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Comment by flakeoil | Hacker News Reader

You probably have to look at the whole picture. Having part of the energy generation from nuclear probably makes the total cheaper than having no nuclear. Even if nuclear maybe is the most expensive.

Not having enough energy or having it cut off by a neighbour is very expensive.

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That is not the case. Grid modelers always land on renewables being cheaper. Except for the cases when the studies start with "assuming cheap and fast to build nuclear power".

https://www.pv-magazine.com/2026/04/17/new-metric-shows-rene...

That is not the case. There are LCOLC, LFSCOE and others which land on renewables being way more expensive. Even without your made up claim about "assuming cheap and fast to build nuclear power".

Which are extremely simplified metrics.

Like the LFSCOE study is only using one source of renewables through all weather together with 2020 data on battery costs.

Which is why I linked a recent full system analysis. With Danish data so a vastly harder problem than a place with abundant solar. So tell me what they missed.

They even tilted the study heavily towards nuclear power and assumed that the nuclear costs are 40% lower than Flamanville 3 and 70% lower than Hinkley Point C while modeling solar as 20% more expensive.

Still finding that renewables are vastly cheaper when it comes to meeting a real grid load.

you should be very careful with 'papers' written by people that stayed at the core of Danish antinuclear movement like Henrik Lund (famous “for me, nuclear power is not a dream. It’s a nightmare. My dream is renewable energy”, but there are more interesting turns there, including EnergyPLAN which was criticized a lot for it's nonsense assumptions which I can bet is used here too. It was so severe that the issue was addressed in a peer reviewed publication https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030626192... ) and a paper that includes frauds like jacobson in citations. These two are famous for citation rings and both are public antinuclear activists.

I can bet they have very "optimistic" estimations for Hydrogen and gas firming on top of the most evident issues adressed in peer review

I do notice that you are talking about past papers rather than this current one.

You also link another of the typical studies desperately trying to shove new built nuclear power into contention.

It looks like this: ”If we assume nuclear power is cheap and fast to build”.

Do the same for renewables and storage and the comparison becomes even more lopsided.

I talked about current one too.

I've linked not a "typical studie" but a peer reviewed correction to the mistakes of the original paper.

Ironically we already know the answer about speed. Check out how TWh/y of clean power evolved in Denmark vs UAE with Barakah built by Korea

In which the peer review presents numbers that’s a fraction of all modern western nuclear power while not giving renewables the same benefit.

> Check out how TWh/y of clean power evolved in Denmark vs UAE with Barakah built by Korea

This tells me you are entirely out of your depth.

You do realize that what we care about are cumulative emissions? You also have to compare it by grid size.

The shining beacon in UAE you lift have a horrendous gCO2/kWh of 468 while Denmark sits at 114. Starting at 650.

Calling that what UAE achieved a success means you don’t care about decarbonization, only trillions in handouts to your pet technology.

You can inspect how that paper was peer reviewed by pointing out what was wrong with it) To me it's wild how people are defending nonsense written by frauds like Lund and Jacobson, both heavy antinuclear proponents that treat hydrogen as some dirt cheap power firming option

The discussion was about speed anyway. UAE achieved higher TWh of clean power than both Denmark and Portugal in less time, as simple as that - this is undeniable

The statement about "handouts of trillions to pet technology" shows you just don't care about emissions, you hate nuclear. Per IPEX nuclear gets 15x less subsidies vs renewables in EU. Germany spent on EEG alone double the cost of entire french nuclear fleet, the gap getting wider. From this year transmission will be subsidized too because DE households have highest prices in EU, close to Denmark. But i guess subsidies for your favorite technology are fine and for the rest it's absolute evil.

Saying that UAE didn't achieve success with it's Barakah is either delusion or willingness to ignore reality.

You do realize that you went completely off the rails here?

I still haven't seen you levy a single factual criticism to the methodology in the paper I linked. It is just you lashing out.

Again you don't care about cumulative emissions, or the grid size.

https://imgur.com/a/09DMS72

And this is the graphs if you assume that renewables never become perfect:

https://imgur.com/a/WrLUrwK

You do realize based on these graphs that every investment in nuclear power just leads to more emissions?

Now lets talk about your TWh per year figure, comparing apples to oranges. UAEs grid is 184 TWh. Why didnt UAE do like Germany and deployed 196 TWh renewabels in that time and completely decarbonize their grid?

Are you realize how absolutely stupid you sound trying to compare TWh per year figures without referencing the grid size?

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