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«“The Germans are telling us: we will be very pragmatic on the issue of nuclear power,” said a senior French diplomat involved in the talks. This meant that “al

by Arnt 1y ago

«“The Germans are telling us: we will be very pragmatic on the issue of nuclear power,” said a senior French diplomat involved in the talks. This meant that “all the biases against nuclear power, which still remain here and there in EU legislation, will be removed.” “This will be a sea-change policy shift,” said a German official.» Will it really? https://www.pv-magazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Levelized-Cost-of-electricity-2024-1200x872.png https://www.pv-magazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Level... is a little unusual, it shows the cheapest nuclear power to be as cheap as the most expensive PV+battery. Still, it's difficult for me to see how this policy change will really change anything. A real change would require a commitment against market-based production/sale of electricity, e.g. a quota such that power generators using PV/batteries were allowed to produce at most x% of the power in the EO.

preisschild 1y ago
You quote a PV-lobbying firm as your source, what do you expect? Also LCOE is just not adequate to compare these two, as you have additional storage and transmission costs for intermittent, weather-dependent sources, whereas most nuclear power plants can be online providing full capacity more than 90% of the time. LCOE does not account for that. This IEA report uses a metric that includes those system costs (value-adjusted LCOE, VALCOE) and it shows nuclear energy is definitely competitive. Especially if managed well and power plants aren't prematurely shut down due to political reasons, like they were in Germany. https://www.iea.org/reports/projected-costs-of-generating-electricity-2020 https://www.iea.org/reports/projected-costs-of-generating-el...
- matthewdgreen 1y ago
  Competitive now? Or competitive in the near future? All of the components of renewables, including PV modules and storage, seem to be following an inverse exponential in price. This does not seem to be true of nuclear. It's easy to make conservative assumptions that leave you with a bunch of financially unsustainable infrastructure. This would be a total disaster.
  - chickenbig 1y ago
    > All of the components of renewables, including PV modules and storage, seem to be following an inverse exponential in price. Definitely not true of offshore wind. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44012502 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44012502 Also it seems like a fallacy of composition to believe that a cheap system is formed from cheap individual components.
    - matthewdgreen 1y ago
      A cheap system is a combination of cheap components, land, and the labor required to assemble it. But in terms of minimized labor costs, you just don’t get a lot better than PV and batteries. And there’s still room for cost reductions from technological improvements and more efficient PV.
      - chickenbig 1y ago
        > A cheap system is a combination of cheap components, land, and the labor required to assemble it. The point is that cheap components may require the use of other components to compensate for its deficiencies, and so on. Solar panels need batteries, synchronous condensers, more transmission capacity, electrolysers, hydrogen storage, backup power stations, demand side response, etc.
        ViewTrick1002 1y ago
        And batteries are plummeting in cost as well. In Australia it was calculated that the extra grid upgrades for renewables comes out to $15B. That is less than the subsidies a single nuclear reactor needs. To electrify society and industry we need to expand our grids by 1.5-2.5x. Stringing an set of wires, using thicker ones or stepping up the voltage higher is a minuscule cost when already having to uprate the grid. Gas turbine emergency reserves would be $1B.
        chickenbig 1y ago
- Arnt 1y ago
  https://pris.iaea.org/pris/worldstatistics/threeyrsenergyavailabilityfactor.aspx https://pris.iaea.org/pris/worldstatistics/threeyrsenergyava... doesn't show many >90% numbers.
  - chickenbig 1y ago
    > doesn't show many >90% numbers The US achieves over 90% capacity factor, as does Finland, and Germany used to. Also capacity and availability are different things; getting pre-empted by solar should not count against the nuclear plant.
    - ViewTrick1002 1y ago
      > getting pre-empted by solar should not count against the nuclear plant. But it makes an already horrifically bad economic calculus even worse.
credit_guy 1y ago
China installs about as much new solar capacity each year as the rest of the world combined. They manufacture the most PVs and have access to the cheapest PVs for that reason. Yet, they also have installed more new nuclear capacity (by far) than the rest of the world combined. Not only they do that, but they also have more nuclear plant being built right now, and more being already approved. Nuclear power is expensive because of the initial construction cost, and that is expensive because we forgot how to build. China didn't.
- matthewdgreen 1y ago
  China is building more nuclear power than the rest of the world, but it's not even remotely keeping up with their renewable buildouts [1]. Mostly this is because renewables like PV modules are built in a factory using standardized mass-production techniques, and nuclear plants (currently) are not. [1] https://cleantechnica.com/2024/01/12/nuclear-continues-to-lag-far-behind-renewables-in-china-deployments/ https://cleantechnica.com/2024/01/12/nuclear-continues-to-la...
  - ethbr1 1y ago
    In terms of scaling PV, there's some lag time before grid-scale issues appear (due to percentage of total) and battery / nuclear et al. are need to solve them. China is coming from a huge (and still growing) base load of coal. Still 60%+ of electricity mix. [0] So even with PV's growth, it's not a systemically problematic component. Compare that to Germany's mix [1], and you realize that China is aiming their reactor building at a problem they'll have in 10 years. (Depending on how aggressively the rest of the world makes China and India stop burning coal...) [0] https://www.iea.org/countries/china/electricity https://www.iea.org/countries/china/electricity [1] https://www.iea.org/countries/germany/electricity https://www.iea.org/countries/germany/electricity
    - matthewdgreen 1y ago
      I don’t think the percentage of nuclear was ever planned to be high enough to serve as a replacement for storage, and China is badly behind those plans.
StopDisinfo910 1y ago
> Will it really? Yes, it will. As they are currently drafted, the EU energy regulation forces France to invest in renewable and shift away from nuclear it already has to avoid missing the mandated European target as nuclear is not considered renewable. Currently France is being routinely fined despite providing Europe with a ton of clean energy. The situation is beyond silly.
- Arnt 1y ago
  Good point. That is a real change, I agree with that, and it makes a great deal of sense for France to want it. I was only thinking about new investment.
- preisschild 1y ago
  > as nuclear is not considered renewable Btw, not "all" nuclear is not considered renewable. Making use of the full fuel life cycle through breeder reactors would count as renewable nuclear energy.
  - chickenbig 1y ago
    > Btw, not "all" nuclear is not considered renewable. There are perhaps two things being considered here, the EU Renewable Energy Directive [1] and the EU taxonomy for sustainable activities [2]. The former results in France being fined for using nuclear power (as nuclear is not mentioned as being renewable), the latter is a tool for investment categorisation, but weights towards closed cycle and Gen III+ reactors. [1] https://energy.ec.europa.eu/topics/renewable-energy/renewable-energy-directive-targets-and-rules/renewable-energy-directive_en https://energy.ec.europa.eu/topics/renewable-energy/renewabl... [2] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2022/698935/EPRS_BRI(2022)698935_EN.pdf https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2022/6989... page 5
__m 1y ago
There is zero chance that Germany will build or reopen nuclear power plants. Neither citizens nor power companies want that.
- preisschild 1y ago
  > nor power companies want that. Important Context: Power companies were paid by the state to shut down their nuclear power plants, of course they want free money for not producing anything.
  - FirmwareBurner 1y ago
    Shutting down nukes costs money to do right, it's not money for nothing.
    - preisschild 1y ago
      The money for shutting down the nuclear power plant and replacing it with another would have eventually been paid anyway, the money from the govt was for missing out on the income from actual energy production.
  - __m 1y ago
    That was a one time payment and wouldn't stop them for reopening (accept for the dismantling process) or building new ones
    - DrillShopper 1y ago
      The Greens will take care of that (kind of ironic, really)
      - Arnt 1y ago
        The Greens are out of power and I think they're going to stay out of power for a while. The road is free for anyone who wants to invest. (We even have precedent that the state will pay if an operating license is withdrawn, which might happen if the Greens return to power.)

by Arnt 1y ago

preisschild 1y ago

You quote a PV-lobbying firm as your source, what do you expect? Also LCOE is just not adequate to compare these two, as you have additional storage and transmission costs for intermittent, weather-dependent sources, whereas most nuclear power plants can be online providing full capacity more than 90% of the time. LCOE does not account for that. This IEA report uses a metric that includes those system costs (value-adjusted LCOE, VALCOE) and it shows nuclear energy is definitely competitive. Especially if managed well and power plants aren't prematurely shut down due to political reasons, like they were in Germany. https://www.iea.org/reports/projected-costs-of-generating-electricity-2020 https://www.iea.org/reports/projected-costs-of-generating-el...

matthewdgreen 1y ago
Competitive now? Or competitive in the near future? All of the components of renewables, including PV modules and storage, seem to be following an inverse exponential in price. This does not seem to be true of nuclear. It's easy to make conservative assumptions that leave you with a bunch of financially unsustainable infrastructure. This would be a total disaster.
- chickenbig 1y ago
  > All of the components of renewables, including PV modules and storage, seem to be following an inverse exponential in price. Definitely not true of offshore wind. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44012502 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44012502 Also it seems like a fallacy of composition to believe that a cheap system is formed from cheap individual components.
  - matthewdgreen 1y ago
    A cheap system is a combination of cheap components, land, and the labor required to assemble it. But in terms of minimized labor costs, you just don’t get a lot better than PV and batteries. And there’s still room for cost reductions from technological improvements and more efficient PV.
    - chickenbig 1y ago
      > A cheap system is a combination of cheap components, land, and the labor required to assemble it. The point is that cheap components may require the use of other components to compensate for its deficiencies, and so on. Solar panels need batteries, synchronous condensers, more transmission capacity, electrolysers, hydrogen storage, backup power stations, demand side response, etc.
      - ViewTrick1002 1y ago
        And batteries are plummeting in cost as well. In Australia it was calculated that the extra grid upgrades for renewables comes out to $15B. That is less than the subsidies a single nuclear reactor needs. To electrify society and industry we need to expand our grids by 1.5-2.5x. Stringing an set of wires, using thicker ones or stepping up the voltage higher is a minuscule cost when already having to uprate the grid. Gas turbine emergency reserves would be $1B.
        chickenbig 1y ago
Arnt 1y ago
https://pris.iaea.org/pris/worldstatistics/threeyrsenergyavailabilityfactor.aspx https://pris.iaea.org/pris/worldstatistics/threeyrsenergyava... doesn't show many >90% numbers.
- chickenbig 1y ago
  > doesn't show many >90% numbers The US achieves over 90% capacity factor, as does Finland, and Germany used to. Also capacity and availability are different things; getting pre-empted by solar should not count against the nuclear plant.
  - ViewTrick1002 1y ago
    > getting pre-empted by solar should not count against the nuclear plant. But it makes an already horrifically bad economic calculus even worse.

credit_guy 1y ago

China installs about as much new solar capacity each year as the rest of the world combined. They manufacture the most PVs and have access to the cheapest PVs for that reason. Yet, they also have installed more new nuclear capacity (by far) than the rest of the world combined. Not only they do that, but they also have more nuclear plant being built right now, and more being already approved. Nuclear power is expensive because of the initial construction cost, and that is expensive because we forgot how to build. China didn't.

matthewdgreen 1y ago
China is building more nuclear power than the rest of the world, but it's not even remotely keeping up with their renewable buildouts [1]. Mostly this is because renewables like PV modules are built in a factory using standardized mass-production techniques, and nuclear plants (currently) are not. [1] https://cleantechnica.com/2024/01/12/nuclear-continues-to-lag-far-behind-renewables-in-china-deployments/ https://cleantechnica.com/2024/01/12/nuclear-continues-to-la...
- ethbr1 1y ago
  In terms of scaling PV, there's some lag time before grid-scale issues appear (due to percentage of total) and battery / nuclear et al. are need to solve them. China is coming from a huge (and still growing) base load of coal. Still 60%+ of electricity mix. [0] So even with PV's growth, it's not a systemically problematic component. Compare that to Germany's mix [1], and you realize that China is aiming their reactor building at a problem they'll have in 10 years. (Depending on how aggressively the rest of the world makes China and India stop burning coal...) [0] https://www.iea.org/countries/china/electricity https://www.iea.org/countries/china/electricity [1] https://www.iea.org/countries/germany/electricity https://www.iea.org/countries/germany/electricity
  - matthewdgreen 1y ago
    I don’t think the percentage of nuclear was ever planned to be high enough to serve as a replacement for storage, and China is badly behind those plans.

StopDisinfo910 1y ago

> Will it really? Yes, it will. As they are currently drafted, the EU energy regulation forces France to invest in renewable and shift away from nuclear it already has to avoid missing the mandated European target as nuclear is not considered renewable. Currently France is being routinely fined despite providing Europe with a ton of clean energy. The situation is beyond silly.

Arnt 1y ago
Good point. That is a real change, I agree with that, and it makes a great deal of sense for France to want it. I was only thinking about new investment.
preisschild 1y ago
> as nuclear is not considered renewable Btw, not "all" nuclear is not considered renewable. Making use of the full fuel life cycle through breeder reactors would count as renewable nuclear energy.
- chickenbig 1y ago
  > Btw, not "all" nuclear is not considered renewable. There are perhaps two things being considered here, the EU Renewable Energy Directive [1] and the EU taxonomy for sustainable activities [2]. The former results in France being fined for using nuclear power (as nuclear is not mentioned as being renewable), the latter is a tool for investment categorisation, but weights towards closed cycle and Gen III+ reactors. [1] https://energy.ec.europa.eu/topics/renewable-energy/renewable-energy-directive-targets-and-rules/renewable-energy-directive_en https://energy.ec.europa.eu/topics/renewable-energy/renewabl... [2] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2022/698935/EPRS_BRI(2022)698935_EN.pdf https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2022/6989... page 5

__m 1y ago

There is zero chance that Germany will build or reopen nuclear power plants. Neither citizens nor power companies want that.

preisschild 1y ago
> nor power companies want that. Important Context: Power companies were paid by the state to shut down their nuclear power plants, of course they want free money for not producing anything.
- FirmwareBurner 1y ago
  Shutting down nukes costs money to do right, it's not money for nothing.
  - preisschild 1y ago
    The money for shutting down the nuclear power plant and replacing it with another would have eventually been paid anyway, the money from the govt was for missing out on the income from actual energy production.
- __m 1y ago
  That was a one time payment and wouldn't stop them for reopening (accept for the dismantling process) or building new ones
  - DrillShopper 1y ago
    The Greens will take care of that (kind of ironic, really)
    - Arnt 1y ago
      The Greens are out of power and I think they're going to stay out of power for a while. The road is free for anyone who wants to invest. (We even have precedent that the state will pay if an operating license is withdrawn, which might happen if the Greens return to power.)