The cost of batteries is immaterial to anything being discussed here. As you already knew.
From the previous comment: > Batteries will probably be cheaper, The above commenter clearly thinks that batteries are going to provide cheap storage. If you have some alternative plan for storage at the scale of tens of terawatt hours, please do tell.
I'd imagine we'll probably continue to store power the same way the vast majority of power is stored now, using pumped hydroelectric storage.
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 nuclea…
To be fair electricity prices vary throughout time. Basing a long term decision on a short term price is foolish. Worse case scenario is the government has to subsidize the power station, best case is it helps prevent serious economic issues by providing power.
Worth a lot to not be dependent on Russia for energy.
Renewables + storage will provide massively cheaper baseload power.
Will not happen. ”green” energy is not green- it consume massive amount of resources, it is expensive, short lived, destabilize the grid. I’m super happy my country is finally waking up from the horrible green hypnosis.
It doesn't matter if it consumes resources what matters is that it's less than what it replaces a.k.a. better for the environment.
I see this manipulative arguement used all the time with lithium mining.
Has there been, in recent memory, any grid scale generator, or roof-top solar for that matter, that didn't get significant subsidies? The argument should be about whether or not those subsidies would have been better spend elsewhere. I'd probably argue subsidising local wind / solar (plus storage), and local manufacturing of same, would be better, even though I tend to argue nuclear is a reason option some of the tim…
Subsidies for renewables are very reliably seen to drive prices down faster than would have happened without, producing always a very large net gain.
Nukes have been heavily subsidized forever, but prices have only ever risen.
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).
Define externalities. Is a balanced grid part of the externalities, ie the work needed to make sure that supply can always match that of demand?
The grid can be balanced by the application of market forces. (If there's an electrical shortage, prices go up. If there's a surplus, prices go down. The incentives are all there to encourage producers to produce power during shortages.)
I was thinking more about pollution or nuclear waste management. A coal plant that just buys coal at market prices and sells electricity at market prices isn't paying for externalities unless they're taxed on CO2 and particulate emissions.
I don't think most reasonable people count biomass in with renewable (at least not large scale biomass). e.g. this website https://grid.iamkate.com/ has biomass in "other" along with nuclear and pumped hydro storage.
Biomass literally grows on trees. It's by definition renewable.
In theory, but an unfortunate amount of biomass burnt in Europe is old growth forest being cut down in the US and shipped across the Atlantic. So renewable, but it would take hundreds of years to renew, and likely won't be renewed.\
Nuclear has always had massive scaling issues because leaving base load power generation means ever lower capacity factors. Running a nuclear power plant with a 40% capacity factor more than doubles the cost per kWh. You can look at Frances ~70% average Capacity factor in 2 ways either it’s a ~30% cost premium over most of the rest of the world on every power plant. Or more realistically ~40% of generation was at the…
Honestly what we really need is something that we can pump that power into (not a battery - something productive I mean) so we can keep those reactors at higher efficiency levels. I do not know what that is but surely vast amounts of extra power could be used for something useful no? Research? Cleaning the air? Hot tubs for Walruses?
Excess power is most usefully applied capturing CO2 and desalinating water. But nukes' operating cost is too high for that. Spending a single year's operating cost on solar, and then using solar to do that work,leaves you with all subsequent years' opex available to use building out more solar.
You assert that renewables projects do not start producing power before completion? I can cite hundreds that have done. I have never heard of a single nuke plant that produced before it was completed.