Thread by @jmkorhonen

Again on #nuclear power:

I don't believe a major nuclear renaissance is in the cards unless states step in much more forcefully than they have so far.

But nuclear energy could make an important contribution towards sustainability, and should be supported.

One of the most insane policies of the last few decades have been the premature closures of operational nuclear power plants. Any environmentalist should oppose such policies until it is clear that fossil fuels and destructive bioenergy use are dead, dead, dead.

Once we get rid of fossil fuels and obtain both energy and raw materials sustainably, I have no problems shutting down nuclear power if that is what people want and what science warrants.

But until then, keep the plants running.

I would however advise pro-nuclear activists to take a careful look at the trends in the manufacturing of renewable energy technologies. Don't look at current installation rates, look at the investments in capacity.

I believe a "Big Green Bang" could happen this decade.

Within a few years, global installation rates for solar PV alone might reach terawatt of installed capacity per year.

That could have a significant impact on costs because technologies tend to get cheaper the more they are produced. Here's a very rough estimate.

The main sources for the graph above are own calculations based on

Way, Rupert, Matthew C. Ives, Penny Mealy, and J. Doyne Farmer. ‘Empirically Grounded Technology Forecasts and the Energy Transition’. Joule 6, no. 9 (21 September 2022): 2057–82. doi.org/10.1016/j.joul….

and

Lovering, Jessica R., Arthur Yip, and Ted Nordhaus. ‘Historical Construction Costs of Global Nuclear Power Reactors’. Energy Policy 91 (1 April 2016): 371–82. doi.org/10.1016/j.enpo….

Lovering et al. find the largest sustained "learning rate" for modern nuclear to be 2% p.a.