8 ms·

Do you have a better explanation? What were the "economic reasons" that caused three nuclear stations to shut down, if it wasn't the availability of cheap renew

Do you have a better explanation? What were the "economic reasons" that caused three nuclear stations to shut down, if it wasn't the availability of cheap renewable electricity?

JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> What were the "economic reasons" that caused three nuclear stations to shut down, if it wasn't the availability of cheap renewable electricity Not saying the following is the case, but the sample space is broad. For example, overregulation.
- revertmean 4y ago
  The fuller quote from the PSEG page is: "Since the first ZECs eligibility period began, power markets have deteriorated significantly, thus the financial needs of New Jersey's nuclear plants have continued to grow. Nationwide, nuclear plants continue to struggle economically to survive. Since 2018, three nuclear plants have closed in the eastern U.S., all for economic reasons, and the impact has had a ripple effect." So, they aren't blaming regulations, they're blaming the fact that the power markets have "deteriorated" ie. there is less money to be made. Nuclear clearly hasn't become cheaper, and neither have fossil fuels, so what exactly has led to this cheaper electricity if it isn't the plummeting price of renewables?
  - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
    > they aren't blaming regulations Yet no evidence for this is raised. I don’t believe an abandonment of nuclear R&D is solely to blame. But I haven’t seen sufficient evidence to discard the hypothesis.
    - revertmean 4y ago
      No evidence for what? I'm genuinely baffled here. They're the nuclear power company; surely they would know the reasons they need a subsidy?!
    - derriz 4y ago
      The industry lobbies heavily (as described in the article and well documented in other sources) for subsidies not reduced regulation. This suggests the nuclear industry's issues are financial not regulatory. This conclusion would also agree with most financial analysis of wholesale electricity markets where nuclear electricity is multiple times the price per MWh compared to not just renewables but also CCGT. Wind, solar and gas turbines are the only competitive generation technologies available currently.
      - pigeonhole123 4y ago
        Don't big players in every industry lobby for more regulation? Does this mean that this is what is good for the markets they are dominant in? I fail to see this implication.
        derriz 4y ago
        The nuclear industry is dying on aggregate globally, as indicated by metrics such as market share, overall capacity or price competitiveness. Nuclear proponents often blame the cost of meeting onerous (and by implication unreasonable) regulations for the fact that it cannot compete on price. Most of the rest of the electricity energy sector campaign for LESS regulation - the coal power industry is notable example but you see this even in the renewables space where, for example, wind producers would like to have more freedom to site turbines. The fact that the nuclear industry puts nearly all its lobbying effort into securing financial support instead of attacking regulations, suggests that regulation is not the reason why nuclear is failing to survive but that it's simply because of price/cost. The other notable example I can think of in the energy sector is with directly growing biofuels. A similarly uneconomic way of providing energy that couldn't exist without massive subsidy.
- dale_glass 4y ago
  So which regulations are superfluous and expensive? There's much talk of overregulation from nuclear proponents, but I've yet to hear of specific examples. Specifically, I want examples of laws that are expensive to comply with but clearly unnecessary. The thing about nuclear is that regulation is clearly highly necessary in the industry -- there's still plenty existing power plants like Fukushima that are not safe to walk away from, and that can only exist safely when they're competently monitored, and their weaknesses are shored up. And in fact, accidents result in more, expensive but reasonable regulation. One of the conclusions from Fukushima was that you needed the ability to hook up emergency power and water to a power plant in the event of a disaster, even one that destroys roads. Had people gotten to Fukushima in time with the right tools, it'd have been far less dramatic and less expensive. So that's a quite reasonable thing to want. However, this means that now there need to be tools and spare parts that can be carried by a helicopter in reasonable time. The existence of those tools, parts and helicopters however all costs money, and so is their continued testing and maintenance. And yet again nuclear gets more expensive as we patch another hole, while renewables are not affected.
  - thereisnospork 4y ago
    > So which regulations are superfluous and expensive? There's much talk of overregulation from nuclear proponents, but I've yet to hear of specific examples. Specifically, I want examples of laws that are expensive to comply with but clearly unnecessary. for instance: In CA Diablo Canyon is catching flak over the effect its cooling water has on the local sealife (gmafb) which is at least part of the official reason it is intending to shutdown.
    - dale_glass 4y ago
      That seems like a perfectly reasonable concern, though. Now you might argue that power production is going to unavoidably kill something, and we have to make a choice about what's the lesser evil -- do we poison everything with coal, overheat fish with nuclear power plant cooling, smash birds with wind turbines, or set them on fire with a solar heliostat? We might well decide that it comes out in favor of nuclear there, but if we're minimizing harm then harm has to be measured, accounted for, and limited, and therefore regulating this particular thing makes perfect sense.
pyrale 4y ago
The availability of cheap gas is also a necessary component. That is the silent partner when people talk about renewables, usually [1]. And of course, oil companies aren't exactly small corporations, so there are also subsidies there [2][3]. [1]: https://www.powermag.com/more-than-32-gw-of-new-gas-fired-power-plants-in-u-s-pipeline/ https://www.powermag.com/more-than-32-gw-of-new-gas-fired-po... [2]: https://www.sei.org/publications/subsidies-shale-oil-and-gas/ https://www.sei.org/publications/subsidies-shale-oil-and-gas... [3]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2020/03/20/we-must-not-let-the-shale-industry-go-bankrupt/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2020/03/20/we-must-not-...
- revertmean 4y ago
  That makes sense. Could well be. Has significantly more gas been added than renewables over that past decade or so?
  - pyrale 4y ago
    Not likely, but I don't have US stats. Usually, the numbers you get are installed capacity. They aren't really helpful, because renewables load factor is significantly lower than other energies. That being said, even factoring that out and relying on demand fulfilled instead, a renewables+gas system still usually sources most of its energy from renewables. If you see a system where most of the power comes from fossil fuel, that means renewables aren't dimensioned to service all the power needs.
    - trashtester 4y ago
      I don't know about hte US, but here is a graph from Germany: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/gallery_image/public/paragraphs/images/fig9-german-energy-sources-share-primary-energy-consumption-1990-2021.png?itok=9gMG_K24 https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/g... In 2022, the last nuclear plants were shut down. I expect that capacity was replaced by either import or fossil fuels + any new renewable capacity since last year. By inspecting the graph, it seems that their current consumption includes about 2000 PJ of renewables, which is maybe slightly more than the production from nuclear was 20 years ago. https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/gallery_image/public/paragraphs/images/fig9-german-energy-sources-share-primary-energy-consumption-1990-2021.png?itok=9gMG_K24 https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/g... If you compare this to a graph of installed capacity you see how misleading it is to look at installed capacity, where you get the impression that more than half of Germany's power comes from renewables: https://www.google.com/search?q=german+energy+consumption+by+source&rlz=1C1ONGR_enNO954NO954&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjOrKWvuIf4AhVIxIsKHV_mCYEQ_AUoAXoECAEQAw&biw=1719&bih=1429&dpr=1.38#imgrc=I3b_X0VdjBcUYM https://www.google.com/search?q=german+energy+consumption+by... In reality, it looks like Germany gets about 15-20% of their energy from renewables. Over the last 20 years, energy prices in Germany have roughly doubled, while the amount of energy produced by carbon-neutral sources is about the same (nuclear was replaced by renewables). Total greenhouse gas emissions have gone down a bit, due to reduced overall consumption and the replacement of coal with gas.
Mrdarknezz 4y ago
Well I think comparing intermittent energy with baseload energy 1:1 is kind of unfair since they fill different functions in the grid. It's cheaper and less risky to produce a bike than a train. Both are a means of transportation but you can't replace trains with bikes or bikes with trains.
- revertmean 4y ago
  I suppose you could complain to the grid operators that they're being unfair in buying the cheapest electricity rather than the more expensive stuff, but I'm not sure it will sway them much :) Is electricity in the US socialized? I thought they were all private companies, but you seem to be talking as though this is a political choice, rather than an economic one. I freely admit I don't know much about how the US operates its grids.
  - klabb3 4y ago
    As a baseload source, it is likely that nuclear has been out-competed by "natural" gas, and other fossils (and hydro, where available), but when we start shutting those down, we're likely to want our nuclear back. Saying nuclear is uneconomical compared to wind/solar is dishonest without mentioning baseload (comparing price only when one source is abundant).
    - trashtester 4y ago
      In practice, what seems to happen if you shut down nuclear in favour of renewables, is that renewables will replace maybe 30-50% of the nuclear power, and the rest will be covered by gas. The total price tends to end up around $0.15/kwh, plus taxes, or around the same as new nuclear, with all associated regulations. (but more than already established nuclear, or the cost nuclear should have if built economically). For those who really care about global warming, nuclear is still much better than such a mix. If you're really not worried about global warming, gas + renewables make a lot more sense. Especially if you don't want coal or nuclear "in your back yard".
  - sanderjd 4y ago

Do you have a better explanation? What were the "economic reasons" that caused three nuclear stations to shut down, if it wasn't the availability of cheap renewable electricity?

JumpCrisscross 4y ago

> What were the "economic reasons" that caused three nuclear stations to shut down, if it wasn't the availability of cheap renewable electricity Not saying the following is the case, but the sample space is broad. For example, overregulation.

revertmean 4y ago
The fuller quote from the PSEG page is: "Since the first ZECs eligibility period began, power markets have deteriorated significantly, thus the financial needs of New Jersey's nuclear plants have continued to grow. Nationwide, nuclear plants continue to struggle economically to survive. Since 2018, three nuclear plants have closed in the eastern U.S., all for economic reasons, and the impact has had a ripple effect." So, they aren't blaming regulations, they're blaming the fact that the power markets have "deteriorated" ie. there is less money to be made. Nuclear clearly hasn't become cheaper, and neither have fossil fuels, so what exactly has led to this cheaper electricity if it isn't the plummeting price of renewables?
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > they aren't blaming regulations Yet no evidence for this is raised. I don’t believe an abandonment of nuclear R&D is solely to blame. But I haven’t seen sufficient evidence to discard the hypothesis.
  - revertmean 4y ago
    No evidence for what? I'm genuinely baffled here. They're the nuclear power company; surely they would know the reasons they need a subsidy?!
  - derriz 4y ago
    The industry lobbies heavily (as described in the article and well documented in other sources) for subsidies not reduced regulation. This suggests the nuclear industry's issues are financial not regulatory. This conclusion would also agree with most financial analysis of wholesale electricity markets where nuclear electricity is multiple times the price per MWh compared to not just renewables but also CCGT. Wind, solar and gas turbines are the only competitive generation technologies available currently.
    - pigeonhole123 4y ago
      Don't big players in every industry lobby for more regulation? Does this mean that this is what is good for the markets they are dominant in? I fail to see this implication.
      - derriz 4y ago
        The nuclear industry is dying on aggregate globally, as indicated by metrics such as market share, overall capacity or price competitiveness. Nuclear proponents often blame the cost of meeting onerous (and by implication unreasonable) regulations for the fact that it cannot compete on price. Most of the rest of the electricity energy sector campaign for LESS regulation - the coal power industry is notable example but you see this even in the renewables space where, for example, wind producers would like to have more freedom to site turbines. The fact that the nuclear industry puts nearly all its lobbying effort into securing financial support instead of attacking regulations, suggests that regulation is not the reason why nuclear is failing to survive but that it's simply because of price/cost. The other notable example I can think of in the energy sector is with directly growing biofuels. A similarly uneconomic way of providing energy that couldn't exist without massive subsidy.
dale_glass 4y ago
So which regulations are superfluous and expensive? There's much talk of overregulation from nuclear proponents, but I've yet to hear of specific examples. Specifically, I want examples of laws that are expensive to comply with but clearly unnecessary. The thing about nuclear is that regulation is clearly highly necessary in the industry -- there's still plenty existing power plants like Fukushima that are not safe to walk away from, and that can only exist safely when they're competently monitored, and their weaknesses are shored up. And in fact, accidents result in more, expensive but reasonable regulation. One of the conclusions from Fukushima was that you needed the ability to hook up emergency power and water to a power plant in the event of a disaster, even one that destroys roads. Had people gotten to Fukushima in time with the right tools, it'd have been far less dramatic and less expensive. So that's a quite reasonable thing to want. However, this means that now there need to be tools and spare parts that can be carried by a helicopter in reasonable time. The existence of those tools, parts and helicopters however all costs money, and so is their continued testing and maintenance. And yet again nuclear gets more expensive as we patch another hole, while renewables are not affected.
- thereisnospork 4y ago
  > So which regulations are superfluous and expensive? There's much talk of overregulation from nuclear proponents, but I've yet to hear of specific examples. Specifically, I want examples of laws that are expensive to comply with but clearly unnecessary. for instance: In CA Diablo Canyon is catching flak over the effect its cooling water has on the local sealife (gmafb) which is at least part of the official reason it is intending to shutdown.
  - dale_glass 4y ago
    That seems like a perfectly reasonable concern, though. Now you might argue that power production is going to unavoidably kill something, and we have to make a choice about what's the lesser evil -- do we poison everything with coal, overheat fish with nuclear power plant cooling, smash birds with wind turbines, or set them on fire with a solar heliostat? We might well decide that it comes out in favor of nuclear there, but if we're minimizing harm then harm has to be measured, accounted for, and limited, and therefore regulating this particular thing makes perfect sense.

pyrale 4y ago

The availability of cheap gas is also a necessary component. That is the silent partner when people talk about renewables, usually [1]. And of course, oil companies aren't exactly small corporations, so there are also subsidies there [2][3]. [1]: https://www.powermag.com/more-than-32-gw-of-new-gas-fired-power-plants-in-u-s-pipeline/ https://www.powermag.com/more-than-32-gw-of-new-gas-fired-po... [2]: https://www.sei.org/publications/subsidies-shale-oil-and-gas/ https://www.sei.org/publications/subsidies-shale-oil-and-gas... [3]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2020/03/20/we-must-not-let-the-shale-industry-go-bankrupt/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2020/03/20/we-must-not-...

revertmean 4y ago
That makes sense. Could well be. Has significantly more gas been added than renewables over that past decade or so?
- pyrale 4y ago
  Not likely, but I don't have US stats. Usually, the numbers you get are installed capacity. They aren't really helpful, because renewables load factor is significantly lower than other energies. That being said, even factoring that out and relying on demand fulfilled instead, a renewables+gas system still usually sources most of its energy from renewables. If you see a system where most of the power comes from fossil fuel, that means renewables aren't dimensioned to service all the power needs.
  - trashtester 4y ago
    I don't know about hte US, but here is a graph from Germany: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/gallery_image/public/paragraphs/images/fig9-german-energy-sources-share-primary-energy-consumption-1990-2021.png?itok=9gMG_K24 https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/g... In 2022, the last nuclear plants were shut down. I expect that capacity was replaced by either import or fossil fuels + any new renewable capacity since last year. By inspecting the graph, it seems that their current consumption includes about 2000 PJ of renewables, which is maybe slightly more than the production from nuclear was 20 years ago. https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/gallery_image/public/paragraphs/images/fig9-german-energy-sources-share-primary-energy-consumption-1990-2021.png?itok=9gMG_K24 https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/g... If you compare this to a graph of installed capacity you see how misleading it is to look at installed capacity, where you get the impression that more than half of Germany's power comes from renewables: https://www.google.com/search?q=german+energy+consumption+by+source&rlz=1C1ONGR_enNO954NO954&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjOrKWvuIf4AhVIxIsKHV_mCYEQ_AUoAXoECAEQAw&biw=1719&bih=1429&dpr=1.38#imgrc=I3b_X0VdjBcUYM https://www.google.com/search?q=german+energy+consumption+by... In reality, it looks like Germany gets about 15-20% of their energy from renewables. Over the last 20 years, energy prices in Germany have roughly doubled, while the amount of energy produced by carbon-neutral sources is about the same (nuclear was replaced by renewables). Total greenhouse gas emissions have gone down a bit, due to reduced overall consumption and the replacement of coal with gas.

Mrdarknezz 4y ago

Well I think comparing intermittent energy with baseload energy 1:1 is kind of unfair since they fill different functions in the grid. It's cheaper and less risky to produce a bike than a train. Both are a means of transportation but you can't replace trains with bikes or bikes with trains.

revertmean 4y ago
I suppose you could complain to the grid operators that they're being unfair in buying the cheapest electricity rather than the more expensive stuff, but I'm not sure it will sway them much :) Is electricity in the US socialized? I thought they were all private companies, but you seem to be talking as though this is a political choice, rather than an economic one. I freely admit I don't know much about how the US operates its grids.
- klabb3 4y ago
  As a baseload source, it is likely that nuclear has been out-competed by "natural" gas, and other fossils (and hydro, where available), but when we start shutting those down, we're likely to want our nuclear back. Saying nuclear is uneconomical compared to wind/solar is dishonest without mentioning baseload (comparing price only when one source is abundant).
  - trashtester 4y ago
    In practice, what seems to happen if you shut down nuclear in favour of renewables, is that renewables will replace maybe 30-50% of the nuclear power, and the rest will be covered by gas. The total price tends to end up around $0.15/kwh, plus taxes, or around the same as new nuclear, with all associated regulations. (but more than already established nuclear, or the cost nuclear should have if built economically). For those who really care about global warming, nuclear is still much better than such a mix. If you're really not worried about global warming, gas + renewables make a lot more sense. Especially if you don't want coal or nuclear "in your back yard".
- sanderjd 4y ago