Sweden’s incoming cabinet says new nuclear reactors will be built • Hacker News Board

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

#411

Post by zppln » Sat, Oct 15, 2022, 6:28 AM UTC

cycomanic wrote: post #403

The main effect of this is electricity prices going up. It's completely ideological, Vattenfall the company running nuclear power plants wanted to shut down the reactors because they were not economically viable. The irony is that Sweden is ideally suited for going 100% renewable. The North has lots of hydro (which is essentially storage) and the south has lots of windy coastline. But if you go around Sweden the numb…

And why weren't they viable? Sounds strange that other countries would be able to operate nuclear reactors profitably but not Sweden.

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

#412

Post by cycomanic » Sat, Oct 15, 2022, 6:31 AM UTC

phire wrote: post #311

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…

The government isn't paying to build it. They are only providing loan guarantees, not actual money. And they only have to pay to shut it down if a future government forces it to shut it down before the plant stops being commercially viable. The main purpose of both guarantees is to make it much easier for nuclear reactors to get commercial funding from private banks.

> The government isn't paying to build it. They are only providing loan guarantees, not actual money.

Loan guarantees are actual money, especially if the builder defaults.

> The main purpose of both guarantees is to make it much easier for nuclear reactors to get commercial funding from private banks.

So ask yourself why will commercial funders not give money to the builds, while they are perfectly happy for solar/wind?

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

#413

Post by roenxi » Sat, Oct 15, 2022, 6:33 AM UTC

cycomanic wrote: post #391

roenxi wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bet what is going on isn't that surprising to industry insiders, or the people who make profit-loss decisions about whether to fund power plants or not. This is the issue with politics and the power market, the language gets locked into "what should we do" which is then interpreted as "well, the government should do it!". The problem with nuclear power isn't what the government is funding, it is that the government…

Yes let's just go free for all and the market sort it out. When was that a good idea when it came to safety critical infrastructure?! The whole let the current generation reap the profits and the market will magically figure things out got us into the current mess in the first place. The nuclear industry is not being held to higher standards relatively than other means of energy production. Wind farms must jump throu…

> Yes let's just go free for all and the market sort it out. When was that a good idea when it came to safety critical infrastructure?!

On days of the week ending with "y". Private markets are the best way to feed people, clothe people, house people, entertain people and keep people healthy. By and large people don't willingly go with a public option in any of those categories if they have a choice. The electricity market is the same.

The evidence at the moment is that someone next to Fukushima when it went bad would be ... perfectly fine. No physical risk. Chernobyl wasn't as bad as a dam collapse. This was all with 1980s tech. The evidence here is that the risk is possible for a private party to handle. Rare evacuations aren't common enough to worry about and are a much smaller problem than making what is happening in Europe at the moment a regular risk.

Note that I'm calling for nuclear to be held to the same safety standards you've been exposed to for your entire life - my objection is that the standards for nuclear are unreasonably high compared to literally everything else.

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

#414

Post by kzrdude » Sat, Oct 15, 2022, 6:38 AM UTC

rongopo wrote: post #360

Is the shadow of Fridays for future influencing this decision? IMHO perhaps yes to some extent.

To some extent this is the centre-right populist issue of the hour

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

#415

Post by cycomanic » Sat, Oct 15, 2022, 6:40 AM UTC

phire wrote: post #361

ncmncm wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

They are theoretical money that might become real money in the future. They don't cost the government anything unless a power plant fails and defaults on it's loans. And even the it's not the full $40 billion. Just the shortfall between what the bank can recover and the cost of the loan. And if the project got anywhere near completely, there should still be a nuclear power plant. Given that one of the bigger risks to…

> They are theoretical money that might become real money in the future.

> They don't cost the government anything unless a power plant fails and defaults on it's loans. And even the it's not the full $40 billion. Just the shortfall between what the bank can recover and the cost of the loan.

I can't believe we are having this discussion on HN. Are you seriously implying loan guarantees are free?

> And if the project got anywhere near completely, there should still be a nuclear power plant.

Except that is not guaranteed. Historically speaking nuclear power plants have been going massively over budget. So the one thing that seems guaranteed is that the government has to guarantee even more loans.

> Given that one of the bigger risks to nuclear power plans are changing government regulations, it's actually a pretty low risk loan guarantee for the government to make.

Point me to any case where changing government regulations were a significant risk for nuclear power plants. The main risk is that the build goes massively over budget (like what is happening with pretty much every build in recent history), which will make it much more difficult to recover the cost.

>There is a decent chance they will never have to activate the guarantee.,

So if that is the case why do they need it? Private investors should be all over it. The reality is, the risk is high for questionable return. That is why they need the government to step in.

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

#416

Post by Joeri » Sat, Oct 15, 2022, 6:45 AM UTC

cycomanic wrote: post #391

roenxi wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bet what is going on isn't that surprising to industry insiders, or the people who make profit-loss decisions about whether to fund power plants or not. This is the issue with politics and the power market, the language gets locked into "what should we do" which is then interpreted as "well, the government should do it!". The problem with nuclear power isn't what the government is funding, it is that the government…

Yes let's just go free for all and the market sort it out. When was that a good idea when it came to safety critical infrastructure?! The whole let the current generation reap the profits and the market will magically figure things out got us into the current mess in the first place. The nuclear industry is not being held to higher standards relatively than other means of energy production. Wind farms must jump throu…

To give an example of hurdles for wind power: there are some wind mills in the harbor region of Antwerp that aren’t allowed to generate power during the day because one time a single protected bird flew against the turning arm. They’re only allowed to use them when the birds are sleeping.

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

#417

Post by beefield » Sat, Oct 15, 2022, 6:45 AM UTC

tored wrote: post #346

ncmncm wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

False. There is no shortage of any of the materials needed to go fully renewable.

It’s Time to Wake Up - The Currently Known Global Mineral Reserves Will Not Be Sufficient to Supply Enough Metals to Manufacture the Planned Non-fossil Fuel Industrial Systems https://www.gtk.fi/en/research/time-to-wake-up/ "No matter what minerals will be needed, we will need large quantities of them as the renewable power sources like wind and solar, require extensive mineral resources to manufacture the infrastruc…

To put it nice, I would be careful to use that report to back any argument whatsoever. To come up with their conclusion they e.g. basically assumed LFP battery chemistry does not exist. (To be more accurate, they assumed that there is a set amount of nickel/cobalt you need to produce a kWh of lithium batteries) The conclusion also requires that no significant new reserves are found after 2018, which already now is proven false. (Lithium reserves have increased since 2018 by more than what a single generation of EVs need.)

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

#418

Post by bigbacaloa » Sat, Oct 15, 2022, 6:47 AM UTC

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…

"clean nuclear power" advocates should be made to visit Fukushima

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

#419

Post by medion » Sat, Oct 15, 2022, 6:47 AM UTC

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…

Twitter, something so “valuable” which offers virtually nothing of value to humanity. If twitter was turned off there would be some whinging for a week on some other platform and then it would be forgotten…

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

#420

Post by cinntaile » Sat, Oct 15, 2022, 6:49 AM UTC

belorn wrote: post #25

A bit of context, the south area which this reactor is suggested to be built in has occasionally a 1000% electricity higher price from the northern regions. A big reason for this is that prices in the south is highly connected to markets that the south region is connected to, and those region are heavily importers of electricity creating a higher demand than there is available of cheap energy. For example, in order t…

> For example, in order to address this there is a oil power plant operating basically 24/7 and does so very profitably even with high oil prices.

This is not why the oil plant exists, it is an emergency plant. If it is running 24/7 then it does so because the oil plant is profitable. Not out of necessity.