281–290 of 1001 posts
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This is what the oil and nuclear industry propaganda says. The reality is that solar and wind anticorrelate more than you think, demand shifting (e.g. charging the car when it's sunny) is easier than you think, batteries and pumped storage and power2gas are cheaper than you think and nuclear power is way, way, way, way more expensive than you think. Weather based models with actual data say that in Australia you'd ne…
> solar and wind anticorrelate more than you think They anticorrelate in some locations. In others, they don't. Here in Finland in the winter you get effectively zero sun. We also get persistent stationary anticyclones. That means potentially over a month of temps in the -30°C region, and zero wind. Australia is extremely sunny. California is even better, they are modeling that assuming they keep their current hydro…
This is going to be a huge waste of time and money until we realize that building new nuclear power plants will be too expensive and too late, since we'll have figured out a renewable energy concept that'll handle the load by then. Instead we could also just join a French project, who have way more experience. We should focus on extending our hydro power storage capacity instead. There will be a referendum anyways, s…
That's a very, very risky bet you're taking here. We know nuclear energy really well, and you're suggesting we ignore it for something that we will "figure out" later. Meanwhile the clock is ticking.
> We should focus on extending our hydro power storage capacity instead.
This is so limited that it's not at all an alternative, though.
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Just a guess (I'm not the previous user), but I guess you need to look at the space _per GWh_? If a big nuclear reactor takes 10x more space but has 20x more capacity, then it means not having much space favors the big nuclear reactor rather than building 10 small ones that will take twice more space. (and same for the time)
its probably my fault for not making myself clear. i mean when the available space is constrained to a specific amount of space that cannot be exceeded. just picking random numbers: i have 1 square mile available. a big reactor takes 4 square miles. i cannot fit a big reactor, despite the bigger reactor being more efficient.
Citizens should take note that no nuclear plants are ever built without many billions in state loans and guarantees. It's not a cheap source of electricity, it's a way for someone to get money from taxpayers to subsidize their business.
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Every SMR startup is failing. The more they progress, the more they revise their costs upwards. SMR make as much sense as space datacenters. You can gaslight investors, you can gaslight HN, you can gaslight a national parliament full of lobbyists, but you can't gaslight thermodynamics.
"SMR make as much sense as space datacenters." So a whole lot of sense given the entire US Navy uses them and I already have one datacenter operating up in space (small test unit that over 3 months has provided ZERO issues) and a bigger one heading up into orbit next year when it's done being made. "but you can't gaslight thermodynamics" No but you can certainly conflate them like you're doing right now.
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You should take note that you’re uninformed or intentionally spreading false information and misrepresenting reality. Fact of the matter is it takes a large upfront investment to build a nuclear reactor and it has a longer time horizon before it becomes profitable in comparison to something like a gas or coal power plant. It comes down to whether or not the country, government, citizens and country have the ability t…
Everybody knows about the upfront cost, but the size and long tail of costs after the plant has been built, or when unforeseen events occur, is largely hidden from all financial statements. So much so that people actually believe that nuclear power is cheap, when it's not. But the truth surfaces of course - you can look at the financials of EDF in France (nationalized in 2022 with 60+ bn euros in debt), KEPCO in Kore…
The real issue is narrower: new nuclear is capital intensive and hard to finance without long term revenue guarantees, while old waste sites can impose large public cleanup costs.
Decommissioning and waste are included in serious cost models and regulatory funding requirements, existing nuclear life extensions can be among the cheapest firm low carbon power sources, and KEPCO/EDF’s debts reflect tariff policy, fuel shocks, outages, state interventions, and investment cycles. Not simply “nuclear power is unprofitable.”
The honest conclusion is that nuclear needs strong regulation and disciplined project delivery, not that nuclear is categorically fake-cheap.
Aka what I said earlier: you need the ability for strategic long term thinking and planning and execution.
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You should take note that you’re uninformed or intentionally spreading false information and misrepresenting reality. Fact of the matter is it takes a large upfront investment to build a nuclear reactor and it has a longer time horizon before it becomes profitable in comparison to something like a gas or coal power plant. It comes down to whether or not the country, government, citizens and country have the ability t…
Show us just a single NPP that is properly insured
I leave the rest as an exercise to the reader.
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> solar and wind anticorrelate more than you think They anticorrelate in some locations. In others, they don't. Here in Finland in the winter you get effectively zero sun. We also get persistent stationary anticyclones. That means potentially over a month of temps in the -30°C region, and zero wind. Australia is extremely sunny. California is even better, they are modeling that assuming they keep their current hydro…
I think it also depends on other stuff. Spain gets bunch of sun even when there's the deepest winter in Finland but even if they are technically part of the same grid, the challenge is getting the energy there.
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>Nuclear will also boil over Swiss rivers and shallow lakes. What on earth are you talking about?
Slight hyperbole, but nuclear reactors in Switzerland and France shut down more and more often because the water needed to cool them down is already too hot: https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/climate-adaptation/beznau-nucle... It is far from boiling, but these limits are there to avoid killing all life in the rivers.
Note though that those limits exist just like the emission limits for WiFi: it was a sane number when it was decided. It's not clear at all that raising the temperature a little more will "kill all life in the rivers". It would probably deserve some research.