When I first read the titile, I thought that the US is going to have to build A LOT to triple global production. Then it occured to me that the author means the US is pledging to make deals and agreements which enable other countries to build their own. Sometimes I think the US thinks too much of itself and that’s also very much part of American branding.
Where are my renewable bros at? Tell me this is bad.
I’m a renewable bro. I wanna see as much money pumped into as much infrastructure for renewables as possible. I wanna see solar on every building. I wanna see off-shore wind and tidal energy production. I’m keenly following development of clean, efficient, and cost-effective energy storage technologies, and much is being done in this space to support a future switch to full renewable reliance.
That won’t change the fact that we need on-demand energy now and we need to stop using coal and gas as soon as possible. We currently don’t have energy storage at scale. We will, but we don’t. So in the meantime, nuclear is probably the best option to pursue for use over the next couple of decades while we continue to invest in, and implement, renewables.
I will have to strongly disagree here. The timelines are actually the main reason why I would disqualify Nuclear power as a solution to energy, even as a temporary one.
The time from inception to going online for a new Nuclear reactor is in the range of 15-25 years. Of course we could attempt to shorten that, but that would probably mean compromising on safety. So indeed, if we want to stop using fossil fuels asap, building solar, wind, and hydro, which come online in a matter of months (maybe years for hydro), is much faster.
Aggravating this are two further issues: Current Nuclear energy production is non-renewable, and supply problems are already known to occur at current energy production levels. Second, the global construction capacity is limited, probably to around current levels. Even if we do not push for faster construction times, the number of companies and indeed people who have the necessary expertise are already at full capacity, and again, expanding that would probably imply safety problems.
That is to say, currently running Nuclear power plants are save and clean, so by all means keep doing it until renewables take over. But expanding Nuclear power to solve the energy problem is a non-starter for me, due to the timeline and it being non-renewable. And that is before we start talking about the very real dangers of Nuclear power, which are not operational of course, but due to proliferation, war, and governmental or general societal instability (due to say, climate change).
Of course we could attempt to shorten that, but that would probably mean compromising on safety.
I think it’s less that it would mean compromising on safety and more that it would mean compromising on the appearance of safety because we’d have to stop letting the courts delay construction while they indulge everybody who tries to sue to stop it with meritless claims.
Also – and I say this as a Georgia Power ratepayer on the hook for the vast cost overruns for Plant Vogtle 3 and 4 – we would need to import foreign labor or something because here in the US we are demonstrably too incompetent and corrupt to do it properly ourselves.
The time from inception to going online for a new Nuclear reactor is in the range of 15-25 years.
In the US. In China, nuclear reactors go from first pour to operation in 5-6 years. Economies of scale apply.
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That is a very interesting report, thanks!
Reading through the summary and overview, they address exactly the problem that I’ve highlighted: how can we build more reactors faster and more economically, without compromising safety? Of course that means that this issue remains unresolved for now, underscoring my point.
They avoid discussing the other risks I’ve mentioned (stability, war, proliferation) and admit as much, which is fair enough, but I cannot find any comment regarding the availability of fissile material in the supply chain, which I would think is a rather crucial point.
What I take away from this report is that Nuclear power has a place in solving the climate crisis, if we:
- Implement a host of regulatory changes and new project management practices, and focus R&D to resolve the remaining problems
- Focus mainly on economic viability (which is a fair point, unfortunately), where Nuclear provides clear benefits if their assumptions hold (including thst point 1 is fully implemented)
- Disregard that fissile material is non-renwable and availability might be limited
- Disregard the immense risks of political instability and proliferation.
All in all, they conclude that sweeping changes are needed (which is always a risk) and disregard crucial present and known risks. Both these points are simply non-issues with solar, wind, and hydro-power.
Exactly. I’m 100% on board with both renewables and nuclear, but the time to build nuclear would seem to have passed. We’re a few decades too late.
That’s not too say we shouldn’t be building any new nuclear plants - in particular modern designs like SMRs, but I think it would be wiser to focus our energy now on large, grid-scale storage to help smooth out intermittent generation from renewables.
If “we” meaning society could “focus our energy” on anything except profit generation, we could build hundreds of nuclear reactors in less then a decade. We could also eliminate cars and domestic flights, and all kinds of other utopian shit. While you want to live in the status quo but with magic batteries. I’d rather “focus our energy” and live in the Star Trek post-scarcity universe.
It doesn’t take 25 years to get a nuclear plant off the ground because people are too busy sitting around counting their capitalism dollars to finish the construction. There are a tremendous number of things that need to happen in addition to planning, approving, building, and commissioning a nuclear facility. I’m fact, is those economic forces that make it happen as fast as possible, because investors want to see a return on their investment. Nuclear plants - and large power plants in general - are not a back deck. They are enormously complex, and given the sensitive nature of their fuel, there are additional things that need to happen on top of what you would expect from, say, a coal or oil generator.
But I’m not sure what you are saying about “magic batteries”. How, exactly, do you plan to make intermittent renewable generation viable without some sort of grid-scale storage?
You don’t just click your heels together there times and find yourself in a star trek utopia. That’s not how things work.
Batteries exist yes. But batteries at the scale required to store the amount of energy that even a small country uses in one day do not exist, and would be by all accounts magic.
Nuclear reactors are not magic, they are real, and they can be built, and should be built both to increase our energy production and replace fossil fuels and of course supplement renewables. Because if nuclear reactors are not built, that supplemental energy won’t come from magic storage, it will come from fossil fuels.
When did I say anything about batteries?
it would be wiser to focus our energy now on large, grid-scale storage
That is a battery. But the type of battery it is describing doesn’t actually exist.
The time from inception to going online for a new Nuclear reactor is in the range of 15-25 years. Of course we could attempt to shorten that, but that would probably mean compromising on safety
It also takes 20years for a tree to grow, so I guess we should stop planting trees too. Good logic.
The rest of what you are saying is ignorant at best. “Global construction capacity” is constrained to current levels. How convenient that we can only build exactly the number of nuclear reactors we are currently building. But we can build an unlimited amount of solar panels, wind turbines and “hyrdo.”
How long do you think it takes to “build hydro?” If you ignore any and all environmental costs of flooding valleys, then sure I guess you could do it pretty quickly, you’d probably have to relocate hundreds of thousands of people, but sure that sounds more feasible then building a nuclear reactor.
Current Nuclear energy production is non-renewably because of cold-war era treaties against enrichment and breeder reactors. The timeline for nuclear fuel to run out if you allow breeders, is after the sun burns out. So that’s a non-issue. Not to mention other theoretical sources of nuclear fuel that we don’t bother even looking at because it’s cheaper to burn more coal.
If you read my comment, I specifically add a caveat for hydro.
In terms of solar and wind, of course we cannot just build unlimited amounts, but we can ramp up capacity a lot more easily and quickly than with nuclear, because it’s a lot simpler and faster to build (especially solar). Imagine if we increase construction capacity by 10x tomorrow; we would still need to wait for 15 to 25 years to see any impact with nuclear, while solar and wind would go online next year.
Of course, ramping up production brings an increased risk of manufacturing faults and construction errors in all cases. But I would argue that any nuclear accident is a lot more undesirable than some solar or wind power going offline.
In terms of nuclear fuel, these alternative technologies may exist. But again, the time to market, and the fact that we are introducing a new technology into our vastly expanding production capacity just brings even more risk and uncertainty, which is completely unnecessary when extremely save and reliable, well tested alternatives exist (solar and wind).
So what I am arguing is that we focus our limited resources and money (the latter being the key factor in our economy, unfortunately) on the things that have the largest impact in the shortest amount of time, and that is solar and wind (and to an extent hydro).
And again, all that analysis is graciously disregarding the very real risks of nuclear power (instability, war, proliferation).
Of course, ramping up production brings an increased risk of manufacturing faults and construction errors in all cases.
I disagree. I think that people make fewer mistakes in each repetition, the more times they repeat an action.
Right now nobody has mastered the building of nuclear plants. As a civilization, we’re on the equivalent of our third day on the new job. If we committed to tripling world supply, that would lead to us mastering it. We’d be at the equivalent of having been at the job for a couple years.
What does “mastering it” really mean? Usually a big part is learning from mistakes. Which I do not think is something you want to do with nuclear power.
But here is the thing. There is no resource constraint between building nuclear power and building solar or wind, or even hydro. They use difference resources, they require different sectors of the economy to realize, and they require different engineering. They don’t compete with each other except in the minds of people who favor one over the other for some reason.
Nuclear competes with fossil fuels, that’s it. So do renewables, but on a much more limited basis. They do not compete iwth each other. No individual or government is ever looking at a choice between Wind power and Nuclear power and choosing one over the other.
Except for funding, obviously.
And as I said, the main point is we need clean, renewable energy as soon as possible, which only solar and wind (and to some extent hydro) can provide.
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🥱
Does anyone actually take these decades-long pledges seriously?
From a country that’s preventing shutdowns on the monthly, fuck no.
Yeah a 20 year commitment when the next party will revert all progress means nothing.
“I’m going to go to the gym three times a week until 2050!”
Then compare the effort in going to the gym three times a week with the effort in tripling the world’s supply of nuclear power.
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Today, there is 413GW of nuclear capacity globally. Of that, 57GW is in China.
China plans to reach 300GW of nuclear capacity by 2035. Assuming linear growth, that number will be around 550GW by 2050 (more than double the current global nuclear capacity) There are currently 57 nuclear power plants under construction. 21 are in China. 1 is in the US.
This US pledge is basically useless.
I’ll believe it when I see it. I’d prefer that they build something modern rather than hauling out the tired old plant designs we’ve been using since the 70s.
It’s not bad, its just bullshit. None of that shit is going to happen, and if it does happen, it’ll be China leading the charge not the US.
Yeah, but China bad. Remember?
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Tbf, long term goals are a good thing. National planning having a lifespan of 4-8 years is fucking insane, and probably contributes non-trivial to federal expenditures and waste. We’d be better off if we could follow long term goals. But you’re right, though, it was performative planning by and large.
Actual genuine question here. Has any US administration made a decades long plan like this, announced it to the public, and then a future administration saw said plan through to fruition?
Yes.
Unfortunately, said plan was dismantling the railroads in favor of the Interstate Highway System.
I believe both exiting Iraq and Afghanistan qualify.
Maybe not exactly what you’re getting at though
That qualifies.Thanks you!
Maybe the panama canal? The Hoover Dam? But yea not much, the US hasn’t done large projects like that since private interests figured out they could milk huge sums of money by contracting and never delivering anything.
Nope.
As a general fuck-up in life I’ve found it far more valuable to make promises on a timeframe I can manage, even if they’re really tiny, than to make big promises.
Long term goals? Sure. Long term deadlines? No. We’re either not going to meet them and nobody is going to be held accountable. Or we are going to meet them and we could’ve done better.
You don’t trust a person or business to keep their promise 30 years from now, why would you trust the US government?
This. A 30-year goal needs to have 30 sets of one-year objectives to be tracked.
Sounds like typical politicians.
Are US pledges like this worth much?
It depends on who you are and what you think about/place value on. This news has little value to cynics, but may have value to investors.
What does any of what you just said have to do with the US making a pledge to increase global energy sustainability (energy and fossil fuels specifically being the crux of global catastrophe)
Sometimes I think posters just like to jab for rage bait
It doesn’t, I shared my experience understanding the article. Does a different perspective irritate you?
Nah, just calling out an attention addict
Only your hatred can destroy me
Wasn’t an attempt to “destroy you” but go off with your dramatic self!
i don’t think you got the reference ;)
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Where are my renewable bros at? Tell me this is bad.
It’s a waste of resources. Perfect timing for the NuScale drama https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2023/11/15/2781465/0/en/NuScale-Power-Corporation-Sued-By-Block-Leviton-LLP-for-Securities-Law-Violations.html
exactly, we can’t spend that much to slow or stop climate change. it’s not an option, the money is more valuable.
This is fucking amazing! This is making my day.
Is this just an election year promise thing? Is it real?
Lots of nuclear bros being confidently incorrect in here. Same as it ever was.
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Hi, pro-nuclear here,
That’s the eventual ideal, but energy storage technology isn’t there yet. The biggest issue facing renewables currently is the ability to maintain a base load demand that is increasing faster and faster each year.
Currently, the cheapest way we have to store energy is to store it chemically, in the form of coal, petroleum, or fissle fuel. Of these, the fissle option is by far the best. It’s by far the most energy-dense, doesn’t release any carbon into the atmosphere when used, and the amount of waste it produces is dangerous, but miniscule in comparison. All the high level waste ever produced since the late 50s could fit in a single building.
It’s not realistic to fully replace everything with renewables until some very difficult engineering problems are solved. So our choices right now are:
- build more renewables
Pros: getting cheaper and more efficient but worse than current tech, no carbon pollution
Cons: experience more power failures as it cannot meet current energy demands
- build a coal/petroleum plant
Pros: very cheap and very efficient
Cons: accelerate climate change, increase pollution
- build a nuclear plant
Pros: can easily meet base load demands, very efficient, no carbon pollution
Cons: expensive, special waste management is required.
As things stand now, I would like to replace aging petroleum power plants with nuclear while continuing to build more and more renewables. Then, once we’ve either found a way to reduce energy demand or improve storage, start to phase out the nuclear plants
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special waste management is doing a lot of heavy lifting
Yeah, I suppose it is. Although I would argue leaving the waste to future generations is definitely not what we’re doing. Basically, we’re just putting it in a deep hole. Once that underground storage is full it never needs to be opened again. There isn’t any shortage of radioactive elements underground that exist naturally, creating a man-made radioactive pocket deep underground isn’t all that different.
Not having enough power and more power failures isn’t such a bad trade-off
The power that gets sent out over the grid does a lot more that charging your iPhone or powering your computer. For example: Electric vehicles(including public transit) relies on it, food preservation relies on maintaining constant refrigeration which would lead to even more food waste, and if a hospital loses power for even a couple minutes there are real lives at stake.
We could do the alternative and leave a dead planet to future generations.
Look, we all agree that renewables are the future but they are still the future. Build nuclear now and we can slowly wean off of that. Nuclear waste is a much more manageable problem than “crops no longer grow”.
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The problem is that while personal renewables exist, they’re still pretty expensive and are largely untested at scale. We’re in that stage that computers went through in the late 90s, where it’s an expensive investment that is likely to be obsolete before the year is over.
Not many people would be excited to spend ~$30K outfitting a building with solar panels, turbines and batteries only to learn that they need to be replaced in 2-3 years.
The technology is promising, but it’s not ready for mass adoption yet. We need a stopgap
Agree. I’d wager the average joe would only invest in personal renewables if it was cheaper to run than paying an electric bill in the short term, was just as efficient, and was easy to install. Otherwise we’d be adding even more e-waste to landfills.
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Okay. Go study batteries and let us know when you make a breakthrough.
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Lol.
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Alright buddy, time to water the ficus.
Fuck no. Why not real green energy which does not produce nuclear waste that has to be stored safely for thousands of years and where most places dont have a place to store it in?
Why not real green energy which does not produce nuclear waste that has to be stored safely for thousands of years and where most places dont have a place to store it in?
Because that’s not a real issue. Not only is it true that we do have a perfectly-good place to store it that we refuse to use for no good reason, we don’t actually need to store it at all because we ought to be reprocessing it instead.
Probably because we can’t reach energy demands with just renewable energy.
You should look up how the power grid works. Most energy is generated on demand. When the sun isn’t out and the wind isn’t blowing, you have to rely on stored energy.
I don’t know if you’ve been paying attention to energy storage technology, but it’s not very good right now. Until it improves, foregoing additional sources of energy that we can generate on demand is asinine.
To be honest though, you’re just a victim of propaganda that exists to funnel as much money to Solar as possible. Be careful. Whenever there is a bunch of money being passed around, there will also be a bunch of misinformation and grifters.
