alt Hacker NewsWe deploy 10x the capacity in renewables and batteries than we do in nuclear and its only accelerating. We are trending towards 1/10th the cost of nuclear per GW. There is no going back just due to the sheer scale of mass manufacturing renewables.
We are below $1B/GW for solar. China just opened a $100/kWh ($100M/GWh) battery storage plant. All deployable within a year.
Contrast this to $16B/GW for recent nuclear plants, and you don’t benefit from starting a build for another 20 years
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Use case: Germany
It's going great!!!11
https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/DE/live/fifteen_min...
Since the capacity factor is so much lower, 10x in capacity just about matches the energy production of nuclear. Never mind the dispatchable power.
And since nuclear power plants last about 4x longer than renewables, you actually have to install 4x the production to have an equivalent fleet over time.
So by your numbers, the world is shifting towards a nuclear fleet.
The problem is that much of Europe lies pretty far north. Certainly, Spain can deploy solar power with high efficiency, but Netherlands can't grab as much sunlight no matter what, to say nothing of Sweden or Norway. Wind power helps, but it's way more expensive than solar.
That's great, but what percentage of decarbonization will it stall at due to lack of energy density and relying on the wind/sun?
That cost is a property of the regulatory environment, it isn't intrinsic.
You can buy a floating nuclear power plant in the form of an aircraft carrier for a lot less than $16B. The US Navy builds these things as a matter of course in a few years using standard designs they crank out by the dozens.
Since you use China as a comparison for solar: China builds 1.4GW nuclear power plants in 5 years for $3.5 bn.
And of course the capacity factor for PV is about 10%, so you need 10x the capacity to get the same output even on average. Never mind that you get nothing at night, and very little in winter.
I am a small-time investor in renewable energy businesses, but I am also a believer in nuclear energy.
Consider a city like Mumbai that needs about 3.8 GW per day. One would need lots of windmills and large solar farms that would need to be positioned in a different state having more sunlight throughout the year. Mumbai often experiences cloudy weather and intermittent wind. I cannot imagine only wind and solar supporting the needs of Mumbai.
There are countries other than the US who do not take 20 years to build a reactor. Out-dated regulations, punitive paperwork, and perhaps poor project management are the reasons for the oft-cited delays in the US. Other countries complete their builds in 6 to 7 years. https://thebreakthrough.org/issues/energy/chinas-impressive-...