5 ms·

> For example, in Denmark[1] a solar-dominated grid would cost around 565 EUR/MWh. A nuclear-dominated grid would cost around 141 EUR/MWh. That's not what it s

> For example, in Denmark[1] a solar-dominated grid would cost around 565 EUR/MWh. A nuclear-dominated grid would cost around 141 EUR/MWh. That's not what it says. It says that would be the cost assuming the current grid and power came from only solar or only nuclear. The majority of the cost then is for overprovisioning and storage, especially to handle the lack of sun in the winter. The actual low cost power comes from mixes of renewables, that they note nuclear can't compete with (especially in their hypothetical future energy system with things like scheduled EV charging). They give an example of offshore wind (66%), solar (8%), CCGT (26%) (primarily natural gas) for 66 EUR/MWh, or, restricting to biomass for the gas plant: offshore wind (84%), solar (13%), CCGT (3%) at 99 EUR/MWh. (it's also worth noting that this is for Denmark. Something like 98% of Canadians live south of Denmark's southernmost line of latitude).

looofooo0 4mo ago
There is not enough wind capacity in most countries
red75prime 4mo ago
I chose those numbers to emphasize the system cost. Too many people go "Solar panels are cheap! Why don't we have them everywhere?" That's why.
- brainwad 4mo ago
  Even then, the costs came down 10x in a decade, so it seems foolish to commit to nuclear which has no prospects of getting cheaper.
  - somenameforme 4mo ago
    It will likely become significantly more expensive at scale. At current nuclear usage we use about 60,000 tons of uranium year powering nuclear reactors. [1] Global reserves are around 6 million tons, with estimates putting potential reserves around double that. [2] So that's enough for about 2 centuries of usage at current levels. Bump up nuclear by 10x and we're at 20 years until we're out, assuming all those potential reserves can be found. The claims of endless nuclear energy rely on salt-water extraction which is like 3 parts per billion and not at all economical, or the development of breeder reactors which as of yet also remain prohibitively expensive, significantly more dangerous/finnicky owing to using liquid sodium as a coolant, and offer much easier weaponization. Back in the 70s Exxon predicted the impacts of widespread CO2 output, but hand-waved it away. I feel people are doing the exact same thing with nuclear, and probably under the exact same motivation. They are biased towards nuclear and want it to work, and so are either ignoring the issues or assuming/hoping for a future technological breakthrough to resolve them, but as of yet that breakthrough appears nowhere in sight. [1] - http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2026/ph241/flanagan2/ http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2026/ph241/flanagan2/ [2] - https://www.visualcapitalist.com/charted-global-uranium-reserves-by-country/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/charted-global-uranium-rese...
    - peterfirefly 4mo ago
      Remember when the world ran completely out of copper?
      - leonidasrup 4mo ago
        The world will not run completely out of copper, be we can expect much higher prices. "Copper and lithium are major exceptions where expected mined supply from announced projects falls short of projected demand in 2035, with implied deficits of 30% for copper and 40% for lithium" https://www.iea.org/reports/global-critical-minerals-outlook-2025/overview-of-outlook-for-key-minerals https://www.iea.org/reports/global-critical-minerals-outlook...
        peterfirefly 4mo ago
        Copper prices may be higher in 2035 but I'll be astonished if lithium prices are. I expect lithium to be much cheaper by then. Note that we kept extracting copper long after people said we would run out. We even increased production AND lowered prices.
      - myrmidon 4mo ago
        First: I completely agree that extrapolating current ressource use towards a "exhaustion date" is naive, and historically things never worked out that way. But copper price is still up by >500% since the early 2000s.
        somenameforme 4mo ago
        If it wasn't clear in my post, the entire point is not that we'd run out, but that it'd become economically unviable. As the supply starts to run out and/or we turn to more expensive sources, prices go up - sharply. We'll never really run out of anything - it will just become so expensive that it's no longer viable for widespread usage. Nuclear is quite sensitive to this issue because the primary, and arguably sole, argument for it is that it's cheap.
leonidasrup 4mo ago
Biomass in Demark is in large part not green technology. Could be even worse then fossil gas. "The utmost amount (46%) of wood pellets comes from the Baltic countries (Latvia and Estonia) and 30% from the USA, Canada and Russia.6 Estonia and Latvia have steadily been the primary exporters of biomass to Denmark, mainly in the form of wood pellets and wood chips." https://noah.dk/Biomass-consumption-in-Denmark https://noah.dk/Biomass-consumption-in-Denmark
- lukan 4mo ago
  Even if the wood is imported, it still counts as green, as it regrowing and does not add CO2 that was in the ground before. (So it depends how much CO2 the ships used to transport it there)
  - leonidasrup 4mo ago
    1. We can comfortable say that the CO2 from burned wood stays in the atmosphere for at-least 100 years (time necessary for the next tree to grow), with all the associated effects. 2. I could not imagine scaling biomass to country like India or China to cover the same share in electricity production mix as in Dermark (Denmark currently produces 20% of electricity from Bioenergy). https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/denmark https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/denmark
    - lukan 4mo ago
      1. No, if you take wood out of the forest and let it regrow, it is roughly +-0 CO2 balance (It is not just the new trees binding CO2, taking advantage of the new sunlight, all the other plants and existing trees start to bind CO2 the moment they can) 2. No, it is not and I doubt anyone claimed that this is possible.
      - leonidasrup 4mo ago
        "Does wood bioenergy help or harm the climate?" by John Sterman. John Sterman is the Jay W. Forrester professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management "The EU, UK, US, and other nations consider wood to be a carbon neutral fuel, ignoring the carbon dioxide emitted from wood combustion in their greenhouse gas accounting. Many countries subsidize wood energy – often by burning wood pellets in place of coal for electric power – to meet their renewable energy targets. But can wood bioenergy help cut greenhouse emissions in time to limit the worst damage from climate change? The argument in favor seems obvious: wood, a renewable resource, must be better than burning fossil fuels. But wood emits more carbon dioxide per kilowatt-hour than coal – and far more than other fossil fuels. Therefore, the first impact of wood bioenergy is to increase the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, worsening climate change. Forest regrowth might eventually remove that extra carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, but regrowth is uncertain and takes time – decades to a century or more, depending on forest composition and climatic zone – time we do not have to cut emissions enough to avoid the worst harms from climate change. More effective ways to cut greenhouse gas emissions are already available and affordable now, allowing forests to continue to serve as carbon sinks and moderate climate change." https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00963402.2022.2062933 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00963402.2022.2...
rob74 4mo ago
> Something like 98% of Canadians live south of Denmark's southernmost line of latitude ...while also having a colder climate than the Danish. At least while the Gulf Stream is still working.
TheOtherHobbes 4mo ago
Battery and storage tech is improving and innovating all the time. It also has a fast build cycle. Commissioning reactors that won't come online for 10-15 years makes no sense at all, economically and practically.
- Moldoteck 4mo ago
  It makes sense for Canada. Unless you love using gas for firming of course
- xethos 4mo ago
  > Commissioning reactors that won't come online for 10-15 years makes no sense at all, economically and practically. Because we won't need base load in 15 years? Or because you're arguing that we'll have so many batteries, and they'll be so cheap, and they'll be so over-provisioned regarding summer/winter variance, that we won't be able to sell excess nuclear power to the states? Personally, I wouldn't make either bet, no matter what odds you give me

looofooo0 4mo ago

There is not enough wind capacity in most countries

red75prime 4mo ago

I chose those numbers to emphasize the system cost. Too many people go "Solar panels are cheap! Why don't we have them everywhere?" That's why.

brainwad 4mo ago
Even then, the costs came down 10x in a decade, so it seems foolish to commit to nuclear which has no prospects of getting cheaper.
- somenameforme 4mo ago
  It will likely become significantly more expensive at scale. At current nuclear usage we use about 60,000 tons of uranium year powering nuclear reactors. [1] Global reserves are around 6 million tons, with estimates putting potential reserves around double that. [2] So that's enough for about 2 centuries of usage at current levels. Bump up nuclear by 10x and we're at 20 years until we're out, assuming all those potential reserves can be found. The claims of endless nuclear energy rely on salt-water extraction which is like 3 parts per billion and not at all economical, or the development of breeder reactors which as of yet also remain prohibitively expensive, significantly more dangerous/finnicky owing to using liquid sodium as a coolant, and offer much easier weaponization. Back in the 70s Exxon predicted the impacts of widespread CO2 output, but hand-waved it away. I feel people are doing the exact same thing with nuclear, and probably under the exact same motivation. They are biased towards nuclear and want it to work, and so are either ignoring the issues or assuming/hoping for a future technological breakthrough to resolve them, but as of yet that breakthrough appears nowhere in sight. [1] - http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2026/ph241/flanagan2/ http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2026/ph241/flanagan2/ [2] - https://www.visualcapitalist.com/charted-global-uranium-reserves-by-country/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/charted-global-uranium-rese...
  - peterfirefly 4mo ago
    Remember when the world ran completely out of copper?
    - leonidasrup 4mo ago
      The world will not run completely out of copper, be we can expect much higher prices. "Copper and lithium are major exceptions where expected mined supply from announced projects falls short of projected demand in 2035, with implied deficits of 30% for copper and 40% for lithium" https://www.iea.org/reports/global-critical-minerals-outlook-2025/overview-of-outlook-for-key-minerals https://www.iea.org/reports/global-critical-minerals-outlook...
      - peterfirefly 4mo ago
        Copper prices may be higher in 2035 but I'll be astonished if lithium prices are. I expect lithium to be much cheaper by then. Note that we kept extracting copper long after people said we would run out. We even increased production AND lowered prices.
    - myrmidon 4mo ago
      First: I completely agree that extrapolating current ressource use towards a "exhaustion date" is naive, and historically things never worked out that way. But copper price is still up by >500% since the early 2000s.
      - somenameforme 4mo ago
        If it wasn't clear in my post, the entire point is not that we'd run out, but that it'd become economically unviable. As the supply starts to run out and/or we turn to more expensive sources, prices go up - sharply. We'll never really run out of anything - it will just become so expensive that it's no longer viable for widespread usage. Nuclear is quite sensitive to this issue because the primary, and arguably sole, argument for it is that it's cheap.

leonidasrup 4mo ago

Biomass in Demark is in large part not green technology. Could be even worse then fossil gas. "The utmost amount (46%) of wood pellets comes from the Baltic countries (Latvia and Estonia) and 30% from the USA, Canada and Russia.6 Estonia and Latvia have steadily been the primary exporters of biomass to Denmark, mainly in the form of wood pellets and wood chips." https://noah.dk/Biomass-consumption-in-Denmark https://noah.dk/Biomass-consumption-in-Denmark

lukan 4mo ago
Even if the wood is imported, it still counts as green, as it regrowing and does not add CO2 that was in the ground before. (So it depends how much CO2 the ships used to transport it there)
- leonidasrup 4mo ago
  1. We can comfortable say that the CO2 from burned wood stays in the atmosphere for at-least 100 years (time necessary for the next tree to grow), with all the associated effects. 2. I could not imagine scaling biomass to country like India or China to cover the same share in electricity production mix as in Dermark (Denmark currently produces 20% of electricity from Bioenergy). https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/denmark https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/denmark
  - lukan 4mo ago
    1. No, if you take wood out of the forest and let it regrow, it is roughly +-0 CO2 balance (It is not just the new trees binding CO2, taking advantage of the new sunlight, all the other plants and existing trees start to bind CO2 the moment they can) 2. No, it is not and I doubt anyone claimed that this is possible.
    - leonidasrup 4mo ago
      "Does wood bioenergy help or harm the climate?" by John Sterman. John Sterman is the Jay W. Forrester professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management "The EU, UK, US, and other nations consider wood to be a carbon neutral fuel, ignoring the carbon dioxide emitted from wood combustion in their greenhouse gas accounting. Many countries subsidize wood energy – often by burning wood pellets in place of coal for electric power – to meet their renewable energy targets. But can wood bioenergy help cut greenhouse emissions in time to limit the worst damage from climate change? The argument in favor seems obvious: wood, a renewable resource, must be better than burning fossil fuels. But wood emits more carbon dioxide per kilowatt-hour than coal – and far more than other fossil fuels. Therefore, the first impact of wood bioenergy is to increase the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, worsening climate change. Forest regrowth might eventually remove that extra carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, but regrowth is uncertain and takes time – decades to a century or more, depending on forest composition and climatic zone – time we do not have to cut emissions enough to avoid the worst harms from climate change. More effective ways to cut greenhouse gas emissions are already available and affordable now, allowing forests to continue to serve as carbon sinks and moderate climate change." https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00963402.2022.2062933 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00963402.2022.2...

rob74 4mo ago

> Something like 98% of Canadians live south of Denmark's southernmost line of latitude ...while also having a colder climate than the Danish. At least while the Gulf Stream is still working.

TheOtherHobbes 4mo ago

Battery and storage tech is improving and innovating all the time. It also has a fast build cycle. Commissioning reactors that won't come online for 10-15 years makes no sense at all, economically and practically.

Moldoteck 4mo ago
It makes sense for Canada. Unless you love using gas for firming of course
xethos 4mo ago
> Commissioning reactors that won't come online for 10-15 years makes no sense at all, economically and practically. Because we won't need base load in 15 years? Or because you're arguing that we'll have so many batteries, and they'll be so cheap, and they'll be so over-provisioned regarding summer/winter variance, that we won't be able to sell excess nuclear power to the states? Personally, I wouldn't make either bet, no matter what odds you give me