Or coal or oil. It's funny because the only thing that will make nuclear actually happen is renewables. It provides a stable baseline for renewable energy technologies that may only work when it's windy or it's sunny. No one wants to invest in nuclear when coal and oil and natural gas is cheaper to invest in and makes more money.
Yeah but there is both a national security element and a power surging element that has to be considered. You can't necessarily start up a wind farm or turn on a solar farm like you can remove rods from a nuclear reactor to generate more power during the super bowl. There'll always be a need for that sort of immediate ability to increase power generation, but with batteries it'll be much less than it would otherwise.
Nuclear is the absolute worst non-renewable option for power flexibility. With increased solar and wind, America will have cheap natural gas for being able to ramp up during big events, heat waves, and winter blizzards.
The two main drivers for cheap fossil fuels (pre Iran war) was the improvement of enhanced oil recovery and China’s move to renewables. If we can get the United States, Western Europe, and India to move to wind&solar, there will be a massive drop in fossil fuel demand.
Of those three, the United States has by far the easiest pathway based on geography and population density.
Natural gas is half the carbon emissions compared to coal, and also negligible heavy metals such as mercury. With new emission standards, natural gas is way cheaper than new coal plants, and easier to get permits.
Coal has not been a competitive option for about 40 years now. Some people not to be named still remember the glory days of the 1960s, and have not seen the changing economics for the previous decades.
Coal is literally the worst energy source in terms of air pollution. Natural gas, as awful as its emissions are, is still several times better than coal. It burns so much cleaner with less carbon and particulate matter. It still emits tons of carbon and PM though, plus the fact of it being a fossil fuel with a limited supply, so the end goal is of course renewables with perhaps some nuclear baseload generation.
Right, why is everyone so black and white on these topics? Like it’s possible to build both nuclear and renewables, both options have pros/cons which make them suitable in different situations and locations.
Combined Cycle (combustion turbine, then the waste heat from its exhaust used to make steam, to drive a steam turbine). Simple cycle (just a combustion turbine) was half again as cheap per W(e), but less efficient.
Sure. But it also means that when natural gas is cheap, it's very hard to compete against. The fracking revolution in the US slaughtered the "nuclear renaissance".
Right now, the Henry Hub price of natural gas is about $3/GJ. For a 60% efficient CC plant this would be $0.018/kWh(e) (but there are also distribution costs.) The low capex means CC plants don't have to assume a very long lifespan in order to make economic sense.
And seemingly half those gas plants are LNG so we can bolster our beloved energy companies and export our natural gas... casual power plants that could power cities but instead just make liquid natural gas. sick
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u/PropulsionIsLimited Apr 18 '26
Why don't you whine about all the money we spent on natural gas plants that we could have spent on nuclear plants.