5 ms·

To be fair to both sides, the electricity prices at the time when the decision was made was very different from today. We had prices in the south of sweden 2020

by belorn 4y ago

To be fair to both sides, the electricity prices at the time when the decision was made was very different from today. We had prices in the south of sweden 2020 that was as low as around €0.02 per kw/h, compared to over €0.3 in 2022, and in 2020 the price trend was looking to be going downwards. If prices had continue to go down and let say had landed at €0.01 per kw/h this year than we would not be discussing nuclear power as much. It will be a gamble to say what prices will be in 1, 5, 10 and 20 years into the future, and any gamble involve a cost in one way or an other. The previous government made one bet, this government is doing an other.

DisjointedHunt 4y ago
It’s probably fair to say that energy demand over the next ten years will increase significantly. The anecdotes of the end of Moores law that signifies the end of electronic efficiency through miniaturization alone and the increasing adoption of energy hungry devices for personal compute or lifestyle will certainly have a multiplicative effect over time as these trends make their way through society. In such a scenario, it’s hard to imagine prices being the same if demand increases by even a single digit multiple of the present.
- ncmncm 4y ago
  Energy demand will not increase in the next decade. It will, instead, fall, as it has in recent years. Electricity demand will increase as that takes over for other energy uses that will be collapsing.
  - dekken_ 4y ago
    You appear to be contradicting yourself, but I imagine you don't think you are, so you might want to elaborate.
    - Gwypaas 4y ago
      He is not contradicting himself. You have to remember the awful efficiency of thermal engines. Primary energy demand will decrease because you do not lose 70% of the energy by simply cooling it like in steam turbine used by nuclear power plants or car engines. On the other hand, electricity usage will increase because you have now replaced your 30-40% efficient engines with 90+% efficient engines, but from a different source. That barely have any losses from the primary energy input.
      - dekken_ 4y ago
        Thanks for that
      - belorn 4y ago
        Since we should keep the oil in the ground that current thermal engines uses, the energy input will be from a different source when we change from burning oil to electrical engines. The primary energy input should be from the wind, sun, elevated water, nuclear bonds and geothermal. The change from 30-40% efficient engines to 90+% efficient engines is if we burn the oil in a power plant. It is an improvement, but not a sufficient big one compared to actually keeping the oil in the ground.
        ben_w 4y ago
        You basically can't get 90% efficiency from burning oil in a power plant. E = 1 - Cold/Hot, where cold ≈ 300 K and hot ≈ 1300 K (gasoline-air fire), giving theoretical maximum efficiency of 77%. In practice much lower, what I've seen is just over 60% even in the best combined cycle power plants. If you use some really high temperature chemistry, you can get to 5260 K from dicyanoacetylene in oxygen, which is 95%, but not gasoline. And dicyanoacetylene is a bit explody.
      - fshbbdssbbgdd 4y ago
        True enough, but I’m hopeful for an energy-abundant future where we figure out how to make solar, wind, nuclear, and batteries cheaply and at scale. Imagine what we could do if energy efficiency didn’t trade off against carbon output. We wouldn’t have to replace all our appliances with something slightly more efficient (and less maintainable) every so many years. And the resources it takes to do that could be redirected elsewhere.
    - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
      Petrol burned in a car is energy, not electricity.
      - dekken_ 4y ago
        The fact that you can use combustion to generate electricity, means they are interchangeable. The other comment is probably more on point about conversion effeciency.
        JumpCrisscross 4y ago
        > that you can use combustion to generate electricity, means they are interchangeable This is an accounting issue, not a question of thermodynamics. Electricity typically refers to grid electric. We don’t count non plug-in hybrid electrical output as “electricity.” That’s how energy use can be stable while electrification increases.
themitigating 4y ago
To be fair electricity prices vary throughout time. Basing a long term decision on a short term price is foolish. Worse case scenario is the government has to subsidize the power station, best case is it helps prevent serious economic issues by providing power.
- treeman79 4y ago
  Worth a lot to not be dependent on Russia for energy.
  - ncmncm 4y ago
    Nobody depends on Russia for renewable energy.
    - adrianN 4y ago
      Until recently I occasionally heard plans about building wind farms in Siberia and exporting Hydrogen to Europe. Luckily that's off the table now.
    - jskrablin 4y ago
      Backup generation for renewables is usually gas powered. And you need the backup because renewable energy is not exactly a stable source of energy.
      - ben_w 4y ago
        Currently yes, but hydrogen is so easy to make from electricity that it predates sensible electrical generation methods by 43 years. We didn't bother making hydrogen in large quantities because there was no point when we already had a convenient supply of a flammable gas, not because it's even remotely difficult.
  - Gwypaas 4y ago
    Sweden is not dependent on Russian energy and is the largest electricity exporter in Europe. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/sweden-tops-france-europes-largest-net-power-exporter-2022-08-10/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/sweden-tops-france-e...
roenxi 4y ago
I bet what is going on isn't that surprising to industry insiders, or the people who make profit-loss decisions about whether to fund power plants or not. This is the issue with politics and the power market, the language gets locked into "what should we do" which is then interpreted as "well, the government should do it!". The problem with nuclear power isn't what the government is funding, it is that the government is saddling the industry with enormous costs in attempting to meet an unrealistic safety standard that _nothing else_ is held to. I suspect solar farms would go bankrupt if their waste was held to the same do-no-harm standard. If the government just let people build what they thought was best, and demanded a generic fact-based safety standard rooted in observed harms (ie, not the stupid linear model after Chernobyl or some arbitrary radiation exposure limit which is literally undetectable vs. coal killing people on a daily basis) then the market could just sort this out. Nuclear was on the too-cheap-to-meter path until the bureaucrats turned up to help decide how to run the plants. And EU bureaucrats are particularly bad at managing fast paced technological change they have a multi-decade track record of failure at this point in exactly these two fields - technology and energy policy. China is eating their lunch. China! Authoritarian alleged communists! That is what policy failure in the EU has led to.
- ncmncm 4y ago
- cycomanic 4y ago
  Yes let's just go free for all and the market sort it out. When was that a good idea when it came to safety critical infrastructure?! The whole let the current generation reap the profits and the market will magically figure things out got us into the current mess in the first place. The nuclear industry is not being held to higher standards relatively than other means of energy production. Wind farms must jump through significant buerocratic hurdles despite the fact that the potential dangers are massively lower.
  - roenxi 4y ago
    > Yes let's just go free for all and the market sort it out. When was that a good idea when it came to safety critical infrastructure?! On days of the week ending with "y". Private markets are the best way to feed people, clothe people, house people, entertain people and keep people healthy. By and large people don't willingly go with a public option in any of those categories if they have a choice. The electricity market is the same. The evidence at the moment is that someone next to Fukushima when it went bad would be ... perfectly fine. No physical risk. Chernobyl wasn't as bad as a dam collapse. This was all with 1980s tech. The evidence here is that the risk is possible for a private party to handle. Rare evacuations aren't common enough to worry about and are a much smaller problem than making what is happening in Europe at the moment a regular risk. Note that I'm calling for nuclear to be held to the same safety standards you've been exposed to for your entire life - my objection is that the standards for nuclear are unreasonably high compared to literally everything else.

by belorn 4y ago

DisjointedHunt 4y ago

It’s probably fair to say that energy demand over the next ten years will increase significantly. The anecdotes of the end of Moores law that signifies the end of electronic efficiency through miniaturization alone and the increasing adoption of energy hungry devices for personal compute or lifestyle will certainly have a multiplicative effect over time as these trends make their way through society. In such a scenario, it’s hard to imagine prices being the same if demand increases by even a single digit multiple of the present.

ncmncm 4y ago
Energy demand will not increase in the next decade. It will, instead, fall, as it has in recent years. Electricity demand will increase as that takes over for other energy uses that will be collapsing.
- dekken_ 4y ago
  You appear to be contradicting yourself, but I imagine you don't think you are, so you might want to elaborate.
  - Gwypaas 4y ago
    He is not contradicting himself. You have to remember the awful efficiency of thermal engines. Primary energy demand will decrease because you do not lose 70% of the energy by simply cooling it like in steam turbine used by nuclear power plants or car engines. On the other hand, electricity usage will increase because you have now replaced your 30-40% efficient engines with 90+% efficient engines, but from a different source. That barely have any losses from the primary energy input.
    - dekken_ 4y ago
      Thanks for that
    - belorn 4y ago
      Since we should keep the oil in the ground that current thermal engines uses, the energy input will be from a different source when we change from burning oil to electrical engines. The primary energy input should be from the wind, sun, elevated water, nuclear bonds and geothermal. The change from 30-40% efficient engines to 90+% efficient engines is if we burn the oil in a power plant. It is an improvement, but not a sufficient big one compared to actually keeping the oil in the ground.
      - ben_w 4y ago
        You basically can't get 90% efficiency from burning oil in a power plant. E = 1 - Cold/Hot, where cold ≈ 300 K and hot ≈ 1300 K (gasoline-air fire), giving theoretical maximum efficiency of 77%. In practice much lower, what I've seen is just over 60% even in the best combined cycle power plants. If you use some really high temperature chemistry, you can get to 5260 K from dicyanoacetylene in oxygen, which is 95%, but not gasoline. And dicyanoacetylene is a bit explody.
    - fshbbdssbbgdd 4y ago
      True enough, but I’m hopeful for an energy-abundant future where we figure out how to make solar, wind, nuclear, and batteries cheaply and at scale. Imagine what we could do if energy efficiency didn’t trade off against carbon output. We wouldn’t have to replace all our appliances with something slightly more efficient (and less maintainable) every so many years. And the resources it takes to do that could be redirected elsewhere.
  - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
    Petrol burned in a car is energy, not electricity.
    - dekken_ 4y ago
      The fact that you can use combustion to generate electricity, means they are interchangeable. The other comment is probably more on point about conversion effeciency.
      - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
        > that you can use combustion to generate electricity, means they are interchangeable This is an accounting issue, not a question of thermodynamics. Electricity typically refers to grid electric. We don’t count non plug-in hybrid electrical output as “electricity.” That’s how energy use can be stable while electrification increases.

themitigating 4y ago

To be fair electricity prices vary throughout time. Basing a long term decision on a short term price is foolish. Worse case scenario is the government has to subsidize the power station, best case is it helps prevent serious economic issues by providing power.

treeman79 4y ago
Worth a lot to not be dependent on Russia for energy.
- ncmncm 4y ago
  Nobody depends on Russia for renewable energy.
  - adrianN 4y ago
    Until recently I occasionally heard plans about building wind farms in Siberia and exporting Hydrogen to Europe. Luckily that's off the table now.
  - jskrablin 4y ago
    Backup generation for renewables is usually gas powered. And you need the backup because renewable energy is not exactly a stable source of energy.
    - ben_w 4y ago
      Currently yes, but hydrogen is so easy to make from electricity that it predates sensible electrical generation methods by 43 years. We didn't bother making hydrogen in large quantities because there was no point when we already had a convenient supply of a flammable gas, not because it's even remotely difficult.
- Gwypaas 4y ago
  Sweden is not dependent on Russian energy and is the largest electricity exporter in Europe. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/sweden-tops-france-europes-largest-net-power-exporter-2022-08-10/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/sweden-tops-france-e...

roenxi 4y ago

I bet what is going on isn't that surprising to industry insiders, or the people who make profit-loss decisions about whether to fund power plants or not. This is the issue with politics and the power market, the language gets locked into "what should we do" which is then interpreted as "well, the government should do it!". The problem with nuclear power isn't what the government is funding, it is that the government is saddling the industry with enormous costs in attempting to meet an unrealistic safety standard that _nothing else_ is held to. I suspect solar farms would go bankrupt if their waste was held to the same do-no-harm standard. If the government just let people build what they thought was best, and demanded a generic fact-based safety standard rooted in observed harms (ie, not the stupid linear model after Chernobyl or some arbitrary radiation exposure limit which is literally undetectable vs. coal killing people on a daily basis) then the market could just sort this out. Nuclear was on the too-cheap-to-meter path until the bureaucrats turned up to help decide how to run the plants. And EU bureaucrats are particularly bad at managing fast paced technological change they have a multi-decade track record of failure at this point in exactly these two fields - technology and energy policy. China is eating their lunch. China! Authoritarian alleged communists! That is what policy failure in the EU has led to.

ncmncm 4y ago
cycomanic 4y ago
Yes let's just go free for all and the market sort it out. When was that a good idea when it came to safety critical infrastructure?! The whole let the current generation reap the profits and the market will magically figure things out got us into the current mess in the first place. The nuclear industry is not being held to higher standards relatively than other means of energy production. Wind farms must jump through significant buerocratic hurdles despite the fact that the potential dangers are massively lower.
- roenxi 4y ago
  > Yes let's just go free for all and the market sort it out. When was that a good idea when it came to safety critical infrastructure?! On days of the week ending with "y". Private markets are the best way to feed people, clothe people, house people, entertain people and keep people healthy. By and large people don't willingly go with a public option in any of those categories if they have a choice. The electricity market is the same. The evidence at the moment is that someone next to Fukushima when it went bad would be ... perfectly fine. No physical risk. Chernobyl wasn't as bad as a dam collapse. This was all with 1980s tech. The evidence here is that the risk is possible for a private party to handle. Rare evacuations aren't common enough to worry about and are a much smaller problem than making what is happening in Europe at the moment a regular risk. Note that I'm calling for nuclear to be held to the same safety standards you've been exposed to for your entire life - my objection is that the standards for nuclear are unreasonably high compared to literally everything else.