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It's a demonstration of rationality? No one builds new nuclear power plants because they can not compete on price. Hinkley Point C will produce power at $145/MW

It's a demonstration of rationality? No one builds new nuclear power plants because they can not compete on price. Hinkley Point C will produce power at $145/MWh. That is crazy. At that kind of price point, you are better off building an interconnect to Norway and straight up importing hydro power. Think about the kind of lifetime and investment that comes with nuclear. You start a new plant project today. It might produce power in 15 years, for some 30+ years to make it economical. Who the fuck wants to bet $20B+ on solar not supplanting our entire power generation within some 45 years? Because that is what you are saying: build new nuclear, because even half a century from now, we won't have the storage technology to make solar and wind work. That's the bet.

summm 5y ago
Hinckley Point does not need to be economic by far. It is more about nuclear weapons. UK as a country needs a new reactor to keep its nuclear arsenal. They made that clever deal to let the energy market subsidize the military.
RealityVoid 5y ago
Yes, because current cost is not set in stone and with mass production cost goes down. With removing redundant regulation, cost goes down. With inherently safe reactor designs cost goes down. I bet that if coal plants hand to offset the environmental externalities, it would be way more expensive. Setting the price from that plant is like saying that reusable rockets could not be competitive because the space shuttle was more expensive than the non-reusable alternatives. And, even if I am wrong and really, nuclear is more expensive, so what? Compared to the alternative of having our societies collapsing because of climate change, a 3x on the price of energy would be money _very_ well spent. Also, if nuclear really is that non performant, it would be _awesome_ for renewables. They would actually be attractive economically and we would see more of them, not less. Kill hidrocarbons all together. Leave the free market so sort out the alternative if you really care about cost.
- rich_sasha 5y ago
  Nuclear is the one way to solve carbon emissions with nothing but money. Renewables, storage etc, these are not quite solved problems. But we could just throw money at nuclear and get it done. The world was once building reactors like there’s no tomorrow, surely we could restart that. Yeah it’s expensive but so is sea level rise and dealing with hurricanes. And safety? Pollution from burning coal kills so many people every year, I’m slowly beginning to think nuclear safety is a bit if a non issue, even it a plant blows up every now and then.
  - RealityVoid 5y ago
    Oh, I am on board with you here! One thing I will object to though - the claim that "one way to solve carbon emissions with nothing but money" - mostly because money is a proxy for human effort and physical resources. "Just money" is not really a thing, at least how I see it. An human effort is a great thing to spent and physical resources as well, but there is a cutoff point where "just money" doesn't cut it, because the underlying resource that money is supposed to buy is simply not enough of around. But that is not the case with nuclear energy. So sorry for the deviation.
rsj_hn 5y ago
I guess it depends on how you price reliability. Solar is cheaper but then factor in the cost of storing solar for 24 hours and it stops looking cheaper. Of course if you are OK with the power not being reliable then you don't need the battery. > At that kind of price point, you are better off building an interconnect to Norway and straight up importing hydro power Except there isn't enough hydro power in Norway to replace France's nuclear production, so looking at the current spot price of a non-scalable resource like hydro doesn't tell you much. That's the problem with hydro -- there are only so many resources to exploit. I'm also not going to touch how you value energy independence, but there is a value to it. Of course importing oil is not energy independent, but you can import oil from many countries, so that is more resilient than a fixed interconnect to Norway. What France could do is try importing LNG or coal or oil, but if the restriction is low carbon power, then you are stuck with nuclear or having the lights go out. This reality is why Germany is importing gas and using coal, and complaining about nuclear isn't going to change that reality.
- tuatoru 5y ago
  > factor in the cost of storing solar for 24 hours and it stops looking cheaper. Engineering research on grid-scale storage has barely begun. It's really no more than ten years old, except for pumped hydro. Before that it was just ideas and concept studies. Already storage is cheaper than gas peaker plants for some short-run uses according to Lazard. And there are some promising, cheap technologies for other uses (longer duration): iron-air batteries, aluminium-air batteries, latent heat and sensible heat storage (air liquefaction; hot rocks), various flow batteries. Look at the trends, not what the costs were two years ago. Once someone starts to look into this stuff properly, the costs go down quickly. Edit: and if the perovskite R&D comes up with the goods, we'll have dual-layer (2x output) PV panels for the same cost (or less) as single-layer Si panels.

summm 5y ago

Hinckley Point does not need to be economic by far. It is more about nuclear weapons. UK as a country needs a new reactor to keep its nuclear arsenal. They made that clever deal to let the energy market subsidize the military.

RealityVoid 5y ago

Yes, because current cost is not set in stone and with mass production cost goes down. With removing redundant regulation, cost goes down. With inherently safe reactor designs cost goes down. I bet that if coal plants hand to offset the environmental externalities, it would be way more expensive. Setting the price from that plant is like saying that reusable rockets could not be competitive because the space shuttle was more expensive than the non-reusable alternatives. And, even if I am wrong and really, nuclear is more expensive, so what? Compared to the alternative of having our societies collapsing because of climate change, a 3x on the price of energy would be money _very_ well spent. Also, if nuclear really is that non performant, it would be _awesome_ for renewables. They would actually be attractive economically and we would see more of them, not less. Kill hidrocarbons all together. Leave the free market so sort out the alternative if you really care about cost.

rich_sasha 5y ago
Nuclear is the one way to solve carbon emissions with nothing but money. Renewables, storage etc, these are not quite solved problems. But we could just throw money at nuclear and get it done. The world was once building reactors like there’s no tomorrow, surely we could restart that. Yeah it’s expensive but so is sea level rise and dealing with hurricanes. And safety? Pollution from burning coal kills so many people every year, I’m slowly beginning to think nuclear safety is a bit if a non issue, even it a plant blows up every now and then.
- RealityVoid 5y ago
  Oh, I am on board with you here! One thing I will object to though - the claim that "one way to solve carbon emissions with nothing but money" - mostly because money is a proxy for human effort and physical resources. "Just money" is not really a thing, at least how I see it. An human effort is a great thing to spent and physical resources as well, but there is a cutoff point where "just money" doesn't cut it, because the underlying resource that money is supposed to buy is simply not enough of around. But that is not the case with nuclear energy. So sorry for the deviation.

rsj_hn 5y ago

I guess it depends on how you price reliability. Solar is cheaper but then factor in the cost of storing solar for 24 hours and it stops looking cheaper. Of course if you are OK with the power not being reliable then you don't need the battery. > At that kind of price point, you are better off building an interconnect to Norway and straight up importing hydro power Except there isn't enough hydro power in Norway to replace France's nuclear production, so looking at the current spot price of a non-scalable resource like hydro doesn't tell you much. That's the problem with hydro -- there are only so many resources to exploit. I'm also not going to touch how you value energy independence, but there is a value to it. Of course importing oil is not energy independent, but you can import oil from many countries, so that is more resilient than a fixed interconnect to Norway. What France could do is try importing LNG or coal or oil, but if the restriction is low carbon power, then you are stuck with nuclear or having the lights go out. This reality is why Germany is importing gas and using coal, and complaining about nuclear isn't going to change that reality.

tuatoru 5y ago
> factor in the cost of storing solar for 24 hours and it stops looking cheaper. Engineering research on grid-scale storage has barely begun. It's really no more than ten years old, except for pumped hydro. Before that it was just ideas and concept studies. Already storage is cheaper than gas peaker plants for some short-run uses according to Lazard. And there are some promising, cheap technologies for other uses (longer duration): iron-air batteries, aluminium-air batteries, latent heat and sensible heat storage (air liquefaction; hot rocks), various flow batteries. Look at the trends, not what the costs were two years ago. Once someone starts to look into this stuff properly, the costs go down quickly. Edit: and if the perovskite R&D comes up with the goods, we'll have dual-layer (2x output) PV panels for the same cost (or less) as single-layer Si panels.