4 ms·

> Well if they're reliable, why is France in this world of hurt right now? This an exceedingly intellectually lazy argument which shows that you're either hor

by izacus 4y ago

> Well if they're reliable, why is France in this world of hurt right now? This an exceedingly intellectually lazy argument which shows that you're either horribly biased (and never engaged with the reading material properly) or didn't even spend a minute thinking through what you're asking. It's somewhere on the level of "well, why is there snow in New York if global warming is happening HUUUUH?!". (Not to mention that the French nukes are in process of being started already.)

zh3 4y ago
Erm, EDF. I'm in favour of nuclear, but EDF/Hinckley Point are how not to do it (I think the only residential consumers they have left have failed to do any sort of shopping around/don't care about the cost - very possibly different for business/vested interests).
- pjerem 4y ago
  That’s not the whole story. EDF is a very competent company which have everything needed to provide cheap electricity to the whole country while making money. The point is (and I think it’s a scandal) that EDF is forced, by law, to resell its nuclear electricity to its competitors at an under the market price. EDF is also required to offer an electricity plan with a law fixed price. Which is a good thing because historically, it allowed end users not to suffer from market price fluctuations. Now what is happening is that all those fake competitors that did resell EDF electricity cheaper than EDF offerings, took their margin for more than a decade and are now asking their customer to unsubscribe and to go back to the EDF fixed-by-law offer.
  - zh3 4y ago
    Eh, EDF charges more money directly than other suppliers (as a direct residential consumer, it was only a couple of years back I discovered how much more expensive they are). Plus as for making money, they are heavilty debt-laden and need the Frech government to bail them out[0]. * [0] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/jul/19/france-to-pay-nearly-10bn-to-fully-nationalise-edf https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/jul/19/france-to-p...
mijoharas 4y ago
I don't think that's fair. If almost 40% of french nuclear is offline right now[0][1] then I think it's reasonable to ask questions about reliability. Could you explain how the position is lazy? (Note: I'm in favour of nuclear power) [0] https://twitter.com/BurggrabenH/status/1567971418255532035 https://twitter.com/BurggrabenH/status/1567971418255532035 [1] Our forecast is for 59% utilisation or 315TWh based on EDF's guidance.
- mijoharas 4y ago
  If you're arguing that the French nuclear run by EDF is unreliable, while the German nuclear power was reliable I'll grant that, but that wasn't what I took from your comment. (It's possible I misinterpreted)
- izacus 4y ago
  For starters: to compare reliability (which is a statistic), you need to first look at more than a single anecdotal time sample. This is like... highschool level stuff. (Which is also the reason why I have very little will to refute your points, because they seem to be done from either dishonesty or ignorance. Anyone on HN is old enough to understand why anecdotal single sample evidence is not a way to refute statistical phenomena). That is to say - even if EDF massively, critically fscked up this time, it has little effect to the reliability of nuclear power as a whole. Just like a single exploding windmill in Denmark doesn't change much about reliability of wind power.
  - mijoharas 4y ago
    Ok, this is ridiculous, given your position, I'm not going to spend long on this but: > Just like a single exploding windmill in Denmark doesn't change much about reliability of wind power First off, you realise France has 56 nuclear power stations? I'm wondering where you're getting "single sample" and "single windmill" from If, over a year, 40% of windmills in Denmark weren't producing power, it would make a hell of a lot of sense to question the reliability of Danish windmills. I don't know why you pulled out the straw man of saying the person was questioning all of nuclear power, but they had a very reasonable fact-based question. I'd be very happy to listen to any data or explanations you could bring, but frankly you don't seem to be discussing things in good faith right now.
locallost 4y ago
They're in the process of being started for months now. It's even mentioned in the tweets that EdF has a poor track record of keeping their word. How much I would know if I would only read the material properly. Reliability is a word and it has a meaning. With that in mind nothing beats renewables because the tech just works and they're so decentralized that a glitch of huge proportions would be needed to make them not work as designed. On the other hand a huge power plant can go out unexpectedly and take a massive part of the grid offline just as unexpectedly. That's unreliable and it's in fact what has happened this year.
- izacus 4y ago
  >They're in the process of being started for months now Of course they are, that's how they work. 6 of them came online in last two weeks. But that's not what you were honestly implying there, is it? > Reliability is a word and it has a meaning. With that in mind nothing beats renewables because the tech just works and they're so decentralized that a glitch of huge proportions would be needed to make them not work as designed. On the other hand a huge power plant can go out unexpectedly and take a massive part of the grid offline just as unexpectedly. That's unreliable and it's in fact what has happened this year. Whatever meaning "reliability" has (especially in practical terms of you getting your power), it's really not what you wrote in the other sentences. Especially it's not a word that means "ignoring drawbacks of whichever option I like."
  - locallost 4y ago
    I am not implying anything at all, I am stating it explicitly, as is the author on Twitter. Here's a quote: > To deliver 315TWh, EDF needs to bring back significant capacity, i.e. solve some of its corrosion issues. Can it? > We will see. EDF has a way to over-promise and under-deliver over the years. So this "major, not minor" - make no mistake. > 32/n The tweet also contains a list of 8 reactors that were supposed to be back earlier but got "delayed". So we can pretend that there's no problem or danger of further delays, but that's just wishful thinking. The market certainly doesn't buy it, the futures prices for France were 2x any other country in Europe for early next year last time I checked. Reliability is in fact a word that has nothing to do with drawbacks of something else. The only thing that matters is, is it delivering on what it said it would do. The issue is you're interpreting what I said based on your assumptions. The word you are maybe thinking of for renewables output is not reliability, but predictability. But even here you'd be wrong since their output can be predicted pretty accurately based on weather forecasts. So they are both reliable and predictable. Nuclear is neither as it was made quite clear this year (and clear in other ways in decades before). You could call renewables variable, since their output, well, varies. But it does so in a predictable and reliable way.
krageon 4y ago
The reading material is essentially an entire twitter thread saying "nuclear is the beginning and the end of the answer and everyone who is against it is not thinking right. Anti-nuclear sentiment is rampant and the problem". I found it profoundly uninteresting so if you feel I should have gotten something else from it, perhaps you can enlighten me with what that was.

by izacus 4y ago

zh3 4y ago

Erm, EDF. I'm in favour of nuclear, but EDF/Hinckley Point are how not to do it (I think the only residential consumers they have left have failed to do any sort of shopping around/don't care about the cost - very possibly different for business/vested interests).

pjerem 4y ago
That’s not the whole story. EDF is a very competent company which have everything needed to provide cheap electricity to the whole country while making money. The point is (and I think it’s a scandal) that EDF is forced, by law, to resell its nuclear electricity to its competitors at an under the market price. EDF is also required to offer an electricity plan with a law fixed price. Which is a good thing because historically, it allowed end users not to suffer from market price fluctuations. Now what is happening is that all those fake competitors that did resell EDF electricity cheaper than EDF offerings, took their margin for more than a decade and are now asking their customer to unsubscribe and to go back to the EDF fixed-by-law offer.
- zh3 4y ago
  Eh, EDF charges more money directly than other suppliers (as a direct residential consumer, it was only a couple of years back I discovered how much more expensive they are). Plus as for making money, they are heavilty debt-laden and need the Frech government to bail them out[0]. * [0] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/jul/19/france-to-pay-nearly-10bn-to-fully-nationalise-edf https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/jul/19/france-to-p...

mijoharas 4y ago

I don't think that's fair. If almost 40% of french nuclear is offline right now[0][1] then I think it's reasonable to ask questions about reliability. Could you explain how the position is lazy? (Note: I'm in favour of nuclear power) [0] https://twitter.com/BurggrabenH/status/1567971418255532035 https://twitter.com/BurggrabenH/status/1567971418255532035 [1] Our forecast is for 59% utilisation or 315TWh based on EDF's guidance.

mijoharas 4y ago
If you're arguing that the French nuclear run by EDF is unreliable, while the German nuclear power was reliable I'll grant that, but that wasn't what I took from your comment. (It's possible I misinterpreted)
izacus 4y ago
For starters: to compare reliability (which is a statistic), you need to first look at more than a single anecdotal time sample. This is like... highschool level stuff. (Which is also the reason why I have very little will to refute your points, because they seem to be done from either dishonesty or ignorance. Anyone on HN is old enough to understand why anecdotal single sample evidence is not a way to refute statistical phenomena). That is to say - even if EDF massively, critically fscked up this time, it has little effect to the reliability of nuclear power as a whole. Just like a single exploding windmill in Denmark doesn't change much about reliability of wind power.
- mijoharas 4y ago
  Ok, this is ridiculous, given your position, I'm not going to spend long on this but: > Just like a single exploding windmill in Denmark doesn't change much about reliability of wind power First off, you realise France has 56 nuclear power stations? I'm wondering where you're getting "single sample" and "single windmill" from If, over a year, 40% of windmills in Denmark weren't producing power, it would make a hell of a lot of sense to question the reliability of Danish windmills. I don't know why you pulled out the straw man of saying the person was questioning all of nuclear power, but they had a very reasonable fact-based question. I'd be very happy to listen to any data or explanations you could bring, but frankly you don't seem to be discussing things in good faith right now.

locallost 4y ago

They're in the process of being started for months now. It's even mentioned in the tweets that EdF has a poor track record of keeping their word. How much I would know if I would only read the material properly. Reliability is a word and it has a meaning. With that in mind nothing beats renewables because the tech just works and they're so decentralized that a glitch of huge proportions would be needed to make them not work as designed. On the other hand a huge power plant can go out unexpectedly and take a massive part of the grid offline just as unexpectedly. That's unreliable and it's in fact what has happened this year.

izacus 4y ago
>They're in the process of being started for months now Of course they are, that's how they work. 6 of them came online in last two weeks. But that's not what you were honestly implying there, is it? > Reliability is a word and it has a meaning. With that in mind nothing beats renewables because the tech just works and they're so decentralized that a glitch of huge proportions would be needed to make them not work as designed. On the other hand a huge power plant can go out unexpectedly and take a massive part of the grid offline just as unexpectedly. That's unreliable and it's in fact what has happened this year. Whatever meaning "reliability" has (especially in practical terms of you getting your power), it's really not what you wrote in the other sentences. Especially it's not a word that means "ignoring drawbacks of whichever option I like."
- locallost 4y ago
  I am not implying anything at all, I am stating it explicitly, as is the author on Twitter. Here's a quote: > To deliver 315TWh, EDF needs to bring back significant capacity, i.e. solve some of its corrosion issues. Can it? > We will see. EDF has a way to over-promise and under-deliver over the years. So this "major, not minor" - make no mistake. > 32/n The tweet also contains a list of 8 reactors that were supposed to be back earlier but got "delayed". So we can pretend that there's no problem or danger of further delays, but that's just wishful thinking. The market certainly doesn't buy it, the futures prices for France were 2x any other country in Europe for early next year last time I checked. Reliability is in fact a word that has nothing to do with drawbacks of something else. The only thing that matters is, is it delivering on what it said it would do. The issue is you're interpreting what I said based on your assumptions. The word you are maybe thinking of for renewables output is not reliability, but predictability. But even here you'd be wrong since their output can be predicted pretty accurately based on weather forecasts. So they are both reliable and predictable. Nuclear is neither as it was made quite clear this year (and clear in other ways in decades before). You could call renewables variable, since their output, well, varies. But it does so in a predictable and reliable way.

krageon 4y ago

The reading material is essentially an entire twitter thread saying "nuclear is the beginning and the end of the answer and everyone who is against it is not thinking right. Anti-nuclear sentiment is rampant and the problem". I found it profoundly uninteresting so if you feel I should have gotten something else from it, perhaps you can enlighten me with what that was.