. The name is a bit
of a clue after all about its condition when the Vikings named it.

Edit: Covered in a reply, but for those who don't read it please understand I
was referring to the Medieval Warm Period[1].

[1[
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Warm_Period](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Warm_Period)

~~~
throw0101a
Greenland's name was partly marketing:

> _After finding a habitable area and settling there, he named it Grœnland
> (translated as "Greenland"), supposedly in the hope that the pleasant name
> would attract settlers.[20][21][22] The Saga of Erik the Red states: "In the
> summer, Erik left to settle in the country he had found, which he called
> Greenland, as he said people would be attracted there if it had a favorable
> name."[23]_

* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenland#Etymology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenland#Etymology)

~~~
User23
I can't dispute whether or not Erik engaged in marketing, but I wouldn't be
surprised if he did. However his voyage was well into the start of the
Medieval Warm Period[1], so I'll stand by my claim that there was less
glaciation when he named the place.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Warm_Period](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Warm_Period)

------
WarOnPrivacy
Could someone who is more R-Wing than I am, please explain why you have an
unshakable preference for fossil fuels?

We are zeroing in on free energy from renewables, so it isn't economics - not
any longer. With that past us, why do folks on the right even care where we
get our energy from?

If the argument is jobs - well, that's a weak argument because the only job
fields that either party cares about are those that can be leveraged for
politics.

If the jobs argument includes thwarting disruptive technologies to prop up
legacy industries - well, that doesn't sound very Keynesian to me.

Even so, I'll accept the jobs argument. I would love to see Appalachian coal
regions become a mecca for renewable manufacturing. I'd love to see N.Dakota
oil workers own massive energy generating coops (or whatever someone who
actually groks energy comes up with). I'd be happy to see my tax dollars fund
the heck out that. So whatever your jobs[1] complaint is, assume I accept it
and agree to subsidize worthwhile substitutes.

Once jobs and economics is off the table, why are you still attached to fossil
fuels?

[1] Shareholding isn't a job.

~~~
the_economist
Renewables don't provide constant power without city-scale energy storage,
which doesn't exist (yet) at any reasonable price point. Solar for example
won't provide power after sunset or on cloudy days.

Because you can't rely on renewables to provide power throughout every
day/year, you need to have natural gas/coal/nuclear available. Those have very
high fixed costs (other than natural gas), but very low marginal costs, so
once you have built them it is cheaper to just use them than to build
additional renewable power infrastructure.

~~~
screye
That is exactly nuclear energy comes in. It is impossible to actually run a
grid off a renewable (esp. Solar) energy power-plant in any stable manner.

Nuclear energy serves the purpose of acting as the filler for the delta
between the peak and trough.

~~~
fuoqi
>Nuclear energy serves the purpose of acting as the filler for the delta
between the peak and trough.

No. Just. No.

It's incredibly stupid and inefficient to use nuclear as a peak power plant.
Due to the huge CAPEX reasonable power system should use nuclear for base load
and maximize capacity factor as much as possible.

Yes, there are experiments on maneuvering nuclear plants, but: a) usually
maneuvering range is relatively small (60-80% from max output) b) latency is
still too big when compared to gas plants and hydroelectric storage. There are
some micro-nuclear plant designs, which would be more flexible and more
suitable for this scenario, but they are mostly just paper reactors.

~~~
Ruthalas
I'm pretty sure your parent comment was suggesting the opposite of what you
understood them to be suggesting.

I believe they meant the delta time between peaks, rather than the delta power
between baseline and peak.

------
sremani
If California invested a quarter of it renewable investments into nuclear,
there would not be rolling blackouts today.

~~~
acidburnNSA
We have a bunch of full-scale 24/7 low-carbon success stories (France,
Ontario, Finland, Sweden) that rely heavily on nuclear. It's abundantly clear
that nuclear is a climate champion when comparing live carbon emissions data
on this map [1]. Compare Germany (who is phasing out nuclear) to nuclear-
dominant France.

[1] [https://www.electricitymap.org/map](https://www.electricitymap.org/map)

And before anyone says nuclear is too expensive, know that nuclear costs today
are about on par with all other future low-carbon grid proposals. While wind
and solar _generators_ are dirt cheap, adding the extra transmissions lines,
vast energy storage, smart grids, etc. adds $40-$60/MWh when done at levels
that actually decarbonize, which makes nuclear already competitive.

Right now the dirt cheap renewables are riding on the back of a natural gas
powered grid that can handle their intermittency, (except sometimes in
California).

~~~
pedrocr
All you said is true, but I wouldn't still bet against the renewables because
we're probably very early in the cost-curve of storage still. In the last 10
years lithium batteries have become 10x cheaper for example. Nuclear was by
far our best technical option for the last 20 years. I'm not so sure about the
next 20 though.

I ran the math this week on powering the house off-grid with solar and
batteries. We even have a stream going through the property that could easily
power all our needs throughout the year. The solar install is just so much
simpler and lower maintenance though. With current available batteries going
100% solar already has a positive return on ~12k€ total investment. But it
still makes more sense to only do a 1 to 3k€ investment in solar with no
batteries, even giving away the rest of the power to the power company as we
have no net-meetering. If we had net-meetering for the next 5 years it would
boost the solar installs while the batteries keep going down in price. Within
10 years we can cover all the rooftops with solar. And with the distributed
generation and storage we'd probably need less of a grid than we have now, not
more.

~~~
hairytrog
The battery/solar/storage costs are near material costs already. And the
material costs are artificially low. If you wanted to scale up production to
match demand, prices will have to increase so that mines can extract worse
ores in harder to reach places.

~~~
pedrocr
From what I've seen there's enough known advancements coming to make the cost
of the type of lithium battery I'd need to at least half of what it is right
now. There's also the growing market for second-lives of EV batteries. So I
expect to turn the house effectively off-grid within 5 years, keeping the
traditional grid as backup and occasional filler. In rural areas with crappy
power that's an improvement over the existing grid. Even today if I valued the
insurance against power cuts enough to buy a generator just doing the battery
install today would make sense instead. From what I've read lithium itself is
plentiful, it's the other stuff that goes into batteries, and is actively
being engineered out, that's a problem, like cobalt. So I wouldn't bet for a
rise in the price of the needed raw materials, but insight into the cost
curves of mining would be cool to see.

~~~
erentz
I think the point he is making is that battery metals as a commodity have been
unusually cheap. As have a lot of commodities for a while now. Commodity
prices are expected by many to go up as demand increases. It’s why people are
investing in companies that mine battery metals. As that happens the input
costs of batteries will increase and given how massive the component of
batteries is in the wind/solar green grid scenario that could change the
economics considerably.

FWIW uranium is also expected by many to undergo a big surge in price in the
next few years with refueling contracts coming due in the US and the growth of
nuclear overseas. But the fuel costs for a nuclear plant are a much smaller
component compared to other sources, and I am guessing also compared to the
battery metals component of the alternate solar/wind/battery/new grid system.

~~~
pedrocr
Yes, and I replied to that. The used materials are changing. The hard ones for
lithium chemistries are being replaced and there are more storage technologies
than lithium. Given all the ways to improve/grow both mining and the
chemistries of batteries and new storage technologies I wouldn't bet against
the reduction of cost of storing electrical energy as demand increases.

------
User23
There’s no energy source that doesn’t have serious environmental trade-offs,
with the possible exception of geothermal. Hydro destroys river habitats, wind
kills birds especially raptors at an absurd rate, solar only works for a
couple decades and leaves you with nasty waste, hydrocarbons release CO2 and
nastier things besides, and nuclear’s environmental drawbacks are well known.

So unless we want to advocate for a mass human die off such that our energy
needs have no appreciable footprint, we need to recognize that there will be
serious trade-offs and deal with it.

~~~
andrewl
I don't know how scalable it is, but isn't concentrated solar power fairly
environmentally benign? That system uses mirrors and lenses to boil water and
generate steam. The steam drives turbines attached to generators.

There are certainly _some_ environmental effects, as described at:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentrated_solar_power#Envir...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentrated_solar_power#Environmental_effects)

But the basic model seems cleaner to me.

~~~
loeg
Multiple problems:

\- High land use (low energy density). This has both economic and ecological
cost/impact. It might be ok in the SW US, but likely unacceptable elsewhere.

\- Becomes less effective the further you get from the equator.

\- Energy storage is a problem at night time, and also cloudy days.

------
ghouse
Cheap gas is also the primary contributors to coal's woes.

------
jokoon
Each time I listen to climate change scientists and consultants who talk about
the numbers, I clearly see how people will die because of it, but it's crazy
how powerless I feel about it.

It seems the only good to go about it is to educate people so that they can
understand why their standard of living will be forcefully taken from them so
that their children can live better lives.

Climate change is the worst punishment caused by individualism, even worse
than inequality. I'm still staying optimistic, but in the end I think that
carbon reductions will reduce the average standard of living of all humans on
earth, and that's the most worrying fact, in my view.

~~~
dantheman
How is climate change caused by individualism?

------
jillesvangurp
More accurately, the high price of nuclear, is causing its woes. Everything
else is simply cheaper. It's simple economics. Nuclear just is too darn
expensive. There are a lot of other arguments but $ per kwh it just does not
add up for nuclear.

~~~
lightgreen
Nuclear is expensive because:

* we don’t build them at scale (takes too long to build one, require much engineering efforts to build each, complex permits to build each etc)

* opposition from locals/governments increase delays/risks and thus capital cost

* its cheaper to train/hire engineers/maintenance workers/construction workers when reactors are the same

Nuclear will be much cheaper when we start building many of them.

Cannot find the source now, I recall S Korea built each next power plant
faster than the previous.

~~~
guerby
According to:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_South_Korea](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_South_Korea)

The three last nuclear reactors have taken up to double the time of the
previous ones between construction start and producing power. The last one
took ten years, instead of mostly 5 years for the previous ones.

~~~
boomboomsubban
They are also the first power plants of a new design, resetting at least some
of the previous optimizations.

