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Telling that nuclear is a bad technology (compared to wind and solar that are not even competing with nuclear) then suggesting to use a WAY worse technology (re

• idiotsecant 5y ago
  I mean, obviously they have the advantage of not requiring nuclear fuel.
• pfdietz 5y ago
  Of course wind and solar compete with nuclear. At large penetration, wind and solar make the grid unfriendly to nuclear, as the price drops too often for a nuclear power plant to be economical. Both renewables and nuclear are inflexible, and are competing for the ability of the grid to deal with inflexible sources. If you look at model solutions to a renewable/storage/nuclear grid, the solutions tend to flip from "mostly nuclear" to "mostly renewable" with little overlap, depending on cost assumptions.
  • redisman 5y ago
    Nuclear should be subsidized to keep them online for sure. All governments should want a backbone that can work under any circumstances (excerpt flooding I guess )
    • pfdietz 5y ago
      A bigger subsidy issue is wind/solar being given credits for power produced. So, they keep pumping out and putting power onto the grid even when prices go negative. Only when the negative price is lower than -subsidy do they curtail. This is terrible for existing nuclear plants. What the grid really needs is transparency at the customer level of real time power costs.
      • p_l 5y ago
        I'd like to see a system that prioritised power purchasing depending on predictability, not instant price. So first buy goes to power plants (including virtual power plants) that can provide stable power generation given a specific window of time - whether that that's nuclear, hydro, or solar+wind+battery+hydrogen - so long as it's close to zero emissions and will pump out required power no matter the weather over specified time. Let wind/solar fight over peak power, or consolidate into virtual power plants with storage operators (it should also incentivize buildout of storage, so win-win in my book)
        • pfdietz 5y ago
          I would like to see uncertainty and intermittency exposed to consumers, with contracts that allow power to be curtailed in various ways. The less you value consistency, the less you would pay (up to a point.) Or, if you contract for a certain level of reliability, you could stipulate the payment you'd get if that were violated.
          • p_l 5y ago
            This is already done for industrial consumers that have necessary infrastructure installed - there are also some projects to enable demand response for individual consumers. The problem is you can't just expose the prices without appropriate infrastructure support on the consumer side.
            • pfdietz 5y ago
              I was imagining consumers having contracts that stipulate how much the utility can turn their consumption on and off, and how often, and under what circumstances. This wouldn't necessarily require any real time decisions on the part of the consumers, although smart appliances that the utility could control would help. This is already available to a limited extent, with things like remotely controllable water heaters and AC compressors.
• Arnt 5y ago
  You asked for one, so one is what you'll get: The possible liability from a nuclear accident so large that it basically isn't insurable, because insurance agencies won't promise to pay a sum that large. A dam may be located in such a spot that the worst-case liability is insurable, ie. the electricity can be fairly and properly priced in our present model of society. (Not necessarily. If the dam could flood Paris and the smaller cities further down the Seine, insurance agencies might refuse to insure that one fully, of course.)
  • gambiting 5y ago
    That's just one of few reasons why nuclear power plants shouldn't be owned by private corporations. They should be owned and ran by national operators, so then you don't have the issue of insurable events or worry about private operators not paying for decommissioning the plants at the end of their livespan. Power generation is a matter of national security, so nations should be paying for those plants from the national budget.
    • Arnt 5y ago
      Worry about insurable events doesn't go away — the central bank can only print money as long as trust in the currency stays, and that trust isn't infinite.
      • dragonwriter 5y ago
        > the central bank can only print money as long as trust in the currency stays, and that trust isn't infinite. The central bank can print money without bound. Some of the effects of money printing changes with confidence in the currency, but the core effects that it targets don't really change until people radically change behavior to reduce use of the currency as a medium or even measuring stick for routine transactions.
        • Arnt 5y ago
          If people stop treating it as money, then is the thing the central bank prints still money? It can print more of the thing, sure. Anyway, this isn't relevant to my argument upstream — it just changes the reason why nuclear reactors aren't properly pricable in our market economy, from "can't be insured due to worst case" to "worst case can destroy the currency". (It also doesn't rule out other argumens, pro or contra.)
• m4rtink 5y ago
  Why do you think pumped storage hydro plants are worse (thank what) ? They are not ever strictly power plants, rather they provided the much needed buffer to store energy during fluctuating demand and/or supply. Pumped storage is also completely compatible with both nuclear base load (store extra from base load that can't be easily throttled) and unpredictable renewables sources (store extra when needed, cover - reasonably short - periods of no supply from the source.