6 ms·

Well, those are paradoxes of renewables. When the sun shines bright and the wind is blowing strong grid operators has to pay producers to stop producing, unless

Well, those are paradoxes of renewables. When the sun shines bright and the wind is blowing strong grid operators has to pay producers to stop producing, unless they can find someone who will take this energy for less money that they would have to pay to the renewables producers to stop windmills (this is that "price below zero"). When the sun is not shining and wind is not blowing and your country invested heavily into renewables (like United Kingdom) then you have basically two options. Build a lot of gas power plants, as only they have sufficiently quick cold start time (about 1h) or buy electricity paying (very high) spot prices. Building gas power plants sounds good, but it costs money and you need a lot of them, plus, they emit CO2, defeating the whole purpose of this green transformation. So UK went with the second option, that's why they have the greenest energy on the World... and the most expensive one. As a result, outside areas with predictable weather (that is deserts) it is much better to simply use technology that came into use 70 years ago (indeed in June this year it will be exactly 70 years) with great success: nuclear power plants. And be done with all the paradoxes.

pjc50 2y ago
The UK decided to build a nuclear power station as well in 2010: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_C_nuclear_power_station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_C_nuclear_power_... It is still not operational. Nuclear is too slow. As well as not especially cheap either. There's also a lot of market stupidity in the UK: the marginal price for the most expensive generation sets the price for all generation. In some cases this results in weird situations like wind farms paying back the government because the electricity price was too high for their CFD.
- cyberax 2y ago
  Nuclear power plants can be built much faster. 6 years from the first concrete to completion is possible. The key is to not design each reactor as a unique snowflake.
  - loeg 2y ago
    Churn out more nothing-special AP1000s.
    - pjc50 2y ago
      How many of these have been built?
      - cyberax 2y ago
        Twelve AP1000s are in operation or are in the final construction steps. 20 more are in the planning stages. Russia's Rosatomexport is building roughly similar VVER-1200 power plants within about ~6 years from the first concrete. E.g.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rooppur_Nuclear_Power_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rooppur_Nuclear_Power_Plant They are indeed "nothing special" plants.
        loeg 2y ago
        Also the Chinese CAP1000 design is largely just an AP1000, and China plans to go from shovels down to operation in five years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lianjiang_Nuclear_Power_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lianjiang_Nuclear_Power_Plant
- johngladtj 2y ago
  Nuclear is not too slow, bureaucracy and political ill will is. How many nuclear power plants has china built during a similar period? How many did France when they were building out their grid? This isn't a technical problem.
  - ViewTrick1002 2y ago
    France is currently wholly unable to build new nuclear power. Their latest plant is 7x over budget and 13 years late on a 5 year construction schedule. The EPR2 program is continuously being delayed, with the most recent news being a absolutely massive subsidy program and hopefully final investment decision in mid 2026. With the current target date being the first reactor finished by 2038. China is also massively scaling back their nuclear power ambitions. Since 2020 they have been averaging 4-5 construction starts a year leading to something like a 3% nuclear share of the grid at saturation. Compare with 15 years ago when they were targeting a French like 70%.
  - rstuart4133 2y ago
    > How many nuclear power plants has china built during a similar period? About 1/40th of the amount of renewables they built in the same period.
- ximus 2y ago
  Hinkley Point is the premier example of how badly slow a nuclear development can be. Reactors are often built in 5-7 years.
  - ViewTrick1002 2y ago
    Which modern western reactor was built in 5-7 years? It feels quite strange to base our data on half a century old data because you don’t like the recent data experience.
  - philjohn 2y ago
    And also the ruinous planning regulations in the UK, which thankfully the current Labour government have signalled they're going to reform (which hopefully means gutting a lot of them).
  - myrmidon 2y ago
    Vogtle 3/4 (USA): 10 years. Shin-Hanul (Korea): 12 years. Olkiluoto (Finland): 18 years. Flamanville (France): 17 years. I did not even need to cherry pick those. Your estimates are wildly unrealistic. Also note: Those times are from begin of construction, not start of planning (!!).
    - epistasis 2y ago
      This sort of numerical deception is endemic in nuclear advocacy dicsussions. I don't know if it's intentional, the best explanation I have is that somebody proposes an (unrealistic) number as a goal, and then it's accepted by advocates as the reality. But if reality was known, the person probably would not be an advocate. I have not yet met an advocate that will talk about the real, existing, challenges to nuclear the same way that renewable energy advocates talk about the challenges. Go and listen to a podcast on renewables, and it's all about what's not working, what's working, where the opportunities are, and what needs to be changed with the tech. Go listen to a nuclear energy podcast and all you get is wishful thinking, rose-colored glasses, and papering over the real problems that face the real projects. Edit: for example of the podcasts, here's Jigar Shah on Decouple https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwN1MCtBkVk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwN1MCtBkVk giving the hosts a dose of reality. And Shah is far more optimistic than nearly any realistic person on nuclear, the Liftoff plan (https://liftoff.energy.gov/advanced-nuclear-2/ https://liftoff.energy.gov/advanced-nuclear-2/) that his department produced starts from an unrealistic current position and then assumes massive gains somehow to get to a competitive position. It's rose-colored glasses in itself, but at least it shows a plan of how to make nuclear realistic.
- ZeroGravitas 2y ago
  There is some market (and regulatory) stupidity but both your cited ones have reasonable cases to be made for them. If you order the bids low to high then pay the highest bid then a) you encourage honest (i.e. lower) priced bids and drive expensive/inefficient plants out the market while encouraging new low price entrants who can guarantee they'll get used (because low bid) and make money, driving the market price lower. The problem is the expensive gas caused by Russian invasions and planning a market pricing mechanism around such events is kind of silly when you can just windfall tax to fix the problem quickly and easily if the energy companies aren't all run by your mates from private school. But also generation ain't the whole cost, there's the grid fees and taxes. The latter made sense when burning coal and now are looking likely to be shifted to gas. Collar prices on wind farms are actually a genius bit of financial engineering, guaranteeing minimum funding in a volatile market at low cost by capping the profits.
ttoinou 2y ago
I read online 10+ years ago the same comment that you’re writing right now. Wind and solar energy didn’t get widely implemented for good reasons that we can debate between citizens, they’re a scam here to profit some specific industry, to please the media and reduce feeling of ecologic guilt among some people
rickydroll 2y ago
You don't eliminate the paradoxes. You substitute new ones. The question with nuclear power plants is, what do you do when the consumption is below what is produced? You need to find a power sink. In days past, utility companies gave away nighttime lighting such as streetlights, security lights, etc., because it was way to sell electricity that otherwise would be wasted. The downside is we now have a massive light pollution problem. A better answer is to deploy more storage technology, such as better and distributed batteries, in communities. In addition to sucking up the excess power from the solar wind, it also makes local grids more resilient because the power is held near where it is needed and not dependent on a centralized power plant.
- toomuchtodo 2y ago
  https://www.energy.vic.gov.au/grants/neighbourhood-batteries https://www.energy.vic.gov.au/grants/neighbourhood-batteries
- mpweiher 2y ago
  1. You use nuclear power plants for base load. Which they can provide, unlike renewables. 2. Nuclear power plants can load-follow. Unlike renewables.
  - myrmidon 2y ago
    There is no base load to provide for a nuclear plant if the marginal cost of electricity is close to zero whenever wind/sun is on. Building nuclear plants to then operate them in load following mode is just stupid. If the things can't even compete economically when you build them at pre-existing sites and run them at >90% capacity factor, how would you ever justify building new ones as basically glorified peakers plants, that run barely half the time!? Why would anyone pay for that?
    - mpweiher 2y ago
      That turns out to not be the case. First, the fact that there absolutely is base load is completely independent of how you supply that load. Now you can try to supply it with intermittent renewables, but you will fail, and you will fail with huge costs. "While the LFSCOE-95 are only slightly lower than the LFSCOE for dispatchable technologies, they are about 50% lower for intermittent sources, which challenges the economic sanity of 100% intermittent renewable targets." https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0360544222018035 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03605... Also, the cost of intermittent renewables isn't zero. The price becomes zero and even negative (and that makes it clear that it's the price, not the cost, because cost can't go negative like that), because the electricity becomes worthless or downright harmful. Cost is going to continue to go up as you require ever more overcapacity that cannibalizes itself more and more. And it cannibalizes itself even more than it cannibalizes reliable suppliers. Anyway: just look at what the vast majority of industrial nations are doing. They are combining nuclear for reliable and controllable base-load with intermittent renewables for variable load. Or look at the DOE's "liftoff" documents: nuclear lowers the cost of decarbonization. https://liftoff.energy.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/LIFTOFF_DOE_Advanced-Nuclear_Updated-2.5.25.pdf https://liftoff.energy.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/LIFTOF...
malchow 2y ago
You are interpreting the entire story from the perspective of the utility and ISO (which are distributors, neither a maker of energy nor a net consumer of it). They're Edison-era inventions, borne of the lumbering size, toxicity, noise, and poor capacity factor of mechanical engines. Why don't you interpret it from the perspective of companies (which need to buy energy to do stuff) and consumers (who need to buy energy to be comfortable)? These are the actual buyers. Then you'll see why solar and batteries win all, and utilities, with their badly potholed power highways with massive tolls to consumers, slowly reduce in importance.
swsieber 2y ago
Isn't there a third options of building long term energy storage, or is that not feasible at current tech levels?
- Ekaros 2y ago
  There is, but making that work is complicated. Math gets easy if you can for example buy power for free during day and then sell it night. 365.25 cycles a year. Say 10-30 years. 4000 to 10000, times your storage capacity. Even cents for each might be reasonable. Now cut this at worst case to 10-30 that is purely storing power in summer for winter. And you really start to need very very very cheap per unit storage. Even multiply couple a times and it is still very tough. Remember we are talking about cents per kwh here. Margin just isn't big.
ViewTrick1002 2y ago
You do know that Hinkley Point C will require €170/MWh 24/7 excluding transmission costs for 35 years. Forcing new built nuclear power on the ratepayers would today lead to a self inflicted energy crisis. The question is also how do you match said nuclear plant with the grid load? In California it swings between 15 GW and 50 GW over a year. Or do you suggest that we build peaking nuclear plants?
- chickenbig 2y ago
  > You do know that Hinkley Point C will require €170/MWh 24/7 excluding transmission costs for 35 years. £92.50/MWh 2012 prices = 153 EUR/MWh in 2024 prices and current GBP/EUR exchange rate. If Sizewell C goes ahead then this reduces to under 150 EUR/MWh. Transmission costs will be less than for renewables given the line's higher utilisation and proximity to load, unlike offshore wind up in Scotland. > The question is also how do you match said nuclear plant with the grid load? The UK wholesale market, BETTA, allows bilateral trades. EDF will sell the electricity to their retail arm and will just bypass the wholesale market. A similar arrangement will probably be made for Sizewell C and British Gas, for instance. > Or do you suggest that we build peaking nuclear plants? Perhaps the cheap renewables can be curtailed instead.
  - ViewTrick1002 2y ago
    Sorry. $170/MWh. In the end so horrifically expensive that it doesn’t really matter. I see a whole lot of talk about how to force the consumers to pat for it. Why do you want everyone’s energy bills to massively rise to fund horrifically expensive nuclear power? It will simply become a race where everyone tries to the utmost degree to decouple themselves from your nuclear grid and you leave the poor to shoulder the cost. It seems like you are working backwards from having decided that we must build horrifically expensive new built nuclear power and now are diving into one more insane argument steer the other trying to justify it. Rather than starting from the problem: we need cheap power to decarbonize society.
    - chickenbig 2y ago
tfourb 2y ago
It is cheaper to build out a large (continent wide) network of renewable energy generation with the necessary surplus production and storage than it is to build sufficient nuclear power to adequately provide power. Not to mention much faster and less political contentious (most people like nuclear power in the abstract but are vehemently opposed to power plants or long-term storage close to their home). The UK's problem is not too much green energy. It is the insufficient integration of the European power grid and less than ideal investments into green energy on the part of other European governments. Even if you ignore safety concerns and political resistance, nuclear will always loose on the economics.
myrmidon 2y ago
Your conclusion makes absolutely zero sense. You are against gas peaker plants (for renewables) because they are expensive/produce CO2, but as a solution you suggest building nuclear reactors (which are much more expensive) and then ALSO need the very same peaker plants on top (or buying electricity, or massively overprovisioning nuclear power, which would be ruinous)?! Running gas turbines on H2 is absolutely possible (there are already operational plants made to run it), and thats a perfectly viable longer term contingency in case the battery approach stops improving.

pjc50 2y ago

The UK decided to build a nuclear power station as well in 2010: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_C_nuclear_power_station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_C_nuclear_power_... It is still not operational. Nuclear is too slow. As well as not especially cheap either. There's also a lot of market stupidity in the UK: the marginal price for the most expensive generation sets the price for all generation. In some cases this results in weird situations like wind farms paying back the government because the electricity price was too high for their CFD.

cyberax 2y ago
Nuclear power plants can be built much faster. 6 years from the first concrete to completion is possible. The key is to not design each reactor as a unique snowflake.
- loeg 2y ago
  Churn out more nothing-special AP1000s.
  - pjc50 2y ago
    How many of these have been built?
    - cyberax 2y ago
      Twelve AP1000s are in operation or are in the final construction steps. 20 more are in the planning stages. Russia's Rosatomexport is building roughly similar VVER-1200 power plants within about ~6 years from the first concrete. E.g.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rooppur_Nuclear_Power_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rooppur_Nuclear_Power_Plant They are indeed "nothing special" plants.
      - loeg 2y ago
        Also the Chinese CAP1000 design is largely just an AP1000, and China plans to go from shovels down to operation in five years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lianjiang_Nuclear_Power_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lianjiang_Nuclear_Power_Plant
johngladtj 2y ago
Nuclear is not too slow, bureaucracy and political ill will is. How many nuclear power plants has china built during a similar period? How many did France when they were building out their grid? This isn't a technical problem.
- ViewTrick1002 2y ago
  France is currently wholly unable to build new nuclear power. Their latest plant is 7x over budget and 13 years late on a 5 year construction schedule. The EPR2 program is continuously being delayed, with the most recent news being a absolutely massive subsidy program and hopefully final investment decision in mid 2026. With the current target date being the first reactor finished by 2038. China is also massively scaling back their nuclear power ambitions. Since 2020 they have been averaging 4-5 construction starts a year leading to something like a 3% nuclear share of the grid at saturation. Compare with 15 years ago when they were targeting a French like 70%.
- rstuart4133 2y ago
  > How many nuclear power plants has china built during a similar period? About 1/40th of the amount of renewables they built in the same period.
ximus 2y ago
Hinkley Point is the premier example of how badly slow a nuclear development can be. Reactors are often built in 5-7 years.
- ViewTrick1002 2y ago
  Which modern western reactor was built in 5-7 years? It feels quite strange to base our data on half a century old data because you don’t like the recent data experience.
- philjohn 2y ago
  And also the ruinous planning regulations in the UK, which thankfully the current Labour government have signalled they're going to reform (which hopefully means gutting a lot of them).
- myrmidon 2y ago
  Vogtle 3/4 (USA): 10 years. Shin-Hanul (Korea): 12 years. Olkiluoto (Finland): 18 years. Flamanville (France): 17 years. I did not even need to cherry pick those. Your estimates are wildly unrealistic. Also note: Those times are from begin of construction, not start of planning (!!).
  - epistasis 2y ago
    This sort of numerical deception is endemic in nuclear advocacy dicsussions. I don't know if it's intentional, the best explanation I have is that somebody proposes an (unrealistic) number as a goal, and then it's accepted by advocates as the reality. But if reality was known, the person probably would not be an advocate. I have not yet met an advocate that will talk about the real, existing, challenges to nuclear the same way that renewable energy advocates talk about the challenges. Go and listen to a podcast on renewables, and it's all about what's not working, what's working, where the opportunities are, and what needs to be changed with the tech. Go listen to a nuclear energy podcast and all you get is wishful thinking, rose-colored glasses, and papering over the real problems that face the real projects. Edit: for example of the podcasts, here's Jigar Shah on Decouple https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwN1MCtBkVk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwN1MCtBkVk giving the hosts a dose of reality. And Shah is far more optimistic than nearly any realistic person on nuclear, the Liftoff plan (https://liftoff.energy.gov/advanced-nuclear-2/ https://liftoff.energy.gov/advanced-nuclear-2/) that his department produced starts from an unrealistic current position and then assumes massive gains somehow to get to a competitive position. It's rose-colored glasses in itself, but at least it shows a plan of how to make nuclear realistic.
ZeroGravitas 2y ago
There is some market (and regulatory) stupidity but both your cited ones have reasonable cases to be made for them. If you order the bids low to high then pay the highest bid then a) you encourage honest (i.e. lower) priced bids and drive expensive/inefficient plants out the market while encouraging new low price entrants who can guarantee they'll get used (because low bid) and make money, driving the market price lower. The problem is the expensive gas caused by Russian invasions and planning a market pricing mechanism around such events is kind of silly when you can just windfall tax to fix the problem quickly and easily if the energy companies aren't all run by your mates from private school. But also generation ain't the whole cost, there's the grid fees and taxes. The latter made sense when burning coal and now are looking likely to be shifted to gas. Collar prices on wind farms are actually a genius bit of financial engineering, guaranteeing minimum funding in a volatile market at low cost by capping the profits.

ttoinou 2y ago

I read online 10+ years ago the same comment that you’re writing right now. Wind and solar energy didn’t get widely implemented for good reasons that we can debate between citizens, they’re a scam here to profit some specific industry, to please the media and reduce feeling of ecologic guilt among some people

rickydroll 2y ago

You don't eliminate the paradoxes. You substitute new ones. The question with nuclear power plants is, what do you do when the consumption is below what is produced? You need to find a power sink. In days past, utility companies gave away nighttime lighting such as streetlights, security lights, etc., because it was way to sell electricity that otherwise would be wasted. The downside is we now have a massive light pollution problem. A better answer is to deploy more storage technology, such as better and distributed batteries, in communities. In addition to sucking up the excess power from the solar wind, it also makes local grids more resilient because the power is held near where it is needed and not dependent on a centralized power plant.

toomuchtodo 2y ago
https://www.energy.vic.gov.au/grants/neighbourhood-batteries https://www.energy.vic.gov.au/grants/neighbourhood-batteries
mpweiher 2y ago
1. You use nuclear power plants for base load. Which they can provide, unlike renewables. 2. Nuclear power plants can load-follow. Unlike renewables.
- myrmidon 2y ago
  There is no base load to provide for a nuclear plant if the marginal cost of electricity is close to zero whenever wind/sun is on. Building nuclear plants to then operate them in load following mode is just stupid. If the things can't even compete economically when you build them at pre-existing sites and run them at >90% capacity factor, how would you ever justify building new ones as basically glorified peakers plants, that run barely half the time!? Why would anyone pay for that?
  - mpweiher 2y ago
    That turns out to not be the case. First, the fact that there absolutely is base load is completely independent of how you supply that load. Now you can try to supply it with intermittent renewables, but you will fail, and you will fail with huge costs. "While the LFSCOE-95 are only slightly lower than the LFSCOE for dispatchable technologies, they are about 50% lower for intermittent sources, which challenges the economic sanity of 100% intermittent renewable targets." https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0360544222018035 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03605... Also, the cost of intermittent renewables isn't zero. The price becomes zero and even negative (and that makes it clear that it's the price, not the cost, because cost can't go negative like that), because the electricity becomes worthless or downright harmful. Cost is going to continue to go up as you require ever more overcapacity that cannibalizes itself more and more. And it cannibalizes itself even more than it cannibalizes reliable suppliers. Anyway: just look at what the vast majority of industrial nations are doing. They are combining nuclear for reliable and controllable base-load with intermittent renewables for variable load. Or look at the DOE's "liftoff" documents: nuclear lowers the cost of decarbonization. https://liftoff.energy.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/LIFTOFF_DOE_Advanced-Nuclear_Updated-2.5.25.pdf https://liftoff.energy.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/LIFTOF...

malchow 2y ago

You are interpreting the entire story from the perspective of the utility and ISO (which are distributors, neither a maker of energy nor a net consumer of it). They're Edison-era inventions, borne of the lumbering size, toxicity, noise, and poor capacity factor of mechanical engines. Why don't you interpret it from the perspective of companies (which need to buy energy to do stuff) and consumers (who need to buy energy to be comfortable)? These are the actual buyers. Then you'll see why solar and batteries win all, and utilities, with their badly potholed power highways with massive tolls to consumers, slowly reduce in importance.

swsieber 2y ago

Isn't there a third options of building long term energy storage, or is that not feasible at current tech levels?

Ekaros 2y ago
There is, but making that work is complicated. Math gets easy if you can for example buy power for free during day and then sell it night. 365.25 cycles a year. Say 10-30 years. 4000 to 10000, times your storage capacity. Even cents for each might be reasonable. Now cut this at worst case to 10-30 that is purely storing power in summer for winter. And you really start to need very very very cheap per unit storage. Even multiply couple a times and it is still very tough. Remember we are talking about cents per kwh here. Margin just isn't big.

ViewTrick1002 2y ago

You do know that Hinkley Point C will require €170/MWh 24/7 excluding transmission costs for 35 years. Forcing new built nuclear power on the ratepayers would today lead to a self inflicted energy crisis. The question is also how do you match said nuclear plant with the grid load? In California it swings between 15 GW and 50 GW over a year. Or do you suggest that we build peaking nuclear plants?

chickenbig 2y ago
> You do know that Hinkley Point C will require €170/MWh 24/7 excluding transmission costs for 35 years. £92.50/MWh 2012 prices = 153 EUR/MWh in 2024 prices and current GBP/EUR exchange rate. If Sizewell C goes ahead then this reduces to under 150 EUR/MWh. Transmission costs will be less than for renewables given the line's higher utilisation and proximity to load, unlike offshore wind up in Scotland. > The question is also how do you match said nuclear plant with the grid load? The UK wholesale market, BETTA, allows bilateral trades. EDF will sell the electricity to their retail arm and will just bypass the wholesale market. A similar arrangement will probably be made for Sizewell C and British Gas, for instance. > Or do you suggest that we build peaking nuclear plants? Perhaps the cheap renewables can be curtailed instead.
- ViewTrick1002 2y ago
  Sorry. $170/MWh. In the end so horrifically expensive that it doesn’t really matter. I see a whole lot of talk about how to force the consumers to pat for it. Why do you want everyone’s energy bills to massively rise to fund horrifically expensive nuclear power? It will simply become a race where everyone tries to the utmost degree to decouple themselves from your nuclear grid and you leave the poor to shoulder the cost. It seems like you are working backwards from having decided that we must build horrifically expensive new built nuclear power and now are diving into one more insane argument steer the other trying to justify it. Rather than starting from the problem: we need cheap power to decarbonize society.
  - chickenbig 2y ago

tfourb 2y ago

It is cheaper to build out a large (continent wide) network of renewable energy generation with the necessary surplus production and storage than it is to build sufficient nuclear power to adequately provide power. Not to mention much faster and less political contentious (most people like nuclear power in the abstract but are vehemently opposed to power plants or long-term storage close to their home). The UK's problem is not too much green energy. It is the insufficient integration of the European power grid and less than ideal investments into green energy on the part of other European governments. Even if you ignore safety concerns and political resistance, nuclear will always loose on the economics.

myrmidon 2y ago

Your conclusion makes absolutely zero sense. You are against gas peaker plants (for renewables) because they are expensive/produce CO2, but as a solution you suggest building nuclear reactors (which are much more expensive) and then ALSO need the very same peaker plants on top (or buying electricity, or massively overprovisioning nuclear power, which would be ruinous)?! Running gas turbines on H2 is absolutely possible (there are already operational plants made to run it), and thats a perfectly viable longer term contingency in case the battery approach stops improving.