6 ms·

Without including storage and overbuilding of solar and wind to provide the same capacity factor as nuclear it is not a fair comparison, so it doesn’t point out

Without including storage and overbuilding of solar and wind to provide the same capacity factor as nuclear it is not a fair comparison, so it doesn’t point out how uneconomical this nuclear project is. The attractiveness of 1.6 GW of nuclear power is that it is carbon free, statistically the safest, it is firm energy that can be depended upon 24x7x365, and fuel costs are so trivial nobody even brings them up. All of the opex is in maintenance, staffing, safety and reliability, and that cost is low per MWH.

bluejekyll 5y ago
> All of the opex is in maintenance, staffing, safety and reliability Does this include the higher security needs around nuclear facilities? I left out the construction costs, the Arkwright Summit farm, $125 million. The Solar Star project was $2 billion. This Finnish Nuclear site appears to have cost $12 billion. That makes wind look really good, and solar at least on the same order (and still safer).
- winkeltripel 5y ago
  There are a couple of things to consider. The solar and wind need to be overprovisioned, to feed the grid scale batteries to provide baseload. Those batteries are currently not cost effective, which is why there are very few such batteries in use. If you add in the price of battery, wind and solar look rather pricey. Without the batteries, they are helping us reduce the use of fossil fuel plants, but not helping shut them down. The other thing is the land. Solar and wind each need a substantial % of landmass to have 100% of our power come from those sources. The ongoing costs of running nuclear are also way higher than solar or wind, which matters.
  - markvdb 5y ago
    Look at Latvia. >45% hydro, plenty of space for wind, both on shore and off shore, and hardly any of that potential realised with only 2.2% active wind energy production. Significant public investment in wind energy announced to start construction in... 2026. That is a glacial pace in the face of an ecological and geopolitical crisis situation.
    - ncmncm 5y ago
      Latvia is still climbing out from under Soviet domination. Rich countries should lead.
    - liketochill 5y ago
      4 years planning, That is normal before for starting construction. There are environmental studies to be done first to ensure any damage to the environment the work would cause can be mitigated. There are permits to be issued which must include the mitigation measures. Some design work must be done to get the permits so they know what they are permitting. Land must be purchased, transmission right of ways granted. Enough design work must be done to place the order for long lead time equipment, such as wind turbines. How many, how big, where do they go for best ROI? Some of these permitting steps face opposition and negotiations must take place. This is the process real world infrastructure projects face.
  - nl 5y ago
    No one uses batteries for large scale (eg overnight) storage. They are used for grid stability (eg, 1/2 hour supply). Reliability comes from solar and wind power redundancy and geographic distribution. If your collection area is over a few thousand square kilometres it is very rare for there to be no wind and no sun. Make it a few tens of thousand square kms (which modern high voltage transmission achieves) and your reliability is higher than coal.
    - chelical 5y ago
      Except when the North Sea wind was weaker than usual in 2021, triggering an energy crisis that has persisted to this day. This impacted almost the entirety of Europe and led to a spike in gas prices, since, surprise, all the backup plants rely on gas and coal.
      - ncmncm 5y ago
        Evidently you failed to read "redundancy and geographic distribution". That there is North Sea wind power, howsoever intermittent, is a pure good. Tying it into a larger network makes it better. The solution to local deficits is more localities.
        liketochill 5y ago
        There is not infinite transmission capacity in all directions. It is difficult to get permission to build new transmission lines, which are also expensive.
        nl 5y ago
        Build. More. Transmission. Lines. Transmission lines are not expensive at all compared to nuclear power. This nuclear plant cost $12B and it is a cheap one! Compare that to the SunCable is budgetted at $14B, (AU $20B in the article = US$20B) which is an undersea(!) HVAC cable all the way from Australia to Singapore (3,800km!) AND a 3GW(!) solar farm[1]. By comparison, the distance from Spain to Scotland is 2400km. And when the wind stopped in the North Sea, Spain was setting records in terms of the amount of power generated from wind farms[2] [1] https://www.intelligentliving.co/australian-undersea-sun-cable-power-singapore/ https://www.intelligentliving.co/australian-undersea-sun-cab... [2] https://www.evwind.es/2021/12/03/27-8-of-electricity-came-from-wind-power-in-november-in-spain/83614 https://www.evwind.es/2021/12/03/27-8-of-electricity-came-fr...
shagie 5y ago
> Without including storage and overbuilding of solar and wind There's also the aspect of "how much sun is there?" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_energy_in_Finland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_energy_in_Finland There are a number of issues with photovoltaic solar cells that close to the Arctic Circle.
- Maursault 5y ago
  > There are a number of issues with photovoltaic solar cells that close to the Arctic Circle. What they need up there is a way to generate electricity from darkness.
DasIch 5y ago
You cannot depend on nuclear 24x7x365 as we’ve been able to see in France and Germany the last few years. Hot temperatures in summer cause the temperature of the rivers to increase so much that the water cannot be used for cooling and so these plants have to be shut down. That’s only going to become worse.
- FredPret 5y ago
  That seems like a problem that can be accounted for in the initial design. I’m sure you can design a plant to be cooled down by even 99C water, and if the river is that hot we have other problems.
  - ncmncm 5y ago
    I.e., by increasing cost. But nukes are already not competitive. Increasing cost makes them less so. Their competitiveness is already in sharp decline as alternatives get ever cheaper.
kuhewa 5y ago
> so it doesn’t point out how uneconomical this nuclear project is. It does insofar as it matters for capital. Who wants to invest in a plant that will take at least ten years (but probably more with cost overruns in the billions) before they see a ROI? Especially when the cost per MWH from a renewable project that will be online in 2 years with less risk is already comparable if not more competitive.
- chii 5y ago
  but is a renewable project that matches the capabilities of a nuclear project (to the same degree of reliability and availability) really the same cost? you gotta compare like-for-like. If the solar project that takes 2 years only provide power half the time, then you need double the size to provide the same amortized level of power at night. You also need some form of storage. And that's if you don't have a spate of bad weather preventing it from working - so to amortize that problem you'd need to build yet larger...
  - Gwypaas 5y ago
    No point comparing like for like. The end game is a stabile balanced grid. If that is fulfilled by 100% intermittent or 100% deterministically dispatchable does not affect anything in regards to the end user. All they want is reliably the cheapest power at the time of consumption.
  - kuhewa 5y ago
    That follows if you are playing Sim-City, or I suppose if you think giving the government absolute control over energy production and you want to leave the market completely out of it. I'm just talking the world we live in. To answer more directly though, yeah the power is the same cost. Perhaps when renewable penetration into the energy market is saturated, there will be a greater demand for base load at all those times renewables aren't producing at peak, and that will be reflected in those nuclear MWHs becoming very profitable even at a higher unit cost.
  - nl 5y ago
    The South Australian grid is a great example of how well this approach works. It's mostly (>60%) a mix of solar and wind power, with some gas that fills in the gaps - as well as batteries for grid stability. Still importing some coal power from interstate, but that is decreasing too. The investment has been incremental - so much smaller amounts, with much less risk and therefor more attractive to investors. A large part of this (since 2018) has been done by a conservative state government, who have been highly supportive of the renewable transition. https://theconversation.com/against-the-odds-south-australia-is-a-renewable-energy-powerhouse-how-on-earth-did-they-do-it-153789 https://theconversation.com/against-the-odds-south-australia...
iamcurious 5y ago
>statistically the safest The worst case of nuclear, it is worse than the worst case of solar/wind. So even if it were rational for humanity, it might not be rational for a country. I'm having trouble picturing how it is safer than solar though.
- manicdee 5y ago
  The statistics wrap rooftop solar into the “solar” mix so all those DIY/fly-by-night installers who don’t use safety equipment while working at heights and end up killings themselves make solar by far the deadliest energy source in terms of deaths per MW capacity installed.
  - clusterfish 5y ago
    Bullshit. Coal and petroleum are way deadlier than rooftop solar, even without diluting it with industrial solar installations. https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2008/03/deaths-per-twh-for-all-energy-sources.html https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2008/03/deaths-per-twh-for-all...
Retric 5y ago
Grid solar is statistically significantly safer than Nuclear. Climbing on rooftops can be dangerous, but solar is much better in a dessert than on top of a roof. Nuclear takes longer, is more expensive, has lower ROI, and higher risks. Solar has a lower capacity factor, but having 1/3 the availability at 1/15th the cost is a net win. Especially as we need vastly more power in the daytime and idling Nuclear is really expensive. Currently 3% of global electricity comes from Solar and 16% from hydro with Nuclear only proving 10%. Scaling Nuclear to a significantly on a global scale take not just massive construction and new regulations, but also training etc, we simply don’t have the time.
- seanmcdirmid 5y ago
  Solar works great in some countries, but Finland? I just don't see it working out there.
  - Retric 5y ago
    Yea, though apparently they get 0.3% of their electricity from solar which seems crazy to me.
    - antupis 5y ago
      Actually you need to go southern france northern italy that you get higher solar potential https://www.researchgate.net/figure/PV-solar-electricity-potential-in-Europe-Source-http-rejrceceuropaeu-pvgis_fig1_324541788 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/PV-solar-electricity-pot... big problem is that when you need most electricity(winter) solar is basically 0.
    - qkls 5y ago
      There's sunlight around the clock furing summer. Many summer cottages are off-grid and get all elecricity using solar.
- secondaryacct 5y ago
  Not for the people who would have liked to drink the water used to clean the panels (cf the projects in deserts). Everything has some drawbacks and it s useful to diversify.
natmaka 5y ago
Nuclear isn't (historically) "statistically the safest", and any major accident or hot-waste-related problem may worsen its case. https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy
ncmncm 5y ago
Fuel costs are "not brought up" because they are so much smaller than construction and operation cost, not because they are small. Nuke fuel cost is huge compared to operating cost of solar and wind.

bluejekyll 5y ago

> All of the opex is in maintenance, staffing, safety and reliability Does this include the higher security needs around nuclear facilities? I left out the construction costs, the Arkwright Summit farm, $125 million. The Solar Star project was $2 billion. This Finnish Nuclear site appears to have cost $12 billion. That makes wind look really good, and solar at least on the same order (and still safer).

winkeltripel 5y ago
There are a couple of things to consider. The solar and wind need to be overprovisioned, to feed the grid scale batteries to provide baseload. Those batteries are currently not cost effective, which is why there are very few such batteries in use. If you add in the price of battery, wind and solar look rather pricey. Without the batteries, they are helping us reduce the use of fossil fuel plants, but not helping shut them down. The other thing is the land. Solar and wind each need a substantial % of landmass to have 100% of our power come from those sources. The ongoing costs of running nuclear are also way higher than solar or wind, which matters.
- markvdb 5y ago
  Look at Latvia. >45% hydro, plenty of space for wind, both on shore and off shore, and hardly any of that potential realised with only 2.2% active wind energy production. Significant public investment in wind energy announced to start construction in... 2026. That is a glacial pace in the face of an ecological and geopolitical crisis situation.
  - ncmncm 5y ago
    Latvia is still climbing out from under Soviet domination. Rich countries should lead.
  - liketochill 5y ago
    4 years planning, That is normal before for starting construction. There are environmental studies to be done first to ensure any damage to the environment the work would cause can be mitigated. There are permits to be issued which must include the mitigation measures. Some design work must be done to get the permits so they know what they are permitting. Land must be purchased, transmission right of ways granted. Enough design work must be done to place the order for long lead time equipment, such as wind turbines. How many, how big, where do they go for best ROI? Some of these permitting steps face opposition and negotiations must take place. This is the process real world infrastructure projects face.
- nl 5y ago
  No one uses batteries for large scale (eg overnight) storage. They are used for grid stability (eg, 1/2 hour supply). Reliability comes from solar and wind power redundancy and geographic distribution. If your collection area is over a few thousand square kilometres it is very rare for there to be no wind and no sun. Make it a few tens of thousand square kms (which modern high voltage transmission achieves) and your reliability is higher than coal.
  - chelical 5y ago
    Except when the North Sea wind was weaker than usual in 2021, triggering an energy crisis that has persisted to this day. This impacted almost the entirety of Europe and led to a spike in gas prices, since, surprise, all the backup plants rely on gas and coal.
    - ncmncm 5y ago
      Evidently you failed to read "redundancy and geographic distribution". That there is North Sea wind power, howsoever intermittent, is a pure good. Tying it into a larger network makes it better. The solution to local deficits is more localities.
      - liketochill 5y ago
        There is not infinite transmission capacity in all directions. It is difficult to get permission to build new transmission lines, which are also expensive.
        nl 5y ago
        Build. More. Transmission. Lines. Transmission lines are not expensive at all compared to nuclear power. This nuclear plant cost $12B and it is a cheap one! Compare that to the SunCable is budgetted at $14B, (AU $20B in the article = US$20B) which is an undersea(!) HVAC cable all the way from Australia to Singapore (3,800km!) AND a 3GW(!) solar farm[1]. By comparison, the distance from Spain to Scotland is 2400km. And when the wind stopped in the North Sea, Spain was setting records in terms of the amount of power generated from wind farms[2] [1] https://www.intelligentliving.co/australian-undersea-sun-cable-power-singapore/ https://www.intelligentliving.co/australian-undersea-sun-cab... [2] https://www.evwind.es/2021/12/03/27-8-of-electricity-came-from-wind-power-in-november-in-spain/83614 https://www.evwind.es/2021/12/03/27-8-of-electricity-came-fr...

shagie 5y ago

> Without including storage and overbuilding of solar and wind There's also the aspect of "how much sun is there?" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_energy_in_Finland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_energy_in_Finland There are a number of issues with photovoltaic solar cells that close to the Arctic Circle.

Maursault 5y ago
> There are a number of issues with photovoltaic solar cells that close to the Arctic Circle. What they need up there is a way to generate electricity from darkness.

DasIch 5y ago

You cannot depend on nuclear 24x7x365 as we’ve been able to see in France and Germany the last few years. Hot temperatures in summer cause the temperature of the rivers to increase so much that the water cannot be used for cooling and so these plants have to be shut down. That’s only going to become worse.

FredPret 5y ago
That seems like a problem that can be accounted for in the initial design. I’m sure you can design a plant to be cooled down by even 99C water, and if the river is that hot we have other problems.
- ncmncm 5y ago
  I.e., by increasing cost. But nukes are already not competitive. Increasing cost makes them less so. Their competitiveness is already in sharp decline as alternatives get ever cheaper.

kuhewa 5y ago

> so it doesn’t point out how uneconomical this nuclear project is. It does insofar as it matters for capital. Who wants to invest in a plant that will take at least ten years (but probably more with cost overruns in the billions) before they see a ROI? Especially when the cost per MWH from a renewable project that will be online in 2 years with less risk is already comparable if not more competitive.

chii 5y ago
but is a renewable project that matches the capabilities of a nuclear project (to the same degree of reliability and availability) really the same cost? you gotta compare like-for-like. If the solar project that takes 2 years only provide power half the time, then you need double the size to provide the same amortized level of power at night. You also need some form of storage. And that's if you don't have a spate of bad weather preventing it from working - so to amortize that problem you'd need to build yet larger...
- Gwypaas 5y ago
  No point comparing like for like. The end game is a stabile balanced grid. If that is fulfilled by 100% intermittent or 100% deterministically dispatchable does not affect anything in regards to the end user. All they want is reliably the cheapest power at the time of consumption.
- kuhewa 5y ago
  That follows if you are playing Sim-City, or I suppose if you think giving the government absolute control over energy production and you want to leave the market completely out of it. I'm just talking the world we live in. To answer more directly though, yeah the power is the same cost. Perhaps when renewable penetration into the energy market is saturated, there will be a greater demand for base load at all those times renewables aren't producing at peak, and that will be reflected in those nuclear MWHs becoming very profitable even at a higher unit cost.
- nl 5y ago
  The South Australian grid is a great example of how well this approach works. It's mostly (>60%) a mix of solar and wind power, with some gas that fills in the gaps - as well as batteries for grid stability. Still importing some coal power from interstate, but that is decreasing too. The investment has been incremental - so much smaller amounts, with much less risk and therefor more attractive to investors. A large part of this (since 2018) has been done by a conservative state government, who have been highly supportive of the renewable transition. https://theconversation.com/against-the-odds-south-australia-is-a-renewable-energy-powerhouse-how-on-earth-did-they-do-it-153789 https://theconversation.com/against-the-odds-south-australia...

iamcurious 5y ago

>statistically the safest The worst case of nuclear, it is worse than the worst case of solar/wind. So even if it were rational for humanity, it might not be rational for a country. I'm having trouble picturing how it is safer than solar though.

manicdee 5y ago
The statistics wrap rooftop solar into the “solar” mix so all those DIY/fly-by-night installers who don’t use safety equipment while working at heights and end up killings themselves make solar by far the deadliest energy source in terms of deaths per MW capacity installed.
- clusterfish 5y ago
  Bullshit. Coal and petroleum are way deadlier than rooftop solar, even without diluting it with industrial solar installations. https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2008/03/deaths-per-twh-for-all-energy-sources.html https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2008/03/deaths-per-twh-for-all...

Retric 5y ago

Grid solar is statistically significantly safer than Nuclear. Climbing on rooftops can be dangerous, but solar is much better in a dessert than on top of a roof. Nuclear takes longer, is more expensive, has lower ROI, and higher risks. Solar has a lower capacity factor, but having 1/3 the availability at 1/15th the cost is a net win. Especially as we need vastly more power in the daytime and idling Nuclear is really expensive. Currently 3% of global electricity comes from Solar and 16% from hydro with Nuclear only proving 10%. Scaling Nuclear to a significantly on a global scale take not just massive construction and new regulations, but also training etc, we simply don’t have the time.

seanmcdirmid 5y ago
Solar works great in some countries, but Finland? I just don't see it working out there.
- Retric 5y ago
  Yea, though apparently they get 0.3% of their electricity from solar which seems crazy to me.
  - antupis 5y ago
    Actually you need to go southern france northern italy that you get higher solar potential https://www.researchgate.net/figure/PV-solar-electricity-potential-in-Europe-Source-http-rejrceceuropaeu-pvgis_fig1_324541788 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/PV-solar-electricity-pot... big problem is that when you need most electricity(winter) solar is basically 0.
  - qkls 5y ago
    There's sunlight around the clock furing summer. Many summer cottages are off-grid and get all elecricity using solar.
secondaryacct 5y ago
Not for the people who would have liked to drink the water used to clean the panels (cf the projects in deserts). Everything has some drawbacks and it s useful to diversify.

natmaka 5y ago

Nuclear isn't (historically) "statistically the safest", and any major accident or hot-waste-related problem may worsen its case. https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy

ncmncm 5y ago

Fuel costs are "not brought up" because they are so much smaller than construction and operation cost, not because they are small. Nuke fuel cost is huge compared to operating cost of solar and wind.