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Vietnam Going Solar After Nuclear Power Plants Shelved

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Re: Vietnam Going Solar After Nuclear Power Plants Shelved

#21

Post by Ntrails »

realusername wrote: post #9
MyticMoon wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

having them moved away from that nuclear power plant is a big relief for Vietnamese people already. This is still a huge leap, I would say. Basically, they are just following what China is doing (slowly) so if renewable energy could make a huge impact in China, they might accelerate the program.

> having them moved away from that nuclear power plant is a big relief for Vietnamese people already. Why so exactly? It would have massively reduced emissions to have that nuclear power plant, now instead you have a vague promise they put on 2050, purposely far enough that it does not bind the government to anything.

People are terrified of high visibility catastrophic risk (ie nuclear meltdown) in a way that they cannot get concerned about fossil fuel pollution. It may cause millions of deaths, but they'll mostly go unattributed and certainly not sensationally reported

Re: Vietnam Going Solar After Nuclear Power Plants Shelved

#22

Post by sonnyblarney »

pastullo wrote: post #16

i'm sad to see a decline of nuclear energy everywhere in the world. While renewables are the end goal, nuclear was gonna be the perfect transition source for the next decades, providing emission-free and continuous energy to the grid. I have the bad feeling that cancelling a nuclear power plant, means building coal/gas plants in its place. This article actually mention the renewaleble goal of Vietnam which are really…

Nuclear is good as long as it has very stable, secure and responsible local governance. You can't have political instability, people cutting corners, lack of oversight, lack of security or lack of resources ... or you have problems.

To me that's the problem with Nuclear. Following specific rules and conventions, some nations will be fine, but so many ... it's iffy. If Vietnam gets a couple plants, Burma, Laos, Cambodia etc. will want one too and then the risk of something bad happening just starts to crawl up.

Re: Vietnam Going Solar After Nuclear Power Plants Shelved

#23

Post by daliusd »

ForHackernews wrote: post #10
radicalbyte wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We (the west) should be strongly encouraging this in developing countries. We have the money, we have the instruments, all we need is the will. The US put men on the moon using 1960's technology and brought them back alive. Switching the world to 100% carbon neutral energy production should be more than achievable.

There's no political or economic will. It won't happen.

I'm not sure about political but economic is questionable. I am pretty sure installing and maintaining solar and wind is cheaper than coal (based on https://www.drawdown.org/ book). Not sure about solar.

Re: Vietnam Going Solar After Nuclear Power Plants Shelved

#25

Post by realusername »

AhshahP9 wrote: post #4
wjnc wrote: post #2

The EU and US massively restricting / taxing Chinese solar has its upsides. This might be quite the leapfrog and actually getting solar into countries with lots of sun is quite a meta-efficieny effect. I wonder though how a country like Vietnam can get it's grid in order to cope with a lot more natural energy.

I don't know about Vietnam, but at least in many parts of India people are used to the grid being unreliable anyway.

I'm living in Saigon now, it works well, I have maybe one power-cut every two month.

Re: Vietnam Going Solar After Nuclear Power Plants Shelved

#26

Post by pg_bot »

I think the greatest irony of our age is the progression of climate change due to environmentalists protesting against the development of nuclear power. While nuclear power admittedly has risks, the tradeoffs are clearly worth making if you look at emissions and deaths per megawatt hour. We didn't curtail energy demand, and future generations will pay the price for using fossil fuels instead of nuclear.

Re: Vietnam Going Solar After Nuclear Power Plants Shelved

#27

Post by pjc50 »

realusername wrote: post #9
MyticMoon wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

having them moved away from that nuclear power plant is a big relief for Vietnamese people already. This is still a huge leap, I would say. Basically, they are just following what China is doing (slowly) so if renewable energy could make a huge impact in China, they might accelerate the program.

> having them moved away from that nuclear power plant is a big relief for Vietnamese people already. Why so exactly? It would have massively reduced emissions to have that nuclear power plant, now instead you have a vague promise they put on 2050, purposely far enough that it does not bind the government to anything.

.. assuming the nuclear plant got built on time and on budget.

Re: Vietnam Going Solar After Nuclear Power Plants Shelved

#28

Post by jabl »

adrianN wrote: post #14
akuji1993 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also we shouldn't forget we're talking about Vietnam. A country that is expected to follow slower (because it's not technologically advanced like some European countries or North America). Them having any kind of goal is a good sign, even though it might not be very ambitious in our understanding. Goals can be adjusted.

Actually I'd expect developing nations to be the first in adopting a clean energy grid. They have massively rising demand, so they're building new power plants all the time and don't have vested interests trying to milk every penny out of old coal plants. They also benefit from technological advances that countries with aging power infrastructure can't take advantage of. It's not like they're forced to re-live the in…

Developing nations are generally poor compared to developed countries (duh). So they might not be able to afford energy sources with high upfront costs like nuclear, solar, or wind.

If you ignore externalities, coal is likely the cheapest, unfortunately.

This is exactly what DIDN'T happen with, say, telecom networks. Developing countries skipped directly to mobile telecom, allowing them to save a lot of money by avoiding the upfront cost of building a wired telecom infrastructure.

Re: Vietnam Going Solar After Nuclear Power Plants Shelved

#29

Post by jerven »

Well this will give some place for the output of FirstSolar Inc. two Vietnamese manufacturing plants to go. (2.4 GW DC capacity a year, all online from Q2 2019)

To be honest, nuclear industry hasn't done itself any favors by not building the plants they sold on anything close to time and budget. 15 to 20 years from idea to operation is just not nimble enough.

I don't even think that the all of the proposed coal power will all be build to completion and in operation for long just due to the infrastructure costs.

Re: Vietnam Going Solar After Nuclear Power Plants Shelved

#30

Post by jerven »

pjc50 wrote: post #27
realusername wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> having them moved away from that nuclear power plant is a big relief for Vietnamese people already. Why so exactly? It would have massively reduced emissions to have that nuclear power plant, now instead you have a vague promise they put on 2050, purposely far enough that it does not bind the government to anything.

.. assuming the nuclear plant got built on time and on budget.

Exactly, considering the nuclear power plants where a vague promise from 2007 to have a nuclear power plant at all. A promise that has now been revoked.

Now let's see if solar can meet it's promises.

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