That said, it's entirely possible to make an argument that the combination of wind, solar, battery energy storage, and kinetic (flywheel?) energy storage can solve the above needs for less money over the long term than nuclear. They can be built more incrementally and in smaller chunks, but there's also a certain value in having huge amounts of energy that can be sited basically anywhere. A big challenge with nuclear is that every time someone costs out a plant, by the time they can gather money solar and wind have gotten cheaper faster than expected.
Overall, I'd like to see a diversity of power sources. I think we should try building some big modern nuclear plants, convert some combustion plants with small modular reactors, subsidize solar and wind preferentially in areas where it makes the most sense, and fund hydro projects where it won't impact the environment.
Above I linked live ERCOT data which you can investigate. Another high penetration renewable to investigate is California ISO.
https://www.gridstatus.io/live/caiso
In both cases yes, I do see that Nuclear power is providing a steady baseload of roughly 10% of power generation throughout the day. But Nuclear power as we currently implement it is:
* Very inflexible. * Very expensive to build. * Very time consuming to build. * Still incurs significant downtime for refueling and ends up producing spent fuel which we don't have a great solution for.
I understand research is going into technologies which may address all of those things and that is interesting and exciting. However is it really a blocker for the future?
Just in Texas they have recently peaked at 32GW of solar generation, 47GW of solar+hydro+wind generation, 10GW of batteries discharging, and 79% of demand supported by renewables. In terms of battery storage they have grown from almost nothing 2 years ago: https://www.gridstatus.io/records/ercot?record=Maximum%20Tot...
Solar has tripled in 4 years: https://www.gridstatus.io/records/ercot?record=Maximum%20Sol...
So the question is, why not just build more solar, wind, hydro and batteries? Why is there so much attention on Nuclear power being the only answer?
I am not advocating stopping research on Nuclear power, or shutting down current plants. I actually think we should just naturally follow the technology cost curve and the market forces.
Corrective upvote naturally.
Some people will invest in the most non-promising things just because they are such a long-shot :\
The numbers speak for themselves.
This is not an opinionated article, just plain data, and just for the Texas grid, so it is only representative to a certain degree.
But very concise. And easy to visualize from the graphs.
The top graph says a lot on its own, look at the last few full 24-hour periods 12-14 MAR, when there have been clear sunny skies, as a best-current-performance solar measure for this time of year.
It's not even summer, when skies may not be as consistently clear, but it can be seen that total non-nuclear drops to about twice what nuclear steadily provides as a baseline. And nuclear has about 10% of today's market with its unwavering output. Possibly only competitive at all because the nuclear generation facilities are so old they are all theoretically "paid for" a long time ago. Except in practice under some accounting methods ratepayers could actually still be paying for them decades later, that tendency says even more about overall viability.
Yes, these are all dollars, not just gigawatts.
In the daytime, solar pinches down on everything at this point and almost all the wide open spaces of Texas still remain completely untapped.
Even wind power is curtailed when solar is available, these costs are highly managed from the get-go to fully gouge all ratepayers at all times :\ With that as an underlying foundation, then all apparent activity can be exactly the opposite, which is to minimize the gouging !
So within the accepted limitation that ratepayers will never be able to afford deregulation without all being robbed blind ever since, that bonanza is being competed for by the private companies. ERCOT puts tons of effort into managing the physical grid which represents their market.
"Dynamically bringing the lowest-cost electricity available to ratepayers at all times, to actively reduce the possibility of skyrocketing rate excursions due to shortages."
With future growth, solar will eventually want to pinch down all the way to nuclear. There won't be dollar pressures that make nuclear want to grow, just the opposite, owners of these stranded assets will wish they had never been built even if they are "already paid for", and that was a long time ago for wishes not to come true.
Now to put in perspective the way solar's worst shortcoming is the way it doesn't work at night, the trend is for nuclear to be the most useful at night only where it's non-intermittent nature could be more of a drawback than an advantage. Battery storage growth also appears capable of continually outpacing nuclear construction.
Now the different color bands on the gigawatt/dollar graph all represent different participants in what are now competitive business interests in the "mature" deregulated system. Like any other trading scheme, different players have different advantages at different times, and here you can clearly see their various ups & downs as they all contribute to the overall load on any given trading day.
Each of the different colors actually has an executive "or two" whose bonuses depend entirely on that one type of energy prevailing to whatever degree it can.
If the only bonus you're ever going to get is from nuclear, it's like looking at every problem like a nail because your only tool is a hammer. All you can do is pound away for what it's worth. Under the kind of pressure that is mounting, nothing is ever going to have the fundamental ability to provide as steady a bonus stream as nuclear ever again. That's the remaining financial advantage that is actually what keeps being hammered home, cost is a lost cause for all to see if they can focus through the noise.
At least 90% are not in this boat, and with the downward dollar pressure nuclear may actually be over-represented as it is, lingering as more of an overdone boomer technology than increasingly viable solution on the grid/market of the future.
