5 ms·

There are straight up inaccuracies in this article which makes the know-it-all tone even more insufferable. For example, they claim the sole reason nuclear is

There are straight up inaccuracies in this article which makes the know-it-all tone even more insufferable. For example, they claim the sole reason nuclear is declining in the West is because of capital. This is straightforwardly not true. Politics have played a huge role, most notably in Germany.

UIUC_06 4y ago
> makes the know-it-all tone even more insufferable Oh, you mean that he refers to actual business costs where no one else does?
willnonya 4y ago
"There are straight up inaccuracies in this article which makes the know-it-all tone even more insufferable." They call that "the internet". To be fair politics are a factor in the economics. Looking at the US the politics. Especially in California, make building or expanding nuclear power much lore expe since than it really should be.
- vajrabum 4y ago
  Politics includes history which none of this discussion has. It's more than a little scary how many nuke plants in California were built in seismically active spots no sane engineer would have chosen if the risks were properly understood at design and construction time, and California likely doesn't have the plants most at risk. https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna42103936 https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna42103936
dale_glass 4y ago
Politics are hugely related to economics. If nuclear was making bank, the industry would have the capital to beat the political problems. Eg, suppose for a second we make a nuclear power plant that can profitably sell power for half the price that anything else on the market does. Well, you're a smart business person, so you don't price yourself at 50% of the competition. You price yourself at say, 90% of the competition, so you're still the cheapest, but now have a crazy profit margin. And with that huge profit margin you can do things like having elaborate security systems to reassure people, donate to politicians, run PR campaigns, build cool stuff to buy people's love, etc. You'd have a very straightforward comeback of "shut us down and everything gets more expensive". There's a reason why oil despite being a nasty, dirty and accident prone business isn't going anywhere.
- panick21_ 4y ago
  You are seriously acting as if money in politics solves everything and as if in most of the world energy supply was not driven fundamentally by state policy. Neither is true. Wind and solar were the choices solution BEFORE they became cheap and profitable. The became cheap and profitable because of a sustained demand from society and politics, both domestic and international to make it so. Jimmy Carter banned nuclear fuel processioning, killed nuclear research projects and much more, and partly justified this by putting up solar collectors on the white house. The republicans of that period were all in on fossil and no longer had ideas like 'Atoms for Peace'. So to act as if wind and solar just happened to be cheap and profitable and nuclear just happened to be expensive is simply a misreading of history.
  - dale_glass 4y ago
    > You are seriously acting as if money in politics solves everything and as if in most of the world energy supply was not driven fundamentally by state policy. Certainly not! But money helps, a lot. > So to act as if wind and solar just happened to be cheap and profitable and nuclear just happened to be expensive is simply a misreading of history. Nuclear is inherently expensive, when done well. You don't exactly find a company making nuclear reactor vessels in your local neighborhood. Yeah, you can do it "on the cheap" without say, a containment building, but that turns out not to be a great idea. So got to make one of those, at a considerable expense renewables get to miss on. Plus a few other safety technologies. Solar and wind aren't inherently expensive. They're both made of common components and are extremely amenable to mass manufacturing. Long term, nuclear was always sure to lose. Even the USSR-style, dangerous designs aren't cheap enough.
    - Schroedingersat 4y ago
      Pebble bed reactors with no containment building retrofitted on existing thermal plants might compete if we're willing to accept the gradually growing continuous stream of fission products that will start leaking when it turns out silicon carbide isn't actually invincible.
_0w8t 4y ago
Sweden shut down one of nuclear reactors due to raising maintenance cost. In France two reactors were put off-line for more than a year due to unexpected cracks in piping after just 25 years of operations. Even in Germany the decision to shutdown the reactors was partly economical. 10 years ago assumption about using cheap Russian gas until renewables catches up was not entering unreasonable.
wewxjfq 4y ago
That's the stab-in-the-back myth of nuclear energy. When Germany banned new nuclear power plants, they hadn't built one for 20 years.
- panick21_ 4y ago
  So what? They still removed 20GW of nuclear before they had killed off their coal power. How is that not a gigantic deal?
cycomanic 4y ago
That's simply a myth. Even Germany's decision to phase out nuclear was largely economical (it was the business friendly CDU who made the final decision). Currently a kWh of nuclear cost 3 times as much as wind in Germany (sorry the source was a paper magazine, I will update if I find an online source), that is for existing reactors which are >25years old. Nobody wants to build new plants. To contribute to the discussion you could have maybe brought some evidence if it was so clear cut.
- panick21_ 4y ago
  This is partly explained by simply no value being assigned to base load in many systems. And importantly nuclear often not getting the credit for being green. Also nuclear plants being able to run for 60-100 years while all these wind plants will need to be replaced long before that. The way the 'markets' are structured just isn't to the advantage of nuclear. Nuclear was and is often excluded from renewable subsidies. France just had to pay 500M Euro because they missed their 'renewables' target, all while being green. The same thing in the US when they favored solar. There are lots of example. CDU isn't business friendly, they are Russia and Fossil friendly. They knew it was a popular choice that would be supported by the anti nuclear left. It was a populist choice. All that said, even some old nuclear plants that currently exist do sell long term electricity at quite good prices. Germany was actually pretty good at operating them and given their security, base load capabilities, being green and long term viability, turning them off because of per kWh pricing was basically an insanely delusional populist choice based on fear mongering and incomplete estimation of the pros and cons. But I guess the Germans are now breathing the dirty air that this has produce (sadly blasting it all over central Europe and Western Europe). The South of France at the same time had nice clean air since 40 years.
  - cycomanic 4y ago
    > This is partly explained by simply no value being assigned to base load in many systems. And importantly nuclear often not getting the credit for being green. Also nuclear plants being able to run for 60-100 years while all these wind plants will need to be replaced long before that. The way the 'markets' are structured just isn't to the advantage of nuclear. Nuclear power plants have typical design lifetimes of 40 years. France nuclear power plants are suffering from increasing maintenance costs and outages because they are getting so old and they are nowhere close to 60-100 years. If you mean that markets favor cheaper solutions and that this is not good for nuclear you are correct. > Nuclear was and is often excluded from renewable subsidies. France just had to pay 500M Euro because they missed their 'renewables' target, all while being green. The same thing in the US when they favored solar. There are lots of example. Nuclear has received more subsidies than solar and wind combined (see my citations in a different post).

UIUC_06 4y ago

> makes the know-it-all tone even more insufferable Oh, you mean that he refers to actual business costs where no one else does?

willnonya 4y ago

"There are straight up inaccuracies in this article which makes the know-it-all tone even more insufferable." They call that "the internet". To be fair politics are a factor in the economics. Looking at the US the politics. Especially in California, make building or expanding nuclear power much lore expe since than it really should be.

vajrabum 4y ago
Politics includes history which none of this discussion has. It's more than a little scary how many nuke plants in California were built in seismically active spots no sane engineer would have chosen if the risks were properly understood at design and construction time, and California likely doesn't have the plants most at risk. https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna42103936 https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna42103936

dale_glass 4y ago

Politics are hugely related to economics. If nuclear was making bank, the industry would have the capital to beat the political problems. Eg, suppose for a second we make a nuclear power plant that can profitably sell power for half the price that anything else on the market does. Well, you're a smart business person, so you don't price yourself at 50% of the competition. You price yourself at say, 90% of the competition, so you're still the cheapest, but now have a crazy profit margin. And with that huge profit margin you can do things like having elaborate security systems to reassure people, donate to politicians, run PR campaigns, build cool stuff to buy people's love, etc. You'd have a very straightforward comeback of "shut us down and everything gets more expensive". There's a reason why oil despite being a nasty, dirty and accident prone business isn't going anywhere.

panick21_ 4y ago
You are seriously acting as if money in politics solves everything and as if in most of the world energy supply was not driven fundamentally by state policy. Neither is true. Wind and solar were the choices solution BEFORE they became cheap and profitable. The became cheap and profitable because of a sustained demand from society and politics, both domestic and international to make it so. Jimmy Carter banned nuclear fuel processioning, killed nuclear research projects and much more, and partly justified this by putting up solar collectors on the white house. The republicans of that period were all in on fossil and no longer had ideas like 'Atoms for Peace'. So to act as if wind and solar just happened to be cheap and profitable and nuclear just happened to be expensive is simply a misreading of history.
- dale_glass 4y ago
  > You are seriously acting as if money in politics solves everything and as if in most of the world energy supply was not driven fundamentally by state policy. Certainly not! But money helps, a lot. > So to act as if wind and solar just happened to be cheap and profitable and nuclear just happened to be expensive is simply a misreading of history. Nuclear is inherently expensive, when done well. You don't exactly find a company making nuclear reactor vessels in your local neighborhood. Yeah, you can do it "on the cheap" without say, a containment building, but that turns out not to be a great idea. So got to make one of those, at a considerable expense renewables get to miss on. Plus a few other safety technologies. Solar and wind aren't inherently expensive. They're both made of common components and are extremely amenable to mass manufacturing. Long term, nuclear was always sure to lose. Even the USSR-style, dangerous designs aren't cheap enough.
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    Pebble bed reactors with no containment building retrofitted on existing thermal plants might compete if we're willing to accept the gradually growing continuous stream of fission products that will start leaking when it turns out silicon carbide isn't actually invincible.

_0w8t 4y ago

Sweden shut down one of nuclear reactors due to raising maintenance cost. In France two reactors were put off-line for more than a year due to unexpected cracks in piping after just 25 years of operations. Even in Germany the decision to shutdown the reactors was partly economical. 10 years ago assumption about using cheap Russian gas until renewables catches up was not entering unreasonable.

wewxjfq 4y ago

That's the stab-in-the-back myth of nuclear energy. When Germany banned new nuclear power plants, they hadn't built one for 20 years.

panick21_ 4y ago
So what? They still removed 20GW of nuclear before they had killed off their coal power. How is that not a gigantic deal?

cycomanic 4y ago

That's simply a myth. Even Germany's decision to phase out nuclear was largely economical (it was the business friendly CDU who made the final decision). Currently a kWh of nuclear cost 3 times as much as wind in Germany (sorry the source was a paper magazine, I will update if I find an online source), that is for existing reactors which are >25years old. Nobody wants to build new plants. To contribute to the discussion you could have maybe brought some evidence if it was so clear cut.

panick21_ 4y ago
This is partly explained by simply no value being assigned to base load in many systems. And importantly nuclear often not getting the credit for being green. Also nuclear plants being able to run for 60-100 years while all these wind plants will need to be replaced long before that. The way the 'markets' are structured just isn't to the advantage of nuclear. Nuclear was and is often excluded from renewable subsidies. France just had to pay 500M Euro because they missed their 'renewables' target, all while being green. The same thing in the US when they favored solar. There are lots of example. CDU isn't business friendly, they are Russia and Fossil friendly. They knew it was a popular choice that would be supported by the anti nuclear left. It was a populist choice. All that said, even some old nuclear plants that currently exist do sell long term electricity at quite good prices. Germany was actually pretty good at operating them and given their security, base load capabilities, being green and long term viability, turning them off because of per kWh pricing was basically an insanely delusional populist choice based on fear mongering and incomplete estimation of the pros and cons. But I guess the Germans are now breathing the dirty air that this has produce (sadly blasting it all over central Europe and Western Europe). The South of France at the same time had nice clean air since 40 years.
- cycomanic 4y ago
  > This is partly explained by simply no value being assigned to base load in many systems. And importantly nuclear often not getting the credit for being green. Also nuclear plants being able to run for 60-100 years while all these wind plants will need to be replaced long before that. The way the 'markets' are structured just isn't to the advantage of nuclear. Nuclear power plants have typical design lifetimes of 40 years. France nuclear power plants are suffering from increasing maintenance costs and outages because they are getting so old and they are nowhere close to 60-100 years. If you mean that markets favor cheaper solutions and that this is not good for nuclear you are correct. > Nuclear was and is often excluded from renewable subsidies. France just had to pay 500M Euro because they missed their 'renewables' target, all while being green. The same thing in the US when they favored solar. There are lots of example. Nuclear has received more subsidies than solar and wind combined (see my citations in a different post).