Comment by NotPaidToPost | Hacker News Reader

Comment by NotPaidToPost | Hacker News Reader

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There are/were several new nuclear power stations planned.

The issue is that government policy is that they should be funded by the private sector (and that the UK is no longer able to build a nuclear power station by itself).

No-one in the private sector can do that, as we've seen.

For Hinkley C, EDF could not (and the French government did not want to finance). For another power station Toshiba recently gave up and took a serious financial hit because it was just too much [0].

The only ones willing to throw money at this to build those nuclear plants are the Chinese, which EDF already called in to partly finance Hinkley C, but then everyone goes ballistic about "handing over our electricity supply to the Chinese Communist Party".

Considering that the UK developed and built the first civilian nuclear plant this is (yet another) monumental lack of strategic vision and huge waste.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/nov/08/toshiba-...

Even if you have the money and are not concerned about the time to break even, nuclear seems like a terrible investment.

Let's ignore subsidies for a moment. Also lets assume I can have the plant operational in 10 years (very optimistic unless I'm about to be ready to start construction).

Onshore wind is already much cheaper than than nuclear. The wind turbines being built when I start construction will reach their end of life, be replaced by even more profitable wind turbines that will themselves reach end of life before I will start thinking about decommissioning my nuclear plant. So I'm not just competing about the current generation that already is significantly cheaper, I'm also competing against another few decades of cost reductions for wind.

So how long until wind plus storage is cheaper than my nuclear plant? Will it be in 10 years with economies of scale from EV battery demand, or 30 years until something more ambitious like storing molten salts or molten aluminium becomes serious competition? Or am I willing to bet it takes 50 years, giving my reactor 40 years of profitable operation?

It seems like a terrible bet to make. I would need a lot of subsidies to make it look like a good idea.

> Onshore wind is already much cheaper than than nuclear.

Except that it cannot possibly produce enough to replace nuclear or meet demand.

And nuclear is not more expensive than _offshore_ wind, which will also struggle to produce enough.

As discussed in this thread, people keep ignoring that raw cost per kWh is just one of the parameters. Another key parameter is that production must be able to meet demand.

At the moment it is simply not possible to operate only on wind and solar. This becomes is more true when you account for the boom in electricity needs that is coming because electric cars.

In the UK offshore wind seems only 10% more expensive than nuclear right now [1]. I think it's fair to assume that over the majority of the operating time of a nuclear plant that starts construction today offshore wind will be cheaper than that nuclear plant.

As a private plant operator that isn't also the grid operator I don't really care though about meeting demand. I care about a slightly different metric: can I sell my electricity at a higher price than it takes me to produce it? Of course if nobody can meet demand, prices tend towards infinity and I'm happy. Maybe that happens often enough that I can still make a profit despite all the times I make a loss when wind is too strong and electricity prices are too low. Growing demand is a good point that might help.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source#...

I think this just goes to show how ridiculously expensive Nuclear is to build in the first place, even before the ongoing costs, waste disposal, decommissioning, etc.

The deal took over a decade and not only includes upfront costs but also British bill payers giving a "generous" subsidy to French energy for 35 years.

Providing 7% of the UK's energy needs is far from nothing but it comes at a very high cost. Bringing all the costs in-house might lessen the bill in the long run (if the UK were to be building a lot) but would require a lot of investment in relearning how to build the plants.

Nuclear is not more expensive that, say, offshore wind. [0]

> The deal took over a decade and not only includes upfront costs but also British bill payers giving a "generous" subsidy to French energy for 35 years.

Not so. The deal is only to guarantee the price of electricity sold, which had to be done to remove financial uncertainty over decades in order for EDF/Chinese partner to agree to finance it.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source#...

Except the strike price used is far above the current market rate, with no real indication that it would reach that level naturally. Describing it as a generous subsidy might not be strictly accurate, but isn't far from the truth.

If the strike price used were the current market rate (or maybe a bit lower), that would seem reasonable to allow a company to have the required long term security knowing the bottom won't fall out from under them, but an implicit subsidy does not seem like a good strategy.

As said, it was about removing risk and ensuring a return that made the investment worthwhile.

That's just a direct consequence of the government policy of not financing the construction and operation with public money.

The alternative was to directly spend public money, which makes the complaint about this guaranteed price being a public subsidy rather moot.

... or to accept that the plans were not economically viable as they stand. I'm an economist not a nuclear physicist, but the signal the market is sending is that these plans are not what is needed. Find a way to make the electricity cheaper, or accept the demand isn't there.

> I think this just goes to show how ridiculously expensive Nuclear is to build in the first place, even before the ongoing costs, waste disposal, decommissioning, etc.

All proponents of renewables bringing the topic of nuclear price fail to make the point that they are comparing apples and oranges. One is reliable, the other is not. To make a fair comparison, you have to include either

- the price of added storage, for which the latest estimates I've seen show would put the price at 5-30x the original price per kWh, including manufacturing, power losses, renewal, etc.

or

- the price of making the electricity less reliable for the industry. It's possible, and seriously considered in 100% renewables scenarios, to switch the electricity consumption for industries at specific times (e.g. the factories run at peak solar or peak wind only). And give incentives for individuals (variable kWh price) to try to pilot their consumption around the production. Problem: this might ruin the competitivity of the industry. The costs associated are much harder to estimate.

TL;DR even if it comes at a very high costs, nuclear would still be cheaper than renewables + adequate storage.

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