Thank you for this comprehensive summary Eduardo. However, I do not share your supportive views regarding solar power, Previously, I was a solar advocate. California has the greatest amount of solar. Per CAISO, as of January 10, 2025, California had 20,725 MW. Solar power is not dispatchable. The solar generation peak is about six hours away from the load peak. Storage is not cost-effective. To store California's electricity requirement for a mere 24 hours would cost twice the TOTAL state budget - and there would be a constant replacement cycle since the batteries last only 10-15 years. And, as Moss Landing established, batteries have a nasty habit of bursting into flame. From a power engineering perspective, solar, wind, and batteries fail to provide significant amounts of synchronous grid inertia. For details see "Why is Grid Inertia Important?" https://greennuke.substack.com/p/why-is-grid-inertia-important
Sadly, California's irrational electricity policies are a great example of the effectiveness of lobbying expenditures. In a quote attributed to Mark Twain, "We have the best government that money can buy."
California has an analog to the National Academy of Sciences which has been given a charter to advise the state government regarding science and technology issues. This nonprofit is named the California Council on Science and Technology (CCST). In 2011, the California Energy Commission tasked their eminent scientists and engineers to recommend the most cost-effective way to remove air and water pollution from the generation of California's electricity. The answer was to build about 30 new Diablo Canyon Power Plants throughout the state. https://tinyurl.com/CCST-Nuclear-1 That rational solution did not align with the desires of various deep-pocketed special interests, so the 2011 CCST reports were ignored.
I am actually not against nuclear but I think it is too little too late. Maybe in 2011 it would have been a viable approach but by now PV and Batteries are so cheap, and nuclear is so behind, I think it is no longer really practical. But, if it happens, great. Duke Energy recently indicated that it would take them 10-12 years to get their next AP1000 online - that is a lot of time, even if we believed that time.
Battery longevity is longer than it was initially thought, and we are learning how to better manage them, plus there are newer chemistries. And there are non-LiIon solutions, like Form Energy's Iron-Air batteries. Plus there is advanced geothermal.
Battery storage has improved a lot since the very early deployments in Moss Landing. And there are digital solutions to Grid Inertia - which is an important point, I'm not discounting it.
Still, if nuclear can ramp-up without unduly impacting ratepayers, go for it.
Sadly, you recite many standard anti nuclear power talking points which I've heard for years. The problem is those talking points are only weakly fact-based. Palo Verde Nuclear Power plant near Phoenix, Arizona provides cost-effective clean firm power to southern California. The commissioning problems you discuss are political, not technical problems. The UAE constructed 4 KP 1000s much more rapidly than you describe.
Just because UAE (or Korea, or France, or whoever) can do it does not mean we can do it. Jigar Shah is a pro-nuclear guy (really an "all of the above" guy) and he has similar estimates. The problem is building up the know-how - we could have done it back when but not now.
But, this is the chance for pro-nuclear folks to prove it can work. Data Centers need power and Google, Meta, Amazon have been talking about nuclear. They have the $$s.
Thank you for this comprehensive summary Eduardo. However, I do not share your supportive views regarding solar power, Previously, I was a solar advocate. California has the greatest amount of solar. Per CAISO, as of January 10, 2025, California had 20,725 MW. Solar power is not dispatchable. The solar generation peak is about six hours away from the load peak. Storage is not cost-effective. To store California's electricity requirement for a mere 24 hours would cost twice the TOTAL state budget - and there would be a constant replacement cycle since the batteries last only 10-15 years. And, as Moss Landing established, batteries have a nasty habit of bursting into flame. From a power engineering perspective, solar, wind, and batteries fail to provide significant amounts of synchronous grid inertia. For details see "Why is Grid Inertia Important?" https://greennuke.substack.com/p/why-is-grid-inertia-important
Sadly, California's irrational electricity policies are a great example of the effectiveness of lobbying expenditures. In a quote attributed to Mark Twain, "We have the best government that money can buy."
California has an analog to the National Academy of Sciences which has been given a charter to advise the state government regarding science and technology issues. This nonprofit is named the California Council on Science and Technology (CCST). In 2011, the California Energy Commission tasked their eminent scientists and engineers to recommend the most cost-effective way to remove air and water pollution from the generation of California's electricity. The answer was to build about 30 new Diablo Canyon Power Plants throughout the state. https://tinyurl.com/CCST-Nuclear-1 That rational solution did not align with the desires of various deep-pocketed special interests, so the 2011 CCST reports were ignored.
I am actually not against nuclear but I think it is too little too late. Maybe in 2011 it would have been a viable approach but by now PV and Batteries are so cheap, and nuclear is so behind, I think it is no longer really practical. But, if it happens, great. Duke Energy recently indicated that it would take them 10-12 years to get their next AP1000 online - that is a lot of time, even if we believed that time.
Battery longevity is longer than it was initially thought, and we are learning how to better manage them, plus there are newer chemistries. And there are non-LiIon solutions, like Form Energy's Iron-Air batteries. Plus there is advanced geothermal.
Battery storage has improved a lot since the very early deployments in Moss Landing. And there are digital solutions to Grid Inertia - which is an important point, I'm not discounting it.
Still, if nuclear can ramp-up without unduly impacting ratepayers, go for it.
Sadly, you recite many standard anti nuclear power talking points which I've heard for years. The problem is those talking points are only weakly fact-based. Palo Verde Nuclear Power plant near Phoenix, Arizona provides cost-effective clean firm power to southern California. The commissioning problems you discuss are political, not technical problems. The UAE constructed 4 KP 1000s much more rapidly than you describe.
Just because UAE (or Korea, or France, or whoever) can do it does not mean we can do it. Jigar Shah is a pro-nuclear guy (really an "all of the above" guy) and he has similar estimates. The problem is building up the know-how - we could have done it back when but not now.
But, this is the chance for pro-nuclear folks to prove it can work. Data Centers need power and Google, Meta, Amazon have been talking about nuclear. They have the $$s.