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Comment by pydry | Hacker News Reader

The "nuclear is the new green jesus" movement makes no sense. It's 5x the cost of solar and wind. It's more expensive even than turning wind energy into hydrogen, storing it and burning it for electricity - even if the nuclear plant isnt doing load following (that would cost even more): https://theecologist.org/2016/feb/17/wind-power-windgas-chea...

The only reasons to build nuclear power plants are military. The international community is clear on the reasons when it's Iran building PWRs but it's equally as true for every other country that does it (thats why we can be sure of Iran's motive).

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The point of nuclear power plants is to provide energy when the wind isn't blowing and the sun isn't shining. The real alternative is not "wind" or "solar", it's natgas peaker plants plus demand reduction where feasible. Energy storage is theoretically possible but quite hard outside of established systems like pumped hydro - which still can't deal with prolonged shortfalls as might happen, e.g. in mid-winter over quite large geographical areas. It's not clear that these offer a better scenario than just building some modern, comparatively safe nuclear plants.

nuclear was green Jesus 50 years ago. Today it's been regulated into oblivion making it super expensive in most of the western world. that doesn't make the technology any less interesting and it still has huge potential as part of the mix. you can throw around your numbers for wind/solar + p2x but that shit is still experimental and will require insane investments in infrastructure that's usually not counted in the numbers spewed by the solar/wind is the new green Jesus lobby. my bet is still on nuclear winning the race eventually, but we'll have to see i guess. right now it's pretty insane here in solar/wind land (Germany, Denmark) er haven't brought down emissions one bit in a long long time and prices for electricity is fucking crazy. like people have to actively look if it's ok to boil water, turn on the oven or wash their clothes and we're effectively pulling the whole of Europe down with us because of the insane rules for the "free" market for electricity. but let's see who win out in the end.

That's the second time you've used that phrase in this thread... seems to be flame bait more than anything. Nuclear is cleaner than coal or natural gas, does not emit carbon after construction, and modern technology has made it much more safe (though we'd actually have to build more modern reactors).

Those are facts, not religious beliefs.

I don't think this is "nuclear is the new green jesus" but rather "Nuclear is not the devil that the Greens painted it as."

It is very interesting to see the viewpoint shift happen here. I see people saying that oil companies/Russia were funding/pushing talking points to the green organizations.

>The international community is clear on the reasons when it's Iran building PWRs but it's equally as true for every other country that does it (thats why we can be sure of Iran's motive).

[citation needed] Who's exactly the "international community" and where's the data to that claim?

Cheap bait...

"International community" is usually a euphemism for "a bunch of American and European NGOs" It's a slang term to imply broad consensus to bully people into conforming.

The high price of nuclear power-plants is usually due to the loss of know-how after a long period of "nuclear bad". During this period, the people who built the NPPs of the 60's and 70's retired, and not enough new ones were trained since it was politically on the way out.

> It's 5x the cost of solar and wind.

Do you have a citation for that? In France, the EPR which is absurdly late and out of the initial budget, and the poster child of how if you don't train highly-skilled people you can't just pick it back up when you want, is estimated to produce electricity at an all-in cost that is a little less than twice that of solar, and twice that of terrestrial wind. Wind installed in the sea is pricier than the EPR. The already-built NPPs are the second-cheapest of the lot, behind geothermal.

Source, in French: https://prix-elec.com/energie/production

The same argument according to which solar panels and such will become cheaper as demand increases (because of economies of scale and technical improvements) also applies to nuclear power plants.

https://www.lazard.com/research-insights/2023-levelized-cost...

> The same argument according to which solar panels and such will become cheaper as demand increases (because of economies of scale and technical improvements) also applies to nuclear power plants.

The French nuclear scale-up famously did negative learning by doing. Economics of scale is not something you can assume. This is from before Flamanvile 3 started, that is even more negative learning.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03014...

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