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It's worth noting that nuclear is really expensive when factoring in insurance and disposable, a lot more so than wind and solar. >The cost of generating solar
by schleck8 5y ago
It's worth noting that nuclear is really expensive when factoring in insurance and disposable, a lot more so than wind and solar.
>The cost of generating solar power ranges from $36 to $44 per megawatt hour (MWh), the WNISR said, while onshore wind power comes in at $29–$56 per MWh. Nuclear energy costs between $112 and $189.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-energy-nuclearpower/nuclear-energy-too-slow-too-expensive-to-save-climate-report-idUSKBN1W909J https://www.reuters.com/article/us-energy-nuclearpower/nucle...
- Factorium 5y agoCurrent wholesale electricity prices in Germany are $194/MWh: https://www.energylive.cloud/ https://www.energylive.cloud/ How much does Germany spend on the military? Cancel it, and spend the money on nuclear power. Otherwise Germany has a significant strategic weakness (gas imports) to Russia, its only realistic enemy.
- Gwypaas 5y agoWholesale energy is priced by the marginal cost, gas peaker plants come in at $150 - $200/MWh so not a surprising price to level out on. https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-levelized-cost-of-storage-and-levelized-cost-of-hydrogen/ https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-...
- schleck8 5y agoI don't think canceling an already tight military budget in favor of a power source that could be devastating when hit by an airstrike is a good strategy
- Ericson2314 5y agoit wouldn't be devastating
- schleck8 5y ago>A meltdown or explosion at a nuclear facility could cause a large amount of radioactive material to be released into the environment. https://www.oregon.gov/oha/PH/HEALTHYENVIRONMENTS/RADIATIONPROTECTION/EMERGENCYRESPONSE/Documents/radiologicalterrorism.pdf https://www.oregon.gov/oha/PH/HEALTHYENVIRONMENTS/RADIATIONP...
- Ericson2314 5y agoIdeally with passive containment, anything that blows up the container/automatic-cooler, is also going to physically blow up / spread out the rods too? Big mess, sure, but no meltdown. Also remember war is really bad no matter what. If someone blow up all the powerplants regardless of sort, a huge portion of people will die simply because the lack of electricity.
- Factorium 5y agoRussia supplies 55% of Germany's natural gas imports. Cut that off and say goodbye to manufacturing, electricity, heating.
- nradov 5y agoGermany already spends so little on their military that they have been in breach of their NATO treaty obligations for years.
- wavefunction 5y agoWhy is nuclear considered in contrast to solar and wind? Nuclear energy will allow humanity to move off of petrochemical energy sources much more quickly and given the looming ecological catastrophe the costs of nuclear energy are very reasonable.
- thewarrior 5y agoCost is irrelevant if you can’t store the energy generated. Nuclear is predictable and carbon free. Look at France.
- Gwypaas 5y agoSolar + 4 hours of storage clocking in at $40/MWh in ideal conditions. Substitute for windpower and some worse conditions and nuclear energy still look awful from a cost perspective. https://www.energy-storage.news/developer-8minute-says-more-than-24gwh-of-batteries-included-in-its-us-solar-plus-storage-pipeline/ https://www.energy-storage.news/developer-8minute-says-more-...
- criley2 5y agoSomething about wind and solar isn't working to meet the increasing demands in Germany https://www.dw.com/en/germany-coal-tops-wind-as-primary-electricity-source/a-59168105 https://www.dw.com/en/germany-coal-tops-wind-as-primary-elec... From 2020 to 2021, Coal is up 8%, Wind is down 7%, Solar is down 1%. Non-renewable in total is up 8% and renewable is down 8%. If they can find a battery solution that actually works, then that would be amazing, but existing solutions clearly aren't cutting it. While it might cost more, nuclear power is extremely reliable and offers energy independence, a form of national security that is vital with Russian pipelines strongly influencing the geopolitics of the region. I hope better batteries can offer them the same, because it's sad watching coal expand dramatically.
- cinntaile 5y agoYou should look at longer time periods instead of just looking at one year. Year to year variability could be big due to a variety of reasons.
- criley2 5y agoWhen it comes to consistent power generation, Germans can't just wait until next year. Wind power has it's ups and downs, which is why you need a lot more of it than coal or nuclear to meet the same demand.
- 0xbadcafebee 5y agoWe've literally just been through an entire energy crisis in Europe that was exacerbated due to inconsistent wind. https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Europes-Energy-Crisis-Worsens-As-Wind-Stops-Blowing.html https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Europes-E... The UK is suffering the most from the drop in wind power output, caused by mild weather. The country, which prides itself on its wind capacity and whose Prime Minister last year said wind farms could power every home by 2030, produced less than 1 GW of wind power on several days. This compares with a generation capacity of 24 GW, according to ICIS senior energy economist Stefan Konstantinov. Cheap isn't as important as reliable. It's not like these countries have no money.
- rsj_hn 5y agoThere is this cycle where this is blamed on a combination of Brexit and global warming, so they want to shift to even more wind/solar, causing even more outages, and it's a positive feedback loop. One would think that if you seriously believed that the climate is going to rapidly change, then you would seek out climate-independent sources of energy. It's like predicting the world will be in drought but then advocating for more hydro power. But perhaps I don't understand the full nuances of European politics.
- Ericson2314 5y agoJust-in-type supply chains are "cheaper" too. :)
- kinjba11 5y agoI'm reminded of the Tom Scott video mentioning how parts of the grid is simply not up to the task yet to get wind energy from high-wind areas into the mainland. 'The islands with too much power' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UmsfXWzvEA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UmsfXWzvEA
- neals 5y agoBut what if you put in the health en enviromental cost of nuclears direct competitor: coal. Because at the moment, wind isn't doing so well, there being a wind-drought for the last few months and all.
- cbmuser 5y agoIt’s worth noting that you are confusing system costs and levelized costs of electricity. Cheap wind and solar electricity is absolutely useless if it cannot be produced on demand. Nuclear produces electricity 24/7, independent of weather with no backup required. The kWh costs 30 cents in Germany, but 15 cents in France.
- jhgb 5y ago> with no backup required. Not true. > The kWh costs 30 cents in Germany, but 15 cents in France. International comparisons are useless without comparison of pricing structure. That includes for example the tax regime, fees mandated, etc.
- eecc 5y ago> Nuclear produces electricity 24/7, independent of weather with no backup required. When the plant is not offline…
- martinflack 5y agoCan't a nuclear energy plant run continuously? (Genuinely asking.)
- coryrc 5y agoThey must be shutdown to be refueled regularly, but it can be planned for.
- epistasis 5y agoRefueling usually takes a long time, minimum three weeks, and a month is common: https://www.outagecalendar.com/ https://www.outagecalendar.com/
- fulafel 5y agoForever? No. For the design life of the reactor? Possibly, for a purpouse designed reactor type. If you want it today, there's the nuclear radioisotope thermoelectric generator, in use since the 50s and used on many spacecraft.
- Ericson2314 5y ago> Let us not submit to the vile doctrine of the nineteenth century that every enterprise must justify itself in pounds, shillings and pence of cash income … Why should we not add in every substantial city the dignity of an ancient university or a European capital … an ample theater, a concert hall, a dance hall, a gallery, cafes, and so forth. Assuredly we can afford this and so much more. Anything we can actually do, we can afford. … We are immeasurably richer than our predecessors. Is it not evident that some sophistry, some fallacy, governs our collective action if we are forced to be so much meaner than they in the embellishments of life? … -- John Maynard Keynes
- rks404 5y agoholy hell that's a great quote
- Ericson2314 5y agoThanks :) It's a mission of mine to make (Post-)Keynesianism an essential part of Engineering from a holistic perspective. The economy won't run at "full speed" left to its own devices, and new technology will have a harder time making it out of the research phase without full speed. VCs, being strictly supply-side, are not equipped to solve the problem. (Trying to do everything from the supply side is like trying to "push a string".) And from a more personal angle, the "inventor distraught about being misunderstand by the world" is well-ingrained meme now. Better we have the science to understand what's really going on than not.
- eutectic 5y agoA nuclear power station is not exactly a university or an art gallery.
- Ericson2314 5y agoThe larger point still stands. Investments look more bad than they should when: - We ignore externalities - We ignore that demand changes too, whether in response to monetary magic, or simply do to elasticity (it was always there, we just didn't know it). This applies to both Keynes's examples and nuclear.
- PaulHoule 5y agoThe expensive part about nuclear power is the initial construction. The cost to keep a reactor that's already been built going is low.
- baq 5y agoTime component can’t be disregarded, though. You can build, operate and decommission a wind farm or a solar plant in the time it takes to sell the first watt from a nuclear plant.
- PaulHoule 5y agoThe policy in question is what Germany should do about its current fleet. Building new reactors is another question. There aren't going to be any LWRs started and finished outside of China. The LWR is doomed by the same thing that stopped the construction of coal burning plants circa 1980. Even if the heat was free, the capital cost of the steam turbine, heat exchangers and other parts that accept large amounts of low quality heat is too high. (Consider that the steam generators in a PWR are much bigger than the reactor core and have to be inside the reactor vessel, be earthquake-proof, ...) Reactors that operate at a higher temperature such as the liquid metal fast reactor, molten salt reactor and high-temperature gas cooled reactor could be coupled to something like https://www.swri.org/supercritical-carbon-dioxide-power-systems https://www.swri.org/supercritical-carbon-dioxide-power-syst... which fits in the employee break room in the turbine house at a conventional nuclear power plant. So long as water is not involved you can make the heat exchangers small as well, see https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/5167622 https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/5167622 There are difficult challenges to building any "4th generation" nuclear reactor, but they have a chance of being economically competitive, even without subsidies.
- tomp 5y agoReuters journalists also probably say that the markets are efficient. Out here in the real world, people are paying $200/MWh and hedge funds are making billions.
- xbar 5y agoNo. It is not worth noting any such thing. The need to keep nuclear in the short term is based solely on the urgency of the climate crisis. Cost is irrelevant in the face of extinction. We have a couple centuries to figure out wind and solar economics if we convert all coal and gas to nuclear immediately.
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- himinlomax 5y agoAnd wind/solar is also very expensive once you reach 20% and need storage.
- arcticbull 5y agoDoes the cost include full lifecycle analysis? For instance, wind requires mining huge quantities of rare earth metals in open-air hellscapes in Mongolia, referred to as "the worst place on earth." [1] The two hundred meter tall towers and their giant blades are also built of fiberglass (an epoxy/glass mix) which cannot be recycled and are instead buried. [2] Similarly solar panels are often made with cadmium and tellurium, and various other toxic chemicals which leech out of the panels when placed into landfills. The US for instance has no solar panel recycling mandate except in Washington State. The world already has a massive e-waste problem. By 2050, there will be 78 million metric tons of solar panels to dispose of. [3] Solar panels then have to be supplemented with vast quantities of lithium for temporary storage. Solar and wind aren't "green" they're "less black." Nuclear produces 2000 metric tons of waste per year in the US while amounting to 20% of the entire grid, 0.85TWh per year. [1] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20150402-the-worst-place-on-earth https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20150402-the-worst-place-... [2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-02-05/wind-turbine-blades-can-t-be-recycled-so-they-re-piling-up-in-landfills https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-02-05/wind-turb... [3] https://www.wired.com/story/solar-panels-are-starting-to-die-leaving-behind-toxic-trash/ https://www.wired.com/story/solar-panels-are-starting-to-die...
- Tostino 5y agoThat first link was quite a read. Thanks for that.