3 ms·

> Why should they not be exempted when we today understand how and why it’s happening and they are following the environmental rules set forth for their operati

> Why should they not be exempted when we today understand how and why it’s happening and they are following the environmental rules set forth for their operating permit? So we should allow companies to operate unhindered within (evidence based) rules. Seems like an idea. Let us use that approach for all activities, including nuclear power. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_no-threshold_model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_no-threshold_model is a model with scant evidence in the range relevant to operating a power station. Having said that the ICRP will be updating their model within a decade or so, so perhaps that barrier will disappear.

ViewTrick1002 2y ago
Let’s remove the Price Anderson act as well and have the nuclear plants insure for Fukushima level accident costs rather than relying on the tax payers to pick up the tab. The entire industry would shut down tomorrow if they had to pay the true insurance cost. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%E2%80%93Anderson_Nuclear_Industries_Indemnity_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%E2%80%93Anderson_Nuclear...
- chickenbig 2y ago
  > have the nuclear plants insure for Fukushima level accident costs The flip-side of the Price Anderson act is that the NRC is deeply involved in the operations of nuclear power stations. Why stop at nuclear; why not aircraft, social networks or unvaccinated people? Also make all companies unlimited liability so their shareholders are accountable when something goes wrong.
  - ViewTrick1002 2y ago
    Now you managed to pinpoint the issue with nuclear power. Criticism is met with “don’t you dare question the subsidies” and then a stream of whataboutism across completely different industries rather than daring to compare with the alternative: renewables. Because you already know that comparison makes the nuclear case even worse than it already is. Renewables don’t have capped liability, at worst if regular insurance coverage is not enough the company will be bankrupted and the assets sold to pay for the damages. For renewables it is already baked into the price because the risks are near zero.
    - chickenbig 2y ago
      > For renewables it is already baked into the price because the risks are near zero. Remind me how much each eagle is worth? How about power cuts caused by wind farms tripping incorrectly? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-49309691 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-49309691 How about disruption caused by failure to provide power in low wind conditions, or is that just a societal risk rather than investor risk?
      - ViewTrick1002 2y ago
        So now eagles worth hundreds of billions. Then more whataboutism. Typical. How about the disruption caused by half the French nuclear fleet being offline at the height of the energy crisis? https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/15/business/nuclear-power-france.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/15/business/nuclear-power-fr... A recent study found that nuclear power needs to come down 85% in cost to be competitive with renewables when looking into total system costs for a fully decarbonized grid, due to both options requiring flexibility to meet the grid load. > The study finds that investments in flexibility in the electricity supply are needed in both systems due to the constant production pattern of nuclear and the variability of renewable energy sources. However, the scenario with high nuclear implementation is 1.2 billion EUR more expensive annually compared to a scenario only based on renewables, with all systems completely balancing supply and demand across all energy sectors in every hour. For nuclear power to be cost competitive with renewables an investment cost of 1.55 MEUR/MW must be achieved, which is substantially below any cost projection for nuclear power. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306261924010882 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030626192...
        chickenbig 2y ago
        > So now eagles worth hundreds of billions. https://www.npr.org/2022/04/06/1091250692/esi-energy-bald-eagles https://www.npr.org/2022/04/06/1091250692/esi-energy-bald-ea...; around 30k USD per eagle. That's the cost of doing business, I guess. > A recent study found that nuclear power needs to come down 85% in cost to be competitive with renewables when looking into total system costs for a fully decarbonized grid Per paper you've linked to :- For nuclear power to be cost competitive with renewables an investment cost of 1.55 MEUR/MW must be achieved They state that for nuclear to be cost competitive with (per table 2) onshore wind (1.03 MEUR/MW, 0.37 capacity factor), offshore wind (1.90 MEUR/MW, 0.51 capacity factor) and solar (0.6 MEUR/MW, 0.14 capacity factor) it has to have a price between offshore and onshore wind. One also has to wonder why the high nuclear scenario has 9GW of intermittent energy sources in the mix. Supplementary material chart S1 reveals that the nuclear power is a small part of the overall cost of the energy system. "Transport costs", "remaining investments" and "Operations and maintenance" are over 20B of the 25B EUR cost per year. Figure 6 of the paper needs to be viewed with these totals in mind. Supplementary material chart S3 shows they model nuclear's availability factor by smoothing outages across the year, only ever producing 6,686MW. EDIT :- actually it goes up to 6,823MW for part of the year, averaging out to 6,743MW. Overall the paper is rather poor. EDIT :- Looking at the S3 data again, it appears that heating and unflexible demand add up to at most 9,770MW, so only another 2 nuclear power stations would cover that peak.

ViewTrick1002 2y ago

Let’s remove the Price Anderson act as well and have the nuclear plants insure for Fukushima level accident costs rather than relying on the tax payers to pick up the tab. The entire industry would shut down tomorrow if they had to pay the true insurance cost. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%E2%80%93Anderson_Nuclear_Industries_Indemnity_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%E2%80%93Anderson_Nuclear...

chickenbig 2y ago
> have the nuclear plants insure for Fukushima level accident costs The flip-side of the Price Anderson act is that the NRC is deeply involved in the operations of nuclear power stations. Why stop at nuclear; why not aircraft, social networks or unvaccinated people? Also make all companies unlimited liability so their shareholders are accountable when something goes wrong.
- ViewTrick1002 2y ago
  Now you managed to pinpoint the issue with nuclear power. Criticism is met with “don’t you dare question the subsidies” and then a stream of whataboutism across completely different industries rather than daring to compare with the alternative: renewables. Because you already know that comparison makes the nuclear case even worse than it already is. Renewables don’t have capped liability, at worst if regular insurance coverage is not enough the company will be bankrupted and the assets sold to pay for the damages. For renewables it is already baked into the price because the risks are near zero.
  - chickenbig 2y ago
    > For renewables it is already baked into the price because the risks are near zero. Remind me how much each eagle is worth? How about power cuts caused by wind farms tripping incorrectly? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-49309691 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-49309691 How about disruption caused by failure to provide power in low wind conditions, or is that just a societal risk rather than investor risk?
    - ViewTrick1002 2y ago
      So now eagles worth hundreds of billions. Then more whataboutism. Typical. How about the disruption caused by half the French nuclear fleet being offline at the height of the energy crisis? https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/15/business/nuclear-power-france.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/15/business/nuclear-power-fr... A recent study found that nuclear power needs to come down 85% in cost to be competitive with renewables when looking into total system costs for a fully decarbonized grid, due to both options requiring flexibility to meet the grid load. > The study finds that investments in flexibility in the electricity supply are needed in both systems due to the constant production pattern of nuclear and the variability of renewable energy sources. However, the scenario with high nuclear implementation is 1.2 billion EUR more expensive annually compared to a scenario only based on renewables, with all systems completely balancing supply and demand across all energy sectors in every hour. For nuclear power to be cost competitive with renewables an investment cost of 1.55 MEUR/MW must be achieved, which is substantially below any cost projection for nuclear power. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306261924010882 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030626192...
      - chickenbig 2y ago
        > So now eagles worth hundreds of billions. https://www.npr.org/2022/04/06/1091250692/esi-energy-bald-eagles https://www.npr.org/2022/04/06/1091250692/esi-energy-bald-ea...; around 30k USD per eagle. That's the cost of doing business, I guess. > A recent study found that nuclear power needs to come down 85% in cost to be competitive with renewables when looking into total system costs for a fully decarbonized grid Per paper you've linked to :- For nuclear power to be cost competitive with renewables an investment cost of 1.55 MEUR/MW must be achieved They state that for nuclear to be cost competitive with (per table 2) onshore wind (1.03 MEUR/MW, 0.37 capacity factor), offshore wind (1.90 MEUR/MW, 0.51 capacity factor) and solar (0.6 MEUR/MW, 0.14 capacity factor) it has to have a price between offshore and onshore wind. One also has to wonder why the high nuclear scenario has 9GW of intermittent energy sources in the mix. Supplementary material chart S1 reveals that the nuclear power is a small part of the overall cost of the energy system. "Transport costs", "remaining investments" and "Operations and maintenance" are over 20B of the 25B EUR cost per year. Figure 6 of the paper needs to be viewed with these totals in mind. Supplementary material chart S3 shows they model nuclear's availability factor by smoothing outages across the year, only ever producing 6,686MW. EDIT :- actually it goes up to 6,823MW for part of the year, averaging out to 6,743MW. Overall the paper is rather poor. EDIT :- Looking at the S3 data again, it appears that heating and unflexible demand add up to at most 9,770MW, so only another 2 nuclear power stations would cover that peak.