10 ms·

Nuclear energy key to decarbonising Europe, says EESC

130 points by mpweiher 11mo ago

z3ratul163071 11mo ago
[flagged]
- okanat 11mo ago
  Only Germany did. They were quite anti-nuclear in the 80s. So they didn't upgrade the reactors. The closure was inevitable. US also supported this more neutral position btw and everybody mocked French for being the lone wolf.
klipklop 11mo ago
This is what anybody with a brain has been saying since at least the 1980's.
- esafak 11mo ago
  Halleluia! Better late than never.
- thenaturalist 11mo ago
  And what have they said about the millenia-spanning effects of the waste? About reactor malfunctions and fallout? Yes, I know the chances are slim and you know as well as I do they're not 0.
  - mpweiher 11mo ago
    Nothing man-made is perfect, not even nuclear. But even with the two big accidents, nuclear is the safest form of energy generation we have. By far. The actual safety is almost entirely unrelated to the fears people have. There is even a term for this: radiophobia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiophobia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiophobia Radiophobia is an irrational or excessive fear of ionizing radiation, leading to overestimating the health risks of radiation compared to other risks. It can impede rational decision-making and contribute to counter-productive behavior and policies.
    - squigz 11mo ago
      I think the concern most people have is not necessarily the long-term health effects of nuclear vs other forms of power, but the risks of a catastrophic incident
IlikeKitties 11mo ago
Nuclear Energy is incredibly expensive and has a lot of other issues like long term waste storage. It's arguably better than Coal and Gas but the KEY to decarbonisation is and always will be renewables. The Headline is rather misleading in that regard. Anyways, solar is also cheaper
- belorn 11mo ago
  As long there is no need to use gas during periods of non-optimal weather, then solar and wind is great. The lithium battery plant in northern Sweden went bankrupt so its difficult to say how to solve the storage solution by both being cheap and financial viable. New battery solutions are being made, but in the end it need to be cheap enough over the long term. The current use of gas for non-optimal weather means prices jump up by a factor of around 100x of what it is during good weather, and the average price in nordpool (the northen pan-European power exchange) is about 20x than what you get with good weather. That should illustrate how much variability there is in the energy price right now, and how much people are paying for that gas powered electricity in periods of non-optimal weather conditions. A lot of fossil fuel subsidies goes directly to support the high variability power grid, and they more than doubled during 2022 when the gas prices went up. It is incredibly expensive, likely more than nuclear, to have a grid supported by renewables during optimal weather conditions and fossil fuels during non-optimal weather conditions. It also generate a lot of waste in term of pollution which has a bigger issue both short and long term than nuclear waste.
  - jltsiren 11mo ago
    Nordpool prices are not true market prices, as much of the demand does not participate in the market. For example, many residential customers still have fixed-rate contracts, and some power companies sell the power they generate to their owners at cost price.
- exabrial 11mo ago
  > Long term waste storage This is pretty far from the truth. Exactly One Swimming Pool is all that is needed to store the entire "waste" for a country. If you don't recycle it. Or if you don't put it concrete.
EricE 11mo ago
[flagged]
DarkNova6 11mo ago
So you want to create a completely new industry. From the ground. With all existing experts having retired. Demanding high quality, no-fault tolerance production. Dependent on resources not found in Europe. Look, I love nuclear technology. But time has moved on. The costs to rebuild this industry is astronomical and means we lose out on key-future technology like batteries. Edit: But then there are bombs. And especially French love their nukes due national security. This is the only reason to keep pushing for nuclear, since Russia, the US and China are not gonna change direction on this either. But the very least we could do is be honest about it. Edit 2: Changed from "World has moved on" to "time has moved on", since evidently China has invested for a good 2 decades to build their own fully functional nuclear-industry. Proving my point that it takes dedicated investment, network effects and scale to rebuild this industry. After all, they too want to mass produce nukes.
- nixass 11mo ago
  > Look, I love nuclear technology. But the world has moved on. Come again?
  - iknowstuff 11mo ago
    We deploy 10x the capacity in renewables and batteries than we do in nuclear and its only accelerating. We are trending towards 1/10th the cost of nuclear per GW. There is no going back just due to the sheer scale of mass manufacturing renewables. We are below $1B/GW for solar. China just opened a $100/kWh ($100M/GWh) battery storage plant. All deployable within a year. Contrast this to $16B/GW for recent nuclear plants, and you don’t benefit from starting a build for another 20 years
    - nixass 11mo ago
      Use case: Germany It's going great!!!11 https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/DE/live/fifteen_minutes https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/DE/live/fifteen_min...
      - 11mo ago
softwaredoug 11mo ago
I think Fukushima rather than Chernobyl looms over us as a more realistic disaster that could happen again. When you look at the data though, its political fallout was much worse than the actual toll on human life, etc. Fukushima released a small about of radiation into the environment. But modern reactors don’t have the same runaway reactivity flaws that Chernobyl did. Not zero risk. But not the level of risk resulting in half a continent potentially being uninhabitable.
- goatlover 11mo ago
  Would Chernobyl have realistically made half a continent uninhabitable had the Soviets not taken all measures to contain it? Or is it more worse case fear mongering nuclear has always had, while oil tankers s[ill into oceans, pipelines leak into national parks, people die from polluted air, and climate change continues to grow worse?
  - deleted 11mo ago
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  - mandevil 11mo ago
    I mean, the basic problem at Chernobyl was the lack of a big heavy containment vessel that essentially all other reactor designs have. That containment vessel (and a couple of other design features, e.g. negative void coefficient in a PWR) has, so far, largely prevented Chernobyl like issues at other, better designed reactors. So far a TMI/Fukushima Dai Ichi/Chalk River is about the worst that has been observed in a reactor with a containment vessel. And as for how realistic it was that it would make large areas unlivable, the threat was of a melt-down going far enough down to hit the water table and contaminating the groundwater. That would make large areas only livable if you brought your own water, even for bathing, basically making the area impracticable. Obviously it didn't happen, but I'm not clear whether it was a 0.5% chance, a 5% chance or a 50% chance.
- BurningFrog 11mo ago
  Fukushima was the result of the biggest earthquake in 1000+ years of Japanese history occurring where the resulting tsunami knocked out the backup generators at the plant. Such an extreme set of outlier events could happen again, of course, but it's not very realistic.
retrac 11mo ago
Here in Ontario, residentially we pay about 0.09 USD per kWh at night and 0.18 USD with demand peak pricing on weekday afternoons. Or if you have flat rate it's about 0.13 USD per kWh. This is considered very expensive by Canadian standards and it's due to our nuclear power program where about 55% of electricity is from nuclear, the rest from a mix of wind/hydro/solar/biofuel and gas. The increased price during the day is due to the need to burn a bit of gas at peak demand. The grid is otherwise nearly carbon neutral, and the long-term plan is to phase out the gas with a mix of wind, nuclear and pumped storage. We pay less in practice than the rates given above for power, because the government also subsidizes it. But even without that I understand such rates would be relatively cheap in most European countries.
- tokai 11mo ago
  Relative cheap? More like ridiculously cheap.
- throw0101a 11mo ago
  > Here in Ontario, residentially we pay about 0.09 USD per kWh at night and 0.18 USD with demand peak pricing on weekday afternoons. Provincial regulatory report from 2025-2026: * https://oeb.ca/sites/default/files/rpp-price-report-20251017.pdf https://oeb.ca/sites/default/files/rpp-price-report-20251017... Search for "RPP Price Report" for previous ones: * https://www.oeb.ca/consultations-and-projects/policy-initiatives-and-consultations/regulated-price-plan-rpp https://www.oeb.ca/consultations-and-projects/policy-initiat...
- belorn 11mo ago
  Is that the commercial price to the end customer with tax and connection fees, or is it the gross price at the power exchange?
  - nine_k 11mo ago
    End customer tariffs, I suppose. IDK if they include delivery. Bulk prices at exchanges are way lower, like 2.2¢ per kWh: https://www.ieso.ca/Power-Data/Price-Overview/Ontario-Market-Prices https://www.ieso.ca/Power-Data/Price-Overview/Ontario-Market...
mrweasel 11mo ago
Modern energi consumption confuses me. There has never been more wind and solar, coal fired plants are almost a thing of the past. Everything is becoming increasingly energy efficient, yet we produce more CO2? Where is the fossile fuel being burnt?
- iknowstuff 11mo ago
  Roughly, greenhouse gases are, a quarter from (animal) agriculture, quarter from energy, quarter from industry (cement/steel etc), and a quarter from transport.
  - dalyons 11mo ago
    i couldnt believe that animal ag was the same as power, so i looked it up. Animal ag is ~14%, power is ~35%. so not close to equivilant, but ag is still a way bigger percentage than i would have guessed!
- mandevil 11mo ago
  Mostly, what you are seeing is that the half of the world living in the India-SEA-China circle [1] are living much better lives, which requires far more energy then living as subsistence farmers did. In the G7, CO2 emissions have declined (but not as fast as they need to stay below the 2C target) but the rest of the world is emitting more: during the negotiations for the Kyoto Accords in 1998 G7 countries produced about half of the world's CO2 and now they produce about a quarter. That's mostly because the rest of the world started emitting more and only a little because of drops in the amount produced by G7 countries. There is obviously major ethical issues here. The rich, already developed world- having emitted enormous quantities of CO2 to get there- telling poor, undeveloped people living as subsistence farmers that they can't use any more energy because of all the CO2 already in the atmosphere is a really hard argument to make, locking them into being poor forever while the developed world benefits from all that CO2 consumption. But on the other hand, by skipping right to large scale solar, maybe those inside the circle can do a better job? 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valeriepieris_circle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valeriepieris_circle
- 11mo ago
thegrim33 11mo ago
For some reason it took this long to hit me. If you take as axioms: 1) Countries have major political interest in whether other countries have nuclear reactors 2) Countries are already, at large scale, manipulating discourse across the internet to achieve their political goals Then of course it follows that any comment thread on a semi-popular or higher site about whether a country should build more nuclear reactors is going to be heavily manipulated by said countries. That's where (most) of the insane people in such threads are probably coming from. How are we supposed to survive as a civilization with such corrupted channels of communication?
- cauch 11mo ago
  What is, according to you, the political interest? There are countries that have interest of having gas or oil bought from them. It is not clear if they are pro or against other countries going nuclear: on one hand, nuclear will replace part of their market. On the other hand, lobbying to move towards nuclear may impede progress in replacing gas and oil by renewable (a strategy would be to lobby so that the nuclear project starts and then lobby so that the project stagnates and never delivers). There are countries that have interest in seeing nuclear adopted because they have a market for the ore extraction or waste processing. There are countries that have interest in seeing nuclear not adopted because they have a market around other generations. Finally, some countries may want to see their neighbors adopt nuclear: the neighbor will pay all the front bills and take all the risk (economical but also PR, or the cost of educating experts, ...), and if they succeed, they will provide import energy very cheap that can fill the gaps the country did not wanted to invest in. So it is not clear if there is just one stream of lobbying. The reality is probably that every "sides" does somehow contain manipulative discourse from foreign countries.
- fulafel 11mo ago
  Does this apply also to fossil energy threads? Countries have a major political interest whether other countries use fossil energy, to mitigate the climate catastrophe and ramp down fossils use.
terespuwash 11mo ago
You mean “Nuclear energy key to decarbonising Europe, say lobby groups to members of the EESC to influence the Commission and the Council”.
- raverbashing 11mo ago
  Well, every cloud has a silver lining
- solarengineer 11mo ago
  Per the International Energy Association: What is the role of nuclear power in clean energy transitions? Nuclear power accounts for about 10% of electricity generation globally, rising to almost 20% in advanced economies. It has historically been one of the largest global contributors of carbon-free electricity and while it faces challenges in some countries, it has significant potential to contribute to power sector decarbonisation. Why does it matter to energy security? Nuclear power plants contribute to electricity security in multiple ways by keeping power grids stable and complementing decarbonisation strategies since, to a certain extent, they can adjust their output to accompany shifts in demand and supply. As the share of variable renewables like wind and solar photovoltaics (PV) rises, the need for such services will increase. What are the challenges? Nuclear power faces a contrasted future despite its ability to produce emissions-free power. With large up-front costs, long lead times and an often-poor record of on-time delivery, nuclear power projects have trouble in some jurisdictions competing against faster-to-install alternatives, such as natural gas or modern renewables. It also faces public opposition in many countries. Its uncertain future could result in billions of tonnes of additional carbon emissions. https://www.iea.org/energy-system/electricity/nuclear-power https://www.iea.org/energy-system/electricity/nuclear-power Do note: There are countries other than the US and France who license nuclear technologies and build-outs. There are innovative technologies by US companies that work with modern regulations and are faster and less expensive to build. We must stop citing US nuclear build times that are largely due to outdated regulations and hostile review processes.
solarengineer 11mo ago
I am a former nuclear opponent. I used to think that nuclear waste was glowing green like they show in the Simpsons and in the Doom 1 game. Once I had access to the Internet in this century, I learned better. Here are some sources of information that helped me understand the two oft-cited nuclear disasters better. The World Nuclear Energy write up on the Fukushima incident: https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-security/safety-of-plants/fukushima-daiichi-accident https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-sec... Some information on the Chernobyl incident: The infographics show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uJhjqBz5Tk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uJhjqBz5Tk https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-security/safety-of-plants/chernobyl-accident https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-sec... A lecture in the MIT Courseware on the incident: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ijst4g5KFN0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ijst4g5KFN0 This lecture is way more informative where the professor explains how the workers took the system beyond the rated capacity as part of a test. There have been many lessons learned, and the World Nuclear article linked above shares some of these. Here is a writeup of the Three Mile Island incident: https://world-nuclear.org/Information-Library/Safety-and-Security/Safety-of-plants/Three-Mile-Island-accident https://world-nuclear.org/Information-Library/Safety-and-Sec... One regular complaint is the costs of nuclear energy. This is likely true in the US due to regulations that have not been revised for newer technology, but such high costs are cited around the world. Likewise, the amount of waste and the danger of the waste is not well understood either, and certainly lots of education is needed here. For e.g., most people do not know that the volume of waste is limited and that the same waste can be reused in reactors of other designs. I do believe that national ego issues get in the way of fixes. I believe that such ego issues got in the way of honest repairs (Fukushima) and timely action (Chernobyl). Certainly, nuclear inspections are still treated with suspicion and hostility, but in fact full transparency and integrity should be the norm. Corruption and profit-centric thinking are two other problems that plague the nuclear industry. South Korea has had lots of corruption and shortcuts (https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/04/22/136020/how-greed-and-corruption-blew-up-south-koreas-nuclear-industry/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/04/22/136020/how-greed...). One of the accusations in India against France was that France licenses outdated nuclear reactor technology despite having newer technology. I am unable to locate a link supporting this accusation. With thorium reactors and Small Module Reactors, there are many modern solutions to safety. ThorCon's Thorium Converter Reactor - Lars Jorgensen in Bali https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oB1IrzDDI9g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oB1IrzDDI9g Here is the full training by Thorcon on their reactors: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkvEXm-rMW4&list=PLuGiwaUJYEZeQXnVdr92OMrTrvjHU7QBQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkvEXm-rMW4&list=PLuGiwaUJYE... We need to stop citing and quoting US-based costs and problems that are linked to outdated US regulations. There are other countries that have more modern regulations and modern technologies.
scotty79 11mo ago
Nuclear might be a good idea but for after the war. For now Europe needs distributed power generation and storage that russia can't easily nuke.
throwpoaster 11mo ago
No doy.
Archelaos 11mo ago
Why is HN so full of nuclear energy trolls?
- locallost 10mo ago
  Because it's technical and an advanced form of technology which appeals to tech people and where normal people have an "irrational" fear of it. And also IT and conversely HN is full of people who have trouble fitting in and pride themselves on being rational, and have made it a career and lifestyle of going the other way as everyone else. Which is fine, except putting hopes into a technology that has failed repeatedly for 60 years is in itself irrational. HN would do itself a favor if it learned the lessons of "worse is better" and applied it to, well, almost anything. In this case, a moonshot to advance nuclear globally might bring realistic results in 10-15 years. By that time the world will already be decarbonized by renewables as it's already happening. At best nuclear might be that last missing piece to get to 100%, but even this I would no longer bet on. There is already insane growth in undeveloped countries which will push demand even further. Renewables are ridiculously cheap.
laurencerowe 11mo ago
It's hard to see how non-dispatchable generation like nuclear can be competitive in Northern European markets dominated by intermittent wind power. So much wind capacity has already been built in Denmark that it sometimes meets 100% of electricity demand. Britain will be there soon, certainly long before substantial numbers of new nuclear reactors could conceivably be built. I suspect the UK will only build the nuclear capacity required to keep the industry around on national security grounds.
- mpweiher 11mo ago
  Nuclear power is dispatchable, unlike renewables. Giving a preference to intermittent renewables is not a law of nature, but a rule that is irrational and needs to be removed. Denmark is just now hitting problems with their wind strategy, and of course dependent on being a transit land between large producers and consumers. And currently looking at nuclear. As is Norway. One of the reason is that intermittent renewables are pro-cyclical, that is once they reach a certain level of saturation, they cannibalize each other even more than they cannibalize steady suppliers. The current plan is to quadruple nuclear power in the UK.
  - laurencerowe 11mo ago
    > Nuclear power is dispatchable, unlike renewables. While you can turn nuclear up and down a little bit the fuel costs are negligible so it costs the same to generate 80% or 100% of rated output. It's done in France because nuclear makes up so much of their generation capacity they have no other option. > Giving a preference to intermittent renewables is not a law of nature, but a rule that is irrational and needs to be removed. I think carbon-free generation options should be considered dispassionately with a focus on minimising cost and reducing CO2 emissions as quickly as possible. But there is path dependence at this point. The wind generation capacity will already have been built out before many more nuclear plants come online. I think this will make the economics of expanding nuclear power generation unattractive because we will already have made the commitments to buy the wind generation and we will instead look for the lowest priced options to fill the gaps. > Denmark is just now hitting problems with their wind strategy, and of course dependent on being a transit land between large producers and consumers. And currently looking at nuclear. As is Norway. > > One of the reason is that intermittent renewables are pro-cyclical, that is once they reach a certain level of saturation, they cannibalize each other even more than they cannibalize steady suppliers. The fast decreasing cost of batteries will help smooth out fluctuations in wind generation across a day or two. That should reduce the level of cannibalisation between wind projects substantially, though does not remove the need for backup power for longer periods of little wind. I suspect the proposed SMR projects in Norway and Denmark will depend on whether anyone is able to get SMR build costs down sufficiently to make them attractive. It certainly makes no sense to ban them outright. > The current plan is to quadruple nuclear power in the UK. That was the 2050 target from the last government. In terms of actual commitments the only planned plant after Hinkley C is currently Sizewell C. At the same time 4 of our 5 remaining nuclear plants will be decommissioned by early 2030. I think the target is highly unlikely to be met. There is a £2.5 billion investment in SMRs (if you can call reactors around a 1/3rd the size of existing nuclear power plants small...) but will they really have reduced costs?
accidc 11mo ago
I think nuclear has parallel to mainframes. Capital intensive, long lead time, expensive to operate/maintain/dispose and practically irrelevant in the day of distributed (computing) generation and storage. It’s uncanny how the narrative rhymes: we have insanely capable portable computing devices at price points that are accessible to every person across the planet. Similarly, distributed generation (and storage) are already bringing electricity to people who have no real chance of being on the grid ever. I see no way the economics working out for nuclear, except for niche uses. I can even imagine the grid being something relegated for long range / high intensity applications (instead of household distribution) in a few hundred years
- Rygian 11mo ago
  Consider Poland. 80% of its electricity production (as of this moment, almost midnight) is coal + gas (and it imports from Germany). Its generation mix results in 855 grams of CO₂ per kWh. Consider Germany. 50% is coal + gas, 22% is wind + biomass. At 490 g/kWh. Italy: 60% gas at 386 g/kWh. Then compare them to France: 75% of the electricity comes from nuclear, at 47 g/kWh. All of this despite abundant wind+solar capacity installed in Germany, France, Italy, and Poland. There is a strong need to remove CO₂-intensive generators and replace them by something that does not send CO₂ into the air. There is also a strong need to build up capacity to store energy. https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/PL/live/fifteen_minutes https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/PL/live/fifteen_min...
thenaturalist 11mo ago
Laughs in German... Honestly the main part about nuclear energy is dependence. In Germany we saw how well that played out in 2022 when Russian gas stopped flowing. There is a shit ton of innovation around battery technologies, extending the grid and behind the meter micro-grids. A more diversified, autonomous (as in, wind, solar) energy supply beats Nuclear in terms of national security and long term viability any day.
- mpweiher 11mo ago
  Germany: the country with World’s Dumbest Energy Policy https://www.wsj.com/articles/worlds-dumbest-energy-policy-11548807424 https://www.wsj.com/articles/worlds-dumbest-energy-policy-11... Yep, the Gas that was needed due to ... the World's Dumbest Energy Policy. https://www.ndr.de/nachrichten/mecklenburg-vorpommern/nord-stream-2-gerhard-schroeder-sagt-als-zeuge-im-u-ausschuss-aus,schroeder-326.html https://www.ndr.de/nachrichten/mecklenburg-vorpommern/nord-s... Schon während seiner Kanzlerschaft sei die damalige Bundesregierung der Auffassung gewesen, die deutsche Energiepolitik aus der Abhängigkeit der Kernenergie zu befreien. "Wir fanden deshalb, dass es Sinn macht, auf Gas zu setzen." Uranium is cheap, widely available (largest known reserves in Australia, 3rd in Canada, also Sweden recently had a large find), compact, solid, storable. Security: https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/the-gigantic-unregulated-power-plants-in-the-cloud/ https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/the-gigantic-unregulated-p... In Ukraine, nuclear is what's keeping the lights on.
mooiedingen 11mo ago
Heil euro fuhrer vonderlying! Ist das warum sie eine nue "Unternehmen Barbarossa2.0" macht?
stuaxo 10mo ago
You can build a lot of renewable in the time it takes to make one nuclear power station.
tim333 10mo ago
The EESC is a committee >... composed of representatives from employers' associations, workers' unions (trade unions) and civil society organisations. I'm not sure how up they are on technical issues like the rapid progress in batteries and solar and the like. Hinkley C in the UK was approved in 2016 and probably will be producing in 2031 so 15 years on. (cost ~£40bn). In the last 15 years the cost of battery storage and of solar panels have both fallen about 10x. If that goes on they will be much cheaper but the time nuclear comes online.

130 points by mpweiher 11mo ago

z3ratul163071 11mo ago

[flagged]

okanat 11mo ago
Only Germany did. They were quite anti-nuclear in the 80s. So they didn't upgrade the reactors. The closure was inevitable. US also supported this more neutral position btw and everybody mocked French for being the lone wolf.

klipklop 11mo ago

This is what anybody with a brain has been saying since at least the 1980's.

esafak 11mo ago
Halleluia! Better late than never.
thenaturalist 11mo ago
And what have they said about the millenia-spanning effects of the waste? About reactor malfunctions and fallout? Yes, I know the chances are slim and you know as well as I do they're not 0.
- mpweiher 11mo ago
  Nothing man-made is perfect, not even nuclear. But even with the two big accidents, nuclear is the safest form of energy generation we have. By far. The actual safety is almost entirely unrelated to the fears people have. There is even a term for this: radiophobia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiophobia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiophobia Radiophobia is an irrational or excessive fear of ionizing radiation, leading to overestimating the health risks of radiation compared to other risks. It can impede rational decision-making and contribute to counter-productive behavior and policies.
  - squigz 11mo ago
    I think the concern most people have is not necessarily the long-term health effects of nuclear vs other forms of power, but the risks of a catastrophic incident

IlikeKitties 11mo ago

Nuclear Energy is incredibly expensive and has a lot of other issues like long term waste storage. It's arguably better than Coal and Gas but the KEY to decarbonisation is and always will be renewables. The Headline is rather misleading in that regard. Anyways, solar is also cheaper

belorn 11mo ago
As long there is no need to use gas during periods of non-optimal weather, then solar and wind is great. The lithium battery plant in northern Sweden went bankrupt so its difficult to say how to solve the storage solution by both being cheap and financial viable. New battery solutions are being made, but in the end it need to be cheap enough over the long term. The current use of gas for non-optimal weather means prices jump up by a factor of around 100x of what it is during good weather, and the average price in nordpool (the northen pan-European power exchange) is about 20x than what you get with good weather. That should illustrate how much variability there is in the energy price right now, and how much people are paying for that gas powered electricity in periods of non-optimal weather conditions. A lot of fossil fuel subsidies goes directly to support the high variability power grid, and they more than doubled during 2022 when the gas prices went up. It is incredibly expensive, likely more than nuclear, to have a grid supported by renewables during optimal weather conditions and fossil fuels during non-optimal weather conditions. It also generate a lot of waste in term of pollution which has a bigger issue both short and long term than nuclear waste.
- jltsiren 11mo ago
  Nordpool prices are not true market prices, as much of the demand does not participate in the market. For example, many residential customers still have fixed-rate contracts, and some power companies sell the power they generate to their owners at cost price.
exabrial 11mo ago
> Long term waste storage This is pretty far from the truth. Exactly One Swimming Pool is all that is needed to store the entire "waste" for a country. If you don't recycle it. Or if you don't put it concrete.

EricE 11mo ago

[flagged]

DarkNova6 11mo ago

So you want to create a completely new industry. From the ground. With all existing experts having retired. Demanding high quality, no-fault tolerance production. Dependent on resources not found in Europe. Look, I love nuclear technology. But time has moved on. The costs to rebuild this industry is astronomical and means we lose out on key-future technology like batteries. Edit: But then there are bombs. And especially French love their nukes due national security. This is the only reason to keep pushing for nuclear, since Russia, the US and China are not gonna change direction on this either. But the very least we could do is be honest about it. Edit 2: Changed from "World has moved on" to "time has moved on", since evidently China has invested for a good 2 decades to build their own fully functional nuclear-industry. Proving my point that it takes dedicated investment, network effects and scale to rebuild this industry. After all, they too want to mass produce nukes.

nixass 11mo ago
> Look, I love nuclear technology. But the world has moved on. Come again?
- iknowstuff 11mo ago
  We deploy 10x the capacity in renewables and batteries than we do in nuclear and its only accelerating. We are trending towards 1/10th the cost of nuclear per GW. There is no going back just due to the sheer scale of mass manufacturing renewables. We are below $1B/GW for solar. China just opened a $100/kWh ($100M/GWh) battery storage plant. All deployable within a year. Contrast this to $16B/GW for recent nuclear plants, and you don’t benefit from starting a build for another 20 years
  - nixass 11mo ago
    Use case: Germany It's going great!!!11 https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/DE/live/fifteen_minutes https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/DE/live/fifteen_min...
    - 11mo ago

softwaredoug 11mo ago

I think Fukushima rather than Chernobyl looms over us as a more realistic disaster that could happen again. When you look at the data though, its political fallout was much worse than the actual toll on human life, etc. Fukushima released a small about of radiation into the environment. But modern reactors don’t have the same runaway reactivity flaws that Chernobyl did. Not zero risk. But not the level of risk resulting in half a continent potentially being uninhabitable.

goatlover 11mo ago
Would Chernobyl have realistically made half a continent uninhabitable had the Soviets not taken all measures to contain it? Or is it more worse case fear mongering nuclear has always had, while oil tankers s[ill into oceans, pipelines leak into national parks, people die from polluted air, and climate change continues to grow worse?
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
- mandevil 11mo ago
  I mean, the basic problem at Chernobyl was the lack of a big heavy containment vessel that essentially all other reactor designs have. That containment vessel (and a couple of other design features, e.g. negative void coefficient in a PWR) has, so far, largely prevented Chernobyl like issues at other, better designed reactors. So far a TMI/Fukushima Dai Ichi/Chalk River is about the worst that has been observed in a reactor with a containment vessel. And as for how realistic it was that it would make large areas unlivable, the threat was of a melt-down going far enough down to hit the water table and contaminating the groundwater. That would make large areas only livable if you brought your own water, even for bathing, basically making the area impracticable. Obviously it didn't happen, but I'm not clear whether it was a 0.5% chance, a 5% chance or a 50% chance.
BurningFrog 11mo ago
Fukushima was the result of the biggest earthquake in 1000+ years of Japanese history occurring where the resulting tsunami knocked out the backup generators at the plant. Such an extreme set of outlier events could happen again, of course, but it's not very realistic.

retrac 11mo ago

Here in Ontario, residentially we pay about 0.09 USD per kWh at night and 0.18 USD with demand peak pricing on weekday afternoons. Or if you have flat rate it's about 0.13 USD per kWh. This is considered very expensive by Canadian standards and it's due to our nuclear power program where about 55% of electricity is from nuclear, the rest from a mix of wind/hydro/solar/biofuel and gas. The increased price during the day is due to the need to burn a bit of gas at peak demand. The grid is otherwise nearly carbon neutral, and the long-term plan is to phase out the gas with a mix of wind, nuclear and pumped storage. We pay less in practice than the rates given above for power, because the government also subsidizes it. But even without that I understand such rates would be relatively cheap in most European countries.

tokai 11mo ago
Relative cheap? More like ridiculously cheap.
throw0101a 11mo ago
> Here in Ontario, residentially we pay about 0.09 USD per kWh at night and 0.18 USD with demand peak pricing on weekday afternoons. Provincial regulatory report from 2025-2026: * https://oeb.ca/sites/default/files/rpp-price-report-20251017.pdf https://oeb.ca/sites/default/files/rpp-price-report-20251017... Search for "RPP Price Report" for previous ones: * https://www.oeb.ca/consultations-and-projects/policy-initiatives-and-consultations/regulated-price-plan-rpp https://www.oeb.ca/consultations-and-projects/policy-initiat...
belorn 11mo ago
Is that the commercial price to the end customer with tax and connection fees, or is it the gross price at the power exchange?
- nine_k 11mo ago
  End customer tariffs, I suppose. IDK if they include delivery. Bulk prices at exchanges are way lower, like 2.2¢ per kWh: https://www.ieso.ca/Power-Data/Price-Overview/Ontario-Market-Prices https://www.ieso.ca/Power-Data/Price-Overview/Ontario-Market...

mrweasel 11mo ago

Modern energi consumption confuses me. There has never been more wind and solar, coal fired plants are almost a thing of the past. Everything is becoming increasingly energy efficient, yet we produce more CO2? Where is the fossile fuel being burnt?

iknowstuff 11mo ago
Roughly, greenhouse gases are, a quarter from (animal) agriculture, quarter from energy, quarter from industry (cement/steel etc), and a quarter from transport.
- dalyons 11mo ago
  i couldnt believe that animal ag was the same as power, so i looked it up. Animal ag is ~14%, power is ~35%. so not close to equivilant, but ag is still a way bigger percentage than i would have guessed!
mandevil 11mo ago
Mostly, what you are seeing is that the half of the world living in the India-SEA-China circle [1] are living much better lives, which requires far more energy then living as subsistence farmers did. In the G7, CO2 emissions have declined (but not as fast as they need to stay below the 2C target) but the rest of the world is emitting more: during the negotiations for the Kyoto Accords in 1998 G7 countries produced about half of the world's CO2 and now they produce about a quarter. That's mostly because the rest of the world started emitting more and only a little because of drops in the amount produced by G7 countries. There is obviously major ethical issues here. The rich, already developed world- having emitted enormous quantities of CO2 to get there- telling poor, undeveloped people living as subsistence farmers that they can't use any more energy because of all the CO2 already in the atmosphere is a really hard argument to make, locking them into being poor forever while the developed world benefits from all that CO2 consumption. But on the other hand, by skipping right to large scale solar, maybe those inside the circle can do a better job? 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valeriepieris_circle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valeriepieris_circle
11mo ago

thegrim33 11mo ago

For some reason it took this long to hit me. If you take as axioms: 1) Countries have major political interest in whether other countries have nuclear reactors 2) Countries are already, at large scale, manipulating discourse across the internet to achieve their political goals Then of course it follows that any comment thread on a semi-popular or higher site about whether a country should build more nuclear reactors is going to be heavily manipulated by said countries. That's where (most) of the insane people in such threads are probably coming from. How are we supposed to survive as a civilization with such corrupted channels of communication?

cauch 11mo ago
What is, according to you, the political interest? There are countries that have interest of having gas or oil bought from them. It is not clear if they are pro or against other countries going nuclear: on one hand, nuclear will replace part of their market. On the other hand, lobbying to move towards nuclear may impede progress in replacing gas and oil by renewable (a strategy would be to lobby so that the nuclear project starts and then lobby so that the project stagnates and never delivers). There are countries that have interest in seeing nuclear adopted because they have a market for the ore extraction or waste processing. There are countries that have interest in seeing nuclear not adopted because they have a market around other generations. Finally, some countries may want to see their neighbors adopt nuclear: the neighbor will pay all the front bills and take all the risk (economical but also PR, or the cost of educating experts, ...), and if they succeed, they will provide import energy very cheap that can fill the gaps the country did not wanted to invest in. So it is not clear if there is just one stream of lobbying. The reality is probably that every "sides" does somehow contain manipulative discourse from foreign countries.
fulafel 11mo ago
Does this apply also to fossil energy threads? Countries have a major political interest whether other countries use fossil energy, to mitigate the climate catastrophe and ramp down fossils use.

terespuwash 11mo ago

You mean “Nuclear energy key to decarbonising Europe, say lobby groups to members of the EESC to influence the Commission and the Council”.

raverbashing 11mo ago
Well, every cloud has a silver lining
solarengineer 11mo ago
Per the International Energy Association: What is the role of nuclear power in clean energy transitions? Nuclear power accounts for about 10% of electricity generation globally, rising to almost 20% in advanced economies. It has historically been one of the largest global contributors of carbon-free electricity and while it faces challenges in some countries, it has significant potential to contribute to power sector decarbonisation. Why does it matter to energy security? Nuclear power plants contribute to electricity security in multiple ways by keeping power grids stable and complementing decarbonisation strategies since, to a certain extent, they can adjust their output to accompany shifts in demand and supply. As the share of variable renewables like wind and solar photovoltaics (PV) rises, the need for such services will increase. What are the challenges? Nuclear power faces a contrasted future despite its ability to produce emissions-free power. With large up-front costs, long lead times and an often-poor record of on-time delivery, nuclear power projects have trouble in some jurisdictions competing against faster-to-install alternatives, such as natural gas or modern renewables. It also faces public opposition in many countries. Its uncertain future could result in billions of tonnes of additional carbon emissions. https://www.iea.org/energy-system/electricity/nuclear-power https://www.iea.org/energy-system/electricity/nuclear-power Do note: There are countries other than the US and France who license nuclear technologies and build-outs. There are innovative technologies by US companies that work with modern regulations and are faster and less expensive to build. We must stop citing US nuclear build times that are largely due to outdated regulations and hostile review processes.

solarengineer 11mo ago

I am a former nuclear opponent. I used to think that nuclear waste was glowing green like they show in the Simpsons and in the Doom 1 game. Once I had access to the Internet in this century, I learned better. Here are some sources of information that helped me understand the two oft-cited nuclear disasters better. The World Nuclear Energy write up on the Fukushima incident: https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-security/safety-of-plants/fukushima-daiichi-accident https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-sec... Some information on the Chernobyl incident: The infographics show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uJhjqBz5Tk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uJhjqBz5Tk https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-security/safety-of-plants/chernobyl-accident https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-sec... A lecture in the MIT Courseware on the incident: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ijst4g5KFN0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ijst4g5KFN0 This lecture is way more informative where the professor explains how the workers took the system beyond the rated capacity as part of a test. There have been many lessons learned, and the World Nuclear article linked above shares some of these. Here is a writeup of the Three Mile Island incident: https://world-nuclear.org/Information-Library/Safety-and-Security/Safety-of-plants/Three-Mile-Island-accident https://world-nuclear.org/Information-Library/Safety-and-Sec... One regular complaint is the costs of nuclear energy. This is likely true in the US due to regulations that have not been revised for newer technology, but such high costs are cited around the world. Likewise, the amount of waste and the danger of the waste is not well understood either, and certainly lots of education is needed here. For e.g., most people do not know that the volume of waste is limited and that the same waste can be reused in reactors of other designs. I do believe that national ego issues get in the way of fixes. I believe that such ego issues got in the way of honest repairs (Fukushima) and timely action (Chernobyl). Certainly, nuclear inspections are still treated with suspicion and hostility, but in fact full transparency and integrity should be the norm. Corruption and profit-centric thinking are two other problems that plague the nuclear industry. South Korea has had lots of corruption and shortcuts (https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/04/22/136020/how-greed-and-corruption-blew-up-south-koreas-nuclear-industry/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/04/22/136020/how-greed...). One of the accusations in India against France was that France licenses outdated nuclear reactor technology despite having newer technology. I am unable to locate a link supporting this accusation. With thorium reactors and Small Module Reactors, there are many modern solutions to safety. ThorCon's Thorium Converter Reactor - Lars Jorgensen in Bali https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oB1IrzDDI9g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oB1IrzDDI9g Here is the full training by Thorcon on their reactors: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkvEXm-rMW4&list=PLuGiwaUJYEZeQXnVdr92OMrTrvjHU7QBQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkvEXm-rMW4&list=PLuGiwaUJYE... We need to stop citing and quoting US-based costs and problems that are linked to outdated US regulations. There are other countries that have more modern regulations and modern technologies.

scotty79 11mo ago

Nuclear might be a good idea but for after the war. For now Europe needs distributed power generation and storage that russia can't easily nuke.

throwpoaster 11mo ago

No doy.

Archelaos 11mo ago

Why is HN so full of nuclear energy trolls?

locallost 10mo ago
Because it's technical and an advanced form of technology which appeals to tech people and where normal people have an "irrational" fear of it. And also IT and conversely HN is full of people who have trouble fitting in and pride themselves on being rational, and have made it a career and lifestyle of going the other way as everyone else. Which is fine, except putting hopes into a technology that has failed repeatedly for 60 years is in itself irrational. HN would do itself a favor if it learned the lessons of "worse is better" and applied it to, well, almost anything. In this case, a moonshot to advance nuclear globally might bring realistic results in 10-15 years. By that time the world will already be decarbonized by renewables as it's already happening. At best nuclear might be that last missing piece to get to 100%, but even this I would no longer bet on. There is already insane growth in undeveloped countries which will push demand even further. Renewables are ridiculously cheap.

laurencerowe 11mo ago

It's hard to see how non-dispatchable generation like nuclear can be competitive in Northern European markets dominated by intermittent wind power. So much wind capacity has already been built in Denmark that it sometimes meets 100% of electricity demand. Britain will be there soon, certainly long before substantial numbers of new nuclear reactors could conceivably be built. I suspect the UK will only build the nuclear capacity required to keep the industry around on national security grounds.

mpweiher 11mo ago
Nuclear power is dispatchable, unlike renewables. Giving a preference to intermittent renewables is not a law of nature, but a rule that is irrational and needs to be removed. Denmark is just now hitting problems with their wind strategy, and of course dependent on being a transit land between large producers and consumers. And currently looking at nuclear. As is Norway. One of the reason is that intermittent renewables are pro-cyclical, that is once they reach a certain level of saturation, they cannibalize each other even more than they cannibalize steady suppliers. The current plan is to quadruple nuclear power in the UK.
- laurencerowe 11mo ago
  > Nuclear power is dispatchable, unlike renewables. While you can turn nuclear up and down a little bit the fuel costs are negligible so it costs the same to generate 80% or 100% of rated output. It's done in France because nuclear makes up so much of their generation capacity they have no other option. > Giving a preference to intermittent renewables is not a law of nature, but a rule that is irrational and needs to be removed. I think carbon-free generation options should be considered dispassionately with a focus on minimising cost and reducing CO2 emissions as quickly as possible. But there is path dependence at this point. The wind generation capacity will already have been built out before many more nuclear plants come online. I think this will make the economics of expanding nuclear power generation unattractive because we will already have made the commitments to buy the wind generation and we will instead look for the lowest priced options to fill the gaps. > Denmark is just now hitting problems with their wind strategy, and of course dependent on being a transit land between large producers and consumers. And currently looking at nuclear. As is Norway. > > One of the reason is that intermittent renewables are pro-cyclical, that is once they reach a certain level of saturation, they cannibalize each other even more than they cannibalize steady suppliers. The fast decreasing cost of batteries will help smooth out fluctuations in wind generation across a day or two. That should reduce the level of cannibalisation between wind projects substantially, though does not remove the need for backup power for longer periods of little wind. I suspect the proposed SMR projects in Norway and Denmark will depend on whether anyone is able to get SMR build costs down sufficiently to make them attractive. It certainly makes no sense to ban them outright. > The current plan is to quadruple nuclear power in the UK. That was the 2050 target from the last government. In terms of actual commitments the only planned plant after Hinkley C is currently Sizewell C. At the same time 4 of our 5 remaining nuclear plants will be decommissioned by early 2030. I think the target is highly unlikely to be met. There is a £2.5 billion investment in SMRs (if you can call reactors around a 1/3rd the size of existing nuclear power plants small...) but will they really have reduced costs?

accidc 11mo ago

I think nuclear has parallel to mainframes. Capital intensive, long lead time, expensive to operate/maintain/dispose and practically irrelevant in the day of distributed (computing) generation and storage. It’s uncanny how the narrative rhymes: we have insanely capable portable computing devices at price points that are accessible to every person across the planet. Similarly, distributed generation (and storage) are already bringing electricity to people who have no real chance of being on the grid ever. I see no way the economics working out for nuclear, except for niche uses. I can even imagine the grid being something relegated for long range / high intensity applications (instead of household distribution) in a few hundred years

Rygian 11mo ago
Consider Poland. 80% of its electricity production (as of this moment, almost midnight) is coal + gas (and it imports from Germany). Its generation mix results in 855 grams of CO₂ per kWh. Consider Germany. 50% is coal + gas, 22% is wind + biomass. At 490 g/kWh. Italy: 60% gas at 386 g/kWh. Then compare them to France: 75% of the electricity comes from nuclear, at 47 g/kWh. All of this despite abundant wind+solar capacity installed in Germany, France, Italy, and Poland. There is a strong need to remove CO₂-intensive generators and replace them by something that does not send CO₂ into the air. There is also a strong need to build up capacity to store energy. https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/PL/live/fifteen_minutes https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/PL/live/fifteen_min...

thenaturalist 11mo ago

Laughs in German... Honestly the main part about nuclear energy is dependence. In Germany we saw how well that played out in 2022 when Russian gas stopped flowing. There is a shit ton of innovation around battery technologies, extending the grid and behind the meter micro-grids. A more diversified, autonomous (as in, wind, solar) energy supply beats Nuclear in terms of national security and long term viability any day.

mpweiher 11mo ago
Germany: the country with World’s Dumbest Energy Policy https://www.wsj.com/articles/worlds-dumbest-energy-policy-11548807424 https://www.wsj.com/articles/worlds-dumbest-energy-policy-11... Yep, the Gas that was needed due to ... the World's Dumbest Energy Policy. https://www.ndr.de/nachrichten/mecklenburg-vorpommern/nord-stream-2-gerhard-schroeder-sagt-als-zeuge-im-u-ausschuss-aus,schroeder-326.html https://www.ndr.de/nachrichten/mecklenburg-vorpommern/nord-s... Schon während seiner Kanzlerschaft sei die damalige Bundesregierung der Auffassung gewesen, die deutsche Energiepolitik aus der Abhängigkeit der Kernenergie zu befreien. "Wir fanden deshalb, dass es Sinn macht, auf Gas zu setzen." Uranium is cheap, widely available (largest known reserves in Australia, 3rd in Canada, also Sweden recently had a large find), compact, solid, storable. Security: https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/the-gigantic-unregulated-power-plants-in-the-cloud/ https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/the-gigantic-unregulated-p... In Ukraine, nuclear is what's keeping the lights on.

mooiedingen 11mo ago

Heil euro fuhrer vonderlying! Ist das warum sie eine nue "Unternehmen Barbarossa2.0" macht?

stuaxo 10mo ago

You can build a lot of renewable in the time it takes to make one nuclear power station.

tim333 10mo ago

The EESC is a committee >... composed of representatives from employers' associations, workers' unions (trade unions) and civil society organisations. I'm not sure how up they are on technical issues like the rapid progress in batteries and solar and the like. Hinkley C in the UK was approved in 2016 and probably will be producing in 2031 so 15 years on. (cost ~£40bn). In the last 15 years the cost of battery storage and of solar panels have both fallen about 10x. If that goes on they will be much cheaper but the time nuclear comes online.