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Comment by chadash | Hacker News Reader

Don't get me wrong, it is great that we can harness wind and solar to generate tons of electricity. But as the article points out, they aren't consistent enough to provide electricity that's always on, which is something our society is built to expect. Last year, Contruction-Physics.com put out a great 3-part article on why nuclear is so expensive. It's worth a read [1]. But long story short, we hardly build them anymore (we last finished a new plant in 2016 and there are two more currently under construction, which takes many years) and regulations change all the time so there are very few people with real expertise at putting them together. And talented people certainly don't want to go into the field, because there's no guarantee of consistent work.

[1] https://www.construction-physics.com/p/why-are-nuclear-power...

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I have a cabin with no grid connection.

It has solar panels, batteries, and a gas generator.

Last year, I used the generator one time, for four hours. So, with a half gallon of gasoline, I ran a 1000sq ft home for 365 days.

We can build a grid, today, the same way. It will produce 95-98% less CO2 (depending on which papers you read), while keeping enough gas capacity as backup for those few hours or days, just like my cabin.

While we work towards 80-90% clean capacity, we commercialize the tech to replace the gas.

Nuclear gives electricity continuously. I wonder what happens with earnings for the owner, when a lot of electricity gets generated by wind and solar, with prices moving up and down even more than now. If a nuclear installation is so expensive in fixed costs, will the owner earn it back in 30 or 40 years. I don't know ofcourse, but it does sound like a risk to me.

Gas turbines fit this scenario much better, you turn them on when wind and solar is down. The same with batteries. Batteries aren't in the news much, but there are quite some huge batteries online already, and that might pay off for the owner (buy low, sell high).

They're more consistent than people think - especially when anticorrelated solar and wind are paired.

Power is cheaper to store than people think.

Nuclear power is worse on all dimensions than people think.

How do you store power cheaply? We don’t have the have capability yet. Doesn’t mean we can’t figure it out, but until then we need consistent power. nuclear power is great because the materials are cheap and abundant and the power is very stable. Even the disposal is much safer “than most people think”.

>until then we need consistent power.

We get it in the form of gas peakers. So does France, when it's nuclear power stations aren't matching demand.

>nuclear power is great because the materials are cheap and abundant

It is by far the most expensive form of power humanity produces, nearly all due to capital costs. Its main benefit is that it shares some of the costs of building nukes and preparing for nuke readiness - this being why Iran, Sweden and South Korea build them and why the US military industrial complex keeps trying to greenwash it.

One thing the nuclear-military industrial complex hasn't pointed out is that the materials are very Russia dependent. Gas from Russia = bad. Uranium? Peachy. It is cheap though.

>the power is very stable.

Not worth 5x the cost to have a steady 1GW output when you can pair something 1/5th of the cost with some pumped storage.

>Even the disposal is much safer

If you do it safely it's much more expensive than people think.

The operation of nuclear power plants isn't particularly safe though, which is why the private sector point blank refuses to insure against a Fukushima type event. This is why the government says don't worry if that happens, joe taxpayer will foot the $1 trillion bill. You. Me.

Didn't answer the question

>How do you store power cheaply?

Pumped storage (short term), batteries (short term), hydrogen (seasonal).

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