I note costs in Western countries are closer to $10/We than $3/We. Only in Korea has $3 been achieved in a liberal democracy. But I would point out the South Korea had an initial response to the pandemic that was far more capable than the ones mounted by the US or the Europeans, which were riddled with political bickering. The reason costs are so high in the West is the politics. Noah Smith wrote about this.
The core problem for the US is our current political economy is optimized for the production of financial values. The stated goal of American capitalism today is to grow shareholder values. This is in stark contrast to the goal of American capitalism on the postwar era, which was to grow a real business. So, the CEOs of GM or Ford (who both served as Def. Sec) were more "successful" individuals than moguls like Howard Hughes or J Paul Getty despite the latter being much, much more financially successful.
And you know what Mike, before the 1973 oil crisis the US and UK built at around $3/Watt.
What I regard as the major contradiction in America Nuclear Policy is that being pro nuclear is a conservative issue and being anti nuclear is a democratic issue.
They can call me socialist etc, but I don't see how a private investor is easily going to put money into a project that takes 7 years to generate revenue, breaks even at 18 years and only makes good money on year 19.
Perhaps SMRs can change that, but I am still an old school engineer who believes in public works programs and that infrastructure is ultimately the responsibility of the state.
The amount of money to restart your nuclear program and get to historical levels is less than the amount that Joe Biden gave to the war in Ukraine in 1 year. They shouldn't say that it's unaffordable.
Precisely! Before 1973, we still ran under the New Deal Order. Being pro-nuclear today is a political stance. Conservatives *say* they favor nuclear power, but how many nuke plants got built during and after the Reagan Revolution.
I would point out that private companies built a lot of plants in the sixties and seventies. Under the right kind of economic policy, American capitalism can build stuff, a lot of stuff, just like China does. But that is not what American capitalism is about today.
I think the issue with the political economy needs to be dealt with before real progress can be make on dealing with climate change. Such an effort has the added benefit of avoiding civil war in the US, which I think would be a very bad thing. So I am all in favor with solving both of these issues. I'm an old school engineer myself (PhD Chem E 88).
I mentioned this to Robert Bryce this year, that part of the debate regarding nuclear has to do with privatisation having gone too far. Even though he is more conservative leaning, he actually agreed with me.
I gave a presentation to Tom Nelson a few months ago and showed data on the USA historical build, it was an incredible rate.
The lesson in nuclear to me is that it's the source that is the most susceptible to the political cycle, in South Africa our programs got shut down 3 times in 3 consecutive administrations, because there was no continuity in policy across government.
I don't understand why you insist that the net zero target is unachievable.
I agree it is unachievable with renewables. However if one were to regulate and finance nuclear power more rationally it could be far cheaper than fossil fuels.
Unlike with renewables is no techical reason why we could not rapidly replace all fossil fuel generation with nuclear over the next 30 years.
As I see it the limits are self-imposed.
(1) Overly strict regulations which value a life lost to radioactivity 100-10,000 times more than a life lost to air pollution.
(2) Market regulations which require private financing of nuclear power, more than doubling the cost.
In my experience, most people are unaware of these self imposed limitations.
Surely we should focus on trying to increase understanding of this?
you need to separate energy and electricity, electricity is only a small percentage of the total energy demand.
Net Zero electricity might be achievable by nuclear, but you fully electrify you need to expand at a command economy rate,
Prof. Kelly at Cambridge showed just what the numbers would be, it's going to be an extremely costly experiment with reduced standards of living.
The population of Asia and Africa still hasn't entered the middle class, and the most likely source for them to do so will be a fossil fuel of the sort, probably coal.
I should have added that this should only be done in a way that did not limit economic growth.
I agree that full electrification of transport and heating is a huge technical challenge and would be very expensive to do by 2050.
Nuclear enabled hydrogen seems to me to be a way to bypass the need for full electrification of transport and heating. If nuclear is made as cheap as it could be hydrogen could also be made at low cost. One you have cheap clean hydrogen you open the way to replacing hydrocarbons without requiring electrification.
hydrogen has major issues, just to replace Charles De Gaulle Airport through electrolysis will require 1/4 of all the nuclear power stations in France.
also hydrogen is actually a secondary greenhouse gas and its Global Warming Potential might be worse than C02 if leaks are not controlled. It's incredibly expensive to handle.
I certainly agree regarding the handling issues and related issues of inadvertent releases.
I was more thinking of clean hydrogen as a feedstock to make synthetic hydrocarbon fuels (along with carbon capture).
As I understood it nuclear reactors could be rapidly switched on ms timescales from the grid to hydrogen synthesis, making it easy and efficient for nuclear to load follow.
Initially the hydrogen produced could just replace grey hydrogen.
I don't see how nuclear-power produced hydrogen makes sense. Solar-generated electrons will always be cheaper than nuclear power. Nuclear power fuel is cheap, but sun is free. And solar installations are cheaper to build. To make a kg of hydrogen you need about 40 kwh of electrons. Solar panels have no moving parts, once built they will produce power when the sun is shining. The drawback from solar is it is not available at night and there is less of it when it is cloudy. So you use the nukes to provide round-the clock power. You supplement with solar during peak day time demand but use most of it to make chemicals like hydrogen.
The hydrogen could be used directly for fertilizer manufacture and industrial process heat, and also used to make hydrocarbons for aviation and shipping use:
SASOL is investing a lot into hydrogen production using Solar, and thet are generally leading in the Fischer Tropsch. It would make sense to generate synthetic fuels more than to redesign an airplane.
Yes, but if they are made from CO2 (or from biomass) the *net* addition is less.
I simply cannot see battery-powered aircraft. And for ships, they looked at nuclear power commercial ships back in the sixties. It didn't pan out. So I think we will need synfuels for that too.
I am not sure if biomass is that much better for the environment, but your point is taken. There was a scheme in France that aims to use the methane from sewerages and then too combine that with hydrogen. But my first instinct is to be skeptical of the energy density and consequently cost, unless you've just got soo much sun in summer that it might be possible.
It's theoretically possible, but I would like to see some basic hand calculations.
I am sceptical about the EROI for solar, particularly at high latitudes like the UK, where the capacity factor is only 10%. Makes more sense to use wind to make hydrogen in the UK.
However wind has a much bigger environmental footprint than nuclear power, shredding birds, bats and insects and disrupting cetaceans when installed offshore.
I'm an American, so when I think solar hydrogen-->liquid fuels I am thinking the American Southwest. I am working on a post where I argue that a solar facility making hydrogen could be seen as a "hydrogen well" to be utilized by oil companies as a source of feedstock to produce hydrocarbon fuels and chemicals, which is their principal business. My idea is that the government would build these things in lieu of QE and other kinds of economic stimulus the next time time we get a financial panic, which is scheduled for sometime around 2026 give or take half a decade.
It is the EROI that worries me most about solar. It is surprisingly low (below 10) because of the amount of energy required to make polysilicone. If the EROI can be increased to well above 10 then I am all for it.
Interesting article. I would like to add a few points.
1) The article that you linked to that raves about increased solar is using capacity as a metric. This is a common ploy used to exaggerate the impact of renewables. Given that solar capacity is around 20% and nuclear/fossil fuels can run over 90% capacity, one must multiply solar capacity by 0.20 to get a good estimate of actual electricity production. Of course, the article does not do that because this would make the increases look much less impressive.
2) Where did you get that first graphic? Or did you create it? Do you know what study it is referencing?
I am interested in how quickly nations have historically been able to ramp up electrical production using nuclear, natural gas, and hydro and then comparing it to how fast nations have been able to increase solar and wind.
1. Yes, but I didn't want to get into that detail as solar's value depends on its penetration, daytime etc,
2. I will try and find that source, it was published in science mag if I recall.
France during the messmer plan built up to 2-3 reactors per year, and at a time had 10 sites running simultaneously, what nuclear does require though is a committed government and social democratic expansion. I don't believe that the private sector will do it alone. So it's more likely to take place in countries that accept some level of state driven expansion (US and UK has to overcome political dogma before this occurs).
I would love to see similar figures for the national growth of natural gas and hydro. I think that there have been impressive expansions in the past that are much bigger than the current expansion of Green energy, but they are nowhere near as well documented.
This would give more evidence that completing the Third Energy Transition is a better path forward than Green energy policies.
Hey, I think you’v just figured out how to eliminate the US debt? Coma to a decimal. Capitalism has its faults, but I am not ready to agree that there is a better system. Or that capitalism contributed to the US being at a disadvantage to China. To the extent China adopted capitalism, that may have been a net benefit to them. To the extent the US adopted socialism, a net liability. I do agree big projects have to be government / private arrangements. We have to mitigate risks, possibly using the US Government as a backstop in an excess risk model, with premium rates tied to standardized construction planning and multiple owners each having skin in the next plants economics. It’s possible the nuclear industry in western nations needs actuaries more than engineers right now.
I would argue that they need quantative analyists in America, engineers who can identify risks and act accordingly. There is nothing in Nuclear construction that is more complicated than LNG, in fact I think that offshore LNG is more complicated.
US nuclear vendors don't carry the risk like in India and that's a major shortcoming,
Others include policies like Price Anderson that creates all kinds of bad incentives.
These are the type of regulatory reforms that I would seriously consider changing in the US.
I note costs in Western countries are closer to $10/We than $3/We. Only in Korea has $3 been achieved in a liberal democracy. But I would point out the South Korea had an initial response to the pandemic that was far more capable than the ones mounted by the US or the Europeans, which were riddled with political bickering. The reason costs are so high in the West is the politics. Noah Smith wrote about this.
The core problem for the US is our current political economy is optimized for the production of financial values. The stated goal of American capitalism today is to grow shareholder values. This is in stark contrast to the goal of American capitalism on the postwar era, which was to grow a real business. So, the CEOs of GM or Ford (who both served as Def. Sec) were more "successful" individuals than moguls like Howard Hughes or J Paul Getty despite the latter being much, much more financially successful.
And you know what Mike, before the 1973 oil crisis the US and UK built at around $3/Watt.
What I regard as the major contradiction in America Nuclear Policy is that being pro nuclear is a conservative issue and being anti nuclear is a democratic issue.
They can call me socialist etc, but I don't see how a private investor is easily going to put money into a project that takes 7 years to generate revenue, breaks even at 18 years and only makes good money on year 19.
Perhaps SMRs can change that, but I am still an old school engineer who believes in public works programs and that infrastructure is ultimately the responsibility of the state.
The amount of money to restart your nuclear program and get to historical levels is less than the amount that Joe Biden gave to the war in Ukraine in 1 year. They shouldn't say that it's unaffordable.
Precisely! Before 1973, we still ran under the New Deal Order. Being pro-nuclear today is a political stance. Conservatives *say* they favor nuclear power, but how many nuke plants got built during and after the Reagan Revolution.
I would point out that private companies built a lot of plants in the sixties and seventies. Under the right kind of economic policy, American capitalism can build stuff, a lot of stuff, just like China does. But that is not what American capitalism is about today.
I think the issue with the political economy needs to be dealt with before real progress can be make on dealing with climate change. Such an effort has the added benefit of avoiding civil war in the US, which I think would be a very bad thing. So I am all in favor with solving both of these issues. I'm an old school engineer myself (PhD Chem E 88).
I mentioned this to Robert Bryce this year, that part of the debate regarding nuclear has to do with privatisation having gone too far. Even though he is more conservative leaning, he actually agreed with me.
I gave a presentation to Tom Nelson a few months ago and showed data on the USA historical build, it was an incredible rate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1zx5TPzGcg
The lesson in nuclear to me is that it's the source that is the most susceptible to the political cycle, in South Africa our programs got shut down 3 times in 3 consecutive administrations, because there was no continuity in policy across government.
Jacobson is far from a credible critic of nuclear energy. (https://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-jacobson-lawsuit-20180223-story.html)
I don't understand why you insist that the net zero target is unachievable.
I agree it is unachievable with renewables. However if one were to regulate and finance nuclear power more rationally it could be far cheaper than fossil fuels.
Unlike with renewables is no techical reason why we could not rapidly replace all fossil fuel generation with nuclear over the next 30 years.
As I see it the limits are self-imposed.
(1) Overly strict regulations which value a life lost to radioactivity 100-10,000 times more than a life lost to air pollution.
(2) Market regulations which require private financing of nuclear power, more than doubling the cost.
In my experience, most people are unaware of these self imposed limitations.
Surely we should focus on trying to increase understanding of this?
We could have cheaper and cleaner energy.
you need to separate energy and electricity, electricity is only a small percentage of the total energy demand.
Net Zero electricity might be achievable by nuclear, but you fully electrify you need to expand at a command economy rate,
Prof. Kelly at Cambridge showed just what the numbers would be, it's going to be an extremely costly experiment with reduced standards of living.
The population of Asia and Africa still hasn't entered the middle class, and the most likely source for them to do so will be a fossil fuel of the sort, probably coal.
https://www.rbkc.gov.uk/pdf/Prof%20Mike%20Kelly%20-%20FENand%20ER.pdf
I should have added that this should only be done in a way that did not limit economic growth.
I agree that full electrification of transport and heating is a huge technical challenge and would be very expensive to do by 2050.
Nuclear enabled hydrogen seems to me to be a way to bypass the need for full electrification of transport and heating. If nuclear is made as cheap as it could be hydrogen could also be made at low cost. One you have cheap clean hydrogen you open the way to replacing hydrocarbons without requiring electrification.
hydrogen has major issues, just to replace Charles De Gaulle Airport through electrolysis will require 1/4 of all the nuclear power stations in France.
That doesn't include the issues with handling etc
https://www.france24.com/en/tv-shows/down-to-earth/20201023-hydrogen-hype-aviation-s-false-promise
also hydrogen is actually a secondary greenhouse gas and its Global Warming Potential might be worse than C02 if leaks are not controlled. It's incredibly expensive to handle.
https://www.oxfordenergy.org/wpcms/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Insight-140-Quantifying-vented-by-product-hydrogen-a-case-study-in-China.pdf
I certainly agree regarding the handling issues and related issues of inadvertent releases.
I was more thinking of clean hydrogen as a feedstock to make synthetic hydrocarbon fuels (along with carbon capture).
As I understood it nuclear reactors could be rapidly switched on ms timescales from the grid to hydrogen synthesis, making it easy and efficient for nuclear to load follow.
Initially the hydrogen produced could just replace grey hydrogen.
Nuclear can work for that yes, but you need to run it at higher temperatures, gas cooled reactors might be better suited for it.
The feedstock market is small though and every hydrogen plant in the world is located next to where it's used.
Could we not eventually replace grey hydrogen plants with nuclear plants, perhaps using SMRs?
I don't see how nuclear-power produced hydrogen makes sense. Solar-generated electrons will always be cheaper than nuclear power. Nuclear power fuel is cheap, but sun is free. And solar installations are cheaper to build. To make a kg of hydrogen you need about 40 kwh of electrons. Solar panels have no moving parts, once built they will produce power when the sun is shining. The drawback from solar is it is not available at night and there is less of it when it is cloudy. So you use the nukes to provide round-the clock power. You supplement with solar during peak day time demand but use most of it to make chemicals like hydrogen.
The hydrogen could be used directly for fertilizer manufacture and industrial process heat, and also used to make hydrocarbons for aviation and shipping use:
SASOL is investing a lot into hydrogen production using Solar, and thet are generally leading in the Fischer Tropsch. It would make sense to generate synthetic fuels more than to redesign an airplane.
But synthetic fuels still emitt c02.
Yes, but if they are made from CO2 (or from biomass) the *net* addition is less.
I simply cannot see battery-powered aircraft. And for ships, they looked at nuclear power commercial ships back in the sixties. It didn't pan out. So I think we will need synfuels for that too.
I am not sure if biomass is that much better for the environment, but your point is taken. There was a scheme in France that aims to use the methane from sewerages and then too combine that with hydrogen. But my first instinct is to be skeptical of the energy density and consequently cost, unless you've just got soo much sun in summer that it might be possible.
It's theoretically possible, but I would like to see some basic hand calculations.
I am sceptical about the EROI for solar, particularly at high latitudes like the UK, where the capacity factor is only 10%. Makes more sense to use wind to make hydrogen in the UK.
However wind has a much bigger environmental footprint than nuclear power, shredding birds, bats and insects and disrupting cetaceans when installed offshore.
I prefer nuclear because I care about wildlife.
I'm an American, so when I think solar hydrogen-->liquid fuels I am thinking the American Southwest. I am working on a post where I argue that a solar facility making hydrogen could be seen as a "hydrogen well" to be utilized by oil companies as a source of feedstock to produce hydrocarbon fuels and chemicals, which is their principal business. My idea is that the government would build these things in lieu of QE and other kinds of economic stimulus the next time time we get a financial panic, which is scheduled for sometime around 2026 give or take half a decade.
It is the EROI that worries me most about solar. It is surprisingly low (below 10) because of the amount of energy required to make polysilicone. If the EROI can be increased to well above 10 then I am all for it.
Interesting article. I would like to add a few points.
1) The article that you linked to that raves about increased solar is using capacity as a metric. This is a common ploy used to exaggerate the impact of renewables. Given that solar capacity is around 20% and nuclear/fossil fuels can run over 90% capacity, one must multiply solar capacity by 0.20 to get a good estimate of actual electricity production. Of course, the article does not do that because this would make the increases look much less impressive.
2) Where did you get that first graphic? Or did you create it? Do you know what study it is referencing?
I am interested in how quickly nations have historically been able to ramp up electrical production using nuclear, natural gas, and hydro and then comparing it to how fast nations have been able to increase solar and wind.
1. Yes, but I didn't want to get into that detail as solar's value depends on its penetration, daytime etc,
2. I will try and find that source, it was published in science mag if I recall.
France during the messmer plan built up to 2-3 reactors per year, and at a time had 10 sites running simultaneously, what nuclear does require though is a committed government and social democratic expansion. I don't believe that the private sector will do it alone. So it's more likely to take place in countries that accept some level of state driven expansion (US and UK has to overcome political dogma before this occurs).
You can get the pdf here
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/5lerrj0g1n5tvl88vklbb/Science-2016-Cao-et-al.pdf?rlkey=9avyiws5vj9v36q1fqhwh2k28&dl=0
I would love to see similar figures for the national growth of natural gas and hydro. I think that there have been impressive expansions in the past that are much bigger than the current expansion of Green energy, but they are nowhere near as well documented.
This would give more evidence that completing the Third Energy Transition is a better path forward than Green energy policies.
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/we-need-to-complete-the-third-energy
This is the reference
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaf7131
just found it, thanks Anton
Thanks for checking, my calculator says $2,226trillion
small factoid: In South Africa the comma and point have two opposite meanings in English and Afrikaans. I prefer using the comma as a decimal .
Hey, I think you’v just figured out how to eliminate the US debt? Coma to a decimal. Capitalism has its faults, but I am not ready to agree that there is a better system. Or that capitalism contributed to the US being at a disadvantage to China. To the extent China adopted capitalism, that may have been a net benefit to them. To the extent the US adopted socialism, a net liability. I do agree big projects have to be government / private arrangements. We have to mitigate risks, possibly using the US Government as a backstop in an excess risk model, with premium rates tied to standardized construction planning and multiple owners each having skin in the next plants economics. It’s possible the nuclear industry in western nations needs actuaries more than engineers right now.
I would argue that they need quantative analyists in America, engineers who can identify risks and act accordingly. There is nothing in Nuclear construction that is more complicated than LNG, in fact I think that offshore LNG is more complicated.
US nuclear vendors don't carry the risk like in India and that's a major shortcoming,
Others include policies like Price Anderson that creates all kinds of bad incentives.
These are the type of regulatory reforms that I would seriously consider changing in the US.
Others include acting on waste treatment.