11 ms·

We tried ideology driven energy policy in Europe and it hasn't gone well. We phased out nuclear power plants (because nuclear = bad) while doubling down on Russ

We tried ideology driven energy policy in Europe and it hasn't gone well. We phased out nuclear power plants (because nuclear = bad) while doubling down on Russian gas dependency (because trade = peace). Clearly this has gone poorly and it will take Europe a decade to strengthen its energy sovereignty again. There are good reasons to question renewable energy: the cost picture doesn't make sense right now, it has intermittency problems, etc. But killing renewable projects because, uh, farming or whatever?, particularly at a time when the demand for energy is growing faster than ever, seems short sighted at best.

HPsquared 1y ago
Still, farming is pretty important and we must strike a balance.
- dalyons 1y ago
  The US grows more acres of corn just for ethanol than the number of acres needed to go 100% solar. We would have _more_ useful farmland if we switched.
  - HPsquared 1y ago
    100% solar on electricity, or all energy usage including vehicles? Vehicles use a lot of energy.
    - dalyons 1y ago
      all energy including vehicles. The US grows an unfathomable amount of ethanol corn, ~ 30 million acres. Its insanity, its an incredibly inefficient way to get energy.
    - xbmcuser 1y ago
      If all vehicles in the US were electric US total Electricity demand would rise from about 4,000 TWh to only 4,800 TWh. That’s it. And this is exactly why the U.S. risks losing both the trade war and the AI race to China. China is going all-in on electrification, and that alone gives it a massive efficiency edge. Layer on top the fact that renewables and batteries keep getting cheaper every year, and the advantage compounds exponentially. Take heavy equipment as an example: a Caterpillar machine might cost $10 million, while the Chinese electric equivalent is just one-fifth the price and burns only a third of the energy. That’s already nearly half the cost compared to diesel or gas-powered machines before you even count lower maintenance and fuel savings. The math is simple: electric wins. And renewable compound the victory
lazide 1y ago
The US (near as I can tell) isn’t even killing them for any concrete reason (any reason given changes), just to be anti-whatever they are. Which, is similar to the German anti-nuclear approach, to be frank. Burning dirty coal instead of keeping an already existing nuke plant running isn’t a decision based on either environmental or economic reasoning, and that was done a lot. Pendulum swings, etc, etc.
SamuelAdams 1y ago
I am speculating, but I think the real motive for cancelling renewables is to appeal to coal counties in the USA. Coal is in a scary place right now in the US, see this as an example: https://www.reddit.com/r/antiwork/comments/1mmqwd3/i_live_in_coal_country_and_i_dont_know_who_else/ https://www.reddit.com/r/antiwork/comments/1mmqwd3/i_live_in... Basically coal is less profitable and more expensive in places that have always been coal counties. The only thing to do in these areas is mine coal, so the concern is that entire regions will be rendered worthless if coal collapses. Which means local residents cannot sell their homes without taking significant losses, and they probably lose their jobs in coal, which manifests into a poverty trap for the entire town. And there are hundreds of these towns all through Appalachia. So renewable energy will always be a political issue over the next 50 years, because entire towns and regions depend on its political outcome.
- Sharlin 1y ago
  At the same time there are hundreds of towns in low-lying areas that are being rendered worthless by the climate change.
  - deadeye 1y ago
    Where can I find a list of these towns?
    - meowkit 1y ago
      [dead]
- cosmic_cheese 1y ago
  The thing is, if you’re burning fossil fuels to generate power there’s not much reason to prefer coal over natural gas. The latter is cheaper and cleaner and once pipelines are in place, you don’t need to truck it around. Coal is dead and it’s not coming back. Areas in which it served as the pillar of the economy need to figure something else out. I say this as someone hailing from one such area. Speaking frankly, the way politicians keep selling the fantasy of it making a comeback is cruel.
masklinn 1y ago
Killing solar because “farming” is an unfathomable level of mind-bogglingly nonsensical. Of course making sense does not in any way matter to this administration, and Trump hates wind turbines because of his dumb golf course, but still…
pluc 1y ago
The obstacle to clean energy has always been humans. We'll get our due soon enough.
cameldrv 1y ago
The costs for solar and batteries have come down a whole lot since ~10 years ago during the energiewende. IMO solar is the cost leader in areas where there is decent sun. The U.S. has a lot better sun than Germany.
- bryanlarsen 1y ago
  Solar is the cost leader in most areas with poor sun too. You have to have truly abysmal sun for it to not be the cost leader. Finland has such abysmal sun, Germany doesn't.
seanmcdirmid 1y ago
Did France really phase out nuclear, or do you mean the rest of Europe?
- microtonal 1y ago
  I think it's primarily Germany that phased it out? Seems like the grandparent is overgeneralizing.
- masklinn 1y ago
  Mostly Germany, Belgium as well, possibly a few others. France did shut down superphenix for completely ideological reasons tho. Also stopped investing in nuclear but that was not really ideological (the nuclear buildup originated in something of a misprediction, and sadly the country didn’t really capitalise on it).
  - seszett 1y ago
    Belgium didn't phase out nuclear. They decided that someone in the future would handle the closure of the nuclear plants, and when the time came and no replacement plant had been built, we just kept the nuclear plants running.
    - masklinn 1y ago
      Belgium legislated the phase out of nuclear in 2003 due 2025, opting to neither replace nor postpone closure of nor refurbish its at the time 7 reactors as their lifetimes ran out. Then it had to postpone the closure of at least two reactors following the second invasion of Ukraine, and this year officially dropped the phaseout and opened the door for new builds (unlikely as they are).
  - orwin 1y ago
    Belgium did not. My code currently help deploying updates on 3 nuke plants in belgium, so hopefully I'd know.
    - 1y ago
manoDev 1y ago
The artificial energy supply shortage caused by this prohibition will be a great excuse to invade another oil-rich country. The current administration has already demonstrated Venezuela is next in line.
oezi 1y ago
I would argue that buying Russian gas was primarily market driven and politics didn't stop it from happening. It was cheaper than American or Qatari gas why should European nations not have bought it? It the same way that the US got hooked on cheap Chinese imports. Also renewables make too much sense right now. That's why a lot of dollars are allocated towards them even though subsidies are mostly gone.
- mastax 1y ago
  Well, for one thing, massive methane leaks in Russian gas infrastructure means that Russian gas ii much worse for the environment than any other source of gas.
tialaramex 1y ago
The cost picture already makes sense for onshore wind, which is why if you have a suitable site people do that. If you own a hilltop farm in the UK a bank loan for a wind turbine is a no-brainer for the loan officer - because it's not correlated to farm gate prices unlike other loans you might want e.g. for equipment or buildings so that's a desirable loan to have.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
exe34 1y ago
> We tried ideology driven energy policy in Europe and it hasn't gone well. We phased out nuclear power plants (because nuclear = bad) while doubling down on Russian gas dependency (because trade = peace). Clearly this has gone poorly and it will take Europe a decade to strengthen its energy sovereignty again. what I don't understand is how this was obvious to me 20 years ago as a teenager, but European leaders just somehow thought it was a good idea. Was it just "a lucky guess" on my part? it was just so obvious that when you tolerate and interact with narcissists as if their behaviour was acceptable, they will simply escalate their behaviour. I was also critical of ties with the Chinese government and I was told I was just paranoid/racist. today we suddenly realise oh that was a bad idea, the leopards are chewing on our faces. I reckon the rich and powerful saw it coming alright and they just figured they'd make bank before it got to the point they'd have to send the kids of poor people to war.
- delusional 1y ago
  It was also obvious to all my friends when I was a teenager in 2008 that being friends with America was a bad idea. That also turned out to be right. All we would have had to do was have no allies for the past ~60 years, and we would have never gotten burned. We also would have been entirely irrelavant to international politics, and likely wouldn't have become one of the richest nations on earth. World politics is like love. It's better to have had a productive alliance that hits a rough patch, than never to have had one at all.
  - exe34 1y ago
    as it happens I was completely wrong about the US, I did not expect them to fall to Moscow that easily. To be fair, the French got it right - they have their own nuclear deterrent and their own weapons manufacturing.
delusional 1y ago
> We tried ideology driven energy policy in Europe and it hasn't gone well. We phased out nuclear power plants (because nuclear = bad) Maybe that was the discussion where you're from, what do i know. Where I'm from we had a honest political debate about nuclear, and the public decided on no. It wasn't because of "ideology". We discussed the safety, the waste challenge, and everything else.
mulmen 1y ago
> There are good reasons to question renewable energy: the cost picture doesn't make sense right now What? Did renewables get more expensive for some reason? Solar and wind have been cheaper than coal for years. Attacking renewables is the ideological move because anything good is bad. It’s just weaponized ignorance.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
UebVar 1y ago
What you say is spectacular and completely wrong. What you claim didn't happen, and can easily disproven with data. Your interpretation of a reasoning of a policy (that didn't happen) is bad faith. You are wrong about both electricity [1], gas[2] and total energy [3]. Europe was very dependent on energy imports in the past and current policy is the by far most successful attempt in a long at changing it. It will help us for decades to come. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-prod-source-stacked?country=~OWID_EU27 https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-prod-source-s... [2] https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/infographics/where-does-the-eu-s-gas-come-from/ https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/infographics/where-does-t... [3] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-prod-source-stacked?country=~OWID_EU27 https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-prod-source-s...
- picafrost 1y ago
  I don't understand your post. Europe absolutely spent many years phasing out nuclear energy while rationalizing that increased gas imports from Russia was good because trade will make us friends [0]. The data supports this (though obviously does not capture the political discourse around Russian gas reliance). I am in agreement that the current, post-Ukraine invasion policy is good. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wandel_durch_Handel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wandel_durch_Handel
  - janice1999 1y ago
    > Europe absolutely spent many years phasing out nuclear energy Germany is not Europe. Over 70% of electricity in France is nuclear and they have plans to build at least 6 EPR2 plants.
    - picafrost 1y ago
      It is more representative of the situation over the past 30 years to say that France is not Europe. But even they had plans to cut nuclear energy to 50%. [0] [0] https://www.lemonde.fr/en/economy/article/2023/01/24/france-s-elusive-promise-cutting-nuclear-power-to-50-of-electricity-production_6012818_19.html https://www.lemonde.fr/en/economy/article/2023/01/24/france-...
WA 1y ago
All energy policies are ideology driven, but you make it sound like nuclear isn’t ideology driven. That’s just nonsense. - Nuclear waste has non-zero cost that aren’t factored in. - Nuclear risks are externalized, not factored in. - Nuclear power is heavily subsidized. - Solar power industry in Germany on particular was destroyed for ideological reasons. - Solar has much more capacity than nuclear for many years now: https://www.smard.de/page/home/topic-article/211972/212382/entwicklung-der-nettonennleistung https://www.smard.de/page/home/topic-article/211972/212382/e...
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- xboxnolifes 1y ago
  What about nuclear between 10 years ago and 50 years ago? Same reasons to not use it?
- mastax 1y ago
  I think I agree with you broadly, but to make the counter argument: A big part of the reason why nuclear power isn’t cost-effective nowadays is because those costs have been at least partially internalized. The US federal government has stopped producing cheap nuclear fuel by disassembling nuclear weapons. Nuclear plants need to pay for the cost of storing their spent fuel on site indefinitely. Plant operators need to pay into a federal disaster insurance pool.
  - legulere 1y ago
    > Nuclear plants need to pay for the cost of storing their spent fuel on site indefinitely. I highly doubt that. If you multiply annual costs with the timeframe needed (millions of years) you get absurdly high numbers.
ViewTrick1002 1y ago
> There are good reasons to question renewable energy: the cost picture doesn't make sense right now, it has intermittency problems, etc. You seem to rely on quite outdated information. Renewables are the cheapest source of energy in human history. The recent explosive growth is fueled by pure economics rather than feelgood. The same thing is happening with storage with the prices plummeting. With the recent auctions landing at $50-60/MWh. https://www.ess-news.com/2025/06/26/china-energy-engineering-launches-record-25-gwh-storage-tender-as-prices-hit-historic-low/ https://www.ess-news.com/2025/06/26/china-energy-engineering... In many regions unsubsidized renewables + storage are now the cheapest source of energy, undercutting coal and gas. Nuclear power does not even enter the picture due to the absolutely insane costs involved.
- anovikov 1y ago
  OK but what are the prices at which storage auctions land OUTSIDE of China?
  - ViewTrick1002 1y ago
    > That means it’s fully within China’s purchasing power parity advantage sphere, where everything costs 40% less than in the west. That means zero tariffs. Something like $70-80 per MWH. https://medium.com/the-future-is-electric/grid-storage-at-66-kwh-the-world-just-changed-c2f39f42f09f https://medium.com/the-future-is-electric/grid-storage-at-66... Archive: https://archive.is/UXcdL https://archive.is/UXcdL
    - anovikov 1y ago
      It's not at all convincing. Recent announced deals in Portugal are over 1000 EUR per MWH which doesn't make any economic sense at all.
- arcticbull 1y ago
  Renewables really aren't that cheap unless you view them entirely in isolation. Sun doesn't shine all night and wind doesn't blow continuously, it needs to be viewed with storage to represent a complete picture. Rooftop solar is more expensive than nuclear due to the zero economies of scale, residential storage is staggeringly expensive, and utility scale solar + storage only became less expensive than nuclear power a couple of years ago. Solar and wind both have significant sovereignty issues. The entire solar supply chain is in China where they're heavily subsidized so the PRC can corner the market -- and substantially all the rare earths in wind turbines come from China. Generally recycling costs aren't considered and at least in the west there's no plan to recycle at least the fiberglass in turbine blades, leaving them to be buried. I'm all for renewables but the way they're positioned is unrealistic. Nuclear is only expensive because of the way it's built in the US, relying on the few locations made available (if any) to build basically fully customized installations. If we copy-pasted reactors onto sites that suit them it would be very competitive, don't take my word for it. Jigar Shah who headed the DOE loans program said the exact same thing during his term. If we're being pedantic, nuclear is renewable too thanks to seawater extraction. There's a practically unlimited amount of uranium in the ocean and the rock underneath it.
miohtama 1y ago
Europe didn't phase our nuclear plants. It was only Germany and Italy. Finland, France and UK kept building.
Gravityloss 1y ago
"Europe" certainly didn't do that. Some countries in Europe did.

HPsquared 1y ago

Still, farming is pretty important and we must strike a balance.

dalyons 1y ago
The US grows more acres of corn just for ethanol than the number of acres needed to go 100% solar. We would have _more_ useful farmland if we switched.
- HPsquared 1y ago
  100% solar on electricity, or all energy usage including vehicles? Vehicles use a lot of energy.
  - dalyons 1y ago
    all energy including vehicles. The US grows an unfathomable amount of ethanol corn, ~ 30 million acres. Its insanity, its an incredibly inefficient way to get energy.
  - xbmcuser 1y ago
    If all vehicles in the US were electric US total Electricity demand would rise from about 4,000 TWh to only 4,800 TWh. That’s it. And this is exactly why the U.S. risks losing both the trade war and the AI race to China. China is going all-in on electrification, and that alone gives it a massive efficiency edge. Layer on top the fact that renewables and batteries keep getting cheaper every year, and the advantage compounds exponentially. Take heavy equipment as an example: a Caterpillar machine might cost $10 million, while the Chinese electric equivalent is just one-fifth the price and burns only a third of the energy. That’s already nearly half the cost compared to diesel or gas-powered machines before you even count lower maintenance and fuel savings. The math is simple: electric wins. And renewable compound the victory

lazide 1y ago

The US (near as I can tell) isn’t even killing them for any concrete reason (any reason given changes), just to be anti-whatever they are. Which, is similar to the German anti-nuclear approach, to be frank. Burning dirty coal instead of keeping an already existing nuke plant running isn’t a decision based on either environmental or economic reasoning, and that was done a lot. Pendulum swings, etc, etc.

SamuelAdams 1y ago

I am speculating, but I think the real motive for cancelling renewables is to appeal to coal counties in the USA. Coal is in a scary place right now in the US, see this as an example: https://www.reddit.com/r/antiwork/comments/1mmqwd3/i_live_in_coal_country_and_i_dont_know_who_else/ https://www.reddit.com/r/antiwork/comments/1mmqwd3/i_live_in... Basically coal is less profitable and more expensive in places that have always been coal counties. The only thing to do in these areas is mine coal, so the concern is that entire regions will be rendered worthless if coal collapses. Which means local residents cannot sell their homes without taking significant losses, and they probably lose their jobs in coal, which manifests into a poverty trap for the entire town. And there are hundreds of these towns all through Appalachia. So renewable energy will always be a political issue over the next 50 years, because entire towns and regions depend on its political outcome.

Sharlin 1y ago
At the same time there are hundreds of towns in low-lying areas that are being rendered worthless by the climate change.
- deadeye 1y ago
  Where can I find a list of these towns?
  - meowkit 1y ago
    [dead]
cosmic_cheese 1y ago
The thing is, if you’re burning fossil fuels to generate power there’s not much reason to prefer coal over natural gas. The latter is cheaper and cleaner and once pipelines are in place, you don’t need to truck it around. Coal is dead and it’s not coming back. Areas in which it served as the pillar of the economy need to figure something else out. I say this as someone hailing from one such area. Speaking frankly, the way politicians keep selling the fantasy of it making a comeback is cruel.

masklinn 1y ago

Killing solar because “farming” is an unfathomable level of mind-bogglingly nonsensical. Of course making sense does not in any way matter to this administration, and Trump hates wind turbines because of his dumb golf course, but still…

pluc 1y ago

The obstacle to clean energy has always been humans. We'll get our due soon enough.

cameldrv 1y ago

The costs for solar and batteries have come down a whole lot since ~10 years ago during the energiewende. IMO solar is the cost leader in areas where there is decent sun. The U.S. has a lot better sun than Germany.

bryanlarsen 1y ago
Solar is the cost leader in most areas with poor sun too. You have to have truly abysmal sun for it to not be the cost leader. Finland has such abysmal sun, Germany doesn't.

seanmcdirmid 1y ago

Did France really phase out nuclear, or do you mean the rest of Europe?

microtonal 1y ago
I think it's primarily Germany that phased it out? Seems like the grandparent is overgeneralizing.
masklinn 1y ago
Mostly Germany, Belgium as well, possibly a few others. France did shut down superphenix for completely ideological reasons tho. Also stopped investing in nuclear but that was not really ideological (the nuclear buildup originated in something of a misprediction, and sadly the country didn’t really capitalise on it).
- seszett 1y ago
  Belgium didn't phase out nuclear. They decided that someone in the future would handle the closure of the nuclear plants, and when the time came and no replacement plant had been built, we just kept the nuclear plants running.
  - masklinn 1y ago
    Belgium legislated the phase out of nuclear in 2003 due 2025, opting to neither replace nor postpone closure of nor refurbish its at the time 7 reactors as their lifetimes ran out. Then it had to postpone the closure of at least two reactors following the second invasion of Ukraine, and this year officially dropped the phaseout and opened the door for new builds (unlikely as they are).
- orwin 1y ago
  Belgium did not. My code currently help deploying updates on 3 nuke plants in belgium, so hopefully I'd know.
  - 1y ago

manoDev 1y ago

The artificial energy supply shortage caused by this prohibition will be a great excuse to invade another oil-rich country. The current administration has already demonstrated Venezuela is next in line.

oezi 1y ago

I would argue that buying Russian gas was primarily market driven and politics didn't stop it from happening. It was cheaper than American or Qatari gas why should European nations not have bought it? It the same way that the US got hooked on cheap Chinese imports. Also renewables make too much sense right now. That's why a lot of dollars are allocated towards them even though subsidies are mostly gone.

mastax 1y ago
Well, for one thing, massive methane leaks in Russian gas infrastructure means that Russian gas ii much worse for the environment than any other source of gas.

tialaramex 1y ago

The cost picture already makes sense for onshore wind, which is why if you have a suitable site people do that. If you own a hilltop farm in the UK a bank loan for a wind turbine is a no-brainer for the loan officer - because it's not correlated to farm gate prices unlike other loans you might want e.g. for equipment or buildings so that's a desirable loan to have.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

exe34 1y ago

> We tried ideology driven energy policy in Europe and it hasn't gone well. We phased out nuclear power plants (because nuclear = bad) while doubling down on Russian gas dependency (because trade = peace). Clearly this has gone poorly and it will take Europe a decade to strengthen its energy sovereignty again. what I don't understand is how this was obvious to me 20 years ago as a teenager, but European leaders just somehow thought it was a good idea. Was it just "a lucky guess" on my part? it was just so obvious that when you tolerate and interact with narcissists as if their behaviour was acceptable, they will simply escalate their behaviour. I was also critical of ties with the Chinese government and I was told I was just paranoid/racist. today we suddenly realise oh that was a bad idea, the leopards are chewing on our faces. I reckon the rich and powerful saw it coming alright and they just figured they'd make bank before it got to the point they'd have to send the kids of poor people to war.

delusional 1y ago
It was also obvious to all my friends when I was a teenager in 2008 that being friends with America was a bad idea. That also turned out to be right. All we would have had to do was have no allies for the past ~60 years, and we would have never gotten burned. We also would have been entirely irrelavant to international politics, and likely wouldn't have become one of the richest nations on earth. World politics is like love. It's better to have had a productive alliance that hits a rough patch, than never to have had one at all.
- exe34 1y ago
  as it happens I was completely wrong about the US, I did not expect them to fall to Moscow that easily. To be fair, the French got it right - they have their own nuclear deterrent and their own weapons manufacturing.

delusional 1y ago

> We tried ideology driven energy policy in Europe and it hasn't gone well. We phased out nuclear power plants (because nuclear = bad) Maybe that was the discussion where you're from, what do i know. Where I'm from we had a honest political debate about nuclear, and the public decided on no. It wasn't because of "ideology". We discussed the safety, the waste challenge, and everything else.

mulmen 1y ago

> There are good reasons to question renewable energy: the cost picture doesn't make sense right now What? Did renewables get more expensive for some reason? Solar and wind have been cheaper than coal for years. Attacking renewables is the ideological move because anything good is bad. It’s just weaponized ignorance.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

UebVar 1y ago

What you say is spectacular and completely wrong. What you claim didn't happen, and can easily disproven with data. Your interpretation of a reasoning of a policy (that didn't happen) is bad faith. You are wrong about both electricity [1], gas[2] and total energy [3]. Europe was very dependent on energy imports in the past and current policy is the by far most successful attempt in a long at changing it. It will help us for decades to come. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-prod-source-stacked?country=~OWID_EU27 https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-prod-source-s... [2] https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/infographics/where-does-the-eu-s-gas-come-from/ https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/infographics/where-does-t... [3] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-prod-source-stacked?country=~OWID_EU27 https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-prod-source-s...

picafrost 1y ago
I don't understand your post. Europe absolutely spent many years phasing out nuclear energy while rationalizing that increased gas imports from Russia was good because trade will make us friends [0]. The data supports this (though obviously does not capture the political discourse around Russian gas reliance). I am in agreement that the current, post-Ukraine invasion policy is good. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wandel_durch_Handel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wandel_durch_Handel
- janice1999 1y ago
  > Europe absolutely spent many years phasing out nuclear energy Germany is not Europe. Over 70% of electricity in France is nuclear and they have plans to build at least 6 EPR2 plants.
  - picafrost 1y ago
    It is more representative of the situation over the past 30 years to say that France is not Europe. But even they had plans to cut nuclear energy to 50%. [0] [0] https://www.lemonde.fr/en/economy/article/2023/01/24/france-s-elusive-promise-cutting-nuclear-power-to-50-of-electricity-production_6012818_19.html https://www.lemonde.fr/en/economy/article/2023/01/24/france-...

WA 1y ago

All energy policies are ideology driven, but you make it sound like nuclear isn’t ideology driven. That’s just nonsense. - Nuclear waste has non-zero cost that aren’t factored in. - Nuclear risks are externalized, not factored in. - Nuclear power is heavily subsidized. - Solar power industry in Germany on particular was destroyed for ideological reasons. - Solar has much more capacity than nuclear for many years now: https://www.smard.de/page/home/topic-article/211972/212382/entwicklung-der-nettonennleistung https://www.smard.de/page/home/topic-article/211972/212382/e...

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
xboxnolifes 1y ago
What about nuclear between 10 years ago and 50 years ago? Same reasons to not use it?
mastax 1y ago
I think I agree with you broadly, but to make the counter argument: A big part of the reason why nuclear power isn’t cost-effective nowadays is because those costs have been at least partially internalized. The US federal government has stopped producing cheap nuclear fuel by disassembling nuclear weapons. Nuclear plants need to pay for the cost of storing their spent fuel on site indefinitely. Plant operators need to pay into a federal disaster insurance pool.
- legulere 1y ago
  > Nuclear plants need to pay for the cost of storing their spent fuel on site indefinitely. I highly doubt that. If you multiply annual costs with the timeframe needed (millions of years) you get absurdly high numbers.

ViewTrick1002 1y ago

> There are good reasons to question renewable energy: the cost picture doesn't make sense right now, it has intermittency problems, etc. You seem to rely on quite outdated information. Renewables are the cheapest source of energy in human history. The recent explosive growth is fueled by pure economics rather than feelgood. The same thing is happening with storage with the prices plummeting. With the recent auctions landing at $50-60/MWh. https://www.ess-news.com/2025/06/26/china-energy-engineering-launches-record-25-gwh-storage-tender-as-prices-hit-historic-low/ https://www.ess-news.com/2025/06/26/china-energy-engineering... In many regions unsubsidized renewables + storage are now the cheapest source of energy, undercutting coal and gas. Nuclear power does not even enter the picture due to the absolutely insane costs involved.

anovikov 1y ago
OK but what are the prices at which storage auctions land OUTSIDE of China?
- ViewTrick1002 1y ago
  > That means it’s fully within China’s purchasing power parity advantage sphere, where everything costs 40% less than in the west. That means zero tariffs. Something like $70-80 per MWH. https://medium.com/the-future-is-electric/grid-storage-at-66-kwh-the-world-just-changed-c2f39f42f09f https://medium.com/the-future-is-electric/grid-storage-at-66... Archive: https://archive.is/UXcdL https://archive.is/UXcdL
  - anovikov 1y ago
    It's not at all convincing. Recent announced deals in Portugal are over 1000 EUR per MWH which doesn't make any economic sense at all.
arcticbull 1y ago
Renewables really aren't that cheap unless you view them entirely in isolation. Sun doesn't shine all night and wind doesn't blow continuously, it needs to be viewed with storage to represent a complete picture. Rooftop solar is more expensive than nuclear due to the zero economies of scale, residential storage is staggeringly expensive, and utility scale solar + storage only became less expensive than nuclear power a couple of years ago. Solar and wind both have significant sovereignty issues. The entire solar supply chain is in China where they're heavily subsidized so the PRC can corner the market -- and substantially all the rare earths in wind turbines come from China. Generally recycling costs aren't considered and at least in the west there's no plan to recycle at least the fiberglass in turbine blades, leaving them to be buried. I'm all for renewables but the way they're positioned is unrealistic. Nuclear is only expensive because of the way it's built in the US, relying on the few locations made available (if any) to build basically fully customized installations. If we copy-pasted reactors onto sites that suit them it would be very competitive, don't take my word for it. Jigar Shah who headed the DOE loans program said the exact same thing during his term. If we're being pedantic, nuclear is renewable too thanks to seawater extraction. There's a practically unlimited amount of uranium in the ocean and the rock underneath it.

miohtama 1y ago

Europe didn't phase our nuclear plants. It was only Germany and Italy. Finland, France and UK kept building.

Gravityloss 1y ago

"Europe" certainly didn't do that. Some countries in Europe did.