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I support nuclear power, however I doubt we will ever see many more reactors built in most countries. The growth of photovoltaic solar power combined with coming cheaper grid scale battery storage is going to wreck the economics for nuclear (including fusion if it ever works).


The big assumption being economical grid storage. We don't have a technology yet to do that.


Yes we do and it’s already being deployed. See [1] for example.

[1] https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2019/07/29/california-gas-plant-...


Solar wrecking the economics for nuclear looks unlikely to me: https://en.howtruthful.com/o/nuclear_power_can_replace_coal_...


Check the rate of nuclear power plants being built. It's fallen off a cliff. The people who finance nuclear reactors already think that nuclear power will be uneconomic in the lifetime of any new plants.


I looked that up. There are 450 plants in operation worldwide and 50 under construction. That sounds like healthy growth. https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-an...


It looks like they're in the process of decommissioning nuclear power plants in most places and they're expected to be functionally extinct by 2055.

https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/IMG/png/10-12.png


We will need at least 3x of that amount (assuming 70% renewables). Even if you can somehow build 50 nuclear plants per year it will still take 21 years to build the next 1050.


There are a lot being decommissioned at the moment too. I'm not sure if that's more or less than the 50 that the World Nuclear Association page claims are being constructed.




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