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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

#91

Post by belorn »

cjblomqvist wrote: post #19
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…

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.

To be fair to both sides, the electricity prices at the time when the decision was made was very different from today. We had prices in the south of sweden 2020 that was as low as around €0.02 per kw/h, compared to over €0.3 in 2022, and in 2020 the price trend was looking to be going downwards.

If prices had continue to go down and let say had landed at €0.01 per kw/h this year than we would not be discussing nuclear power as much. It will be a gamble to say what prices will be in 1, 5, 10 and 20 years into the future, and any gamble involve a cost in one way or an other. The previous government made one bet, this government is doing an other.

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

#92

Post by nathanaldensr »

quelsolaar wrote: post #76
traceelement wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The sun doesn't shine, especially at useful angles, enough and battery technology at scale isn't there. We absolutely need nuclear, essentially no matter the cost, assuming populations of certain countries don't want to use coal.

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

#93

Post by r00fus »

elihu wrote: post #51
anigbrowl wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Power generation should be publicly owned, private ownership of such critical resources inevitably creates moral hazard.

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).

Is there any nuclear facility that's privately owned that didn't get massive subsidies/loan guarantees from a government?

At the size of a 100MW+ generation facility, you need government sized budgets and timelines.

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

#94

Post by nathanaldensr »

ncmncm wrote: post #24

Reactors will not be forced to shut down, in the future. Instead, they will be shut down as unable to produce power at a competitive price. Those that continue operating will depend even more on taxpayer subsidies than they do now. The money that will be spent on these new reactors would buy a hell of a lot more wind power than these nukes could produce. But money for renewables would not go into the pockets of right…

Pure FUD. The wind doesn't blow all the time and battery technology at scale isn't there.

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

#96

Post by r00fus »

quelsolaar wrote: post #76
traceelement wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Renewables don't give you baseload power. So renewables + nuclear is a good balance.

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

#97

Post by ncmncm »

elihu wrote: post #74
ncmncm wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 overwhelming majority of storage will not be batteries, unless a massively cheaper battery chemistry takes over.

Lake Mead stores (well, stored) radically less energy than mountaintop reservoirs with thousands of feet of "head" can hold behind cheap earthen dikes. Look up "penstock".

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

#98

Post by locallost »

MichaelCollins wrote: post #78
locallost wrote: post #68

Quoted post unavailable.

If you believe that, you're probably in a cult. The most extreme climate models don't predict anything you could reasonably characterize as "won't be a planet left."

I am in the cult of "living in the present, where one part of the world has experienced one of the severest droughts in the history of mankind, and the other the worst floods". Recently I joined a second cult called "it's only going to get worse". So what the heck, we've got money and time for expensive solutions that take forever to finish.

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

#99

Post by Isolus »

lnsru wrote: post #6

Meanwhile in Germany: https://switzerlandtimes.ch/world/german-greens-remain-firm-... Welcome to The new dark ages in Germany. Leading politicians even do not have any higher education: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricarda_Lang It’s scary how these people decide about topics they have no idea about.

Germany is a densely populated country. We already don't know where to put the nuclear waste. No one wants it on his or her doorstep. The cost of storage alone is a nightmare.

The nuclear exit was supported by the population and not decided against them by politicians.

And to your criticism: A lot of politicians in germany are lawyers. Are they allowed do decide for the country? Do they have an idea about nuclear topics?

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

#100

Post by Georgelemental »

ncmncm wrote: post #29
mkl95 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Relying on coal on for 30%+ of their electricity

It is dishonest to conflate emergency war measures as policy.

The emergency measures are needed because the peacetime policy was not designed to be resilient. A better peacetime policy would have obviated the need for destructive emergency measures.
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