Hacker News Reader

Comment by _ph_ | Hacker News Reader

Nuclear certainly keeps the CO2 emissions down. France has a pretty low CO2 footprint based on 80+% nuclear electric power. However, nuclear is not only controversial, but going forward, expensive. For new installations, wind and solar installations are cost competitive if not even cheaper, with little environmental or economic risks attached.

View on HN

> For new installations, wind and solar installations are cost competitive if not even cheaper, with little environmental or economic risks attached.

Citation needed.

Exactly. If subsidies are removed from the equation, solar in particular is quite a bit more expensive. Wind and solar also lack the 24/7 reliability of nuclear.

No, solar is about 100€/MWh without subsidies. Indeed, the one big problem remaining with wind and solar is constant supply over the day. But the larger the connected grids are, the better this balances out. While a nuclear power plant delivers a constant output 24/7 (this is also not ideal as we are lacking consumption in the late evening and night, thats why Belgium put lights onto their highways), nuclear power plants regularly get pulled of the grid entirely, if there is a technical problem. A new one should of course have less downtimes than an older one, but one needs to plan in a certain amount of replacement capacity.

The wikipedia article about Hinkley talks about the costs and guaranteed prices: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_C_nuclear_power_... I am pretty sure, that does not even include the long term cost for the nuclear waste. The roughly 100€/MWh brings it into line with offshore wind, which is about twice as expensive as onshore wind, but more steady and reliable. Solar is roughly in the same ballpark too in middle Europe, in Dubai a new solar plant is being built which promises to be less than $30/MWh.

Hinkley point is an aberration. its doesn't make any buisness or strategic sense for the UK.

Its double the cost of grid power, in perpetuity, in exchange for some vague handwaving that the Chinese might try out some of their experimental reactors on british soil. Or perhaps a "free trade deal" which is equally moronic for UK manufacturing.

Is there any good cost estimate, what the final electricity price produced by the Olkiluoto reactor is going to be, with its construction cost ballooning from 3 to 8 billion pounds?

The investment firm Lazard has a nice report[1] on comparing U.S. energy costs by source. Here's the costs in the U.S. (without counting subsidies):

    * Wind:          $  32/MWh
    * Solar:         $  43/MWh
    * Natural Gas:   $  52/MWh
    * Coal:          $  65/MWh
    * Geothermal:    $  82/MWh
    * Biomass:       $  82/MWh
    * Nuclear:       $  97/MWh
    * Solar+Storage: $ 119/MWh
    * Diesel:        $ 212/MWh

So wind and solar are currently the cheapest, but you can only get to about 50% penetration with those without storage[2]. The rest has to be "dispatchable".

[1]: https://www.lazard.com/media/2390/lazards-levelized-cost-of-...

[2]: https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~vsmith/docs/renewables_sgc...

There is a massive "but" at the end of that.

For example: most grids in the western world rely on constant/predictable supplies of power.

Nuclear/coal/gas/hydro provide a constant level of electricity with a clear spinup/spindown time.

That being said, in hot countries solar is a good option, as when its hot, its generally sunny which means the aircon demand can be serviced well.

But, thats assuming that the sun and the wind are constant.

They are not, so you have to store that energy somehow. Grid scale batteries are just not really feasible yet, unless you happen to live in wales[1] or scotland[2].

However they now are only really there to overcome British tea breaks(thats a bit unfair). But they are the product of a nationalised energy infrastructure that thought about doing things properly. (now its just be massive diesel gennies to deal with the comedically narrow line between blackout and working grid)

So actually the problem of generating electricity from natural sources is pretty much solved (barring costs) The biggest barrier is storing electricty for a stable grid.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinorwig_Power_Station [2]http://www.scottishpower.com/pages/cruachan_power_station.as...

You made that up, right? The current project is that solar will be cheaper than nuclear by 2025.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/aug/11/solar-an...

I said cost competitive, not that they are cheaper by the last cent today. Onshore wind is cheaper, solar currently in the same ballpark. But the cost of Hinkley is going to raise during its life time, which solar keeps getting cheaper. And is the long time storage cost of the waste and the dismantling of the plant already priced into the cost of Hinkley?

You haven't provide a citation in either case.

I have in other subtrees of the discussion. Hinkley C is guaranteed about 100 €/MWh with raising fees according to inflation. This is roughly the same cost as offshore wind, onshore wind in Germany is around 60€/MWh, solar 100-120€ MWh, there is a solar project in Dubai which promises to be better than 30€/MWh.

Here are some numbers given (in $, not €): https://www.neueenergie.net/wirtschaft/markt/wind-schlaegt-k...

Little environmental risks attached?

6000 birds are killed each year at one solar facility:

http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-solar-bird-dea...

Nuclear can be done correctly as France has proven. How many major nuclear disasters have their been? Japan is the most recent, but are nuclear disasters really a major threat compared to covering large swatches of land with solar panels or worse, windmills?

I pose that as an honest question: what's the cost benefit of nuclear vs. highly inefficient solar or wind?

What's the environmental cost of producing massive batteries to store solar or wind energy?

There are huge unintended consequences that ought to be explored.

I'm afraid the birds are just going to have to evolve their way out of this one.

How many birds are killed by house cats and cars every year? Of course one needs to keep investigating how to make windmills more bird-friendly. The solar plant which killed birds is a solarthermal one which concentrates the sunlight via mirrors. Photovoltaic plants do not kill birds. France has a good history of running their plants, but they do get older. So the risk is constantly raising. I am living in Bavaria, Germany. Here is is still not considered entirely safe to eat mushrooms and wild boar from the forests, as they still carry contamination from the Chernobyl incident, and are expected to do so for the next decades. And Chernobyl is about 1000 km away from here.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com