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Comment by socialdemocrat | Hacker News Reader

I am skeptical to current nuclear power, would have liked Molten Salt Reactors instead. However I see leaders having to do something. Environmentalists are blocking construction of more wind power, and crisis with Russia makes gas less accessible. France has a relatively good track record on nuclear power. They may pull this off. 2035 is a really long time to wait for new power to the grid though.

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>Environmentalists are blocking construction of more wind power

Environmentalists really are their own worst enemies. When I was in high school near San Diego about 15 years ago, there was a huge amount of opposition to a solar power project. From environmentalists. There was a solar power plant out in Imperial County and the environmentalists were protesting the high voltage lines that would bring the power into San Diego. Something about them going through an area full of endangered tortoises or something like that if I recall correctly.

Isn't environmentalists' argument that we should reduce our power consumption, rather than destroying the environment to keep providing so much power? That's not as crazy a position as you make it out to be is it?

It's an absolutely crazy proposition because there are very few people who would choose to reduce their quality of life. It's far easier to switch to net-zero energy sources than it is to completely redefine society.

Some people think it's worth redefining society to protect the environment. I wouldn't agree with that absolutely either, but it's a logical and defensible position. It's not incoherent.

The problem is there position is completely irrational when you take the amount of damage down to standards of living to the negligible environmental damage done from PV panels. It's almost like the goal is to maximize human misery not minimize environmental damage.

Wholly impractical solutions are not defensible.

"The position is coherent" is a devastatingly low bar for the table stakes or redefining society that radically.

I also don't think it's particularly coherent. Reversing economic development in many places might actually push populations back into less sustainable modes of managing/interacting with their local environments.

Or dying.

It doesn't seem particularly coherent to me for a few reasons. To draw a hard line between human activity/habitat and nature seems artificial. A human settlement is not so different from a beaver dam of ant colony in many ways. The idea especially in the US that there is some pre-colonial unspoiled nature that we could preserve or return to seems historically ignorant. Native Americans were managing the land with fire in much of North America for at least 15k years and the whole place was a giant game park with archipelagos of agriculture and settlements. Early settlers remarked that upon arrival they could ride a horse through New England forests at a full gallop, which wouldn't be possible in a primeval/unmanaged forest. So redefining society away form managing nature would be a radical departure and it unclear what the end goal would even be. There is nothing to roll the clock back to really anywhere in the world, and even if you "re-wild" a lot of the continent it's not clear what you would get, it certainly wouldn't resemble the Americas of 1491 ecologically.

Mostly these folks seem like neo-malthusians who just hate people and civilization.

I'm all for increasing bio-diversity, pulling carbon out of the air, and cleaning up waste but I don't think any of that requires us to use drastically less energy. If anything we should aim to make energy so clean and cheap that those other things become cheap and easy.

> The idea especially in the US that there is some pre-colonial unspoiled nature that we could preserve or return to seems historically ignorant.

Who are you replying to here? Who's argued this?

The point I'm making is that there's a certain type of activist who believes these kinds o things, and they're arguing for things like reduction of per-capita energy use to reduce society's impact on the land based on the idea that there was ever really land here that wasn't actively managed by people. (At least since the glaciers receded) I'm making the case that these neo-malthusians want to protect an imagined environment of the past that didn't exist. There are certainly things we're doing that are environmentally negative form the perspective of biodiversity, CO2, local water tables, etc but I don't think fixing those things necessarily means using less energy, or having a lower standard of living.

A huge chunk of this thinking is ultimately the puritan moral code writ large. US-society in particular believes all good things must somehow involve suffering or sacrifice: so "fixing" environmental damage must involve making a sacrifice, and if it's not a constant one you "feel" then how can it be solution?

This also goes the other way: the sacrifice of the environment or air pollution or waterways of whatever is the obvious price that must be paid for luxury amenities.

I’m never really convinced of that the puritans were so profoundly influential on modern American habits. They were a relatively small group relative to the whole effort of colonization and almost everyone else thought they were crazy. Even their own children, as evidenced by the Half Way Compromise.

Notwithstanding I see that kind of “Puritanism” among European X-RAY activists. There’s something certainty very human about it, but I think people often reach for irrational, exuberant religiosity during confusing and difficult times.

Yeah, humans have lived fine before fossil fuels so we can do it again, right? Just kill half of them. And let 90% of the remaining population work in the fields like slaves. Easy /s

Wildest strawman I’ve ever seen on this site. I’ve never even remotely seen anyone argue for what you’re mocking.

And it’s not even anything to do with fossil fuels - it’s about renewables.

While I agree that modern society requires significant energy inputs, there is a middle ground. For instance, if cities or the suburbs were more pedestrian friendly, walking, cycling, etc. would be a viable option meaning less use of fossil fuels by driving.

Standards of living are highly connected to energy consumption. Reducing power consumption without also reducing living standards is difficult to do. Furthermore, power consumption is going to increase as transportation and industrial processes become electrified.

Electricity consumption is going to rise with electrification. Power consumption is going down. A heat pump is about three times as efficient as heating with oil. An electric engine is about twice as efficient as an ICE, and so on.

The overton window of HN is skewed so far into techno-optimism that you get downvoted into oblivion for mentioning reducing energy usage.

Edit: surprise, I'm also getting silent downvotes, as if I needed further proof.

People will advocate permanently destroying a habitat before they consider taking a bus instead of driving.

Yeah, that one just boggles my mind. A few huge PV solar projects out in the desert in southern California and Nevada got stalled by environmentalists complaining about increased shading cooling down the desert.

At this point, even if solar panels in the desert kill off a few species of lizards, seriously, what's the alternative? More damage will occur if we don't. It needs to be about minimizing total damage, even if it means damaging isolated areas intentionally.

> It needs to be about minimizing total damage, even if it means damaging isolated areas intentionally.

I think that's an arithmetic everyone largely accepts, but they just don't want to be the specific ones paying the price while others seemingly get only the benefits. NIMBYism, if you will.

It's 100% NIMBYism.

Just like the complaints about how higher-density housing may hurt 'the environment' for whatever city people live in. Like, if everyone blocks high density housing, those people don't just disappear, they're gonna end up living in low density housing, and that's obviously much worse for the environment: takes up more space, which means cutting into nature more, and generally takes more energy for the lifestyle too.

But that doesn't matter to NIMBY's -- the important thing is that they don't have to see the environment changing where they live in particular.

It isn’t really NIMBYism to oppose remote desert solar plants, it is just people who care, perhaps without fully weighing cost/benefit, about any negative effect on nature.

There is a rational case that the huge footprint of solar and wind ends up doing more damage than more compact nuclear or natural gas plants. I suspect most of those opposing solar also oppose nuclear and gas.

I’d call it Nothing Is Good Enough Syndrome instead of NIMBY.

> I’d call it Nothing Is Good Enough Syndrome instead of NIMBY.

Definitely. Problem for us is that while more net-zero projects are being constructed than ever before, increased demand for energy has outpaced it, so we're ending up with more "dirty" energy capacity being added, not to mention the infuriating trend of decommissioning nuclear plants and replacing them with gas turbines.

We need to be building plants based on whatever net-zero technologies we know how to build. If that means more nuclear fission plants in the short term, whatever. Yeah I get that radioactive waste is a problem, but it's way easier to store the waste safely than it is to suck carbon out of the atmosphere. If something better comes about along the way, switch to building that when it comes. But don't just twiddle your thumbs and wait for it.

Like the wealthy Bay Area town that just recently sought to block the development of affordable housing under the pretext of protecting mountain lion habitat.

These people would literally rather live next to mountain lions than next to slightly poorer people. (ignoring the fact that mountain lions don't actually roam bay area suburbs)

https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2022/02/07/woodside-offici...

you mean they don't cross el camino? https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2020/04/20/jaywalking-moun...

Next door neighbour's driveway had a mauled deer carcass in middle of day, few years ago.

Tongue in cheek: Of course mountain lions are preferable. They are much rarer than the hoards of poor people. Which one do I want in the background of my "chillin' at home" insta pics?

Massive desert projects are just big subsidies to big corps. Few make money, at least one failed, others get bailouts. We could have all the same capacity cheaper, energy independence by putting more PVs on home roofs.

The hippies are right, the corporate whores are wrong.

https://www.newsdata.com/california_energy_markets/southwest...

We have high home-solar uptake here in Australia, but the problem on the whole is that you then have a grid needing to cater for peak load without having the regular income to make it financial. Makes for a bit of a death spiral. They need higher prices to cover grid costs, which drives more people to put on solar, and so on.

I’ve only thought about this for five seconds but that seems like a pricing structure issue rather than something inevitable.

I have a friend who works in the energy sector and has a strong focus on solar. He's talked about this as a major issue for a few years. I don't know if it's inevitable, but would influence a lot of industry policy.

https://www.energynetworks.com.au/news/energy-insider/the-de...

Early adopters of solar here had very strong feed-in tariffs, but these are non-existent now for new sign-ups because otherwise energy companies were paying out more and more, while still having the same grid/maintenance costs. It disincentivises people from upgrading their solar capacity too. If you got 3-5kW way back, but upgrade to 10kW now, you lose your lucrative feed-in tariff.

Going back many years, I remember my grandfather risking his health because he was scared of unpredictable electricity bills should he run his A/C. That's probably an argument against smart metering, at least for the elderly.

There's often talk of distributed battery systems. e.g., trial programs where houses with solar and batteries pool efforts.

Regardless, for every household that effectively goes offgrid, it leaves the fewer, remaining customers paying for the same powerlines and facilities. Solar uptake is about 30-40% here, from memory.

It's almost as if grid providers need to be competitive with alternatives. I'm currently getting about half of my electricity through solar+battery, and that's only going to grow until I'm no longer dependent on my utility at all.

A lot of environmentalists are really just ecofascists/terrorists who would rather see the wholesale destruction of advanced civilization than make pragmatic compromises, in effect if not intent.

They occupy an incredibly infantile frame that we should be less accommodating towards if we actually want an interesting collective future.

I've just started calling that brand of environmentalist "misanthropes" as I think it's the most accurate term.

Here in Australia, it can be argued that The Green Party's blanket ban and refusal to even consider let alone use nuclear has contributed significantly to more carbon in the air as we have instead relied on coal for the last 50 years.

This is just plain wrong.

Absent environmentalism or non-economic considerations (hello Jervis Bay) no nuclear power would ever be built in Australia. We have way too much cheap, conveniently located coal.

Both of those things can be correct.

Without environmentalist pressure, coal would be used indefinitely. And nuclear isn't being built or considered because the environmentalists won't support it.

Accordingly they can get positive credit for the first and negative for the second.

Don't kid yourself though - no major party in Australia supports nuclear. The Liberals will say they'll think about it, knowing there's a couple hundred idiots who'll actually believe them and give them a vote while they greenlight Indian-owned coal-miners finishing the destruction of the Great Barrier Reef.

Both major parties (Labor and Liberal) have huge donors from coal-mining concerns, as well as union support from coal-miners who - in a startling display of unification with the capital class - also oppose it because it's not coal-mining.

The world will be building fusion reactors in 2050, or spacebeamed solar power or opening a portal to the Warp or something for limitless free energy, and Australian politicians will still be talking about how "we can't just give up on coal".

Progress in this field is going to come from the private sector in-spite of the government who are already trying to kill solar power projects.

Two further points:

NIMBYism would kill nuclear power in Australia stone dead, including NIMBYism in conservative-held rural seats.

New-build coal, nuclear, and gas, is simply economically competitive with new-build renewables in Australia right now absent direct government subsidies - and if anyone is tempted to rabbit on about sun not shining and wind not blowing please go read AEMO's draft 2022 Integrated System Plan before replying.

Maybe so. But imo we should have built a strong nuclear industry including refining, power generation and waste disposal. Instead of digging rocks out of the ground and selling them abroad. We should refine them in Australia, lease the uranium to consumer nations, then charge them to store the waste in Australia. We are the safest nation on Earth for nuclear waste disposal. By storing the waste we would help foster adoption in places where waste disposal isn't appropriate. Not to mention the waste is still valuable, it can be refined again.

Think SaaS reoccurring revenue for waste disposal but we can take that waste, refine it and lease it again. Then earn more reoccurring revenue for its storage. Rinse and repeat. We could corner the market for Uranium.

Is this the Green party that does not, and never has, held power here in AU?

It feels like a bit of a stretch, given the major sources of funds to the two largest political parties, and the various leaders of same who are consistently on record espousing the joy of coal and other fossil fuels while (weirdly) claiming wind turbines are ugly and (disingenuously) blaming grid outages on renewables.

They also blocked an emissions trading scheme in the senate because it wasn’t perfect. They have almost no credibility anymore.

> Environmentalists really are their own worst enemies.

Doesn't almost everyone see themselves as an environmentalist these days? The problem is - the average "environmentalist" is not trying to maximize for anything.

It's a broad bucket that almost everyone is falling into and there's almost zero common ground, no organization, etc.

Of course there are going to be people that oppose almost everything that label themselves as "environmentalists". There's always people that oppose everything! And most people consider themselves "environmentalists".

> Doesn't almost everyone see themselves as an environmentalist these days?

That is not a self evident claim. At least, most people do not belong to environmental advocacy groups. The largest one is the Sierra club, with 1% of the US population as members.

Additionally any twitter bot or "crisis actor" paid by an oil company can claim to belong to the category.

It's far too easy to blame "environmentalists" for everything.

Lots of NIMBY anti-development people would consider themselves environmentalist. They are in fact conservatives people that would rather keep the status quo and are against free market for housing and want their assets to inflate to insane prices.

Unsurprisingly.

Moreover, politicians passed unpopular laws e.g. ecotaxes or bans and direct blame onto "environmentalists".

It can be a powerful tactic to drive a wedge between general population and "environmentalists". Ultimately to protect certain companies.

In my example, it was other kids at my school and their parents protesting it for environmental reasons. And mind you, the powerlines weren't even passing through our town so it wasn't NIMBYism.

I think most environmental argument is just normal politics. We have just expanded what people care about. A new set of things have become contraversial or virtuous. And these issues can mix in weird ways that cause friction and cost to people. But government and politicians don't really want these issues to be political. Balancing so many things is just too complex and fraught.

Also, a lot of environmental groups are focused on specific things. Expecting them to protect the whole world and all of the future is unreasonable. It's like expecting a cancer charity to reduce homelessness. Someone who loves birds just wants to protect birds.

I sometimes wonder if oil and gas companies even need lobbying: Environmentalists are the number one threat to any green initiative.

If they could all agree on one thing just for once.

Likely Shell is funding these “environmentalist groups” in what is basically the corporate version of shitposting. :)

Remember the term "carbon footprint" was popularized by BP[1] specifically as an effort to distract from efforts at systemic regulation that might effect corporations by making CO2 seem like an individual moral concern.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_footprint#Origin_of_the...

Would it surprise you to know that some anti-nuclear activism was supported [1] by the fossil fuel industry?

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/kensilverstein/2016/07/13/are-f...

The Endangered Species Act has become a blunt instrument that environmentalists and NIMBYs can use to shut down almost any major infrastructure project. No one wants to see any species go extinct but the time has come to make some hard choices. We may have to sacrifice the six-toed purple salamanders or whatever in order to preserve the rest of the biosphere.

We're not really saving these species, anyway. Climate change will eventually come for them. We can either make a few hard choices now or watch as a few... hundred... thousand choices are made for us.

In this article, I don't see evidence for "environmentalists" being the ones block wind-power, sounds more like argument between levels of the French state [1]. But just as much, the mantle of environmentalist can be taken by anyone, notably just nimbys. There's not a copyright on the term. But it winds-up even worse when others point to these idiot uses of the term environmentalist and then try to push actually environmentally destructive projects.

https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy/news/french-wind-ene...

The Green parties of Europe, which are the political face of the environmental movement, all oppose nuclear power. Perhaps most strongly in Germany, but The Greens in France oppose it as well.

They don't oppose wind power, which is the complaint above.

The Finnish Green Party no longer opposes nuclear power as of last year.

How did that transition happen?

It's been a gradual process over the last two decades.

The cynical view would be that during that time they left the government twice to protest the government approving new nuclear power projects, and paid a heavy political price for that. They can't afford to do it a third time, and given Finland's position (can't rely on solar or wind during winter, can't build more hydro, can't depend on imports during the production troughs) it is highly likely that more nuclear will be approved at some point.

The non-cynical view is that the world has actually changed over that time. Reducing CO2 emissions is more urgent than ever, and there's no longer time to hope that we can instead reduce energy usage which used to be their preferred solution.

What makes you say more urgent than ever?

We’ve been promised apocalypse by now several decades ago, and literally nothing changed.

CO2 is just a misdirection away from actually dangerous things such is persistent chemical pollutants we dump into the ocean by millions of tons that cause widespread hormonal disruption or outright toxicity.

that is happening today, not at some unspecified point in the future. So weird nobody seems to be concerned about that.

> the mantle of environmentalist can be taken by anyone, notably just nimbys

The mantle of NIMBY can be given to anyone, even environmentalists.

This seems very "no true scottsman" adjacent.

tortoises and their back yards I'm sure.

Seems that green Democrats would rather throw themselves into a volcano than accept anything less than their 100% absolute perfect solution.

New York keeps shutting down nuclear reactors... and then offsetting the power losses with natural gas. No one could have possibly predicted this?

https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=47776

Congrats!

Environmental people are a diverse bunch with plenty of charlatans and people willing to enrich themselves for “the greater good”. It’s pretty trivial for various interests to undermine and drive their agendas.

At some point you begin to wonder if environmentalists like this are indeed environmentalists?

There's a difference between conservationism and environmentalism as it relates to climate change, and this comes up every time there's a debate like this. Most environmental advocacy groups are much more concerned with conservation than climate change.

The German greens, now freshly back in government, have greatly accelerated worldwide deployment of renewables when they were in government last time. Without them it would have easily taken a decade longer for prices to plummet to the current levels. Renewables wouldn't be the cheapest form of energy. Let's see what they can do this time around. When the economics favor renewables, then its a no brainer. This makes new nuclear projects even more questionable. Note that the promises are there since at least 60 years. Lack of investment wasn't a problem. Recently a swiss energy company said they don't want to build new nuclear. Why should they, it doesn't make money unless the government is willing to provide the profits, which is only the case in some countries.

Are there any large MSR's in commercial use? I see a lot of test/development reactors on the wiki page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactor#Commercial...

Building one MSR sounds like a good way to prove the design, but I wouldn't want to see them build 6 at the same time. The EPR design that they are building is well tested.

No, there are not.

Moltex's approach to molten salt reactors looks interesting: https://youtu.be/7qJpVClxzVM?t=536

Instead of pumping radioactive molten salt between a reactor and heat exchanger, they plan to leave it sitting in stainless steel tubes, and use simple convection to extract the heat.

Oak Ridge rejected this idea in the 1950s because they were trying to power an aircraft, but convection makes more sense when the reactor isn't moving.

A 17min explanation on molten salts by a nuclear physics professor:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F92L6F0INYk

Excellent explanation, thanks for sharing!

Last time around it was negative learning by doing for France[1]. I wonder what magical efficiency gains they will manage to muster compared to Flamanville [2], Hinkley Point C[3] and Olkiluoto 3[4] which the state owned french nuclear industry is building. Well, more than magical "simplification", "cost cutting" and "modular design" shown on a powerpoint before reality hits again.

[1]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03014...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_(nuclear_reactor)#Flamanvi...

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_C_nuclear_power_...

[4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olkiluoto_Nuclear_Power_Plant#...

Nuclear reactors have massive learning effects, the more you build with the same people and organization the cheaper it is. Nuclear own massive scale is its own worst enemy.

If we could just build 500MW smaller Molten Salt cooled reactors we could literally build them like gas plants.

The source regarding actually seeing negative learning effects I linked in the original comment states in the abstract.

> The French nuclear case illustrates the perils of the assumption of robust learning effects resulting in lowered costs over time in the scale-up of large-scale, complex new energy supply technologies. The uncertainties in anticipated learning effects of new technologies might be much larger that often assumed, including also cases of “negative learning” in which specific costs increase rather than decrease with accumulated experience.

Sure, a nuclear cycle without the use of a steam turbine may have a future. Similarly to how gas plants undercut coal, and nuclear. Simply due to the cost of the steam plant. I haven't seen any proposals though which is more concrete than a pie-in-sky powerpoint design though.

The other issue is that for wind you only need an axle and a generator, for sun it is solid state. It is hard to compete with the economics of solid state power generation.

What matter to me is that within one generation they totally de-carbonized the grid from oil and coal to nuclear and have successfully been in running it that way for decades.

Germany has been doing a Green New Deal style thing with Renwables for 2 decades now, in my opinion they could have easily been heading to 100% CO2 free by now if they had just started to build nuclear plants.

The French certainty made mistakes and unfortunately technology innovation and improvement and continued expatiation of the products on a global scale didn't happen.

Of course I don't want to relay on learning effects from these large complex projects, but its better then just extrapolating from individual first time builds.

We defiantly want to move to smaller AND more efficient nuclear plants, but for that we also need nuclear industry, nuclear education a competent nuclear regulator and a government that actually puts its resources in that place.

> The other issue is that for wind you only need an axle and a generator, for sun it is solid state. It is hard to compete with the economics of solid state power generation.

That is one consideration. The real question is all in, 100% making sure all citizens have as much power as they need at every moment no matter what happens. If you approach it like that, going a all nuclear route with some localized batteries for peak shaving would be the overall cheapest solution for a largish industrial economy. You just replace current coal plants with nuclear plants and use the same infrastructure.

Doing a fully renewable massive industrial economy is totally unsolved problem requiring storage, smart grids and so on. And even then, when you consider the loses of solar in the case of a vulcano for example, you probably need some kind of gas backup.

Had the world at Kyoto just said, lets everybody build 1 nuclear plant per 1 million people, we would have de-carbonized by now.

Nuclear looks to be about 3x as expensive as wind/solar [0] and that is assuming you use it at 100% of its capacity due to the high building cost and low marginal costs. Just looking at California, winter nights drop to about half of electric demand as summer days [1] so you'd have to pay even more for spare capacity.

I think it would far cheaper to just build like 2x the wind/solar you need and use the surpluses to make methane [2] which is easily stored and already used for 40% of the US electrical grid [3].

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

[1]: http://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/default.aspx

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-to-gas

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_of_the_Unit...

Based on first principle I simply believe nuclear is the better long term play. In terms of total resources and land required modern nuclear beat anything by order of magnitude. Current prices based on 40 year old technology are not my main concern.

Nuclear is proven and proven at massive scale, its proven massive industrial nation can transition to almost 100% nuclear and can do so within a few decades.

The method that you advocate where you overbuild massive amounts of unsolved issues and it not even proven on a medium scale. And in the cost calculation sited don't account for the problem all in from production to distribution.

Methane produced in the way you advocate would still be transported in leaky pipelines. Massive power grids would need to be build to connect the regions optimal for collection with where it is most used. Massive batteries would still be required in such a system.

I am 100% sure that if a government today said, lets build 100 nuclear reactors in the next 30 years and put them next to each operating coal plant. I am 99% sure they could do it and that it would be a robust system for the next 50-100 years. For that certainty I would be worth paying a premium for.

Again, look at German, had they spent 2 decades on a green transformation on nuclear, they would now already be nearly CO2 free by now.

> Nuclear is proven and proven at massive scale, its proven massive industrial nation can transition to almost 100% nuclear and can do so within a few decades.

France is part of the Synchronous grid of Continental Europe and thus can run their nuclear generators at 100% capacity all the time because the other countries around them use lower fixed cost/higher marginal cost energy sources. An entire electrical grid powered by nuclear energy would be far more expensive to run.

> The method that you advocate where you overbuild massive amounts of unsolved issues and it not even proven on a medium scale. And in the cost calculation sited don't account for the problem all in from production to distribution.

What is unproven about it? Wind/solar/methane power/storage is all done on a massive scale already. The only unproven part is the methane production but when you consider nuclear is 3x expensive for base and likely 6x expensive for peak, nuclear makes no sense.

> The plant, which has a projected lifetime of 60 years, had an estimated construction cost of between £19.6 billion and £20.3 billion

> According to January 2021 estimates, the expected operational start date is June 2026 with a build cost of £22–23 billion

That seems like a... fairly modest overrun for a megaproject?

Flamanville and Olkiluoto were the first two of a new design. Historically, that rarely goes well. Taishan went a lot better, and Hinkley Point is basically on track.

It's always nice to be an authoritarian state

> CNN said French energy firm EDF, which helps run the site, had warned the US government that China's nuclear regulator had raised limits on permissible levels of radiation outside the plant to avoid shutting it down.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-58026038

Hinkley Point C is looking to be an at least £50 billion cool transfer from taxes to private corporations. Renewables have also gotten way cheaper today compared to 2017.

> EDF has negotiated a guaranteed fixed price – a "strike price" – for electricity from Hinkley Point C of £92.50/MWh (in 2012 prices),[20][77] which will be adjusted (linked to inflation – £106/MWh by 2021[71]) during the construction period and over the subsequent 35 years tariff period. The base strike price could fall to £89.50/MWh if a new plant at Sizewell is also approved.[20][77] High consumer prices for energy will hit the poorest consumers hardest according to the Public Accounts Committee.[81]

> In July 2016, the National Audit Office estimated that due to falling energy costs, the additional cost to consumers of 'future top-up payments under the proposed HPC CfD had increased from £6.1 billion in October 2013, when the strike price was agreed, to £29.7 billion'.[82][83] In July 2017, this estimate rose to £50 billion, or 'more than eight times the 2013 estimate'.[9]

They will keep adding renewable sources in the meantime, it’s not like they’ll be sitting on their hands.

100% agree Molten Salt reactors are one of the main keys to a liveable future for us this century...

Honestly, even Molten Salt cooled reactors would be enough. The most advanced once are Terrestrial Energy and Moltex Energy in Canada. Canada is actually putting effort behind real next generation.

I am more exited about this then almost anything else. If these can work its a literal game changer.

"France has a relatively good track record on nuclear power"

What does that means?

France built out its nuclear power generation from 10% to 80% in the span of less than 20 years [1]. While it's true that its latest plants are having difficulties, nuclear power has always been more expensive for one-of-a-kind designs rather than serial production.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France#Messme...

> nuclear power has always been more expensive for one-of-a-kind designs rather than serial production.

Surely that’s the case of most everything?

Also epr was sold on outright lies, they sold the ability to build a novel plant after years of not building anything not just faster then the previous N4 (which had tons of teething issues) but faster than the P4s (the very successful generation before the the N4, which france built quite a few of).

Plus the terrible awful idea that areva (the plant designer) would be responsible for overseeing construction (on previous generations it was always edf). Strangely that doesn’t make the incentives great.

France just had to turn off 3 of their rotting reactors[0] and they lowered their estimates for this year to 295-315 TWh[1]. They're desperate, it's election year and they failed to come up with a diversified energy plan for the future. Luckily the recent taxonomy decision may help to avoid sharp tax rises to finance this backward and hilariously expensive[2] strategy but those EU funds won't run forever. Expensive times coming up for the French taxpayers.

[0] https://then24.com/2022/02/08/three-nuclear-reactors-shut-do...

[1] https://www.edf.fr/sites/default/files/epresspack/2447/5c9aa...

[2] https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/edf-announces-new-de...

Ahah, it's always expensive time for the french taxpayer -- always have been! They even have recursive layer of taxes, where you pay taxes on amounts that have... already been removed from your revenue as... taxes.

That's not what recursion means. There are income taxes on your whole income (- a base provision for living expenses), and you can deduct certain things ( like donations to nonprofits) from the taxable income.

I know what recursion means thank you so much. If you get $100 income, get a 20% tax on that, and then get another 20% tax on... not $80 but on the /previous/ $100, you are paying recursive taxes. Thats what the old "CSG" was (replaced by something else but in the same 'spirit'), in france. You are being taxed on amount you already been taxed on.

Yes, all taxes ( i include social charges and stuff like healthcare, retirement, etc. payments) are counted based on your total income - some provisions.

totaling 8 now .. but in the end will need another one really going down bad to stop all the sudden pro-nuclear movement here in Europe, which I can imagine only must have some astroturfing behind.

But til then, blow more money into insurable and as much green as coal and gas power plants :(

(And that calculations done by real experts didn't even include all the other uneconomic issues from getting that stuff from somewhere til storing the waste - but yeah I know, all these waste will be taken by those new shiny molten reactors that have no problem at all on paper and will eat all the waste - both things just so far from reality in practice, which almost does not exist even).

The common stance and knowledge here at HN about all this is consternating :(

> But til then, blow more money into insurable and as much green as coal and gas power plants :(

Nuclear plants don't emit CO2, unlike coal and gas plants.

But they do generate (human-)life-threatening nuclear wastes that last 100k years. That dwarfs even the longest human civilization like Egypt[0]. 100k ago, humankind was barely appearing. Plastic in comparison takes around 450 years to be disaggregated through exo-human processes[1].

How to deal properly with these wastes is still a vigorous debate generator[2]. The thing is, with our current theoretical knowledge and practical expertise, we don’t have solutions that scale at the industrial level at which nuclear wastes are produced. Not in a way that we can say "and thus mankind will be completely free of dealing with this issue in the next 100k year".

[0] https://pintsofhistory.com/2011/08/08/the-unbelievable-durat... and you might have a look at https://www.historians.org/about-aha-and-membership/aha-hist... [1] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/11/chart-of-the-day-this... [2] https://www.challenges.fr/top-news/l-asn-pointe-un-risque-d-...

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