Majority of Americans support more nuclear power in the country

What I have never understood is why local governments don't force more use of solar on new construction of houses, especially those in the sunbelt. The more usage that is driven, the lower the cost. It would drive R&D, increase manufacturing and jobs and drive down costs. In addition, it would reduce a significant load on our aging infrastructure.

I have had 10.5 Kw of solar panels (32 panels) for a while now, and I do live in the south, but not the southwest, so I probably get more rain than the optimum.

Overall, I’m quite pleased with what they provide. Most days that are not completely rainy, I get anywhere from 40-65 KwH. However, they simply reduce my usage, not cancel it out. On the very best months, usually once in spring and once in fall, I generate as much electricity as I’m using. The rest of the time, I still buy quite a bit of power. In the summer for example, living in the south means a lot of cooling. I probably generate about 50+% of what I use. In the winter it’s more like 75%.

However, they were pretty expensive (I paid up front, to not have an additional payment), and I can’t imagine that increasing the price of a home by that much will endear the state to homebuyers. Houses are already hard to afford for most.

Nuclear, on the other hand, can actually provide power in all weather conditions, and is probably the only way that governments can meet their carbon targets (not that I think that that is all that important either, but be that as it may…).

I think solar is a good thing, but it’s never going to provide the amount of power that is required. Nor is wind. They can be good solutions to help reduce strain on the grid, but they are not reliable enough to provide all the power needs of today’s society.

Dave, how long would you have to use your solar panels until the energy savings would pay for them not counting the interest on your purchase? I have often wondered if they would beat investing in the stock market.

As far as electric needs, my brother-in-law's father works at the electric distribution center for a large city in our area and he is very concerned about being able to meet their current electrical needs and this is a city that is growing substantially. When I hear him talk about his concerns about just meeting the basic needs of that area and how hard it is to do that during peak use times, I cringe when I think about those who want more electric cars. BTW I am not opposed to someone getting an electric car, I just realize that we do not have the electrical capacity to run them. Thus, I think it would be extremely foolish- I mean irresponsible- to mandate them.

Key drivers for nuclear are regulation and capital--regulation driving a lot of the capital. What I've seen is that there seems to be not only a DOD-like regulatory scheme that may or may not actually ensure safety in terrestrial applications (we basically use the Rickover reactor and Navy regulations), and there is an essentially infinite loop of opportunities for opponents to sue the utility until it gives up building. That's what happened with my childhood utility, NIPSCO in NW Indiana, and the proposed Bailly station, now a gas fired station. Right up the road, American Electric Power was big enough to fight it, and the Cook plant is operating to this day in SW Michigan.

(side note; both my dad and grandfather worked in electric power engineering, my dad for Foxboro in process control and my granddad for Commonwealth Edison around Chicago)

Solar and wind? I've actually owned a hot water solar, and even with subsidies, I can't make solar, wind, and the like work financially. I'm all for distributed power generation where it makes sense, including solar, wind, cogeneration, and more--but as things stand now, we have a lot of subsides that seem to serve mostly (not trying to judge you Daves) to make people living large feel good about using a lot of resources. Think Al Gore living in 20,000 square feet with a 90' houseboat....feeling good because he's buying carbon credits and driving a Prius.

I'd favor, actually, an end to all solar, wind, hybrid, and electric subsidies combined with an excise on fossil fuels to equal something like $20/ton, offset by a drop in income taxes. Then let markets decide how they are going to avoid that tax.

The electric grid is a problem in and of itself. I do agree, solar doesn't create all the energy we need, it helps alleviate a bit of the burden. Most of the charging of electric vehicles happen during the evening when the grid has a lot less load. This is something that is missed in the speeches that we often hear. With that said, we would need a lot more money to be put into charging network and grids, both for electric vehicles, but also growth in the country. I am a fan of nuclear power and would love to see that expanded more in the US.

Bert,

That was a bit of my attraction to solar. It was to offset my crazy energy bill. I consume a ton of energy (3 HVAC, 3 Fridges, 1 Freezer, 1 EV....). I haven't pulled the plug, mostly because I can't make the numbers work, unless I install it all myself.

You must eat a LOT! :^) (OK, seriously, I get it, big house, certain amount of entertaining, all that....)

My personal move for ecology is to try and get people to NOT bring so much stuff into the house....I've got a pretty big fridge myself, and at times I regret that because it "invites" people to bring a lot of things in that we don't really need. And at other times, I'm glad for the space to hold the bread that I ferment in there....no EV, though, since their range about halves at -20F, which in Minnesota goes from "inconvenient" to "downright hazardous". Plus, no third pedal antitheft devices on EVs...

That, and I'm holding off on AC this year....only turn it on when the mercury gets above 85F or so.

JD, even with the tax subsidy (which was about 25% of the cost of the panels, so it was substantial), I estimate it would take on the order of 20 years to pay for them at the rate I use electricity. So I can tell you it’s not something that will “pay for itself” in any reasonable time period. At my age, I doubt I’ll be in my home another 17 years (I got them about 3 years ago or so), so I hope that they add to the sale price of the home, particularly since they are already paid off. Most people get a “solar mortgage” which then passes on to any prospective buyers unless it’s made a part of closing.

Plus, the calculation is complex. The power company will always raise prices, so it may help more in the future. However, the company has also been lobbying to get the solar tariff in my state changed from 1:1 to instead paying something less for the power I generate than what it costs me to buy it. Let’s just say that I wouldn’t consider solar panels a good investment compared to the stock market. I’m contrary enough to already be considering how I can implement power storage to keep the amount of power going back to the power company as small as I can, 0 if possible. However, that will cost money to implement too. I’m not above being petty enough to attach a 100W incandescent light bulb to the outside of my house to use up any power I can’t store, just so the power company couldn’t get it for less than they are charging me.

My thinking is that solar panels help a lot if you are a heavy power user. I like having it cool in the summer, so I don’t do the “78 degrees” thing in the house in the summer. Plus, my wife cooks and bakes a lot, so our ovens get quite some use. I also have a large aquarium that has to be heated 100% of the time, and I have servers also running 100% of the time in my home. So as Bert put it, having solar does make me feel good about the fact I can use more resources but keep my home below average in power use for my area (no offense taken). I have no interest in living a frontier life. I have done what I can to reduce electric power usage by having a gas stovetop, gas heat, gas water heat, gas dryer, and gas logs I use to heat the first floor during winter. Of course, those that are worried about emissions don’t like people making that choice either.

As I see electrical usage going up, and as I watch most countries in Europe struggle with wanting both no nuclear and having emissions go to 0, but “renewable” power being unreliable much of the time, I’m reasonably certain that technologies like nuclear will be a big part of “clean” (relatively) power generation for the foreseeable future.

Dave,

You hit all of the points that I struggled with, regarding solar. I am a techie guy, so I have wanted to have them. Plus the whole stick your nose up to the utility factor. I agree, no matter how I sliced it, I couldn't get a ROI less than 20 years. I am not 100% convinced yet on how much it increases the cost of the home. Not enough sales to really quantify that really well. I do agree that it is a hedge against increases.

I do scratch my head on why much of EU is abandoning Nuclear when they put so much into it over the last few decades. I don't see renewable getting us there at all. Energy continues to increase. I toured a bunch of these big farms around Las Vegas, some are solar and some are mirror/steam turbine. They take up massive amounts of land, and still don't scratch the surface on providing enough power to the area. the only country I am aware of that is on renewable energy is Iceland. I think it is just about 100% from geothermal. We need to have a balanced go forward strategy.

There’s at least one more nation that is pretty close to 100% renewable. I was just in Norway this past February. I noticed that Norwegians like it warm, and good heat is everywhere, even in their cities above the arctic circle, two of which I visited. When I asked about it, I was told that (at least compared to most of the rest of Europe), power is very cheap in Norway because more than 95% of it comes from hydro power. That is (or was) certainly considered a renewable, but seems to be out of favor in the U.S. these days due to other environmental concerns.

I was also told that Norway is experimenting with another kind of geothermal energy based on sea temperatures where they pipe water under the sea, and use the temperature differential to generate power. I don’t think it’s really in use yet, let alone widespread, but they are definitely trying to solve the issues with it to increase their electrical generation capability. That country is definitely pushing everyone towards electric vehicles, and besides the problem of charger availability, they realize that electrical use will go way up if they get a significant percentage of the country to use electric cars.

But it should be noted that not only is Iceland tiny (about 375,000), even Norway is a very small country (5.5 million). What those countries are doing is in no way scalable to countries with far larger populations. I agree that any strategy to meet current power needs has to be balanced, and in my opinion, if the powers that be want to eliminate carbon emissions, nuclear will end up being part of the equation, whether they like it or not.

Gentlemen, if it takes 20 years to pay for solar panels, you might be out of luck; a 2022 report (now gone dead so no link, sorry) noted that solar panels installed in California in 2006 or later were at the end of their life cycle already. So I'd guess 15 good years is about what you'll get. (I have seen a LOT of government reports on solar and wind that are, to put it very nicely, "highly optimistic"....to put it less nicely, Exodus 20:16 )

Side question (from the finance side of me) is whether that payoff time assumes lost interest. Even 3-5% interest on a mortgage is going to seriously impact the viability of a technology with a 20 year payoff, to put it mildly.

The math might work better if more states had "peak load" pricing that would allow utilities to charge for the "peak load" power generation they bring online on hot August days. Peak solar generation aligns nicely with the peak cost of additional generating capacity.

Bert, as I said, I didn’t do this as an investment. Given what I see in our local power tariffs, and the requests from the utilities to raise them, particularly given what they are spending on their own renewable power sources, I figured it might pay off before the 20-year timeframe under somewhat ideal conditions. But yes, I know I was always taking a chance. The panels I bought are supposed to last 30 years (and they have a pro-rated warranty attached to them, something like a car battery), but again, I don’t expect I’ll actually be around the house in 20 years let alone longer than that. However, seeing how much my relatives’ power prices have gone up in Europe in the past few years, I wanted a small hedge against that happening here, with all the push for clean energy, and I figured with retirement coming up, I didn’t want large electrical bills. I had the money to purchase the panels before that happens, so I gave it a shot.

I’m not 100% sure what you mean by your point about interest. I paid for the panels up front, so no loan or interest. If you are referring to people buying the panels themselves on time, well I agree that technological products aren’t something that increase in intrinsic value making time payment worth the interest paid. I would never have tried solar panels if purchasing them with a long-term loan was the only option.

Lost interest; if you pay $10000 for solar panels, you're forgoing the interest you'd otherwise get on that money via mutual funds and the like. Or if you borrow it on your mortgage, you're paying 3-5% on that money.

Long and short of it is that if you're counting on, say, $500 back per year, but the lost interest on your money is 5% (or $500/year), your repayment period goes from 20 years to "never", or at least "not until the price of electricity doubles".

Which, to be fair, appears to be pretty much a campaign promise of Mrs. Harris, but....reality is that this is one of those "Exodus 20:16" moments on the part of advocates.

It reminds me of an initiative at my alma mater for something called "cellulosistic ethanol", and the writeup made clear that the plan for making it work was not great improvements in the enzyme reaction to make the conversion of cellulose to glucose more economical, but rather large increases in the price of petroleum.

OK, the logic works, but I don't need to give someone twenty-five million dollars to figure out that if the price of a commodity goes up a lot, people will try alternatives. That's for free from my high school economics class.

Long and short of it is that as I watch supposed "environmental" initiatives,especially from the government, I see a lot of moments where advocates need to be reminded of Exodus 20:16.

OK, I get it now. If I had invested the cost of the solar panels, where would I be now? Possibly better off, it’s true. I haven’t actually tried comparing the value of my money now vs. what it was when I bought the panels. I’d have to run the numbers of what I have saved on electricity vs. what I would have made in the market. If I had invested all of it in my own company’s stock, I’d definitely be better off, but I wouldn’t likely have done that anyway, given I like to spread out my risk.

As I said, I would never have borrowed to purchase them, against my mortgage or otherwise.

You're what I've heard called a "early adopter", and God bless you guys for going forward when you had the resources, but the numbers don't work out yet. I've got any number of nice inventions that I use in part because a lot of the R&D was paid for by early adopters.

The place where I get a little bit touchy is when the advocates are trying to broaden the appeal beyond early adopters to the public as a whole, and they proceed too often by ignoring very real costs and realities to the technology.

Not surprisingly, politicians are generally involved in the steps of deception. Whether that is intentional, or because too many politicians don't know how engineering and finance works, can be hotly debated.