I see an overwhelming interest in Nuclear power in our media and in online articles posted to reddit and HN. In many discussions I have had online and in person most people are significantly misinformed in that they think that Nuclear power is playing a larger role than it is currently or that we can not scale EVs/heat pumps/AI Datacenters without building a lot more Nuclear power plants. Most people scoff at the idea that wind power, solar power and hydro power with batteries could ever totally meet our needs.
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.
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.