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> I like the fact that the Greens are finally considering nuclear. it's more likely that the electorate is now finally capable of accepting nuclear. The greens
by chii 4y ago
> I like the fact that the Greens are finally considering nuclear.
it's more likely that the electorate is now finally capable of accepting nuclear. The greens are merely trying to get votes and attempt to make their policies match what their electorates would vote for.
I think the previous fear about nuclear is mostly misinformed, and bad PR from high profile accidents isn't helping.
Nuclear is fairly clean, cheap, and available. We really should consider it as a viable source for the long term future.
- mikeyouse 4y agoExcept it’s not remotely cheap. Guaranteeing rates on new build nuclear is like 6x more expensive than wind resources and at least 4x higher than say combined cycle natural gas. If the new reactor at Hinkley is ever completed, it’s going to cost over $0.15/kWh wholesale which is more than I’m paying retail at the moment.
- tcoff91 4y agoMan I’m paying 0.33 to $0.52 per kWh. I’d love to pay 0.15
- GoOnThenDoTell 4y agoI think my generator in santa clara charges something like 15c (flat) before distribution, which gets to 31c/41c/49cents depending on usage level. Nuclear seems like a normal price for the bay area
- zbrozek 4y agoThat sounds like PG&E pricing, not SVP pricing. Anybody on PG&E should have solar panels. Hang them off your balcony if you have to. The electricity rates are astronomical. http://zlnp.net/serve/pge_rates/pge-electric-rates.png http://zlnp.net/serve/pge_rates/pge-electric-rates.png
- hedora 4y agoAlso, demand California implement community net metering (allowing you to buy a percentage ownership of panels in a nearby parking lot, etc, and applying their generation to your power bill.)
- mikeyouse 4y agoIn honesty, I was being modest with my "under $0.15/KWh" -- it's actually fixed price at $0.114/KWh. So I can run my heat pump to cool my house, my heat pump to warm my pool, and my electric car charger at 1pm on July 4th and still pay $0.114. It's a really great deal from a well-run local power company in the Midwest US. There is a fair amount of coal in the mix still (about 1/3 of summer generating capacity) which is being phased out over the next few years so we'll see what happens to rates.
- JanSt 4y agoIn Germany we have massive wind and solar capacity (120GW) and phased out nuclear. Energy prices have constantly risen to above 35c/kwh and our dependeny on gas grew. At the moment it‘s above 55c/kwh for new contracts. We still have very dirty electricity because so much coal and gas have to be burned
- adrianN 4y agoIt would of course have been better for the climate to turn off the coal plants first, but it's fallacious to judge the cost of different electricity sources by the retail price of electricity.
- olau 4y agoNo, the wind and solar capacity is not massive, in fact it is far too small. If it were much bigger, you would have much lower prices. Electricity in Europe is expensive at the moment because of fuel prices. Also, I don't have the numbers nearby, but I believe gas is mostly used for heating in Germany. Your heating system is outdated - you just didn't care because of the cheap gas from the east. Stop blaming the technologies that can actually fix this.
- zaarn 4y agoThe Schröder Government pushed for massive reforms to install Gas heating in homes. At the time this was more efficient than nighttime electric boiler heating, wood heaters or oil boilers. A modern caloric gas oven is fairly efficient overall. Of course, one most realize that Schröder left the office having signed Nord Stream I only days prior and then immediately proceeded to join the Gazprom Board of Directors as well as serving as Director for the Nord Stream I Ltd. company and later Nord Stream II Ltd. That might be a minor case of corruption, possibly. Who knows, courts haven't decided yet. The Merkel cabinet I-IV never really pushed to change it, since gas was working fine for the status quo.
- u320 4y agoGas is used to cover for wind and solar when that is not delivering. You cannot replace that by more wind and solar.
- adastra22 4y ago1. Most of that cost is an apples to oranges comparison as the nuclear plants are required to fully fund decommissioning upfront, whereas dismantling a wind farm (even if just turbine by turbine as they break down) isn’t priced into that alternative. apples-to-apples it’s not that much more expensive upfront cost, and significantly cheaper over 50+ years of operation. 2. Most of the real costs that exist for nuclear are construction. Repurposing coal plants saves a good chunk of that.
- adrianN 4y agoDismantling a couple hundred wind turbines seems like a significantly easier job than dismantling a nuclear power plant. You also don't need state-funded insurance against catastrophic failure for wind turbines. Normal insurance can be bought.
- Huh1337 4y agoYou decommission a nuclear plant only once, after 60-100 years of operation (or even later). You need to replace the wind turbine blades every 15-25 years - the blades could literally fly apart if you didn't. And there's no good way to recycle them, so it goes into landfill. Not great.
- Reason077 4y agoNot many nuclear plants last for 60-100 years. Most existing ones have an operational life of about 40 years. Those that run longer have invariably received an extensive (and expensive) mid-life refurbishment. Then they are left in a shutdown, de-fuelled state (safe storage) for 60 years or so before they can be safely dismantled. This whole process is very expensive, in part because you have to pay to manage and maintain the site for such a long time. Decommissioning all the UK’s existing civil nuclear sites is estimated to cost taxpayers over £132bn, and the work will not be complete for 120 years.
- Huh1337 4y agoSure, refurbishment is necessary - my country just went through the process after 35 years of operation of the oldest reactors, now it's certified for 50 years more and another refurbishment is expected after that - not decommissioning. It wasn't that bad. We pay more for maintenance of the little wind power we have (less than 15% of our energy production on windy days) than we pay for nuclear reactor refurbishment (>30% of our baseload, works all day and night, all year).
- danw1979 4y agoYup but you won’t be paying less than £0.30/kWh flat-rate pretty soon. Hinkley is stupidly expensive and I doubt the capacity factor will turn out any better than wind and batteries, but I still think we should build a few more nuclear power stations - the public will turn hard against renewables at the first sniff of power outages being caused because the wind wasn’t blowing, and we’re less likely to run into that with some nuclear baseload in the mix.
- adrianN 4y agoHow? Economics strongly suggest to run nuclear plants at maximum output whenever you can. So you wouldn't be able to use them as backups when there is a lack of wind power.
- ZeroGravitas 4y agoUsing that money to build more wind and supporting infrastructure would make it much less likely. People don't talk about it much, but CfD has killed nuclear. It lays the long term costs and risks bare. Hinckley is going to overrun it's already high cost, and France will be left picking up the tab for any cost overruns. I wonder if their contract lets them just build the equivalent wind power to save money? Or just shut it down and walk away. At some point the cost of subsidizing expensive energy for another country is going to become untenable.
- u320 4y agoThere is no "equivalent wind power". They perform different roles on the grid.
- ZeroGravitas 4y agoYes, and it's probably cheaper to emulate that role with other tech. Not sure the contract would allow for it though.
- finikytou 4y ago
- jeffbee 4y agoThe electorate does not support it. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/03/23/americans-continue-to-express-mixed-views-about-nuclear-power/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/03/23/americans-c...
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- mpweiher 4y ago72% in the "encourage" or "neither" camp seems pretty accepting.
- ako 4y agoI doubt it that the entire elactorate is accepting nuclear, especially now that we see what is happening in Ukraine. It's pretty scary to see fighting and bombing happing at nuclear plants.
- ovi256 4y agoThe fighting and bombing is just as scary and deadly away from nuclear plants.
- goodpoint 4y agoNot at all. Nuclear plants make for excellent targets for warfare and terrorism. Nuclear power is highly centralized so one strike at transformers or pylons leaves millions without electricity.
- otikik 4y agoBut all major sources of energy share that same “one point of failure” problems. Solar plants and wind turbines also have transformers. Gas and oil have pipes, etc.
- throw827474737 4y agoIt needs a grid and storage we never built due to fossil and nuclear faith.. but if we would then decentralized renewables don't have that problem. The problem with nuclear is also not millions without power, but a strike that sets the nuclear plant without power (including backups), then it is quickly game over.
- ovi256 4y ago> a strike that sets the nuclear plant without power (including backups), then it is quickly game over Wdym ? All modern designs are safe to shut down even without power.
- goodpoint 4y ago
- pjc50 4y ago"Cheap" has never really delivered. When was the most recent nuclear plant built within its cost estimate? > misinformed, and bad PR from high profile accidents isn't helping I'd say that people were fairly informed by the accidents. Nuclear has a "radioactive black swan" problem: the worst-case accidents have contaminated such huge areas that the tolerance for risk of any kind is low. If the Russians blow up Zaporizhzhia while the wind is blowing east-to-west Europe will have to throw away half its dairy production again, possibly for years. (On the other hand, if Chernobyl had happened while the wind was prevailing west-to-east, would we have even heard about it?)
- hef19898 4y agoThere was no way to keep that secret. Also it kind of indicates the USR only cleaned up under pressure from the West. Chernobyl was evacuated before the West was fully aware of what happened for example. After Chernobyl, a full train load of milk powder, from Eastern Europe, vanished in Bavaria. It was bought by a major dairy producer, when it was decided to destroy it said train was nowhere to be found... Funny coincidence...
- u320 4y ago> If the Russians blow up Zaporizhzhia while the wind is blowing east-to-west Europe Nope. Chernobyl was a different beast altogether.
- gizmo 4y agoWhen will the cancerous dust produced by coal plants finally be considered a cost? Nuclear is more expensive than the optimistic napkin math shows, but so is every other energy source! Europe has invested a trillion or two into intermittent green energy sources in the past 30 years —enough to nuclearize the entire energy grid— and is still totally dependent on coal and gas for survival. The argument has never been that nuclear doesn’t have any downsides. The argument is that without nuclear you’ll freeze. There is no serious alternative. The risks of accidental nuclear contamination are minimal and the risks of nuclear war are greatly underestimated.
- ETH_start 4y ago
- goodpoint 4y agoIt was never cheap and it's getting even more expensive while renewables are much cheaper: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source#/media/File:3-Learning-curves-for-electricity-prices.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source#...
- otikik 4y agoI believe part of why it’s getting more expensive is the lack of investment and innovation, and that’s driven by bad public perception, which drive laws and investigation budgets.
- throw827474737 4y agoThat belief is fine but wrong ;)
- otikik 4y agoAt least my comment includes some reasoning (งツ)ว
- YurgenJurgensen 4y agoWhy does the comparison with renewables matter if people don't build those renewables either?
- coldtea 4y agoBoth nuclear and renewables are expensive, when the externalities and hidden costs swept under the carpet by industry lobbies are considered. Nothing beats free millions of years in the making energy stored on the ground for us to extract - but even that's non-renewable and getting more cumbersome and expensive to extract.
- goodpoint 4y ago> Both nuclear and renewables are expensive, when the externalities and hidden costs swept under the carpet by industry lobbies are considered. The very opposite. It makes nuclear even more expensive.