U.S. Sets Targets to Triple Nuclear Energy Capacity by 2050

https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/us-sets-targets-triple-nuclear-energy-capacity-2050

by chickenbig • 2 years ago

102 103 2 years ago

energy.gov

IshKebab3• 2 years ago

Is it even vaguely price competitive with solar & battery at this point?

throwaway888abc• 2 years ago

For the H100/B200 AI clusters ?

m1015• 2 years ago

The price is a function of regulations. It is self imposed, so a concerted effort here could reduce prices.

Also, economics are not equal to climate/carbon. If we want to reduce climate change only nuclear is the way to go - not solar/battery.

I don't think solar+battery is cost competitive if you were to replicate nuclear completely, but I've not looked at the numbers. Need to consider a nuclear plant may have a 60 year life whereas panels would be 20 at best and batteries probably less.

chgs2• 2 years ago

You can’t mention price without including the externalities and the total cost of ownership. Regulations attempt to price those.

jay_kyburz• 2 years ago

The price is a function of regulations. It is self imposed, so a concerted effort here could reduce prices.

In other words, if you cut corners you can make nuclear cheap.

svara2• 2 years ago

I don't think solar+battery is cost competitive if you were to replicate nuclear completely, but I've not looked at the numbers.

Why are you commenting then? This is a complex, deeply researched topic. It's contentious enough already, no need to add more noise.

"Looking at the numbers" is literally the one thing one needs to do in order to be able to add to this discussion.

hughrlomas• 2 years ago

It is worth investing a little more on nuclear in the interest of energy security. It isn't always a race to the bottom.

A diverse and robust energy grid is composed of various generation sources that differ in capacity factors, environmental impact, stability, availability, etc.

ChrisRR2• 2 years ago

Energy security is way more important than people make out. You'd think that politicians would focus on relying less on the countries that they have political tensions with

devjab2• 2 years ago

It depends on how you regulate the market. Part of the reason solar is still expensive on the market in Europe is because of regulations. To counter this to not kill growth you have various forms of economic incentives like tariffs for solar where the various government’s subsidies make up for the regulation. It’s to keep the fossil and nuclear energy market in Europe sustainable. Since we still heavily rely on these sources when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing.

The battery industry is expected to grow a maddening percentage in the coming decade. Germany moving their renewable goal from 60-80% by (I’m not sure about the year but I think it’s 2030), alone increased the expected economic growth for supplying battery storage by 800%. There is nowhere near enough storage to make nuclear and fossil fuels obsolete yet however. Especially not if we also increase the EV market share.

Solar isn’t optimal in very hot regions, however, as the efficiency goes down 0.3-0.5% in efficiency for every degree Celsius above 0 degrees Celsius. So in some regions nuclear is going to be a good option. I’m not personally a fan of nuclear because its safety depends on governments being willing to regulate the safety, but there is no denying that it’s still a much, much, better alternative to fossil fuels as far as delivering power on demand.

This is how it looks in Europe. I have no idea how it looks in the US.

belorn2• 2 years ago

The battery industry being built at the moment in Sweden is having some major issues right now when investment money and subsidizes are running dry. The biggest actor are close to bankruptcy and rushing to find new sources of money.

There seems a general pattern that if you need to build it outside of china, be that batteries, nuclear power plants or solar panels, it becomes too expensive.

panick21_• 2 years ago

This is a difficult question because if you build 1 plant, it clearly isn't. But there are large learning effect. Any nation that builds many plants, shares workforce and management rapidly drops cost.

If you look at UAE building South Korean plants, they were finishing plants pretty rapidly and if they had simply continued, they could have turned 100% green in just a few more years at quite a low cost overall.

It also depends on your energy market and financing. If you have a lot of solar, that simply destroys the market during certain periods, nuclear isn't gone be that profitable. But if you don't have a bunch of wind/solar and you actually value stable energy production. Then its much more reasonable.

A nuclear plant can run for 80+ years. So it depends on interest rates you use.

haccount5• 2 years ago

Make a cost calculation of how much solar and battery you need to keep your lights on during peak summer and then do the same calculation for how much solar and battery you need to keep the lights on in the middle of winter when a large scale 5 day blizzard.

Pretend you are a metal foundry.

Good luck.

ben_w6• 2 years ago

Big fat wire to somewhere which isn't in a blizzard.

Or just build the metal foundry in the non-blizzard-prone area in the first place, because the blizzard takes out power lines even if there was a nuclear reactor on the other end.

I've done the maths, and I'd it wasn't for geopolitics, China makes enough Aluminium to make an HVDC grid so thick that it would have so little resistance that they could usefully connect every grid in the world for a cost of 250e9 USD for the Aluminium.

Scaled down to just the USA, no international stuff, it's something you can easily do if someone convinces Trump or Musk to delete any internal obstruction.

pydry• 2 years ago

The fact that you can do this and still be a bit cheaper for those periods than nuclear power is what makes it really ridiculous:

https://theecologist.org/2016/feb/17/wind-power-windgas-chea...

Of course, we'll never stop building nuclear power in spite of this because it provides indirect subsidies for the military.

ZeroGravitas5• 2 years ago

Okay, I'm moving my metal foundry to a location that's sunny all year round, just like I've previously moved it to Iceland for geothermal or next to big hydro dams. Cheap energy makes it worthwhile.

zahlman6• 2 years ago

France leads the world in this department, with 70% of their electricity generation coming from nuclear, and serving as the world's largest net exporter of electricity (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_France). The consensus among sources I can readily find is that home consumers pay around 25-30 euro cents per KWh for electricity, and electricity production wholesales at around 8 euro cents per KWh. I'd say it's competitive, yes.

mgoetzke2• 2 years ago

That does not include the deficit these reactors ran up, nor all the subsidies they got from tax payers in many forms

jillesvangurp2• 2 years ago

A lot of French nuclear plants are scheduled to be decomissioned in the next years because these nuclear plants are getting old. There's an ongoing discussion about extending the life of some of those plants. And there are some plans for new reactors with estimated cost currently at ~50 billion euros. Of course that's extremely likely to go up further. Nuclear projects always balloon in cost.

Energy prices are set by the government and don't reflect the actual cost. French tax payers pay for the difference and have done so for years. The cost price probably excludes quite a bit that tax payers are also paying for.

The sad reality with nuclear is that it's a very unprofitable business unless you get governments to sponsor construction, waste disposal, security, etc. and then bail out failing nuclear companies when they fail anyway. All of these things have happened in France. France has nuclear reactors because it regards being a nuclear power as strategically important. Not because it's particularly cheap. It never was.

As of now, that somewhat artificial cost of 8 cents per kwh is actually on the high side for renewables. There are cheaper ways to get power these days.

KennyBlanken3• 2 years ago

The first hit for "france nuclear power production cost" comes up with this:

https://www.enerdata.net/publications/daily-energy-news/fran...

The full cost of existing nuclear power calculated by the CRE amounts to respectively €60.7/MWh over the period 2026-2030

And the first hit for "wind power cost europe mwhr" shows just how subsidized nuclear is:

https://windeurope.org/policy/topics/economics/

At its cheapest wind is half the cost of nuclear and at its worst is the same cost as nuclear - with none of the massive headaches.

jbverschoor• 2 years ago

Hopefully Kirk Sorensen / Flibe will finally get some more presence. ( https://flibe.com )

KennyBlanken3• 2 years ago

"Operational production reactors coming online in 2040."

That's about a decade and a half too late. We need to be reducing our carbon footprint right now, and we have that ability: wind and solar. Low initial impact, fast to net carbon negative.

Nukes take decades to dig themselves out of their carbon positive holes, if they ever do so at all (the nuclear industry does not account for most of the CO2 generated from supply and operations.)

aubanel• 2 years ago

Net carbone negative is bullshit (no such things as net emissions if you don't have a "removal" side, which is not happening rn)

Then nuke is much better for low co2 energy mix, cf France vs Germany

deprecative• 2 years ago

With all due respect, we really ought to wait on things like this until at least February. While nuclear is likely to continue we must be aware that it's not fossil fuel and not guaranteed.

stubish2• 2 years ago

I think the Office of Nuclear Energy is trying to get in front of Musk shutting all these projects down and moving the green funding to solar and battery.

zahlman6• 2 years ago

Musk has an established track record of pro-nuclear sentiment (see my other comment for example). I see no reason to expect him to do any such thing.

ChrisRR2• 2 years ago

Musk also has a track record of being a gigantic tool to serve his own interests. So I'll only believe it when I see it

stubish2• 2 years ago

The vast amounts of waste in building nuclear power is part of why it is so expensive, with projects traditionally ballooning to triple budget estimates. Exactly the stuff he is required to cut hard by mid-2026. With the numbers in plain sight, arguments of corruption will be rejected, despite the fact he stands to gain billions due to owning the biggest slice of proven, lower cost, less wasteful alternative.

mjevans• 2 years ago

Built it all - decreasing the cost of energy is how we raise quality of life. More non-oil energy is how we decrease carbon emissions.

adrianN• 2 years ago

So nuclear will stay roughly were it is as a fraction of total electricity production?

jillesvangurp2• 2 years ago

It will probably go down over time. These targets are nice but it takes a long time for those plans to become reality. Plenty of time for changing the plans or cancelling them completely.

Regardless of those plans and whether they are cancelled or not, renewables are going full steam ahead in most of the world and will likely add essentially all of the planned nuclear capacity in a matter of years. And then some.

At this point renewables are, by far, the most cost effective way to generate power. Wind, solar, and battery storage are growing at a ridiculous rate. That's actually causing headaches for plans made years ago for e.g. gas plants and indeed nuclear plants. Some gas plants that opened fairly recently are actually facing early closures because they are no longer price competitive.

ZeroGravitas5• 2 years ago

In Australia they've started planning for the closure of gas grid connections to people's homes.

Since they were built with the idea of supplying gas for a few decades and will be obsolete before that planned date, they're started to raise the rates they charge to ensure it gets paid off in time. This then accelerates the pace of people moving off gas.

anshumankmr• 2 years ago

Based. I hope my country does this too.

voidUpdate• 2 years ago

How much of this is those SMEs that people are making specifically to power AI?

AlchemistCamp2• 2 years ago

It shouldn't take an entire generation to do this. China's building even more within the next five years:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-08-20/china-app...

surfpel3• 2 years ago

Also relevant:

China Added More Solar Panels in 2023 Than US Did In Its Entire History

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-26/china-add...

AlchemistCamp2• 2 years ago

Yes. China has also opened more coal power plants than the rest of the world combined over the past couple of years.

It should be clear from these three examples that some regulatory environments are more conducive to rapidly building infrastructure than others.

underseacables• 2 years ago

It has a lot to do with outside groups using the bureaucratic process to slow things down. A popular method is using what it's called environmental impact study. If an EIS identifies that some little field mouse might be harmed if the nuclear power plant is built, an outside organization can use that report to sue to stop the entire project. This tactic has been used countless times to stop everything from copper mining, to solar farms. Worse, still, if a group sues, and they win, the government picks up the tab. It's called environmental justice lawsuits, and they have utterly destroyed most Green projects in America.

mgoetzke2• 2 years ago

I wonder how they plan to keep costs under control. Spending $19 billion USD on 2,4GW capacity as with Georgia does not sound like a keeper.

briandear2• 2 years ago

Better than $5 billion on 11 EV chargers.

https://www.governing.com/infrastructure/5b-for-ev-infrastru...

ZeroGravitas5• 2 years ago

As your article clearly states the money mostly hasn't been spent and the delay in giving out the money is why most stuff hasn't happened yet.

If you can declare that a failure before most projects have a spade in the ground then this newly announced nuclear plan has already failed.

cjpearson• 2 years ago

Along with cost, the biggest issue is still local opposition, right? Is there any plan to solve that?

amanaplanacanal• 2 years ago

I don't have any faith in these kinds of plans. The US doesn't seem capable of actually finishing nuclear projects. I assume this is just a grift for someone to siphon away a whole lot of money.

chickenbig9• 2 years ago

The US doesn't seem capable of actually finishing nuclear projects.

Vogtle 3 and 4 were completed in the last couple of years, plus Watts Bar Unit 2 8 years ago.

Also let's not forget the work to maintain and upgrade units so they can run beyond the 40 year initial license.

HDThoreaun2• 2 years ago

Vogtle 3 and 4 were such colossal economic failures that they likely killed all investment in nuclear for the next decade.

huijzer2• 2 years ago

Meanwhile battery energy storage deployments increase about 100% per year in both China and the US.

That means battery deployments will have tripled in... 2026.

Just to show the difference in growth rate, if batteries would keep increasing 100% annually, installations will have increased 1*2^25 = 300 million times by 2050. So multiple orders of magnitude different is what I'm trying to point out.

The growth rate that the US government sets here is 4% (1.04^25 = 3).

It's meaningless I think. It doesn't move the needle.

U.S. Sets Targets to Triple Nuclear Energy Capacity by 2050

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