5 ms·

Are they? Usually most analysis ignore costs of having a buffer in the system - either batteries or water reservoirs for pumped storage. That also inclides effi

Are they? Usually most analysis ignore costs of having a buffer in the system - either batteries or water reservoirs for pumped storage. That also inclides efficiency of storage, and the fact that cycles of power generation in most cases do not align with usage. Initial cost per unit is low and they're faster to build - that's the reason of their proliferation - and in case of personal use, subsidiaries. Compared to nuclear - which takes many political terms to build - politicians can reap benefits early. Because nuclear is superior by every metric except: - high initial costs - longer lead time Not to mention less land required, which is another of ignored costs.

bryanlarsen 1y ago
It's not just high initial costs, nuclear also has significant running costs, high disposal costs and massive time costs.
- Y-bar 1y ago
  > significant running costs Exactly this. The running costs per produced MW is so high that governments has to promise to effectively pay billions in subsidies to NPP:s both in terms of cheap state-backed loans and contract-for-difference power price because because they would otherwise not be viable. [1] https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/sweden-proposes-state-loans-new-nuclear-reactors-2025-03-27/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/sweden-proposes-stat...
  - mpweiher 1y ago
    That's actually not true. Running costs of nuclear power plants are extremely low, some of the lowest of all energy sources. The reason that NPP operators now require guarantees from governments is to offset the incredibly lopsided benefits offered to intermittent renewables, including subsidies, cheap loans, guaranteed income regardless of demand and priority. Nobody can effectively compete with the government handing out those kinds of benefits.
    - Y-bar 1y ago
      If running costs are so low as you claim, why does both the Swedish Government as well as plant owners such as Fortum claim that the only way to be profitable on the market is for the Government to subsidise the cost of running the plants? Wind or Hydro in Sweden gets no such unique subsidies.
      - p_l 1y ago
        Because markets, as currently implemented for energy in EU, do not adequately include things like intermittency of demand. If you take a source that has very low per-MWh price but very intermittent, it gets effectively highly prioritized and everyone else is paying price to match up with this wrecking ball. Except, usually, gas turbines which slot very very nicely into the swings in capacity related to wind and solar and thus benefit from them.
        bryanlarsen 1y ago
        That's true for the UK and Spain as of 2023[1], but the other major energy markets in the EU incorporate significant capacity mechanisms in their pricing. Edit: Spain added one in Feb 2025. Haven't looked up the UK yet. 1: https://www.eurelectric.org/in-detail/capacity-mechanisms/ https://www.eurelectric.org/in-detail/capacity-mechanisms/
        Y-bar 1y ago
        That's not true in Scandinavia (can't speak for EU as a whole). For example Nord Pool's market structure and pricing mechanisms are specifically designed to account for the intermittency of production and demand: https://www.nordpoolgroup.com/en/the-power-market/Intraday-market/ https://www.nordpoolgroup.com/en/the-power-market/Intraday-m...
    - bryanlarsen 1y ago
      Those are generally available to anybody providing either carbon neutral power or grid stability. Nuclear can take advantage of those too. Nuclear generally receives other subsidies too -- like cost overrun protection, insurance, and cleanup waivers.
- Xelbair 1y ago
  Nuclear has the lowest costs per MW out of all options.
  - ViewTrick1002 1y ago
    New built nuclear power is in reality by far the most expensive option. https://www.lazard.com/media/eijnqja3/lazards-lcoeplus-june-2025.pdf https://www.lazard.com/media/eijnqja3/lazards-lcoeplus-june-... Do note that these are US renewable prices which are way higher than seen elsewhere both in Europe and the rest of the world.
js8 1y ago
Actually, not quite true, according to this: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/large-solar-arrays-batteries-now-cheaper-conventional-generation-germany-report https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/large-solar-arrays-batt... Nuclear also has non-negligible ecological impact outside the power plant due to mining and processing of nuclear fuel.
hwillis 1y ago
> and the fact that cycles of power generation in most cases do not align with usage. This is false. Power usage everywhere is highest when the sun is shining. There are also very very few places where solar power ever causes the market to bottom out with any regularity. Note that there is no technical problem with this- you can always just disconnect renewables from the grid. The phenomenon you are thinking of -the duck curve- refers to the power demand after subtracting solar. The daily peak consumption of power in many places is wider than solar generation, so if there is enough solar you end up getting new smaller peaks just after dawn and around sunset. This is minorly inconvenient for non-renewable sources, which prefer to have more predictable demands. > Usually most analysis ignore costs of having a buffer in the system Correctly! Non-renewable plants are the ones that need buffer. Solar, wind, hydro etc can all be connected to a grid with zero instability- you just unplug them if nobody wants the power. Non-renewable plants have slow ramp speeds- they need the buffer in order to follow a changing load. > Not to mention less land required, which is another of ignored costs. This is incorrect; I don't know of any analyses which don't include land and interconnection costs which are obviously substantial. If you mean more intangibly... that's very silly. The US Interstate system is 3.9 million miles of road, with 60' medians, 16' of shoulder, and 48' of lanes. 237,250 square kilometers. The "blue square"[1] is 10,000 square km. The amount of land we spend on parking lots absolutely dwarfs it. > Because nuclear is superior by every metric Nuclear has not gotten cheaper- why would it? It's a big clockwork. We are not better at building pipes than we were 80 years ago. Solar has and will continue to: plants get more productive, panels get thinner, efficiencies go up. There is no grounding principle that indicates nuclear can be cheaper, and it certainly is not in practice. Solar is far cheaper than coal by capacity much less kWh, and nuclear plants are more complex than coal. What indicates that a 500 MW nuclear plant should be cheaper than a 500 MW coal plant, not counting running costs? > Are they? Demonstrably yes, absent weird conspiracy theories. Renewable installations keep opening at much lower costs than traditional plants. [1]: https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/energy/2015/05/21/fact-checking-elon-musks-blue-square-how-much-solar-to-power-the-us/ https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/energy/2015/05/21/fact-checking-elon...
- sofixa 1y ago
  > This is false. Power usage everywhere is highest when the sun is shining While the biggest peak is around midday, the second biggest is in the evening (most people are home, cooking, watching TV/listening to music/playing video games/etc; or in restaurants, clubs, cinemas, etc) which, depending on location and time of year, can easily be after sunset (e.g. half the year in the Northern hemisphere for sure). You still need enough power to cover that, especially if it has been a cloudy/rainy day, or week, or month. > Non-renewable plants are the ones that need buffer. Solar, wind, hydro etc can all be connected to a grid with zero instability- you just unplug them if nobody wants the power. Non-renewable plants have slow ramp speeds- they need the buffer in order to follow a changing load And this is so easy and foolproof to do, just check out the Iberian power outage.
adrianN 1y ago
You can go to like 60-80% renewable with barely any storage in the system. Few countries are at the stage of the renewable rollout where they need to think about storage. Poland can easily double the amount of renewables without additional storage.
- sofixa 1y ago
  > You can go to like 60-80% renewable with barely any storage in the system That depends on the renewable type (e.g. 60% hydro is fine; 60% solar is not, because the sun goes down at night, and there can be extended periods of overcast weather which lower solar production) and what backup sources (like gas peaker plants) are available.
  - bryanlarsen 1y ago
    60-80% can be usually be met with a well designed mix of hydro & solar. You can get to 100% with either hydro or geothermal, but most countries don't have that option.
  - adrianN 1y ago
    Germany has similar climate to Poland and manages around 60% renewable (and growing) with very little storage. A mix of wind and solar with fossil power plants for backup works reasonably well.
ViewTrick1002 1y ago
Why should I as a consumer buy electricity from your extremely expensive new built nuclear power when either my own renewables with storage or grid based renewables with storage delivers? Nuclear power is extremely expensive and doesn’t provide anything a modern grid needs.

bryanlarsen 1y ago

It's not just high initial costs, nuclear also has significant running costs, high disposal costs and massive time costs.

Y-bar 1y ago
> significant running costs Exactly this. The running costs per produced MW is so high that governments has to promise to effectively pay billions in subsidies to NPP:s both in terms of cheap state-backed loans and contract-for-difference power price because because they would otherwise not be viable. [1] https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/sweden-proposes-state-loans-new-nuclear-reactors-2025-03-27/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/sweden-proposes-stat...
- mpweiher 1y ago
  That's actually not true. Running costs of nuclear power plants are extremely low, some of the lowest of all energy sources. The reason that NPP operators now require guarantees from governments is to offset the incredibly lopsided benefits offered to intermittent renewables, including subsidies, cheap loans, guaranteed income regardless of demand and priority. Nobody can effectively compete with the government handing out those kinds of benefits.
  - Y-bar 1y ago
    If running costs are so low as you claim, why does both the Swedish Government as well as plant owners such as Fortum claim that the only way to be profitable on the market is for the Government to subsidise the cost of running the plants? Wind or Hydro in Sweden gets no such unique subsidies.
    - p_l 1y ago
      Because markets, as currently implemented for energy in EU, do not adequately include things like intermittency of demand. If you take a source that has very low per-MWh price but very intermittent, it gets effectively highly prioritized and everyone else is paying price to match up with this wrecking ball. Except, usually, gas turbines which slot very very nicely into the swings in capacity related to wind and solar and thus benefit from them.
      - bryanlarsen 1y ago
        That's true for the UK and Spain as of 2023[1], but the other major energy markets in the EU incorporate significant capacity mechanisms in their pricing. Edit: Spain added one in Feb 2025. Haven't looked up the UK yet. 1: https://www.eurelectric.org/in-detail/capacity-mechanisms/ https://www.eurelectric.org/in-detail/capacity-mechanisms/
      - Y-bar 1y ago
        That's not true in Scandinavia (can't speak for EU as a whole). For example Nord Pool's market structure and pricing mechanisms are specifically designed to account for the intermittency of production and demand: https://www.nordpoolgroup.com/en/the-power-market/Intraday-market/ https://www.nordpoolgroup.com/en/the-power-market/Intraday-m...
  - bryanlarsen 1y ago
    Those are generally available to anybody providing either carbon neutral power or grid stability. Nuclear can take advantage of those too. Nuclear generally receives other subsidies too -- like cost overrun protection, insurance, and cleanup waivers.
Xelbair 1y ago
Nuclear has the lowest costs per MW out of all options.
- ViewTrick1002 1y ago
  New built nuclear power is in reality by far the most expensive option. https://www.lazard.com/media/eijnqja3/lazards-lcoeplus-june-2025.pdf https://www.lazard.com/media/eijnqja3/lazards-lcoeplus-june-... Do note that these are US renewable prices which are way higher than seen elsewhere both in Europe and the rest of the world.

js8 1y ago

Actually, not quite true, according to this: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/large-solar-arrays-batteries-now-cheaper-conventional-generation-germany-report https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/large-solar-arrays-batt... Nuclear also has non-negligible ecological impact outside the power plant due to mining and processing of nuclear fuel.

hwillis 1y ago

> and the fact that cycles of power generation in most cases do not align with usage. This is false. Power usage everywhere is highest when the sun is shining. There are also very very few places where solar power ever causes the market to bottom out with any regularity. Note that there is no technical problem with this- you can always just disconnect renewables from the grid. The phenomenon you are thinking of -the duck curve- refers to the power demand after subtracting solar. The daily peak consumption of power in many places is wider than solar generation, so if there is enough solar you end up getting new smaller peaks just after dawn and around sunset. This is minorly inconvenient for non-renewable sources, which prefer to have more predictable demands. > Usually most analysis ignore costs of having a buffer in the system Correctly! Non-renewable plants are the ones that need buffer. Solar, wind, hydro etc can all be connected to a grid with zero instability- you just unplug them if nobody wants the power. Non-renewable plants have slow ramp speeds- they need the buffer in order to follow a changing load. > Not to mention less land required, which is another of ignored costs. This is incorrect; I don't know of any analyses which don't include land and interconnection costs which are obviously substantial. If you mean more intangibly... that's very silly. The US Interstate system is 3.9 million miles of road, with 60' medians, 16' of shoulder, and 48' of lanes. 237,250 square kilometers. The "blue square"[1] is 10,000 square km. The amount of land we spend on parking lots absolutely dwarfs it. > Because nuclear is superior by every metric Nuclear has not gotten cheaper- why would it? It's a big clockwork. We are not better at building pipes than we were 80 years ago. Solar has and will continue to: plants get more productive, panels get thinner, efficiencies go up. There is no grounding principle that indicates nuclear can be cheaper, and it certainly is not in practice. Solar is far cheaper than coal by capacity much less kWh, and nuclear plants are more complex than coal. What indicates that a 500 MW nuclear plant should be cheaper than a 500 MW coal plant, not counting running costs? > Are they? Demonstrably yes, absent weird conspiracy theories. Renewable installations keep opening at much lower costs than traditional plants. [1]: https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/energy/2015/05/21/fact-checking-elon-musks-blue-square-how-much-solar-to-power-the-us/ https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/energy/2015/05/21/fact-checking-elon...

sofixa 1y ago
> This is false. Power usage everywhere is highest when the sun is shining While the biggest peak is around midday, the second biggest is in the evening (most people are home, cooking, watching TV/listening to music/playing video games/etc; or in restaurants, clubs, cinemas, etc) which, depending on location and time of year, can easily be after sunset (e.g. half the year in the Northern hemisphere for sure). You still need enough power to cover that, especially if it has been a cloudy/rainy day, or week, or month. > Non-renewable plants are the ones that need buffer. Solar, wind, hydro etc can all be connected to a grid with zero instability- you just unplug them if nobody wants the power. Non-renewable plants have slow ramp speeds- they need the buffer in order to follow a changing load And this is so easy and foolproof to do, just check out the Iberian power outage.

adrianN 1y ago

You can go to like 60-80% renewable with barely any storage in the system. Few countries are at the stage of the renewable rollout where they need to think about storage. Poland can easily double the amount of renewables without additional storage.

sofixa 1y ago
> You can go to like 60-80% renewable with barely any storage in the system That depends on the renewable type (e.g. 60% hydro is fine; 60% solar is not, because the sun goes down at night, and there can be extended periods of overcast weather which lower solar production) and what backup sources (like gas peaker plants) are available.
- bryanlarsen 1y ago
  60-80% can be usually be met with a well designed mix of hydro & solar. You can get to 100% with either hydro or geothermal, but most countries don't have that option.
- adrianN 1y ago
  Germany has similar climate to Poland and manages around 60% renewable (and growing) with very little storage. A mix of wind and solar with fossil power plants for backup works reasonably well.

ViewTrick1002 1y ago

Why should I as a consumer buy electricity from your extremely expensive new built nuclear power when either my own renewables with storage or grid based renewables with storage delivers? Nuclear power is extremely expensive and doesn’t provide anything a modern grid needs.