Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power • Hacker News Board

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#151

Post by _ph_ » Mon, May 23, 2022, 5:03 PM UTC

hericium wrote: post #130

_ph_ wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Often enough, France cannot even power itself, less so export electricity 24/7. And the number of operational reactors is going down, not up. France is only a strong exporter in the times where there is low demand - exporting surplus nuclear energy is of course far better than regulating the reactors down - both from an economic standpoint as well as an ecologic one.

Macron announced[1][2][3] plans to build 14 new reactors. [1] https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/11/business/nuclear-power-france... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/10/world/europe/france-macro... [3] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/10/france-to-buil...

Yes, he did. Is there any chance he will build them, if you look at the unfinished Flammaville reactor, which is like 10 years overdue and equally over the price estimate? France currently has like 58 reactors, all of them very old. It is doubtful that France can even keep up the current production levels.

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#152

Post by cma » Mon, May 23, 2022, 5:03 PM UTC

seanw444 wrote: post #22

pastor_bob wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

fukushima

If Chernobyl and Fukushima are the only examples of major catastrophe they can point to, and one wasn't even directly caused by malpractice of the employees, and the last one that was malpractice was nearly 40 years ago... then I don't even know. The best I got is "they're stupid."

As we are seeing with the Russian invasion, Chernobyl isnt even over yet and is still a major risk.

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#153

Post by _ph_ » Mon, May 23, 2022, 5:04 PM UTC

goodguyamerikan wrote: post #125

Nuclear power should not need any of endorsement from political parties. Only from scientists which it already has.

No, there is no clear endorsement from "scientists".

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#154

Post by ncmncm » Mon, May 23, 2022, 5:05 PM UTC

TimPC wrote: post #105

epistasis wrote: post #16

This is great, and hopefully it will stop the premature shutdown of existing nuclear reactors. But it's pretty tiny climate news overall. Nuclear reactors are aging out and nobody in Western Europe or the US seems to know how to build in a cost competitive way anymore. Deploying 5GW of solar and storage, or 3-4GW of wind, is far easier, faster, and cheaper than trying to build a new reactor, which won't come on line…

There are problems of baseload power that neither solar nor wind reliably solve though. Barring the introduction of a complex system of storage to the electrical grid you don’t just need a certain amount of total power generation you need the distribution of production to match the distribution of consumption. We can generate much of this with solar and wind if we are comfortable with having far less power at night f…

> a complex system of storage

... which will be built when it makes sense to build it.

Right now, building out storage makes no sense. Money that could be spent on storage is now rightly spent on generating capacity that can still displace carbon polluters. When there is too little carbon pollution left to displace, then will be time to build storage. By that time the storage will be radically cheaper to buy, because its cost is falling even faster than renewables cost ever did.

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#155

Post by Krasnol » Mon, May 23, 2022, 5:06 PM UTC

csours wrote: post #10

If Germany's Green Party takes the same line, I think it will be a huge blow to Russia. Also, it's about time.

They won't and why should they? Nuclear is done in Germany. They won.

Instead Germany has been the biggest motor for renewable development in the world and now needs to jump back on their own ship after 16 years of conservative stagnation.

Something which is happening right now.

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#156

Post by ncmncm » Mon, May 23, 2022, 5:06 PM UTC

thatfrenchguy wrote: post #35

epistasis wrote: post #16

This is great, and hopefully it will stop the premature shutdown of existing nuclear reactors. But it's pretty tiny climate news overall. Nuclear reactors are aging out and nobody in Western Europe or the US seems to know how to build in a cost competitive way anymore. Deploying 5GW of solar and storage, or 3-4GW of wind, is far easier, faster, and cheaper than trying to build a new reactor, which won't come on line…

Deploying solar or wind is nice and stuff, but it doesn’t remove fossil plants, because when there is no sun / wind (which happens a lot in Europe), you need to burn fossil fuels. Storage is not viable today, both because it emits a lot of co2/kWh (especially if you wanted to eliminate fossil plants, you’d need to overprovision) and because of supply constraints. Hydro and nuclear is the only low-carbon future.

False. Each dollar diverted from renewables to nukes brings climate catastrophe nearer.

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#157

Post by Dma54rhs » Mon, May 23, 2022, 5:07 PM UTC

Gwypaas wrote: post #56

RealityVoid wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, let's pretend thousands of people dying prematurely because of pollution isn't happening as well. Perfect is the enemy of good and looking for a "perfect" solution (zero carbon, zero risk) is just causing suffering and driving us to early extinction.

The alternative isn't fossil fuels. It's renewables. Compare against reality instead of your made up competition.

We don't have storage. It's like saying to starving nation the simple solution is to grow more crops.

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#158

Post by _ph_ » Mon, May 23, 2022, 5:08 PM UTC

kalleboo wrote: post #145

_ph_ wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There should be some limit on how far the price varies, but it is an illusion, that electricity costs the same independent of time. For normal household appliances, there isn't too much flexibility - you need light, when it is dark, cook for the meals etc. But with heating and especially with electric cars, flexible costs make a lot of sense. Even more in the industry, which is the larger consumer of electricity and…

> Even more in the industry, which is the larger consumer of electricity and needs incentives, to shape there consumption on availability, as far as it makes sense The shape of consumption is going to be - industry flees the country, and goes somewhere cheaper (and dirtier)

That is unlikely, if the energy is overall cheaper than at a fixed rate. Also, all countries are facing the same challenges with the transition to renewables.

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#159

Post by ncmncm » Mon, May 23, 2022, 5:10 PM UTC

dahfizz wrote: post #106

bryanlarsen wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No generator provides base load, because load is usage, not power. Lots of places in the world satisfy base load with dispatchable power.

Instead of nitpicking terminology, let's talk about the issue directly: What do you do when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing? There isn't enough batteries on earth to even make a dent in the storage you would need. We don't want to burn any more hydrocarbons. What are our other options? Massive pumped hydro might get us there, but that construction is on a similar time horizon to a new nuclear plant a…

Only a negligible fraction of the storage that will be built will be batteries, so talking about batteries is just blowing smoke.

Storage cost is falling even faster than renewables cost ever did. There are many different storage options. Each place will adopt the mix of them that makes sense for that place. Until new renewable generating capacity no longer displaces carbon emission, spending on storage would be stupid.

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#160

Post by ncmncm » Mon, May 23, 2022, 5:11 PM UTC

nabla9 wrote: post #67

jka wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a corresponding graph for solar electricity production, out of interest?

Heh. In Finland you have solar even in the night during summers and very little during winters. https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Hourly-PV-output-for-Hel...

In winter, at times when wind falls off and demand exceeds transmission line delivery capacity, synthetic fuel will be shipped in from the tropics. The amount of synthetic fuel to stockpile is a cost optimization exercise.