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Comment by kranke155 | Hacker News Reader

Why? How expensive is nuclear vs wind and solar at this point?

Depends; a lot more expensive typically. But the real challenge is the process of getting any nuclear built in a hurry. This seems to be a process that is measured in decades; not months or years.

And given the cost, is not something that seems to be very popular in any case right now. Wind and solar are much more popular. The cost is much lower, plans are easy to get approved because there is very little controversy (other than some level of NIMBYism) and you can be up and running pretty soon after.

And a useful side-effect of investing in renewable technology is that it can be exported. German companies like Siemens and others are making quite a bit of money with this. That's a good thing in times of recessions. Germany's heavy industry will end up going cold turkey on fossil fuels because of cost and climate. This is short term very disruptive of course but that also means a lot of money is being invested in alternatives. Which of course is something Germany can export as well. Germany might come out fine.

> a lot more expensive typically

more expensive to operate existing plants that were already paid for a long time ago? i could never understand the shutting down part.

Nuclear is very cheap when you have an available power plant like Germany has... but instead decides to shut it down because that's not politically acceptable to use them

I think public opinion has shifted actually, but greens are still very ideologically opposed and a member of the coalition government.

The plants in Germany would have been due for expensive maintenance and they are old. (Maybe not EOL old but old)

The problem for Germany is that nuclear power plants, wind, and solar don't product natural gas.

Natural gas can be turned into electricity, but electricity cannot practically be turned into natural gas and German industry needs a lot of natural gas.

But with sufficient baseload nuclear, one could free up gas capacity because of the lower demand for gas peaker plants. Similarly, if electricity were as cheap as gas per kWh, many industrial applications could actually switch to electrical heating.

The cost of nuclear isn't important to this short term debate, simply having it is.

Right, solar and wind, although relatively cheap to produce, unfortunately, face challenges when it comes to energy storage. These types of industries require stability.

Electricity cannot be stored, regardless of source. Base load is a thing, sure. But there are ways ro cope with that, all energy hungry industries in Europe, and Germany, found ways to do so. That includes everything, from steel over chemicals to paper.

The lack, and price, of gas for things other than electricity was a problem for a while. But one that had nothing to do with nuclear power.

Electricity can be stored, mostly in pumped hydro storage, but also in e.g. battery storage, pressurized air or heated rock. But storage is scarce, expensive and doesn't look like it is going to be built anytime soon (for the usual reasons, NIMBY, environmentalism, YAGNI (correct or imagined), "energy abstinence is more virtuous", "we can manage by regulating demand", etc.)

Pumped hydro capacities are all but fully occupied, and few and far between to begin with. Battery tech os nowhere close, nor is battery capacity, to make as much as a dent overall.

Nuclear is dirt cheap when you have your power plants already built. Most of the cost of nuclear is building cost and related capital cost for the loans you take to build one and teardown/disposal. All German reactors had already paid off, teardown and disposal are deposited up front. So just running cost for them, mostly people and fuel, which is in the 5ct/kWh range (for sources e.g. look at the last IPCC report, but good numbers are hard to come by for the usual trade secret reasons).

Wind is also in the 5ct/kWh range, solar at 10ct/kWh. However, to get both to a load factor of over 90% (which is typical for nuclear power plants) you would need a sufficient amount of storage and overbuild your capacity, which will cost an additional >10ct/kWh.

On the energy markets in Europe, at least the one Germany is connected to, the prices per kWh are calculated basedbon generation costs. Meaning investments and fox costs are not considered. CO2 certificates are so. With those being way too cheap the three cheapest electricity sources are: Wind, PV and coal. If memory serves well you have then hydro and nuclear, with has gas power plants usually being priced out more often than not.

That structure doesn't really make sense from a climate perspective. It does show so, that nuclear is far, far from being cheap.

> On the energy markets in Europe, at least the one Germany is connected to, the prices per kWh are calculated basedbon generation costs. Meaning investments and fox costs are not considered.

Nope. Definitely not.

Prices are based on a) fixed-price contracts that are negotiated with energy-producers and b) an spot-price auctioning model that is based on supply/demand. As an energy reseller, what you cannot get with your long-term contracts you have to make up with spot priced. With some additional provisions: Renewables get fixed prices (determined by bid) by lay by their regional reseller. And the highest spot price is always paid out to all lower-priced energy producers.

But in all that, no energy producer will leave out the building and financing cost from their price calculation. Otherwise e.g. renewables would be free, because their generation cost is practically zero, no people or fuel to pay for, just building and financing.

Fixed prices =|= fixed costs. And yes, spot prices actually do exclude those. Sure, companies do include those in their internal calculations. The energy markets don't care. And yes, the results of this are funny. E.g. closing down gas plants without a single opertional hour because they are just not able to operate economically.

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