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Comment by Gwypaas | Hacker News Reader

As long as you rely on the fallacy that nuclear is cheap to operate any initial costs can be handwaved away. Today renewables are cheaper than the marginal cost of nuclear, steam turbines and all machinery around them is simply that complex. They are a relic of an bygone era which tech enthusiasts for some reason continue clinging to as the magical solution to all our energy needs. Even in the face of reality.

A dollar spent on nuclear is a dollar that could have much more effect invested in renewables instead.

https://www.lazard.com/media/451885/grphx_lcoe-07.png

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> dollar spent on nuclear is a dollar that could have much more effect invested in renewables instead.

The real world is made of atoms and people, not dollars. To illustrate: if starting tomorrow, every car produced was electric, it would take 20 years to replace all the cars. Given unlimited money, we could not convert all production of cars to electric in 5 years. The earliest possible switch to all electric cars is like 2050.

We have limited capacity to produce batteries and renewables, and a limited speed at which that production can be expanded.

We also have existing manufacturing capacity for nuclear and staff with skills to build / operate them, and it should be used. It should not be wasted.

Even more pessimistically, stopping investment into further nuclear technology (i.e. de-emphasizing it in universities as a possible career path and indicating that demand will be falling in the open market) will accelerate its decline, and likely lead to countries becoming even more reliant on fossil fuels in the short term. The death of tooling, industry knowledge and parts manufacturing capacity specific to that industry will make nuclear plants even more unappealing. If battery tech or other energy storage takes longer than expected to come up to speed, we'll still be reliant on fossil fuels for baseload capacity. It's utopian thinking; devoting any resources to the second-best option is unacceptable, since pure renewables are just "better."

There's a saying about that line of logic, isn't there? A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

It has already stopped. I studied engineering physics in Sweden which during the cold war had a very extensive nuclear weapons and energy research program. [1]

I did the required undergraduate nuclear physics course which at the time was focused on nuclear energy. At the time a very surface level course due to being reduced in size over the years in favor or atomic and quantum physics instead.

I still have Introductory Nuclear Physics [2] sitting in my bookshelf because I never had the chance to sell it, the course was changed to be centered around particle accelerators instead.

That program used to be the prime source of people going into nuclear energy research and development. Today you can't even take it as an master, it died out due to everyone seeing it as a dead end career wise with the advent of renewables.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Sweden

[2]: https://www.amazon.com/Introductory-Nuclear-Physics-Kenneth-...

The picture you give shows that you need subsidies to make your claim true for nuclear and cc gas. Only coal is way above unsubsidized renewables.

It's true that grid solar (not wind) is cheaper per kWh produced. But: 1) there are real problems with solar lacking nighttime production 2) the nuclear plants in question in Germany are mostly already functional and for the most part just need to be turned back on. That is much different than new construction of a nuclear plant

Nuclear power plants would only replace some gas power plants for electricity production. There aren't many able to be turned on again.

More Russian gas and oil is used in transport and heating. Nuclear power plants play no role in providing energy for heating, transport, and similar in Germany.

So it would only do some good, therefore don’t do it?

In the face of reality nuclear is the only realistic way to address the majority of the issues that most renewables cannot realistically face:

https://e360.yale.edu/features/why-nuclear-power-must-be-par... All this talk about "a bygone era" seems to stem from a place of hatred but what is perceived as "old" if anything most techbros and minimalist wannabes seem to hate nuclear.

But if you stop watching the Simpsons and look at the data, you will soon realize that renewables are not able to provide enough reliable energy and this has been proved time after time.

nature.com/articles/s41467-021-26355-z

Depends on what tech comes out. If lithium-sulfur batteries and perovskite solar cells go into mass production I think nuclear will be one of the smaller contributors. Nuclear works best where there's limited hydroelectric, wind, and solar but minimal chance of earthquakes.

Okay so what are all these renewables and batteries made of?

For each item.

Where are you going to get it?

Where does it need to go?

Who's going to make it?

How many do you need?

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