This is a mostly dumb and gimmicky idea. It will fail. If we want serious climate solutions we need either a massive build-out of nuclear power or wind plus utility-scale battery (or potentially ammonia) storage. Solar energy has a ridiculously low EROI. Solar energy on a car? Probably an even lower EROI.
You're fifteen years out of date. A 2022 PERC cell has an EBPT of about 3-6 months and can be recycled after 30 years into a slightly worse cell which will last another 30 years. Only wind comes close.
> A 2022 PERC cell has an EBPT of about 3-6 months
Okay, so there's a new solar cell that is slightly better and perhaps can be manufactured a little cheaper. Great! So what? You have failed to take into account the burden of energy storage. The capacity factor for solar is an abysmal ~20% if not ~10% in some localities. Wind can have a superior capacity factor of up to ~50%. Energy storage is the constraint.
Renewables can provide about 30% of world electricity with no storage. Cheap storage like thermal (so the cheapest sand) and concentrating solar (even better EROI, comes with 12hr storage and is getting close to the price of gas) can make it provide another 20% of electricity and the 20-30% of primary energy that is low grade heat.
PWRs can provide about 30% of world electricity and that same low grade heat and then you run out of Uranium. It also requires overprovision or storage for fluctuating demand and planned downtime and has correlated failures on the order of weeks or months. A capacity factor of <50% of the french fleet this yeae with unplanned correlated outages of 3 months during winter is far worse than new offshore wind with 65% forecastable output that fluctuates daily.
Even with current storage technologies the nuclear option costs more than adding enough storage to cover the next 30% with renewables.
Also your initial conceit was putting a solar panel on a 1 week battery to suppliment its input by a few miles a day. The constraint here is efficiency, daily mileage, travel velocity and area. You're welcome to keep bringing up boring predictable reactionary lies (I'm guessing something about density while ignoring the difference between fertile and fissile is next, then MOX, then breeders, then sea mining, then lies about mining), but this point has been fully addressed.
Won't happen anytime soon. There's a lot. We have a century's worth, and the uranium price could easily be three times higher, without hardly an impact to utilities, and unlock more reserves and exploration.
> capacity factor of <50% of the french fleet
This not an indictment of nuclear power as a whole.
American nuclear reactors have a ~90% capacity factor.
> Cheap storage like thermal (so the cheapest sand)
Won't be effective for producing electricity. Might only be ~30% efficient.
> far worse than new offshore wind
Wind is reasonable but don't forget that reactors can last a ridiculously long time ~75 years. Wind turbines might only last ~20 years in a corrosive environment.
Oh we're doing the thing where you lie about things that have already been addressed
> Won't happen anytime soon. There's a lot. We have a century's worth, and the uranium price could easily be three times higher, without hardly an impact to utilities, and unlock more reserves and exploration.
A century at 300GW. Quadruple that and it's 25 years. Replace 2/3rds of electricity and it's under 20. And those are reserves at a price 3 times higher. New lower level reserves will be even more expensive to the point where the LCOE of solar is around the raw uranium price.
> Won't be effective for producing electricity. Might only be ~30% efficient.
...Which is why I suggested it for the 20-30% of primary energy that is low grade heat where it is 100% efficient.
> This not an indictment of nuclear power as a whole. American nuclear reactors have a ~90% capacity factor.
If you want the anomalous US reliability, then you can't pretend you're going to pay historic french or japanese prices. Also what's the capacity factor of US nuclear reactors where construction started this century?
> Wind is reasonable but don't forget that reactors can last a ridiculously long time ~75 years. Wind turbines might only last ~20 years in a corrosive environment.
When individual unplanned repairs, or regular planned maintenance for a decade, or mid life refurbs cost more than an entire new wind turbine, this is a massive downside, not an upside. Pre-paying for 75 years worth of electricity rather than 25 means you can only build out a third of the capacity (or a twelfth given the much higher user facing cost per kWh even if you can find the cash to keep hiding the larger hidden costs)
But before you can start gaslighting about the economics you have to demonstrate that it's physically possible. Which you have not done.
Nuclear can make a small contribution, but it cannot meet the scale of renewables.
> New lower level reserves will be even more expensive to the point where the LCOE of solar is around the raw uranium price.
No. From the World Nuclear Association, "doubling the uranium price (say from $25 to $50 per lb U3O8) takes the fuel cost up from 0.50 to 0.62 ¢/kWh, an increase of one-quarter, and the expected cost of generation of the best US plants from 1.3 ¢/kWh to 1.42 ¢/kWh (an increase of almost 10%)."
Uranium could easily be $300/lb and nuclear will still be competitive.
> Pre-paying for 75 years worth of electricity rather than 25
Yeah, "electricity" which is intermittent and currently requires Russian and Qatari natgas to load balance... or perhaps you can re-open some coal mines. Pick your poison.
Uranium is already over $50/lb. Doubling (which isn't even historic highs which were >$120/lb) would add 0.2c/kWh in the best reactors or 0.3-0.4c in the current fleet which is around 15-25% of a solar or good wind project's LCOE. The historic high happened when there was a small shortfall in production in two mines, and you're talking about quadrupling production overnight (because you need around 6 years of fuel to switch it on) just to meet the current pace of renewables.
> Uranium could easily be $300/lb and nuclear will still be
competitive.
$300/lb is $14/MWh which would put it precisely a dollar above the PPA price of recent indian and mexican solar projects in the current fleet, or $10/MWh which is projected 2025 prices in a high burnup reactor. Ie. Raw Uranium alone would cost more than renewables total cost whilst still only making up a quarter of the marginal costs and a tenth of the total cost.
> Yeah, "electricity" which is intermittent and currently requires Russian and Qatari natgas to load balance... or perhaps you can re-open some coal mines. Pick your poison.
Replacing 50% of electricity and 30% of primary energy without any electrical storage at all is still double what is possible with nuclear which will require that gas and coal to be running 24/7. 4 hour storage and more variable loads (like replacing fossil ammonia) can push this up to quadruple the maximum physically possible contribution from PWRs.
Also before you start gaslighting about storage you need to demonstrate that PWRs can do better than renewables with no storage if the PWR has 0 capex or build time, or that nuclear doesn't need 4 hour storage for meeting variable loads. Which you haven't.
They could define and enforce environmental laws that would make the current way of farming that is destroying nature impossible. The farmers would need to adapt or go bankrupt.
Instead they get offered millions. And in response they terrorize our society.
These are both pretty bad takes. We as a civilization do not mine the crust for uranium. We mine high-grade ore deposits. I think with our current resources and technologies we could sustain demand for about 100 years.
Nuclear energy is used at scale. Nuclear energy supplies ~70% of French electricity production.
What's more important is the development of nuclear technology. Not all uranium is used in current reactors. The majority of uranium is U238. If breeder reactors were developed, our existing resources could be utilized far more effectively.
Depends on what tech comes out. If lithium-sulfur batteries and perovskite solar cells go into mass production I think nuclear will be one of the smaller contributors. Nuclear works best where there's limited hydroelectric, wind, and solar but minimal chance of earthquakes.
Nuclear is not suited for peaker plants. It probably never will be. The fuel is a small part of the cost of a nuclear plant. This is why battery tech is key to energy transition. If lithium-sulfur batteries can be produced at scale, we won't have as much of an issue with the intermittent nature of solar and wind.
Energy density and availability of materials. Li-S ballpark is 550 Wh/kg while conventional lithium-ion is around 200 Wh/kg. Using nickel, cobalt, and other expensive metals is not scalable.
Newer Battery Electric vehicle of similar size are not really much heavier then combustion cars of the same size. That boost in weight savings (and poorer duty cycles) would make such more sense for airplanes than cars.
The Nickel and Cobalt parts have been declining for decades and are low percentages of *-ode material, especially in cars which are no volume constrained. Only smartphone batteries or similar appliances have high amounts of those. In fact there some EVs which have less cobalt then normal cars because cobalt steel is used in many parts of the motor and transmission.
Yeah, LFP is arguably good enough for 80% of all EVs is my guess. Arguably it is also good enough for energy storage as well. However, for EVs, LFP doesn't have as high energy density. Something like 70% of all cobalt is mined in the DRC. I still think there will need to be more advanced and affordable battery chemistries before there is ubiquitous battery energy storage and EV adoption.
This is why something like Li-S is the holy grail of batteries.
LFP doesn't have as high cells densities, however on a packaging level (due to their higher stability) next gen LFP seems to be on par with this gen Li-Ion. Also quick charging and cold resistance of LFP is a big improvement.
I would rather see Li-S be used in planes where inspections are common unlike cars.
For grid storage neither is ideal, as you really want to decouple (dis)charging from capacity. Subterranean normal pressure hydrogen storage (using geological structures like salt caves) or flow batteries seem more promising for that reason.
Vanadium redox flow batteries have energy densities of ~10–20 Wh/kg. But for grid storage I think even sodium-ion batteries would be a better candidate. Those have energy densities of ~150 Wh/kg. Vanadium is mostly produced as a byproduct of mining magnetite iron ore deposits. So, sodium-ion is less dependent on the output of handful of mines globally.
Having a hydrogen economy is overall pretty inefficient. I think it's largely a dead end. We do not need multi-year energy storage. Seasonal storage is needed at most. Lithium-ion batteries have self-discharge rates of around 2% per month. Even if the batteries lose ~10% over a few months that's an acceptable loss and is superior to the inefficiencies inherent in hydrogen production via electrolysis and the subsequent use of stored hydrogen via fuel-cells — which require platinum-group metals.
> Because mining nuclear materials is an ecological disaster. Also, guess who's a big exporter of uranium in Europe? Russia.
Cameco could easily restart Rabbit Lake and McArthur River. Supply is no issue. Claiming that mining uranium is an "ecological disaster" is disingenuous. It's not excessively dangerous relative to other mining operations.
Also, gold content of asteroids is incredibly low. You'd be lucky to find a metallic asteroid with even 1 ppm of gold. Mines here on Earth often have grades above 4 ppm. The highest grade mines have above 20 ppm of gold. Second, let's say you find a M-type asteroid, how in the hell are you going to melt the nickel-iron and reprocess it for the valuable stuff like gold and platinum?
Overall, asteroid mining is pretty idiotic. It will not be economical within our lifetimes and certainly will not play a role in producing the resources necessary for combating climate change.
