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Can you cite any stats to back up the claim that nuclear is cheaper than solar or wind in any country, any of them, that's not over 4 years old? The price of s

Can you cite any stats to back up the claim that nuclear is cheaper than solar or wind in any country, any of them, that's not over 4 years old? The price of solar and battery storage has collapsed. It's really dramatic This is a log scale https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/solar-pv-prices?time=earliest..2025 https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/solar-pv-prices?time=earl...

realusername 1y ago
Battery storage would need another 100x improvement before being usable for such usage. Maybe it will reach that point, maybe not but anyways, you can't plan a grid on non-existing tech. Otherwise I'd pick some better non-existing one
- karmakurtisaani 1y ago
  What kind of usage? Batteries are already being built and deployed at scale to support renewables.
  - realusername 1y ago
    No they aren't, there's no country on earth which can sustain a winter load with batteries.
    - TheOtherHobbes 1y ago
      There is no country on earth which has spent anything like as much on developing storage as it has on fragile, unreliable, expensive nuclear plants. Systems like these are just getting started. https://stateofgreen.com/en/solutions/storing-heat-for-a-cold-day-in-denmarks-capital-region/ https://stateofgreen.com/en/solutions/storing-heat-for-a-col...
      - realusername 1y ago
        Yeah sure, it's right around the corner, I had the same conversation on HN 3 years ago haha. Say what you want about nuclear plants but they work, right now and we have example of countries successfully creating a grid with it. I can't say the same about the magical batteries.
        karmakurtisaani 1y ago
        Exponential growth is a funny thing. First it looks like nothing is happening, and all of a sudden everything has changed. Check out discussions about wind and solar some 10 years ago. E: for reference from memory, it took about 50 years to install the first TW of solar. The next TW took 2 years, and the next TW is projected to take only 1 year, 2025.
        realusername 1y ago
        For now it looks more like a flat curve than an exponential one. Batteries haven't followed PV at all, especially not for a grid scale usage. Making batteries viable for home use is a very different story to make them viable for a grid.
        rhubinak 1y ago
        > Making batteries viable for home use is a very different story to make them viable for a grid. True. But both are stories from the same book. Meaning: If more homes install batteries and some become fully off-grid you will stabilize the whole grid without needing to install more power generation. This is exactly what happened in Pakistan (src: https://www.weforum.org/stories/2025/08/pakistan-energy-affordable-reliable-electricity/ https://www.weforum.org/stories/2025/08/pakistan-energy-affo...) and I expect will happen all over the world as: 1. PV+battery prices continue falling 2. Climate change resulting in more sunny days (one of the very few upsides) 3. The need to become more self-sufficient due to energy price volatility due to shitty govt/shitty grid/shitty neighbors attacking your neighbors Would be nice to see some subsidy from the govt (is EU listening?) like: "here's low interest loan to take your home off grid payable over 20+ years (expected lifetime of the whole PV+bat system) during which you promise you won't connect to grid".
    - thomasmg 1y ago
      In the next years, it doesn't make sense to use batteries to sustain winter load: it would be way too expensive. But batteries get cheaper quickly, such that it doesn't make sense to build expensive nuclear plants just for winter. What does make sense, until batteries are cheap enough, is natural gas during winter, plus (where available) wind energy and hydro / pumped storage, existing nuclear plants (optimised for winter), biomass (wood), photovoltaics in the mountain, and geothermal.
    - guerby 1y ago
      Simulated wind-water-solar-battery in one of Australia grid is pretty close: https://reneweconomy.com.au/a-near-100-per-cent-renewable-grid-is-readily-achievable-and-affordable/ https://reneweconomy.com.au/a-near-100-per-cent-renewable-gr...
  - quickthrowman 1y ago
    Enough batteries to last with no nuclear, coal, or natural gas on a still winter night? There are not enough grid scale batteries yet. There’s ~8 hours of daylight at the 45th parallel in December. I don’t feel like doing napkin math on Saturday morning, but you’d need an obscene amount of batteries, the US uses 500+ GWh per day. Ideally battery storage density will keep advancing to the point where we can use grid scale backup batteries for long durations but we are not there yet.
    - natmaka 1y ago
      A typical car battery stores 60 kWh (the average capacity of models is increasing), so, charged during the day using inexpensive renewable electricity (particularly solar), it can power a household during one of the rare winter nights with insufficient wind. Case in point: France. A household consumes an average of 14 kWh of electricity per day. The capacity of electric cars will exceed 500 GWh before 2035 and 2000 GWh between 2040 and 2050. Trucks, utility vehicles, and stationary batteries (domestic and industrial) will add to this. Batteries from retired vehicles will increasingly be converted into static batteries before being recycled (see "Redwood Materials" in the US). In California, when the sun is at its peak (midday), solar power produces up to three-quarters of the electricity. Batteries are charged in the afternoon, when solar electricity is cheap, and released in the evening, when Californians return home. At their peak consumption, around 8 p.m., batteries can supply up to 30% of the state's electricity.
      - quickthrowman 1y ago
        OK, so the answer to my question is “No”. You can safely ignore all the households, they barely use any power compared to commercial and industrial facilities. What is the office tower going to do, use backup batteries from 500 cars in the basement to run dozens of pumps and fans? That doesn’t even get into industrial electrical loads.. Supplying 30% of California’s power is not 100% backup of the grid with batteries, sorry. Neither is “Let’s use cars to back up houses,” which ignores the fact that most power demand is non-residential. We are a ridiculously long ways away from an exclusively solar + wind + batteries grid.
- kristopolous 1y ago
  so the 3.2GWh battery grid storage array, in operation, this is still 1/100th what is needed? https://www.energy-storage.news/edwards-sanborn-california-solar-storage-project-world-largest-bess-battery-system-fully-online/ https://www.energy-storage.news/edwards-sanborn-california-s... You want a 320 GWh installation? You do realize HVDC grids can do 3,000km energy travel, right? That's basically anywhere to anywhere, continental US. There's already installs like the PDCI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_DC_Intertie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_DC_Intertie that take 3GW from north oregon to LA. There's even transcontinental energy links in the works like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia-Asia_Power_Link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia-Asia_Power_Link
  - tick_tock_tick 1y ago
    > so the 3.2GWh battery grid storage array, in operation, this is still 1/100th what is needed? That's closer to 1% of what California needs by itself then even 1% of the USA's need. We aren't even taking into account the large and continual growth in electricity demand yet either.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - guerby 1y ago
      Together with a large and continual growth of battery electric vehicules.
  - realusername 1y ago
    > so the 3.2GWh battery grid storage array, in operation, this is still 1/100th what is needed? Unless I'm mistaken, the US consumption is 500GWh/day with peaks at 700GW/day, so 3GWh isn't going to do much
    - karmakurtisaani 1y ago
      "This technology that is starting to emerge is garbage because it's not already everywhere"?

realusername 1y ago

Battery storage would need another 100x improvement before being usable for such usage. Maybe it will reach that point, maybe not but anyways, you can't plan a grid on non-existing tech. Otherwise I'd pick some better non-existing one

karmakurtisaani 1y ago
What kind of usage? Batteries are already being built and deployed at scale to support renewables.
- realusername 1y ago
  No they aren't, there's no country on earth which can sustain a winter load with batteries.
  - TheOtherHobbes 1y ago
    There is no country on earth which has spent anything like as much on developing storage as it has on fragile, unreliable, expensive nuclear plants. Systems like these are just getting started. https://stateofgreen.com/en/solutions/storing-heat-for-a-cold-day-in-denmarks-capital-region/ https://stateofgreen.com/en/solutions/storing-heat-for-a-col...
    - realusername 1y ago
      Yeah sure, it's right around the corner, I had the same conversation on HN 3 years ago haha. Say what you want about nuclear plants but they work, right now and we have example of countries successfully creating a grid with it. I can't say the same about the magical batteries.
      - karmakurtisaani 1y ago
        Exponential growth is a funny thing. First it looks like nothing is happening, and all of a sudden everything has changed. Check out discussions about wind and solar some 10 years ago. E: for reference from memory, it took about 50 years to install the first TW of solar. The next TW took 2 years, and the next TW is projected to take only 1 year, 2025.
        realusername 1y ago
        For now it looks more like a flat curve than an exponential one. Batteries haven't followed PV at all, especially not for a grid scale usage. Making batteries viable for home use is a very different story to make them viable for a grid.
        rhubinak 1y ago
        > Making batteries viable for home use is a very different story to make them viable for a grid. True. But both are stories from the same book. Meaning: If more homes install batteries and some become fully off-grid you will stabilize the whole grid without needing to install more power generation. This is exactly what happened in Pakistan (src: https://www.weforum.org/stories/2025/08/pakistan-energy-affordable-reliable-electricity/ https://www.weforum.org/stories/2025/08/pakistan-energy-affo...) and I expect will happen all over the world as: 1. PV+battery prices continue falling 2. Climate change resulting in more sunny days (one of the very few upsides) 3. The need to become more self-sufficient due to energy price volatility due to shitty govt/shitty grid/shitty neighbors attacking your neighbors Would be nice to see some subsidy from the govt (is EU listening?) like: "here's low interest loan to take your home off grid payable over 20+ years (expected lifetime of the whole PV+bat system) during which you promise you won't connect to grid".
  - thomasmg 1y ago
    In the next years, it doesn't make sense to use batteries to sustain winter load: it would be way too expensive. But batteries get cheaper quickly, such that it doesn't make sense to build expensive nuclear plants just for winter. What does make sense, until batteries are cheap enough, is natural gas during winter, plus (where available) wind energy and hydro / pumped storage, existing nuclear plants (optimised for winter), biomass (wood), photovoltaics in the mountain, and geothermal.
  - guerby 1y ago
    Simulated wind-water-solar-battery in one of Australia grid is pretty close: https://reneweconomy.com.au/a-near-100-per-cent-renewable-grid-is-readily-achievable-and-affordable/ https://reneweconomy.com.au/a-near-100-per-cent-renewable-gr...
- quickthrowman 1y ago
  Enough batteries to last with no nuclear, coal, or natural gas on a still winter night? There are not enough grid scale batteries yet. There’s ~8 hours of daylight at the 45th parallel in December. I don’t feel like doing napkin math on Saturday morning, but you’d need an obscene amount of batteries, the US uses 500+ GWh per day. Ideally battery storage density will keep advancing to the point where we can use grid scale backup batteries for long durations but we are not there yet.
  - natmaka 1y ago
    A typical car battery stores 60 kWh (the average capacity of models is increasing), so, charged during the day using inexpensive renewable electricity (particularly solar), it can power a household during one of the rare winter nights with insufficient wind. Case in point: France. A household consumes an average of 14 kWh of electricity per day. The capacity of electric cars will exceed 500 GWh before 2035 and 2000 GWh between 2040 and 2050. Trucks, utility vehicles, and stationary batteries (domestic and industrial) will add to this. Batteries from retired vehicles will increasingly be converted into static batteries before being recycled (see "Redwood Materials" in the US). In California, when the sun is at its peak (midday), solar power produces up to three-quarters of the electricity. Batteries are charged in the afternoon, when solar electricity is cheap, and released in the evening, when Californians return home. At their peak consumption, around 8 p.m., batteries can supply up to 30% of the state's electricity.
    - quickthrowman 1y ago
      OK, so the answer to my question is “No”. You can safely ignore all the households, they barely use any power compared to commercial and industrial facilities. What is the office tower going to do, use backup batteries from 500 cars in the basement to run dozens of pumps and fans? That doesn’t even get into industrial electrical loads.. Supplying 30% of California’s power is not 100% backup of the grid with batteries, sorry. Neither is “Let’s use cars to back up houses,” which ignores the fact that most power demand is non-residential. We are a ridiculously long ways away from an exclusively solar + wind + batteries grid.
kristopolous 1y ago
so the 3.2GWh battery grid storage array, in operation, this is still 1/100th what is needed? https://www.energy-storage.news/edwards-sanborn-california-solar-storage-project-world-largest-bess-battery-system-fully-online/ https://www.energy-storage.news/edwards-sanborn-california-s... You want a 320 GWh installation? You do realize HVDC grids can do 3,000km energy travel, right? That's basically anywhere to anywhere, continental US. There's already installs like the PDCI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_DC_Intertie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_DC_Intertie that take 3GW from north oregon to LA. There's even transcontinental energy links in the works like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia-Asia_Power_Link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia-Asia_Power_Link
- tick_tock_tick 1y ago
  > so the 3.2GWh battery grid storage array, in operation, this is still 1/100th what is needed? That's closer to 1% of what California needs by itself then even 1% of the USA's need. We aren't even taking into account the large and continual growth in electricity demand yet either.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - guerby 1y ago
    Together with a large and continual growth of battery electric vehicules.
- realusername 1y ago
  > so the 3.2GWh battery grid storage array, in operation, this is still 1/100th what is needed? Unless I'm mistaken, the US consumption is 500GWh/day with peaks at 700GW/day, so 3GWh isn't going to do much
  - karmakurtisaani 1y ago
    "This technology that is starting to emerge is garbage because it's not already everywhere"?