Solar Deployment Is Faster Than Nuclear

November 8th, 2013 by Guest Contributor

Originally published on the Lenz Blog.
By Karl-Friedrich Lenz.

Climate scientist Jim Hansen has written another open letter in support of nuclear energy as a solution to global warming. Thanks to this tweet by Barry Brook for the link.

If you want nuclear as part of the solution, you necessarily need to explain why renewable energy won’t be able to do the job alone. This particular open letter says:

Renewables like wind and solar and biomass will certainly play roles in a future energy economy, but those energy sources cannot scale up fast enough to deliver cheap and reliable power at the scale the global economy requires.

Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Station.
Image License: Public Domain.

We’ll have to wait a couple of decades to see if solar and wind are able to provide for 100 percent of energy. Contrary to what Jim Hansen (not an expert on energy systems) thinks, I expect that this will happen. But we already know one thing for sure.

Solar and wind have scaled up enough already to make nuclear lose in the market place. Even with nuclear enjoying the benefit of insufficient levels of insurance (leaving the remaining risk for the taxpayer), it just doesn’t make economic sense any more to build new nuclear plants.

And if you decide to build a new nuclear plant today, it won’t be able to deliver energy until ten years later, and will then have to compete for a couple of decades against wind and solar at the much more reduced prices these technologies will have then.

In contrast, you can build a large solar project in a couple of weeks or months. I am not sure why that is “not fast enough”, but it is sure faster than nuclear by a factor of over ten.

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Tags: Jim Hansen, solar vs nuclear, Time Taken To Deploy Nuclear Power Plants

About the Author

Guest Contributor is many, many people. We publish a number of guest posts from experts in a large variety of fields. This is our contributor account for those special people. :D

Cosette

The decline of the world nuclear electricity production :

http://energeia.voila.net/electri/electri_nucle_declin.htm

French study, with historical data and graphs (in french only).
- Matt
  
  Well this study shows nuclear ~constant from 2001 to 2011 (2.54Twh), well it goes up to 2.63 in 2006 and then back down. It “big” decline is in % of world production. With Japan drop was bigger in 2012 (2346 TWh) and we will see what 2013 holds. But I don’t expect growth, likely 2006 will be high water mark for a long time to come. What we need is to move the conversation to improving market signals to decrease coal/gas/oil use.
- José DeSouza
  
  Another “Frenchleak” (in english): http://www.sortirdunucleaire.org/english/downloads/EPR-explosive-technology.pdf.
globi

What nuclear growth? Nuclear has lost about 30% of its market share in the electricity sector (worldwide) since it peaked in the 1990’s.
name

Will solar be the death knell for the overregulated nuclear industry or will lawsuits get there first?
- SecularAnimist
  
  To call the nuclear industry “over regulated” is a sick joke. It exemplifies the hypocrisy of pro-nuclear zealots, who love to proclaim that nuclear power in the USA has a great safety record, and then seek to tear down the very regulatory system that is responsible for that record. (Of course, Japan’s nuclear industry had a great safety record too. Until just recently.)
  
  The reality is that the existing fleet of US nuclear reactors is inadequately regulated, and safety problems are widespread and increasing as the power plants age. Meanwhile EVERY new nuclear power plant under development everywhere in the world is experiencing costly and time-consuming safety problems. And the response of the pro-nuclear zealots is what? That the regulatory system should be abolished and nuclear power plants should be exempted from any legal or financial liability for damages that they cause.