Comment by pydry | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pydry | Hacker News Reader

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>I don't understand the reasoning for phasing out nuclear power

1) It's ridiculously expensive. LCOE is 5x the cost of solar and wind: https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/renewable/wind/st...

2) Yes, still a lot more expensive once you take storage into account. Even for the most inefficient forms of storage: https://theecologist.org/2016/feb/17/wind-power-windgas-chea...

3) It takes about 12-20 years to build new plants. Solar/wind is 1-4 years.

4) 5x is an understatement. It's even more expensive if you properly account for insurance. Dealing with Fukushima cost $800 billion. This is unaccounted for in LCOE and taxpayers will be fully on the hook for whatever the next Fukushima.

5) New power plants aren't being built because it's too expensive. So, old ones are having their lives extended (the latest law in congress was about this). Older plants = more danger. Fukushima happened in large part because it was old.

6) Despite this many countries still build nuclear power. Why? Two reasons: 1) it shares nuclear military costs 2) it lets you build a bomb quickly.

Nations that want to invest into solar, wind and storage should do so and illustrate to other countries that such investment will out compete those who would invest in nuclear. This would be a good thing.

What nations who currently invest into solar and wind are doing is to also invest in a lot of fossil fuel reserve energy, like natural gas. This is the official strategy of Germany, and is also the primary strategy of UK. In combination this is what caused the insane energy prices that Europe suffered this winter.

This is why I want a EU ban against building new fossil fuel capacity, especially natural gas. Solar and wind is great, but not if they are combined with natural gas, oil or coal. I loose a lot of trust in politics when green party politicians are advocating to maintain programs to subsidizes fossil fueled power plants while at the same time advocating to shut down nuclear power plants.

In term of insurance for accidents, here I would also advocate for a law that is technology independent. Any damaged suffered to third-parties because of a commercially operated power plant should be covered by insurance. Hydroelectric plants, nuclear power and all plants emitting green house gases would be impossible to cover but the symbolic gesture of such law would be interesting.

> This is why I want a EU ban against building new fossil fuel capacity, especially natural gas.

Why would you want this? Fossil fuels are very important for a working electricity grid. Natural gas is flexible and it outcompetes worse energy sources like coal or oil so it actually reduces the CO2 output compared to what it was before. Your suggestion would give us high electricity prices.

The fact that Germany decarbonised so much, so fast and so cheaply and without nuclear power appears to have made a lot of people very angry.

Unlike Poland, who quietly powers itself with 80% coal and attracts very little flak because 1) it didn't make the nuclear industry look unnecessary 2) it preferred to burn coal over gas from America's main geopolitical rival.

> The fact that Germany decarbonised so much, so fast and so cheaply and without nuclear power appears to have made a lot of people very angry.

Decarbonised? They still have the worst CO2/KWh in Western Europe, and among the worst in Europe:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/carbon-intensity-electric...

After literally decades of massive renewables investments and subsidies.

Alright, now do it again but this time assign the coal to the countries importing the electricity rather than where it is burnt and include the actual GWP of gas (ie. around the same as coal) and include the actual GWP of France's nuclear fuel which mostly comes from a low yield open pit mine in niger.

> which mostly comes from a low yield open pit mine in niger.

That's literally bullshit. Main import sources of uranium in France are Kzakhstan, Australia, and Canada. Please stop spouting Russian and/or Greenpeace propaganda.

I hope you understand how your comment can easily interpreted like fossil fuel advocacy. Trying to split hair over coal vs natural gas is just a distraction when the issue should be to ban fossil fuels. As a EU ban it would cover both Poland and Germany, and a bunch of other countries that current depend heavily on fossil fuel and who have very few alternatives for periods of high demand and low supply. It would be costly in the short run and require a lot of investment, but every new construction of a fossil fuel plant goes directly against the goal of zero emissions and is a plain failure to reach the global climate crisis.

There is also a huge loss of public trust when green party politicians are advocating to keep subsidizing fossil fuel plants. If environmentalist want to keep oil and natural gas plants, then how will the public be convinced of climate change? The strategy need to be clear and fossil fuel free, and if that solution is wind, solar and storage then that plan need to be up front and part of the budget discussions. It should not be the argument from environmentalists that we should be using natural gas because it happen to be cheaper that nuclear.

> It would be costly in the short run and require a lot of investment

It seems like you already know why it's not realistic. Fossil fuels fulfill the role of a marginal power source very well, neither renewables nor nuclear can replace that role as of yet. There are still plenty of issues that need to be solved towards electrification, lets not make it unrealistically difficult for ourselves.

With the goal of keeping the grid as cheap as possible it is indeed unrealistic to care about global warming or the environment. The only thing that matter is to use what ever technology is cheapest at any given job at any given location, and especially focusing on fast returns on investments and political policies that can provide windfall during a single election cycle.

It is however not a policy I would advocate or vote for. I rather oppose fossil fuels especially when they are being subsidized through taxes. Europe can also not really handle an other winter, especially if the weather would not be exceptional mild. Bailouts can only be paid so many times before it becomes unrealistic.

That's not quite what's happening, there is not just one goal. It's just that having as cheap electricity as possible is one of many competing goals that they try to optimize for.

This winter and perhaps the one after that as well will be interesting for sure, after that the major natural gas risk should be mitigated by having enough LNG terminals and supply. There is still quite a bit of leeway to reduce taxes on electricity, but when you're short on supply you might not want to incentivize electricity use.

When the wind is optimal, wind power is the cheapest possible energy source. When the sun is optimal, solar is cheapest. When neither is true, natural gas is the cheapest solution in the short run. This is not just what the economics say, it is also the official strategy in several nations as I mentioned before.

Trying to disincentivize electricity use during periods of low supply do not work. Governments feel forced to step in if factories has to shut down or people can't heat their homes. Those not willing gets voted out, as was also demonstrated this winter.

All this is a local maximum where every action is rational but the result is terrible for everyone involved. Paying through taxes does not actually make the energy price low, and the massive cost to the environment will have to be paid at some point in the future.

More LNG terminals and more fossil fuel plants will not make the situation better. Demand through electrification is growing faster than the economic savings from using even more fossil fuels, and when winter comes the same scenario as last will occur. The only ones who will profit is those countries that export fossil fuels.

Poland announced in 2014 that it will build a reactor and start it in 2022. Nothing ensued.

What Poland really does now is quite different: https://notesfrompoland.com/2023/02/03/polands-second-larges...

It's expensive because no investment has been made to scale it up and make cheaper & safer, whereas a ton of subsidies and investment went into scaling up solar and making that cheaper over the past 2 decades.

China will probably make it cheap given the pace they're going building out nuclear plants.

China is way more active deploying renewables than nuclear. https://www.colorado.edu/cas/2022/04/12/even-china-cannot-re...

Yep, they have massive energy demand and going full steam ahead in all energy sources.

> taxpayers will be fully on the hook for whatever the next Fukushima.

That's actually an interesting point. Japan etc. can raise that magnitude of funds, but the whole world benefits from countries that run on nuclear instead of coal and gas. Should we not all pay for that? For already-built reactors that's a bit late, but:

If there were a global standard for new reactors (which would obviously have to meet the minimum requirements of the most stringent participating country), multinationals could build to that spec without a lot of reinventing the wheel per regulatory environment as we do today, everyone would agree it's safe enough (presuming a safe environment; I don't know if a place like Afghanistan can provide that today), and everyone is equally (by GDP or so? TBD) on the hook for helping out if one of them has an incident.

Based on Fukshima being the only INES level >=5 incident in the past 30 years, and one of four since nuclear energy tech became somewhat established in the 1950s, on the hundreds of nuclear power plants that are still in service around the world (I don't know how many have been cumulatively, probably around 1-2k?), that would be stupidly cheap insurance per kWh produced.

For point 2, the number are from a Greenpeace study in german. They say they can generate 25TWh per year with 11.2GW of land wind power (so about 3000 wind turbines) taking into account the storage lost (they assume 42.6% round trip efficiency, more than wikipedia figures).

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

It's expensive because the regulation is insane. In times and places with sane regulation, the upfront costs are still high but it soon pays for itself.

A new plant costs like $10B. We could build 8 of them if we got back what was stolen from the Paycheck Protection Program.

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