COP28: Countries launch declaration to triple nuclear energy by 2050 | Hacker News Reader

COP28: Countries launch declaration to triple nuclear energy by 2050

energy.gov

46 pointsanigbrowl52 comments

While I'm for nuclear, I hope that it's not used as a cop-out to do nothing now.

Which is what it often feels like locally. "I'm against these new windmills being built, we should instead build nuclear" is quite common to hear. Especially from climate deniers, so it's often more of a stalling technique to undermine green energy.

We need the power now. Not in 15+ years. Of course, the best time to start would then have been yesterday. But we don't have nuclear in my country (Norway), I don't believe we could be efficient in building it. I'd rather our neighbors do it, that already has it (Sweden), and then we build what we're good at, and then we share the grid (ala ACER).

A report from this week (in Norwegian) by Rystad Energy concluded that they don't believe it would be beneficial for Norway to look into nuclear at the moment. https://www.nho.no/tema/energi-miljo-og-klima/artikler/kjern...

For Europe (the continent and the EU) it totally makes sense to have a common grid - as it has already now. Nuclear in France, solar in Spain,... this diversity has served Europe well in the last decades.

But you are right. Those who are against windmills always mention nuclear as alternatives, but you can bet 100% they would be even more against a nuclear reactor in their neighborhood.

At least in Spain, the municipality that holds de radioactive waste or the reactors are very eager to have them because they get a lot of money either from the government or the electric utility. The biggest complainers are the nearby municipalities, that receive nothing but have to deal with nuclear being around.

And then you have things like Chooz plant (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chooz_Nuclear_Power_Plant#/map...), that is technically in France but is more in Belgic than France. Plants in the border like Gravelines, Cattenom, Fessenheim, or as far as possible from big cities like Flamanville, Paluei, Penly, Brennilis. In fact, Flamanville (one of the biggest planned plant in France) or Gravelines are closer to London than to Paris. Cattenom closer (and upwind) to Frankfurt or Luxemburg than to Paris. Fessenheim would be in Germany if it was build 1 mile/km to the east. They also built a lot of reactors in the highly seismic area of west Alps, but if something happened to any of them, the winds would carry the spicy cloud to Switzerland, Italy or Germany.

Okay, but aren't these countries benefiting from French energy being imported?

It helps to remind them that there is no free lunch.

We should be doing all these things in parallel, yes. If we accidentally end up with "too much" low carbon energy that is fine, industry will scale to can use it up.

I don't like these arguments about not knowing how to build nuclear power plants and the whole per county approach. This is a huge project each country might only do once every decade or more, so we need a multinational team building it. If they do one every year that is better for building experience and improves safety.

Wind power is intermittent in most regions in Europe, without expensive storage it just extends the lifetime of coal plants that are then used as an indefinite "backup".

We need to get back to the building times of the 80s in Sweden for nuclear. The korean nuclear plants have the fastest building time these days after the chinese, so no surprise they will be building the new ones in Poland

Combinations of solar, wind, batteries, and (crucially) some e-fuel like hydrogen enables a 100% RE grid to work even in Europe, at a cost that new construction nuclear will have trouble matching. Europe, particularly eastern Europe, is one of the last places nuclear makes any sense, but even that is an expiring refuge as renewables and storage continue to improve in the face of massive demand driving them down experience curves.

Any words about what a country will do 27 years in the future are worth very little. Few or none of the politicians speaking the words will still be around.

Norway has large hydro resources. They are acting as Europe's battery, in a way. That means power sources there are competing purely on levelized cost of energy, where new nuclear cannot come close to winning.

If Norway really wanted to invest into more energy production, then infusing more research money into tidal power would likely results in better returns than nuclear.

Sweden mostly need nuclear power in order to stop burning oil/biofuel. The southern part of Sweden regularly need more energy than get produce, and thus the oil plant located there need to operate at almost 24/7. It is the single largest source of pollution by a very large margin. A nuclear plant in that region would also help Denmark reduce their footprint when the weather is sub optimal for wind production. More wind energy is likely not going to cause much harm (except when placed onto nature reserves), but the issue with the oil plant is also not going to be solved by more wind energy. Denmark is already well over 100% wind capacity.

Tripling nuclear until 2050 is too little and too late to stop CO2-emissions in the energy sector. And looking at the issues western countries have even just replacing old reactors with new ones, it is also a highly unrealistic goal.

Based on current exponential growth curves, we get 100% of current electricity demand (even after allowing for capacity factor) just from just PV some time around 2032, and 100% of all current primary energy demand 3.5 years after that. And that's without counting any contribution from wind, geothermal, tidal, etc.

Practically this means some combination of the exponential turning sigmoid or energy use going up; but even so, CO2 from energy is no longer something I'm worried about. All the other CO2 sources (steel, aluminium, concrete), all the other non-renewable resources (phosphate), all the other environmental problems (biodiversity loss)? Those are still things to be solved (solutions are known for many and possibly all, but now they must be proven economically). CO2 though, especially from energy, that problem I think we're going to resolve.

Supplying world primary energy demand from PV, if the historical experience curve continues, could drove the cost of PV energy to less than $0.01/kWh, perhaps much less.

Save the world and get rich trying.

From an economic point of view, this is a catastrophe. Solar panels will become more and more efficient, making nuclear power an utterly expensive alternative. Private investors are building plants everywhere in my region.

Not only solar panels, but windmills as well

Why can’t we apply liberal market forces to nuclear energy? If it was worth it, heaps of corporations would be investing in it.

Unless everyone starts building them tomorrow, I wouldn't worry too much. Commitments from these events are mostly empty promises, so if wind and solar are looking that much cheaper in five years, I'm sure they'd switch.

Part of the game will be to get other countries to sign contracts with the supplier before that realisation hits. They'll have decades of construction and further decades of expensive power to regret their decision by which time the sales team will have long retired.

That kind of corruption is common even when the person selling the dream is getting money from their own country's people. It steps up a gear when you are selling the dream to other nations.

Nuclear already is the expensive alternative. Just in the beginning of Nov, NuScale Power terminated its much hyped SMR projects in Utah [1]. Target price for these was $89 per megawatt hour. Wind and solar are what, ~$25/MWh currently?

[1] https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/nuscale-power-uamps-...

Note that the target price (which probably wasn't going to be achieved) also involved about $30/MWh of federal subsidies, and the target assumed 40-50 reactor modules being built (it was not the price for those first six modules for CFPP).

It was clear what was going to happen after they announced the price increase late in 2022/early 2023. NuScale carefully stopped making positive statements that could get them personally sued and the executives started unloading their stock.

Is that including storage? Renewables at unusable at scale without it, since they're intermittent sources. Also France has ~$50/MWh nuclear power.

> From an economic point of view, this is a catastrophe. Solar panels will become more and more efficient, making nuclear power an utterly expensive alternative. Private investors are building plants everywhere in my region.

Nonsensical comment.

Perhaps you should consider the environment damage that comes from the manufacture of solar panels and their disposal at EOL.

First of all you don't even state what your region is.

Europeans and Americans created regulations which make nuclear energy ridiculously expensive.

Due to regulatory environment which means regulators can introduce additonal conditions at the drop of hat the time it takes to build nuclear power stations is simply undecidable.

The Japanese and Koreans build nuclear plants in 5 years tops where as in the US it might take 30 years to finish a plant because the regulators keep on piling on new conditions when nothing in the environment has essentially changed.

You would think that in the West experience gained in designing, building and managing nuclear plants would mean improved designs with each new generation. Not so.

You're hitting all the usual nuke bro talking points there, but they are utterly without merit. Nuclear is struggling everywhere, even in China (relative to renewable installation) where it ostensibly has full support. This isn't because of regulatory obstacles, but because of the inherent inferiority of the technology.

> even in China (relative to renewable installation)

To be fair PRC has finally, recently, as in last few years, started building indigenous nuclear relatively economically which appear to be performing around original expectations. What happened / what PRC couldn't seem to do, like the west, is build _western_ nuclear tech economically, even (if one choose to presume) without onerous western regulations. PRC nuclear ambition under 13th 5-year plan was delayed largely due Fukushima reassessement and drama over original pursuit of western nuclear tech (French EPR / US AP1000 technical and political issues like US sanctions / Westinghouse bankruptcy) forcing PRC planners to switch to domestic tech, which is now coming online. Current 14th 5-year plan still aiming for ~180-200 GWe by 2035 with ~150 reactors, which is in line with mid 2010s assessments.

What is also happening is PRC rapidly scaling up coal and solar, due to geopolitics of rushing energy security and lower renewable costs. No one expected renewable to scale so fast so cheaply. Another huge factor is PRC crack down on real estate shifted construction overcapacity into building renewables. 10s of millions of surplus construction workers + skills building skyscrapers and building solar and wind that is relatively transferable. Combined with vertical integration and industrial base, it's set of conditions hard to replicate in advanced economies unless they import a lot of labour. Which is not impossible.

Advanced economies also disadvantaged in labour with respect to nuclear, even in US with immigration, fulfiling nuclear workforce demand is currently projected to be a large challenge. EU likely more difficult with their demographics. Last thing you want is to build a bunch of nuclear plants that are chronically short on labour. PRC on other hand, despite demographic doomsayers, still has depth to generate millions of STEM/technical workers for decades (hence youth unemployment). I don't really know what the solution for EU is, but I'm guessing politically, they'd rather deal with nuclear plants and prioritizing lower # of nuclear workforce than immigration to build renewables. If there's any urgency, EU would have to import millions of (let's be real) brown people. IIRC, EU has like 100m more people than US and 1M clean energy workers vs US 3M. Can EU bring in 3M workers short term to get renewable rollout on pace? Again, not impossible. But politically difficult.

But not Germany.

Technically, Germany has already met their share of the requirements, well ahead of schedule.

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/w/d... Germany is prety high up there.

(You missed the joke that they’ve already managed to triple their current nuclear capacity… i.e. 0 x 3 = 0)

My immediate reaction too — zero surprise of course but it’s ridiculous given recent events

The dependency on Russian gas was bad but Russia is also controlling 40% of the worlds uranium conversion capacities.

https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-nuclear-power-industry-graphi...

CANDU reactors use un-enriched Uranium. Technology exists, and has been in use for half a century.

But the German government has stopped ALL research in nuclear power usage. Even if there was a safe and cheap solition that would not make us dependent from Russia, Germany would not find it because they decided to not even try. It is an absolute disgrace.

The German federal government is funding Wendelstein 7-X, a large, experimental fusion reactor of the stellerator type, to a high degree (9/10 of 80% = 72% as it seems?), so this statement cannot be true in general (maybe you are thinking only of nuclear fission research?).

Stellarators (like tokamaks) have terrible volumetric power density, so it's really doubtful they can ever be made economically competitive, even with fission as it currently exists.

The modern Advanced CANDU reactor in fact does use moderately enriched uranium. The cost of enrichment has fallen greatly since the original designs, so the benefit of using natural uranium has mostly dissipated, and enrichment provides some operational benefits.

40 % is not bad. That leaves 60 % other suppliers.

Germany bets its future on solar, wind and H2. That will be interesting experiment. Who will have the lower cost/kWh in the end?

Definitely not nuclear, it’s a great source of energy but really expensive, susceptible to temperature changes, requires well trained technicians.

But Germany doesn’t really have a coherent plan. The country will continue to depend on nuclear from neighboring countries.

H2 is a pie in the sky. Betting your future on this is pure insanity.

Green H2 is projected to get cheap enough that a combined cycle plant running as a base load source on green hydrogen would be economically superior to a new construction nuclear power plant. Of course, a 100% RE grid needn't operate any hydrogen plant in base load mode, only to fill in gaps not covered by direct use of solar, wind, and batteries. Very little H2 is actually needed to cover dunkelflauten; somewhat more might be useful for seasonal leveling.

As it stands now it will be a disastrous experiment which will (and already has) affect(ed) the rest of north-western Europe due to the interconnected nature of the electricity network. Electricity prices in the lower half of Sweden have risen dramatically due to this and also due to the fact that our own 'progressive/green' politicos took down half the nuclear generation capacity based on ideological reasoning.

This poses a number of questions:

- will these ideologically driven apparatchiks ever be held accountable in some way or will they just glide through the promotion circus and end up in cushy positions as ambassador in some warm country, in some UN organisation or as head of some NGO or (like Schroeder [1]) in the board of Gazprom or some similar organisation?

- if Germany continues to de-industrialise due to a shortage of affordable power it will only be harder to reach that pie in the sky called the H₂-based economy - can this downward spiral be halted in some way?

- how does a country's responsibility to help stabilise the European grid interact with another country's irresponsible experimentation with that stability?

While the climate-apostles have boarded their private jets for yet another posh gathering the temperature has steadily dropped, the land is white and frozen and electricity prices have risen up to tenfold. Gas prices are still low but that does not help for those who listened to the apostles and replaced their gas-burning central heating for an electric heat pump. Solar does not help either when snow covers the panels which look out over a steely-gray snow-laden sky (source: I just looked out of the window) nor does wind (source: same the before).

[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/gerhard-schr...

In a post-fossil fuel age, Germany is fucked energywise anyway compared to sun-drenched lower latitude countries. Unless nuclear in Germany can compete with solar in these places (competing with solar in Germany is not enough), German energy-intensive industries will operate at a great disadvantage.

That is not correct. Once the energy cost goes below a certain level, it simply is no longer important compared to other factors like human resources, tax, infrastructure,... .

Example: If the kWh/h costs 2 cent in Germany and only 1 cent in country X, that 100% difference would not matter, even for the most energy hungry industries.

Renewable energy has to get cheaper than it currently is before it becomes less of an economic input than fossil fuels currently are, for many industrial processes. For example, in production of iron renewable energy is competing against the raw chemical energy of coke.

> In a post-fossil fuel age, Germany is fucked energywise anyway compared to sun-drenched lower latitude countries

Assuming that the 'greens' either get the boot or a revelation which leads to new nuclear power stations being built in Germany I'd say they'll be more than fine at night while during the day they'll be able to use their installed and yet to be installed solar capacity in addition to their base load capacity.

If and when the long-term energy storage problem is solved in an actually useable way [1] this can change but until that time any country or region intent on going 'fully renewable' will need a backup base load capacity for those times the sun and wind are absent. The former happens predictably every night and less predictably when the skies are overcast, the latter is as predictable as the weather. That base load can - assuming that 'non-renewable/non-nuclear' sources are out - be nuclear or (possibly pumped) hydroelectric. If the geography allows for (pumped) hydro and if the local 'greens' do not get laws (re)written to block the establishment of such infrastructure that would offer a long-term solution. Realistically speaking most places which allow for large-scale hydroelectric facilities probably already have them. This leaves nuclear power... which is expensive to establish but cheap to run. This combination of facts makes nuclear a good base load provider since running a nuclear power plant at or near maximum capacity does not add much to the expenditures but means the investment in building the plant and the related processing/waste storage facilities is recuperated sooner. Adding solar and wind to the mix will lead to an excess in power during the times these sources produce which will necessitate lowering the output of the nuclear plant which in turn means the investment in building it will take longer before the investment is recuperated.

[1] something like 'e-fuels' using captured CO₂ and generated H₂ to create synthetic hydrocarbons - possible but extremely energy-inefficient - or some yet to be developed process

The proposal I've heard for using CO2 to make e-fuels for grid storage would work like this:

1) Electrolyze water to H2 and O2. 2) Store the O2 (either as compressed gas or LOX). 3) Use the H2 with CO2 to make hydrocarbons or other fuels (methanol?). 4) The fuel is eventually burned in Allam cycle turbines, using the stored oxygen to burn the fuel in compressed CO2 (oxyfuel combustion). The produced CO2 of combustion comes off with water and is easily separated for storage for use in step (3).

This still has storage (oxygen, CO2, and the produced fuel) but these may be easier than storing hydrogen in locations without suitable geology.

Solar with battery storage seems to have passed nuclear on price 4 years ago, when it was 2-3x more expensive than it is today and perhaps 10x more expensive than it will be before a new nuclear plant can be finished.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2019/07/01/new-sola...

If that's true (and I see no reason to doubt it) Germany will make the cheapest energy in the EU by a country mile in just a few years. Unfortunately, they are bound by treaties to cover the cost of nuclear in other countries, so it won't help them as much as it could.

The main problem for solar+storage is that centralized, government-controlled energy production is a huge cash cow for the state. In the EU, the price of electricity gives the governments extra income both when they sell electricity and when they tax the consumption. They can basically drain money from the population at will.

I see this declaration as a step to keep things that way, it just makes no sense otherwise.

I was told at one point that storage in Germany is inhibited because an entity wanting to operate grid-connected storage had to pay tax on the energy used to charge the storage (and then the output would be taxed again by whoever ultimately consumed it.)

How long do the batteries last? What happens after a week or cloudy winter weather?

Battery storage typically seems to smooth out production over about 24hrs, not multiple days and certainly not seasons.

Dunkelflauten (and seasonal leveling) are covered by use of an e-fuel like hydrogen.

You can see this effect in action at the optimization/simulation site https://model.energy/ Go there, solve for Germany (2011 weather data, 2030 cost assumptions), then disable hydrogen and try again. The optimum cost nearly doubles.

Interestingly, this simulation also suggests a 95% cost increase if Germany tried to do it without e-fuel/power-to-X (which it estimates would need to cover about 8% of demand)

https://www.wartsila.com/static/energy-vision/#/country/DE

Germany has no newly educated technical personal, has no place to store the used fuel, and a majority of the public doesn‘t want it due to the risks in this densely populated country.

We have build a lot of solar and wind though. And more is coming after years of right leaning parties blocking wind. As far as I know it‘s cheaper to build than nuclear, isn‘t it?

Oh come on. Germans have developed a completely irrational fear of nuclear energy, and everything is just a result of this.

Driving cost of nuclear power plants up as much as possible was a political decision. Not finding a permanent storage was a political decision.

Not having any personell was a poltical decision. What do you expect if you shut down modern and perfectly working power plants, and stop research in nuclear power?

Alternative energy is more expensive, as you can see on your energy bill. I am paying 45€ per khW. How come electricity is so much cheaper in France?

According to official statistics [1], in 2022 Germany produced 33% of its electricy from coal (up from 30% coal in 2021). Of this coal, one third is brown coal. Judging from these numbers, the situation in Germany is a catastrophy from an ecological standpoint. Any german green that acted agains nuclear in Germany should feel deeply ashamed for what was achieved in the country. A green catastrophy in a country that could have been a leader! A national shame, I say.

[1] https://www.destatis.de/EN/Press/Graphics/Energy/2023/_Inter...

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