Nuclear is simply incompatible with renewables, if the price tag is of any concern to you. Nuclear reactors take long and cost a lot to build, still aren’t cheap to operate if you include the infrastructure cost of getting, handling and storing the fuel, can’t respond to chaning demand quickly and are centralized.
The fact is that the price tag is not the only factor.
It is true that a 1000 MW nuclear plant cost about 10 times the equivalent solar field (about 6-9 billions for the nuclear plant Vs about 800 millions for panels) but at this point you use about 15 square Km to just match the output of the nuclear plant, with no storage, and only in the best case scenario.
In a real case scenario the price tag of building a solar field that could replace a nuclear plant is probably not that different anymore.
To produce the same amount of power in every condition you could not install the exact amout of panels, you need way more (double ? triple ?) with the associated costs and space requirements.
And then you need batteries to be able to offer energy also at night and to store energy for the days when the sun is not enough to produce the energy required.
I would say that to match a nucler plant a solar field would cost about half of it for the same power generation but with the additional problem that you need way more space, which itself is a cost.
Nuclear power plants need subsidies over their whole life, mainly to handle the risk inherent with nuclear fuel and the finincial risk of having to handle spent fuel for centuries to come.
We have nuclear power plants that uses less problematic fuel which is easier to handle and less risky.
Nuclear power plants need to run at full power, which costs money every time renewables are pushing the energy price into the negatives.
True, but when the renewables are not producing enough ?
Nuclear power plants need a centralized power grid.
Like a solar farm.
Renewables work in exactly the opposite way. They are cheap to build and maintain, they are variable and decentralized. So to use renewables effectively, you need to build a decentralized grid and ideall, on-premise energy storage.
No, they work in the exactly same way. What is different is that renewables can be made decentralized. Solar panels on the roof produce only for the house, not for the power grid (even if you can connect them to the grid to fill in the surplus).
I think you are comparing a nuclear plant with the small panels you install on your roof but you cannot make such comparison.
So the energy grid of the future will be purpose-built to accomodate renewable energy.
As far as I remember, what was told me when I worked in the field was that power grids does not care about the source, only the power: a power grid do not care if the 10 Gw power it transfer comes from a nuclear plant, a solar farm or from a squirrel on a wheel.
And the grid is already ready, we are already able (ok at least here) to send to the grid the surplus generated by the solars panels on the roof. And adding the batteries will not require anything done on the grid itself (at least this is what my collegues said).
Trying to force nuclear energy generation into that mix only makes sense, if you have a clear, non-monetary reason to do so, like enriching uranium for bombs. For strictly commercial use, nuclear power is dead.
What about being sure that a 5 days of bad weather cannot stop a society ?
First, you don’t have to install the solar capacity in one huge blob. Solar farms also don’t have to be the only use of the land. You can still farm crops that like shade, you can hold cattle, build the energy storage right beneath the solar farm, a car park or what have you. There is also a lot of currently “wasted space”, such as roof tops or existing car parks. There are also swimming solar pannels that have the added benefit of keeping lake temparatures in check in the summer. You also have wind turbines that can contribute their fair share to the energy mix. So no, you don’t need to build huge over-capacity and you don’t need to bulldoze huge swaths of land to install solar. And the price to build solar and battery storage is still going down.
Where are the nuclear plants that use “safer fuels”?
Renewables are cheaper to build and run, meaning that renewable energy is always cheaper than nuclear power. You’d need to artificially limit the amount of renewables companies are allowed to build or subidize nuclear, otherwise renewables will price nuclear out of the market.
No, solar farms don’t need centralized grids nearly as much as nuclear power does. What is much more important for renewables is monitoring the local grids, so they don’t get overwhelmed by people providing power to the grid with their solar pannels.
And people already absolutely do provide power to the grid with their own solar pannels, you denying that just shows that you haven’t mich thought about/experienced local “grass roots” energy production. In Germany, the capacity of the local grids is one of two big hurdles renewable energy production is facing right now. Commercial and private energy producers are complaining that the utility companies are forcibly cutting their power plants from the energy grid to stabilize it.
And like I said in other comments already, hydrogen/natural gas power plants are a much better fit to handle extended lulls in wind and solar.
The fact is that the price tag is not the only factor.
It is true that a 1000 MW nuclear plant cost about 10 times the equivalent solar field (about 6-9 billions for the nuclear plant Vs about 800 millions for panels) but at this point you use about 15 square Km to just match the output of the nuclear plant, with no storage, and only in the best case scenario.
In a real case scenario the price tag of building a solar field that could replace a nuclear plant is probably not that different anymore.
To produce the same amount of power in every condition you could not install the exact amout of panels, you need way more (double ? triple ?) with the associated costs and space requirements.
And then you need batteries to be able to offer energy also at night and to store energy for the days when the sun is not enough to produce the energy required.
I would say that to match a nucler plant a solar field would cost about half of it for the same power generation but with the additional problem that you need way more space, which itself is a cost.
We have nuclear power plants that uses less problematic fuel which is easier to handle and less risky.
True, but when the renewables are not producing enough ?
Like a solar farm.
No, they work in the exactly same way. What is different is that renewables can be made decentralized. Solar panels on the roof produce only for the house, not for the power grid (even if you can connect them to the grid to fill in the surplus).
I think you are comparing a nuclear plant with the small panels you install on your roof but you cannot make such comparison.
As far as I remember, what was told me when I worked in the field was that power grids does not care about the source, only the power: a power grid do not care if the 10 Gw power it transfer comes from a nuclear plant, a solar farm or from a squirrel on a wheel.
And the grid is already ready, we are already able (ok at least here) to send to the grid the surplus generated by the solars panels on the roof. And adding the batteries will not require anything done on the grid itself (at least this is what my collegues said).
What about being sure that a 5 days of bad weather cannot stop a society ?
You are mixing up many different things.
First, you don’t have to install the solar capacity in one huge blob. Solar farms also don’t have to be the only use of the land. You can still farm crops that like shade, you can hold cattle, build the energy storage right beneath the solar farm, a car park or what have you. There is also a lot of currently “wasted space”, such as roof tops or existing car parks. There are also swimming solar pannels that have the added benefit of keeping lake temparatures in check in the summer. You also have wind turbines that can contribute their fair share to the energy mix. So no, you don’t need to build huge over-capacity and you don’t need to bulldoze huge swaths of land to install solar. And the price to build solar and battery storage is still going down.
Where are the nuclear plants that use “safer fuels”?
Renewables are cheaper to build and run, meaning that renewable energy is always cheaper than nuclear power. You’d need to artificially limit the amount of renewables companies are allowed to build or subidize nuclear, otherwise renewables will price nuclear out of the market.
No, solar farms don’t need centralized grids nearly as much as nuclear power does. What is much more important for renewables is monitoring the local grids, so they don’t get overwhelmed by people providing power to the grid with their solar pannels.
And people already absolutely do provide power to the grid with their own solar pannels, you denying that just shows that you haven’t mich thought about/experienced local “grass roots” energy production. In Germany, the capacity of the local grids is one of two big hurdles renewable energy production is facing right now. Commercial and private energy producers are complaining that the utility companies are forcibly cutting their power plants from the energy grid to stabilize it.
And like I said in other comments already, hydrogen/natural gas power plants are a much better fit to handle extended lulls in wind and solar.