Google commits to buying power generated by nuclear-energy startup Kairos Power

> nuclear power today is an insane prospect when the energy market is being reshaped at this speed

We’re still more than a decade away from having enough batteries to make this shift. Again, excluding EVs and AI. That’s why we’re reänimating coal plants and building new gas turbines.

I’d also love to see the numbers on that simulation going from 98.6% coverage to what we expect from a modern grid. (And if the balance is provided by gas or something else.) It should surprise nobody that going from 1 sigma to 2 can cost as much as 2 to 3, even if the percentage gap is much smaller.

> Europe old paid off nuclear plants are regularly being forced off the markets due to supplying too expensive energy

Europe has invested €1.5tn into new gas infrastructure. That doesn’t go poor without a fight and collateral damage.

A study recently found that a nuclear powered grid to be vastly more expensive than a renewable grid when looking at total system cost.

Nuclear power needs to come down by 85% in cost to be equal to the renewable system.

Every dollar invested in nuclear today prolongs our reliance on fossil fuels. We get enormously more value of the money simply by building renewables.

  The study finds that investments in flexibility in the electricity supply are needed in both systems due to the constant production pattern of nuclear and the variability of renewable energy sources. However, the scenario with high nuclear implementation is 1.2 billion EUR more expensive annually compared to a scenario only based on renewables, with all systems completely balancing supply and demand across all energy sectors in every hour. For nuclear power to be cost competitive with renewables an investment cost of 1.55 MEUR/MW must be achieved, which is substantially below any cost projection for nuclear power.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030626192...

In this context, what is a "modern grid"?

> Nuclear power needs to come down by 85% in cost to be equal to the renewable system.

Only if you don't care about reliability.

Seems like you didn’t read the quote from the abstract. Here’s the relevant part:

> with all systems completely balancing supply and demand across all energy sectors in every hour.

I call BS on that.

You’re asking us to trust your gut reaction over a peer-reviewed study. Do you have any qualifications or experience in the field?

> a nuclear powered grid to be vastly more expensive than a renewable grid when looking at total system cost

Yes, nuclear is more expensive. SMRs should help with that, but their expense has never been contested.

But marginal economics aren't everything. Renewable and battery production isn't ramping up fast enough to make that margin available at scale. This doesn't seem capital contrained, either--every major economy is throwing gobs of cash at the problem.

> Every dollar invested in nuclear today prolongs our reliance on fossil fuels. We get enormously more value of the money simply by building renewables

False economy. A dollar not invested into nukes doesn't go into renewables--partly because of the aforementioned scaling problem, it tends to wind up in gas.

We’re spending trillions of dollars of new money on gas infrastructure with decades of life and financial liabilities attached to them because we need the power, have maxed out renewables and are left with a choice: gas or nukes. Opposing nukes isn’t playing for renewables, it’s playing for gas.

Sorry, was writing on a mobile. Here's a more detailed explanation why it's pure BS.

Because it's simply magic thinking. They postulate a "future fully sector-coupled system" and then say that if this somehow magics into existance, then everything's peachy.

Basically, "a sector-coupled system" allows transforming excess power into something useful (district heating, hydrogen, steel, etc.), and shedding the load and/or providing some power back when there's not enough generated power available.

In other words, if you solve the problem of providing 1 month of energy storage for Germany and Denmark, then renewable energy is basically free. Duh.

The problem is that "sector-coupled systems" don't exist, and their creation will result in far, far, far, far more expenses than building fucking PWRs.

> We’re still more than a decade away from having enough batteries to make this shift.

A decade to have significant amounts of battery storage is actually a pretty optimistic timeline compared to nuclear. Nuclear plant construction times are on the order of a decade or (realistically) two decades in the West, if you include planning. In China they're managing 7 years, but their nuclear buildouts, while impressive, aren't trending an upward path when compared to renewables (see chart here [1].) SMRs might change this, but they're years from leaving "research" status and entering the mass-production/learning curves that could make them cost competitive.

This doesn't make me happy. If I thought nuclear was viable on the timelines we have to dampen climate change, I'd be 100% in favor of it. If we could assemble the political will to raise taxes and build nuclear at "wartime" speeds, I'd say go for it. I'm also very much in favor of SMR development, just not willing to bet the house on it.

As it stands, there isn't anywhere near enough nuclear power in the planning pipeline for nuclear to matter much on a 20 year timeline.

In any case, we are not going to a 100% renewable/battery grid in 10 years. The first goal is to get renewables to 90-95% or more of power generation, massively overbuilt with short-term battery storage backed by intermittent fossil fuels for the remaining 5-10%. This will represent a massive reduction in emissions. The last 5-10% will have to be completed over the next couple of decades, and the increasing battery production trend gives hope that it can be.

The worst problem with existing nuclear is that with a 15-20 year planning/construction timeline and the current molasses build rate, new nuclear plants will arrive right at the moment when cheap storage is eating the economic use-cases that make them financially viable.

[1] https://cleantechnica.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/China-r...

> * Nuclear plant construction times are on the order of a decade or (realistically) two decades in the West, if you include planning*

Sure. Forecasting twenty years out is tough. But our forecasts out 10 years show the power crunch easing to almost no degree--we'll still likely be making the same tradeoff then as now. (And, I suspect, still filling the gap with gas in teh west.)

You're broadly correct: we need to build faster. There is no reason we can't build a large plant in under a decade and an SMR in a few years. The latter is what Google is experimenting with here. It's a long shot. But so is hoping battery production scales the orders of magnitude necessary for it to become a utlity backbone over the next decades.

> first goal is to get renewables to 90-95% or more of power generation, massively overbuilt with short-term battery storage

We don't have the battery pipeline. What we're repeatedly getting is renewables plus gas generators. There is no world in which you put down trillions of dollars of gas infrastructure and then poof it in a few years because it's no longer needed.

> If we could assemble the political will to raise taxes and build nuclear at "wartime" speeds, I'd say go for it.

Tepco, Russia, and MetEd all lied to or misled the public about the nature of their respective accidents.

Not enough people who were alive during those incidents have died.

SMRs can potentially do something that renewables can’t: they could be placed near the loads in places with no space for renewables and without relying on the grid. Think industrial areas or even cities or towns that are surrounded by other developed land. The grid moves slowly, and electricity prices via existing transmission lines are, in many areas, hilariously inflated for a number of reasons. A hypothetical portable, easy-to-acquire SMR producing power at $100/MWh would not be an amazing deal if a large electric utility bought it, but a $100/MWh would be an amazing price in quite a few markets if a small utility could actually buy at that price and deliver via a small last-mile distribution system.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03605... here's another one or this https://liftoff.energy.gov/advanced-nuclear/

California would like a word with you. Gas generators are increasingly being forced off the grid with storage.

https://blog.gridstatus.io/caiso-batteries-apr-2024/

Storage costs are today lower than the most aggressive projection for 2050 according to one widely cited US DoE study from 2023.

https://substack.com/home/post/p-149971818

> https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03605...

Yes, that shit study which models supplying the entire grid with one energy source and lithium storage through all weather conditions.

I would suggest reading the study I linked so you can see the difference in methodology when credible researches in the field tackle similar questions.

The credible studies are focused on simulating the energy system and market with real world constraints. Which apparently works out way cheaper when not involving nuclear in the picture.

> https://liftoff.energy.gov/advanced-nuclear/

That entire report is an exercise in selectively choosing data to misrepresent renewables and present nuclear power in the best possible light and wishful thinking.

To the degree that the prominent "renewables vs. nuclear" graph they keep repeating on the webpage and figure 6 in the report is straight up misleading.

This is the source:

What is different about different net-zero carbon electricity systems?

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266627872...

Utilizing storage costs from 2018 and then of course making the comparison against the model not incorporating any hydrogen derived zero carbon fuel to solve seasonal problems.

Which is todays suggestion for solving the final 1-2% requiring seasonal storage in the late 2030s.

Something akin to todays peaker plants financed on capacity because they run too little to be economical on their own, but zero carbon.

Would they have chosen the ReBF model the difference between made up optimal nuclear power and 2018 renewables would be: $80-94/MWh and $82-102/MWh.

It is essentially: Nukebros writes reports for nukebros, they confirm their own bias. Simply an attempt to justify another massive round of government subsidies on nuclear power.

Yes, the study incorporates no lithium storage. Including storage we will easily reach far above 90% renewable penetration.

When we get to the final percent in the 2030s we can utilize akin to todays peaker plants financed on capacity markets [1] but zero carbon.

Peaker plants today already run too little to be economical on their own, essentially what in our current grids constitute seasonal storage and emergency reserves.

Simply update the terms for the capacity markets to require the fuel to be zero-carbon. It can be synfuels, biofuels or hydrogen. Whatever comes out the cheapest.

As we electrify transportation we can shift over the massive ethanol blending in gasoline in the US to be our seasonal buffer. [2]

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_market#Capacity_ma...

[2]: https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=27&t=10

lmao, you say shit study but you suggest using green h2 as backup which not only isn't economically feasible (for now at least) but current generators are either using a mix with gas or use pure h2 with huge nox releases due to high temp burning. Not just that, most lcoe costs magically assume that 4h storage is enough. Look at yesterday's Germany generation and tell me how 4h storage will be enough there. Or maybe I should link to amount of subsidies Germany is pouring each year in renewables like https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-05-29/germany-s... or like https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/germany-looks-specia... It's funny that when I ask ren-bros how much subsidies edf in France is getting they are either silent or are linking to price shielding that's totally unrelated and is present in most eu countries after russia's invasion. Renewable bros as usual are dunking on nuclear and promoting their clean supply like a mecca without facing hard reality - most renewables now are subsidized by fossils and will be in any close future

>you suggest using green h2 as backup which not only isn't economically feasible (for now at least)

That's poor logic, h2 as a last-2%er doesn't need to be feasible until we've gotten to the 98% mark. And honestly, h2 feasibility is a function of cheap energy anyway, which probably means midday solar while solar farms are chasing dusk prices.

not, h2 feasibility in the context of power generation depends on many more factors, including how frequent the plant is used when day hours will be mostly tapped by solar generation and how you'll do price compensation. And in the context of h2 for renewables as a peaker, it'll need to be much more than 2%. And again, the emission problem for h2 generation isn't solved yet beyond fuel cells

> When we get to the final percent in the 2030s we can utilize akin to todays peaker plants financed on capacity markets [1] but zero carbon.

Capacity markets effectively don't exist in Europe right now. There are plans to create a plan for them by 2027, this is how urgent it is for Europe. But no worries, natural gas is now green, and it's fine to send money to Azerbaijan for it.

There is no pathway for most of Europe to switch to renewables any time soon.