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Austin Vernon
Personal blog · austinvernon.sitescienceeconomics
Austin Vernon's personal blog at austinvernon.site covers science and economics. Since 2021, 40 different Hacker News readers have linked it 69 times, most often “Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-09-27, and you can follow it by feed.
Most-linked posts?
- Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?4 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2022-01-11
- Standard Thermal: Energy Storage 500x Cheaper Than Batteries4 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2025-08-25
- Geothermal's path to relevance: cheap drilling3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2021-10-25
- SpaceX's Starship: America's Secret Weapon3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2022-04-07
- Geothermal's Path to Relevance: Better Heat Transfer and Engines2 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2022-07-28
- The Weapons That Win World Wars2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-02-23
- The Outsize Impact of AI Logistics2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-07-07
- The Electric Car's Shrinking Role in Reducing Oil Demand2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-03-25
- Natural gas is a fuel of the future2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-05-23
- The Minimum Viable Navy2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-05-23
What Hacker News says?
I read this opinion in that blog of Austin Vernon that made the HN rounds about a year ago [1]. In the end his argument is basically "if some energy generation method has moving parts, it has to be more expensive that one that doesn't". But let's look at the numbers. Here's a study by the EIA that looks at the capital costs and also at the Operating and Maintenance costs of various types of power plants [2]. The cos…
Comment linking /blog/nuclear.html
on “Nuclear energy is clean”Submitted Standard Thermal: Energy Storage 500x Cheaper Than Batteries as a story · 251 points
HN discussionThermal batteries make more sense for that, but they need to be super-cheap. One possibility: https://austinvernon.site/blog/standardthermal.html
Comment linking /blog/standardthermal.html
on “California invests in battery energy storage, leaving rolling blackouts behind”Submitted Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant? as a story · 251 points
HN discussionFor some applications, you don't actually convert the heat to electricity. This sounds pretty cheap if it works out: https://austinvernon.site/blog/standardthermal.html
Comment linking /blog/standardthermal.html
on “250MWh 'Sand Battery' to start construction in Finland”Submitted Geothermal's path to relevance: cheap drilling as a story · 153 points
HN discussion> The amount of lithium it would take to handle an unusually cloudy week would be astronomical. Unusual events shouldn't be handled by high capex, high efficiency storage. They should be handled by lower capex, lower round trip efficiency storage (as should long term/seasonal storage). I will once again point to Standard Thermal. https://www.standardthermal.com/ https://www.orcasciences.com/articles/standard-thermal…
Comment linking /blog/standardthermal.html
on “Solar energy is now the cheapest source of power, study”Submitted Revitalizing US Navy Shipbuilding as a story · 147 points
HN discussionThat’s another mostly great article you linked to. Still though it doesn’t mention the dramatic cost increase of natural gas plants when used as a peaker instead of always-on, and it assumes we can produce as many batteries as we want. It also assumes we can continue producing massive amounts of natural gas in the US and export huge amounts to the rest of the world. The author's article on renewables and batteries s…
Comment linking /blog/renewablevariation.html
on “Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?”Submitted The Future of E-Bikes as a story · 130 points
HN discussionThe site actually has several articles about why this specific criticism is silly. To summarize: we already have gas plants, and gas storage, leaving them turned off except as a fallback insurance is the sensible option. Even when building new plants, gas plants are the cheapest to build and simplest to run which matters a lot if they're mostly idle, which is why they get used as peakers. https://austinvernon.site/b…
Comment linking /blog/gasredemption.html
on “Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?”Submitted Is the smart grid all hot air? as a story · 123 points
HN discussionFor anyone interested in a breakdown of the basic logic, this recent blogpost that trended on HN is probably the best: https://austinvernon.site/blog/standardthermal.html Really interested in seeing how it fares in reality, almost sounds too good to be true.
Comment linking /blog/standardthermal.html
on “Finnish City Inaugurates 1 MW/100 MWh Sand Battery”Submitted SpaceX's Starship: America's Secret Weapon as a story · 51 points
HN discussionMore geothermal: https://austinvernon.site/blog/geothermalnextsteps.html
Comment linking /blog/geothermalnextsteps.html
on “Quaise Energy is working to create geothermal wells”Submitted Natural gas is a fuel of the future as a story · 30 points
HN discussionInstead of drilling deep, there is also an intersting case for storing cheap solar energy as hat in piles of dirts in the summer to power turbines in the winter: https://austinvernon.site/blog/standardthermal.html
Comment linking /blog/standardthermal.html
on “The time has finally come for geothermal energy”Submitted The Weapons That Win World Wars as a story · 28 points
HN discussionThis seems to be a sequel to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27775927 i.e. "Is Geothermal Really Going to be a Thing?" https://austinvernon.site/blog/geothermal.html
Comment linking /blog/geothermal.html
on “Geothermal's path to relevance: cheap drilling”Submitted Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant? as a story · 18 points
HN discussionHere's a good "state of the art of geothermal drilling" article - https://austinvernon.site/blog/drillingplan.html
Comment linking /blog/drillingplan.html
on “Can you drill into a supervolcano to relieve pressure? (2016)”Submitted The Electric Car's Shrinking Role in Reducing Oil Demand as a story · 15 points
HN discussion> no such operating cost, besides dusting off the panels once in a while, and inspecting and replacing failed units. These things add up. Here's a study by NREL (National Renewable Energy Laboratory), which is very unlikely to be biased against solar [1]. On page 31 they estimate the annual costs O&M (operating and maintenance) costs for a 10 MW solar plant at $144k. That comes at $14 MM/GW, or about $350 MM over a…
Comment linking /blog/nuclear.html
on “Small Modular Reactors Exacerbate Challenges of Nuclear Waste”Submitted How Ukraine Built a War Fighting State as a story · 13 points
HN discussion> One concern in the Project Red test was that 10%-20% of the fluid pumped did not return to the surface. That number is much better than many legacy enhanced geothermal projects but needs improvement. Costs increase and site locations narrow to those with excess cheap water. It could also increase induced seismicity risk over time. > The latest results released for Cape Station do not include the fluid loss number,…
Comment linking /blog/geothermalupdate2024.html
on “Geothermal energy could outperform nuclear power”Submitted Rockefeller and His Partners Built Standard Oil as a story · 10 points
HN discussionThe construction industry is being revolutionised quickly. "Almost every advancement in construction is small enough for a man to carry" - https://austinvernon.site/blog/construction.html So if Katerra wanted revolutionary construction that jumps even quicker than this ongoing well documented advancement, Elon Musk style from the ground up, they need a reason why their product would work contrary to what anyone can…
Comment linking /blog/construction.html
on “Katerra wanted to transform construction. It burnt $2B and shut down”Submitted Why Is the Nuclear Power Industry Stagnant? as a story · 6 points
HN discussionWhile solar is cheaper, the problems are regulatory. Read more here: https://austinvernon.site/blog/renewablesregulatory.html
Comment linking /blog/renewablesregulatory.html
on “G-20 Climate Talks Threatened by Clash over Coal Ahead of COP26”Submitted Enter Cybercab as a story · 4 points
HN discussion
