Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants • Hacker News Board

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#701

Post by ViewTrick1002 » Fri, May 01, 2026, 1:44 AM UTC

Manuel_D wrote: post #684

epistasis wrote: post #679

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not sure how pointing out that a year's worth of global battery production amounts to just 3 days of one US state's electricity demand is supposed to demonstrate that battery storage is feasible. It was pointing out that the comment making off-the-wall requirements of battery storage was already not aware of the order of magnitude of existing batteries. You don't know the exact > To put this in perspective, glo…

> The implication seems to be that batteries will get more expensive at some point. Perhaps. Or more chemistries will be discovered or used. Lithium got very expensive for a short while, then cheap. The cure for high prices is high prices, because unlike oil there are tons of substitutions available for all aspects of batteries. Such as? Is your proposal that we use lead acid batteries instead of lithium based batter…

Or an iron air. Or flow battery. Or sodium. Or all manner of different lithium chemistries across NCA, NMC, LFP and so on.

We’re seeing the Cambrian explosion of battery technology. From early BEVs utilizing the highest performance to even deliver a viable product to a plethora of options depending on your use case.

https://www.pv-magazine.com/2026/02/25/google-to-deploy-worl...

Wasting trillions of tax money and decades of opportunity cost on new built nuclear handouts is extremely shortsighted.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#702

Post by ViewTrick1002 » Fri, May 01, 2026, 1:46 AM UTC

Manuel_D wrote: post #667

dalyons wrote: post #619

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Building enough battery to cover the night is still 20,000 to 30,000 GWh. For comparison, global annual battery output in 2025 was 2,200 GWh. Of which only ~ 300GWh went to grid storage. Even just diurnal storage for a completely renewable grid is a truly enormous amount of storage.

Given a 10-15 year lifetime of the batteries, with BEVs being flexible storage consumers that seems well within reach in a couple of years?

We’re seeing the reshaping of the entire global energy system. Either we jump on the train or get run over.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#703

Post by ViewTrick1002 » Fri, May 01, 2026, 1:49 AM UTC

selfmodruntime wrote: post #611

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Or just batteries? Throw on a gas turbine emergency reserve running your favorite fossil or green fuel for well, the emergencies. We’re talking irrelevant emissions.

I truly can’t comprehend where this massive boner for new built nuclear power comes from. Sci-fi?

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#704

Post by strken » Fri, May 01, 2026, 1:54 AM UTC

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…

If you place the climate crisis into the context of every other potential crisis then yeah, the world is weighing up nuclear proliferation against climate change, both of which are potential extinction risks but not all that likely in the short term.

I agree that this means few decision makers believe climate change will literally end human life, or end industrialised society, in the near term. I disagree that any problem should be ignored unless it's existential.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#705

Post by Manuel_D » Fri, May 01, 2026, 1:55 AM UTC

ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #697

Manuel_D wrote: post #696

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear can deliver flexible demand if required , it just involves either lowering the reactivity in the core, or if the drop in demand is sudden, bypassing steam from the turbine and running it directly to the condenser. But since their operating costs are so much lower than their construction costs operators run them at 100% capacity as long as they can. The only situation where deliberately operating a nuclear pla…

Not economically. EDF is already crying about renewables cratering the earning potential and increasing maintenance costs for the existing french nuclear fleet. Let alone the horrifyingly expensive new builds. And that is France which has been actively shielding its inflexible aging nuclear fleet from renewable competition, and it still leaks in on pure economics.

It's never economical to operate an asset at under 100% capacity. Intermittent sources of energy like solar and wind encounter the same problem when they start to saturate demand during peak periods of generation. Install a new solar panel in California, and chances are you won't actually be able to sell any electricity around midday since demand is saturated.

The difference is that nuclear will keep running at night, in the winter, regardless of how strong the wind is blowing. A cheap, but intermittent source of carbon-free energy is not comparable on a dollar-by-dollar basis to a non-intermittent source of carbon-free energy.

The common retort is to use batteries, but let's put this in perspective: France uses 1,219 GWh of electricity daily (note that this is just electricity and doesn't include things like transportation, fuels in smelters, chemical feedstock etc.). 12 hours of storage would be 600 GWh. Seasonal fluctuations in wind and solar are even more extreme, and might need days worth of stored energy. But let's be humble and just see what it'll take to provision 12 hours:

At $150/kWh that'll be 90 billion dollars. These batteries will be good for 2,000 to 5,000 cycles. Let's say 4,000, so it has an 11 year life span. Over the course of 55 years that'd cost $450 billion. Just for the storage, mind you, France has to build the renewable generation on top of the storage.

On the flip side, the Flamanville Nuclear plant has a lifespan of 60 years. You could build 12 Flamanville nuclear plants and satisfy 100% of France's electricity demand. At €19 billion euros, or about $22 billion USD building 12 Flamanville plants would work out to $264 billion. The cost of storage to even out intermittent sources is much more expensive than just building the nuclear plants.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#706

Post by db48x » Fri, May 01, 2026, 1:56 AM UTC

ianburrell wrote: post #456

db48x wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't. Watts were a mistake by whatever committee it was that standardized unit names. Power should not have been given a unit; it should have been left as ∆energy/time just as velocity is distance/time.

Joule is a derived unit, it is kg*m^2/s^2. There are lots of derived units, like hertz and newton, because they useful than writing out the whole thing. Electronics would be really annoying if had to write out volt, ohm, and watts (ampere is base unit, coulomb is derived).

Don’t put words in my mouth. I only said that power should be J/s instead of watts. The “per second” part of that is what is most important thing about power. It’s the rate at which energy is accumulating or being used up.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#707

Post by db48x » Fri, May 01, 2026, 1:59 AM UTC

badc0ffee wrote: post #433

db48x wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't. Watts were a mistake by whatever committee it was that standardized unit names. Power should not have been given a unit; it should have been left as ∆energy/time just as velocity is distance/time.

It's shorthand for a Joule (unit of energy) per second (unit of time). Watt is the problem with that?

Using watts is fine for anyone who deals with energy and power all the time. The problem comes when the lay person tries to reason about power. If power were written as J/s then they could use the same reasoning that they are already familiar with from dealing with speed and position, or with flow rate and volume.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#708

Post by Nifty3929 » Fri, May 01, 2026, 2:03 AM UTC

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…

Wow - nearly 20% of the California bullet train! Almost double the wildlife crossing!

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#709

Post by Manuel_D » Fri, May 01, 2026, 2:03 AM UTC

ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #701

Manuel_D wrote: post #684

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The implication seems to be that batteries will get more expensive at some point. Perhaps. Or more chemistries will be discovered or used. Lithium got very expensive for a short while, then cheap. The cure for high prices is high prices, because unlike oil there are tons of substitutions available for all aspects of batteries. Such as? Is your proposal that we use lead acid batteries instead of lithium based batter…

Or an iron air. Or flow battery. Or sodium. Or all manner of different lithium chemistries across NCA, NMC, LFP and so on. We’re seeing the Cambrian explosion of battery technology. From early BEVs utilizing the highest performance to even deliver a viable product to a plethora of options depending on your use case. https://www.pv-magazine.com/2026/02/25/google-to-deploy-worl... Wasting trillions of tax money and dec…

How about we don't bother with either fission or wind and solar? Just build fusion plants and be done with it. If we're comfortable betting trillions of dollars in infrastructure projects on the hopes that a heretofore unproven technology will pan out, let's be more ambitious than batteries!

Of course, there's no guarantee that any of those fission ideas will actually pan out. Likewise with these battery chemistries. Investing loads of money into intermittent sources with just the hope that some future battery chemistry will solve storage at grid scale is not what I'd call a wise plan.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#710

Post by magicalhippo » Fri, May 01, 2026, 2:07 AM UTC

abenga wrote: post #238

StreamBright wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Renewables are not suitable for replacing nuclear, coal and other traditional sources of energy due to the fact that you cannot control production.

Why do you need to control production? Why not over provision and store?

> Why do you need to control production?

Because there's a minimum demand you must be able to supply.

Here in Norway we get just about all our power from hydro, and we have a lot of pumped storage lakes which we use as "water batteries". However, eventually hydro relies on water falling from the sky.

Not long ago there had been some really dry years, and our storage was running at record lows. Had the subsequent year been dry we'd be in a real pickle.

Another aspect here is that production is one thing, but grid-scale renewable production rarely happens right next to the primary consumers, and has to be transported. And the grid might not be able to.

Again here in Norway, we had a situation not long ago where the price difference between the north of Norway and the south of Norway was 100x because the south struggled to produce while the north was overflowing, but there was insufficient capacity on the grid to send all the energy being produced up north down south.