I think you should add some facts about nuclear that resonatee with people and show them in graphs so they better understand it (since legislators aren't very knowledgable on nuclear, otherwise they would consider using it, no question). Such as how it's the lowest carbon footprint source and the 2nd safest source of energy (1), that it requires the least amount of materials (2), it is the most environmentally friendly way to generate electricity (3) and that longterm, it's very inexpensive (4).
Very nice article. I appreciate the more pragmatic look. I fear we are spending ridiculous amounts for minimal to no environmental benefit.
Have you done any analysis on energy return on investment ("EROI")? For the most part, pragmatism hasn't been much of a part of the "green" energy dialog to this point. Showing through EROIs that the purportedly "green" energy efforts like wind and, for the most part, solar are environmental detriments, not solutions might help further the discussion.
My recollection is that solar is marginal to begin with, but when you add storage it is ethanol-level bad. (My information is somewhat dated there, i.e., before the improvements you described in your battery storage article. Think Argonne Labs did some work 10 or so years ago.
I see a role for solar, but it is limited, e.g., company with existing roof space whose use is primarily during daylight hours.
But, generally, I am with you on combined cycle and nukes being the best way to go. IIRC, combined cycle eefficiency has progressed a lot in the last 15-20 years.
This field badly needs comprehensive life-cycle analysis from an emissions, EROI, and economic perspective. It would have been nice for the government to have done it before sending untold billions of dollars down the road to nowhere.
Yes, wind is entrenched already. There will be a lot of "green" resistance as well as the power companies that are feeding at the public through.
Actually showing that there are far more environmental costs (construction and associated mining, parasitic grid costs, direct environmental harm (e.g., birds, lepidoptera) than people are aware of might help. For example, I don't recall ever seeing this issue get any press:
The life-cycle analysis should include both the economic and environmental costs associated with construction (e.g., mining, etc.) as well as the parasitic grid costs that accommodating intermittent sources entails.)
The great untold story of energy is how combined cycle efficiency has increased. The efficiency increase has saved us the cost of building nearly 100 extra power plants.
We have decreased emission about 20%, I wish people would look at how and why the emissions have decreased. Hint: solar and wind have had marginal impact.
Agreed on all accounts. Nuclear is a mature and safe energy source that avoids the pitfalls of intermittents. Opposition to nuclear power only exists due to concerns about old tech, and partisans looking to line the pocketbooks of their fossil fuel or renewable energy backers. Any politician who isn't an idiot and who actually cares about the future of Colorado should start funding the development of nuclear plants asap.
Agree on most counts. In CA, much of their daytime peak demand is literally due to the summer sun shining, so daytime solar will work better for them than many other states, but wind will remain completely inferior to fission.
Your plan is perfectly reasonable. I'd add one more thing - A company called NET Power. Thye can generate 10% more energy from the same volume of natural gas as a normal gas plant, AND have full carbon capture at zero cost. Thye are building a full-size plant in La porte Texas now, and the pilot plant has been running since 2022 without incident.
That changes things. Instead of building wind farms, you could focus on upgrading EXISTING natural gas plants to the Net Power. Then backfill with nuclear power, or other new tech, at your leisure. You'll get to 75% clean power in about three years. Replace the coal plants with nuclear over the next 10 years, and problem solved. I should say, solved at a VERY low-cost to the consumer, probably about what you are paying now.
The easy answer is, for this to matter a) everyplace has to be connected to every other place, and b) every place has to have sufficient excess generation capacity to power every other place. Neither will ever be true or will be true at such a massive cost as to be impossible.
Also, power plants are best situated next to the cities they serve. Why? Because you lose a lot of energy in transmission. Also, you don't WANT to connect too many grids together, because failure can cascade through the system. The biggest outages in the U.S. started from localized events.
This situation is a fundamental reason why a pause in the New York net-zero transition is necessary. If the only viable DEFR solution is nuclear, then the wind, solar, and energy storage approach cannot be implemented without nuclear power. Using nuclear solely as a backup is inappropriate because it works best as a baseload resource. Developing baseload nuclear eliminates the need for a huge DEFR backup resource and massive buildout of wind turbines and solar panels sprawling over the state’s lands and water. Although nuclear power is expensive when compared to the resources needed for a wind, solar, energy storage, and DEFR system that all have shorter expected operational life spans it is likely that it would be cheaper.
Hopefully all the independent analyses that are concluding the same thing will have an effect.
NEVER use the average - the system has to be sized to meet the extreme ends of demand. If your peak summer demand is 20 GW, then your storage has to be 24 GW X 10 days. That is the only path to 99.999% reliability, which sounds high, but is the current level of reliability.
I take it as you are talking about Colorado you are implictly talking about onshore wind. Do you feel your analysis would change if considering offshore wind?
Pumped hydro is a permitting nightmare given given the specific site characteristics needed. Xcel looked at pumped hydro in Grand Junction to provide spinning reserve on the Western Slope after the retirements at Craig and Hayden. The amount of support they received was approximately nil.
Batteries are easy to site and pair with a generator or to be grid-charging.
Your logic is where we "yucky" conservatives have been at for years. Welcome to the party, pal. (Also, saying "yuck" that you had to agree with the POTUS lowers you in my estimation to that of a slow child.)
David, why did you choose the AP1400 over the AP1000? You selected a foreign reactor design that has not been built in the United States, has a design that has not been certified by NERC, and has not been proposed to be built here. Why not use the AP1000? Or was the a deliberate choice because you found out just how incompetent the United States has become regarding nuclear power plant construction and didn't want to blow-up your cost comparisons?
This is like comparing US and Korean shipbuilding and proposing that the US Navy use the Sejong the Great-class (~$1B/ship) for the Arleigh-Burke Flight III program ($2.5B/ship). It's unrealistic given the dilapidated industrial base in the United States, lack of institutional knowledge, and a poorly skilled technical workforce to expect US-built reactors to come in at a price par to what is being built in Korea.
Hey, look at that. I was wrong! Thanks for the correction. Half the price is generous towards Vogtle, 1/3 of the price would be more accurate.
Still you have to project a higher cost for nuclear power in the United States versus for a project elsewhere. Don't get me wrong that Colorado, more specifically the utilities (as the Colorado Energy Office is largely toothless) need to consider the addition of nuclear for their post 2030 ERPs. However, until the requirements of SB 23-16 are added to the CEP requirements under HB19-1261, what the CEO proposes isn't going to matter and using their plans feels like a very loose thought experiment. Even then, the post 2026/27 state when Colorado will be within two energy markets creates for more flux on what post-2030 will look like.
There's no credible way to drastically reduce CO2 without nuclear energy. Beyond the level France has done with their nukes.
Out of curiosity, why are you opposed to nuclear? It's the 2nd safest form of energy (solar is 1st, wind is 3rd) and has the smallest environmental impact.
Hopefully, you will actually move from Colorado. It has the highest background radiation level of any state! Some comes from cosmic rays, some comes from the native rocks.
If you are fighting radiation in Colorado, give up the fight.
If you just want fossil fuels, go ahead and keep fighting nuclear.
I think you should add some facts about nuclear that resonatee with people and show them in graphs so they better understand it (since legislators aren't very knowledgable on nuclear, otherwise they would consider using it, no question). Such as how it's the lowest carbon footprint source and the 2nd safest source of energy (1), that it requires the least amount of materials (2), it is the most environmentally friendly way to generate electricity (3) and that longterm, it's very inexpensive (4).
1. https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy
2. https://thebreakthrough.org/issues/energy/updated-mining-footprints-and-raw-material-needs-for-clean-energy
3. https://unece.org/sites/default/files/2022-04/LCA_3_FINAL%20March%202022.pdf
4. https://www.nei.org/CorporateSite/media/filefolder/resources/reports-and-briefs/2023-Costs-in-Context_r1.pdf
Very nice article. I appreciate the more pragmatic look. I fear we are spending ridiculous amounts for minimal to no environmental benefit.
Have you done any analysis on energy return on investment ("EROI")? For the most part, pragmatism hasn't been much of a part of the "green" energy dialog to this point. Showing through EROIs that the purportedly "green" energy efforts like wind and, for the most part, solar are environmental detriments, not solutions might help further the discussion.
My recollection is that solar is marginal to begin with, but when you add storage it is ethanol-level bad. (My information is somewhat dated there, i.e., before the improvements you described in your battery storage article. Think Argonne Labs did some work 10 or so years ago.
I see a role for solar, but it is limited, e.g., company with existing roof space whose use is primarily during daylight hours.
But, generally, I am with you on combined cycle and nukes being the best way to go. IIRC, combined cycle eefficiency has progressed a lot in the last 15-20 years.
This field badly needs comprehensive life-cycle analysis from an emissions, EROI, and economic perspective. It would have been nice for the government to have done it before sending untold billions of dollars down the road to nowhere.
Wind makes no sense even without EROI. I am going to dive into solar soon-ish and there I will look at EROI.
Yes, wind is entrenched already. There will be a lot of "green" resistance as well as the power companies that are feeding at the public through.
Actually showing that there are far more environmental costs (construction and associated mining, parasitic grid costs, direct environmental harm (e.g., birds, lepidoptera) than people are aware of might help. For example, I don't recall ever seeing this issue get any press:
https://conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/csp2.366
The life-cycle analysis should include both the economic and environmental costs associated with construction (e.g., mining, etc.) as well as the parasitic grid costs that accommodating intermittent sources entails.)
The great untold story of energy is how combined cycle efficiency has increased. The efficiency increase has saved us the cost of building nearly 100 extra power plants.
We have decreased emission about 20%, I wish people would look at how and why the emissions have decreased. Hint: solar and wind have had marginal impact.
Agreed on all accounts. Nuclear is a mature and safe energy source that avoids the pitfalls of intermittents. Opposition to nuclear power only exists due to concerns about old tech, and partisans looking to line the pocketbooks of their fossil fuel or renewable energy backers. Any politician who isn't an idiot and who actually cares about the future of Colorado should start funding the development of nuclear plants asap.
Agree on most counts. In CA, much of their daytime peak demand is literally due to the summer sun shining, so daytime solar will work better for them than many other states, but wind will remain completely inferior to fission.
Your plan is perfectly reasonable. I'd add one more thing - A company called NET Power. Thye can generate 10% more energy from the same volume of natural gas as a normal gas plant, AND have full carbon capture at zero cost. Thye are building a full-size plant in La porte Texas now, and the pilot plant has been running since 2022 without incident.
That changes things. Instead of building wind farms, you could focus on upgrading EXISTING natural gas plants to the Net Power. Then backfill with nuclear power, or other new tech, at your leisure. You'll get to 75% clean power in about three years. Replace the coal plants with nuclear over the next 10 years, and problem solved. I should say, solved at a VERY low-cost to the consumer, probably about what you are paying now.
"The wind is always blowing somewhere...."
The easy answer is, for this to matter a) everyplace has to be connected to every other place, and b) every place has to have sufficient excess generation capacity to power every other place. Neither will ever be true or will be true at such a massive cost as to be impossible.
Also, power plants are best situated next to the cities they serve. Why? Because you lose a lot of energy in transmission. Also, you don't WANT to connect too many grids together, because failure can cascade through the system. The biggest outages in the U.S. started from localized events.
I like your analysis and mostly agree. The problem with CCGT is that it relies on just in time delivery of fuel so you need to add oil backup.
I especially like the data you quoted on national scale wind availability. I have been looking for something like that for a long time.
I write about the same problem in New York (https://pragmaticenvironmentalistofnewyork.blog/). Responsible New York agencies all agree that new Dispatchable Emissions-Free Resource (DEFR) (https://reformingtheenergyvisioninconvenienttruths.com/new-yorks-reforming-the-energy-vision-background-material/dispatchable-emissions-free-resources-page/) technologies are needed to make a solar and wind-reliant electric energy system work reliably during the Dunkelflaute episodes. No one knows what those technologies are. I believe the only likely viable DEFR backup technology is nuclear generation because it is the only candidate resource that is technologically ready, can be expanded as needed, and does not suffer from limitations of the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
This situation is a fundamental reason why a pause in the New York net-zero transition is necessary. If the only viable DEFR solution is nuclear, then the wind, solar, and energy storage approach cannot be implemented without nuclear power. Using nuclear solely as a backup is inappropriate because it works best as a baseload resource. Developing baseload nuclear eliminates the need for a huge DEFR backup resource and massive buildout of wind turbines and solar panels sprawling over the state’s lands and water. Although nuclear power is expensive when compared to the resources needed for a wind, solar, energy storage, and DEFR system that all have shorter expected operational life spans it is likely that it would be cheaper.
Hopefully all the independent analyses that are concluding the same thing will have an effect.
"So, let’s just say 10GW average."
NEVER use the average - the system has to be sized to meet the extreme ends of demand. If your peak summer demand is 20 GW, then your storage has to be 24 GW X 10 days. That is the only path to 99.999% reliability, which sounds high, but is the current level of reliability.
I take it as you are talking about Colorado you are implictly talking about onshore wind. Do you feel your analysis would change if considering offshore wind?
From what little I've seen it would be just as bad. The wind is more constant but the off-shore turbines spend a lot of time broken.
It's worse - the ocean is a rough place for big electrical devices.
How many floating offshore powerplants are there? Outside of wind, precious few.
Nice article. I am not sure it changes your math but there are other alternatives to BESS. Did you not include them for a reason?
There's pumped hydro but the industry at present seems to be all-in on batteries.
Pumped hydro is a permitting nightmare given given the specific site characteristics needed. Xcel looked at pumped hydro in Grand Junction to provide spinning reserve on the Western Slope after the retirements at Craig and Hayden. The amount of support they received was approximately nil.
Batteries are easy to site and pair with a generator or to be grid-charging.
Your logic is where we "yucky" conservatives have been at for years. Welcome to the party, pal. (Also, saying "yuck" that you had to agree with the POTUS lowers you in my estimation to that of a slow child.)
My "yuck" was not for conservatives. It was directed at Trump specifically.
And thank you for the welcome :)
David, why did you choose the AP1400 over the AP1000? You selected a foreign reactor design that has not been built in the United States, has a design that has not been certified by NERC, and has not been proposed to be built here. Why not use the AP1000? Or was the a deliberate choice because you found out just how incompetent the United States has become regarding nuclear power plant construction and didn't want to blow-up your cost comparisons?
https://www.powermag.com/blog/plant-vogtle-not-a-star-but-a-tragedy-for-the-people-of-georgia/
This is like comparing US and Korean shipbuilding and proposing that the US Navy use the Sejong the Great-class (~$1B/ship) for the Arleigh-Burke Flight III program ($2.5B/ship). It's unrealistic given the dilapidated industrial base in the United States, lack of institutional knowledge, and a poorly skilled technical workforce to expect US-built reactors to come in at a price par to what is being built in Korea.
The two main Korean designs are certified by NRC (I assume you typed NERC but meant NRC - all these similar acronyms are a PITA).
And yep, they build their reactors for about half the price of the Vogtle build.
Hey, look at that. I was wrong! Thanks for the correction. Half the price is generous towards Vogtle, 1/3 of the price would be more accurate.
Still you have to project a higher cost for nuclear power in the United States versus for a project elsewhere. Don't get me wrong that Colorado, more specifically the utilities (as the Colorado Energy Office is largely toothless) need to consider the addition of nuclear for their post 2030 ERPs. However, until the requirements of SB 23-16 are added to the CEP requirements under HB19-1261, what the CEO proposes isn't going to matter and using their plans feels like a very loose thought experiment. Even then, the post 2026/27 state when Colorado will be within two energy markets creates for more flux on what post-2030 will look like.
Give it up dude. I'll fight nuclear in Colorado until my last breath, and so will plenty of other Coloradans. This is going nowhere.
There's no credible way to drastically reduce CO2 without nuclear energy. Beyond the level France has done with their nukes.
Out of curiosity, why are you opposed to nuclear? It's the 2nd safest form of energy (solar is 1st, wind is 3rd) and has the smallest environmental impact.
Hopefully, you will actually move from Colorado. It has the highest background radiation level of any state! Some comes from cosmic rays, some comes from the native rocks.
If you are fighting radiation in Colorado, give up the fight.
If you just want fossil fuels, go ahead and keep fighting nuclear.
Yeah I read that Boulder, CO has a natural radiation count so high that if was that level outside of a nuclear plant, they'd shut it down.
But not moving - it's a wonderful place to live. If it was on an ocean it would be perfect.
You also have remarkably low cancer rates. because the modeling of cancer risk form radiation is off and has been for decades.
Why? It's safe. It's clean. It's unobtrusive. And, it's cheaper than wind or solar (you might struggle with that one, but it's true!)