6 ms·

If modern renewables are so affordable as investments, provide quick returns, and produce electrictiy that's 30% the cost of nuclear, then why isn't it everywhe

If modern renewables are so affordable as investments, provide quick returns, and produce electrictiy that's 30% the cost of nuclear, then why isn't it everywhere and electric power very cheap?

dale_glass 4y ago
They take time to build, solar is intermittent, and just like with nuclear there are NIMBY issues. Installed solar capacity is rapidly going up. Solar in particular is a big potential issue for nuclear, because so long the sun is shining, why would you buy any nuclear power? Solar is far cheaper to provide, so any rational person would buy solar first. And the more solar the less nuclear has to do during the day, which means that all those billions take longer and longer to pay off. And you better hope storage doesn't kick off before that.
- fewavewavewa 4y ago
  So renewables are not cheap, easy, and quick?
  - dale_glass 4y ago
    They're very cheap compared to building nuclear, very easy to build compared to nuclear, and go up in weeks or months rather than years, so also quick. Capacity is being rapidly added, but there's not enough of them yet.
    - fewavewavewa 4y ago
      So it's easy to throw up some wind turbines and solar panels, but difficult, expensive, and requires cutting-edge technology to make them useful as power sources to the national grid?
      - dale_glass 4y ago
        No, we just need to build more of them. Renewables started being competitive fairly recently and you can't just magic solar panels and turbines out of thin air, they need to be built. And we're rapidly building them. Which by the way, the very reason why we're having this conversation. If nuclear was such a great proposition, people would go and build it. We wouldn't be having silly arguments about its worth on websites that affect nothing. People with billions of money to spend and who expect juicy profits don't need Hacker News' validation.
        fewavewavewa 4y ago
        We (well, at least in the UK) have plenty of them. It's all that tricky, expensive, and financially unrewarding infrastructure that's holding things back. We pay Scottish windfarms about £200million per year to curtail their output, just because we can't get the power from source to sink.
pasttense01 4y ago
Because customers want electricity 24 hours/day, 7 days/week and 52 weeks/year. Conversely renewables are intermittent. So the basic solutions are to massively overbuild renewables, to massively increase the capacity of the electric grid--so you can move huge amounts of electricity all around the country, have massive amounts of very expensive electricity storage and/or to have a massive fossil fuel backup system.
- fewavewavewa 4y ago
  .
- yodelshady 4y ago
  > So the basic solutions are to massively overbuild renewables, And who the fuck is doing that? Because they're not god-damned cheap if you do that! I do not care if you can sell your product for cheap if I have to buy a much more expensive, planet-killing fossil-fuel product to make up for your SLA of "ha ha ha oh my god they think we have an SLA", which is why none of these academic ideas actually fucking include storage or SLAs! And no, cheap storage is not a fucking thing! Someone earlier on HN today was boasting of a solution that cost $800,000 per MWh, and if it exponentially decayed in cost at a rate greater than any industrial improvement ever for the next decade, it would still be more expensive than nuclear! And yes, I'm angry, because empirically, on the very grid I use, that is exactly what has happened. We're paying, not the "extortionate" $100 or so nuclear promised, but over $500, because something needs to keep the lights on at moments not convenient for the intermittence. And I've worked with the industrial consumers of their product, conferences where literally everyone has academic AND industry experience in real engineering, and they're fucking suicidal because of the losses incurred by this shit, Europe-fucking-wide. This is not okay. This is fraud.
  - dale_glass 4y ago
    > And who the fuck is doing that? Because they're not god-damned cheap if you do that! Nobody is doing it yet because nobody is even close to having too much solar or wind at this point. But that's still likely cheaper in the end. > And yes, I'm angry, because empirically, on the very grid I use, that is exactly what has happened. We're paying, not the "extortionate" $100 or so nuclear promised, but over $500, because something needs to keep the lights on at moments not convenient for the intermittence. Nuclear promised power too cheap to meter. That's never materialized. Nuclear promises many things, but so far shows no signs of fulfilling them. Eg, Hinkley Point C in the UK is infamous for that it's already economically nonsensical and can only exist because the government guaranteed a subsidy. It's already not competitive with modern renewables. That's unlikely to improve in the future.
cinntaile 4y ago
They are pretty much everywhere nowadays, because they're such good investments. The fact that they're intermittent is a big problem for nuclear and other "constant" power sources, resulting in their gradual disappearance. More renewables will make this happen even faster. The problem is that this is not necessarily good for the grid as a whole if there are no power sources that can fill in when renewables aren't producing as much, while they at the same time have priced the stable sources out of the market.
- trashtester 4y ago
  > The problem is that this is not necessarily good for the grid as a whole I agree. Average electricity prices seem to be higher the more renewables are available in a given area. It seems to me that this, in part, is due to the pricing mechanisms available. Let's say a nuclear based energy company could sell power to its customers at a fixed price, where the customer would commit to buying this even when the spot price went lower. Now, let's also assume that the customer would only pay for the grid capacity needed to transfer this power from the local power plant. If companies selling wind power needed a grid capable of transmitting the power from the other side of the continent, that extra cost would be slapped on top of the wind power, NOT other power sources. In sum, this should make it possible to sell the nuclear power to consumers at prices moderatly above the production cost (plus taxes, local grid costs and reasonable profits). For old nuclear plants (or those built at the prices available in Korea or China), this would make the price to the consumer quite competitive, if not outright cheaper than energy mixes based on renewables and natural gas. Also, there is nothing technical that prevents us from building nuclear plants at the safety standards of those plants, with designs from about 1970 not only at the same price (inflation adjusted) as back then, but even much cheaper, due to technological developments. If so, I would expect production costs below $20/MWh. This would still cause less total harm per TWh than any other stable power mix available today. What prevents this seems to be regulations at every level, where nuclear is burdened with all sorts of extra costs, ranging from insane security requirements and other red tape, limits on pricing in many markets, having to pay for the extra grid capacity required by renewable sources, excessive taxes or deposits for externalities that is not required for other energy sources. Now let's say all power sources were held to the same standards when it comes to externalities such as safety/harm caused. This would mean that wind would have to deposit enough funds to ensure proper recycling of blades at end-of-life (or at the very least, safe storage). Ditto for solar. Hydrocarbons have the same allowances for toxic substances as nuclear, in terms lives lost and diseases caused. The harm from greenhouse gases could also be priced in this way. Grid costs would be allocated proportionally to grid capacity requirements. If we do this, I'm convinced Nuclear would come out as the cheaper than renewables combined with enough hydrocarbon plants (or batteries) to even out the variability of the production capacity. If all power source were punished the same as nuclear for any risks, they would be impossibly expensive. If the demands on nuclear were reduced to the same levels as other sources, it would become dirt cheap.

If modern renewables are so affordable as investments, provide quick returns, and produce electrictiy that's 30% the cost of nuclear, then why isn't it everywhere and electric power very cheap?

dale_glass 4y ago

They take time to build, solar is intermittent, and just like with nuclear there are NIMBY issues. Installed solar capacity is rapidly going up. Solar in particular is a big potential issue for nuclear, because so long the sun is shining, why would you buy any nuclear power? Solar is far cheaper to provide, so any rational person would buy solar first. And the more solar the less nuclear has to do during the day, which means that all those billions take longer and longer to pay off. And you better hope storage doesn't kick off before that.

fewavewavewa 4y ago
So renewables are not cheap, easy, and quick?
- dale_glass 4y ago
  They're very cheap compared to building nuclear, very easy to build compared to nuclear, and go up in weeks or months rather than years, so also quick. Capacity is being rapidly added, but there's not enough of them yet.
  - fewavewavewa 4y ago
    So it's easy to throw up some wind turbines and solar panels, but difficult, expensive, and requires cutting-edge technology to make them useful as power sources to the national grid?
    - dale_glass 4y ago
      No, we just need to build more of them. Renewables started being competitive fairly recently and you can't just magic solar panels and turbines out of thin air, they need to be built. And we're rapidly building them. Which by the way, the very reason why we're having this conversation. If nuclear was such a great proposition, people would go and build it. We wouldn't be having silly arguments about its worth on websites that affect nothing. People with billions of money to spend and who expect juicy profits don't need Hacker News' validation.
      - fewavewavewa 4y ago
        We (well, at least in the UK) have plenty of them. It's all that tricky, expensive, and financially unrewarding infrastructure that's holding things back. We pay Scottish windfarms about £200million per year to curtail their output, just because we can't get the power from source to sink.

pasttense01 4y ago

Because customers want electricity 24 hours/day, 7 days/week and 52 weeks/year. Conversely renewables are intermittent. So the basic solutions are to massively overbuild renewables, to massively increase the capacity of the electric grid--so you can move huge amounts of electricity all around the country, have massive amounts of very expensive electricity storage and/or to have a massive fossil fuel backup system.

fewavewavewa 4y ago
.
yodelshady 4y ago
> So the basic solutions are to massively overbuild renewables, And who the fuck is doing that? Because they're not god-damned cheap if you do that! I do not care if you can sell your product for cheap if I have to buy a much more expensive, planet-killing fossil-fuel product to make up for your SLA of "ha ha ha oh my god they think we have an SLA", which is why none of these academic ideas actually fucking include storage or SLAs! And no, cheap storage is not a fucking thing! Someone earlier on HN today was boasting of a solution that cost $800,000 per MWh, and if it exponentially decayed in cost at a rate greater than any industrial improvement ever for the next decade, it would still be more expensive than nuclear! And yes, I'm angry, because empirically, on the very grid I use, that is exactly what has happened. We're paying, not the "extortionate" $100 or so nuclear promised, but over $500, because something needs to keep the lights on at moments not convenient for the intermittence. And I've worked with the industrial consumers of their product, conferences where literally everyone has academic AND industry experience in real engineering, and they're fucking suicidal because of the losses incurred by this shit, Europe-fucking-wide. This is not okay. This is fraud.
- dale_glass 4y ago
  > And who the fuck is doing that? Because they're not god-damned cheap if you do that! Nobody is doing it yet because nobody is even close to having too much solar or wind at this point. But that's still likely cheaper in the end. > And yes, I'm angry, because empirically, on the very grid I use, that is exactly what has happened. We're paying, not the "extortionate" $100 or so nuclear promised, but over $500, because something needs to keep the lights on at moments not convenient for the intermittence. Nuclear promised power too cheap to meter. That's never materialized. Nuclear promises many things, but so far shows no signs of fulfilling them. Eg, Hinkley Point C in the UK is infamous for that it's already economically nonsensical and can only exist because the government guaranteed a subsidy. It's already not competitive with modern renewables. That's unlikely to improve in the future.

cinntaile 4y ago

They are pretty much everywhere nowadays, because they're such good investments. The fact that they're intermittent is a big problem for nuclear and other "constant" power sources, resulting in their gradual disappearance. More renewables will make this happen even faster. The problem is that this is not necessarily good for the grid as a whole if there are no power sources that can fill in when renewables aren't producing as much, while they at the same time have priced the stable sources out of the market.

trashtester 4y ago
> The problem is that this is not necessarily good for the grid as a whole I agree. Average electricity prices seem to be higher the more renewables are available in a given area. It seems to me that this, in part, is due to the pricing mechanisms available. Let's say a nuclear based energy company could sell power to its customers at a fixed price, where the customer would commit to buying this even when the spot price went lower. Now, let's also assume that the customer would only pay for the grid capacity needed to transfer this power from the local power plant. If companies selling wind power needed a grid capable of transmitting the power from the other side of the continent, that extra cost would be slapped on top of the wind power, NOT other power sources. In sum, this should make it possible to sell the nuclear power to consumers at prices moderatly above the production cost (plus taxes, local grid costs and reasonable profits). For old nuclear plants (or those built at the prices available in Korea or China), this would make the price to the consumer quite competitive, if not outright cheaper than energy mixes based on renewables and natural gas. Also, there is nothing technical that prevents us from building nuclear plants at the safety standards of those plants, with designs from about 1970 not only at the same price (inflation adjusted) as back then, but even much cheaper, due to technological developments. If so, I would expect production costs below $20/MWh. This would still cause less total harm per TWh than any other stable power mix available today. What prevents this seems to be regulations at every level, where nuclear is burdened with all sorts of extra costs, ranging from insane security requirements and other red tape, limits on pricing in many markets, having to pay for the extra grid capacity required by renewable sources, excessive taxes or deposits for externalities that is not required for other energy sources. Now let's say all power sources were held to the same standards when it comes to externalities such as safety/harm caused. This would mean that wind would have to deposit enough funds to ensure proper recycling of blades at end-of-life (or at the very least, safe storage). Ditto for solar. Hydrocarbons have the same allowances for toxic substances as nuclear, in terms lives lost and diseases caused. The harm from greenhouse gases could also be priced in this way. Grid costs would be allocated proportionally to grid capacity requirements. If we do this, I'm convinced Nuclear would come out as the cheaper than renewables combined with enough hydrocarbon plants (or batteries) to even out the variability of the production capacity. If all power source were punished the same as nuclear for any risks, they would be impossibly expensive. If the demands on nuclear were reduced to the same levels as other sources, it would become dirt cheap.