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You are not thinking about the big picture. If just running nuclear power plants 24/7 is cheaper than running Solar/Wind when the weather is perfect and backup

You are not thinking about the big picture. If just running nuclear power plants 24/7 is cheaper than running Solar/Wind when the weather is perfect and backup/storage when not, then why should we scale solar/wind up that much to begin with?

bryanlarsen 1y ago
> If just running nuclear power plants 24/7 is cheaper It's not cheaper, it's about 20x as expensive. Running nuclear intermittently is more than 20x as expensive.
- throw0101c 1y ago
  > It's not cheaper, it's about 20x as expensive. Not according to the Ontario Energy Board, which sets wholesale rates; see Table 2: * https://www.oeb.ca/sites/default/files/rpp-price-report-20241018.pdf https://www.oeb.ca/sites/default/files/rpp-price-report-2024...
  - bryanlarsen 1y ago
    10s of billions of dollars of costs have been uploaded from the electricity wholesalers to taxpayers in Ontario. Excluding those makes Ontario numbers misleading.
    - throw0101c 1y ago
      Talk to Mike Harris about privatizing stuff in Ontario: there's no reason why Ontario Hydro could not have been kept 100% in public hands and the debt serviced 'internally' instead of being assigned to OEFC. At the end of the day it's still electrical rate payers paying the bill. (Just like ratepayers are paying for the failed experiment of McGuinty's Energy Green Act: what's the cost of that?) As it stands all current nuclear refurbishments are being done with commercial rates, as is dealing with nuclear waste (per the NFWA).
- olyjohn 1y ago
  Compare battery costs from 1990 to today. Don't you think that if we actually did some investment in nuclear, that we could bring the cost of that down significantly as well?
  - bryanlarsen 1y ago
    France didn't experience cost reduction in their flurry in the 1980's. China didn't experience cost reduction in their flurry in the 2010's. So if there is some sort of volume effect available, it'd need to be a number significantly greater than a few dozen. And nobody is proposing building in that sort of quantity.
- Saline9515 1y ago
  Sorry, that's not true. France, which has the most stringent and costly regulations, produces nuclear electricity at around 70€/MWh[0] on average. And this production is intermittent, pilotable, and more importantly, at a very large scale, for a small carbon and spacial footprint, which isn't possible to do with batteries at the moment. [0]https://www.vie-publique.fr/en-bref/291910-energie-un-nouvel-accord-sur-le-prix-de-lelectricite-nucleaire https://www.vie-publique.fr/en-bref/291910-energie-un-nouvel...

bryanlarsen 1y ago

> If just running nuclear power plants 24/7 is cheaper It's not cheaper, it's about 20x as expensive. Running nuclear intermittently is more than 20x as expensive.

throw0101c 1y ago
> It's not cheaper, it's about 20x as expensive. Not according to the Ontario Energy Board, which sets wholesale rates; see Table 2: * https://www.oeb.ca/sites/default/files/rpp-price-report-20241018.pdf https://www.oeb.ca/sites/default/files/rpp-price-report-2024...
- bryanlarsen 1y ago
  10s of billions of dollars of costs have been uploaded from the electricity wholesalers to taxpayers in Ontario. Excluding those makes Ontario numbers misleading.
  - throw0101c 1y ago
    Talk to Mike Harris about privatizing stuff in Ontario: there's no reason why Ontario Hydro could not have been kept 100% in public hands and the debt serviced 'internally' instead of being assigned to OEFC. At the end of the day it's still electrical rate payers paying the bill. (Just like ratepayers are paying for the failed experiment of McGuinty's Energy Green Act: what's the cost of that?) As it stands all current nuclear refurbishments are being done with commercial rates, as is dealing with nuclear waste (per the NFWA).
olyjohn 1y ago
Compare battery costs from 1990 to today. Don't you think that if we actually did some investment in nuclear, that we could bring the cost of that down significantly as well?
- bryanlarsen 1y ago
  France didn't experience cost reduction in their flurry in the 1980's. China didn't experience cost reduction in their flurry in the 2010's. So if there is some sort of volume effect available, it'd need to be a number significantly greater than a few dozen. And nobody is proposing building in that sort of quantity.
Saline9515 1y ago
Sorry, that's not true. France, which has the most stringent and costly regulations, produces nuclear electricity at around 70€/MWh[0] on average. And this production is intermittent, pilotable, and more importantly, at a very large scale, for a small carbon and spacial footprint, which isn't possible to do with batteries at the moment. [0]https://www.vie-publique.fr/en-bref/291910-energie-un-nouvel-accord-sur-le-prix-de-lelectricite-nucleaire https://www.vie-publique.fr/en-bref/291910-energie-un-nouvel...