Hacker News Reader

Comment by ftth_finland | Hacker News Reader

> but without those caveats there isn't much point to it which is why nobody else builds it.

Having power and not freezing to death when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow is a pretty solid point.

We just put a new nuclear power plant into service in Finland.

> Its LCOE is 5x that of solar and between 1.5x-3x more expensive than solar/wind paired with just about all viable forms of green large scale storage (hydrogen, batteries, pumped storage).

Do you have any sources to back up these figures? I’m genuinely interested.

How is hydrogen a viable storage form when you cannot burn 100% hydrogen and fuel cell aren’t available or cost effective at utility scale?

How are batteries a viable storage form when there isn’t enough global manufacturing capacity to store energy at scale?

How is pumped hydro a viable storage form when you are limited by geography and can’t really build any more?

View on HN

>Having power and not freezing to death when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow is a pretty solid point.

Not really. Electricity usage is not actually constant and nuclear power doesn't do load following unless you double the cost again (10x solar's LCOE).

Theres a reason only France tried that - and that is strongly related to the reason why Areva went spectacularly bankrupt.

Theres no reality in which it makes any economic sense except #1 providing military support or #2 a pretend reality where all available storage options are economically infeasible.

I have to say that an ignorant #2 is a pretty anti-climate position to take.

> Not really.

Oh, really? What's your solution to producing non-polluting power when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow?

> Electricity usage is not actually constant and nuclear power doesn't do load following unless you double the cost again

Can you explain how you've come to this conclusion?

We recently turned up a new nuclear power plant in Finland and they did nothing but turn up and down the generation levels when doing tests. Looking at the graphs, I can see output has varied between 3,3 and 4,3 GW this week.

The local wikipedia article on nuclear power states that power output can be regulated 5%/min, which is faster than almost all other generation methods.

> Theres a reason only France tried that - strongly related to the reason why Areva went spectacularly bankrupt.

Are you saying that Areva went over budget because they build us a load following nuclear plant?

> Theres no reality in which it makes any economic sense except #1 providing military support or #2 a pretend reality where all available storage options dont work.

Pray do tell what those available storage options are. Give us the real skinny then, none of that FUDD.

>Oh, really? What's your solution to producing non-polluting power when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow?

Gosh you really didnt read anything I wrote did you?

I did.

You didn't read anything I wrote, nor did you raise any of the points I raised.

In fairness, in a renewably powered world Finland is going to be a really bad place to be. It's one of the worst places for energy (I'd call it the energy butthole of that world but I'll reserve that label for Russia). Solar is seasonal and wind is relatively sparse there.

What this means is you're going to lose your heavy energy intensive industry. Going with nuclear won't save you from that, if you're then competing with industry in places where solar is available all year at costs likely to be below $0.01/kWh.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com