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Reactors will not be forced to shut down, in the future. Instead, they will be shut down as unable to produce power at a competitive price. Those that continue
by ncmncm 4y ago
Reactors will not be forced to shut down, in the future. Instead, they will be shut down as unable to produce power at a competitive price. Those that continue operating will depend even more on taxpayer subsidies than they do now.
The money that will be spent on these new reactors would buy a hell of a lot more wind power than these nukes could produce. But money for renewables would not go into the pockets of right-wing blueblood Swedes, which seems to be what matters to the incoming government.
When the nukes are mothballed early, every kWh they ever produced will, instantly, have actually cost much more than had been reckoned, as the fixed costs are amortized over fewer total.
- nathanaldensr 4y agoPure FUD. The wind doesn't blow all the time and battery technology at scale isn't there.
- onlyrealcuzzo 4y agoYes, why not both?
- ncmncm 4y agoMoney is fungible. Each dollar spent on nuke generating capacity is that dollar not spent on several times as much renewable generating capacity.
- HyperSane 4y agoNot when you take the capacity factor into account. Nuclear reactors have far higher capacity factors than wind and solar.
- ncmncm 4y agoEven after you take capacity factor into account.
- HyperSane 4y agoAnd the cost of the backup power for when wind and solar don't generate enough?
- ben_w 4y agoYes. The most expensive serious storage solution is LiIon, and even that's merely the same cost (or at least, the bell curves of their prices mostly overlap) as an equivalent nuclear reactor. (I'm deliberately ignoring any claims about future battery costs; while I'm expecting them to come down, they don't need to in order to make this argument).
- HyperSane 4y ago"and even that's merely the same cost (or at least, the bell curves of their prices mostly overlap) as an equivalent nuclear reactor." citation needed.
- ben_w 4y ago• PV utility scale with battery, Germany, €55-€100/MWh, (2021): https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/publications/studies/cost-of-electricity.html https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/publications/studies/cost-o... • LCOE for nuclear, analysis based on new nuclear worldwide but priced in Euros, €67-€82/MWh, (2020): https://energy.ec.europa.eu/system/files/2020-10/final_report_levelised_costs_0.pdf https://energy.ec.europa.eu/system/files/2020-10/final_repor... page 40-41
- ClumsyPilot 4y agoMoney is fictional - only raw resources, manufacturing fapacity and climate disaster are real. I thought this should be clear to everyone today, when energy price whent up 10x because yoy can print euros but can't print jeoules of energy or natural gas. Renewables and nuclear use different resources and manufacturing capacities.
- jules 4y agoYes, this argument gets repeated again and again and again, and when you ask about storage you never get a decent answer. And yet, the argument keeps getting repeated even by people who matter and make the decisions. When I started watching debates in the Dutch house of representatives I pretty much lost all hope. Of the 150 members, I'd say 145 are either unable or unwilling to think quantitatively and do simple napkin math. Not just regarding energy policy but in all areas. Yet they are verbally very strong, which makes the problem even worse. I suspect it's the same in most western countries. If you think I'm exaggerating, remember when the Royal Statistical Society asked "if you spin a coin twice, what is the probability of getting two heads?" and 47% of Conservative MPs and 77% Labour MPs got the answer wrong. Many technical people cannot even fathom this, and tend to assume that people who cannot answer such questions must be severely mentally impaired in general. That is completely wrong; you have lots of people who are near geniuses verbally but incapable of or unwilling to do quantitative thinking.
- ncmncm 4y agoThe decent answer is, simply, that storage will be built when there is enough renewable capacity to charge it from. Storage is technically trivial. Building it all will be a big civil engineering job, but we have plenty of civil engineers.
- jules 4y agoThat's magical thinking. Let's start with the obvious question: what kind of storage would that be? Remember, your argument against nuclear was price. Have you run the napkin math on your preferred choice of storage?
- BurningFrog 4y agoWhat is this trivial energy storage tech I've never heard of?
- fragmede 4y agoPumped hydro, probably. There are implementation details that make it tricky in practice, but those are less technical and more political in nature.