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If you believe in a climate crisis and are serious about it you probably want to run the numbers on different options and policies to see what works rather than

by tim333 6mo ago

If you believe in a climate crisis and are serious about it you probably want to run the numbers on different options and policies to see what works rather than saying yay this boo that. Running numbers on producing energy in say 15 years time which is roughly how long it takes to approve and build nuclear, and comparing it with projected solar+wind+battery costs for 15 years hence you tend to come with much better figures for the non nuclear. (see graph here with the trend https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/nuclear-vs-solar?hide_intro_popup=true https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/nuclear-vs-solar?hide_intro_po...) China which is fairly sensible on this stuff and which plans to be world's largest nuclear producer by 2035 actually added 1GW of nuclear and ~300GW of solar last year because it's cheaper. I'll give you maintaining existing nuclear makes sense. But as a British tax payer the cost of our upcoming Hinkley C is eye watering (£48bn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_C_nuclear_power_station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_C_nuclear_power_...)

leonidasrup 6mo ago
For China, nuclear power plants are still not very important, they build a lot new coal power plants. "2025 also saw China commission 78 GW of new coal power capacity, which is more than India’s net coal power additions over a ten-year period from 2015 to 2024" https://energyandcleanair.org/publication/built-to-peak-coal-power-expansion-runs-out-of-room-in-china/ https://energyandcleanair.org/publication/built-to-peak-coal...
pydry 6mo ago
The reason why people tend to get a bit cheerleadery about nuclear power is because it has some great PR and it resonates with them. It needs the PR because it is so unconscionably expensive. The public needs to be primed to consent to indirect and direct subsidies. The reason China, US, France, it is because it shares a skills base and supply chain with nukes. The reason Sweden, Poland, Iran, etc. build a few plants is because it shares a skills base and supply chain with a nuclear weapons program they might want in a hurry one day. It's always obvious for those countries who the existential threat is.
- tim333 6mo ago
  Yeah, apparently Hinkley may be partly to keep the nuclear weapon skills. (https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/oct/12/electricity-consumers-to-fund-nuclear-weapons-through-hinkley-point-c https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/oct/12/electricity-...)
- Moldoteck 6mo ago
  very little supply chain is shared with weapons, dont spread nonsense. If you want weapons it's far cheaper to have just an enrichement facility exactly for that. And nuclear is cheap. Look at lazard estimate for existing fleet. Or open swiss data. Or even german data
  - pydry 6mo ago
    Nuclear costs about 5x as much as solar and wind according to Lazard. This doesnt even include catastrophe insurance (taxpayers are on the hook in the event it goes boom and there's an $800 billion fukushima style cleanup fee). I dont think it was price or global warming that got Poland suddenly interested in 2023. They dont want to build a nuke today but if their existing nuclear umbrella suddenly gets yanked away...
    - Moldoteck 6mo ago
      You talk about new projects based on Vogtle costs. You need to look at the Lazard lcoe for existing fleet which didnt have such delays. Fukushima cleanup could have costed much less. Jp govt wanted it to be expensive. "They dont want to build a nuke today but if their existing nuclear umbrella suddenly gets yanked away..." - again, it's unrelated. If you want weapons you can have some secret enrichemnt facility for that. Much cheaper. Npp without enrichment are pointless anyway for weapons due to parasitic isotopes.
xphos 6mo ago
We can both build Nuclear that is safe and also build it faster. Its a matter of political will and reasonable regulation. Nations looking on the 100 year horizon would build nuclear and they would be newer and safer nuclear as time goes on. The next generation of reactors are safer and promise to be cheaper to build but the last of the GEN4 nuclear still are safe especially when we actually pay to have nuclear regulator inspectors. The things we are willing to be cheaper on are always the inspectors but never the permitting its so backwards.
- audunw 6mo ago
  I don’t see why you would look at nuclear at all on a 100 year horizon. At that timescales you gotta look at the fundamentals: 1. We’ve got a free fusion reactor in the sky and collecting and storing that energy is fundamentally cheap. Especially in a long term perspective when the materials needed to store the energy will be mostly recycled and practically free. 2. We’ve got a free fission reactor under our feet. Drilling deep enough expensive now but there’s no reason it needs to be. Se Quaise for progress in that area. 3. In a 50 year timeframe we don’t have any spare capacity to add more global warming from the thermal forcing of thermal power plants. Yeah you heard me right, thermal power plants contribute directly to global warming, and the effect is surprisingly significant. The good news is the effect disappears rapidly when you shut them down, unlike greenhouse gases. And we should certainly never shut down any nuclear power plants until we’ve eliminated greenhouse gas emissions. But at the same time, while we have an insane amount of greenhouse gases lingering in the atmosphere we can’t afford adding global warming from thousands of new nuclear reactors… like some nuclear proponents would have us do. A 100 years from now, if we’ve brought greenhouse gases down again, that’s when we can start considering adding significantly more nuclear power. Though I doubt there will be any interest. Makes sense for space travel though. I’m pro nuclear despite all that. But more from an R&D perspective.
  - Moldoteck 6mo ago
    1 - fusion reactor in the sky is not that easy to capture 24/7 due to nights/winter. BESS can partially alleviate the problem, not solve it. 2 - geothermal has an inconvenient property to lower output over time. 3 - nuclear requires far less grid investments, far less mining/materials 4 - If we are serious about nuclear we should investigate up to smallest detail how hitachi deployed first ABWR for such a short time/low cost and do that in series, en masse. I can bet in 20y Germany will still have far worse emissions than France
Moldoteck 6mo ago
it's strange you mention HPC but dont mention the costs of chinese nuclear... British taxpayer will pay even more pr kwh for some offshore and tidal projects

by tim333 6mo ago

leonidasrup 6mo ago

For China, nuclear power plants are still not very important, they build a lot new coal power plants. "2025 also saw China commission 78 GW of new coal power capacity, which is more than India’s net coal power additions over a ten-year period from 2015 to 2024" https://energyandcleanair.org/publication/built-to-peak-coal-power-expansion-runs-out-of-room-in-china/ https://energyandcleanair.org/publication/built-to-peak-coal...

pydry 6mo ago

The reason why people tend to get a bit cheerleadery about nuclear power is because it has some great PR and it resonates with them. It needs the PR because it is so unconscionably expensive. The public needs to be primed to consent to indirect and direct subsidies. The reason China, US, France, it is because it shares a skills base and supply chain with nukes. The reason Sweden, Poland, Iran, etc. build a few plants is because it shares a skills base and supply chain with a nuclear weapons program they might want in a hurry one day. It's always obvious for those countries who the existential threat is.

tim333 6mo ago
Yeah, apparently Hinkley may be partly to keep the nuclear weapon skills. (https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/oct/12/electricity-consumers-to-fund-nuclear-weapons-through-hinkley-point-c https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/oct/12/electricity-...)
Moldoteck 6mo ago
very little supply chain is shared with weapons, dont spread nonsense. If you want weapons it's far cheaper to have just an enrichement facility exactly for that. And nuclear is cheap. Look at lazard estimate for existing fleet. Or open swiss data. Or even german data
- pydry 6mo ago
  Nuclear costs about 5x as much as solar and wind according to Lazard. This doesnt even include catastrophe insurance (taxpayers are on the hook in the event it goes boom and there's an $800 billion fukushima style cleanup fee). I dont think it was price or global warming that got Poland suddenly interested in 2023. They dont want to build a nuke today but if their existing nuclear umbrella suddenly gets yanked away...
  - Moldoteck 6mo ago
    You talk about new projects based on Vogtle costs. You need to look at the Lazard lcoe for existing fleet which didnt have such delays. Fukushima cleanup could have costed much less. Jp govt wanted it to be expensive. "They dont want to build a nuke today but if their existing nuclear umbrella suddenly gets yanked away..." - again, it's unrelated. If you want weapons you can have some secret enrichemnt facility for that. Much cheaper. Npp without enrichment are pointless anyway for weapons due to parasitic isotopes.

xphos 6mo ago

We can both build Nuclear that is safe and also build it faster. Its a matter of political will and reasonable regulation. Nations looking on the 100 year horizon would build nuclear and they would be newer and safer nuclear as time goes on. The next generation of reactors are safer and promise to be cheaper to build but the last of the GEN4 nuclear still are safe especially when we actually pay to have nuclear regulator inspectors. The things we are willing to be cheaper on are always the inspectors but never the permitting its so backwards.

audunw 6mo ago
I don’t see why you would look at nuclear at all on a 100 year horizon. At that timescales you gotta look at the fundamentals: 1. We’ve got a free fusion reactor in the sky and collecting and storing that energy is fundamentally cheap. Especially in a long term perspective when the materials needed to store the energy will be mostly recycled and practically free. 2. We’ve got a free fission reactor under our feet. Drilling deep enough expensive now but there’s no reason it needs to be. Se Quaise for progress in that area. 3. In a 50 year timeframe we don’t have any spare capacity to add more global warming from the thermal forcing of thermal power plants. Yeah you heard me right, thermal power plants contribute directly to global warming, and the effect is surprisingly significant. The good news is the effect disappears rapidly when you shut them down, unlike greenhouse gases. And we should certainly never shut down any nuclear power plants until we’ve eliminated greenhouse gas emissions. But at the same time, while we have an insane amount of greenhouse gases lingering in the atmosphere we can’t afford adding global warming from thousands of new nuclear reactors… like some nuclear proponents would have us do. A 100 years from now, if we’ve brought greenhouse gases down again, that’s when we can start considering adding significantly more nuclear power. Though I doubt there will be any interest. Makes sense for space travel though. I’m pro nuclear despite all that. But more from an R&D perspective.
- Moldoteck 6mo ago
  1 - fusion reactor in the sky is not that easy to capture 24/7 due to nights/winter. BESS can partially alleviate the problem, not solve it. 2 - geothermal has an inconvenient property to lower output over time. 3 - nuclear requires far less grid investments, far less mining/materials 4 - If we are serious about nuclear we should investigate up to smallest detail how hitachi deployed first ABWR for such a short time/low cost and do that in series, en masse. I can bet in 20y Germany will still have far worse emissions than France

Moldoteck 6mo ago

it's strange you mention HPC but dont mention the costs of chinese nuclear... British taxpayer will pay even more pr kwh for some offshore and tidal projects