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Comment by ZeroGravitas | Hacker News Reader

> Nuclear might be more expensive per MWh pure electricity cost-wise, but the full system with storage, balancing and distribution costs is much more complicated=expensive

This is a current talking point in Australia. "Yes we admit it's more expensive per kWh but it'll be cheaper overall".

The national science agency didn't agree when it looked into it. They found it's more expensive per kWh and still more expensive after taking into account grid impacts.

So are you getting your information from your equivalent science agency or from the equivalent right wing politicians and press?

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You have academic theories, I'm getting practical information from my electricity invoice. The energy regulation office informed me about the necessary power grid operation budget increase through it when they doubled the distribution fee at the end of 2023. The budget (and fee) was stable for decades before this after accounting for inflation.

What grid impacts? The grid here has worked well for decades, there is no comparable grid impact from replacing coal and gas with nuclear. I guess it's different in Australia but this is a very densely populated small country, replacing 3 thermal power plants with 1 nuclear has zero impact on the grid and you can reuse parts of the thermal plant and infrastructure around it.

The politicians are busy talking about migrants and the Russian war, so I can't read anything about this from them even if I wanted to.

> right wing politicians and press?

Is nuclear right-wing now? I thought the right wing were all for coal; nuclear is an ideal replacement for coal. Non-dispatchable renewables play nice with fossil fuels since the plants have to stay online for bad days; the fossil fuel lovers should love them too (though I agree that they don't seem to)

The fossil fuel suppliers don't like fossil plants being kept online just in case, they like it when the fuel is actually burned in large quantities and then more is bought from them. That's how they make their money.

They did however like to say that renewables would lead to more fuel being burned, even though that never made a lick of sense, because that helped them delay renewables and so burn even more fossil fuels. And some people believed that, even though it's doesn't make any sense.

Nuclear fills that same, "this makes no sense but if you repeat it enough it'll delay progress on renewables and allow for more fossil fuels to be sold/burned" role in right-wing messaging.

Again, that might be true in Australia, but there are zero fossil fuel suppliers where I live. Coal mines were closed a decade ago because there was no more blank coal left and we have zero gas.

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