Comment by mpweiher | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mpweiher | Hacker News Reader

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> In practice it is expensive to build, expensive to run, and really expensive to clean up.

That turns out not to be the case.

Nuclear power plants are expensive, but that's because they are big. For the amount of electricity they generate, they are cheap.

They are also quite cheap to run. As far as I know, there is no cheaper source of electricity than a nuclear power plant that has paid off its construction costs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbeJIwF1pVY

And they run for a long time, if you don't do stupid shit like ban nuclear power. The US has so far extended the operating license of every nuclear plant that has applied to 80 years, and they now thin 100 years is a realistic option.

> There's a reason they're mostly run by govts.

Most nuclear power plants in the US are privately run, last I checked. So were the nuclear power plants in Germany. In Germany, the Greens tried to force nuclear power to become uneconomical by ever stricter regulations. They failed. Nuclear power had to be outlawed.

> Private capital has no appetite for nuclear

This turns out not to be the case.

https://world-nuclear.org/net-zero-nuclear/news/internationa...

https://www.nucnet.org/news/polish-billionaire-to-invest-gbp...

Also, the hyperscalars, for example, have all invested in nuclear. The biggest risk to nuclear is governments, which is why private investors want assurances or the government on board.

> wait till you find out what fusion-on-earth costs...

What does it cost?

> Nuclear power plants are expensive, but that's because they are big. For the amount of electricity they generate, they are cheap.

Not according to the standard statistic for electricity generation cost - LCOE which amortizes capital costs.

> They are also quite cheap to run. As far as I know, there is no cheaper source of electricity than a nuclear power plant that has paid off its construction costs.

The are not cheap to run. Indian Point closed ahead of end-of-life because it couldn't support its operational costs - about $31 per MWh - about $500m per annum. Average wholesale prices at the time were around $28/MWh.

> Not according to the standard statistic for electricity generation cost - LCOE

According to the IEA it is. If you think nuclear LCOE is high, then you probably looked at the Lazard data. But Lazard themselves say that their figures for nuclear are not representative and that they did not try to make them representative.

Here is the Vice Chairman for Energy at Lazard:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16HVh_Fx6LQ

“We do not, in this study, try to cost out new nuclear” (2:35)

“We think nuclear will be a big part of the future” (2:47)

“the costs of nuclear should go down “ (12:54)

“next five to 10 years the nuclear bar the one that's most likely to change the most in in terms of cost reduction” (14:06)

If you look at other sources than Lazard, for example the IEA, you will find that even nuclear LCOE is low.

However, LCOE is actually not the correct metric, as it only covers the cost of producing electricity from that source. It doesn't capture the cost of intermittent sources, which have very high system costs due to their intermittency.

Levelized Full System of Electricity (LFSCOE) is what you need to look at that, and there nuclear does well and intermittent are generally horrible, and they get worse the more of them you have. So you need to balance intermittent with stable providers like nuclear. And no, batteries are not sufficient, except maybe in the Sahara.

Here is the Finnish environment minister:

""If we consider the [consumption] growth figures, the question isn't whether it's wind or nuclear power. We need both," Mykkänen said at a press conference on Tuesday morning.

He added that Finland's newest nuclear reactor, Olkiluoto 3, enabled the expansion of the country's wind power infrastructure. Nuclear power, he said, is needed to counterbalance output fluctuations of wind turbines."

https://yle.fi/a/74-20136905

> [Nuclear power plants] are not cheap to run.

Yes they are. One counterexample does not disprove this, even if it were a valid counterexample, which it is not.

Wholesale prices that don't include various externalities are not a valid counterexample.

Nuclear power plants are expensive because 95% of the cost of the produced MWH is in building the plant.

If you avoid irrelevant comparisons of costs (e.g. vs intermittent sources), nuclear is actually attractively priced.

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