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The article does not explain why nuclear must be part of the energy solution. In fact, the argument seem to be that nuclear has been the target of fear mongerin

The article does not explain why nuclear must be part of the energy solution. In fact, the argument seem to be that nuclear has been the target of fear mongering from environmentalists and therefore nuclear must be a part of the energy solution which is a fallacy. Germany has decommissioned numerous nuclear plants (Energiewende) and yet its GDP is up and its coal consumption down. https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-consumption-and-power-mix-charts https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-c... Critics said it couldn't be done, except it was done. Critics claim that Energiewende isn't popular, except surveys show that it is supported by a super majority of Germans. The main issue nuclear power's supporters ignore is that nuclear is much more expensive than renewables. According to LAZARD 14.0, the cost for wind is $26 to $54 per MWh and $129 to $198 for nuclear. https://www.lazard.com/media/451419/lazards-levelized-cost-of-energy-version-140.pdf https://www.lazard.com/media/451419/lazards-levelized-cost-o... Furthermore a nuclear plant costs billions to construct and is an investment that takes decades before reaching its break-even point. That's not something the market is interested in, despite record-low capital costs around the world. Should the tax-payer subsidize an energy source that is already at least four times as expensive as wind which may, in a decade or two, be ten times as expensive?

hntrader 6y ago
"four times as expensive as wind" This isn't a valid comparison, since wind isn't capable of base load supply. You would need to factor in storage costs to make the comparison valid.
- partingshots 6y ago
  Batteries are also getting cheaper and improving in capacity at immense rates too no? It seems like a double whammy against nuclear, unless there’s something I’m missing?
  - rusk 6y ago
    Just curious where we are we at in terms of the environmental aspects of mass scale heavy duty battery production?
  - melling 6y ago
    We just spent 2 decades saying this. I suppose we’re going to say it for another. that’s 30 years of emissions that could have been avoided.
    - pumpkinpal 6y ago
      We've also spent 30+ years trying to build nuclear plants on time and on budget and we've been unable to do that.
      - melling 6y ago
        Even with that, 20% of US electricity is still from nuclear. We managed to build these before the industry became expensive. Now Germany and the United States are rushing to close the operating plants. I’m not sure why we can’t figure out how to build a standard design and replicate it
        konjin 6y ago
        Because we can't build anything larger than an office building on time and on budget.
        _nalply 6y ago
        Perhaps because that standard design didn't work out? Even Switzerland is shutting down nuclear plants and they managed to build the longest railroad tunnel of the world without budget overruns and half a year before due date.
        dispat0r 6y ago
        In Switzerland it's a political decision same as Germany it has nothing todo with cost or the ability to run the plants.
        _nalply 6y ago
        That's not so clear cut. Mühleberg near Berne has said that 2019 they didn't make profit, however the operator company BKW never published gains with that plant. https://www.bernerzeitung.ch/region/kanton-bern/das-akw-muehleberg-rentiert-2019-erstmals-nicht-mehr/story/31329779 https://www.bernerzeitung.ch/region/kanton-bern/das-akw-mueh... (paywalled)
  - PartiallyTyped 6y ago
    That is if, not only can we keep making them, we produce them at massive scales without inciting coups around the world for Lithium [1]. Because let us be honest with ourselves, the CIA has staged coups around the world many-a-times [2], and iirc but can't locate that some of said instances were done to support private entities. [1] https://www.indepthnews.net/index.php/opinion/3735-we-will-coup-whoever-we-want-elon-musk-and-the-overthrow-of-democracy-in-bolivia https://www.indepthnews.net/index.php/opinion/3735-we-will-c... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...
    - _nalply 6y ago
      Lithium for energy storage is not the only option. Pumped water already has been a thing for decades. Additionally other avenues are being explored like [1] pumped air and [2] lifting concrete weights. [1] https://www.planete-energies.com/en/medias/close/what-compressed-air-energy-storage https://www.planete-energies.com/en/medias/close/what-compre... [2] https://profittrends.com/energy-investing/renewable-energy/swiss-startup-energy-storage-crane-concrete/ https://profittrends.com/energy-investing/renewable-energy/s...
      - PartiallyTyped 6y ago
        Interesting solutions, especially the latter, absolutely brilliant, despite the reduction in efficiency, it probably trumps batteries wrt to first materials used.
  - sjwright 6y ago
    There’s no prospect of batteries acting as base load supply anytime in the foreseeable future. Batteries aren’t even great for peak supply yet. Those big grid-scale battery farms installed by Tesla (et al) are used primarily for grid stabilisation and a limited amount of useful arbitrage.
  - cameldrv 6y ago
    That's fine, but show your work. Nuclear gives us 24/7 reliable power. What is the cost comparison for renewables for the same product?
    - lapinot 6y ago
      It's obvious that energy sources based on local meteo conditions don't have 24/7 reliability. The question is: how much of that reliability do we need? What would be possible if we did forgo some? Most of our industrial processes are optimized for pure efficiency (optimizing asymptotic behavior with no regard to constants), which is biased towards high-energy, constantly running chains and immense infrastructure. These need reliability. If we optimize for more smaller workloads, which can start/stop depending on local conditions (and power source), then we loose some efficiency in the process but gain a lot in the simplicity of the energy supply chain (which may in the end translate in lower/comparable overall energy consumption).
      - cameldrv 6y ago
        Electricity production in the U.S. is only about 2% of GDP, but basically every economic activity relies on electricity to function. Having very much of the electric supply be truly intermittent would create enormous costs elsewhere in the economy. If you're going to power the U.S. on renewables, you're going to need a lot of storage to get the needed reliability, so if you're comparing costs, you need to compare an equivalent end product.
      - belorn 6y ago
        > how much of that reliability do we need? There are two guiding clues for that. One is to look at https://www.electricitymap.org/ranking https://www.electricitymap.org/ranking and see how Germany is doing. One can derive the weather based on how brown the color is. The second clue is energy prices swings more heavier as a country replaces nuclear with renewable. Heavy energy using industries can't double production when prices shrink by 50%, but they will stop production when costs exceed profits. This is already happening in Sweden when prices jumped by +70% this winter. It will be interesting to see what happens when the steel industry is becoming even more dependent on energy prices and will have to stop for weeks during the winter, and the effect that will have on employment contracts.
  - BelenusMordred 6y ago
    Average lifetime of those batteries are about 7 years before a full replacement. Everyone also seems to clearly ignore how detrimental they are to the environment. There's huge swathes of toxic wastelands created from mining the materials needed. So cost, lifecycle and externalised environmental damage is what I would say is missing here. https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/07/27/141282/the-25-trillion-reason-we-cant-rely-on-batteries-to-clean-up-the-grid/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/07/27/141282/the-25-tr... Late edit: Batteries certainly have their place in smoothing out the grid inputs, I don't want to come across as saying they are not useful when they certainly are. In South Australia the newly installed grid scale batteries have paid themselves off within a few years. The article linked makes clear the engineering tradeoffs involved, and as a society we should always base these decisions on the numbers over emotion. Think there is a bright future for small modular reactors in remote and rural areas if communities are willing to accept them.
    - MaxBarraclough 6y ago
      > Average lifetime of those batteries are about 7 years before a full replacement. The significance of this is a function of our ability to recycle them.
    - magikaram 6y ago
      I happened to read an article a few weeks back regarding Aluminum-Air batteries, and a potential use in EVs, yet while they might not be ideal for EVs, a potential ability for use in the grid might be convenient.
    - manicdee 6y ago
      > Average lifetime of those batteries are about 7 years before a full replacement. Based on what? > Everyone also seems to clearly ignore how detrimental they are to the environment. There's huge swathes of toxic wastelands created from mining the materials needed. Ah, you're one of those people. Never mind, carry on.
  - endymi0n 6y ago
    Triple whammy if you include the larger and larger capacity factor of ever growing wind turbines (and offshore). Even if you're overprovisioning 2x and fill in with battery capacity for some of the shrinking holes inbetween, you'll end up cheaper than nuclear. Which, on the other hand also still does not factor in the externalities of the still-not-solved issues of final deposition of nuclear waste (some quote 38 billion still outstanding for just getting rid of the current ones that haven't been factored into historic electricity prices), defending against proliferation and antitrust issues due to the massive capital investment and minimum size of nuclear power plants. I used to be pro-nuclear at some point, but just looking at the current wholesale prices and trends, it's basically game over for nuclear.
  - dispat0r 6y ago
    > improving in capacity at immense rates There is almost no increase in capacity at least not without making the batteries bigger.
- PartiallyTyped 6y ago
  It also needs to factor the cost of producing batteries and manufacturing the storage.
- lorenzhs 6y ago
  "Base load" doesn't really exist any more. Yes, there's a minimum below which demand almost never dips, but the implication of base load is that this should be produced by the type of power plants that provide a continuous supply, like nuclear or coal. But these are extremely inflexible and can't react quickly to changes in demand or supply by other means. As the share of renewables grows, the position nuclear is in becomes worse, not better. More flexible solutions are needed that don't need demand scheduling days or weeks ahead.
  - corty 6y ago
    Nuclear isn't as inflexible as you think. A usual change rate in power output is around 10%/min, so you can go from half to full in 5 minutes. Far away from days or weeks. Here is a nice comparison: https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lastfolgebetrieb https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lastfolgebetrieb
    - kdtsh 6y ago
      On a synchronous grid? Unless the capacity of the nuclear plant is tiny (which means the economy of scale is lost - who is building a nuclear plant in the area of 10s of MW?), you instantly have voltage instability if you lose supply, and yes, bringing the network back to synchronicity can take days or weeks. This is the same issue we have with coal, which is part of the reason we are trying to diversify the grid (large synchronous machines are not all bad because they do maintain inertia in the network, which means it is easier to maintain voltage stability, but machines like synchronous condensers can provide this without needing to pin our energy requirements on it).
      - corty 6y ago
        Yes, on a synchronous grid. Yes, everyone does it. Yes, it works. You seem to be thinking in a binary manner, the plant is either on or off and there is some big central regulator doing the switching. But that isn't how it works. Plants, through their grid connection, 'see' the grid frequency of 50.00Hz. If the frequency now deviated to 49.99Hz because consumption increased, the generators will be slowed down a little. Not a lot, because they intentionally do have some momentum reserve for very fast variations. Now that out generator has slowed, your nuclear power plant (say a BWR) reacts to this: a slower generator slows the coolant flow to the reactor. The load following will turn up the coolant pumps, cooling down the reactor a little more, leading to less steam bubbles, more moderation, more fission, higher power output. This higher power output leads to higher steam throughput, speeding up the generator. If grid load decreases and frequency goes up to 50.01Hz, the reverse happens. Faster generator means higher coolant flow. Load following control slows down the coolant pumps a bit, steam bubbles increase through higher temperature, less moderation, lower fission, lower power and steam production, slows down the generator. Things are designed to stabilize at 50.00Hz. The exact amount of power the reactor produces is dynamically scaled up and down to keep the grid frequency stable. For a PWR, there is some more control logic involved because steam bubbles aren't normally present in a PWR. So load following works by changing control rod positions depending on the grid frequency, which isn't quite as fast, but still in the order of minutes. So load following is very gradual and non-binary. The myth that you can only on/off power plants is just a myth for almost any kind of plant.
- paranoidrobot 6y ago
  > wind isn't capable of base load supply. I'm sorry, but really: Citation required on that claim. There's plenty of counter positions[1][2][3] which say that if you assume 'base load' is a genuine thing, that renewables, including wind, are capable of meeting all our power generation needs - through a mix of energy sources, and also energy storage. [1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2017-10-12/renewable-energy-baseload-power/9033336 https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2017-10-12/renewable-ene... [2] https://theconversation.com/renewable-energy-can-provide-baseload-power-heres-how-2221 https://theconversation.com/renewable-energy-can-provide-bas... [3] https://www.energymatters.com.au/renewable-news/baseload-energy-generation-expose-myth/ https://www.energymatters.com.au/renewable-news/baseload-ene...
  - hntrader 6y ago
    > and also energy storage. Precisely, that's my point. The costings of the OP ignore that part.
  - bryanlarsen 6y ago
    Base load generation is unnecessary, the only type of power that's needed is dispatchable or peak power. If you can meet demand at peak, you can meet demand in the trough too. All other power types are added to the grid to increase affordability, reliability or green credentials. Neither wind nor nuclear are suitable to use for peak power.
    - mzmoen 6y ago
      This assumes that you're power generation always matches demand through time. If you had a sudden spike at night that you don't usually have (like in Texas where people kicked on their heat unexpectedly) and you were using solar, the mismatch would exist and you wouldn't be able to meet the load.
      - bryanlarsen 6y ago
        Exactly. You need natgas peakers (that aren't frozen) or charged batteries to deal with this. Nuclear, wind and solar are all unsuitable for this situation.
- bryanlarsen 6y ago
  Here's a project that's supplying energy at $40/MWh *including storage costs* https://www.energy-storage.news/news/developer-8minute-says-more-than-24gwh-of-batteries-included-in-its-us-sola https://www.energy-storage.news/news/developer-8minute-says-...
  - belorn 6y ago
    That project is a great step forward to cutting the dependency on using fossil fuels as "reserve energy" for when demand exceeds what the grid of renewables can create. There are however some details to that design. The linked project storage is 75% capacity for 4 hours, and it usage is for solar and storage which has a daily charge and discharge cycle (customers will be daily buying the stored energy and thus repaying the storage investment on a predictable and daily basis). In order for Germany to abandon the dependency of using fossil fuels for reserve energy the storage would need to have the capacity of the full grid, it would need to be able to last weeks, and the capacity of wind would need to be able to fill both the storage and grid demands at the same time. If and people are willing to invest into wind power plants which overcapacity won't have a buyer but will simply be there in case the batteries need to be recharged, and people also investments into batteries which won't be discharged and generating revenue unless the weather makes wind production go below demand, then there exist a chance we can replace the fossil fueled based reserve energy with wind + storage. Currently there does not seem to exist a single wind + storage project out there. I suspect the above economics is the reason for that.
jpxw 6y ago
The issue is that solar/wind can only provide so much of your country’s energy supply, due to storage issues. So you’re then left with a choice. Go with nuclear, or use fossil fuels, to make up the remainder of your energy consumption. For example, Germany is still under 50% renewable despite their recent pushes. But instead of getting the other 50% from a relatively clean source (nuclear), they choose instead to use fossil fuels.
- lorenzhs 6y ago
  > "But instead of getting the other 50% from a relatively clean source (nuclear), they choose instead to use fossil fuels." Unless you're saying that Germany is choosing to build new fossil fuel plants instead of building more renewables (which it largely isn't), what you're describing is a transition that isn't finished yet, not a choice.
  - ohgodplsno 6y ago
    This transition can _never_ be finished. There is no reality in which, in 2025, or 2030, or 2040, Germany is running 100% on renewables. Let's have a quick look at the german energy mix: https://www.electricitymap.org/zone/DE https://www.electricitymap.org/zone/DE As I write this: * Germany has 68GW of wind capacity. Only 3GW are currently producing, because there's no wind. * Solar is doing just as bad, with 9.11GW active out of 53GW * Even worse, in the last 24 hours, wind has basically been at 5% capacity the entire time. Solar picked up quite a bit, but the base production is guaranteed by coal plants. This gets immensely worse at night where this rises to over half of their energy output * Each kWh has cost the world the emission of 400g of CO2. * Even in the best possible conditions, their green mix still ejects 210g of carbon per kWh. The green energy ayatollahs, with their there-is-no-alternative policy are making things worse by refusing a temporary, controlled, safe source of energy. Is nuclear ideal ? No. Should it be a temporary (~100 years or so) source of energy while we transition to better options ? Yes. Is it the best solution that we have to fight climate change as it stands ? Absolutely. And yes, they are building new coal plants to make up for their decisions. Datteln 4 just started up last year.
    - 6y ago
isoprophlex 6y ago
Are those costs calculated in the current energy markets? Once intermittent renewables (solar, wind) reach their saturation point, nuclear revenue changes. This is also highly dependent on how much storage (and flex) capacity is installed alongside these renewables...
- i_am_proteus 6y ago
  This is a very important point. With load-following natural gas (and some coal) plants available, the returns on renewable energy are excellent, and the cost per kW "average" output is quite low. These values cannot be linearly extrapolated out to 100% capacity without energy storage which, even if a viable solution is invented, will not be free. Bear in mind also that current wind and solar installs are being built in the most economical locations to build wind and solar: places that get good amounts of average wind and average light, and which are close enough to populated areas to avoid lots of transmission loss. Future wind and solar installations (albeit with some benefit from hypothetical improvements in PV efficiency) will not be as efficient on a per-unit basis, and utilities will increasingly have to build not to the average power output (made possible only because of load-following natural gas, as well as coal) but rather to some low percentile. An example: if a 100% renewable grid must service an area with a flat average demand of 500 GW, then if renewable output is greater than 500 GW 95% of the time, the other 5% of the time will require firing up a fossil source or turning off customers' power. And this assumes demand is constant, which it isn't-- demand peaking is just as much of a problem as supply dipping.
- marcosdumay 6y ago
  > Once intermittent renewables (solar, wind) reach their saturation point, nuclear revenue changes. Yes, once that happens, nuclear revenue gets worse, while flexible power sources (natural gas) get the lion share of the profits.
xenonite 6y ago
Regarding the decommission of the nuclear plants in Germany: I don't understand why they are shutdown early, because the major CO2 investment happens during construction. So wouldn't it make sense to leave the active nuclear plants running until their original retirement date, and rather shutdown the coal plants early?
- ElKrist 6y ago
  Germany did not go out of nuclear for CO2 emissions reasons
- bjourne 6y ago
  That's more or less what they are doing. Most of the reactors that have been shut down were built in the 1970s when safety standards weren't as strict as they are today. https://cnpp.iaea.org/countryprofiles/Germany/Germany.htm https://cnpp.iaea.org/countryprofiles/Germany/Germany.htm That is, the reactors were over 40 years old and were reaching their end-of-life dates anyway. Upgrading them to conform to modern safety standards isn't cost-effective. Essentially, this is what the nuclear phaseout entails; old plants are decommissioned and governments refrain from subsidizing the construction of new ones.
  - revax 6y ago
    >Upgrading them to conform to modern safety standards isn't cost-effective. Why that? In France nuclear power plants are kept to the newest safety standards. Everything in a nuclear power plant can be replaced apart from the reactor vessel and the containment building.
    - bjourne 6y ago
      Because many of them were built before TMI and Chernobyl, in the 70's using designs from the 60's. It's similar to how maintenance on a car from the 70's probably isn't worth it. Nuclear isn't working very well in France either. The reactor in Flamanville had an initial projected cost of 3.5 billion euros which has now ballooned to 12.4 billion euros and the project is over a decade late. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-nuclear-idUSKBN24A1Q5 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-nuclear-idUSKBN24A... The French are also preparing to transition away from nuclear as more plants are being decommissioned.
jackjohn 6y ago
> despite record-low capital costs around the world No [1] it seems like the costs are licensing and beaurocracy due to design re-iteration. [1] https://news.mit.edu/2020/reasons-nuclear-overruns-1118 https://news.mit.edu/2020/reasons-nuclear-overruns-1118
orwin 6y ago
Okay, so let's dig in: 1: Electricity is roughly 25% of a country energy expense. If we want to fight climate drift, electricity should become 80% of the total energy expense at the very least. That mean multiplying the number of power plants by 3.5 roughly, if we want to keep the same level of comfort (and by two if we accept to loose 40% of our GDP). 2: here are the cost of a 100% renewable mix: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306261918312790 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030626191... The land usage cost is ignored, but as 80% of the agricultural surface in the EU is used by animal or for animal feed, let's say we all divide our consumption by 7 (eat meat once a week), and the fred agricultural land can be used for biomass and solar. The need in rare earth and how much of the worldwide production europe would take in this scenario isn't sustainable, but let's believe in an infinite earth with infinite ressources, so the extraction rate isn't an issue and is done solely with renewable. Europe still need more than 40% of the world future production. 3. So now, using the information you got with 1/, in a scenario with merely doubling the electricity output and reducing GDP by 40%, expand the data on 2/ (still without nuclear plant). Draw your own conclusions, look at the data yourself, i only did order of magnitude calculations and it seems obvious to me. If one of my point is wrong, please explain why. Okay, now in the price category: EDF is forced by France to sell its electricity to its competitor at a low price, and basically give it for free for some institution. Also, it is forced to cover the cost of an industrial failure it did neither start nor want, and to bear the cost of political choice (fessenhein closure). Despite that, i'm pretty sure electricity is cheaper in France than in most other European countries with no access with cheap hydro. Oh, and EDF bear the full cost of future nuclear plant decommission, so the "ït will cost more in the future" shit is wrong and already accounted for.
i_am_proteus 6y ago
Your source "LAZARD" on page 3 shows wind as $29 to 54 and Nuclear as $121 to 198. Is there a reason for you using different numbers?
mpweiher 6y ago
> The article does not explain why nuclear must be part of the energy solution. 1. "it generates baseload electricity with no output of carbon," 2. "nuclear power plants operate at much higher capacity factors than renewable energy sources or fossil fuels." 3. "Third, nuclear power releases less radiation into the environment than any other major energy source. " Now you might not agree with the explanations, but to say it doesn't explain seems...incorrect.
- pfdietz 6y ago
  Non sequiturs are not explanations. None of those claims imply nuclear must be part of the energy solution.
jerome-jh 6y ago
Coal consumption is may be down in Germany but it is still huge (the 4th in the world). Of course GDP is up since coal is very cheap! Germany is the elephant in the room of Europe. Because of it, it is impossible for Europe to pressure India and China to lower their coal consumption. And EU could pressure them: it is China's largest customer and outsources quite a bit to India. Overall coal is the major factor leading to a climatic overrun.
- toyg 6y ago
  Europe and US would still not have an ideological high ground even if they fully decommissioned coal. They built their wealth on coal, so from the perspective of BRIC and other still-industrializing countries they would (and in fact already do) appear like they are just trying to pull up the drawbridge. Pressuring developing countries to stop using coal is a lost cause, and will only increase enmity. What we really have to do is to make alternatives so cheap and reliable, that coal looks like the stupid choice. Renewables can even be sold to certain poor areas (like deserts) as a great chance for an economic leap.
  - DaedPsyker 6y ago
    It's not a fair comparison, coal was pretty much the only game in town and at a time when understanding of pollution only related to local level. Yes its unfair but at the end of the day its the developing countries that will be hit hardest by climate change, not the west. I do agree we should subsidise clean energy around the world though.
    - dispat0r 6y ago
      wind energy is so cheap why are india and china still building new coal plants?
      - pfdietz 6y ago
        The wind resource in India is poor. Solar is likely the answer there, with batteries and hydrogen.

hntrader 6y ago

"four times as expensive as wind" This isn't a valid comparison, since wind isn't capable of base load supply. You would need to factor in storage costs to make the comparison valid.

partingshots 6y ago
Batteries are also getting cheaper and improving in capacity at immense rates too no? It seems like a double whammy against nuclear, unless there’s something I’m missing?
- rusk 6y ago
  Just curious where we are we at in terms of the environmental aspects of mass scale heavy duty battery production?
- melling 6y ago
  We just spent 2 decades saying this. I suppose we’re going to say it for another. that’s 30 years of emissions that could have been avoided.
  - pumpkinpal 6y ago
    We've also spent 30+ years trying to build nuclear plants on time and on budget and we've been unable to do that.
    - melling 6y ago
      Even with that, 20% of US electricity is still from nuclear. We managed to build these before the industry became expensive. Now Germany and the United States are rushing to close the operating plants. I’m not sure why we can’t figure out how to build a standard design and replicate it
      - konjin 6y ago
        Because we can't build anything larger than an office building on time and on budget.
      - _nalply 6y ago
        Perhaps because that standard design didn't work out? Even Switzerland is shutting down nuclear plants and they managed to build the longest railroad tunnel of the world without budget overruns and half a year before due date.
        dispat0r 6y ago
        In Switzerland it's a political decision same as Germany it has nothing todo with cost or the ability to run the plants.
        _nalply 6y ago
        That's not so clear cut. Mühleberg near Berne has said that 2019 they didn't make profit, however the operator company BKW never published gains with that plant. https://www.bernerzeitung.ch/region/kanton-bern/das-akw-muehleberg-rentiert-2019-erstmals-nicht-mehr/story/31329779 https://www.bernerzeitung.ch/region/kanton-bern/das-akw-mueh... (paywalled)
- PartiallyTyped 6y ago
  That is if, not only can we keep making them, we produce them at massive scales without inciting coups around the world for Lithium [1]. Because let us be honest with ourselves, the CIA has staged coups around the world many-a-times [2], and iirc but can't locate that some of said instances were done to support private entities. [1] https://www.indepthnews.net/index.php/opinion/3735-we-will-coup-whoever-we-want-elon-musk-and-the-overthrow-of-democracy-in-bolivia https://www.indepthnews.net/index.php/opinion/3735-we-will-c... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...
  - _nalply 6y ago
    Lithium for energy storage is not the only option. Pumped water already has been a thing for decades. Additionally other avenues are being explored like [1] pumped air and [2] lifting concrete weights. [1] https://www.planete-energies.com/en/medias/close/what-compressed-air-energy-storage https://www.planete-energies.com/en/medias/close/what-compre... [2] https://profittrends.com/energy-investing/renewable-energy/swiss-startup-energy-storage-crane-concrete/ https://profittrends.com/energy-investing/renewable-energy/s...
    - PartiallyTyped 6y ago
      Interesting solutions, especially the latter, absolutely brilliant, despite the reduction in efficiency, it probably trumps batteries wrt to first materials used.
- sjwright 6y ago
  There’s no prospect of batteries acting as base load supply anytime in the foreseeable future. Batteries aren’t even great for peak supply yet. Those big grid-scale battery farms installed by Tesla (et al) are used primarily for grid stabilisation and a limited amount of useful arbitrage.
- cameldrv 6y ago
  That's fine, but show your work. Nuclear gives us 24/7 reliable power. What is the cost comparison for renewables for the same product?
  - lapinot 6y ago
    It's obvious that energy sources based on local meteo conditions don't have 24/7 reliability. The question is: how much of that reliability do we need? What would be possible if we did forgo some? Most of our industrial processes are optimized for pure efficiency (optimizing asymptotic behavior with no regard to constants), which is biased towards high-energy, constantly running chains and immense infrastructure. These need reliability. If we optimize for more smaller workloads, which can start/stop depending on local conditions (and power source), then we loose some efficiency in the process but gain a lot in the simplicity of the energy supply chain (which may in the end translate in lower/comparable overall energy consumption).
    - cameldrv 6y ago
      Electricity production in the U.S. is only about 2% of GDP, but basically every economic activity relies on electricity to function. Having very much of the electric supply be truly intermittent would create enormous costs elsewhere in the economy. If you're going to power the U.S. on renewables, you're going to need a lot of storage to get the needed reliability, so if you're comparing costs, you need to compare an equivalent end product.
    - belorn 6y ago
      > how much of that reliability do we need? There are two guiding clues for that. One is to look at https://www.electricitymap.org/ranking https://www.electricitymap.org/ranking and see how Germany is doing. One can derive the weather based on how brown the color is. The second clue is energy prices swings more heavier as a country replaces nuclear with renewable. Heavy energy using industries can't double production when prices shrink by 50%, but they will stop production when costs exceed profits. This is already happening in Sweden when prices jumped by +70% this winter. It will be interesting to see what happens when the steel industry is becoming even more dependent on energy prices and will have to stop for weeks during the winter, and the effect that will have on employment contracts.
- BelenusMordred 6y ago
  Average lifetime of those batteries are about 7 years before a full replacement. Everyone also seems to clearly ignore how detrimental they are to the environment. There's huge swathes of toxic wastelands created from mining the materials needed. So cost, lifecycle and externalised environmental damage is what I would say is missing here. https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/07/27/141282/the-25-trillion-reason-we-cant-rely-on-batteries-to-clean-up-the-grid/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/07/27/141282/the-25-tr... Late edit: Batteries certainly have their place in smoothing out the grid inputs, I don't want to come across as saying they are not useful when they certainly are. In South Australia the newly installed grid scale batteries have paid themselves off within a few years. The article linked makes clear the engineering tradeoffs involved, and as a society we should always base these decisions on the numbers over emotion. Think there is a bright future for small modular reactors in remote and rural areas if communities are willing to accept them.
  - MaxBarraclough 6y ago
    > Average lifetime of those batteries are about 7 years before a full replacement. The significance of this is a function of our ability to recycle them.
  - magikaram 6y ago
    I happened to read an article a few weeks back regarding Aluminum-Air batteries, and a potential use in EVs, yet while they might not be ideal for EVs, a potential ability for use in the grid might be convenient.
  - manicdee 6y ago
    > Average lifetime of those batteries are about 7 years before a full replacement. Based on what? > Everyone also seems to clearly ignore how detrimental they are to the environment. There's huge swathes of toxic wastelands created from mining the materials needed. Ah, you're one of those people. Never mind, carry on.
- endymi0n 6y ago
  Triple whammy if you include the larger and larger capacity factor of ever growing wind turbines (and offshore). Even if you're overprovisioning 2x and fill in with battery capacity for some of the shrinking holes inbetween, you'll end up cheaper than nuclear. Which, on the other hand also still does not factor in the externalities of the still-not-solved issues of final deposition of nuclear waste (some quote 38 billion still outstanding for just getting rid of the current ones that haven't been factored into historic electricity prices), defending against proliferation and antitrust issues due to the massive capital investment and minimum size of nuclear power plants. I used to be pro-nuclear at some point, but just looking at the current wholesale prices and trends, it's basically game over for nuclear.
- dispat0r 6y ago
  > improving in capacity at immense rates There is almost no increase in capacity at least not without making the batteries bigger.
PartiallyTyped 6y ago
It also needs to factor the cost of producing batteries and manufacturing the storage.
lorenzhs 6y ago
"Base load" doesn't really exist any more. Yes, there's a minimum below which demand almost never dips, but the implication of base load is that this should be produced by the type of power plants that provide a continuous supply, like nuclear or coal. But these are extremely inflexible and can't react quickly to changes in demand or supply by other means. As the share of renewables grows, the position nuclear is in becomes worse, not better. More flexible solutions are needed that don't need demand scheduling days or weeks ahead.
- corty 6y ago
  Nuclear isn't as inflexible as you think. A usual change rate in power output is around 10%/min, so you can go from half to full in 5 minutes. Far away from days or weeks. Here is a nice comparison: https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lastfolgebetrieb https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lastfolgebetrieb
  - kdtsh 6y ago
    On a synchronous grid? Unless the capacity of the nuclear plant is tiny (which means the economy of scale is lost - who is building a nuclear plant in the area of 10s of MW?), you instantly have voltage instability if you lose supply, and yes, bringing the network back to synchronicity can take days or weeks. This is the same issue we have with coal, which is part of the reason we are trying to diversify the grid (large synchronous machines are not all bad because they do maintain inertia in the network, which means it is easier to maintain voltage stability, but machines like synchronous condensers can provide this without needing to pin our energy requirements on it).
    - corty 6y ago
      Yes, on a synchronous grid. Yes, everyone does it. Yes, it works. You seem to be thinking in a binary manner, the plant is either on or off and there is some big central regulator doing the switching. But that isn't how it works. Plants, through their grid connection, 'see' the grid frequency of 50.00Hz. If the frequency now deviated to 49.99Hz because consumption increased, the generators will be slowed down a little. Not a lot, because they intentionally do have some momentum reserve for very fast variations. Now that out generator has slowed, your nuclear power plant (say a BWR) reacts to this: a slower generator slows the coolant flow to the reactor. The load following will turn up the coolant pumps, cooling down the reactor a little more, leading to less steam bubbles, more moderation, more fission, higher power output. This higher power output leads to higher steam throughput, speeding up the generator. If grid load decreases and frequency goes up to 50.01Hz, the reverse happens. Faster generator means higher coolant flow. Load following control slows down the coolant pumps a bit, steam bubbles increase through higher temperature, less moderation, lower fission, lower power and steam production, slows down the generator. Things are designed to stabilize at 50.00Hz. The exact amount of power the reactor produces is dynamically scaled up and down to keep the grid frequency stable. For a PWR, there is some more control logic involved because steam bubbles aren't normally present in a PWR. So load following works by changing control rod positions depending on the grid frequency, which isn't quite as fast, but still in the order of minutes. So load following is very gradual and non-binary. The myth that you can only on/off power plants is just a myth for almost any kind of plant.
paranoidrobot 6y ago
> wind isn't capable of base load supply. I'm sorry, but really: Citation required on that claim. There's plenty of counter positions[1][2][3] which say that if you assume 'base load' is a genuine thing, that renewables, including wind, are capable of meeting all our power generation needs - through a mix of energy sources, and also energy storage. [1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2017-10-12/renewable-energy-baseload-power/9033336 https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2017-10-12/renewable-ene... [2] https://theconversation.com/renewable-energy-can-provide-baseload-power-heres-how-2221 https://theconversation.com/renewable-energy-can-provide-bas... [3] https://www.energymatters.com.au/renewable-news/baseload-energy-generation-expose-myth/ https://www.energymatters.com.au/renewable-news/baseload-ene...
- hntrader 6y ago
  > and also energy storage. Precisely, that's my point. The costings of the OP ignore that part.
- bryanlarsen 6y ago
  Base load generation is unnecessary, the only type of power that's needed is dispatchable or peak power. If you can meet demand at peak, you can meet demand in the trough too. All other power types are added to the grid to increase affordability, reliability or green credentials. Neither wind nor nuclear are suitable to use for peak power.
  - mzmoen 6y ago
    This assumes that you're power generation always matches demand through time. If you had a sudden spike at night that you don't usually have (like in Texas where people kicked on their heat unexpectedly) and you were using solar, the mismatch would exist and you wouldn't be able to meet the load.
    - bryanlarsen 6y ago
      Exactly. You need natgas peakers (that aren't frozen) or charged batteries to deal with this. Nuclear, wind and solar are all unsuitable for this situation.
bryanlarsen 6y ago
Here's a project that's supplying energy at $40/MWh *including storage costs* https://www.energy-storage.news/news/developer-8minute-says-more-than-24gwh-of-batteries-included-in-its-us-sola https://www.energy-storage.news/news/developer-8minute-says-...
- belorn 6y ago
  That project is a great step forward to cutting the dependency on using fossil fuels as "reserve energy" for when demand exceeds what the grid of renewables can create. There are however some details to that design. The linked project storage is 75% capacity for 4 hours, and it usage is for solar and storage which has a daily charge and discharge cycle (customers will be daily buying the stored energy and thus repaying the storage investment on a predictable and daily basis). In order for Germany to abandon the dependency of using fossil fuels for reserve energy the storage would need to have the capacity of the full grid, it would need to be able to last weeks, and the capacity of wind would need to be able to fill both the storage and grid demands at the same time. If and people are willing to invest into wind power plants which overcapacity won't have a buyer but will simply be there in case the batteries need to be recharged, and people also investments into batteries which won't be discharged and generating revenue unless the weather makes wind production go below demand, then there exist a chance we can replace the fossil fueled based reserve energy with wind + storage. Currently there does not seem to exist a single wind + storage project out there. I suspect the above economics is the reason for that.

jpxw 6y ago

The issue is that solar/wind can only provide so much of your country’s energy supply, due to storage issues. So you’re then left with a choice. Go with nuclear, or use fossil fuels, to make up the remainder of your energy consumption. For example, Germany is still under 50% renewable despite their recent pushes. But instead of getting the other 50% from a relatively clean source (nuclear), they choose instead to use fossil fuels.

lorenzhs 6y ago
> "But instead of getting the other 50% from a relatively clean source (nuclear), they choose instead to use fossil fuels." Unless you're saying that Germany is choosing to build new fossil fuel plants instead of building more renewables (which it largely isn't), what you're describing is a transition that isn't finished yet, not a choice.
- ohgodplsno 6y ago
  This transition can _never_ be finished. There is no reality in which, in 2025, or 2030, or 2040, Germany is running 100% on renewables. Let's have a quick look at the german energy mix: https://www.electricitymap.org/zone/DE https://www.electricitymap.org/zone/DE As I write this: * Germany has 68GW of wind capacity. Only 3GW are currently producing, because there's no wind. * Solar is doing just as bad, with 9.11GW active out of 53GW * Even worse, in the last 24 hours, wind has basically been at 5% capacity the entire time. Solar picked up quite a bit, but the base production is guaranteed by coal plants. This gets immensely worse at night where this rises to over half of their energy output * Each kWh has cost the world the emission of 400g of CO2. * Even in the best possible conditions, their green mix still ejects 210g of carbon per kWh. The green energy ayatollahs, with their there-is-no-alternative policy are making things worse by refusing a temporary, controlled, safe source of energy. Is nuclear ideal ? No. Should it be a temporary (~100 years or so) source of energy while we transition to better options ? Yes. Is it the best solution that we have to fight climate change as it stands ? Absolutely. And yes, they are building new coal plants to make up for their decisions. Datteln 4 just started up last year.
  - 6y ago

isoprophlex 6y ago

Are those costs calculated in the current energy markets? Once intermittent renewables (solar, wind) reach their saturation point, nuclear revenue changes. This is also highly dependent on how much storage (and flex) capacity is installed alongside these renewables...

i_am_proteus 6y ago
This is a very important point. With load-following natural gas (and some coal) plants available, the returns on renewable energy are excellent, and the cost per kW "average" output is quite low. These values cannot be linearly extrapolated out to 100% capacity without energy storage which, even if a viable solution is invented, will not be free. Bear in mind also that current wind and solar installs are being built in the most economical locations to build wind and solar: places that get good amounts of average wind and average light, and which are close enough to populated areas to avoid lots of transmission loss. Future wind and solar installations (albeit with some benefit from hypothetical improvements in PV efficiency) will not be as efficient on a per-unit basis, and utilities will increasingly have to build not to the average power output (made possible only because of load-following natural gas, as well as coal) but rather to some low percentile. An example: if a 100% renewable grid must service an area with a flat average demand of 500 GW, then if renewable output is greater than 500 GW 95% of the time, the other 5% of the time will require firing up a fossil source or turning off customers' power. And this assumes demand is constant, which it isn't-- demand peaking is just as much of a problem as supply dipping.
marcosdumay 6y ago
> Once intermittent renewables (solar, wind) reach their saturation point, nuclear revenue changes. Yes, once that happens, nuclear revenue gets worse, while flexible power sources (natural gas) get the lion share of the profits.

xenonite 6y ago

Regarding the decommission of the nuclear plants in Germany: I don't understand why they are shutdown early, because the major CO2 investment happens during construction. So wouldn't it make sense to leave the active nuclear plants running until their original retirement date, and rather shutdown the coal plants early?

ElKrist 6y ago
Germany did not go out of nuclear for CO2 emissions reasons
bjourne 6y ago
That's more or less what they are doing. Most of the reactors that have been shut down were built in the 1970s when safety standards weren't as strict as they are today. https://cnpp.iaea.org/countryprofiles/Germany/Germany.htm https://cnpp.iaea.org/countryprofiles/Germany/Germany.htm That is, the reactors were over 40 years old and were reaching their end-of-life dates anyway. Upgrading them to conform to modern safety standards isn't cost-effective. Essentially, this is what the nuclear phaseout entails; old plants are decommissioned and governments refrain from subsidizing the construction of new ones.
- revax 6y ago
  >Upgrading them to conform to modern safety standards isn't cost-effective. Why that? In France nuclear power plants are kept to the newest safety standards. Everything in a nuclear power plant can be replaced apart from the reactor vessel and the containment building.
  - bjourne 6y ago
    Because many of them were built before TMI and Chernobyl, in the 70's using designs from the 60's. It's similar to how maintenance on a car from the 70's probably isn't worth it. Nuclear isn't working very well in France either. The reactor in Flamanville had an initial projected cost of 3.5 billion euros which has now ballooned to 12.4 billion euros and the project is over a decade late. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-nuclear-idUSKBN24A1Q5 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-nuclear-idUSKBN24A... The French are also preparing to transition away from nuclear as more plants are being decommissioned.

jackjohn 6y ago

> despite record-low capital costs around the world No [1] it seems like the costs are licensing and beaurocracy due to design re-iteration. [1] https://news.mit.edu/2020/reasons-nuclear-overruns-1118 https://news.mit.edu/2020/reasons-nuclear-overruns-1118

orwin 6y ago

Okay, so let's dig in: 1: Electricity is roughly 25% of a country energy expense. If we want to fight climate drift, electricity should become 80% of the total energy expense at the very least. That mean multiplying the number of power plants by 3.5 roughly, if we want to keep the same level of comfort (and by two if we accept to loose 40% of our GDP). 2: here are the cost of a 100% renewable mix: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306261918312790 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030626191... The land usage cost is ignored, but as 80% of the agricultural surface in the EU is used by animal or for animal feed, let's say we all divide our consumption by 7 (eat meat once a week), and the fred agricultural land can be used for biomass and solar. The need in rare earth and how much of the worldwide production europe would take in this scenario isn't sustainable, but let's believe in an infinite earth with infinite ressources, so the extraction rate isn't an issue and is done solely with renewable. Europe still need more than 40% of the world future production. 3. So now, using the information you got with 1/, in a scenario with merely doubling the electricity output and reducing GDP by 40%, expand the data on 2/ (still without nuclear plant). Draw your own conclusions, look at the data yourself, i only did order of magnitude calculations and it seems obvious to me. If one of my point is wrong, please explain why. Okay, now in the price category: EDF is forced by France to sell its electricity to its competitor at a low price, and basically give it for free for some institution. Also, it is forced to cover the cost of an industrial failure it did neither start nor want, and to bear the cost of political choice (fessenhein closure). Despite that, i'm pretty sure electricity is cheaper in France than in most other European countries with no access with cheap hydro. Oh, and EDF bear the full cost of future nuclear plant decommission, so the "ït will cost more in the future" shit is wrong and already accounted for.

i_am_proteus 6y ago

Your source "LAZARD" on page 3 shows wind as $29 to 54 and Nuclear as $121 to 198. Is there a reason for you using different numbers?

mpweiher 6y ago

> The article does not explain why nuclear must be part of the energy solution. 1. "it generates baseload electricity with no output of carbon," 2. "nuclear power plants operate at much higher capacity factors than renewable energy sources or fossil fuels." 3. "Third, nuclear power releases less radiation into the environment than any other major energy source. " Now you might not agree with the explanations, but to say it doesn't explain seems...incorrect.

pfdietz 6y ago
Non sequiturs are not explanations. None of those claims imply nuclear must be part of the energy solution.

jerome-jh 6y ago

Coal consumption is may be down in Germany but it is still huge (the 4th in the world). Of course GDP is up since coal is very cheap! Germany is the elephant in the room of Europe. Because of it, it is impossible for Europe to pressure India and China to lower their coal consumption. And EU could pressure them: it is China's largest customer and outsources quite a bit to India. Overall coal is the major factor leading to a climatic overrun.

toyg 6y ago
Europe and US would still not have an ideological high ground even if they fully decommissioned coal. They built their wealth on coal, so from the perspective of BRIC and other still-industrializing countries they would (and in fact already do) appear like they are just trying to pull up the drawbridge. Pressuring developing countries to stop using coal is a lost cause, and will only increase enmity. What we really have to do is to make alternatives so cheap and reliable, that coal looks like the stupid choice. Renewables can even be sold to certain poor areas (like deserts) as a great chance for an economic leap.
- DaedPsyker 6y ago
  It's not a fair comparison, coal was pretty much the only game in town and at a time when understanding of pollution only related to local level. Yes its unfair but at the end of the day its the developing countries that will be hit hardest by climate change, not the west. I do agree we should subsidise clean energy around the world though.
  - dispat0r 6y ago
    wind energy is so cheap why are india and china still building new coal plants?
    - pfdietz 6y ago
      The wind resource in India is poor. Solar is likely the answer there, with batteries and hydrogen.