Comment by godelski | Hacker News Reader

Comment by godelski | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

There's definitely truth to this and not. It's rather complicated. I don't want to get into arguments which will happen no matter what I say, so I'm just going to link three things and let the data speak for itself.

[0] is the cost of energy by year. We notice that nuclear is the only one to increase and coal is stable while everything else decreases. As time goes by, things usually get cheaper, so we have to ask what's unique to nuclear.

[1] Shows a graph of the decarbonization process of countries' energy sectors. I suggest including: US, France, Germany, Japan, Sweden, and China.

[2] is a near real time map of energy production and tells you where the energy portfolio, its carbon intensity per source, and if the region imports/exports that electricity. All these matter.

So we should all keep these things in mind when discussing energy because carbon is a critical part. This is HN, people are familiar with how to read data, right? Let's not fight, and let's try to start any discussion with some facts that are inarguable. This is just data.

[0] https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/decarbonizing-energy-progress

[2] https://app.electricitymaps.com/map

> We notice that nuclear is the only one to increase

“ France and South Korea were at least able to keep prices and construction times constant.”

“ those countries that were able to avoid price surges are countries that do not stand out in regulating nuclear power less, but in standardizing the construction of reactors more.”

Source will be appreciated as the claims seem to be false according to quick search.

[1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-04-19/french-wi...

[2]: https://tradingeconomics.com/france/electricity-price

The person you're replying to quoted from the worldindata article that I linked which has a source (and many others) to a more thorough study. As to France's (your [2]) there was a perfect storm of bad events. Due to covid many repairs and typical maintenance things got pushed back. Alone it would have only resulted in a slight increase, but covid was also longer than many expected. But then the crisis in Ukraine happened and there was high demand for electricity. You have to remember that France is one of the largest exporters of electricity in all of Europe and often is the number one. Two black swan events. You can't use 2023 as a judgement for France's cost of power as it is a clear outlier event, as even indicated by your [2] source if you zoom out.

Also remember that like most western countries, France has not built a nuclear reactor in decades. Most of the build out was in the 80's and the most recent one began operation in 2002. In fact, only 4 built this century[0] (they're still 80's reactors too btw). Truthfully, they have gotten more expensive over time too and have a negative "learning curve". South Korea on the other hand did their build out in the 90's and has continued building new reactors, albeit at a slower rate than the initial build out. When you look at [0] for different countries compare construction vs operation times and look at that differential over different periods. That's an important clue.

I highly suggest reading that world in data link, as it has a lot to say and provides a ton of sources. It's nowhere near the full story and isn't even centered around nuclear, but these conversations should never be about nuclear alone. That's why I only posted data and am still not saying much. I more want people to look at the data, take care, __think__, and form conclusions from that. These pro vs anti conversations never work and are rather silly as they often are had between two non-experts who do not use concrete data or use very selective data. But we can at least start at the two important things and figure out if we need to dig deeper: trend of costs of sources and how successful different countries (with different strategies) have been at decarbonizing their electricity centers. I think the problem with energy questions is that we all care because this issue, but somehow let it fall off to the side when we discuss energy. So let's start there and make sure we agree on the facts. Then we can get nuanced and dig into the nitty gritty and discuss other things. Start with the carbon.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_commercial_nuclear_rea...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com