3 ms·

So what happens when you stick two French grids next to each other and you can't rely on your neighbors fossil fuel plants to absorb your over production by thr

So what happens when you stick two French grids next to each other and you can't rely on your neighbors fossil fuel plants to absorb your over production by throttling down? The cost for nuclear skyrockets. Do you dare calculating what running Vogtle at say a 40% capacity leads to? We're talking ~40 cents per kWh for the electricity now. You do know that the nuclear industry has been talking "small" and "scale" since the 1950s? It is what they bounce to when large scale projects balloon in cost and fail to deliver. Here's a history refresher: The Forgotten History of Small Nuclear Reactors Economics killed small nuclear power plants in the past—and probably will keep doing so https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-forgotten-history-of-small-nuclear-reactors https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-forgotten-history-of-small-nuc... How will you solve the "cold spell" with your nuclear grid? Just ignore it and pretend nuclear power only solves "base" while keep drumming on the "renewable intermittency!!!" drum? That does not sound very logical.

zozbot234 1y ago
> ...The cost for nuclear skyrockets. The cost for the nuclear plants themselves is exactly the same, it's just no longer offsetting expensive non-renewable sources. Intermittent renewables run into this issue to a far greater extent as they scale out, because their variable cost is higher.
- ViewTrick1002 1y ago
  Renewables mix very well with storage, especially due to their near zero marginal cost. Why should I fill my storage with horrifically expensive nuclear electricity when renewables deliver? That is the question you need to answer.
  - zozbot234 1y ago
    If you've decided to build a nuclear plant already (and there are plenty of reasons for such a choice - for one thing, it adds diversity to the mix when combined with intermittent renewables) that energy is no longer "horrifically expensive", it's already paid for. If you're worried about "producing too much" (which could happen with either nuclear or renewables), putting it in storage makes sense.
    - ViewTrick1002 1y ago
      Again, you don't seem to comprehend how the grid works. Nuclear power does not add diversity to a heavily renewable grid. Both renewable power and nuclear power competes for the most inflexible portion of the grid. A fight renewables win hands down and nuclear power is forced to throttle down. What happens when nuclear power is forced to throttle down? It becomes more expensive due to being nearly 100% CAPEX. Like I said, Vogtle costs 20 cents/kWh running at full tilt. Somewhere at 40 cents/kWh running half the time. Take a look at South Australia: https://explore.openelectricity.org.au/energy/sa1/?range=7d&interval=30m&view=discrete-time&group=Detailed https://explore.openelectricity.org.au/energy/sa1/?range=7d&... Do you notice how many instances last week renewables supplied 100% of the grid load? Mind that this is late winter in Australia. What do you do with your nuclear plant all those hours? Shut it down? Bid negative to make renewables shut down? In Australia old traditional base load coal plants are forced to become peakers or be decommissioned. That is the reality today. In South Australia coal plants were phased out in 2016. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-10-13/australian-coal-plant-in-extraordinary-survival-experiment/104461504 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-10-13/australian-coal-plant... Which again leads us back to the question: Why should I fill my storage with Vogtle electricity at 20 cents/kWh when I can instead buy renewable electricity at a fraction of the cost?
      - zozbot234 1y ago
        > Nuclear power does not add diversity to a heavily renewable grid. A heavily renewable grid is in trouble whenever the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine. A heavily nuclear grid is in trouble whenever demand happens to exceed the limited amount of baseload it can provide. These events tend to be uncorrelated, so one can expect that adding some nuclear to a heavily renewable grid (and vice versa) will save a lot on costly "grid stabilization" services from peaker plants and/or grid-level storage. A nuclear plant is not, strictly speaking, going to supply energy at literal zero or negative prices the way some renewables do, because it can throttle down when that makes economic sense. But its "baseload" profile seems to provide an attractive bundle of bulk supply plus some amount of stabilization compared to a "99%" intermittent renewable mix. Why shouldn't we try to reduce the high variable costs of storage and peaker plants to whatever extent turns out to be feasible?

zozbot234 1y ago

> ...The cost for nuclear skyrockets. The cost for the nuclear plants themselves is exactly the same, it's just no longer offsetting expensive non-renewable sources. Intermittent renewables run into this issue to a far greater extent as they scale out, because their variable cost is higher.

ViewTrick1002 1y ago
Renewables mix very well with storage, especially due to their near zero marginal cost. Why should I fill my storage with horrifically expensive nuclear electricity when renewables deliver? That is the question you need to answer.
- zozbot234 1y ago
  If you've decided to build a nuclear plant already (and there are plenty of reasons for such a choice - for one thing, it adds diversity to the mix when combined with intermittent renewables) that energy is no longer "horrifically expensive", it's already paid for. If you're worried about "producing too much" (which could happen with either nuclear or renewables), putting it in storage makes sense.
  - ViewTrick1002 1y ago
    Again, you don't seem to comprehend how the grid works. Nuclear power does not add diversity to a heavily renewable grid. Both renewable power and nuclear power competes for the most inflexible portion of the grid. A fight renewables win hands down and nuclear power is forced to throttle down. What happens when nuclear power is forced to throttle down? It becomes more expensive due to being nearly 100% CAPEX. Like I said, Vogtle costs 20 cents/kWh running at full tilt. Somewhere at 40 cents/kWh running half the time. Take a look at South Australia: https://explore.openelectricity.org.au/energy/sa1/?range=7d&interval=30m&view=discrete-time&group=Detailed https://explore.openelectricity.org.au/energy/sa1/?range=7d&... Do you notice how many instances last week renewables supplied 100% of the grid load? Mind that this is late winter in Australia. What do you do with your nuclear plant all those hours? Shut it down? Bid negative to make renewables shut down? In Australia old traditional base load coal plants are forced to become peakers or be decommissioned. That is the reality today. In South Australia coal plants were phased out in 2016. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-10-13/australian-coal-plant-in-extraordinary-survival-experiment/104461504 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-10-13/australian-coal-plant... Which again leads us back to the question: Why should I fill my storage with Vogtle electricity at 20 cents/kWh when I can instead buy renewable electricity at a fraction of the cost?
    - zozbot234 1y ago
      > Nuclear power does not add diversity to a heavily renewable grid. A heavily renewable grid is in trouble whenever the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine. A heavily nuclear grid is in trouble whenever demand happens to exceed the limited amount of baseload it can provide. These events tend to be uncorrelated, so one can expect that adding some nuclear to a heavily renewable grid (and vice versa) will save a lot on costly "grid stabilization" services from peaker plants and/or grid-level storage. A nuclear plant is not, strictly speaking, going to supply energy at literal zero or negative prices the way some renewables do, because it can throttle down when that makes economic sense. But its "baseload" profile seems to provide an attractive bundle of bulk supply plus some amount of stabilization compared to a "99%" intermittent renewable mix. Why shouldn't we try to reduce the high variable costs of storage and peaker plants to whatever extent turns out to be feasible?