Pipelines, energy and natural resources
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No, I was just making one amusing (to me) trivial parenthetical observation that has practical effects in all countries that experience cold weather.
Great. I'm not going to draw broad conclusions about power to service a couple of rooms on an unshared roof, though. My doubts are about scale - all the demands of high-density populations taken together are not going to be met by rooftop panels.
Nuclear isn't dead. It's just stuck pretty much everywhere outside China because everybody else refuses to do what the Chinese did on standardization of construction. SMRs were supposed to be the great hope where they could be manufactured in a factory and just rolled out to a site and installed. How's that dream working out? I fully expect the Chinese to standardize an SMR before anybody else too.
We have fusion already. Just have to put a receiver on your roof and it reaches from source in 8.3 minutes.
I remember attending ITERs presentation in university over two decades ago when they were pitching Pickering. But look how long it's taking them. I'm not sure net fusion happens in our lifetime. And I'm not sure if it does, it'll be cheap and scalable in any way that is relevant to 99% of the planet. Meanwhile, kids in Africa who have never had electricity before can now study at night with a small battery and a panel on top of their shack. Progress.
Nobody said all their demands have to be met by rooftop solar. There's no magic one-size-fits-all solution. That's always the ridiculous strawman pushed. There's a lot of room between 0 and 100. And for countries importing energy every percentage point they move that needle the more prosperous their countries will be. All the more so in a world where developed countries don't want to run trade deficits giving dollars to the Global South. That makes dollars to buy oil and gas even harder to get. Using that to keep their middle class temporarily happy instead of reducing dependence on imports would be obvious madness in their shoes.
What was the installed base and installation rates of solar in 2019? We're literally discussing a phenomenon that has developed over the last 5 years. At minimum, solar now delivers more watt-hours than nuclear. If someone told you this was the prediction for 2025 in 2020, you would have said they belong in the loony bin.
Obviously utilities and some homeowner have different considerations. The utilities would have to do security testing, installing fully separate networks, etc.
This is no different a consideration than all the other critical kit we buy that is made in China. Including our phones. It's not like classified BlackBerry or iPhones are made in the US.
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If you willfully decide that the rest of the world other than China isn’t developing nuclear capacity, then nothing I or others say will change your mind. Canada (principally Ontario) is increasing nuclear generation capacity (13GW to 20 GW).
How’s the dream working out? It’s progressing, but feel free to bombast SMRs into non-solar oblivion.
I guess you also missed the part where Canada is leading G7 (and global) SMR implementation. OPG’s Darlington BWRX-300 SMR is planned to go online in four years. China hasn’t committed to when its first SMR goes live.
I remember EVs from the 70s.
Progress
You shouldn't mistake me for being anti-nuclear. I've always been a strong proponent. But I recognize that for a while host of reasons development has absolutely gotten f'd. And now economics is killing them basically everywhere but China.
You bring up the SMR in Ontario. I was so enthusiastic about SMRs a decade ago during my aforementioned PG. Do you remember the original promise of SMRs? They were supposed to be small enough to be manufactured in factories and trucked to a site. They were supposed to be the equivalent of nuclear batteries. Since I was at a military school, there were fantasy discussions that we could use these in the Arctic with minimum maintenance. And the mass manufacturing was supposed to reduce costs by an order or two of magnitude. Does any of this sound at all like the "SMR" being built in Ontario? Not small. Not medium. Not mobile. Not mass produced. Not cheap. Sure, is good we're doing it as a development project. But this thing is nowhere close to being competitive with Chinese solar.
And let's be clear, going forward, nothing matters more than the price of electrons. How powerful a given country's AI will be is entirely going to be determined by the price of electrons. And China's are so cheap that they can even use chips that are a generation behind with twice the power consumption and still be competitive with the US. So if any of this kind of competition matters to you, nothing should matter but the $/kw that you can contract for.
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It would seem that if that level of scrutiny or 'proofing' is necessary, best not to rely on components from a questionable source to begin with.
Using fully separate networks by private industry (even for government and military I imagine) would be going in a completely opposite direction than the rest of the world. Every North American electrical utility that I am aware of, from town-owned to province-wide, is a member of a synchronous grid that they must constantly communicate with. Quebec is on their own because . . . well, Quebec, but has decent inter-ties with surrounding grids. Texas is also on their own because . . . well, Texas, with very limited inter-ties, which showed itself very wanting during cold spells a few years ago.
The elctrification of passenger road transport will no doubt increase, slowly. The world is becoming increasingly urbanized so factors such as range and charging opportunities will be less of an issue; although having said that, retrofitting multi-unit dwellings will be an issue. Acceptance will also hinge on resale values. I can drive an ICE vehicle for 10-15 years and it will be worth something. An EV with a spent battery pack, not so much.
I'm less confident in long distance commercial transport, road, rail or marine making a particular shift, unless it is a result of the next big battery breakthrough that we've been told is 'just around the corner', for about 10 years.
North America is an outlier here. A lot of the world. Especially the developed world moves cargo by rail and particularly electrified rail.
But also, we're back to the strawman of absolutes again. Nothing needs to be 100%. An Amazon or Canada Post van being electric still saves on oil consumption. And if Amazon does it, so will Walmart, Loblaws, etc. They all have to do it to be competitive. And that's how it goes.
Shipping and aviation are long horizon problems. Probably not in our lifetimes. And mostly using biofuels. We've tested and use biofuel blends in the RCAF. But also 40% of bulk shipping globally is coal, oil and LNG. If we get to the point where global consumption for these is reduced to local reserves mostly, this consumption reduces substantially too.
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I don't care what the rate was. I can see how demand and supply are evolving. It isn't obvious that renewables are going to overtake each of the other major contributors in 5 years. It isn't obvious that they ever will, since we don't know what kinds of physical, political, economic, social, etc barriers are going to intrude. Sigmoid curves tend to be more common than monotonically increasing ones.
Again, looking into the minds of others is a fool's errand at best and rude at worst.
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right now nuclear is not competitive price wise. Its not competitive in China which is by far the cheapest on nuclear production
SMR's dont really make sense in how we are using them in Ontario either. The costs of the nuclear building suggest bigger is better
If every SMR was the same exact model sure, hell the same could be said for the non small modular reactors
If we had kept building reactors and electrifying it might be different at one time the US built reactors for half the cost that China does now
the solar/battery transition appears to be the fastest energy transition ever
SMR's dont really make sense in how we are using them in Ontario either. The costs of the nuclear building suggest bigger is better
If every SMR was the same exact model sure, hell the same could be said for the non small modular reactors
If we had kept building reactors and electrifying it might be different at one time the US built reactors for half the cost that China does now
the solar/battery transition appears to be the fastest energy transition ever
In Australia the environmentalists are declaring war on the wind mill group over dead birds. In Germany they are fighting to preserve the last of their heavy industries because wind and solar power costs too much. Perhaps the output of a solar field is cheaper than an NG or coal fired generator but at night for solar or on a high pressure no wind winters day, those same generators are needed so you are actually paying for two systems. Scotland is fighting the AI battle because they will have to more than double their capacity in order to meet the proposed power demands of AI. The high rate of implementation of green technology in the states coincided with Biden and the high implementation here had Trudeau et al to thank. China and India may have large installed green capacity but they have not stopped planning and building carbon based generators. Solar isn't dead but it is no longer the people's choice. Even in Holland, when I was there last, there were turbine fields that were being demolished without being replaced.
News from the early 20th century extolled the virtues of EVs. Those advantages never went away but the EV did except for specific applications and I think you will see the same again although hybrids do change the equation somewhat.
Except we kinda do. The rest of the world is buying Chinese solar and EVs. At an alarming rate. Trump pushes them out of the US (and Canada by default) and this happens:
Like I said, the rest of the world doesn't have the luxury of burning oil and gas they don't have on principle. Whatever gets them the lowest $/watt and $/km wins.
There's a cautious case to be made that OPG picked the winner that will be the standard. But that was before Trump destroyed global trade. So who knows. Not sure the Europeans will want a reactor that has any American parts or even intellectual property in it .....
Highly likely the Chinese will eventually start exporting their reactors elsewhere in substantially more numbers. Especially to places that don't care about local construction. And they have so far bucked the SMR fascination in the West. They build them big just like we did in the 80s.
Ultimately to me the fascination with the transition is the geopolitics. We're getting to the point that China can use PV panels and EVs the way that a Gulf State might use oil. Their exports all over the Global South show this. And Pakistan in particular has been fascinating to see, given its natural affinity for the Gulf States.
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Nuclear is subject to a lot of litigation.
Put environmental tariffs on Chinese products sufficient to cover the massive externalities currently being permitted and check the cost gap again.
Goes back to what I said. People have forgotten what the original idea of SMRs were supposed to be. And their history from naval reactors. OPG's effort is somewhere between development project and political virtue signaling. I wish Ontario had an open electricity market like Alberta. Let whatever supplier build whatever they want. Best price wins.
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