We now have cheap electricity from wind and solar has now reached “affordable” and on its way to cheap. Inexpensive storage is being developed.

Economics will determine what we use for our electricity production.

China can build reactors for less money because China has massive amounts of cash. The can use government money to build reactors and will not have to account to voters for not making better use of that money.

By the time China gets their first thorium reactor built (they’re just starting the R&D process) the US will have massive amounts of wind and solar generation on line.

By the time China perfects and proves their thorium reactor design the US will be enjoying cheaper electricity because the present generation of wind turbines and solar panels will be paid off and producing almost free electricity.

By the time China debates a large scale thorium reactor project to build
lots of new reactors my guess is that China will have figured out that
reactors are not the way to generate electricity. China is pouring money
into wind and solar right now. China can do math.

Of course insurance is a massive problem. That’s one of the the things that makes nuclear too expensive. As it is taxpayers are providing most of the insurance for the industry now. Even existing nuclear can’t support itself but has to depend on subsidies.

But, whatever….

Tell you what, if the Chinese or the Indians can make a functioning thorium reactor which can be built for small enough money to compete with renewable energy then I’ll reconsider my stance.

Let’s check back with each other in a couple of decades and see if things have moved past the U-Toob stage.

You say “Nuclear goes down… because it runs out of cooling water.”
Source: Clean Technica (http://s.tt/14kpF)

Well for uranium fuel cycle reactors, that’s true, but thorium fuel cycles don’t use water cooling, so you are not addressing the technology I am talking about, and instead you are arguing against thorium by tearing down the strawman of uranium water cooled reactors. ( I agree that uranium water cooled reactors are a poor technology and ideally shouldn’t be pursued any longer)

You speak about “nuclear” as if it is some monolithic technology, which it is not. There are dozens of fuel cycle types and reactor designs each with their own pros and cons. It doesn’t advance the conversation to simply disparage one type such as uranium water cooled reactors and declare game over for every kind of nuclear technology as a result.

The largest hurdle for nuclear of any kind is obtaining insurance policies against plant failure, because they are expensive and currently only governments will provide those policies. But this is due to the hysteria around radiation because of the tarnished track record of uranium water-cooled reactors, and the fact that the public and even well educated individuals conflate that particular type of nuclear technology with all nuclear technology. A thorium molten salt reactor doesn’t carry nearly the risk of a uranium water cooled reactor and the insurance policy should be cheaper as a result. Unfortunately this won’t ever happen because of the hysteria I mentioned and the history of around uranium reactors, and it could be enough to sink thorium reactors for good.

Thorium reactors have the added benefit of being an ideal solution to our current uranium nuclear waste fiasco of having thousands of caskets of uranium cycle actinide waste in cooling pools all over the world. This radioactive material has a half life of tens of thousands of years. Too long for any human institution to responsibly manage. A thorium reactor could probably get those nuclear facilities to pay for the service of removing that actinide material to be used in the thorium cycle, which would transmute the spent waste to a less hazardous waste product with a half-life on the order of a few hundred years. A time frame which human institutions could oversee if good generational transition plans were in place.

I can go through the math again if you need me to.

We do not need “baseline” generation. We need power when we need it. Demand is not constant 24 hours a day and 365 days a year. The grid constantly adjusts supply in order to meet demand.

There in not a single “always on”, “always reliable” generation technology. Stuff is constantly causing problems. Nuclear goes down for refueling and because it “breaks” and because it runs out of cooling water.

We already use dispatchable generation and storage to meet the variability of supply and demand. We built 25GW of storage because the nuclear we built ‘back when’ so poorly fit our grid needs. We’ll use dispatchable gas while storage technology matures and finishes the replacement of fossil fuels. We’ll also do a lot more load shifting as we move to an intelligent grid.

Wind and solar will work great for EVs. EVs are very forgiving about when they charge. They sit parked 90% of their lives. On average EVs will need
1.5 hours of power per day (based on 12,000 miles and Nissan Leaf charge
times on a 240vac outlet). Many EVs will be able to skip a day or more if
we hit a particularly low supply or high demand period. Wind and solar are
going to be much cheaper ways to charge our EVs than new nuclear.

Please excuse me for talking back to you, sire. (Tugs forelock….)

Please don’t misunderstand, I’m all for solar and wind too, but, it must be admitted that a society powered by only solar and wind will look different than a society that has a constant base load power supply like we have now. Of course, I admit, that could be a good thing to force a different society to evolve. I’m just saying you have to be honest about the change that is coming and assess the risks.

Meanwhile Wallace flippantly dismisses thorium, which, ironically, is how the fossil fuel industry treats solar and wind. He should be more respectful and if he has criticism be specific and logical about it.

The feasibility tests for thorium were done in the 60’s and were successful. The thorium reactors weren’t shut down due to infeasibility, but rather, hawkish instincts of a Cold-War era US military which preferred a uranium nuclear fuel cycle that produced bomb-making material (which thorium fuel cycles do not).

We’re also paying attention to jet packs and time travel.

If any of this stuff becomes feasible then we can consider using it.

I don’t think centralized utilities are threatened by distributed solar. Or at least shouldn’t be threatened.

They will lose some of their peak hour sales, but at the same time that relieves them of the need to purchase/supply very expensive peaking power. If they are doing merit order pricing tight peak hour supply leaves them paying tremendous amounts for power (from existing coal/nuclear plants, for example) which would otherwise be cheap. There are many hours during which utility companies take a big loss on peak hour sales.

Centralized utilities will still own the distribution system. They’ll take the extra solar from roof owners at <maximum peak cost and sell it on at a profit. And then they will sell power to the roof owners when the Sun is not shining.

The only thing that would threaten centralized utilities is if a very large portion of the public went 'stand-alone'. And you just can't do stand-alone as cheaply as doing grid-tied roof top.

I totally get John's point about the value of distributed generation. Generating close to point of use makes sense. But I think John goes overboard in his support of distributed. Sometimes it's cheaper to buy
from outside ones neighborhood, even with transmission costs included.
It's almost always more dependable/reliable.

The final form of our grid, I think, will be a unified grid covering all of
North America. (Perhaps Alaska will be separate.) We'll generate
electricity wherever it is the cheapest to generate. Local PV will make a
lot of sense in most parts of the country as it will cut down on
transmission line size. We'll also likely see local storage, especially if
new battery technology succeeds. That, also, will cut transmission line
size. (Run the line at full capacity during off-peak hours and store power
locally for peak needs.)

Thanks for the article. A challenge I would make, however, is regarding transmission requirements for renewables, especially in a European (specifically German) context.

– Yes, Germany has installed / is installing vast amounts of solar PV which, for the most part, is relatively small and de-centralised. But as the sun doesn’t always shine, they either need to build a lot more PV + storage, or a combination of other clean-energy solutions (like wind, biomass, hydro, etc) + storage.
– However, one of the challenges they are facing is the need for increased transmission due to wind power which tends to be multiple-turbine (and therefore multiple-MWp) installations. This is certainly the case for offshore wind.
– And the chart above shows ‘Solar Thermal w/ Storage’…none of that will be in Germany. In fact, it’s envisioned that most of it won’t even be in Europe. That’s the point of the Desertec Industrial Initiative that will have HVDC transmission from North Africa (or ‘only’ from Greece via the proposed Project Helios)
– Storage: at the moment, and for the foreseeable future, the storage that gets used (for nuclear and renewables and others) are in places like Norwegian and Swiss pumped-hydro facilities…again, involve a LOT of transmission

By all means, I agree that the cost-effectiveness of distributed generation (especially solar PV) going forward is going eat into the business model of centralised utilities. And I would argue that many of them see it as a genuine, existential threat to them.

But in the absence of a very affordable, scalable storage solution, we are still going to require large-scale thermal back-up (coal, gas, biogas, biomass, etc) OR significant transmission (bigger the area, the better the spread of renewables) OR BOTH.

best regards…