This sounds like a W for the carbon-zero initiative. While renewables are picking up a lot of the media attention and a lot of the slack, having safe nuclear plants to bolster the clean grid helps a ton. The whole issue of power plants not making enough money because coal and natural gas are cheaper to burn breaks my brain. It's like when gas was near $2.00 a gallon years after the mid-2000's gas price crunch and all the sudden everybody wanted a gigantic SUV or truck again. You know what happens when the gas prices go up! You were there! What are you doing???
> The whole issue of power plants not making enough money
Civilian nuclear has never made money and I have looked. They are always subsidised (Loan guarantees, the US DOE, accounting tricks to wish away decommissioning costs etc.)
It's not because of 'treehuggers' either. Russia, China, Japan, France, S. Korea never have been able to either. Not much treehugger influence in the PRC.
Why then? National Security. Military nuclear is a national security issue. Civilian nuclear exists to support military nuclear. Natsec must always come first, or you soon won't have a nat to sec (in the minds of many).
Full disclosure: I'm not an accountant. Just a taxpayer who got to find out what 'stranded costs' are.
Coal is having a major comeback in Europe due to Russia. This has also opened the door to a lot of nuclear. The US doesn’t “need” it but it’s interesting to see them putting forward some modest investment for it still to maintain them.
We need hundreds of nuclear power plants built in the next 25 to 50 years. The full electrification of our ground transportation system is impossible without this.
> need hundreds of nuclear power plants built in the next 25 to 50 years
2040s will be a turning point.
Americans born before 1970 are the problem with nuclear [1]. They should be clearing by the late 2040s [2], which suggests political decoupling starting in the late 2030s.
Unfortunately, that makes nuclear a poor contender for 2050 goals. Moods changing around 2040 means plans by 2050 and effects beginning in the 2060s. Unless the younger generations’ support massively increases, or the older generations begin disengaging quicker, nuclear is probably not a viable solution.
If this is true, the electric transportation shift isn't going to happen for a long time. In fact, it could suffer serious setbacks.
About five years ago I took the time to model and understand power demand for an all-electric fleet. The answer is simple: We need to be able to produce AND transport twice the power we are able to produce today. One way to put it is that we need to duplicate our current energy production systems, both in capacity and distribution. That is a massive undertaking, one which nuclear would make much simpler.
The serious setback I was referring to above has to do with what might happen as more and more full electric vehicles are deployed before the grid and excess power generation capacity is there to support them. This I have not modeled.
If I had to guess, I would say that there will come a point in time where the deployed fleet of electrics will over-burden the system. Lacking any sort of intelligent planning (we have none whatsoever), this is likely to lead to a few things. One of them would be that electricity prices will double or triple. Lacking sufficient generation capacity we will have no choice but to burn more fuel (coal, whatever) in order to generate power. However, there's a limit. Our current plants and distribution network cannot produce and transport twice the power.
What happens then? You can't build power plants instantly. They take time. Solar is great, yet it is unreliable and requires massive over-building (you need over seven times the peak power generation out of a solar installation in order to match the output of a nuclear power plant). In other words, to match the output of a 1 GW nuclear power plant you have to, at a minimum, build a 7 GW photovoltaic solar farm.
What happens? Well, as electricity becomes expensive and rolling blackouts and other nice things start to become more and more part of daily lives electric vehicles might not be seen in the same light. In fact, the cost of operating electric vehicles will likely increase significantly during this period. In addition to that, it is very likely additional taxes will be levied on electric cars in order to have owners of these vehicles pay their fair share of what it will take to support their ability to drive such vehicles.
In many ways those owning electric vehicles today live in a fantasy they are not paying for. They use a large amount of excess energy available to them only because we have not reached that point in time where our energy grid starts to tap out.
If our ruling class has our best interest at heart (and had a clue) the goal would not be electrification of our transport systems by 2030, but rather a doubling of our power generation and distribution capacity by 2030. Do this and electric vehicle ownership will naturally grow tremendously because electricity would be cheap.
One other point. And this one is truly counterintuitive to anyone who hasn't stopped to think critically: Anyone who wants a clean energy future (including cars) has to support producing as much oil as possible and lowering oil prices as far as they will go.
Why?
In case the answer isn't obvious: As mentioned before, we need to double our power generation and distribution system. We need to do that quickly (25 years). The obvious question is: How much will that cost? Well, anyone who understand construction at that scale likely knows one thing: Fuel/oil prices drive costs. Without truly inexpensive oil, fuels, lubricants, etc. we are not going to be able to double our electric infrastructure. We cannot afford to do so. And that is the foundation of apparent ideological contradiction. If you want clean energy you have to support oil and fossil fuels for the next 20 to 30 years. In fact, without becoming enthusiastic supporters of expanding the supply of oil (to lower costs) you likely can kiss your electric car future goodbye.
I just pulled info from this table (1) to understand better the importance of keeping nuclear plants going as we transition away from fossil fuels. There are some interesting notes.
Only 17 states have more than 50% of their power generated without fossil fuels. Among these (Vermont with a whopping 99.8%, good job!). Most of these states have one major source of power (>40%) (except Maine). Some examples are hydro electric (WA, ID, WT, OR, SD, MT), Wind (IA, KS), Natural Gas (CA, NY), and Nuclear (NH, IL, SC, TN, NJ, MD).
This is not good analysis, but it helped me think a little bit about where we're at and how nuclear can help. It seems that today, nuclear is vitally important among states that can't generate power due to geographic constraints, while hydro is significant for the West, Wind for the midwest, and we should shame California and New York for holding on to natural gas production.
Something else of note, the states with the most solar generation (CA, NV, DC, MA) all use natural gas as their primary energy source. It would behoove them to build more nukes, and fewer solar farms.
Thanks for compiling and sharing this info!
I'm not sure a state-level point of view to this problems is the right way to view this problem. Except Texas I guess because it has ercot all to itself. Most big electric producer(eg, calpine) cover large multi-state regions and the interconnect systems tie together many states. Of course there's transmission losses, but otherwise I think a "regional" resource-based perspective with trading/sharing is more appropriate. Then you can pool and distribute based on what's most efficient and cost-effective, letting markets dictate prices.
I suppose this is not exclusive of looking at the state level, considering states have vested interest and often fund large projects.
US is not "set to launch". The US launched the program [1].
One can say the US was "set to launch" this program back in 2021 when the Congress passed the Infrastructure Bill which appropriated the $6 Billion for the task of helping the struggling nuclear power plants [2]. Now the Bill is a law, the money was handed over to the Department of Energy, and the DoE went over the technical details (like the Request for Information), and the program was fully launched.
11 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 59.5 ms ] threadCivilian nuclear has never made money and I have looked. They are always subsidised (Loan guarantees, the US DOE, accounting tricks to wish away decommissioning costs etc.)
It's not because of 'treehuggers' either. Russia, China, Japan, France, S. Korea never have been able to either. Not much treehugger influence in the PRC.
Why then? National Security. Military nuclear is a national security issue. Civilian nuclear exists to support military nuclear. Natsec must always come first, or you soon won't have a nat to sec (in the minds of many).
Full disclosure: I'm not an accountant. Just a taxpayer who got to find out what 'stranded costs' are.
2040s will be a turning point.
Americans born before 1970 are the problem with nuclear [1]. They should be clearing by the late 2040s [2], which suggests political decoupling starting in the late 2030s.
Unfortunately, that makes nuclear a poor contender for 2050 goals. Moods changing around 2040 means plans by 2050 and effects beginning in the 2060s. Unless the younger generations’ support massively increases, or the older generations begin disengaging quicker, nuclear is probably not a viable solution.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1011716/climate-policy-i...
[2] https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html
Until the nuclear regulators retire, nothing much will be approved in USA. They are out of touch with the nation.
About five years ago I took the time to model and understand power demand for an all-electric fleet. The answer is simple: We need to be able to produce AND transport twice the power we are able to produce today. One way to put it is that we need to duplicate our current energy production systems, both in capacity and distribution. That is a massive undertaking, one which nuclear would make much simpler.
The serious setback I was referring to above has to do with what might happen as more and more full electric vehicles are deployed before the grid and excess power generation capacity is there to support them. This I have not modeled.
If I had to guess, I would say that there will come a point in time where the deployed fleet of electrics will over-burden the system. Lacking any sort of intelligent planning (we have none whatsoever), this is likely to lead to a few things. One of them would be that electricity prices will double or triple. Lacking sufficient generation capacity we will have no choice but to burn more fuel (coal, whatever) in order to generate power. However, there's a limit. Our current plants and distribution network cannot produce and transport twice the power.
What happens then? You can't build power plants instantly. They take time. Solar is great, yet it is unreliable and requires massive over-building (you need over seven times the peak power generation out of a solar installation in order to match the output of a nuclear power plant). In other words, to match the output of a 1 GW nuclear power plant you have to, at a minimum, build a 7 GW photovoltaic solar farm.
What happens? Well, as electricity becomes expensive and rolling blackouts and other nice things start to become more and more part of daily lives electric vehicles might not be seen in the same light. In fact, the cost of operating electric vehicles will likely increase significantly during this period. In addition to that, it is very likely additional taxes will be levied on electric cars in order to have owners of these vehicles pay their fair share of what it will take to support their ability to drive such vehicles.
In many ways those owning electric vehicles today live in a fantasy they are not paying for. They use a large amount of excess energy available to them only because we have not reached that point in time where our energy grid starts to tap out.
If our ruling class has our best interest at heart (and had a clue) the goal would not be electrification of our transport systems by 2030, but rather a doubling of our power generation and distribution capacity by 2030. Do this and electric vehicle ownership will naturally grow tremendously because electricity would be cheap.
One other point. And this one is truly counterintuitive to anyone who hasn't stopped to think critically: Anyone who wants a clean energy future (including cars) has to support producing as much oil as possible and lowering oil prices as far as they will go.
Why?
In case the answer isn't obvious: As mentioned before, we need to double our power generation and distribution system. We need to do that quickly (25 years). The obvious question is: How much will that cost? Well, anyone who understand construction at that scale likely knows one thing: Fuel/oil prices drive costs. Without truly inexpensive oil, fuels, lubricants, etc. we are not going to be able to double our electric infrastructure. We cannot afford to do so. And that is the foundation of apparent ideological contradiction. If you want clean energy you have to support oil and fossil fuels for the next 20 to 30 years. In fact, without becoming enthusiastic supporters of expanding the supply of oil (to lower costs) you likely can kiss your electric car future goodbye.
Only 17 states have more than 50% of their power generated without fossil fuels. Among these (Vermont with a whopping 99.8%, good job!). Most of these states have one major source of power (>40%) (except Maine). Some examples are hydro electric (WA, ID, WT, OR, SD, MT), Wind (IA, KS), Natural Gas (CA, NY), and Nuclear (NH, IL, SC, TN, NJ, MD).
This is not good analysis, but it helped me think a little bit about where we're at and how nuclear can help. It seems that today, nuclear is vitally important among states that can't generate power due to geographic constraints, while hydro is significant for the West, Wind for the midwest, and we should shame California and New York for holding on to natural gas production.
Something else of note, the states with the most solar generation (CA, NV, DC, MA) all use natural gas as their primary energy source. It would behoove them to build more nukes, and fewer solar farms.
(1) https://www.nei.org/resources/statistics/state-electricity-g...
I suppose this is not exclusive of looking at the state level, considering states have vested interest and often fund large projects.
One can say the US was "set to launch" this program back in 2021 when the Congress passed the Infrastructure Bill which appropriated the $6 Billion for the task of helping the struggling nuclear power plants [2]. Now the Bill is a law, the money was handed over to the Department of Energy, and the DoE went over the technical details (like the Request for Information), and the program was fully launched.
[1] https://www.energy.gov/articles/doe-seeks-applications-bids-...
[2] https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/civil-nuclear-credit-progr...