3 ms·

I am not pretending to have exact numbers but we should have some orders of magnitude in our heads. Let's pretend that our electricity is running fully in nucl

by pl-94 7y ago

I am not pretending to have exact numbers but we should have some orders of magnitude in our heads. Let's pretend that our electricity is running fully in nuclear wrt. fully in wind turbines/PV: load factor is around 0.7/0.8 (against 0.2) so costs increase by x3-4, life expectancy is 60-80 y against 20-30 years (x2-3), nuclear does not require a new electric grid, whereas renewable energies does (cost ~x1.5), nuclear works better with a low storage (10%) whereas PV/WT want 50-60% of storage (cost x2-4) and cost of building/recycling for a kwh is around 3-5k€ against 1-1.5k€ for WT (idk for PV) (cost %2-4). At the end of the day, the capex/kWh is indeed one order of magnitude higher for WT/PV than for nuclear. I am not pretending those numbers are exact but I think it reflects the order of magnitude. For the 4th claim, the issue is that prices are much lower that what they were supposed to be, and that is why, the field will need to be heavily subsidized for a long term. What I support, it is not to globally spending less money into energy transition. I really hope governments will spend much more than nowadays. But, I just hope we focus on reducing our economical dependency on fuels/coals to preserve a bit of our current comfort while not killing every year several millions of people with fine particles (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents). Give me USD 2 trillions, and I will 1) ban coal generated electricity, 2) ban any vehicles that consume more than 2L/100 km, 3) insulate any existing buildings (and not only new buildings as our policy makers do, since old buildings stay for roughly 100 years), 4) subsidy heavily heat pomp. But I will certainly not close any nuclear power plants. I know it is almost impossible to ask such requests to Europeans, but this is the only plausible solutions I have heard of.

merb 7y ago
a nuclear site would never be cheaper than solar energy. I mean in the next 20-40 years it might have been cheaper. unfortunatly the site needs to be cleaned up in a process that costs multiple billions of euro and the storage for the factory is still not ready for the next thousands of years and is also really costly in germany. in germany solar energy has two problems: - trash (there is no long term storage and there probably will never be one that can sustain 1000+ years) - cleanup of land (germany is small and has a lot of people we need to use our space without wasting it)
rndgermandude 7y ago
>load factor is around 0.7/0.8 (against 0.2) so costs increase by x3-4 This is a double-red herring. First load factors do not correlate with cost, and second comparing the load factor of a nuclear power plant to a PV system is comparing apples with... not even oranges... more like comparing apples with seahorses. The interesting number would be: how much money did I have to put into that thing divided by how much MWh can I get out of a thing. >life expectancy is 60-80 y against 20-30 years (x2-3) Next red herring. If I buy a pair of shoes that last me 10 years but costs 200 bucks, that's 20 bucks/year. If I buy a pair of shoes that costs me 10 bucks and lasts one year, well, 10 bucks/year. Recycling/trashing a pair of shoes adds another 5 EUR/pair, so the cheap pair is 15/year and the expensive one is 20.5 EUR/year. The 10x higher life expectancy by itself does not mean shit to the annual cost. The levelized cost of energy (LCOE) for nuclear in France (who are supposed to be doing nuclear really well) was 50 EUR/MWh in 2017, but that's with the state covering the insurance costs already, which are huge, so a massive hidden-in-plain-sight subsidy. (France EDF and IEA calculations). The Hinkley Point C project in the UK is about 100 EUR/MWh, which the state had to guarantee the operators, or else the operators would have dropped the entire project, probably because their analysts told them that the chances that their plant will be competitive on price over it's lifetime are slim to none. On top of that, a longer life expectancy means a longer commitment, which can work in your favor, or against you. The LCOE in 2018 for large-scale PV in Germany was 37-63 EUR/MWh. Onshore Wind 40-82, Offshore 75-138 (Fraunhofer). Prices are still dropping rapidly as both the technology and construction/maintenance requirements and processes improve, actually dropping, not just "estimated" drops. Prices for nuclear are said to drop too with new fancy technology, maybe... the nuclear lobby said... but so far that's pure speculation and e.g. the fancy EPR-type nuclear plants in France/UK for now actually do not show lower costs. The US has PV at roughly 75 USD/MWh, and nuclear at roughly 96 USD/MWh. I'd call the PV/Wind LCOE at the very least "competitive" to the LCOE of nuclear, sometimes already cheaper, and otherwise estimated to be cheaper soon. Now, you got a point that switching to renewables requires additional and/or refined infrastructure, like changes to the power grid, energy storage/backup power plants, etc. which requires quite a bit of additional research and investment.
- pl-94 7y ago
  I think there is a misunderstanding in my calculation. If one pair of shoes last 3 times longer, then you investment is divided by 3. The same for load factor. If you use your shoes one every 2 days, you need to buy 2 times more shoes.

by pl-94 7y ago

merb 7y ago

a nuclear site would never be cheaper than solar energy. I mean in the next 20-40 years it might have been cheaper. unfortunatly the site needs to be cleaned up in a process that costs multiple billions of euro and the storage for the factory is still not ready for the next thousands of years and is also really costly in germany. in germany solar energy has two problems: - trash (there is no long term storage and there probably will never be one that can sustain 1000+ years) - cleanup of land (germany is small and has a lot of people we need to use our space without wasting it)

rndgermandude 7y ago

>load factor is around 0.7/0.8 (against 0.2) so costs increase by x3-4 This is a double-red herring. First load factors do not correlate with cost, and second comparing the load factor of a nuclear power plant to a PV system is comparing apples with... not even oranges... more like comparing apples with seahorses. The interesting number would be: how much money did I have to put into that thing divided by how much MWh can I get out of a thing. >life expectancy is 60-80 y against 20-30 years (x2-3) Next red herring. If I buy a pair of shoes that last me 10 years but costs 200 bucks, that's 20 bucks/year. If I buy a pair of shoes that costs me 10 bucks and lasts one year, well, 10 bucks/year. Recycling/trashing a pair of shoes adds another 5 EUR/pair, so the cheap pair is 15/year and the expensive one is 20.5 EUR/year. The 10x higher life expectancy by itself does not mean shit to the annual cost. The levelized cost of energy (LCOE) for nuclear in France (who are supposed to be doing nuclear really well) was 50 EUR/MWh in 2017, but that's with the state covering the insurance costs already, which are huge, so a massive hidden-in-plain-sight subsidy. (France EDF and IEA calculations). The Hinkley Point C project in the UK is about 100 EUR/MWh, which the state had to guarantee the operators, or else the operators would have dropped the entire project, probably because their analysts told them that the chances that their plant will be competitive on price over it's lifetime are slim to none. On top of that, a longer life expectancy means a longer commitment, which can work in your favor, or against you. The LCOE in 2018 for large-scale PV in Germany was 37-63 EUR/MWh. Onshore Wind 40-82, Offshore 75-138 (Fraunhofer). Prices are still dropping rapidly as both the technology and construction/maintenance requirements and processes improve, actually dropping, not just "estimated" drops. Prices for nuclear are said to drop too with new fancy technology, maybe... the nuclear lobby said... but so far that's pure speculation and e.g. the fancy EPR-type nuclear plants in France/UK for now actually do not show lower costs. The US has PV at roughly 75 USD/MWh, and nuclear at roughly 96 USD/MWh. I'd call the PV/Wind LCOE at the very least "competitive" to the LCOE of nuclear, sometimes already cheaper, and otherwise estimated to be cheaper soon. Now, you got a point that switching to renewables requires additional and/or refined infrastructure, like changes to the power grid, energy storage/backup power plants, etc. which requires quite a bit of additional research and investment.

pl-94 7y ago
I think there is a misunderstanding in my calculation. If one pair of shoes last 3 times longer, then you investment is divided by 3. The same for load factor. If you use your shoes one every 2 days, you need to buy 2 times more shoes.