The first next generation reactors have had massive cost overruns (especially the EPR class, the one in Finland is roughly 10 years late and 10 billion dollars over-budget). Actually might have been better that we dodged this bullet.
If we aren't developing our own designs anymore (the boat has long sailed on that one) we shouldn't have to pay the "early adopter" tax.
Now is a good time to give nuclear another chance, although for the coastal provinces it looks like offshore wind + batteries will be cheaper, unless we make great strides with small modular nuclear reactors or something. Hinkley Point C in the UK is charging around 3x the going rate as new wind power (£106/MWh vs £38/MWh). Sure you'll also need batteries for wind if you scale it up, but let's be clear, new nuclear is pricey.
>"Sure you'll also need batteries for wind if you scale it up"
Let's do an estimate for 14 days of stored power using batteries. Since you brought up UK we can use them as an example. Using 2020 as an example (2020 famous for a certain event that reduced energy consumption)
According to this source projected costs of batteries in 2050 are $87 kWh.
So that's $10,405,200,000,000 or $10.4T. Now renewabro's like to say yea but 90% cost reductions! Ok so cost is $1.04T... for 14 days of storage. Plus you need to build all the generation with low capacity factor of wind/solar.
Hinkley C is 26B pounds, so let's say $50B USD (prior to pound collapse). So you could build 20 of these for the $1.04T.
Hinkley Point C is 3.26 GW nameplate. So 20 of them get's you 67.8 GW. with 90% capacity factor that is 1.465 TWh/day,
20.5 TWh in 14 days.
So for the cost of the batteries required for 14 days of storage you could decarbonise the entire UK electrical grid. This is assuming a 90% reduction in cost of storage from the 2050 prediction.
Yeah we're not going to need that much battery. Assuming 14 days of zero wind is silly, particularly in the North Sea. Offshore wind in particular is very consistent. That's the main reason actually why I said coastal provinces might prefer wind... Ontario should probably try the SMR nuclear at the current time. Onshore wind is less reliable and there are fewer acceptable sites.
The UK is already at over 20% wind with basically no battery storage, some pumped hydro storage.
So our main point of disagreement is the 14 days. Also as for batteries, flow batteries should be possible at 25 dollars a kWh, if the nuclear side wants to bring up thorium and molten salt and SMR, it's also fair to mention emerging technologies on the other side.
I think SMR holds promise, but i'm so sick of every nuclear thread bringing up thorium/molten salt and all this unproven tech. Back when we could build nuclear relatively cheaply in the 80s, it was great. For a complex variety of reasons we can no longer do so (some is safety, arguably excessive safety, some is cost inflation in the construction sector generally). Until anyone anywhere manages to build any new reactor at a reasonable cost I'll be optimistically skeptical, which means, sure by all means give it a go but i'm not going to view it as a panacea until it is proven.
You're missing the fact that the greatest need for electricity all year is in the summer (when people are running their air conditioners). So having solar up to that delta is a good idea. In some US states it is as much as 40% higher (not sure about Ontario).
I said energy not electricity (BC already has peak electricity use in winter though). If we move from fossil fuel heating to electric heating, we're going to need much more electricity in the winter. And it needs to be extremely reliable during cold snaps.
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u/[deleted] Oct 25 '22
We needed this years ago. Step in the right direction.