Why Small Modular Reactors Can’t Compete with Renewable Energy | Hacker News Reader

Why Small Modular Reactors Can’t Compete with Renewable Energy

cleantechnica.com

16 pointsdoener16 comments

This is just another anti-nuclear blog post. It is as irrelevant as every other anti-nuclear blog post that came before it.

The problem with renewables has always been that it is not a form of dispatchable power, and that it is highly variable depending on location, time, geography, etc. Because of that, it doesn't matter how cheap it is, it can never power a grid by itself. So you will always need something on top of that, such as baseload power like nuclear or a system of energy storage. As a result, the "low cost" claims about renewables simply do not pan out in the real world.

Yet in the "real world" companies are rolling out huge amounts of Solar and Wind while new Nuclear is a rounding error.

Meanwhile armchair nuclear advocates keep saying this is impossible.

Well it is impossible. You'd need to overbuild and connect to neighbour countries, and we all know that can't be done ;)

https://nitter.nl/enn_nafnlaus/status/1565923581246091264 has some interesting graphs and calulcations. The overbuilding described isn't very much higher than what the French planned for their nuclear plants. It is higher, though.

Take away the subsidies and see how long that lasts. Where I live the solar panels get covered in snow every winter. Yet the power company won't even hire teenagers to clean them off. They stay that way until the snow melts generating zero watts of electricity in the meantime.

It's obvious they only find renewables valuable for the subsidies, not the energy (what there is of it) they produce.

You need some new lies, these ones wore out.

Subsidy free PV is cheaper than marginal costs of thermal generation in an ever growing region, and panels are reaching cost parity with roofing and facade materials.

Snow also doesn't sit on a panel that is vertical and being used as a facade or fence (or just sitting in a paddock or field improving yields by reducing wind damage).

In real world we have Germany which used natural gas for base load power generation which resulted into explosion of energy prices. Now they are using "expensive" coal and have manageable prices.

France restarted its nuclear power plants and guess what? Prices for energy went down! How is that even possible when renewables are so cheap and nuclear power can't compete with price?

That's because renewables by installed capacity looks like a big source of power, but by actually provided energy they are negligible rounding error, especially in winter.

> In real world we have Germany which used natural gas for base load power generation which resulted into explosion of energy prices. Now they are using "expensive" coal and have manageable prices.

Funny that having a corrupt leader who is literally employed by gazprom led to sabotaging the renewable rollout and putting it behind by 5 years. In spite of this renewables still replaced every joule that nuclear would have produced were the reactors refurbished at greater cost and 10% or so of the fossil fuels.

> France restarted its nuclear power plants and guess what? Prices for energy went down! How is that even possible when renewables are so cheap and nuclear power can't compete with price?

This is so laughably stupid that it rebuts itself.

> That's because renewables by installed capacity looks like a big source of power, but by actually provided energy they are negligible rounding error, especially in winter.

So 40% of electricity in Germany being produced by wind, solar, and byproduct-derived biogas is a rounding error but producing 2/3rds of that via nuclear in the 90s was significant?

>France restarted its nuclear power plants and guess what? Prices for energy went down! How is that even possible when renewables are so cheap and nuclear power can't compete with price?

Because the nuclear plants that went down were already paid for.

They went down in the first place because theyre expensive to maintain and France was cutting costs.

If nuclear were cost competitive then they wouldnt be riding on the coat tails of soon-to-expire reactors built in the 70s and the % of French electricity supplied by nuclear wouldnt be going down.

German nuclear power plants weren't paid for? What kind of excuse is that?

>or a system of energy storage.

Like pumping water uphill. Which, contrary to pro nuclear propaganda, is cost effective, scales and doesnt require particularly special geography.

How often will we need to replace wind turbine blades as they wear out, solar panels as their yields lower over time, etc. compared to SMR's - you build them, maintain them, and they'd probably last way longer than these other renewable energy capture devices - probably on the timescale of hydroelectric power, if not longer I would imagine. Seems more environmentally friendly to build SMRs instead of fiberglass blades and rare earth sourced solar panels.

I don't know why people are so anti-nuclear - it allows for a guaranteed base output of power 24/7 - something that both current battery tech and the unreliable output of solar/wind power can't provide. Do we want to have fields and fields of wind turbines and solar panels along with the electrical infrastructure needed to carry that power towards urban centers, or do we want conveniently located SMRs close enough to urban areas so they can likely sit nearby or within short distance of existing substations?

Some people who say "But battery tech is improving! We just have to wait it'll be here soon and wind/solar will work!" are the same people that want the whole ICE supply chain removed and replaced with electric ASAP/immediately without any realistic regard for what is actually required for such a drastic change to how people consume energy. We'll wait for battery tech to arrive while we'll have rolling blackouts and grid problems but at least we're saving the planet... somehow.

Seems very cut and dry to me, but I guess radiation is scary for people. From what I understand, SMRs have minimal to no risk of radiation leakages in a meltdown type situation, but I'll leave that for the experts.

Right, “renewable energy,” but the wind turbine/photovoltaic materials aren’t “renewable”: fiberglass and plastic isn’t recyclable, and don’t get me started with the lithium ion batteries these people want us to this store energy in.

That all said I’m not anti renewable or anti electric car, but these aren’t environmentally scalable solutions at the current time and we should look at all options available instead of putting our eggs all in one basket.

On top of recycling actually being a thing for PV and downcycling being a growing industry for wind blades, every solar panel and every wind turbine blade ever made would fit in a single year of tailings pit of a single open pit uranium mine like Husab.

Venture a guess: how much is the US Department of Energy investing in research in: 1. renewables (solar, wind, hydro, geothermal), 2. fission, 3. fusion?

Answers (from DOE FY 2023 Budget [1]):

1. renewables: $1.27 BN (p. 43)

2. fission: $1.66 BN (p.58)

3. fusion: $0.72 BN (p. 36)

[1] https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2022-04/doe-fy202...

Wasn't the point of small modular reactors less about manufacturing and more that they don't overwhelm the attached steam infrastructure needed to extract energy from something with the heat density of a small sun?

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