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Comment by jk700 | Hacker News Reader

In Ukraine, which lived through Chernobyl, public is mostly pro nuclear. Turns out solar and wind isn't actually competitive and nobody likes to pay rich "green energy" investors for no reason, so as long as they have no influence in the government and most mass media, it's pretty hard to convince people of the opposite - that they need to pay a lot more so that a tiny percentage of electricity could come from solar and wind [1].

[1] And even that is misleading and not in any way "greener", since solar and wind can't be used on demand it has to replace some energy, which in this case is nuclear energy, but it can replace only a small part of it, the rest will have to be replaced with something that can be generated on demand, like coal and gas.

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Is there a particular reason why solar and wind aren't competitive in Ukraine, while in general it seems like those technologies are some of the cheapest sources of energy available today?

> those technologies are some of the cheapest sources of energy available today?

No they are not. They only work well at small percentage of generation when you have enough hydropower backup (effectively, batteries): generate from solar during day, and generate from hydro at night (or use fossil fuel backup).

> solar

In California large amount of electricity is consumed by air conditioners (4%). And they work very well together: on hot days you need more electricity for air conditioners, and on hot days solar generation works better.

And you need more air conditioners during summer, and solar works better during summer.

The opposite is true in Ukraine. They don't need air conditioners because summers are not too hot, but but they need to heat buildings at winter because winters are very cold (when solar is very poor) especially at nights (when solar does not exist).

> wind

You cannot place wind turbines anywhere. You need a place with a constant high wind (that's why offsore farms work better). I guess there are no such places in Ukraine. And still you need to have a hydro or fossil fuel backup, because wind itself cannot produce electricity constantly.

> cheapest sources of energy available today

They are cheapest because they are subsidised on one hand, and on the other hand, nuclear is penalized by lawsuits and regulartions and inspections (in the US; in Ukraine the economy barely grows, they don't build much new power plants).

> They only work well at small percentage of generation when you have enough hydropower backup

What do you see as a small percentage? A country like The Netherlands is generating between 10% and 50% renewable energy without significant storage capacity (it's summer so a lot of that energy comes from solar, but in winter the yields from wind will be higher), and we are one of the worst countries in the EU when it comes to renewables. I thought the need for storage is mostly a problem if you want to reach a high percentage of generation using renewables. Anyway, energy storage also seems beneficial if you want to build a nuclear infrastructure, so it seems like a problem that has to be tackled regardless.

> They are cheapest because they are subsidised on one hand, and on the other hand, nuclear is penalized by lawsuits and regulartions and inspections

I don't think subsidies are really a problem. Weren't the nuclear power infrastructures of France and Ukraine mostly build using state subsidies? The amount of subsidies needed to build renewables is also decreasing. Some might argue subsidies aren't necessary anymore, but we still need massive infrastructure investments to create a smart grid, more interconnectors, etc. Also, nuclear energy might be regulated too much, but I'm not sure how much can be saved without hurting safety.

> A country like The Netherlands is generating between 10% and 50% renewable energy without significant storage capacity

Quoting wikipedia:

Renewable energy sources, such as biomass, wind power and solar power, produce 12% of the total electricity.

This is a small percentage.

> I thought the need for storage is mostly a problem if you want to reach a high percentage of generation using renewables.

This is correct. If we want to generate only small percentage using renewables, we can simply have excessive fossil power plants and turn them off when renewables work.

> energy storage also seems beneficial if you want to build a nuclear infrastructure

Barely. Nuclear can work at full power constantly, and can be easily slowed down and then sped up any time.

Of course if we had extremely cheap batteries we could make nuclear work full power all the time and save excessive electricity. So far we don't even have moderately expensive batteries.

> I don't think subsidies are really a problem.

It is not a problem. It partially explains why renewables are "cheap" and nuclear is "expensive".

> Weren't the nuclear power infrastructures of France and Ukraine mostly build using state subsidies?

I don't know about France. It seems to be a government monopoly, so there are very different rules when it works this way.

In Ukraine because of very sad state of economy, they seem to not build any nuclear power plants for a long time.

> Also, nuclear energy might be regulated too much, but I'm not sure how much can be saved without hurting safety.

As pointed many times in this thread, historically, including the worst nuclear disaster Chernobyl, nuclear is much safer than any other electricity generation method (including renewables). If something need to be regulated for safety, it is anything except nuclear.

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