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Sweden’s incoming cabinet says new nuclear reactors will be built

bloomberg.com

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Re: Sweden’s incoming cabinet says new nuclear reactors will be built

#71

Post by pokepim »

tpmx wrote: post #22
cjblomqvist wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The previous government didn't stop the shutdown planned 40+ years ago (due to a national referendum), in part because the owners (Vattenfall) said it's not economically feasible to run them anymore without subsidies. It's complex.

The previous anti-nuclear social-democratic government together with the demonstrably insane "green" party installed a board in the state owned power company Vattenfall that after a while managed to sort of claim that it wasn't economically feasible to run the nuclear plants, with the new heavy taxes the social democrats had put in place on nuclear power production. Yay? Anyway, all of that insanity is thankfully his…

No post body was provided.

Re: Sweden’s incoming cabinet says new nuclear reactors will be built

#72

Post by f_allwein »

NKosmatos wrote: post #55

The only green solution to our current energy problem is more nuclear power plants. We have to stop relying on coal, wood, oil, gas and the rest of the “dirty” materials.

Except nuclear is expensive and takes decades to build, runs on non renewable materials (a good percentage of which come from Russia), leaves waste that is deadly for 100.000s of years, and promising new technologies will need decades to reach maturity.

Now why is it so great compared to, say, solar or geothermal?

Re: Sweden’s incoming cabinet says new nuclear reactors will be built

#73

Post by ncmncm »

junofan wrote: post #50
ncmncm wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No civil nuke plant has ever been operated, anywhere in the world, without massive government subsidies, or by coercing ratepayers to pay well above market rates. Looks like the Swedish public will be on the hook for subsidies for decades more while the rest of Europe (France and Romania perhaps excepted) coasts on renewables at ever plunging prices.

Source? Everything I can find counts PPAs which is… kind of a stretch.

PPAs at inflated prices are absolutely subsidies. They impose inflated costs on users of the power, which is only marginally better than on the body politic at large. Or marginally worse, maybe.

Much of the subsidies are the public picking up the tab for disaster insurance the operator is protected against needing to pay for. Of course no actual insurance company could afford to underwrite such a policy.

Re: Sweden’s incoming cabinet says new nuclear reactors will be built

#74

Post by elihu »

ncmncm wrote: post #37
capitainenemo wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last I read into Germany's plan to be "100%" renewable, it was using other countries in Europe to provide the base load using their hydro and nuclear. Which is great so long as they have excess to provide Germany I suppose. There does not seem to be nearly enough construction of pumped storage or battery to cover the unevenness of German wind power. In fact, their prices have gone negative repeatedly in the past,…

It would be stupid to spend on storage before there is enough renewable generating capacity to charge it from. In the meantime they spend, sensibly, on renewable generating capacity. By the time there is enough, storage will be massively cheaper. In the meantime, charging storage from gas or coal and then drawing it down is the same as burning gas or coal for immediate use, just with losses.

Batteries will probably be cheaper, but pumped hydro storage will probably cost about the same since it's a mature technology.

I could see Norway or Switzerland being major players in pumped hydro storage, given their geography.

Awhile back I did a bunch of math to try to figure out how much stored gravitational energy is in Lake Mead, and if I didn't make any major mistakes it came out to be about as much energy as the U.S. uses (as electrical energy) in 24 hours. The idea of moving that amount of water around on short time scales is hard to fathom.

Re: Sweden’s incoming cabinet says new nuclear reactors will be built

#75

Post by ncmncm »

the-smug-one wrote: post #66
elihu wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's fine if governments pay for and operate power generation facilities, but at the same time I don't think private companies should be prohibited from building power generation facilities if they want to and they think they can do it better (provided they have to pay for externalities).

If anything's good about renewables is that they can be quite small scaled. I think it's cool that I can be an energy producer just with my roof, plus decentralized generation = better security.

There is plenty more good about renewables. Being the cheapest source of power that has ever existed is good, too.

Re: Sweden’s incoming cabinet says new nuclear reactors will be built

#76

Post by quelsolaar »

traceelement wrote: post #33
tpmx wrote: post #7

The new coalition government has pledged $40B (approximately the market cap of Twitter, heh) in loan guarantees for nuclear power construction. They have also pledged to create legal guarantees that future politicians will not be able to shut down functioning nuclear power reactors without suitable monetary compensation to the owners/operators of these reactors. In addition to this, they are commissioning an urgent s…

so they get compensated if they have to close it even so the government payed them to build it. this sound like a bad deal. Tax payers pay for the whole thing and the owner gets even more money if they have to close it for whatever reason. I don't think coal is the answer but germany didn't do enough for renewables during the last 10 years when we knew we would shut down the nuclear plants. So now evrybody uses bad m…

Its all built on very old thinking. Nuclear may have been a good idea in the past, but with the rapid reduction of cost of renewable, especially solar, its no longer worth considering. Building a plant takes a decade, and a decade from now the difference in cost will be even greater. Nuclear will look like huge waste of money then.

Re: Sweden’s incoming cabinet says new nuclear reactors will be built

#77

Post by Gwypaas »

queuep wrote: post #47
cjblomqvist wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The previous government didn't stop the shutdown planned 40+ years ago (due to a national referendum), in part because the owners (Vattenfall) said it's not economically feasible to run them anymore without subsidies. It's complex.

For anyone interested in this national referendum, it’s peak bull crap. No option available to continue with nuclear power https://sv.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kärnkraftsfrågan_i_Sverige

You have to bear in mind that the public was hugely against it. No political party dared to push for it, although negotiations were held.

> The Moderates, the People's Party and the Social Democrats held separate negotiations to formulate a joint yes option with the implication that the reactors would be allowed to be used during their technical lifespan, which was estimated at 25 years. These negotiations finally broke down mainly because the Moderates could not accept the additional proposals: that the state or the municipalities would own the nuclear power plants and that so-called surplus profits from private production of hydropower would be withdrawn through taxation.

Translated from:

https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folkomr%C3%B6stningen_om_k%C3%...

Re: Sweden’s incoming cabinet says new nuclear reactors will be built

#80

Post by Isolus »

tpmx wrote: post #44
mkl95 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Relying on coal on for 30%+ of their electricity

That's a small part of their sins. The big part is relying on gas for heating. When speaking with germans I've found that they think of gas as "clean" which sounds insane to me. Yeah, maybe locally, compared to coal, but it's their largest co2 emission source nevertheless.

I don't know anyone in germany who thinks gas is "clean". New buildings are built with heat pumps. They are considered clean if used with renewable energy.

But it's difficult to use them in old buildings and gas is said to be to most cleanest heating technology based on fossil fuels.

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