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Comment by ncmncm | Hacker News Reader

No civil nuke plant has ever been operated, anywhere in the world, without massive government subsidies, or by coercing ratepayers to pay well above market rates.

Looks like the Swedish public will be on the hook for subsidies for decades more while the rest of Europe (France and Romania perhaps excepted) coasts on renewables at ever plunging prices.

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Energy use in Sweden peaks in the winter, and especially a few extremely cold days. The sun literally doesn't rise in the northern parts, and the coldest days have almost no wind (and frankly it's not very strong overall either). This and last year, Swedes are stocking up on firewood, and it's not for cosplaying reason. Several knowledgeable people predict rolling blackouts this winter.

I would love renewables as much as the next guy but there's simply not a chance that Sweden could sustain a winter with the current supply. Importing helps with survival but the prices are insane, since their neighbors are cold as well. Dispatchable or baseload energy is necessary, and thus nuclear is the only carbon neutral option. Sure, it's more expensive than solar panels midday in the desert, but the comparison is irrelevant.

The "northern parts" of Sweden are, by report, already massively oversupplied with hydro power.

Starting nukes with the hope of power in ten or fifteen years will not help keep anybody warm in the meantime.

Transmission lines ought to be quite a lot quicker to complete.

Fun fact: plans were announced a few days ago to build out transmission lines from the north to central Sweden. Cost is projected to be 14 billion SEK, time to completion (in 2036) 14 years:

https://www.nyteknik.se/energi/svenska-kraftnat-miljardinves...

Nuclear is indeed slow, and we wouldn't be in this shitty situation if politicians and journalists would have informed themselves instead of selling dreams and fairy dust. It's not exactly like the rational voices didn't exist. And whaddaya know, look, now reality knocking on the door. What a surprise.

Yes, the north is oversupplied, because they have most of the hydro. Remember though that hydro is a form of storage, so even if the transmission capacity was higher, it'd deplete faster. I don't have the numbers off the top of my head, but I highly doubt that transmission alone can solve the issue long term, even less so the short term ones. Again, dispatchable and/or baseload energy is a MUST. And the people who yesterday sold solar dreams are today selling energy storage dreams. It's the same great story, but it doesn't exist. Nuclear exists, and it's carbon neutral. It's better to start now, then to not start at all or resorting to oil/gas.

There is one good short-medium term effect of the government change, for nuclear. Maintaining and/or restoring the existing reactors could be done much faster than building new ones. Not all reactors in Sweden are operational today.

Wind power is stronger in the winter

EU has a yearly public report on energy subsidies that demonstrate factually where subsidies goes, how much, and for what purpose. Nuclear subsidies are a proportional small part of the subsidies, and the public get more energy per $subsidies in nuclear than from other energy sources. Some key findings from 2021 report:

"Subsidies to nuclear had varied between €3.2bn and € 4bn between 2008 and 2019 but surged to (€6.3bn) in 2020 due to payments for early closures of nuclear power plants."

"In line with anticipations in the Commission Study, the financial aid to renewables in the EU27 is increasing at a low pace since 2015 to reach €78bn in 2019. Our preliminary estimations show a slight reduction in 2020 to around €77bn. Among the 14 identified subsidy instruments, the feed-in-tariff and feed-in premium schemes remain by far the MS preferred tools to promote RES technologies. They represented 79% of the total RES subsidies, i.e. €61bn in 2019"*

These accounting of subsidies almost always omit the bulk as not accounted in euros. The disaster liability subsidy, and the decommissioning subsidy are rarely so much as mentioned.

Not every country uses a decommissioning subsidy as you should just take the money from the plants during their lifetime and put in a fund for this purpose. This is what is happening in Finland and the fund already has more money then the projected decommissioning costs but they still keep pumping more money into them just in case.

They are accounting the tax money going from the government bank account into the owners of power plants. Money that could go to pay for hospitals or schools.

They don't account for theoretical subsidies of money, as then there would be more money in subsidies than there would be money. The theoretical subsidies that currently goes into fossil fuel to pay for global warming is reaching the point of infinitive money in the case that global warming goes beyond the tipping point. Theoretical subsidies are fun thought experiments but they aren't very valuable, as is infinitive money.

The report do account for decommissioning subsidy if there is actually government money going into the hands of power plants owners.

Show me one place anywhere in the entire history of grid-scale renewables where the consumer's costs went down.

The cost to the developer of deploying new solar / wind to a grid may become more favourable, but they're selling in to a market that reselles to retail / commercial clients, who will, inevitably, pay more over time.

I think what you're argument should be is that new nuclear would result in end-users paying more than they would for new renewables.

I'm mostly convinced where you, or anyone else, lands on the matter, is heavily biased by preconceptions...

and generally tend to think we have the resources to do a many-pronged approach, and that success is less technology dependant and more dependant on the competence of governments and bureaucracies, and the people who constitute them.

I frequently get flyers in the mail, from a variety of mostly co-op providers, offering to supply me power more cheaply than the grid operator does.

So in fact my cost, as a consumer, is lower than it was.

You clearly wish this were not so.

> No civil nuke plant has ever been operated, anywhere in the world, without massive government subsidies, or by coercing ratepayers to pay well above market rates.

Here in Finland we do. They can't coerce the rate payers as the customer is free to buy their electricity from whomever producer they want here and the only government subsidy is helping with the insurance.

edit: For example TVO at Olkiluoto

https://www.tvo.fi/material/collections/20221014135458/HnAXI...

On page 8 you can see that they have been producing cheaper electricity then the average nordpool area price for Finland for the last 10+ years. (and even before that but the graph starts at 2010). The difference is basically what their owners make as profits. TVO does not sell directly to end users. It only sells to its owners at production costs who can then flip that on the market if they feel like it or cover their fixed price contracts (or just use it themselves for the owners that are big energy heavy industrial companies)

Renewables (except hydro) have not driven a grid anywhere in the world, because storage is expensive both in $€ terms and in CO2/kWh terms. Maybe you’ll see the California grid running in 20 years all on renewables + storage at a crazy high cost per kWh and a stupid CO2/kWh compared to nuclear, and that’s just because it’s sunny 300 days a year here!

You dearly wish for storage to be expensive, just as you used to wish solar PV would be. But you were wrong then, and you are wrong now.

I don’t, I want batteries to not pay PGE a shit ton of money. I’ve looked at prices, it’s just not happening.

Source? Everything I can find counts PPAs which is… kind of a stretch.

PPAs at inflated prices are absolutely subsidies. They impose inflated costs on users of the power, which is only marginally better than on the body politic at large. Or marginally worse, maybe.

Much of the subsidies are the public picking up the tab for disaster insurance the operator is protected against needing to pay for. Of course no actual insurance company could afford to underwrite such a policy.

> coasts on renewables at ever plunging prices.

I hope they can coast through the winter using those renewables.

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