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Comment by hacker42 | Hacker News Reader

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

Citation needed.

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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...

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?

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...

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