4 ms·

you'll be so happy about being price competitive when the conditions are bad for like a week and the country just doesn't run (or rely on other countries price

you'll be so happy about being price competitive when the conditions are bad for like a week and the country just doesn't run (or rely on other countries price gouging you for what your country needs to exist.) Opposing nuclear & renewables is stupid. You need both. You need as many power sources as you can, as quick as you can while the resources are available. Energy is not something you leave up to the invisible hand of the market hoping that price competitiveness means that it works well. Lives are at play.

Tepix 4mo ago
No. Nuclear is neither price competitive, nor is it available quick enough. Go fully renewable. Add batteries, like Google is doing. Just one example: https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2026/02/24/google-to-deploy-worlds-largest-iron-air-battery-for-minnesota-data-center/ https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2026/02/24/google-to-deploy-worl...
bryanlarsen 4mo ago
> You need both Why do you need both? It's possible to get 99.99% reliability with wind & solar & batteries & weather modelling. There are multiple ways to handle a week long dankelflaute without nuclear: overbuilding, continental scale distribution, lots of batteries, etc. All are cheaper than nuclear. It's also virtually impossible to get more than 99.99% reliability out of any grid, even a nuclear dominated one. Local distribution has many single points of failure.
- zchrykng 4mo ago
  How much do those batteries cost and can they supply power for multiple days or a season if your renewable sources aren't providing like normal? Not to mention the environmental damage from producing and disposing of batteries.
  - deleted 4mo ago
    [deleted]
  - tcfhgj 4mo ago
    I agree, there are better options for mass scale long term energy storage than batteries, e.g. (green) hydrogen, methane
    - bryanlarsen 4mo ago
      Pumped hydro is currently the cheapest long term energy storage by a significant amount.
      - tcfhgj 4mo ago
        not so cheap anymore when you want to add lot's of storage capacity
        bryanlarsen 4mo ago
        That's exactly when pumped hydro shines. Increasing the storage reservoir capacity is cheap. It's the turbines and infrastructure that's expensive, but that doesn't change if you're only increasing the capacity.
        tcfhgj 4mo ago
        All the cheap storage reservoir capacity is already used - from where are you going to get more?
        bryanlarsen 4mo ago
        All the cheap storage capacity with natural flow have been taken. Pumped hydro doesn't need natural flow, because it uses pumps. All it needs is a height differential. Here's 22,000 in Australia alone. There are millions worldwide. https://arena.gov.au/knowledge-bank/anu-stores-an-atlas-of-pumped-hydro-energy-storage-the-complete-atlas/ https://arena.gov.au/knowledge-bank/anu-stores-an-atlas-of-p...
        tcfhgj 4mo ago
- MakersF 4mo ago
  The marginal cost of batteries grows more than linearly. When batteries are covering 0% of the need, the marginally added battery cycles many times, so the cost is spread over many kwh produced. When you add batteries to go from 99.98 to 99.99, the batteries cycle only for that 0.01, so the same cost to build them is spread over a much fewer kwh, making each kwh produced a lot more expensive. Seasonal storage is madness: you charge once and discharge once per year. Pay 100$/kwh to install it, discharge 20 times (20 years, a 5% payback time, which is a bad investment), and you're paying those kwh a 5$/kwh premium on top of the cost of buying the discharged power. If the battery is instead installed to shift the production from 12.00 to 18.00, it cycles 365 times a year, so in 20 years the premium is 0.01$/kwh. So nucleare doesn't compete with the first 40% of penetration of renewables and the first 30% of battery, it competes with the last 10%, which is still needed to get to 0.
  - bryanlarsen 4mo ago
    Per Ember Energy reports, a cost optimal new build grid is between 90% - 97% solar/wind/battery, and between 3% to 10% gas peaker depending on how much sun/wind your locale gets. But you can't replace the gas peaker with 3% or 10% nuclear because in essence that gas peaker is supplying 100% of the power 3% to 10% of the time. So you'd have to build nuclear plants that can supply 100% of the power. But once you have that you might as well use nuclear power 100% of the time because the rest is irrelevant. But that's about as far from cost-optimal as you can get. As you mentioned, using batteries for seasonal storage is madness. So to get to 100% carbon free you have at least 2 other options: 1. use a different form of seasonal storage. China is experimenting with this. In 2026 they will double the world's pumped hydro storage capacity. But doubling isn't a lot -- the world doesn't have much pumped hydro. But it does mean they might start doing it at China scale in a few years. 2. Overbuild to avoid the need for seasonal storage. Solar works on cloudy days and in the winter. It just doesn't work very well. So you need a lot of it. Which is expensive, but still a heck of a lot cheaper than batteries for seasonal storage. In reality, most places will probably say that 95% or 99% carbon reduction is good enough and keep their backup natural gas generators around for the occasional dankelflaute.
    - 4mo ago
- well_ackshually 4mo ago
  "Why do you need both, it's possible with technologies we don't have at scales we don't control with predictions weeks ahead on a rapidly changing and unpredictable weather model" Yeah, uh, I'm going to go with the "building a nuclear plant is the safest solution" answer, thanks. Technosolutionism is fun up to a certain point. >It's possible to get 99.99% reliability [...] It's also virtually impossible to get more than 99.99% reliability out of any grid Notwithstanding the fact that lol you're happily saying that you're perfectly fine you get 1 hour of complete downtime every year, which fucks over many industries and services, you're ignoring multiple facts: 1/ to ensure safety, that means rolling brownouts when you're at 95% capacity, great solution, 2/ 99.99% works exactly like it does in software: you don't get tiny seconds long drops, you get gigantic, energy grid collapsing catastrophic failures, that are impossible to restart, grid sync because every renewable island is isolated. >It's also virtually impossible to get more than 99.99% reliability What kind of incompetent country are you living in? I have had exactly ZERO minutes of power outages for the past 5 years. I'll be generous and include the 30 minutes of downtime for maintenance. The country wide average blackout time is 2m30s, .43 power cuts / person / year. That's 99.996% stability country wide, and that's heavily weighted down by the places that get fucked by a tree collapsing on a transformer station
- deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]

Tepix 4mo ago

No. Nuclear is neither price competitive, nor is it available quick enough. Go fully renewable. Add batteries, like Google is doing. Just one example: https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2026/02/24/google-to-deploy-worlds-largest-iron-air-battery-for-minnesota-data-center/ https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2026/02/24/google-to-deploy-worl...

bryanlarsen 4mo ago

> You need both Why do you need both? It's possible to get 99.99% reliability with wind & solar & batteries & weather modelling. There are multiple ways to handle a week long dankelflaute without nuclear: overbuilding, continental scale distribution, lots of batteries, etc. All are cheaper than nuclear. It's also virtually impossible to get more than 99.99% reliability out of any grid, even a nuclear dominated one. Local distribution has many single points of failure.

zchrykng 4mo ago
How much do those batteries cost and can they supply power for multiple days or a season if your renewable sources aren't providing like normal? Not to mention the environmental damage from producing and disposing of batteries.
- deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
- tcfhgj 4mo ago
  I agree, there are better options for mass scale long term energy storage than batteries, e.g. (green) hydrogen, methane
  - bryanlarsen 4mo ago
    Pumped hydro is currently the cheapest long term energy storage by a significant amount.
    - tcfhgj 4mo ago
      not so cheap anymore when you want to add lot's of storage capacity
      - bryanlarsen 4mo ago
        That's exactly when pumped hydro shines. Increasing the storage reservoir capacity is cheap. It's the turbines and infrastructure that's expensive, but that doesn't change if you're only increasing the capacity.
        tcfhgj 4mo ago
        All the cheap storage reservoir capacity is already used - from where are you going to get more?
        bryanlarsen 4mo ago
        All the cheap storage capacity with natural flow have been taken. Pumped hydro doesn't need natural flow, because it uses pumps. All it needs is a height differential. Here's 22,000 in Australia alone. There are millions worldwide. https://arena.gov.au/knowledge-bank/anu-stores-an-atlas-of-pumped-hydro-energy-storage-the-complete-atlas/ https://arena.gov.au/knowledge-bank/anu-stores-an-atlas-of-p...
        tcfhgj 4mo ago
MakersF 4mo ago
The marginal cost of batteries grows more than linearly. When batteries are covering 0% of the need, the marginally added battery cycles many times, so the cost is spread over many kwh produced. When you add batteries to go from 99.98 to 99.99, the batteries cycle only for that 0.01, so the same cost to build them is spread over a much fewer kwh, making each kwh produced a lot more expensive. Seasonal storage is madness: you charge once and discharge once per year. Pay 100$/kwh to install it, discharge 20 times (20 years, a 5% payback time, which is a bad investment), and you're paying those kwh a 5$/kwh premium on top of the cost of buying the discharged power. If the battery is instead installed to shift the production from 12.00 to 18.00, it cycles 365 times a year, so in 20 years the premium is 0.01$/kwh. So nucleare doesn't compete with the first 40% of penetration of renewables and the first 30% of battery, it competes with the last 10%, which is still needed to get to 0.
- bryanlarsen 4mo ago
  Per Ember Energy reports, a cost optimal new build grid is between 90% - 97% solar/wind/battery, and between 3% to 10% gas peaker depending on how much sun/wind your locale gets. But you can't replace the gas peaker with 3% or 10% nuclear because in essence that gas peaker is supplying 100% of the power 3% to 10% of the time. So you'd have to build nuclear plants that can supply 100% of the power. But once you have that you might as well use nuclear power 100% of the time because the rest is irrelevant. But that's about as far from cost-optimal as you can get. As you mentioned, using batteries for seasonal storage is madness. So to get to 100% carbon free you have at least 2 other options: 1. use a different form of seasonal storage. China is experimenting with this. In 2026 they will double the world's pumped hydro storage capacity. But doubling isn't a lot -- the world doesn't have much pumped hydro. But it does mean they might start doing it at China scale in a few years. 2. Overbuild to avoid the need for seasonal storage. Solar works on cloudy days and in the winter. It just doesn't work very well. So you need a lot of it. Which is expensive, but still a heck of a lot cheaper than batteries for seasonal storage. In reality, most places will probably say that 95% or 99% carbon reduction is good enough and keep their backup natural gas generators around for the occasional dankelflaute.
  - 4mo ago
well_ackshually 4mo ago
"Why do you need both, it's possible with technologies we don't have at scales we don't control with predictions weeks ahead on a rapidly changing and unpredictable weather model" Yeah, uh, I'm going to go with the "building a nuclear plant is the safest solution" answer, thanks. Technosolutionism is fun up to a certain point. >It's possible to get 99.99% reliability [...] It's also virtually impossible to get more than 99.99% reliability out of any grid Notwithstanding the fact that lol you're happily saying that you're perfectly fine you get 1 hour of complete downtime every year, which fucks over many industries and services, you're ignoring multiple facts: 1/ to ensure safety, that means rolling brownouts when you're at 95% capacity, great solution, 2/ 99.99% works exactly like it does in software: you don't get tiny seconds long drops, you get gigantic, energy grid collapsing catastrophic failures, that are impossible to restart, grid sync because every renewable island is isolated. >It's also virtually impossible to get more than 99.99% reliability What kind of incompetent country are you living in? I have had exactly ZERO minutes of power outages for the past 5 years. I'll be generous and include the 30 minutes of downtime for maintenance. The country wide average blackout time is 2m30s, .43 power cuts / person / year. That's 99.996% stability country wide, and that's heavily weighted down by the places that get fucked by a tree collapsing on a transformer station
deleted 4mo ago
[deleted]