I work at X-energy, one of the Gen 4 vendors trying to get some reactors built in the US by 2027. I wouldn't give up on NEIMA and the new regulatory framework just yet. Yes the NRC is throwing up plenty of roadblocks, but in Reg Guide 1.233 they endorsed a risk informed, performance based approach (RIPB) that replaces a lot (but not enough) of the deterministic regulations with requirements derived from a Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA). Using this, we can build safer plants at much lower cost.
As we go through our licensing process, we will see if the regulator really has bought into the NEIMA/RIPB frame of mind or if they are going to kill us with with deterministic requirements outside the scope of Reg Guide 1.233. But at least some of the NRC staff really have changed their tone so cost effective new nuclear may be possible. And Congress is acting like it will happen, pouring a ton of cash into the Advanced Reactor Demonstration Project (ARDO). New Advanced Nuclear in 2027 may become reality.
Subsidy scarcity may not be a real thing, but anti-nuclear environmentalists tend to overestimate the potential for wind and solar to carry the majority of load on our grid. That lack of understanding leads them to think that nuclear isn't a necessary component of our future grid and building these things takes political will and time. I am pro solar and pro wind, but I usually end up sounding very anti-wind when I talk to people because they tend to believe we can just build enough wind turbines to power everything. It's always windy somewhere right? Wrong. I also don't think we have the luxury of sitting around hoping that nuclear r&d will lead to mass implementation in 30 to 50 years. Mainly all this "new nuclear" stuff is just rebranding. Some of it might lead to lower costs to build in the future and the tech is absolutely cool and useful, but light water reactors are already very safe and cost effective over their lifetimes. Nothing needs to change to make them a good addition to our carbon free grid, except public perception. Yes, they have a massive upfront cost but are very inexpensive to run after that and the environmental impact is far lower.
The tendency of environmentalists to worship at the altar of wind and solar has also led to virtually no push into investment for geothermal. 20 years ago there was no real reason to think geothermal was any less cost effective than wind, but wind power is now cheap because over-hype led to massive investment. If the same had happened for geothermal and nuclear then we wouldn't have had to build natural gas plants and we would be in a much better position right now. The problem is not that "nuclear-bros" hate wind, the problem is that wind hype prevents better solutions from getting funding and attention. So 20 years from now we will still be dealing with where to get power when the wind isn't blowing. And the answer will still be natural gas.
As a scientist who is tertiary to nuclear energy, I was in favour of it for a long time. However, I have changed my mind heartily away from it. The reasons are two-fold. 1. No one has figured out what to do with the waste. Most stays on site. Do we need a ton of mini nuclear waste dumps? Matt skipped this part (almost) entirely. 2. The risk is narrowly site specific. When you build a natural gas plant, you pump out more CO2, but the whole planet bears the risk (it is called global warming for a reason). When you build a nuclear power plant and the s--t hits the fan, it is only the people next to it the bear the burden. This leads to obvious NIMBYism. No one wants to be near one. Every person that I have ever talked to about this topic is virulently opposed because the risk are so narrow and so obvious (after multiple worldwide accidents). Thus cost/benefit analysis only works for building it where nobody lives and therefore you don't need the electricity.
I am late to this and on deadline but wow, this thread! Thanks JCW and others for the crash course in energy history and the complexity of applied risk analysis.
"MIT has a nuclear reactor sitting in the middle of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and nobody minds."
I feel 100% confident that there are people in Cambridge who mind. Cambridge isn't quite as wacky about this as "nuclear-free Berkeley", but there are definitely some of the same types.
It's all safetyism. We overdo reduction of risks we *perceive* as dangerous much more than the risks that are actually dangerous. It's anti rationalism and it's anti science.
Nuclear simply can't compete if it has to have a ton more safety regulations than every other energy industry. "Broadly, nuclear regulation is at a crossroads. Plants are shutting down faster than they are being constructed, and unlike other industries, nuclear is forced to subsidize its regulator (NRC); the industry also faces a permit approval and construction timeline that stretches more than 20 years." - https://www.americanactionforum.org/research/putting-nuclear-regulatory-costs-context/
Nuclear is also the only energy industry that safety stores it's waste at it's own cost. (Keep in mind the waste is not nearly as toxic as it's made out to be.) - https://whatisnuclear.com/waste.html
Maybe I should just pose this as a question:
Why does the energy industry with the lowest Deaths per KwH have the most expensive safety requirements?
I agree with most of this except the final question; to answer it, I'd note the extra scrutiny exists because of the tail risk from failure. No conventional plant disaster will produce something like a Fukushima or Chernobyl.
However, the pendulum has swung too far in one direction and the additional safety measures in the newest designs are doing more to mitigate the risk.
Fukushima killed no one and the release of radiation in the environment was not really objectively a cause for concern. The 1000 people died due to a stupid evacuation. Chernobyl was an imbecile design that could nevertheless be safely operated but was instead operated in a manner indistinguishable from insane terrorists trying to cause the largest nuclear disaster possible.
Deaths/KwH is likely the most causal way to talk about energy sector safety. Is there another figure we care more about than the rate of deaths per the reason we're doing the thing?
Are disabilities from nuclear way higher than solar? Dismemberments? Are there interesting comorbidities?
What is your idea? I read your post and it's not very interesting. You're obviously a nuclear alarmist. The waste from the ships is not going to matter, in fact, humans have dumped spent nuclear fuel into the oceans with no environmental effect.
So, why is KwH a bad stat? Because of a possible black swan event?
Just say that. Don't obfuscate. "Read my super long post where I don't want about deaths/KwH OR ANY OTHER MEASURE" is just bad commenting. This is a place of good faith. Act accordingly.
As a sometimes "nuclear bro," I really appreciate this post's reframing toward overall goals and regulatory flexibility of creating energy that meet those goals, rather than focusing on a specific method of production. It doesn't particularly matter if its solar or nuclear or wind or hydro or whatever -- the question is whether it is relatively clean and relatively efficient.
Here's a (somewhat) related question: Is there any update on fusion power? It always seemed to me like a pipedream that was perpetually "10 years away," but I've gotten into arguments with (generally older, generally conservative) people who seem to think that fusion is only a few years out, and therefore it isn't worth bothering with dirty nuclear / inefficient solar / pointless wind. Is fusion *actually* close to commercial development, or is this just a punt of an argument that conveniently doesn't challenge our fossil fueled status quo?
I think it might be 10 years from showing more power out than power in. Then another 10-50 years to commercialize it at scale. At best. At worst, we're saying the same thing in 2121.
That’s silly - to be a thing at least 10x more energy needs to come out than goes in. Everyone knows that’s a given. Building and maintaining the plant is a rounding error.
Sabine must have some kind of disingenuous agenda.
"In certain circles, being pro-nuclear is a way to be climate-aware and pro-science while also signaling a kind of masculine tough-mindedness and hippie-punching attitude."
I know one of those guys (Yes they are male). And I have no problem signaling pro-science, toughmindedness, hippie punching if its not JUST and attitude. But sure enough, he has zero interest in any other policy and especially not a tax on net emissions of CO2, which he is sure will wreck the economy.
Because it involves juxtaposing one basically incomprehensible risk against another different kind of incomprehensible risk, it's also tailor-made as way to troll climate doomsayers: oh, carbon emissions will definitely end civilization, you say, yet you don't have the courage of your convictions enough to assume this small nuclear risk of ending civilization and stave off what you say is a certain risk of ending of civilization by carbon.
Debating relative risks, especially unknowable or incomprehensible ones, can be surprisingly divisive, probably because it becomes a Rorschach test of what people fear or value.
The understated theme, "how everyone, policymakers, and pundits alike, should *think* about policymaking" is such a valuable and underrated point, as well as absent from much of the discussion thread. I think about this often in the tangible distinction that can be between the difference of the actual legislative text, and the desired policy goals which require assumptions and analytical work. Keep writing on this!! What's more, a tension I hope you further unpack is the difference in the actual vs. the perceived role of Legislators, both in their minds and in the minds of voters. I think it's often framed and believed that Legislators are Executors, which shifts the emphasis of their attention. A better way to think about their role (as Matt alluded to with "we need to do is recognize that the existing regulatory framework for nuclear reactors is extremely hostile to breakthroughs.") would be to say that members of the Senate Banking, Housing, & Urban Affairs Committee are in effect "board members" of the industries listed in the committee and their job is to design and update the parameters of said industry areas. Again, please more on this!
"In the future, if we have so much solar and wind power that the practical impact of licensing new reactors is to compete with renewables, then it would make sense to raise the safety bar."
Why does that make any sense? Why does anything but applying the same cost benefit analysis (counting any net CO2 emitted as a cost) to nuclear as to solar as to coal-fired as to frack gas-fired, as to wind as to geothermal as to carbon capture. And how can you get that implemented without an explicit tax on net emissions?
So, what if we completely reformed automobile manufacturing? How are we holding back progress in the field of automobiles with government design? Don’t know much about, now I wanna know.
It’s less the end result, crash survivability standards that I am interested in relaxing (though I do not think we need standards to meet - simply let people be aware of how safe the car is and value what they want) but prescriptive design elements. What sorta designs are being held back by conformity?
That's where I can't follow Matt's point. The prescriptive design standards are ~ trivial across markets (e.g., wiper size). New vehicles still need to pass their compliance crash tests.
Regulation around autonomous driving will likely become a design constraint - but we're not there yet.
I'm on the "everything and the kitchen sink" bandwagon for fighting climate change, and so I'm wide open to more nuclear-generated electricity. Nonetheless, I'm nervous. We haven't solved the long-term storage issues for nuclear waste (even if waste transportation is *probably* very safe). This has been an open question for, what, decades? France has had a very smart approach toward nuclear energy, and yet in just over a decade, they're planning on reducing its contribution from >70% to around 50%. That may be a very smart mix of nuclear and renewable, but it's still quite a drop -- I'd like to know more about that.
I guess my bottom line is: try it, but don't anticipate counting on it for much.
Just get the other nations who have solved the problem to do it. I recommend the French since they get about 70% of their electricity from nuclear power.
Really glad to see you pursuing this line of work, Matt. Thank you. There are some excellent contributions in this thread and I suggest you engage with them
“ …I’m sure the people who work there have a lot of opinions about which lines of research are the promising ones”
I think this might go towards one of the unstated trade-off issues that make nuclear divisive. Scientists in a lot of different research centers and universities are all competing for funding from a pool of dollars devoted to non-traditional energy sources, and so it behooves scientists that have a strong faith in their own pursuits to play up the downsides of other pursuits.
Even if they don’t denigrate the idea of safe, small nuclear sources as useful, they might happily stand by as the louder folks continue to play in the unsafe and too-expensive narrative around nuclear because it will improve their probability of acquiring funding.
This thread will likely have many people in energy know about how this goes or if this is a real thing, but it strikes me as plausible.
Nuclear power’s safety profile looks even better if you take into account the process of getting the fuel. Uranium mining has gotten safer, though there is still some exposure to radon. On the other hand, coal mining is really dangerous and the newer mining techniques are causing coal miners to develop black lung after shorter periods of working in coal mines. The oil and gas industry is notoriously dangerous. Throw in that per kWh, you need less fuel for a nuclear reactor compared to fossil fuels and nuclear power looks even safer
Strong point. There's no free lunch here when you step back through the raw material supply chains. Arguably the most pressing problem to solve is a cobalt-free battery - more impactful for EV growth but also applicable for grid-storage.
Like most economists or people who's perspective is limited to economics Noah Smith does not have a clue what he is talking about when it comes to technology. This is easy to prove. All you need to do is mandate that wind farms and massed solar arrays must install the energy storage needed to make their generated power despatchable to demand before they can connect to the grid. And then you get to watch the advocates of those alternative sources scream about how unfair this is because it isn't possible now and won't be for the foreseeable future.
The reasons are quite evident to anybody who does understand the basics of technology. They are intermittent sources, geographically limited in production and therefore will require a massive amount of overbuilding, expensive energy storage and a continent spanning and very agile grid in order to make them suitable to base load electrical supply. The last two items do not exist and if they did would be enormously expensive to achieve. Those costs apply only to wind and solar. Which makes it very expensive power indeed. And that does not include the risk of creating a single gigantic grid, which, if it failed, would be disastrous.
The ironic thing is that if you did develop large scale energy storage it would work better with virtually any other generating method. I got into this with Alon Levy who didn't quite seem to grasp the argument or chose not to. You need energy storage, and a lot of it, with wind and solar because they are intermittent sources. Nuclear power has its own intermittency problem. Conventional designs are not agile and are therefor used for base load. (newer designs are agile). What this means in practice is that if you scale nuclear power properly then they can keep chugging away generating power while (and not instead) you store excess power production any way you like to deal with peak loads. You would therefore need to build a lot less energy storage. And it does not matter what type. Batteries, hydro... anything will do.
Solar power have been getting incredibly efficient incredibly quickly.
If the pace of increasing efficiency continues for solar then the incredibly expensive energy storage solutions become very viable and stop being so expensive.
There are plenty of existing ways to store massive amounts of energy in clean ways. For example, we can use excess solar energy during sunny times to create hydrogen and then burn that hydrogen when we start to run out of more efficient storage options. There are also options for pumped water storage and gravity storage.
Currently these are incredibly inefficient, but if there is an extremely large amount of excess energy from solar it would become an efficient option. And there is good reason to believe that these storage options would become more efficient when there is more excess energy from solar.
Solar overbuilding and inefficient storage solutions are not currently viable, as factoring in those costs would make solar more expensive at current prices.
But if solar prices continues to fall, then that would overwhelm added inefficiencies from overbuilding and storage and make solar much cheaper than other options even when you factor in the extra costs from needing to store it in order to get around intermittency.
If solar fell to zero, it would still be far more cost-effective to produce energy via non-solar sources to cover times when the sun wasn't out, than it would be to store the free electricity and retransmit it.
You have to imagine that storage prices will fall, *dramatically*, for this to work out. Now, maybe they will! But solar price drops won't do it.
I work at X-energy, one of the Gen 4 vendors trying to get some reactors built in the US by 2027. I wouldn't give up on NEIMA and the new regulatory framework just yet. Yes the NRC is throwing up plenty of roadblocks, but in Reg Guide 1.233 they endorsed a risk informed, performance based approach (RIPB) that replaces a lot (but not enough) of the deterministic regulations with requirements derived from a Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA). Using this, we can build safer plants at much lower cost.
As we go through our licensing process, we will see if the regulator really has bought into the NEIMA/RIPB frame of mind or if they are going to kill us with with deterministic requirements outside the scope of Reg Guide 1.233. But at least some of the NRC staff really have changed their tone so cost effective new nuclear may be possible. And Congress is acting like it will happen, pouring a ton of cash into the Advanced Reactor Demonstration Project (ARDO). New Advanced Nuclear in 2027 may become reality.
Subsidy scarcity may not be a real thing, but anti-nuclear environmentalists tend to overestimate the potential for wind and solar to carry the majority of load on our grid. That lack of understanding leads them to think that nuclear isn't a necessary component of our future grid and building these things takes political will and time. I am pro solar and pro wind, but I usually end up sounding very anti-wind when I talk to people because they tend to believe we can just build enough wind turbines to power everything. It's always windy somewhere right? Wrong. I also don't think we have the luxury of sitting around hoping that nuclear r&d will lead to mass implementation in 30 to 50 years. Mainly all this "new nuclear" stuff is just rebranding. Some of it might lead to lower costs to build in the future and the tech is absolutely cool and useful, but light water reactors are already very safe and cost effective over their lifetimes. Nothing needs to change to make them a good addition to our carbon free grid, except public perception. Yes, they have a massive upfront cost but are very inexpensive to run after that and the environmental impact is far lower.
The tendency of environmentalists to worship at the altar of wind and solar has also led to virtually no push into investment for geothermal. 20 years ago there was no real reason to think geothermal was any less cost effective than wind, but wind power is now cheap because over-hype led to massive investment. If the same had happened for geothermal and nuclear then we wouldn't have had to build natural gas plants and we would be in a much better position right now. The problem is not that "nuclear-bros" hate wind, the problem is that wind hype prevents better solutions from getting funding and attention. So 20 years from now we will still be dealing with where to get power when the wind isn't blowing. And the answer will still be natural gas.
As a scientist who is tertiary to nuclear energy, I was in favour of it for a long time. However, I have changed my mind heartily away from it. The reasons are two-fold. 1. No one has figured out what to do with the waste. Most stays on site. Do we need a ton of mini nuclear waste dumps? Matt skipped this part (almost) entirely. 2. The risk is narrowly site specific. When you build a natural gas plant, you pump out more CO2, but the whole planet bears the risk (it is called global warming for a reason). When you build a nuclear power plant and the s--t hits the fan, it is only the people next to it the bear the burden. This leads to obvious NIMBYism. No one wants to be near one. Every person that I have ever talked to about this topic is virulently opposed because the risk are so narrow and so obvious (after multiple worldwide accidents). Thus cost/benefit analysis only works for building it where nobody lives and therefore you don't need the electricity.
I for one would love to live within sight of a nuclear plant. Sounds lovely!
I am late to this and on deadline but wow, this thread! Thanks JCW and others for the crash course in energy history and the complexity of applied risk analysis.
"MIT has a nuclear reactor sitting in the middle of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and nobody minds."
I feel 100% confident that there are people in Cambridge who mind. Cambridge isn't quite as wacky about this as "nuclear-free Berkeley", but there are definitely some of the same types.
It's all safetyism. We overdo reduction of risks we *perceive* as dangerous much more than the risks that are actually dangerous. It's anti rationalism and it's anti science.
Nuclear simply can't compete if it has to have a ton more safety regulations than every other energy industry. "Broadly, nuclear regulation is at a crossroads. Plants are shutting down faster than they are being constructed, and unlike other industries, nuclear is forced to subsidize its regulator (NRC); the industry also faces a permit approval and construction timeline that stretches more than 20 years." - https://www.americanactionforum.org/research/putting-nuclear-regulatory-costs-context/
"Based on a review of publicly reported 10-K data, AAF finds the average nuclear reactor must navigate $219 million in regulatory liabilities ($60 million annually per plant), with many of the newest burdens arising in 2012." - https://www.americanactionforum.org/research/putting-nuclear-regulatory-costs-context/
Nuclear is also the only energy industry that safety stores it's waste at it's own cost. (Keep in mind the waste is not nearly as toxic as it's made out to be.) - https://whatisnuclear.com/waste.html
Maybe I should just pose this as a question:
Why does the energy industry with the lowest Deaths per KwH have the most expensive safety requirements?
I agree with most of this except the final question; to answer it, I'd note the extra scrutiny exists because of the tail risk from failure. No conventional plant disaster will produce something like a Fukushima or Chernobyl.
However, the pendulum has swung too far in one direction and the additional safety measures in the newest designs are doing more to mitigate the risk.
Fukushima killed no one and the release of radiation in the environment was not really objectively a cause for concern. The 1000 people died due to a stupid evacuation. Chernobyl was an imbecile design that could nevertheless be safely operated but was instead operated in a manner indistinguishable from insane terrorists trying to cause the largest nuclear disaster possible.
I mean, the obvious answer is, "because deaths per KwH isn't the most useful way to think about the risks."
Then what is? You can't just leave it there.
Deaths/KwH is likely the most causal way to talk about energy sector safety. Is there another figure we care more about than the rate of deaths per the reason we're doing the thing?
Are disabilities from nuclear way higher than solar? Dismemberments? Are there interesting comorbidities?
I mean, I wrote a set of very, very long posts describing how I think about risk down thread.
This behavior is extremely annoying.
What is your idea? I read your post and it's not very interesting. You're obviously a nuclear alarmist. The waste from the ships is not going to matter, in fact, humans have dumped spent nuclear fuel into the oceans with no environmental effect.
So, why is KwH a bad stat? Because of a possible black swan event?
Just say that. Don't obfuscate. "Read my super long post where I don't want about deaths/KwH OR ANY OTHER MEASURE" is just bad commenting. This is a place of good faith. Act accordingly.
I'm sorry to have annoyed you.
As a sometimes "nuclear bro," I really appreciate this post's reframing toward overall goals and regulatory flexibility of creating energy that meet those goals, rather than focusing on a specific method of production. It doesn't particularly matter if its solar or nuclear or wind or hydro or whatever -- the question is whether it is relatively clean and relatively efficient.
Here's a (somewhat) related question: Is there any update on fusion power? It always seemed to me like a pipedream that was perpetually "10 years away," but I've gotten into arguments with (generally older, generally conservative) people who seem to think that fusion is only a few years out, and therefore it isn't worth bothering with dirty nuclear / inefficient solar / pointless wind. Is fusion *actually* close to commercial development, or is this just a punt of an argument that conveniently doesn't challenge our fossil fueled status quo?
I think it might be 10 years from showing more power out than power in. Then another 10-50 years to commercialize it at scale. At best. At worst, we're saying the same thing in 2121.
In the past three years we've they've gone from 3% to 70%.
And China is hot on our heels:
https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a36630528/china-artificial-sun-breaks-fusion-world-record/
I see so much conflicting info on fusion. Here's Sabine Hossenfelder showing the flaws in recent developments: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ4W1g-6JiY
tldw: those percentages don't consider the external energy expended to build and maintain a plant.
That’s silly - to be a thing at least 10x more energy needs to come out than goes in. Everyone knows that’s a given. Building and maintaining the plant is a rounding error.
Sabine must have some kind of disingenuous agenda.
Watch the video and you’ll see she cites credible cost estimates from some of the same organizations touting fusion.
But you’re saying the energy to build the plants. If it’s fusion energy what difference does it make?
Per Matt - using terra watts of energy to cut the flight time from NYC to Tokyo to 45 min is fantastic. The goal
Is for energy not to be a factor anymore.
"In certain circles, being pro-nuclear is a way to be climate-aware and pro-science while also signaling a kind of masculine tough-mindedness and hippie-punching attitude."
I know one of those guys (Yes they are male). And I have no problem signaling pro-science, toughmindedness, hippie punching if its not JUST and attitude. But sure enough, he has zero interest in any other policy and especially not a tax on net emissions of CO2, which he is sure will wreck the economy.
Because it involves juxtaposing one basically incomprehensible risk against another different kind of incomprehensible risk, it's also tailor-made as way to troll climate doomsayers: oh, carbon emissions will definitely end civilization, you say, yet you don't have the courage of your convictions enough to assume this small nuclear risk of ending civilization and stave off what you say is a certain risk of ending of civilization by carbon.
Debating relative risks, especially unknowable or incomprehensible ones, can be surprisingly divisive, probably because it becomes a Rorschach test of what people fear or value.
The understated theme, "how everyone, policymakers, and pundits alike, should *think* about policymaking" is such a valuable and underrated point, as well as absent from much of the discussion thread. I think about this often in the tangible distinction that can be between the difference of the actual legislative text, and the desired policy goals which require assumptions and analytical work. Keep writing on this!! What's more, a tension I hope you further unpack is the difference in the actual vs. the perceived role of Legislators, both in their minds and in the minds of voters. I think it's often framed and believed that Legislators are Executors, which shifts the emphasis of their attention. A better way to think about their role (as Matt alluded to with "we need to do is recognize that the existing regulatory framework for nuclear reactors is extremely hostile to breakthroughs.") would be to say that members of the Senate Banking, Housing, & Urban Affairs Committee are in effect "board members" of the industries listed in the committee and their job is to design and update the parameters of said industry areas. Again, please more on this!
"In the future, if we have so much solar and wind power that the practical impact of licensing new reactors is to compete with renewables, then it would make sense to raise the safety bar."
Why does that make any sense? Why does anything but applying the same cost benefit analysis (counting any net CO2 emitted as a cost) to nuclear as to solar as to coal-fired as to frack gas-fired, as to wind as to geothermal as to carbon capture. And how can you get that implemented without an explicit tax on net emissions?
So, what if we completely reformed automobile manufacturing? How are we holding back progress in the field of automobiles with government design? Don’t know much about, now I wanna know.
In the US, relaxing the crash test safety standards would allow for mini-EV sales (e.g., the Wuling Mini). But I wouldn't call that progress.
https://www.tesmanian.com/blogs/tesmanian-blog/wuling-mini-unofficial-crash-test-shows-no-one-in-the-car-can-survive-even-in-low-speed-frontal-crash
More broadly, I don't really understand Matt's point here ... vehicle safety isn't just deterministic standards. You also need to test them.
https://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/database/veh/veh.htm
It’s less the end result, crash survivability standards that I am interested in relaxing (though I do not think we need standards to meet - simply let people be aware of how safe the car is and value what they want) but prescriptive design elements. What sorta designs are being held back by conformity?
That's where I can't follow Matt's point. The prescriptive design standards are ~ trivial across markets (e.g., wiper size). New vehicles still need to pass their compliance crash tests.
Regulation around autonomous driving will likely become a design constraint - but we're not there yet.
https://www.nhtsa.gov/vehicle-manufacturers/automated-driving-systems
I'm on the "everything and the kitchen sink" bandwagon for fighting climate change, and so I'm wide open to more nuclear-generated electricity. Nonetheless, I'm nervous. We haven't solved the long-term storage issues for nuclear waste (even if waste transportation is *probably* very safe). This has been an open question for, what, decades? France has had a very smart approach toward nuclear energy, and yet in just over a decade, they're planning on reducing its contribution from >70% to around 50%. That may be a very smart mix of nuclear and renewable, but it's still quite a drop -- I'd like to know more about that.
I guess my bottom line is: try it, but don't anticipate counting on it for much.
We haven't solved the long term atmospheric CO2 problem either. Why is that a show stopper concern?
Just get the other nations who have solved the problem to do it. I recommend the French since they get about 70% of their electricity from nuclear power.
Really glad to see you pursuing this line of work, Matt. Thank you. There are some excellent contributions in this thread and I suggest you engage with them
“ …I’m sure the people who work there have a lot of opinions about which lines of research are the promising ones”
I think this might go towards one of the unstated trade-off issues that make nuclear divisive. Scientists in a lot of different research centers and universities are all competing for funding from a pool of dollars devoted to non-traditional energy sources, and so it behooves scientists that have a strong faith in their own pursuits to play up the downsides of other pursuits.
Even if they don’t denigrate the idea of safe, small nuclear sources as useful, they might happily stand by as the louder folks continue to play in the unsafe and too-expensive narrative around nuclear because it will improve their probability of acquiring funding.
This thread will likely have many people in energy know about how this goes or if this is a real thing, but it strikes me as plausible.
Nuclear power’s safety profile looks even better if you take into account the process of getting the fuel. Uranium mining has gotten safer, though there is still some exposure to radon. On the other hand, coal mining is really dangerous and the newer mining techniques are causing coal miners to develop black lung after shorter periods of working in coal mines. The oil and gas industry is notoriously dangerous. Throw in that per kWh, you need less fuel for a nuclear reactor compared to fossil fuels and nuclear power looks even safer
Coal is on its way out; I don't think this is a very useful comparison anymore. Nuclear is much better than oxen-driven power as well.
Strong point. There's no free lunch here when you step back through the raw material supply chains. Arguably the most pressing problem to solve is a cobalt-free battery - more impactful for EV growth but also applicable for grid-storage.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/06/business/lithium-mining-race.html
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01735-z
Like most economists or people who's perspective is limited to economics Noah Smith does not have a clue what he is talking about when it comes to technology. This is easy to prove. All you need to do is mandate that wind farms and massed solar arrays must install the energy storage needed to make their generated power despatchable to demand before they can connect to the grid. And then you get to watch the advocates of those alternative sources scream about how unfair this is because it isn't possible now and won't be for the foreseeable future.
The reasons are quite evident to anybody who does understand the basics of technology. They are intermittent sources, geographically limited in production and therefore will require a massive amount of overbuilding, expensive energy storage and a continent spanning and very agile grid in order to make them suitable to base load electrical supply. The last two items do not exist and if they did would be enormously expensive to achieve. Those costs apply only to wind and solar. Which makes it very expensive power indeed. And that does not include the risk of creating a single gigantic grid, which, if it failed, would be disastrous.
The ironic thing is that if you did develop large scale energy storage it would work better with virtually any other generating method. I got into this with Alon Levy who didn't quite seem to grasp the argument or chose not to. You need energy storage, and a lot of it, with wind and solar because they are intermittent sources. Nuclear power has its own intermittency problem. Conventional designs are not agile and are therefor used for base load. (newer designs are agile). What this means in practice is that if you scale nuclear power properly then they can keep chugging away generating power while (and not instead) you store excess power production any way you like to deal with peak loads. You would therefore need to build a lot less energy storage. And it does not matter what type. Batteries, hydro... anything will do.
Solar power have been getting incredibly efficient incredibly quickly.
If the pace of increasing efficiency continues for solar then the incredibly expensive energy storage solutions become very viable and stop being so expensive.
There are plenty of existing ways to store massive amounts of energy in clean ways. For example, we can use excess solar energy during sunny times to create hydrogen and then burn that hydrogen when we start to run out of more efficient storage options. There are also options for pumped water storage and gravity storage.
Currently these are incredibly inefficient, but if there is an extremely large amount of excess energy from solar it would become an efficient option. And there is good reason to believe that these storage options would become more efficient when there is more excess energy from solar.
Solar overbuilding and inefficient storage solutions are not currently viable, as factoring in those costs would make solar more expensive at current prices.
But if solar prices continues to fall, then that would overwhelm added inefficiencies from overbuilding and storage and make solar much cheaper than other options even when you factor in the extra costs from needing to store it in order to get around intermittency.
Solar can't fall that much.
If solar fell to zero, it would still be far more cost-effective to produce energy via non-solar sources to cover times when the sun wasn't out, than it would be to store the free electricity and retransmit it.
You have to imagine that storage prices will fall, *dramatically*, for this to work out. Now, maybe they will! But solar price drops won't do it.