5 ms·

There we agree. There is only one problem: nobody wants to build new nuclear reactors in the West, they are not competetive with renewables anymore. So every do

by hef19898 3y ago

There we agree. There is only one problem: nobody wants to build new nuclear reactors in the West, they are not competetive with renewables anymore. So every dollar invested in new nuclear reactors is a wasted dollar. The fossil fuel lobby benegits largely from that, because every dollar going into nuclear projects, which will be completed at least a decade later if not more, is a dollar not going into renewables going online in the next year. And it is the latter that posses a problem for fossil fuel plants, not the former. Anyway, as with EVs, capitalism has decided: wind and solar it is, that's where the money goes and not nuclear. For mostly the same reasons come 2030 you wont be able to buy ICE cars anymore. Profits and money.

nickpp 3y ago
Yes, free markets have fuelled a technological boom that delivered us renewables - an incredible, completely unexpected feat. But it may be a case of too little too late. The problem is we spent last 100 years spewing CO2 into the atmosphere instead of switching to nuclear due to the nuclear fear-mongering from environmentalists. Now we are facing Climate Change, a civilization-ending danger. And I am not sure the renewable build-up is fast enough to replace hydrocarbon burning, especially since it also has an availability problem. The rational strategy would thus be a (slow, controlled, careful) cost-reducing deregulation and nuclear buildup in parallel with renewables and closing down of legacy plants. But we are facing the same resistance and fear mongering from the exact same politicians and ideologues that got us into this predicament in the first place. I am pretty sure no solution can come from the same people and way of thinking that created the problem.
- mschuster91 3y ago
  > And I am not sure the renewable build-up is fast enough to replace hydrocarbon burning, especially since it also has an availability problem. It absolutely is. Germany is building about 1.5GW a month of solar and wind combined, so over a year the equivalent of a dozen average large scale NPPs. Even accounting for the availability problem, aka capacity factor (wind ~0.3-0.5, solar .25), that's the equivalent of four NPPs a year. The rest? Can easily be covered with a combination of hydro, geothermal, massive grids and dynamic load management (both on the demand side aka load shedding and on the source side aka powerwalls with feedback capability).
  - hef19898 3y ago
    The demand side became pretty proficient regarding load shedding as well, making literally millions off of it.
    - mschuster91 3y ago
      Meh, a lot of heavy industry is still running on machines from the 60s. Incentivising them to upgrade their old crap to modern times would cost them billions (which is why they've been dragging their arses so long), but it would bring a lot of consumption savings and flexibility to the grid.
      - hef19898 3y ago
        I personally knownof three energy hungry places, two former employers and and one nearby, that runs those really old machines (chemical plants from before the war, WW1 in one case, graphite production of the same age and paper machines at pretty old sites) that are perfectly able for almost a decade now to adapt their production, within certain limits of course, to provide load balancing. They even go as far as adapting production to electricity prices in the spot market and speculate with their long term contract volumes. Litterally making millions, to the point production for zhe waste bin is almost profitable (which renders the whole sustainability angle moot, but I digress). Morw of that, some storage, bio gas and hydrogen peaker plants, geo thermal and renewables and we are good to go.
        mschuster91 3y ago
        > plants from before the war, WW1 in one case JFC. I get why this is profitable, these machines have been written off financially a century ago and have been money printers ever since for that reason, but this kind of behavior should be seriously penalized - it makes competition for new companies really hard (because they have to pay down the value for new machines), and it's bad for the environment as a whole because if they're still running the same motors and control units from back then, then they are wasting a lot of electricity, most likely also emit a lot more toxic effluents than a plant with modern emission controls and mitigations would, and most likely run at lower yield rates than modern processes so they're wasting more raw materials.
- hef19898 3y ago
  Fun fact: Free markets have not a lot to do with the technological leap of solar, that was mostly German subsidies for PV. In the end only Chinese companies benegited from that, but that is a different topic. Nobody, I repeat nobody, is financing new nuclear reactors in the developed world (except specialized and military applications). The money goes, for quote a while now, into renewables and, sadly, some coal plants (which is mainly due to CO2 certificates being too dirt cheap, and making coal plants financially viable). The free market and financials decided against nuclear, as did politics in a lot of countries. One thing you do ignore so, getting new nuclear reactors up and running takes decades in Europe, there is no such thing as a fast built out. Not even if the public and political will would be there, which it isn't. All we do achieve with argueing for new nuclear capacity is slowing the build out of wind and solar down and slow development of grid scale storage tech.
  - nickpp 3y ago
    > Free markets have not a lot to do with the technological leap of solar, that was mostly German subsidies The technology used to make solar panels is the same used for semiconductors. It evolved al Moore's law speed thanks to an unregulated free market for the tech industry. Same reason we enjoy a cheap supercomputer in every pocket in 2023 instead of the city’s Eniac. That’s what lack of regulation does. What German guvernamental subsidies did was to build a lot of Solar capacity in a country with relatively little sun. I hope it works out for them, but I remember earlier this year importing nuclear electricity from France.
    - hutzlibu 3y ago
      " I remember earlier this year importing nuclear electricity from France." And I remember france hat to partially shut down their reactors in the summer, because the rivers were too warm to cool them.
      - nickpp 3y ago
        Nope. The rivers where just fine to cool reactors, it was that they were heating the water too much for the (outdated) environmental regulations.
TheSpiceIsLife 3y ago
> 2030 you wont be able to buy ICE cars anymore. I'm not convinced. I'm expecting the automotive industry will just start producing vehicles that aren't effected by that requirement and those will be marketed in much the same way as SUVs have become pretty much the only vehicle type available because they're permitted to emmit more CO2.

nickpp 3y ago

Yes, free markets have fuelled a technological boom that delivered us renewables - an incredible, completely unexpected feat. But it may be a case of too little too late. The problem is we spent last 100 years spewing CO2 into the atmosphere instead of switching to nuclear due to the nuclear fear-mongering from environmentalists. Now we are facing Climate Change, a civilization-ending danger. And I am not sure the renewable build-up is fast enough to replace hydrocarbon burning, especially since it also has an availability problem. The rational strategy would thus be a (slow, controlled, careful) cost-reducing deregulation and nuclear buildup in parallel with renewables and closing down of legacy plants. But we are facing the same resistance and fear mongering from the exact same politicians and ideologues that got us into this predicament in the first place. I am pretty sure no solution can come from the same people and way of thinking that created the problem.

mschuster91 3y ago
> And I am not sure the renewable build-up is fast enough to replace hydrocarbon burning, especially since it also has an availability problem. It absolutely is. Germany is building about 1.5GW a month of solar and wind combined, so over a year the equivalent of a dozen average large scale NPPs. Even accounting for the availability problem, aka capacity factor (wind ~0.3-0.5, solar .25), that's the equivalent of four NPPs a year. The rest? Can easily be covered with a combination of hydro, geothermal, massive grids and dynamic load management (both on the demand side aka load shedding and on the source side aka powerwalls with feedback capability).
- hef19898 3y ago
  The demand side became pretty proficient regarding load shedding as well, making literally millions off of it.
  - mschuster91 3y ago
    Meh, a lot of heavy industry is still running on machines from the 60s. Incentivising them to upgrade their old crap to modern times would cost them billions (which is why they've been dragging their arses so long), but it would bring a lot of consumption savings and flexibility to the grid.
    - hef19898 3y ago
      I personally knownof three energy hungry places, two former employers and and one nearby, that runs those really old machines (chemical plants from before the war, WW1 in one case, graphite production of the same age and paper machines at pretty old sites) that are perfectly able for almost a decade now to adapt their production, within certain limits of course, to provide load balancing. They even go as far as adapting production to electricity prices in the spot market and speculate with their long term contract volumes. Litterally making millions, to the point production for zhe waste bin is almost profitable (which renders the whole sustainability angle moot, but I digress). Morw of that, some storage, bio gas and hydrogen peaker plants, geo thermal and renewables and we are good to go.
      - mschuster91 3y ago
        > plants from before the war, WW1 in one case JFC. I get why this is profitable, these machines have been written off financially a century ago and have been money printers ever since for that reason, but this kind of behavior should be seriously penalized - it makes competition for new companies really hard (because they have to pay down the value for new machines), and it's bad for the environment as a whole because if they're still running the same motors and control units from back then, then they are wasting a lot of electricity, most likely also emit a lot more toxic effluents than a plant with modern emission controls and mitigations would, and most likely run at lower yield rates than modern processes so they're wasting more raw materials.
hef19898 3y ago
Fun fact: Free markets have not a lot to do with the technological leap of solar, that was mostly German subsidies for PV. In the end only Chinese companies benegited from that, but that is a different topic. Nobody, I repeat nobody, is financing new nuclear reactors in the developed world (except specialized and military applications). The money goes, for quote a while now, into renewables and, sadly, some coal plants (which is mainly due to CO2 certificates being too dirt cheap, and making coal plants financially viable). The free market and financials decided against nuclear, as did politics in a lot of countries. One thing you do ignore so, getting new nuclear reactors up and running takes decades in Europe, there is no such thing as a fast built out. Not even if the public and political will would be there, which it isn't. All we do achieve with argueing for new nuclear capacity is slowing the build out of wind and solar down and slow development of grid scale storage tech.
- nickpp 3y ago
  > Free markets have not a lot to do with the technological leap of solar, that was mostly German subsidies The technology used to make solar panels is the same used for semiconductors. It evolved al Moore's law speed thanks to an unregulated free market for the tech industry. Same reason we enjoy a cheap supercomputer in every pocket in 2023 instead of the city’s Eniac. That’s what lack of regulation does. What German guvernamental subsidies did was to build a lot of Solar capacity in a country with relatively little sun. I hope it works out for them, but I remember earlier this year importing nuclear electricity from France.
  - hutzlibu 3y ago
    " I remember earlier this year importing nuclear electricity from France." And I remember france hat to partially shut down their reactors in the summer, because the rivers were too warm to cool them.
    - nickpp 3y ago
      Nope. The rivers where just fine to cool reactors, it was that they were heating the water too much for the (outdated) environmental regulations.

TheSpiceIsLife 3y ago

> 2030 you wont be able to buy ICE cars anymore. I'm not convinced. I'm expecting the automotive industry will just start producing vehicles that aren't effected by that requirement and those will be marketed in much the same way as SUVs have become pretty much the only vehicle type available because they're permitted to emmit more CO2.