>We know how to build nuclear, we don't do it because its too expensive.
Refusing to build nuclear for decades makes it more expensive. If we start actually building reactors the cost will come down.
>the current Storage + Renewable pricing is so crazy good, that whatever you do with nuclear will just not be able to compete.
I would find this more persuasive if there were no new investment in carbon sources, but carbon sources have clearly remained competitive with batteries + solar, and global carbon emissions remain at an all time high. There's demand for baseload energy.
Building nuclear power stations includes a lot of labor-intensive hard to automate tasks like construction. Baumol's cost disease means it's getting even more expensive: rising general productivity leads to higher wages and higher costs in fields that cannot increase productivity as much as the general economic growth. That's why it's also still cheaper in countries with access to low-cost labor.
SMRs are a try to get out of it by building more but smaller reactors. The reality is however that nuclear has an issue with scaling down. Output goes down way faster than costs and most SMR designs have outputs far greater than what initially counted as an SMR.
Investment in renewable energy already greatly outpaces investment in fossil energy. The economic decision to keep using a fossil system is a different one than having to choose a new one. There's still problems that have no economically competitive renewable solution yet, but a lot of what you are seeing is inertia.
Base load electricity is simply an economic optimisation: demand is not flat, but the cheapest electricity source might only be able to create a relatively flat output. You'll need more flexible plants to cover everything above the base load. If you have cheap gas, base load does not make any sense economically.
For the last two years more than 90% of new power generation capacity added globally was renewable. Est 95% in 2025. So no, new carbon sources are not competitive.
Highly misleading stat. That's referring to capacity expansion, not new construction.
Prior energy assets go offline and are replaced each year. The report you cite is discounting all of that, looking only at expansion above the baseline, then taking total renewable construction and calcuating renewable total construction's share of expansion. Apples to oranges.
If you look at the chart in your own link you'll see that carbon construction investment exceeds renewables still.
Chart: "Annual energy investment by selected country and region, 2015 and 2025"
I would love for what you say to be true but it just isn't, even by that agency's own stats.
Not sure I understand your point. In the plot you mention what the OP said certainly holds true for China and Europe (less so for the US). Also the Charts plot investments not just new capacity investments, I'm not even sure how you distinguish between the two?
The OP said new carbon sources are not competitive.
ANY investment is by definition creating capacity that would not be there without the investment. If carbon were not competitive it would not get investment.
If you sum up all of the carbon and compare to renewables in the chart there's more new carbon investment annually globally than renewables. (Comparing the dark lines vs the green line)
Also this is ignoring "low emission fuels", which are still carbon sources, natural gas and the like.
If you check the chart "Global electricity generation of zero-carbon sources vs. fossil fuels, 2000-2024" you can see that carbon sources were at an all time high in 2024. Growing slower is still growing.
We ought to be shrinking these to zero. I'm very glad to see solar and wind growing but my point is nuclear is worth supporting as an non-carbon energy source that could replace some of this carbon load because of its baseload characteristics.
"Global investment in clean energy and fossil fuels" shows a decline in fossil.
And there are plenty of good reasons why the investment in fossil fuels is still there because these investments can easily be not because its is still competitive, but its still competitive because base costs have been written off.
Aka the replacment of that coal power plant might have been 'competitve' because the whole infrastructure around it is still there and usable, because they might just replace the main burning chamber. Because for current stability reasons its easier to add gas turbines or keep them alive as backup because the renewable energy build out takes more time.
Nonetheless, the overall statistics says that renewable + batteries are now the cheapest energy source on the planet. Locally it might not be doesn't change the fact.
And no we do not need nuclear for baseload. Wind and solar are capable of baseload.
Alone my 4 year old EV has a batterie of 100kWh which would allow a heat pump to heat a house for 2.5 days.
Also countries in the north like Canada has plenty of waterenergy for baseload and countries closer to the aquator have extreme amount of sun.
Earthenergy can be still used in the most northern countries.
Yes for sure it just doesn't happen because huge projects like this have to be aligned and coordinated on complete different scales.
Thats why the french build a reactor in UK.
Even the CDU/CSU political party in germany, who was in power for 16 years uninterupted wasn't doing it.
So whatever we wish or think would happen doesn't matter if the only ones investing in nuclear are techcompanies and as somone else stated, they do this primiarily for existing nuclear capacity.
But whats happening now is a renewable revolution. Batteries are very cheap now and get cheaper and easier to make and you need the manufactoring capacity for them anyway (cars, storage projects) that they will break up every other area like normal housing.
Especially because now it reached africa as a continent and asia. Its exploding.
And its very easy to just extend this potential. Many normal areas are still vacant.
A LOT of countries probably will either neve be able to afford nuclear or will not be allowed to have it anyway.
It's better than carbon. And solar + battery requires more carbon to produce than nuclear energy as there's a lot of mining and physical construction involved + you must overbuild to supply power or rely on non solar sources.
All for building solar. Do not understand the constant need to denigrate nuclear in favour of carbon sources while doing so.
(If carbon sources were at zero this would be a different conversation)
Nothing inherently wrong with steam, just as there's nothing inherently wrong with spinning rust hard disks or punch cards.
We are at the end of the tech curve for steam, we have pushed it hard and made some super impressive technology, but it's not advancing anymore. Supercritical CO2 might have some advantages, or other fluids.
We have zero-carbon tech that uses non-steam principles, and is currently on a tech curve that's getting cheaper than any thermodynamic cycle. We have storage tech now which is an even bigger revolution for the grid than cheap solar, because a huge limitation of the grid has always been the inability to store and buffer energy.
I still have pinning rust disks, but only because they are cheap. If SSDs were cheaper, then we would see a massive switch.
(BTW denigrating steam also denigrates all fossil fuel electricity sources, because they use the same mechanism, except for some natural gas turbines)
What is this, the hipster approach to technology evaluation? Steam conversion efficiency doesn't make sense as a metric for nuclear because (AFAIK) fuel consumption per watt isn't the primary driver of cost for that technology. Or am I mistaken?
> I still have pinning rust disks, but only because they are cheap. If SSDs were cheaper, then we would see a massive switch.
I only use this technology because it is more competitive than the alternatives for my usecase ... ?
> denigrating steam also denigrates all fossil fuel electricity sources
I doubt name calling is a sensible basis for policy decisions.
It's actually hipsters that are into steam, you know, the steam punks.
I don't care about steam conversion efficiency as much as I care that steam Rankine cycle engines are a solved problem so there is no more technological advancement. One of the biggest advancements over the past decades is using a Britton cycle in front for natural gas, ie moving away from steam engines.
> I only use this technology because it is more competitive than the alternatives for my usecase ... ?
If I understand you, yes of course use the more competitive technology. Sticking with steam when there are cheaper alternatives is a poor idea. But moreover as we look to what people choose as technology improves, we will find that steam usage will be relegated to things like geothermal, which like nuclear has essentially free fuel, but doesn't have to go down for a month to refuel, has the potential for more variable generation instead of undesirable constant generation, and is far less complicated.
> denigrating steam also denigrates all fossil fuel electricity sources
The critique is not name calling, it's pointing out that the technology is mature and not improving, unlike the technologies that are recolutionizing grid energy right now across the world. The number of applications that use fuel to generate electricity via steam are shrinking. Perhaps hydrogen in the future, if electrolyzers ever come down the cost curve, but it's pretty speculative.
Horse buggies still exist, but mostly as novelties. Steam generation is headed the same direction.
Nuclear has a few other major flaws: Uranium aka nuclear weapons risk, Dependency on uranium (yes china finally solved the Thorium issue but that happened this year?), geopolitical/terrorism risks (see ukraine).
And because i'm from germany: do you know that in bavaria, you still have to check certain meat for radioactivity?
> Nuclear is expensive even after the reactor is build.
Solar panels and wind turbines need maintenance too. And they have much shorter operational lives than nuclear power plants, meaning they'll need to be expensively replaced much more frequently.
> And I wouldn’t call it progress to still rely on steam machines for energy
Could you please explain your objection to steam-based power? Is it purely aesthetic, or is there some inherent downside to steam turbines that I'm not aware of? Also, concentrated solar power systems that concentrate sunlight and use it to boil steam[1] are significantly more efficient than direct photovoltaics.
> Could you please explain your objection to steam-based power?
My guess would be that you're taking energy that you burn, you then boil water, water then goes through a number of turbines, then to a generator and then you might have electricity. Every step in that process is not 100% efficient.
Direct PV is, sunlight, cell that generates current, current gets transformed into whatever the grid needs. So it's fewer steps.
Refusing to build nuclear for decades makes it more expensive. If we start actually building reactors the cost will come down.
>the current Storage + Renewable pricing is so crazy good, that whatever you do with nuclear will just not be able to compete.
I would find this more persuasive if there were no new investment in carbon sources, but carbon sources have clearly remained competitive with batteries + solar, and global carbon emissions remain at an all time high. There's demand for baseload energy.