5 ms·

Nuclear cheaper than wind, solar as Canada greens its grid: report

26 points by mpweiher 4y ago

AddingValue 4y ago
- koheripbal 4y ago
  Is this a serious comment?
  - AddingValue 4y ago
    Are you an idiot? (both retoric questions) Please move near an nuclear powerplant and die an early cancer death. Thanks.
    - Schroedingersat 4y ago
      Please don't spread lies, it just helps the counter-propaganda. Nuclear power plants emit effectively no radiation at the point of power production unless four or five different people do something colossally stupid all at the same time. It's all at the mine, the enrichment facility and the reprocessing facility. ..And then at the point of power generation after we get complacent, the mistakes stop being statistically independent, and we roll the dice enough times for all of those colossally stupid things to happen at once.
  - AddingValue 4y ago
    U just have proven to me once more how stupid mankind is. Not sure if mankind, with 10% complete idiots will survive another 100 years. Probably not.
ZeroGravitas 4y ago
> Sprott Asset Management CEO John Ciampaglia told Yahoo Finance Canada in August. The Toronto-based financial firm operates the world’s largest physical uranium investment fund. Just a not very convincing advert. Canada is probably one of, if not the, most ideal places for nuclear power (northern latitude, existing plants, hydro to complement it) but even there I doubt more than running existing plants for a while makes financial sense.
- Valgrim 4y ago
  Hydro makes even more sense to complement renewables. The storage and grid infrastructure is already there for the few times in a day when there is no wind or sun.
  - TheLoafOfBread 4y ago
    > The storage and grid infrastructure is already there for the few times in a day when there is no wind or sun. Sorry, no. In Europe we are talking about months without sun and wind, usually December, January, February, when day is short (8 hours for central Europe) and night have 16 hours. Wind won't cut it at that time, so only power plants, which are usually running at that time are either coal, natural gas or nuclear ones. Additionally there is also lack of water through winter, because surprisingly it is frozen in soil and does not move through rivers. So hydro is useless during winter as well.
    - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
      Hydro and Wind are both at peak production in winter for europe and nicely counterbalance solar: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/-/ddn-20210416-1 https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/-/d...
      - TheLoafOfBread 4y ago
        Spring. When there is a thaw. But that's in March and Europeans are considering formal winter up to the ~20th of March, when astronomical spring starts, so you are misreading the data. However you need that energy in January and February, when there is no hydro going, because everything is frozen.
        Schroedingersat 4y ago
        Everywhere south of 48 degrees has a decent amount of solar resource nearby with at least 5% CF (enough to beat nuclear in price) in January. Using bifacials or tilting the panels a little twice a year pushes this up to around 8%. Very few people live north of that and most of them are either within easy transmission range of an even better solar site or already have at least two of wind, hydro (which they use in winter), and nuclear covering most of their energy.
blablabla123 4y ago
True for existing plants maybe depending on local circumstances but the LCOE is for new plants actually really high.
VBprogrammer 4y ago
Great, let's build tonnes of it in the UK. To be competitive with offshore wind let's call it a £50 MWh strike price. Should be fine right? I'll even excuse the lack of clarity of decommissioning the site and long term storage of nuclear waste if you can manage that.
- shapefrog 4y ago
  We really should give them the 37.35/MWh that offshore wind gets, afterall it is cheaper than wind. Hinkley Point C: In 2012, the “strike price” – was set at £92.50 per megawatt hour (MWh) + inflation. Even with comedy level increases in household bills this still looks expensive.
  - VBprogrammer 4y ago
    I went a bit higher because there is some debate that the low strike price of one of the offshore wind farms was artificially low due to being able to use existing infrastructure from an earlier project. Anywhere in that ballpark though and I think we can talk.
  - credit_guy 4y ago
    A quick google [1] shows me the average price for electricity in the UK was 18.9 p/kWh in 2021. This is the same as £189/MWh. The same article states that the estimate for 2022 is £340/MWh (maybe because of the Russia's invasion of Ukraine?). The inflation adjusted strike £92.5 of became £106 in 2021 per wikipedia [2]. Not sure how this strike price arrangement works, but does it follow that the UK government did not need to subsidize Hinkley Point C in 2021, and will not have to subsidize it in 2022? Edit: I did not realize Hinkley Point C is not yet operational. Still, if it were, would it follow that it would make a profit by itself, and would not collect the Government guarantee? [1] https://www.nimblefins.co.uk/average-cost-electricity-kwh-uk https://www.nimblefins.co.uk/average-cost-electricity-kwh-uk [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_C_nuclear_power_station#Cost_to_consumers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_C_nuclear_power_...
    - 4y ago
rhaway84773 4y ago
I understand and agree with the need for factoring in additional storage costs for wind/solar, but why would you do it on a 1:1 basis? We will probably never need to store 100% of generated renewable energy. Storage would probably need to be a small percentage of the generation capacity. https://reneweconomy.com.au/much-storage-back-high-renewable-grids-need-60710/ https://reneweconomy.com.au/much-storage-back-high-renewable... This link seems to indicate that the need grows non-linearly. Existing storage is sufficient for 30-50% penetration, whereas it grows to about 20% when it reaches 80% penetration, only hitting 1:1 in the worst case regions for 100% penetration.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  No, you see, you have to consider an all solar microgrid using ancient poly panels but at the cost of space rated quad junction cells in Oulu using outdoor non-insulated batteries vs. the output of one particular nuclear reactor in the US but pretend it cost as much as one with 50% uptime in France. Otherwise you're being mean and unfair.
  - beerandt 4y ago
    Storage is almost entirely capex, not opex. So yes, you do need to actually base the cost on the worst case scenario.
    - technicalbard 4y ago
      Wrong. Storage has opex, because it has energy losses. Not all the energy that goes in can come out. 2nd Law and all that. On top of that, there will be maintenance and operating staff costs.
    - Schroedingersat 4y ago
      Worst case scenario, huh? So how much does enough storage to cover a months long unplanned nuclear plant outage cost?
  - nwah1 4y ago
pydry 4y ago
>“The Achilles heel of wind and solar is provision of adequate storage, at reasonable cost, of power not needed in the middle of the day, but needed when the sun is not shining and/or the wind is not blowing,” The Achilles heel of this article is that cheap, large scale pumped storage actually does exist (snowy 2, fengning) while the "cheap" SMR it is touting is still a research project still vacuuming up taxpayer subsidies.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  Snowy 2 cost $5 per watt (blown out from initial $1/watt) and already had a bunch of infrastructure. Beats lithium ion by a fair margin for diurnal or longer storage, but hardly a poster child for the process being cheap or on budget. Still cheaper than nuclear though because 1W of storage can serve 2-3W of wind+solar.

26 points by mpweiher 4y ago

koheripbal 4y ago
Is this a serious comment?
- AddingValue 4y ago
  Are you an idiot? (both retoric questions) Please move near an nuclear powerplant and die an early cancer death. Thanks.
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    Please don't spread lies, it just helps the counter-propaganda. Nuclear power plants emit effectively no radiation at the point of power production unless four or five different people do something colossally stupid all at the same time. It's all at the mine, the enrichment facility and the reprocessing facility. ..And then at the point of power generation after we get complacent, the mistakes stop being statistically independent, and we roll the dice enough times for all of those colossally stupid things to happen at once.
- AddingValue 4y ago
  U just have proven to me once more how stupid mankind is. Not sure if mankind, with 10% complete idiots will survive another 100 years. Probably not.

> Sprott Asset Management CEO John Ciampaglia told Yahoo Finance Canada in August. The Toronto-based financial firm operates the world’s largest physical uranium investment fund. Just a not very convincing advert. Canada is probably one of, if not the, most ideal places for nuclear power (northern latitude, existing plants, hydro to complement it) but even there I doubt more than running existing plants for a while makes financial sense.

Valgrim 4y ago
Hydro makes even more sense to complement renewables. The storage and grid infrastructure is already there for the few times in a day when there is no wind or sun.
- TheLoafOfBread 4y ago
  > The storage and grid infrastructure is already there for the few times in a day when there is no wind or sun. Sorry, no. In Europe we are talking about months without sun and wind, usually December, January, February, when day is short (8 hours for central Europe) and night have 16 hours. Wind won't cut it at that time, so only power plants, which are usually running at that time are either coal, natural gas or nuclear ones. Additionally there is also lack of water through winter, because surprisingly it is frozen in soil and does not move through rivers. So hydro is useless during winter as well.
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    Hydro and Wind are both at peak production in winter for europe and nicely counterbalance solar: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/-/ddn-20210416-1 https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/-/d...
    - TheLoafOfBread 4y ago
      Spring. When there is a thaw. But that's in March and Europeans are considering formal winter up to the ~20th of March, when astronomical spring starts, so you are misreading the data. However you need that energy in January and February, when there is no hydro going, because everything is frozen.
      - Schroedingersat 4y ago
        Everywhere south of 48 degrees has a decent amount of solar resource nearby with at least 5% CF (enough to beat nuclear in price) in January. Using bifacials or tilting the panels a little twice a year pushes this up to around 8%. Very few people live north of that and most of them are either within easy transmission range of an even better solar site or already have at least two of wind, hydro (which they use in winter), and nuclear covering most of their energy.

blablabla123 4y ago

True for existing plants maybe depending on local circumstances but the LCOE is for new plants actually really high.

VBprogrammer 4y ago

Great, let's build tonnes of it in the UK. To be competitive with offshore wind let's call it a £50 MWh strike price. Should be fine right? I'll even excuse the lack of clarity of decommissioning the site and long term storage of nuclear waste if you can manage that.

shapefrog 4y ago
We really should give them the 37.35/MWh that offshore wind gets, afterall it is cheaper than wind. Hinkley Point C: In 2012, the “strike price” – was set at £92.50 per megawatt hour (MWh) + inflation. Even with comedy level increases in household bills this still looks expensive.
- VBprogrammer 4y ago
  I went a bit higher because there is some debate that the low strike price of one of the offshore wind farms was artificially low due to being able to use existing infrastructure from an earlier project. Anywhere in that ballpark though and I think we can talk.
- credit_guy 4y ago
  A quick google [1] shows me the average price for electricity in the UK was 18.9 p/kWh in 2021. This is the same as £189/MWh. The same article states that the estimate for 2022 is £340/MWh (maybe because of the Russia's invasion of Ukraine?). The inflation adjusted strike £92.5 of became £106 in 2021 per wikipedia [2]. Not sure how this strike price arrangement works, but does it follow that the UK government did not need to subsidize Hinkley Point C in 2021, and will not have to subsidize it in 2022? Edit: I did not realize Hinkley Point C is not yet operational. Still, if it were, would it follow that it would make a profit by itself, and would not collect the Government guarantee? [1] https://www.nimblefins.co.uk/average-cost-electricity-kwh-uk https://www.nimblefins.co.uk/average-cost-electricity-kwh-uk [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_C_nuclear_power_station#Cost_to_consumers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_C_nuclear_power_...
  - 4y ago

rhaway84773 4y ago

I understand and agree with the need for factoring in additional storage costs for wind/solar, but why would you do it on a 1:1 basis? We will probably never need to store 100% of generated renewable energy. Storage would probably need to be a small percentage of the generation capacity. https://reneweconomy.com.au/much-storage-back-high-renewable-grids-need-60710/ https://reneweconomy.com.au/much-storage-back-high-renewable... This link seems to indicate that the need grows non-linearly. Existing storage is sufficient for 30-50% penetration, whereas it grows to about 20% when it reaches 80% penetration, only hitting 1:1 in the worst case regions for 100% penetration.

Schroedingersat 4y ago
No, you see, you have to consider an all solar microgrid using ancient poly panels but at the cost of space rated quad junction cells in Oulu using outdoor non-insulated batteries vs. the output of one particular nuclear reactor in the US but pretend it cost as much as one with 50% uptime in France. Otherwise you're being mean and unfair.
- beerandt 4y ago
  Storage is almost entirely capex, not opex. So yes, you do need to actually base the cost on the worst case scenario.
  - technicalbard 4y ago
    Wrong. Storage has opex, because it has energy losses. Not all the energy that goes in can come out. 2nd Law and all that. On top of that, there will be maintenance and operating staff costs.
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    Worst case scenario, huh? So how much does enough storage to cover a months long unplanned nuclear plant outage cost?
- nwah1 4y ago

pydry 4y ago

>“The Achilles heel of wind and solar is provision of adequate storage, at reasonable cost, of power not needed in the middle of the day, but needed when the sun is not shining and/or the wind is not blowing,” The Achilles heel of this article is that cheap, large scale pumped storage actually does exist (snowy 2, fengning) while the "cheap" SMR it is touting is still a research project still vacuuming up taxpayer subsidies.

Schroedingersat 4y ago
Snowy 2 cost $5 per watt (blown out from initial $1/watt) and already had a bunch of infrastructure. Beats lithium ion by a fair margin for diurnal or longer storage, but hardly a poster child for the process being cheap or on budget. Still cheaper than nuclear though because 1W of storage can serve 2-3W of wind+solar.