On the one hand I agree on the other hand I think this is an issue with nuclear, not markets.
For example, the market may complement cheap solar with cheap storage. Certainly cracking grid-level storage coupled with cheap solar, will change the game. (And be very profitable)
If you start a new nuclear plan today you're betting the storage problem won't be solved for 15 years (until nuclear operational) or 40 odd years after that (payback period.) That's a bold bet.
All it takes us for compressed-air-in-old-mines (or whatever) to work well, and you're out of luck.
The private market will exhaust storage ideas before investing in new nuclear. Which is your point. Which means a govt betting on storage failure. That's a bet I'm not sure govt wants to make.
There's no cheap storage being able to sustain grid loads, that doesn't exist regardless of what the futuristic articles will tell you on the internet.
That might happen for sure but if we go that route of non existing tech, there's even better than the magical storage, there's fusion and unlike the magical storage tech, we know for sure that it exists.
> If you start a new nuclear plan today you're betting the storage problem won't be solved for 15 years (until nuclear operational) or 40 odd years after that (payback period.) That's a bold bet.
If you bet on a full renewable grid, you're betting that some unknown tech will appear in the next decade to solve all your problems, yeah no thanks, that's not how you plan infrastructure on the long term. R&D and deployment are two very different things. And while you are waiting, any cost to sustain the load (like gas plant) is unrecoverable.
> The private market will exhaust storage ideas before investing in new nuclear. Which is your point.
Hence why I'm saying we don't need the private market which is creating more problems than solutions here.
The private market solution was to use more gas which is bad for climate change and bad for the diplomatic relationships as seen in the EU during the Russian war.
We're on the same page here. Grid level storage does not exist. Then again 20 years ago grid level solar didn't exist.
All infrastructure investment involves some degree of fore-sight, and good luck (in picking the winner.) Private markets will tend to favor the most likely winners, leaving govt to support the outsiders. And govt may get lucky. But more likely they'll just do nothing. Politically no choice is better than the wrong choice.
We could observe models from public-monopoly places. That frees up long-term planning while locking in fixed prices. That approach can be very effective and efficient. It can also go badly wrong.
I'm not discounting any possibility here. Anything could still win. But the odds for nuclear are not looking great to me.
> Private markets will tend to favor the most likely winners, leaving govt to support the outsider
I don't really agree, private market favors tend to favor not the winners but the most profitable part of the grid and let the state or other people manage with the rest.
Electricity is one of the worst place to get private markets, it's hard to divide (natural monopoly), critically need 100% uptime regardless of the costs and the only reason we're even switching generation tech at all is because of bad externalities which private market are also bad at. Then there's also the diplomatic angle, we can't depend from Russia or China from our energy either, regardless if it's cheaper or not.
Sure there's other issues with the public model of electricity but at least it can work if done well whereas I'm betting on a 100% failure rate with a private one, like we're heading right now since we opened up the markets in the EU (and elsewhere)
By picking gas as the backup solution and solar (+ some wind) as the main source of electricity, Europe has picked the most likely overall winners of the energy transition. Many countries in Europe are rapidly approaching 100% solar electricity and the plans are looking to vastly overprovision today's demand because we need to reduce the non-electricity fossil consumption next.
This market has very different needs than the 100% grid stability of today's electricity usage. We might for instance not be able to charge cars in winter nights if there is no wind.
Gas peaking plants will be there but their consumption of gas will become much less.
it sounds like a parallel universe, in todays Europe (the reality), the grid got almost shut down by the Russian war in Ukraine and its gas dependency. The only salvation went from some even dirtier gas imported from the US and there's further talks with Algeria, Qatar and Azerbaidjan to increase gas imports (all great democracies aligned with the EU that won't cause any issue I'm sure).
The renewable policies in the EU were a diplomatic and an environmental failure.
And for now it's "only" the gas dependencies causing issues, everybody can just pray that China doesn't block panel exports to make the situation even more explosive than it already is.
> We might for instance not be able to charge cars in winter nights if there is no wind.
The issue with wind is that when it's down, it's really really down to single digits. It's not just about charging electric cars or not but bringing something else to stabilize the grid.
You're confusing so much that I don't even know where to start. Maybe with "rapidly approaching 100% solar electricity". In reality, it's news when some country, in perfect weather, runs on renewables for few hours in a day. Then coal plants start.
For example, the market may complement cheap solar with cheap storage. Certainly cracking grid-level storage coupled with cheap solar, will change the game. (And be very profitable)
If you start a new nuclear plan today you're betting the storage problem won't be solved for 15 years (until nuclear operational) or 40 odd years after that (payback period.) That's a bold bet.
All it takes us for compressed-air-in-old-mines (or whatever) to work well, and you're out of luck.
The private market will exhaust storage ideas before investing in new nuclear. Which is your point. Which means a govt betting on storage failure. That's a bet I'm not sure govt wants to make.