In remarks tied to the UN week, Trump repeated the argument that Europe—and specifically Germany—turned back to traditional fuels after pursuing renewables, casting it as proof that rapid green transitions don’t work.
Fission isn’t what you want, then. If you had 100 licenses from the NRC in hand today, not a single GW of new nuclear would come online in the US before 2030. Possibly not even 2035.
Correct. This is another part of why fission can’t be our only solution, but that doesn’t mean that we should be betting on fusion in place of fission. Typical times to build and operationalize a fission reactor are in the 5-15 year range from what I understand, but that is significantly lower than the expected timelines for us cracking fusion power and getting the tech mature enough to be able to implement it at scale for power generation. Additionally, the most likely type of fusion that we would be using in this case would be Deuterium-Tritium fusion, which generates neutron radiation and nuclear waste as a result (though significantly less than fission), so you would be likely to see similar waste disposal requirements. Consequently, I would expect similar timelines as fission power operationalization for a fusion plant (though likely still lower than fission, of course, due to the lack of reactor meltdown risk needing to be accounted for).
Between the research component which we have no true ability know the timeline of, only make educated guesses, alongside the construction and operationalization timeline, you’re probably looking at twice the length of time as bringing a fission plant online as a hard minimum, and I’m of the opinion it will likely be even longer. As a result, I think there’s a compelling argument for fission in the interim, though I will admit you are correct in that fusion research investment may have the ability to significantly change this calculus, so I understand your perspective.
The problem is that fission does not actually hybridize with solar/wind/water very well. There is one possible exception; on the question of fission, I’ve switched from “yes” to “no” to “maybe, but still probably no” due to that one exception.
Fission has extremely high up front capital costs, but relatively low ongoing costs. What that means is you really, really want to run it at 100% as close to 24/7 as you possibly can. You also can’t stop your fuel from undergoing decay even when it’s not at critical, though that’s somewhat minor.
Solar and wind have the issue that the amount of power you get from them doesn’t ever match the amount of power you want. They’re also so dirt cheap that we want to use as much of it as we possibly can. To complement them, we need something that can vary its power output.
That is not fission. It fights against that for economic and physics reasons. You end up having to shut off solar and wind at otherwise viable times because fission wants to keep dumping power on the grid.
Can’t seem to find the reference now, but there is one proposed type of plant that stores the superheated steam in the secondary loop, and can therefore vary its output as needed. This would hybridize much better with solar and wind. However, it hasn’t been proven in practice, and doesn’t address a number of other economic problems with fission.
All that said, grid upgrades, grid upgrades, grid upgrades. I can’t emphasize them enough, even though they’re really boring. When you have good long distance transmission, the wind is always blowing somewhere, and the sun is shining somewhere for much of the day. You end up not needing nearly as much storage as you’d think. In fact, we may already have enough pumped hydro in the US to make it work. If not, then it’s fairly close.
Interesting! That’s a very reasonable view, and I hadn’t considered that problem of hybridization, but put in those terms I definitely see your point of how these are somewhat mutually incompatible. I would think, however, that energy storage and grid upgrades would, if I’m understanding correctly, also assist in solving the hybridization problem, as it brings those unpredictable generation methods closer to a stable output value, allowing for it to be more easily accounted for alongside the stable output of fission, with bursts either being handled by storage or some other generation method like conventional generators (after all, we don’t actually have to take carbon emissions to zero, simply get them below the value at which more carbon is absorbed than released). Additionally, while solar is unpredictable as a result of weather, what we can say is that it only produces power during the day, and the daytime is generally when power consumption is at its highest (not universally true, particularly in that evening/early nighttime period, but the daytime is a significant spike), so I would think that helps to some degree with the variable power output problem.
Still, I can see your point, definitely. I don’t think this reduces fission’s viability for stable generation, in particular for countries which might not have the right kind of geography for those other power generation methods to be viable, but when you have the geography of a country like the US, I’ll concede that it’s definitely not your only option, and that there are others with lower upfront cost than fission. Even this isn’t necessarily true if countries were willing to link their grids to expand the available geography, but that is unlikely to become widespread practice anytime soon due to the geostrategic risk that energy dependence like that exposes you to.
And, to your point, if we’re looking from a raw economics perspective, building a fission plant which you plan to replace with fusion in 30-50 years is actually even more expensive, because a large portion of the reactor’s operational lifespan is not being utilized and so therefore isn’t offsetting that initial upfront cost.
. . . what we can say is that it only produces power during the day, and the daytime is generally when power consumption is at its highest (not universally true, particularly in that evening/early nighttime period, but the daytime is a significant spike), so I would think that helps to some degree with the variable power output problem.
There’s another way to model this. We have weather data stretching back a long time. We know when a given region will have sufficient wind and solar. There will be lull where neither are producing enough, but we have a pretty good idea of what that will be based on historical data. Figure out how much storage you need to cover that lull, and double it as a safety factor.
The result from this analysis is a whole lot less storage than is generally assumed. Getting to 95% non-nuclear renewable is relatively easy. It’s much harder to get that last 5%, but as you say, we don’t actually have to go to zero carbon emissions.
Basically, my position is to keep what fission we have. The US produces about 20% of its electricity from fission, and that’s fine. The rest has a clear path forward to drastically cut carbon emissions without a single new fission plant.
Getting to 95% non-nuclear renewable is relatively easy. It’s much harder to get that last 5%, but as you say, we don’t actually have to go to zero carbon emissions.
Yeah, I don’t see why this isn’t a good end goal. 95% non-nuclear renewable, including storage. Supposedly we can do this cheaper than the current grid and with today’s technology.
Would it really be so bad to have natural gas peaker plants for the rest? The problem is it’s not a consistent 5% but that 5% of the year and you can’t really keep up, assuming affordable renewables and storage buildout. Natural gas is good at powering up on demand, instead of wanting to be on continually.
So we’re still emitting carbon, but much much less than today. Maybe we can add it to the pile of things that will be tough to convert, like shipping, aviation, metal refining, plastics
Then if we want fission in 2035, we’ll have to start now. If we want fusion by 2035, we’re probably out of luck because we haven’t even got the tech to the point where we can produce net electricity with it yet (net energy from the reaction yes, but that’s not good enough for a power plant), and once we get that we need to refine it enough to produce enough energy to be worth the cost, and then we have to actually build the power plants. If we want neither, then we’ll probably still be using fossil fuels for a significant percentage of power generation by then, because while solar is cheap and should probably be the bulk of our future energy mix, is isn’t good for some use cases
That’s why you don’t solely fixate on solar. All viable plans involve a mix of solar, wind, water, and grid upgrades. That last one is particularly important. If you have long distance transmission, then there’s always wind or solar available.
As a great example of the importance of grid upgrades ……
Massachusetts has some of the highest electricity rates in the country. Despite our climate we’re committed to renewables, electrification, reducing carbon emissions, etc, and despite those electricity rates. But we had a deal to buy craploads of cheap clean hydropower from Canada …. Everyone benefits …. But couldn’t get the grid upgrades to carry it. Being unable to get grid upgrades means we pay more for electricity, we pollute more, Canadians don’t get the profit
Fission isn’t what you want, then. If you had 100 licenses from the NRC in hand today, not a single GW of new nuclear would come online in the US before 2030. Possibly not even 2035.
And how long before we get fusion?
A lot longer than making grid improvements, solar, and wind.
You are worse than a broken record.
Not my fault that this table is correct:
https://www.enr.com/ext/resources/2023/01/25/Flyvbjerg_database2_ENRweb.jpg
Correct. This is another part of why fission can’t be our only solution, but that doesn’t mean that we should be betting on fusion in place of fission. Typical times to build and operationalize a fission reactor are in the 5-15 year range from what I understand, but that is significantly lower than the expected timelines for us cracking fusion power and getting the tech mature enough to be able to implement it at scale for power generation. Additionally, the most likely type of fusion that we would be using in this case would be Deuterium-Tritium fusion, which generates neutron radiation and nuclear waste as a result (though significantly less than fission), so you would be likely to see similar waste disposal requirements. Consequently, I would expect similar timelines as fission power operationalization for a fusion plant (though likely still lower than fission, of course, due to the lack of reactor meltdown risk needing to be accounted for).
Between the research component which we have no true ability know the timeline of, only make educated guesses, alongside the construction and operationalization timeline, you’re probably looking at twice the length of time as bringing a fission plant online as a hard minimum, and I’m of the opinion it will likely be even longer. As a result, I think there’s a compelling argument for fission in the interim, though I will admit you are correct in that fusion research investment may have the ability to significantly change this calculus, so I understand your perspective.
The problem is that fission does not actually hybridize with solar/wind/water very well. There is one possible exception; on the question of fission, I’ve switched from “yes” to “no” to “maybe, but still probably no” due to that one exception.
Fission has extremely high up front capital costs, but relatively low ongoing costs. What that means is you really, really want to run it at 100% as close to 24/7 as you possibly can. You also can’t stop your fuel from undergoing decay even when it’s not at critical, though that’s somewhat minor.
Solar and wind have the issue that the amount of power you get from them doesn’t ever match the amount of power you want. They’re also so dirt cheap that we want to use as much of it as we possibly can. To complement them, we need something that can vary its power output.
That is not fission. It fights against that for economic and physics reasons. You end up having to shut off solar and wind at otherwise viable times because fission wants to keep dumping power on the grid.
Can’t seem to find the reference now, but there is one proposed type of plant that stores the superheated steam in the secondary loop, and can therefore vary its output as needed. This would hybridize much better with solar and wind. However, it hasn’t been proven in practice, and doesn’t address a number of other economic problems with fission.
All that said, grid upgrades, grid upgrades, grid upgrades. I can’t emphasize them enough, even though they’re really boring. When you have good long distance transmission, the wind is always blowing somewhere, and the sun is shining somewhere for much of the day. You end up not needing nearly as much storage as you’d think. In fact, we may already have enough pumped hydro in the US to make it work. If not, then it’s fairly close.
Interesting! That’s a very reasonable view, and I hadn’t considered that problem of hybridization, but put in those terms I definitely see your point of how these are somewhat mutually incompatible. I would think, however, that energy storage and grid upgrades would, if I’m understanding correctly, also assist in solving the hybridization problem, as it brings those unpredictable generation methods closer to a stable output value, allowing for it to be more easily accounted for alongside the stable output of fission, with bursts either being handled by storage or some other generation method like conventional generators (after all, we don’t actually have to take carbon emissions to zero, simply get them below the value at which more carbon is absorbed than released). Additionally, while solar is unpredictable as a result of weather, what we can say is that it only produces power during the day, and the daytime is generally when power consumption is at its highest (not universally true, particularly in that evening/early nighttime period, but the daytime is a significant spike), so I would think that helps to some degree with the variable power output problem.
Still, I can see your point, definitely. I don’t think this reduces fission’s viability for stable generation, in particular for countries which might not have the right kind of geography for those other power generation methods to be viable, but when you have the geography of a country like the US, I’ll concede that it’s definitely not your only option, and that there are others with lower upfront cost than fission. Even this isn’t necessarily true if countries were willing to link their grids to expand the available geography, but that is unlikely to become widespread practice anytime soon due to the geostrategic risk that energy dependence like that exposes you to.
And, to your point, if we’re looking from a raw economics perspective, building a fission plant which you plan to replace with fusion in 30-50 years is actually even more expensive, because a large portion of the reactor’s operational lifespan is not being utilized and so therefore isn’t offsetting that initial upfront cost.
There’s another way to model this. We have weather data stretching back a long time. We know when a given region will have sufficient wind and solar. There will be lull where neither are producing enough, but we have a pretty good idea of what that will be based on historical data. Figure out how much storage you need to cover that lull, and double it as a safety factor.
The result from this analysis is a whole lot less storage than is generally assumed. Getting to 95% non-nuclear renewable is relatively easy. It’s much harder to get that last 5%, but as you say, we don’t actually have to go to zero carbon emissions.
Basically, my position is to keep what fission we have. The US produces about 20% of its electricity from fission, and that’s fine. The rest has a clear path forward to drastically cut carbon emissions without a single new fission plant.
Yeah, I don’t see why this isn’t a good end goal. 95% non-nuclear renewable, including storage. Supposedly we can do this cheaper than the current grid and with today’s technology.
Would it really be so bad to have natural gas peaker plants for the rest? The problem is it’s not a consistent 5% but that 5% of the year and you can’t really keep up, assuming affordable renewables and storage buildout. Natural gas is good at powering up on demand, instead of wanting to be on continually.
So we’re still emitting carbon, but much much less than today. Maybe we can add it to the pile of things that will be tough to convert, like shipping, aviation, metal refining, plastics
Then if we want fission in 2035, we’ll have to start now. If we want fusion by 2035, we’re probably out of luck because we haven’t even got the tech to the point where we can produce net electricity with it yet (net energy from the reaction yes, but that’s not good enough for a power plant), and once we get that we need to refine it enough to produce enough energy to be worth the cost, and then we have to actually build the power plants. If we want neither, then we’ll probably still be using fossil fuels for a significant percentage of power generation by then, because while solar is cheap and should probably be the bulk of our future energy mix, is isn’t good for some use cases
That’s why you don’t solely fixate on solar. All viable plans involve a mix of solar, wind, water, and grid upgrades. That last one is particularly important. If you have long distance transmission, then there’s always wind or solar available.
As a great example of the importance of grid upgrades ……
Massachusetts has some of the highest electricity rates in the country. Despite our climate we’re committed to renewables, electrification, reducing carbon emissions, etc, and despite those electricity rates. But we had a deal to buy craploads of cheap clean hydropower from Canada …. Everyone benefits …. But couldn’t get the grid upgrades to carry it. Being unable to get grid upgrades means we pay more for electricity, we pollute more, Canadians don’t get the profit