13 ms·

I admit to not reading the article as I don't have access. (I read the article as I found a working link elsewhere) Still, I think nuclear is just not viab

~~I admit to not reading the article as I don't have access.~~ (I read the article as I found a working link elsewhere) Still, I think nuclear is just not viable anymore. Here in The Netherlands for instance, we have quite a few days where energy prices are negative due to an (over) abundance of solar and wind energy. A commercial nuclear power plant is out of the question, as it won't be price competitive with wind or solar. So tax payers will have to foot the bill anyway. I'd rather foot the bill for something more economical, battery storage and other solutions. The 'real' problems we face in The Netherlands is that our grid can't be expanded fast enough to deal with increased wind and solar production. Yes, yes, wind and solar are intermittent and that's something that we have to deal with somehow. However, for the price of a nuclear powerplant (or four) you can buy ungodly amounts of battery storage that we very likely can do without nuclear. >The International Atomic Energy Agency convened a summit to build momentum for a low-emissions technology that many expect will be critical for hitting climate targets. A group of mostly Western countries pledged to triple nuclear generation by 2050. But lenders balked at the eyewatering cost of doing so. Why aren't lenders jumping at the opportunity? >Projects in Western economies have been plagued by construction delays and ballooning costs in recent decades. The newest reactor in the European Union — Olkiluoto 3 in Finland — started generating power last year, more than a decade late and three times over budget. That explains things yes. >“We need state involvement, I don’t see any other model,” Ostros said. “Probably we need quite heavy state involvement to make projects bankable.” If the state would be involved, please put the money in something else. Something better.

jmspring 3y ago
Here in the US, especially in western states, there are remote area where large solar arrays, nuclear could be placed away from things, etc. However, like you mention, infrastructure takes time. California is trying to mandate a high percentage of electric vehicles in a timeframe where they will not be able to keep up with electricity demand. We already have notorious brownouts when it's too hot, etc. Our electric providers have taken profits over infrastructure maintenance. Improving and expanding the infrastructure will take decades.
- kjkjadksj 3y ago
  Its kind of interesting how differently managed the power is in the state depending on if your provider is public or private. No brownouts and cheap power under the public ladwp.
  - jeffbee 3y ago
    California's "notorious brownouts" exist only in the imaginations of habitual Fox News watchers. There hasn't been a load-related power outage in CAISO territory in several years. In August 2020 there was a 2.5-hour (at most) outage for fewer than 1 million customers that was due to a demand/supply emergency. That was the only intentional blackout in the last 25 years. https://www.caiso.com/Documents/Grid-Emergencies-History-Report-1998-Present.pdf#page=3 https://www.caiso.com/Documents/Grid-Emergencies-History-Rep...
    - kjkjadksj 3y ago
      I seem to remember socal edison doing preventative brown outs during the santa ana winds last year. Maybe its not a load related brownout, but for customers it hardly matters why the power is out, only that its out.
      - jeffbee 3y ago
        Your conclusion is correct, but most of these shutoffs don't affect anybody. The utility has to announce them but usually they don't cut anybody off. There was only one event in 2023 during which SCE de-energized more than single digits of customers.
    - jmspring 3y ago
      There have been sporadic rolling brownouts in the last couple of years, that said, CALISO has also had regional power outages due to high winds - Santa Cruz Mountains, above Oroville/northern CA, etc. Let's also not forget the significant number of outages that happen regularly due to lack of maintenance on infrastructure in mountainous and rural areas. I happen to have a coop that has been more stable the last 8 years mainly because when there is a PG&E outage, there is back up power from Nevada Energy (or whatever it's called). Also on the line maintenance front - Dixie Fire. Granted there are tree maintenance, property owner problems, etc. For an all electric infrastructure, more generation and better maintained infrastructure is needed. I think microgrids for areas that have the open land would be something to consider.
realusername 3y ago
> However, for the price of a nuclear powerplant (or four) you can buy ungodly amounts of battery storage that we very likely can do without nuclear. Well no you can't in a meaningful scale, and that's why the Netherlands isn't using batteries for that but gas plants (40% of the total generation).
- louwrentius 3y ago
  We currently still depend on a lot of gas plants yes, but we are working on battery storage: https://www.energy-storage.news/semperpower-starts-operations-on-62mwh-rolls-royce-bess-in-netherlands/ https://www.energy-storage.news/semperpower-starts-operation...
  - realusername 3y ago
    That's a rounding error if you really wanted to move the production from the summer to the winter. Nobody does it because that's not feasible with the current tech. At best you smooth out the daily production.
    - ben_w 3y ago
      You don't need to shift all the energy from the long days in the summer to the long nights in the winter. The cheapest solution varies depending on how close you are to the arctic circle, but for most of the world's population the best is to have a bit more generation capacity than you need on a winter's day combined with a mere few days worth of storage. This is about x100 less energy storage than shifting from summer to winter, at a cost of x3 in generation, and generation is still the cheaper part of the two. Close to the arctic circle, the only solution is a power line to somewhere further south; this is much cheaper than the nay-sayers claim (in $ terms even a planet-spanning 1 Ω grid is only about $265 billion), but is still a political PITA.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
7thaccount 3y ago
It's a bit more nuanced than this. Wind and Solar can lead to negative prices for a variety of reasons. Mostly because they have zero variable fuel costs (what goes into the market price), but very large fixed costs. The subsidies (at least in the US) allow them to bid below zero to try to secure the plant running. They often need to run to maintain the tax credit and due to congestion, there can be fierce competition for the renewables in that area to generate. So yeah, nuclear looks awful in that context but you have to keep in mind that the market prices are really mostly about dispatching generation by short term costs. As complex as these auctions are, they're still far too simple to really take into account some of the advantages of nuclear like being able to run as long as there is some water, while wind and solar can be unavailable at times (they're usually pretty good), but dunkelflaute is a thing where you may have an entire week of having very little renewable energy (something where we don't have enough batteries to fix either). This is one area where a centralized planner (like a vertically integrated utility) can do a better job than the wholesale electricity markets in looking at the bigger picture and the overall costs. Nuclear is certainly financially risky, but it and gas often make sense in a portfolio.
- cauch 3y ago
  While dunkelflaute is a problem, they are as rare as events where a nuclear power plant has to stop production for an unexpected reason. In both case, nuclear or not, when building a network, you will need to build some redundancies and flexibility. A lot of the problems of renewables have an equivalent in the nuclear plants (for example, even with nuclear, batteries are needed because nuclear starts to be more expensive if they have to turn on and off to follow the demand, so it's cheaper to build battery).
  - 7thaccount 3y ago
    All true, but what most of the renewables advocates are advocating for is a system purely of wind, solar, geothermal, and batteries...and to do it as quickly as possible. They're more concerned with a potential climate catastrophe than one where energy becomes far more scarce and demand curtailment the norm. The problem with the latter is if we're not careful and get rid of all of our traditional generation too fast we would have deindustrialization and mass human suffering as well. I'm not being hyperbolic either. Stable electricity is the bedrock of our society and as plant operators move into other roles and generators are moth-balled, going back can't be done at the drop of a hat. This is a big topic right now. Both views are important. We need to decarbonize, but we have to do it without leading to other major issues.
mpweiher 3y ago
> Here in The Netherlands for instance, ... ...the Dutch parliament just voted for 4 new nuclear reactors instead of the 2 that were initially planned. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/dutch-parliament-votes-for-four-new-nuclear-plants-instead-of-two/ar-BB1joFn3 https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/dutch-parliament-votes-... > energy prices are negative Yes, this is one of the many problems with renewables. Negative prices do not reflect cost, but rather how much the supplied energy is currently worth to consumers. Negative prices mean that the energy that is produced is currently less than worthless, it is harmful. The reason for this is the volatility/unreliability, which means you have to massively overprovision. > for the price of a nuclear powerplant (or four) you can buy ungodly amounts of battery storage That tuns out not to be the case. Not only can you not buy sufficient storage at any price currently, the prices are also astronomical.

~~I admit to not reading the article as I don't have access.~~ (I read the article as I found a working link elsewhere) Still, I think nuclear is just not viab

jmspring 3y ago

Here in the US, especially in western states, there are remote area where large solar arrays, nuclear could be placed away from things, etc. However, like you mention, infrastructure takes time. California is trying to mandate a high percentage of electric vehicles in a timeframe where they will not be able to keep up with electricity demand. We already have notorious brownouts when it's too hot, etc. Our electric providers have taken profits over infrastructure maintenance. Improving and expanding the infrastructure will take decades.

kjkjadksj 3y ago
Its kind of interesting how differently managed the power is in the state depending on if your provider is public or private. No brownouts and cheap power under the public ladwp.
- jeffbee 3y ago
  California's "notorious brownouts" exist only in the imaginations of habitual Fox News watchers. There hasn't been a load-related power outage in CAISO territory in several years. In August 2020 there was a 2.5-hour (at most) outage for fewer than 1 million customers that was due to a demand/supply emergency. That was the only intentional blackout in the last 25 years. https://www.caiso.com/Documents/Grid-Emergencies-History-Report-1998-Present.pdf#page=3 https://www.caiso.com/Documents/Grid-Emergencies-History-Rep...
  - kjkjadksj 3y ago
    I seem to remember socal edison doing preventative brown outs during the santa ana winds last year. Maybe its not a load related brownout, but for customers it hardly matters why the power is out, only that its out.
    - jeffbee 3y ago
      Your conclusion is correct, but most of these shutoffs don't affect anybody. The utility has to announce them but usually they don't cut anybody off. There was only one event in 2023 during which SCE de-energized more than single digits of customers.
  - jmspring 3y ago
    There have been sporadic rolling brownouts in the last couple of years, that said, CALISO has also had regional power outages due to high winds - Santa Cruz Mountains, above Oroville/northern CA, etc. Let's also not forget the significant number of outages that happen regularly due to lack of maintenance on infrastructure in mountainous and rural areas. I happen to have a coop that has been more stable the last 8 years mainly because when there is a PG&E outage, there is back up power from Nevada Energy (or whatever it's called). Also on the line maintenance front - Dixie Fire. Granted there are tree maintenance, property owner problems, etc. For an all electric infrastructure, more generation and better maintained infrastructure is needed. I think microgrids for areas that have the open land would be something to consider.

realusername 3y ago

> However, for the price of a nuclear powerplant (or four) you can buy ungodly amounts of battery storage that we very likely can do without nuclear. Well no you can't in a meaningful scale, and that's why the Netherlands isn't using batteries for that but gas plants (40% of the total generation).

louwrentius 3y ago
We currently still depend on a lot of gas plants yes, but we are working on battery storage: https://www.energy-storage.news/semperpower-starts-operations-on-62mwh-rolls-royce-bess-in-netherlands/ https://www.energy-storage.news/semperpower-starts-operation...
- realusername 3y ago
  That's a rounding error if you really wanted to move the production from the summer to the winter. Nobody does it because that's not feasible with the current tech. At best you smooth out the daily production.
  - ben_w 3y ago
    You don't need to shift all the energy from the long days in the summer to the long nights in the winter. The cheapest solution varies depending on how close you are to the arctic circle, but for most of the world's population the best is to have a bit more generation capacity than you need on a winter's day combined with a mere few days worth of storage. This is about x100 less energy storage than shifting from summer to winter, at a cost of x3 in generation, and generation is still the cheaper part of the two. Close to the arctic circle, the only solution is a power line to somewhere further south; this is much cheaper than the nay-sayers claim (in $ terms even a planet-spanning 1 Ω grid is only about $265 billion), but is still a political PITA.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

7thaccount 3y ago

It's a bit more nuanced than this. Wind and Solar can lead to negative prices for a variety of reasons. Mostly because they have zero variable fuel costs (what goes into the market price), but very large fixed costs. The subsidies (at least in the US) allow them to bid below zero to try to secure the plant running. They often need to run to maintain the tax credit and due to congestion, there can be fierce competition for the renewables in that area to generate. So yeah, nuclear looks awful in that context but you have to keep in mind that the market prices are really mostly about dispatching generation by short term costs. As complex as these auctions are, they're still far too simple to really take into account some of the advantages of nuclear like being able to run as long as there is some water, while wind and solar can be unavailable at times (they're usually pretty good), but dunkelflaute is a thing where you may have an entire week of having very little renewable energy (something where we don't have enough batteries to fix either). This is one area where a centralized planner (like a vertically integrated utility) can do a better job than the wholesale electricity markets in looking at the bigger picture and the overall costs. Nuclear is certainly financially risky, but it and gas often make sense in a portfolio.

cauch 3y ago
While dunkelflaute is a problem, they are as rare as events where a nuclear power plant has to stop production for an unexpected reason. In both case, nuclear or not, when building a network, you will need to build some redundancies and flexibility. A lot of the problems of renewables have an equivalent in the nuclear plants (for example, even with nuclear, batteries are needed because nuclear starts to be more expensive if they have to turn on and off to follow the demand, so it's cheaper to build battery).
- 7thaccount 3y ago
  All true, but what most of the renewables advocates are advocating for is a system purely of wind, solar, geothermal, and batteries...and to do it as quickly as possible. They're more concerned with a potential climate catastrophe than one where energy becomes far more scarce and demand curtailment the norm. The problem with the latter is if we're not careful and get rid of all of our traditional generation too fast we would have deindustrialization and mass human suffering as well. I'm not being hyperbolic either. Stable electricity is the bedrock of our society and as plant operators move into other roles and generators are moth-balled, going back can't be done at the drop of a hat. This is a big topic right now. Both views are important. We need to decarbonize, but we have to do it without leading to other major issues.

mpweiher 3y ago

> Here in The Netherlands for instance, ... ...the Dutch parliament just voted for 4 new nuclear reactors instead of the 2 that were initially planned. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/dutch-parliament-votes-for-four-new-nuclear-plants-instead-of-two/ar-BB1joFn3 https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/dutch-parliament-votes-... > energy prices are negative Yes, this is one of the many problems with renewables. Negative prices do not reflect cost, but rather how much the supplied energy is currently worth to consumers. Negative prices mean that the energy that is produced is currently less than worthless, it is harmful. The reason for this is the volatility/unreliability, which means you have to massively overprovision. > for the price of a nuclear powerplant (or four) you can buy ungodly amounts of battery storage That tuns out not to be the case. Not only can you not buy sufficient storage at any price currently, the prices are also astronomical.