Nuclear is absolutely necessary to complete the clean energy transition, but is it really an either-or with solar and wind? We need massive amounts of clean electricity to displace fossil energy sources, not just to power the grid but also to synthesize all the chemical feedstocks that currently come from oil. The skills and resources needed to build out nuclear capacity and solar/wind capacity are quite different and needn't compete with each other.
> is it really an either-or with solar and wind? We need massive amounts of clean electricity
No. This is a false dichtomy pushed, from what I can tell, by the gas lobby. It's solar and wind + nukes or gas.
Batteries work in theory but not in practice: production doesn't scale fast enough, and that was before LLMs brought a new and growing source of power demand to the table. (I'm ignoring that grid batteries compete with transport electrification. A combination of economies of scale and common bottlenecks in construction of battery plants, irrespective of chemistry, links the pursuits.)
Batteries are radically transforming California's power grid.
In the last few years, they have displaced a huge chunk of the natural gas power used in early evenings after sunset when solar drops off but demand is still high.
Why doesn't battery production scale fast enough? Be specific on what limits it.
I firmly believe battery production can scale up very fast. Indeed, that's exactly what's been happening.
Realize that to replace all the motor vehicles in the US with BEVs would need enough batteries to store at least 40 hours of the average US grid output. This is almost certainly much more than would be needed for the grid itself.
I'm not sure that grid batteries should compete with transport electrification. One reason I haven't moved yet on batteries for the home is that I'm still interested to see what alternatives to lithium emerge. It seems to me that transport prioritises size and weight, whereas home and grid might take a hit on those measurements to maximise efficiency, durability, etc
> not sure that grid batteries should compete with transport electrification
The bottlenecks are in processing materials, forming anodes and cathodes and packaging them into cells. Processes preserved across most chemistries. There is a reason the guys who built Li-on plants are pretty good at building LFP plants, and why the guys building LFPs are making announcements about sodium.
Why can't processing be ramped up arbitrarily? There's no compelling limit on how many factories can be built.
This is the glory of industry: if the process is profitable, you can stamp out factories and generate ever larger profits, up to the point the market is saturated.
> One reason I haven't moved yet on batteries for the home is that I'm still interested to see what alternatives to lithium emerge
You could also buy a medium-sized lithium package now and already help with the transition, if you have the means, and then buy a full pack once the new hype tech becomes production-ready in 30 years (perhaps sooner but, with current warming, that's not something I'd wait on)
Nuclear is absolutely not necessary to complete the clean energy transition. It's dubious that new construction nuclear power plants are even useful for it, compared to alternatives.
No one has said it’s either-or. In fact the thread you responded specifically mentions how nuclear needs to be there as a “bad weather backup” of other clean energy sources.
Lots of people say either or. When nuclear comes up, someone will claim we should just go all in on solar, wind and batteries. That's unworkable, so we wind up burning gas.
I rarely, if ever, read pro-nuclear saying that they aim to replace oil, coal and gas. It's always "wind and solar is unreliable" (not intermitent).
Even in this thread someone is saying that the problem with solar is that "if a megavolcano darkens the atmosphere... thus we should go all in to nuclear", as if it was a guaranteed event in the next 100 years.
>I rarely, if ever, read pro-nuclear saying that they aim to replace oil, coal and gas.
It is almost always implied. It seems so obvious that nuclear should be replacing fossil fuels it doesn't seem worth mentioning. Unless someone says they're aiming for an energy policy of nuclear plus fossil fuels, it's probably safe to say their goal is nuclear and solar/wind/etc.
Even the volcano comment you mention ends with "For energy we obviously need all the options available."
I can't deduce "implied" when the comments are very, very explicit against solar and wind, not a single word about gas. But somehow I have to read between the lines that they actually meant to criticise fossils.
> rarely, if ever, read pro-nuclear saying that they aim to replace oil, coal and gas. It's always "wind and solar is unreliable"
People picked tribes and decided it's all or nothing. I agree--that's stupid. There is a historical alignment between renewables backers and anti-nuke activists (see: Germany) that caused nuclear to polarise away from renewables. That doesn't really exist anymore. But you see its artefacts in the debate.
It sounds like they're talking about the difference between baseload power and intermittent power. Replacing fossil fuel baseload power plants can be done now. Replacing them with variable renewable energy sources would require some sort of breakthrough in energy storage technology.
> Replacing them with variable renewable energy sources would require some sort of breakthrough in energy storage technology
No, it wouldn't. Batteries + renewables is proven and it works. The problem isn't a technological barrier. The problem is we need batteries for a lot of things and production can't ramp up fast enough.
It’s not ideal to have solar/wind and nuclear though. Nuclear doesn’t throttle well (or at least, economically). And Even building gas peak plants to cover still cloudy days is an order of magnitude lower in capital cost and risk than nuclear. The problem is we don’t have a coordinated enough system to properly reward mostly- turned off gas peak plant owners.
I meant “no one is saying that on this thread” of course. A lot of people talk about the conflict between Palestine and Israel too but we don’t bring it here because we are talking about something else.
Whatever your plan for a nuclear grid without burning fossil gas is (massive overprovision, syngas production, batteries, demand response, just ignoring the issue) it'll work better and cheaper with renewables.
> Nuclear is absolutely necessary to complete the clean energy transition, but is it really an either-or with solar and wind?
For energy we obviously need all the options available.
If a major volcano goes off up and darkens the sky with clouds and high winds make wind farms unsafe to operate, then nuclear is probably our only reliable power source left. It's not like there weren't multiple ice ages and warming events in the history of our planet.
There is a reason sailboats were obsoleted by the steam engine: it could tug forward in windless waters and stll make it fast enough to deliver the mail. The base load power station is the steam engine. The sailboat is the wind turbine or the PV array. Most of them need a gas fired power plant to compensate for windless or cloudy days, like newer sailboats need an engine. We could use a load following SMR in place of the gas fired plant.
They're mostly used for recreational sailing or racing and are also equipped with an engine (diesel or electric sail drive) for maneuvers and in case there's no wind. Sailing has also advanced a lot since the nineternth century, but commercial shipping is now done with bunker oil and diesel engines and was previously done with steamers.
