@nwdiver,
Thank you for your quick response. I apologize that I'm not nearly as quick.
It's easy to focus on how much solar/wind we have without acknowledging how incredibly fast it's growing. Every 2.5 years installed solar doubles. Diablo Canyon will be operating until 2024. Solar and Wind are expected to grow >8 fold by then. Solar output in California is currently ~8GW with peak demand ~40GW...
I want to believe your claim of 8X by 2024. Can you point me to something authoritative that I can use for quotes in newsletters or publications re "installed solar doubles every 2.5 years" and/or the trend line extending out another 8-10 years? (It's one thing to double again in the next 2.5 years and still another to repeat that doubling two or three or more times.)
Diablo Canyon will be experiencing significant curtailment events by the time it's retired... that's no way to operate a nuclear plant and undoubtedly played into PG&E decision.
Sorry, I don't know what a "curtailment event" is, much less a significant one, nor the implications of same.
What may not be immediately obvious is the fact that there is no 'nuclear industry' like there is a solar and wind industry... there are only companies that operate nuclear plants.
A very interesting point and new to me!
What does this mean? With the exception of Areva and Exelon most companies involved in operating, maintaining and building nuclear plants are far more exposed to coal, oil and gas than nuclear. Flour is the company behind NuScale building modular reactors; most of their business is in oil... do you really think they want a carbon tax? Westinghouse and GE also build and maintain gas turbines... do you really think they want a carbon tax? Duke Energy operates ~7GW of nuclear... but 11GW of coal and gas... do you really think they want a carbon tax? This is why NEI spends more time attacking Wind and Solar than actually lobbying for a carbon tax like AWEA and SEIA.
OK, I can wrap my head around this. It's very disappointing but I get it. I wonder if this is one reason why nuclear power has advanced seemingly so little since the 1960s/1970s in terms of deployed technology.
Sorry, can you please translate these acronyms: NEI, AWEA, SEIA.
Yes... nuclear power is very clean energy... but very few people that work in nuclear power actually care. Their goal is maintaining the status quo. ~20% nuclear... and the rest?
Wow... I would have thought that there would be SOME people in the "nuclear industry" interested in spreading the deployment of nuclear. I mean... what about all those guys who talk about small, modular nuclear? Or thorium? Or....? It has always seemed to me as if there were a bunch of ideas "out there" but, puzzlingly, no one seeming that interested in turning the ideas into deployments. No Solar City, Tesla or Apple or similar for the nuclear world.
Who cares. Wind and Solar on the other hand a determined to conquer the world... and they are succeeding.
I'd say Wind and Solar PLUS batteries. A good storage technology will be the key to widespread success.
But what to do in the meantime? I'm still left thinking that maybe the current raft of nukes should be subsidized for CO2 benefits until we really ARE in a better place w.r.t. CO2 levels & trends. (Maybe more accurately "more subsidized". Seems like there are many subsidies already in place in the nuclear power world, ranging from insurance guarantees to we'll-take-the-waste guarantees.)
Thank you.
Alan