Comment by ViewTrick1002 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ViewTrick1002 | Hacker News Reader

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This comment shows that you don’t really grasp how the German grid works.

The German grid is currently constrained north-south due to limited transmission capacity. Over production of renewables in the north and over consumption in the south.

The reactors the pro-nuclear lobby in Germany identified as ”most easily restartable” are in the north.

Therefore restarting them is a pure waste of money. It does not solve any problems Germany has with its grid.

Then it comes down to the cost question. You can maintain a piece of infrastructure forever but at some point the costs does not justify the gain. Better spend the money on renewables and storage instead.

An example of such stupidity is Diablo Canyon in California requiring a $12B subsidy on top of regular income for selling electricity to run 5 extra years from 2025 to 2030.

You do know that France is on a downward trend of nuclear power as well? Reactors are entering end of life and the EPR2 program is in absolute shambles.

Currently they can’t even agree on how to fund the absolutely insanely bonkers subsidies.

Now targeting investment decision in H2 2026… And the French government just fell because they are underwater in debt and have a spending problem which they can’t agree on how to fix.

A massive handout to the dead end nuclear industry sounds like the perfect solution!

>Over production of renewables in the north and over consumption in the south.

Well I guess it is impossible to upgrade the grid in any kind of reasonable timeframe in Germany. There are still other options that could be done to hasten the end of burning coal - I pointed out a few, there are likely others.

>Then it comes down to the cost question. You can maintain a piece of infrastructure forever but at some point the costs does not justify the gain. Better spend the money on renewables and storage instead.

Yes it is a question. Unfortunately you have given no evidence of the actual costs.

>...You do know that France is on a downward trend of nuclear power as well?

In 2014 France set a goal to reduce nuclear's share of electricity generation to 50% by 2025. This target was delayed in 2019 to 2035, before being abandoned in 2023. (I am sure France is also trying to increase renewables and storage.)

>An example of such stupidity is Diablo Canyon in California requiring a $12B subsidy on top of regular income for selling electricity to run 5 extra years from 2025 to 2030.

This comment shows you don't really grasp the issue of power in CA. The 12 billion dollar estimate included costs unrelated to Diablo Canyon according to PG&E. Their estimate is closer to 8B, of which the majority will be covered by selling the electricity. They have a 1.1 billion dollar grant to help with some of the rest, though unclear how much the state will have to subsidize things in the end. The issue is that Diablo Canyon provides about 1/4 of the clean power in CA and can provide it when renewables can't - like every other place, CA currently has a tiny amount of grid storage. Without Diablo Canyon, CA will likely have to buy power from coal plants in other states. So CA is willing to pay extra to avoid having to burn coal. That is different than Germany that decided it would rather burn coal than use nuclear.

We will see when Germany actually stops during fossil fuels. Unfortunately, there certainly do seem to be some advocates of solar/wind who would prefer to go decades (or maybe much longer) burning coal and killing people and destroying the environment when their country had the option to use a clean energy source.

Upgrades are on the way but you were trying to frame it as a desperate issue to solve immediately, without realizing your solution didn’t solve anything.

For evidence have a read:

https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/news/2024/06/pge-quietly-s...

Just keep hiking the rates in a monopolized system. All good!

You do know that California in recent years has cut fossil gas usage by 40% due to storage? Many evenings batteries are the largest producer in the Californian grid for hours on end. Happened yesterday for example.

But batteries are of course insignificant. Just delivering the equivalent to 8 nuclear reactors pretty much removing the duck curve.

I suggest you update your worldview to 2025.

https://www.caiso.com/todays-outlook/supply

>…Upgrades are on the way but you were trying to frame it as a desperate issue to solve immediately, without realizing your solution didn’t solve anything.

It is only non-urgent if a country wants to minimize the people it is killing by recklessly burning coal. Otherwise, no big deal.

>…For evidence have a read:

Yes I had seen that. Which is why I wrote:

>>…The 12 billion dollar estimate included costs unrelated to Diablo Canyon according to PG&E. Their estimate is closer to 8B, of which the majority will be covered by selling the electricity. They have a 1.1 billion dollar grant to help with some of the rest, though unclear how much the state will have to subsidize things in the end.

CA battery capacity has had better growth than I thought. Though there is obviously a difference between batteries to provide power for a few hours a day and a plant that would provide power 24/7. Diablo Canyon provides close to 18,000 GWh per year of clean power. If that goes away this year, it will obviously take a while to be able to replace the power with other clean power.

> minimize

Countries don’t actually minimize anything largely due to diminishing returns. Hell the US has lost many nuclear weapons, that’s the kind of thing that seems like it should be a much larger priority but all budgets end up being finite.

> a plant that would provide power 24/7

Solar + batteries provide more electricity in CA than nuclear for roughly 16 hours a day. Midnight to 5AM demand is so low they are actually charging grid batteries, something that could be cheaply time shifted to daytime solar if demand actually increased. New nuclear just doesn’t fit especially if it’s taking 4+ years to build.

>...Midnight to 5AM demand is so low they are actually charging grid batteries

This is misleading. Demand from midnight to 5 AM in CA is much higher than you imply and unfortunately the largest provider of power at night is generally natural gas.

As I said before:

>>Diablo Canyon provides close to 18,000 GWh per year of clean power. If that goes away this year, it will obviously take a while to be able to replace the power with other clean power.

>...New nuclear just doesn’t fit especially if it’s taking 4+ years to build.

I find that those who actually want to decarbonize the grid, don't particularly care what clean technology is used and different countries will have a different mix of technologies they use. The mix that works best in say CA, might not be what works best, in say, Canada.

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