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Just about every builder and operator of large nuclear fleets of reactors have all outright said or implied by their actions that nuclear is uneconomical vs ren

• rurounijones 8y ago
  I can get the "We cannot build them in time" part but the whole "It is not economical to build them" strikes me as a pretty crazy position to take. Uneconomical compared to the massive disruption that climate change will bring to our civilization? Are we fighting to save our future or not? Discarding a proven technology that will massively reduce our carbon emission for an unproven "We still have problems to solve around wide-scale baseload" seems to be ass-backwards to me and pinning more on hope than common sense.
  • i_am_proteus 8y ago
    Renewables will replace the most expensive fossil plants before the cheaper ones, which will make the base load price to compete with pretty hard for nuclear to match.
    • adrianN 8y ago
      Right now it looks like the opposite is true. Due to a lack of storage we need more expensive gas plants instead of cheap coal plants that can't follow demand as quickly.
      • philipkglass 8y ago
        Overnight capital costs are significantly lower for new gas plants than new coal plants. Real capital costs are lower yet since gas plants are faster to complete. Fixed O&M costs are also lower for gas. The shale revolution made fuel for them cheap too. There's no combination of circumstances that presently makes a new coal plant cost-competitive with a new gas plant in the continental US. See table 1 here: https://www.eia.gov/analysis/studies/powerplants/capitalcost/pdf/capcost_assumption.pdf https://www.eia.gov/analysis/studies/powerplants/capitalcost... The renewable costs are already badly outdated but AFAICT the relative prices of coal and gas plants are still about right.
  • skybrian 8y ago
    That's not the right metric. The question is whether you can sell electricity for a lower price than the competition or will end up selling electricity at a loss, resulting in "stranded costs" for rate payers. To do that comparison, you need to predict prices in the electricity market for many decades. Predicting the future is hard, but the trend for solar and wind costs is pretty clear and it seems foolish to bet against them. A high carbon tax would make nuclear more competitive against fossil fuels, but not solar and wind.
    • rurounijones 8y ago
      > That's not the right metric. I guess that opinion comes down to whether you think Climate Change is an existential threat to our civilisation or not. If you are of the opinion that it is then costs be damned and build everything: Renewables, Storage, Nuclear. If we end up with more power than we need then we can shutdown excess or funnel that into powering carbon capture technologies if we ever get there. If you are not of the opinion then current economics, as you have described, rule the day.
      • MapleWalnut 8y ago
        It's always going to be a matter of economics.
        • deleted 8y ago
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        • godelski 8y ago
          Climate is a matter of economics though. The difference is that the cost is in the future. That's why the poster was talking about the cost of climate and if you consider it an existential crisis. I guess it also matters if you care about current costs vs future costs.
          • rurounijones 8y ago
            As a sidenote. I also have trouble understanding the mindset of people who argue purely on economic basis. It seems that telling out grandchildren "Sorry you inherited a ruined climate, but we didn't want to spend the money at the time to avoid it" is a rational decision. (And hey, maybe some people think it is; but I can't)
  • rtpg 8y ago
    It's not that nuclear is unproven, it's that _renewables at this point are proven_. You can build huge (or tiny! it's super scalable) fleets of renewable energy sources pretty economically, with a ~0% chance of making surrounding areas uninhabitable for 20 years if there's a failure. Yeah sure a truckload of uranium goes a long way but building the plants is really hard even when you look past the regulatory issues.
    • rurounijones 8y ago
      Someone said roughly the same thing in another thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19167849 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19167849 But as far as I know there is no proven large-scale storage system, which is a criticla part of renewables. The other commenter mentioned building batteries and then it is just a matter of scale which seems like an over-simplification to me but I cannot find much useful info on it. Personally I would love a 100% renewable setup but I would not bet the future of our civilization on it when nuclear is another option.
      • darkmarmot 8y ago
        We do have a very simple large-scale storage system that's already in use across the world: pumping water uphill. It's just not as economical as rain when you factor in the efficiency losses from generating and transferring power twice.
        • rurounijones 8y ago
          And pumping water uphill is a regional solution that requires specific regional geography, to me that does not class as "scalable". I should be more specific in that to me "scalable" is a solution that can be deployed anywhere without require specific regional properties. Maybe you think this is unneeded and that a lot of region specific solutions can cover the storage requirements. However another posted did point out that 1 mile by 1 mile of batteries is apparently enough to store US energy requirements.
          • 8y ago
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  • dv_dt 8y ago
    > "It is not economical to build them" strikes me as a pretty crazy position to take. Why, no matter what resources you allocate financially, if you have X dollars, you can do more and sooner with X building renewable sources than if you split it between renewables and nuclear.
    • rurounijones 8y ago
      Because that is based on the assumption that renewables and no nuclear is viable and going to work based on advances in technology. I think there is enough debate in this thread to illustrate why that is not a universal position. This comment explains it better: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19169073 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19169073
      • pfdietz 8y ago
        It's difficult to see how nuclear can fit in, even if renewables aren't directly covering everything. Renewables will be intermittent, which means as they build out they will often crash the price of electrical power. Nuclear cannot do well in that environment, since it cannot dispatch economically. Its costs are largely fixed, and it depends on selling power at a good price averaged over the large fraction of time it needs to be operating. But renewables slash the price it can get much of the time, even if they cannot cover everything. If nuclear is reduced to covering (say) 20% of the time cheap renewables are not available, it's a dead technology. Something else, like using hydrogen produced from renewables during their high output times, will be used instead.
• agumonkey 8y ago
  Jean-Marc Jancovici, engineer in the energy field and pro nuclear, said that the math on renewable is bogus. And that if you don't want nuclear, money should be spent on energy saving measures like heat pumps and building insulation. I do understand how tempting are renewables, low risk, low entry cost..
  • ben_w 8y ago
    Ironically, and I say this as someone who is very pro-solar, nuclear power is the safest power source around. Deaths per TWh are lower just because of how many people generally die falling off rooftops and that being a common place to install them. http://www.edouardstenger.com/2011/03/25/a-look-at-deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source/ http://www.edouardstenger.com/2011/03/25/a-look-at-deaths-pe...
    • agumonkey 8y ago
      it's not flat statistics the issue, it's the high risk and high complexity. Solar roof can kill if they fail but it's quite easy to see and deal with. Nuclear plant failures are too extreme and complex. There was a research center not far from my town, and every year people are worried that their thyroid issues aren't due to past experiments polluting the underground water supply. It's never conclusive but always on people's mind.
  • pfdietz 8y ago
    If he's right, why are everyone + dog installing solar and wind, but hardly anyone is installing nuclear? Has there been a sudden massive decline in greed in the world?
    • agumonkey 8y ago
      Fad and clueless politicians. Govt gave credits for Solar and wind but apparently never did the math for other ways to save energy. Again nuclear is too risky politically...
      • 8y ago
• godelski 8y ago
  > France: 44 Billion would be saved by investing in rewables instead of nuclear >link I can't read French so I can't comment on this report. I'm not saying it is wrong or your conclusions are wrong. But I would say that there's an unfortunate thing happening and it is that bad information and research is being done. In fact we don't have to go far back in HN history to find this post > https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18950154 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18950154 All I'm saying is that you have to be wary of these things (and a lot of people are upset about this, because that's not what science should be. It also gives cannon fodder to global warming deniers...) But to comment on France specifically, they are basically the only European country making good climate decisions https://www.electricitymap.org/?wind=false&solar=false&page=country&countryCode=FR&remote=true https://www.electricitymap.org/?wind=false&solar=false&page=... Sweden has a great advantage of a lot of natural hydro sources. But something to pay attention to in these countries is how their electricity is generated over the course of a day. You may also want to look at how different countries have fared over time (not including China because you can't make fair comparisons with it). https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC?end=2014&locations=US-EU-DE-FR-SE-GB&name_desc=true&start=1960&view=chart https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC?end=2014... > The last few completed plants in the US (that didn't get canceled) were 20-30 years in the making - and typically over budget and schedule by more than 2x. With some of the cancelled projects over budget by 3-4x. This is honestly a HUGE problem. And I think everyone pro nuclear agrees with you. There's a lot of reasons why. It isn't just, as others have mentioned, the NRC requiring essentially complete designs. But there are a lot of things that could be fixed by policy changes. You do also have to consider the cost of human life. Safety is a great concern with energy: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/#6c1f1c35709b https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-d... But here's an interesting perspective (I don't think any sane person is arguing for 100% nuclear, or even 50%, but the perspective is interesting). https://medium.com/@Jorisvandorp/how-much-would-a-100-nuclear-energy-system-cost-3dd7703dd5d3 https://medium.com/@Jorisvandorp/how-much-would-a-100-nuclea... But I think there is one argument that stands out with nuclear. It is the question of how we transition to "all renewable" or "renewable + fusion". We don't have the technology to handle the storage capacity of solar and wind for periods when there are no solar or wind. I mean we hear a lot about Germany's renewable feats, but look back at that world bank data and you'll notice that between 2009-2014 the trend is flat. So while I think we should sink a lot of R&D money into battery technology (and sequestration), you also need to have a contingency plan. While nuclear is expensive, it is clearly less expensive than what happens if we don't reduce our carbon footprint. The thing is just that we don't have time anymore. We can argue all we want, but with existing technology, the only option is nuclear. And we need to act NOW, not tomorrow. NOW. (now is even too late)
• pdonis 8y ago
  None of this has anything to do with technical problems with building nuclear reactors. The US Navy has been hiring private contractors to build them for decades with no such issues. (And Naval reactors have more stringent requirements than commercial ones, because of the widely varying loads they have to deal with.) The so-called "cost savings" in France are due to unrealistically optimistic assumptions about renewables, not any issues with nuclear. The issues in the US are entirely legal and political: nuclear power plant projects get tied up by interminable lawsuits based on NIMBYism and ignorance, and the US political policies on fuel reprocessing have turned what should have been an easily solved problem into a quagmire. I suspect the "problems" in China are more due to their cavalier attitude towards coal than anything else; they don't mind firing up a lot of new coal plants and having lots of people suffer respiratory disease and death as a result, if that's cheaper than nuclear.
  • Maakuth 8y ago
    It depends how you defined technical issue. For example the French Areva power plant projects in Europe have been met with all sorts of issues ranging from subcontractors that are inexperienced with NPP level of quality and documentation requirements all the way to challenge of proving automation system reliability to the regulatory body. These happen in the plant vendor's native France as well, so shouldn't be cultural issues either. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_(nuclear_reactor) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_(nuclear_reactor) These are not NIMBY or political issues, but rather stem from the fact that there's been a long pause in building new NPPs in the west. All the senior people involved with earlier designs are long since retired and even the juniors that were around might have moved on. And also some of the technology choices used in old designs are not even available anymore, so there's new families of tech to prove to the regulators, digital automation being one of these to my understanding.
    • olau 8y ago
      Also, we've seen more things go wrong. When you design a nuclear plant, you need to do a really careful risk analysis. That's why they are so safe. But as time progresses, and actual designs meet reality and Murphy's law kicks it, it turns out some of the assumptions are factually incorrect. More elaborate safety requirements are needed to compensate, increasing cost. You can't build a car the way you could 50 years ago, and the same is true for nuclear plants.
• jdm63 8y ago
  Waste disposal is a big issue too. No state wants the waste, so it keeps lying around and leaking at decommissioned sites.