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marcusaurelius_phd t1_isb7c6z wrote

Reply to comment by blastuponsometerries in Ethics of Nuclear Energy in Times of Climate Change: Escaping the Collective Action Problem by CartesianClosedCat

> Actually batteries have come a very long way in just the past decade

Still a couple orders of magnitude off.

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blastuponsometerries t1_isbn6m9 wrote

~10 GWH of batteries were produced in 2010

~600 GWH of batteries will be produced this year. That is an order of magnitude in a little over a decade (with primarily venture back companies investing and less governments).

It will take ~10 TWH (transport) and ~20 TWH (grid), per year to transition to full renewable. So yes, 2 orders of magnitude off is about right.

Definitely within reach and cleaner non-renewables (like nuclear) can help bridge the gap sooner. But its coming. And that's just with the current generation of tech, if we think a decade or more into the future, additional material advancements can accelerate this further.

The best part is that batteries at the end of life are high grade ore. So recycling valuable materials will close the loop. After the transition, very little additional mining will be needed to maintain the world's battery supply. Unlike oil, which for generations has to be constantly replenished as the material nearly fully turns over every few months. So much waste.

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marcusaurelius_phd t1_isbo7jx wrote

Now look at the amount of lithium and other materials required to produce those batteries. Compare and contrast with the material cost of nuclear plants -- hint: they're the lowest of any power generation amortized over lifetime. Incidentally, they require less CO₂-emitting concrete than windmills per Wh.

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blastuponsometerries t1_isbsynv wrote

I am not arguing against Nuclear, its part of the solution. But only part.

Solar and wind can be built out much much faster. You can see that from the economics alone.

Nuclear requires government funding to make it feasible. Wind/solar are being built out currently in a major way with private investments. Sure gov incentives help, but are no longer mandatory. Private capital going towards wind/solar is a massive advantage in the fight on climate change because it bypasses political processes that oil money has stymied.

I would like more nuclear. But its simply not economic to do so. If we could get governments to move past inaction and invest in the future grid, sure it would come along. But in the meantime, significant nuclear will be nothing more than a nice idea.

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marcusaurelius_phd t1_isbtfd7 wrote

> Solar and wind can be built out much much faster.

The necessary storage cannot, even accepting the overly optimistic prediction you posted earlier.

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blastuponsometerries t1_isbv512 wrote

Batteries are economic for gird use right now. Its just production constrained. Just so happens capitalism is really good at solving that particular issue.

Nuclear is totally different. Massively expensive, high risk, and long time horizons. Something capitalism is bad at solving. Thus gov intervention is required to change the dynamic. This is borne out in the empirical reality of how private companies are currently investing.

Still grid storage can dramatically lag wind/solar for a few reasons:

  • Wind/solar naturally complement each other (wind tends to produce more at night, when solar is offline)
  • Existing hydro is easily retrofitted to be more on demand and act as grid storage (already currently happening)
  • EVs are not picky about charging times and are easily setup to take advantage of low prices and reduce at times of high prices, helping to decouple generation and demand
  • If we dramatically overproduce during the day, there are plenty of productive uses for basically free power, desalination is a great place to start
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marcusaurelius_phd t1_isbzxzn wrote

> Batteries are economic for gird use right now. Its just production constrained. Just so happens capitalism is really good at solving that particular issue

You're just waving away a very obvious problem, and I don't understand how you can. Lithium production is constrained. Batteries cost money, that means energy, production capacity, and lithium as well as other stuff. On top of that, they don't improve à la Moore's law as you appear to believe. We gain a few % every year, not an order of magnitude every 5.

Currently, grid-level storage cover at best minutes, sometimes hours in very small areas. To cover windless, sunless periods, we need days, and indeed more like 2 weeks.

You say nuclear plants take too long to build, but there is no way we can produce enough batteries in 20 years, which is plenty of time to build reactors.

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blastuponsometerries t1_isc2jdv wrote

>You're just waving away a very obvious problem, and I don't understand how you can. Lithium production is constrained.

So separate out discussing batteries and lithium.

Batteries are production constrained and require fairly significant capx into new factories to get. That has been happening in a major way for the past few years and is only accelerating. It will take many years of scaling to truly satisfy world demand, but that means a lot of money and investment (again already happening).

Lithium itself has a different dynamic.

Lithium is quite abundant and has been considered a waste product from other types of mining for quite a long time. That has now changed and will be solved in reasonably short order. No new tech is required and tons of reserves are already proven. Within 5 years the price should be reasonably stabilized.

Also, most of the battery mass are what I mentioned. Iron/Aluminum/Carbon/Silicon. People fixate on lithium because it is in the name of the battery, but its a relatively small part by mass. Its just not a serious problem outside of the next few years.

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>Currently, grid-level storage cover at best minutes, sometimes hours in very small areas. To cover windless, sunless periods, we need days, and indeed more like 2 weeks.

The more solar you build, the more predictable it becomes. The solar panel on your house might change based on relative cloud cover, but solar over a whole region becomes quite predictable.

To make power reliable, you have to over build it. The current fossil fuel is overbuilt. So you would need more solar than for you average day. Also major appliances (like EVs) will become more responsive to changing grid prices. Demand will become more elastic.

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>You say nuclear plants take too long to build, but there is no way we can produce enough batteries in 20 years, which is plenty of time to build reactors.

Plenty of time. Now someone actually has to put up the money.

Its already happening in renewables, hopefully government or capital desires to actually invest in nuclear. In the meantime, nuclear is standing still and will waste out another decade.

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