ViewTrick1002

Which bullet is false? Be specific.

The Price-Anderson act and equivalents around the world tells a different story.

In Sweden in 2022 the right wing coalition which won promised new nuclear would appear if only it was allowed. Quickly they abandoned large scale nuclear in favor of SMR, PowerPoints reactors are always cheap.

Four years later, we are at:

- The state takes essentially all financial risk, even borrowing the money because Vattenfall refuses to put it on its own balance sheet.

- The state provides a huge direct taxpayer handout.

- The state takes the construction risk. Cost overruns means taxpayers put in more.

- The state subsidizes the entire final waste repository.

- The state subsidizes roughly the entire accident liability.

- The state guarantees the electricity price for 40 years.

That rather proves the point about what happens when new nuclear meets actual financing conditions.

And right wing coaltion just lost the latest election two weeks ago. Seems like we didn't get any new nuclear after all.

Given that the nuclear industry would shut down overnight if having to pay its own insurance costs it’s quite hard to take you seriously when you say it’s not subsidized.

How many hundreds of billions or trillions should we waste to get ”learnings” when renewables and storage is already the cheapest energy source in human history?

This line of thinking seems to start with that we must have new nuclear, for some reason, and then try to rationalize it.

That is 210 MW thermal. Which would produce about 70 MW electricity.

$2.8B for 70 MW is insanely expensive.

This assumes learning rates never seen by nuclear energy. Within generations we've seen small learnings, and between generations the nuclear energy has been all negative learning by doing.

That’s for the whole economy.

Transport is generally put at - 15-25% increase. Due to both needing less refinement and transport, and just how efficient BEVs are.

We did try to build nuclear. Massive subsidy programs were created, it just didn’t deliver.

Making an already uncompetitive energy source even more expensive.

Which we are replacing with renewables? Trying to shove fossil fuels into the picture seems like a false comparison?

"Multi pronged" works when different technologies complement each other. The problem is that renewables and nucelar power competes for the same slice, a battle nuclear loses with a mile. Any grid will include emergency reserves. But those optimize for lowest possible CAPEX and higher OPEX. Since they sit idle most of the time.

Nuclear power has the opposite spread of ruinously expensive CAPEX and acceptable OPEX.

I would say the pandemic shows that you do not need to account for every possibility. Humanity is amazing at adapting itself and finding new solutions to the problem at hand, rather than wasting all our resources trying to prevent the next made up disaster.

This is why we model with 10 year winters, X00 year floods or similar. Fix reasonable problems, leave the tail risk as tail risk. The worst that happens are rolling blackouts until the grid adapts, which is no different than any other outage due to grid maintenance or someone cutting a cable with a digger.

This is having decided that we must waste money and resources on new nuclear, and trying to rationalize it.

We fix tail risks when we encounter them. Not by envisioning your pet ones to make your solution fit.

They just model the weather hour by hour. But you’re made up scenario is of course impossible to cover.

Or do you mean half the French nuclear fleet offline due to corrosion and cracking issues? Or the majority of the Eastern European due too hot or low rivers? Or half the Swedish fleet multiple times the last couple of years?

Please do tell what is wrong with the CSIRO GenCost.

If they were essentially free all plants would be built with them. Evidently they are not free.

We’ve solved both. The research has moved on from VALCOE to whole system modeling. Including transmission, storage, backup, firming and modeling it hour by hour.

Studies are converging on renewable energy systems being cheaper in climates ranging from Australia to the Nordics:

Some recent ones:

Finland, 2025: nuclear scenarios 71–84% higher system cost; unrestricted least-cost optimization builds zero new nuclear. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S036054422...

Denmark, 2026: system-level LCOE including storage, flexibility and system integration; renewables substantially cheaper than nuclear. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S036054422...

Australia, CSIRO + AEMO GenCost 2025–26: whole-system modelling including transmission, storage and firming; renewables + storage remain the lowest-cost net-zero pathway. https://www.csiro.au/en/research/technology-space/energy/Ele...

Look at the proposed EPR2 subsidies. It is interest free loans and €100 per MWh on top of that, while assuming large learning effects.

They are admitting Flamanville 3 like costs before they have even started building.

All these extra methods of preserving water adds cost, to a technology where paid off plants are struggling. Let alone ruinously expensive new builds.

Which proven French technology?

Given the outcome of Flamanville 3 and that the proposed subsidies for the EPR2 fleet are ruinously expensive France is unable to build competitive new nuclear.

Which is an argument for the Messmer plan half a century ago. Now what we spend our money on for the 2026 version of the Messmer plan.

Or build renewables and storage and get massively more energy, in a few years rather than in the 2040s.

Not sure where this fixation on new nuclear comes from?

Because nautical miles is an angle measurement which then happens to be 1852 meters when you break it down.

Nuclear power had already collapsed due to its own costs and timelines.

In hindsight it’s much easier to blame the accidents rather than face the structural problems nuclear power has.

Which has only been exacerbated by renewables and storage disrupting the global energy markets, forcing ”baseload” plants to become peakers. Against their will.

The problem is that we attempted to build nuclear power. It just didn’t deliver. There was massive state support behind it.

It is hard looking at Vogtle, Virgil C. Summer, Olkiluoto 3, Flamanville 3, Hinkley Point C, Hanhikivi and the countless cancelled projects and think: ”That’s what I want some more of!!”

This tells me you are not serious. The easiest nuclear reactors to restart, as per that same nuclear lobby group, were those in the north.

Northern Germany is already overproducing electricity, leading to curtailment of renewables.

What problem are you solving with even more overproduction in the north leading to re-dispatch?

> CfD is going strong in the UK; it seems about the only way of deploying it, given the revenue uncertainty associated with market saturation/cannibalisation.

> Denmark required CfDs too. https://windeurope.org/news/successful-danish-offshore-wind-...

I love you now are trying to smear off-shore wind costs on everything. Of course not lookign at solar, storage or on-shore wind.

Lets lookat those. In Germany, which still do CFD bids for solar, even though a ton get built on pure market value, the CFD bids today are below the market price for the capture-rate of their electricity.

The CFDs are also structured to not pay out when electricity is zero or negative. They trade money for a tiny bit of certainty. That is how far we've come.

> Of course, other subsidies exist. Feed in tariffs. Transmission charges. Capacity and ancillary service payments to provide services that solar/wind do not.

Who pays when half the French nuclear fleet is offline? Who pays when the majority of the eastern european nuclear fleet is offline? Who pays for the N+1 requirements coming from nuclear power being enormous single points of failures leading to large reserves being necessary?

People like you love to complain about these things, but you can never formulate a solution where nuclear power is required to pay for the problem large single points of failures cause in the grid.

The flip side is that what you are saying is that nuclear power will be commercially viable into the 2100s. And betting the house on that. While knowing that the electricity they provide is expensive enough to lead to energy poverty for generations.

That seems absolutely insane.

Jevons Paradox did not happen for nuclear power. What happened was crazy cost overruns, cancellations and the industry collapsing into its current state.

Who cares if we get to 95%, 97, 99% or 100% carbon neutral electricity when we still need to decarbonize agriculture, aviation, chemicals, industry, construction and so on?

Don't let perfect be the enemy of good enough. Transition that final firming to whatever carbon neutral sources we land on when their emissions matter in the late 2030s and 2040s.

We need to optimize decarbonization per dollar spent with the shortest time to market.

You do realize that renewable subsidies are being phased out all over the world? They aren't needed anymore. Complaining about "equality" because your desired solution didn't deliver in time is a kindergarten level argument.

We've spent the past 70 years subsidizing nuclear power. It just never delivered on its promise.

The relevant question is: Where does Germany spend the next €100 billion today to avoid the most emissions?

And that is certainly not new built nuclear power.

Now you’re desperately trying to rationalize new built nuclear power.

GenCost has an amazing FAQ section you evidently either ignored, or did not peruse.

For example here they discuss economic life vs operational life, when you live in reality rather than grasping for straws:

> Why is the economic life used in LCOE calculations instead of the fulloperational life?

> The LCOE calculation converts all upfront and ongoing costs to annual costs which is then divided by annual production. The capital cost component of a technology is converted to an annual repayment to the debt and equity providers. The annual repayment amount is determined using the economic life and the weighted average cost of capital. The economic life is shorter than the asset life for some technologies such as coal, nuclear and hydro. Some stakeholders have queried why this is so.

> Debt and equity providers require a shorter payback period than the total asset life for some technologies to avoid the risk that part of the equipment might fail or might need new investment (sometimes called refurbishment or extension costs) to keep operating safely and reliably. To determine the economic life, debt and equity providers might look to the warranties provided with the equipment. They might also look at the typical timing of refurbishments or life extensions for that technology. The economic life is an input provided by the engineering firm that AEMO commissions each year as an input to GenCost.

> Some stakeholders suggested that coal and nuclear could access special financing arrangements to move the economic life closer to the asset life. However, our preference is not to introduce special arrangements for technologies where there is limited Australian evidence. A common approach to the LCOE calculation is important to maintain comparability. The 2024-25 report does explore the impact of longer capital recovery periods in Section 2. It finds there is no significant benefit from the longer operational life of nuclear relative to shorter-lived technologies whose costs have been falling over time.

Even looking at China and South Korea they see essentially zero learning effects across plants after the FOAK build. Small ones at the same plant.

Crying about FOAK vs NOAK is not even close to solving the absolutely stupidly large subsidies new built nuclear power needs.

Again with the loaded terms. Sad. The market is limited until for example Jevons paradox expands it. Which will never happen with new built nuclear power due to how expensive the electricity is, that leads to energy poverty for generations instead. But I digress.

Look at Texas or California. About all new renewable projects in those markets are coupled with storage.

What you call cannabilisation, and try to paint like the end of the world, is simply the market working. Now pure renewable projects aren’t enough, instead you need to sell the electricity when the consumers demand it.

In just a year or two storage has massively smoothed out the price swings in Texas.

But again, that would require curiosity rather than desperately trying to poke holes the study already answered.

Why are you so afraid of renewables and storage?

We have vastly moved the scientific frontier of modeling our energy systems since 2019.

All those analyses find that renewable grids are far cheaper than if involving new built nuclear power.

Here are two modern papers on the subject:

https://www.csiro.au/-/media/Energy/GenCost-2025-26-Final/Ge...

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S036054422...

I find it telling that you call it an ”economic problem” and ”intermittents”. It seems like you have an axe to grind, but not much backing your standpoint anymore. So you’ve fallen to using derogatory.

Those same fossil fuels have the same economic ”crowding” out problem when cheaper sources in the same class delivers.

A single cycle gas turbine would love to get paid running at 100% all year around. It doesn’t because CCGT plants with higher efficiency undercut it.

Just like what happens in renewables. They start crowding out each other. Storage steps in and solves the peaks. More renewables come online until they ”crowd each other out” and around we go.

That’s called being a market. Which you nuke fans seems deathly afraid of given the economics of new built nuclear power.

How do you mean that the EU is a shit show?

Limited port capacity? Erosion? Limit disturbance of wild life?

Either way it is a public resource. On one side access to a countries fishing grounds to make money from it. On the other side access to a countries tax money to make money from it.

I get a feeling that you think fishermen should have some special heritage rights guaranteeing large profit margins rather than having to pay the public for the access to a shared resource.