Even the link itself mentions how it’s not really a good metric to use as it doesn’t factor in whole lot of externalities. I.e coal is cheaper, but when it creates air pollution that shortens your lifespan, is it worth the tradeoff? Nor does it factor in things like energy density: a nuclear power plant is far smaller than the amount of land needed to put up enough wind turbines to match its output.
Basically… LCOE looks like a neat gotcha, right up until you look past that first diagram.
Its expensive to build new bespoke massive, built on site reactors. I’m not arguing for more of them I’m saying lets run them for their full service lives as they were so expensive to produce. However if we are discussing new installations i’d love to start making a lot of small modular light water reactors in factory conditions. Economies of scale.
I agree. Smaller local modern salt reactors would be a better use of nuclear than investing in the conventional centralised nuclear plants.
However they’re still in the experimental phase and not easily available. I too would love if “we” starting making a lot of them, but there’s no finished design or anyone offering to build them for mass deployment.
Right now, with the currently available options, renewable is the only cheap mass produced energy source that can beeasily deployed everywhere and in different scales.
Hopefully the container sized nuclear plants will eventually be as easy to setup.
Renewables also have a similar issue with storage. It exists mainly in experimental projects. It’s extremely local if it even makes financial sense to do it. In places where existing nuclear or hydro is available it will not be make much financial sense to store excess renewable energy with a loss.
Nuclear is not cheap.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levelized_cost_of_electricity
Even the link itself mentions how it’s not really a good metric to use as it doesn’t factor in whole lot of externalities. I.e coal is cheaper, but when it creates air pollution that shortens your lifespan, is it worth the tradeoff? Nor does it factor in things like energy density: a nuclear power plant is far smaller than the amount of land needed to put up enough wind turbines to match its output.
Basically… LCOE looks like a neat gotcha, right up until you look past that first diagram.
https://www.mackinac.org/blog/2022/nuclear-wasted-why-the-cost-of-nuclear-energy-is-misunderstood
Its cheaper than climate change.
Its expensive to build new bespoke massive, built on site reactors. I’m not arguing for more of them I’m saying lets run them for their full service lives as they were so expensive to produce. However if we are discussing new installations i’d love to start making a lot of small modular light water reactors in factory conditions. Economies of scale.
I agree. Smaller local modern salt reactors would be a better use of nuclear than investing in the conventional centralised nuclear plants. However they’re still in the experimental phase and not easily available. I too would love if “we” starting making a lot of them, but there’s no finished design or anyone offering to build them for mass deployment.
Right now, with the currently available options, renewable is the only cheap mass produced energy source that can beeasily deployed everywhere and in different scales.
Hopefully the container sized nuclear plants will eventually be as easy to setup.
Renewables also have a similar issue with storage. It exists mainly in experimental projects. It’s extremely local if it even makes financial sense to do it. In places where existing nuclear or hydro is available it will not be make much financial sense to store excess renewable energy with a loss.
Its not exactly new science we have proven designs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_naval_reactors
Power from nuclear plants in Ontario is some of the cheapest to produce in the province, because the plants have been running for literal decades.