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Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

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Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#611

Post by selfmodruntime »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #565
simplyluke wrote: post #556

Believing we're in a climate crisis and also being anti-nuclear are mutually exclusive positions in my mind, and opposition to nuclear from environmentalist orgs should be viewed as a massive historical mistake as it set us back decades in moving the needle on carbon emissions. The engineering side of running reactors safely is a solved problem, the US navy has > 7500 reactor-years with a perfect safety record.

Why do so many nuclear fans try to suggest climate change only exists if you like nuclear? It's very odd. Compare: If you believe COVID exists you need to use hydroxychloroquine. It makes you sound like you don't even believe in the problem you are proposing an (unpopular with experts) solution for.

Renewables can give us large amounts of energy but when you need reliable output 24/7/356 you can choose thermal, gas, coal or nuclear. Not all countries have access to thermal energy so if you want to become carbon neutral nuclear is the only valid choice for that aspect.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#612

Post by dalyons »

simplyluke wrote: post #582
epistasis wrote: post #571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's two very different types of reactors: the already-paid-for long-run reactor that's still going, and then on-paper-not-yet-constructed reactor in a high cost of living nation. Building lots of new nuclear instead of doing the cheaper option of tons of batteries and renewables, only makes sense in a few geographic locations. Not all, or even most! Even keeping old reactors running gets super expensive as they g…

> The far bigger fight for climate these days isn't electricity: it's car-centric living All of transportation, including commercial + aviation, in the US is 28% of greenhouse gasses, electric generation is 25%. They're functionally equivalent. Further, a common refrain from environmentalist messages I've seen my entire life is that "every bit counts" and that's used to justify why an individual should say, buy an EV…

what about an existential-crisis-then-costs-be-damned emergency buildout of renewables and batteries? you would displace more carbon emissions far faster than a nuclear buildout, just due to the speed at which they can be deployed and scaled.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#613

Post by selfmodruntime »

ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #608
noosphr wrote: post #605

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Building lots of new nuclear instead of doing the cheaper option of tons of batteries and renewables This is not the cheaper option. You need to have batteries that can store power for at least a week to have base load as reliable as nuclear power. There isn't enough battery capacity in the world to do this for a state like California, let alone the whole country.

Even with Danish insulation and weather and tilting the study heavily towards nuclear power by assuming that the nuclear costs are 40% lower than Flamanville 3 and 70% lower than Hinkley Point C while modeling solar as 20% more expensive renewables come out to vastly cheaper when doing system analyses. https://www.pv-magazine.com/2026/04/17/new-metric-shows-rene...

This article conveniently doesn't include flexible demands and energy storage, both of which are a solved problem with nuclear but completely unrealistic with renewables.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#614

Post by thinkcontext »

simplyluke wrote: post #601
epistasis wrote: post #590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's great, but we live in the 2020s, not the 1970s. Technology has changed over 50 years. France talks about building more nuclear, but what's actually getting put on the grid is renewables, not nuclear. It wasn't the weird enviors that stopped nuclear in the US, they don't have much power. What really stopped it was that the industry ordered too many reactors at once in the 1970s, they didn't standardize on a des…

> Technology has changed over 50 years Technology sure has but through a confluence of outsourcing, bad policy, NIMBY attitudes among the boomer generation, and weaponized lawsuits US infrastructure remains somewhat frozen in the 1970s. Look at how much pushback, red tape, and cost there is to building a solar farm, road, datacenter or yes, nuclear plant compared to China. Nuclear actually might be the best example o…

> Look at how much pushback, red tape, and cost there is to building a solar farm, road, datacenter or yes, nuclear plant compared to China

That's quite a comparison given China's governance and environmental record. China will take your land, poison you, imprison you if you protest and suppress any mention of it on social media or in the press. Of course a business can get a lot done in that environment, is that really something to aspire to?

Some level of permitting reform is warranted but I would think hard about whether you want to adopt China's policies.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#615

Post by greendestiny »

simplyluke wrote: post #556

Believing we're in a climate crisis and also being anti-nuclear are mutually exclusive positions in my mind, and opposition to nuclear from environmentalist orgs should be viewed as a massive historical mistake as it set us back decades in moving the needle on carbon emissions. The engineering side of running reactors safely is a solved problem, the US navy has > 7500 reactor-years with a perfect safety record.

Nonsense, the reluctance of governments to reduce carbon emissions has been driven by the reluctance for entrenched industries to give up their gravy train. There are many ways for power to be produced with lower carbon emissions, it's absolutely not a binary situation at all.

What nuclear is is a wedge issue that can successfully split the opposition to the fossil fuel industry. People should be incredibly wary of the argument being forced into these positions, its artificial and contrary to the desires of people who want action on climate change who support nuclear and don't.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#616

Post by selfmodruntime »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #409
Alexsky2 wrote: post #253

A bit unrelated to the Belgium story but I recently visited Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant near San Luis Obispo, CA and learned a ton about the technical details, safety systems, and policy decisions that go into operating a nuclear power plant. When operating at full capacity, it provides up to 10% of California power! While there is certainly always more such facilities can do for safety and efficiency, my impre…

I did some research about that nuclear power plant. In 1985 dollars, the total construction cost was 5.6B USD. That is an astonishing amount of money. That is at least 16B USD in 2026 money. If you also include decomissioning costs of about 4-5B USD... how the fuck does nuclear power make any economic sense? PV solar plus batteries: ALL THE WAY. To be clear, I am not anti-nuclear power by any means. I think it is a t…

> how the fuck does nuclear power make any economic sense

Because these plants run for 80+ years (some countries are now considering 100) while most renewables run for 25 at most. And also because `plus batteries` doesn't exist. The world battery capacity isn't enough to power California for a single week. Large scale battery technology isn't even in its infancy, it just doesn't exist.

Don't forget, you've paid for the nuclear power plant once. You will pay for a new set of renewable capabilities every 25 years in dollars.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#617

Post by [deleted] »

zajio1am wrote: post #552
panja wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe there is a discussion to be had about WHY it needs to make economic sense? Power is a natural monopoly, maybe it doesn't need to be a part of the economy?

Power distribution is a natural monopoly, power production is commodified/competitive business.

[deleted]

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#618

Post by selfmodruntime »

zekrioca wrote: post #428
graeme wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't generate power by burning carbon and is a grid replacement for carbon sources. Grid cost rise sharply on 100% solar. Taking china as an example they currently build solar, coal and nuclear. No country is building only solar/batteries. Further if we build more nuclear we'd be better at it and it would be cheaper.

You are talking only about the operations of the nuclear, and ignoring all the high energy process required to mine and process uranium before it can be used as a fuel, and after as waste. But let’s pass this problem to the next generation, they will know what to do :)

Surely you include the rare earths needed for solar panels as well in all of your comparisons. Nuclear fuel is incredibly energy dense.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#619

Post by dalyons »

noosphr wrote: post #605
epistasis wrote: post #571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's two very different types of reactors: the already-paid-for long-run reactor that's still going, and then on-paper-not-yet-constructed reactor in a high cost of living nation. Building lots of new nuclear instead of doing the cheaper option of tons of batteries and renewables, only makes sense in a few geographic locations. Not all, or even most! Even keeping old reactors running gets super expensive as they g…

>Building lots of new nuclear instead of doing the cheaper option of tons of batteries and renewables This is not the cheaper option. You need to have batteries that can store power for at least a week to have base load as reliable as nuclear power. There isn't enough battery capacity in the world to do this for a state like California, let alone the whole country.

naw, we'll just build enough battery to cover the nights and then use gas as emergency backup for any rare wonky weather events. that could easily get us to 90+% clean, which would be absolutely amazing. Constant base load only supply like nukes are economically obsolete. On a modern grid you need a rapid response backup. Which is gas for now, and hopefully we'll come up with something to replace that later.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#620

Post by lucb1e »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #525
booi wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$5.6B actually sounds like a good deal. It outputs 2GW+ of power. While solar is definitely cheaper for 2GW of power, you still need batteries for when the sun is down. So you probably need approximately 30GWh of batteries to just replace this one power plant. The batteries alone would cost nearly $7B of grid-scale batteries that must be replaced every 20 years. Ignoring the fact that the nuclear plant already exists…

> $5.6B actually sounds like a good deal. It outputs 2GW+ of power. I don't understand. Are you talking about 1985 dollars of 2026 dollars? After some research, I learned that thermal powerplants (coal/gas/oil) completed in 1985 cost about 0.8B to 1.2B USD per GW. 5.6B USD in 1985 for 2GW sounds like a terrible price -- at least twice the cost.

> a terrible price -- at least twice the cost

I'd double my electricity bill if that means saving somewhere between 3 and 9 million lives per year[1], better health for myself and the people around me, and that's completely ignoring climate change benefits where prevention both saves money and reduces deaths/displacement/poverty in the long term

Either short-term solution is fine (nuclear or full renewable), but we're currently doing everything piecemeal. Plopping down a few big reactors in 20 years while people (in countries without salt planes, at least) are still trying to get permits for the remaining reasonable wind turbine and pumped hydro locations... it just feels like seven-mile boots for the energy transition

If we can make seven-mile steps by plopping down wind/solar plus the required storage in gigawatt quantities, all the better, but that hasn't been happening. We'll run out of uranium eventually but, for now, such reactors buy time. Of course, this discussion has been happening for so long that the "it takes too long to build" naysayers will get their way soon, even at the slow pace we're currently going full renewable at. It's now or never, we need to commit to an option, no matter which one

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_pollution#/media/File:How-...

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