Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

dpa-international.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

731–740 of 1001 posts

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#731

Post by ak217 »

echelon wrote: post #660
avianlyric wrote: post #641

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have done. The Three Mile Island accident happened when it was being operated by Navy vets [1]. Simple training isn’t enough. During the investigation of the accident the Admiral that built and ran the Navy nuclear program was asked how the Navy had managed to operate accident free, and what others could learn. This was his response: > Over the years, many people have asked me how I run the Naval Reactors Progra…

How many people have died on account of nuclear accidents? Vs. coal? Vs. not having enough energy? (eg. blackouts killing hospital ventilators, etc.) ----- Edit: because of HN rate limits, I can't respond to a sibling comment. I'll do that here: > Their safety record is good, but can they generate power at a cost that's commercially competitive? If it's too expensive then the plan doesn't work. Is a purely wind/solar…

> Is a purely wind/solar + battery grid viable?

Yes.

(I don't disagree that a diverse mix is good, and I'm all for nuclear, I'm just saying the old "it's intermittent and can't grid form" boogeyman is no longer true. It would also really behoove Western countries to start manufacturing batteries at scale if we don't want to get a bloody nose in the future, because they're good for more than just the grid)

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#732

Post by socalgal2 »

skybrian wrote: post #651
cushychicken wrote: post #621

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The engineering side of running reactors safely is a solved problem, the US navy has > 7500 reactor-years with a perfect safety record. It’s also worth noting that the US Navy is the only organization with a perfect nuclear safety record. My point being: by god, let the Navy nukes train everyone else!

Their safety record is good, but can they generate power at a cost that's commercially competitive? If it's too expensive then the plan doesn't work.

They're expensive because of, arguably, over regulation. The are not inherently expensive, we've just declared them so. The next response will be "all that regulation is needed" but it's arguably that the over regulation is killing people by the unintended consequences of keeping things like coal viable, etc...

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#733

Post by frollogaston »

socalgal2 wrote: post #732
skybrian wrote: post #651

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their safety record is good, but can they generate power at a cost that's commercially competitive? If it's too expensive then the plan doesn't work.

They're expensive because of, arguably, over regulation. The are not inherently expensive, we've just declared them so. The next response will be "all that regulation is needed" but it's arguably that the over regulation is killing people by the unintended consequences of keeping things like coal viable, etc...

Right. There are countries that aren't particularly wealthy and rely on nuclear power just because they don't have reliable fossil fuel sources.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#734

Post by dalyons »

Manuel_D wrote: post #712
ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #702

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

More like a few decades, if ever. Battery production is estimated to reach 6.8 TWh per year in 2035 [1]. But only 12% of this is expected to go to battery storage systems, yielding just 800 GWh. 12 hours of storage worldwide at current electricity demand is 30,000 GWh. And by 2035, electricity demand is going to be more than that, as transportation and industry is increasingly electrified and migrated off of fossil f…

wind runs through the night, and so does hydro and existing nuclear. So lets say, 15,000gwh that needs shifting? Still a big number, but...

BESS increased 45% y/y in 2025, and is looking like higher growth than that in 2026 already ~60% (1). Im optimistic that the mckinsey conservative linear estimates of growth are missing the s-curve of scaling new tech, just like they did for solar. They only have to be wrong by a little y/y and we get to 1000ghw a year by 2030 (note, they released a more recent study that pulled 800gwh/year in to closer to 2030 [2], the previous study was already too conservative) . At 1twh a year we're seriously chipping away at emissions, we're done in 15 years if nothing else changes (which of course it will, both on the demand and supply side). Still, thats actually incredible!

1 https://www.energy-storage.news/over-17gwh-of-bess-deployed-... 2 https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/week-in-charts/ba...

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#735

Post by epistasis »

noosphr wrote: post #607
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…

>That's great, but we live in the 2020s, not the 1970s. I'm old enough to have heard that in every decade since the 90s. >But this time it's different! Yes, we're much closer to climate change making the industrial supply chains for building a nuclear power plant impossible. If we don't do it in the next 20 years our only choice is going to be what seasoning to use on human flesh.

> I'm old enough to have heard that in every decade since the 90s

What you haven't heard every decade since the 90s is that storage, solar, and wind are cheaper than nuclear. Technology has changed. We're no longer running 486dx or pentiums, we have something better.

>> But this time it's different!

I didn't say that, and I'm not sure what you're referring to. Do you think energy technology is not going through a massive disruption, completely different than the 1990s, or 2000s?

> Yes, we're much closer to climate change making the industrial supply chains for building a nuclear power plant impossible. If we don't do it in the next 20 years our only choice is going to be what seasoning to use on human flesh.

This is very cryptic. Climate change doesn't threaten the industrial supply chains for nuclear, it does threaten the standard cooling sources though, such as rivers and other aquatic ecosystems. "If we don't do it" not sure what the "it" is bet no path leads to cannibalism.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#736

Post by dalyons »

lucb1e wrote: post #639
spacebanana7 wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gas is an excellent compliment for renewables. It scales up and down quickly, and can cover all the weak spots around intermittency and dunkelflautes. The carbon emissions are relatively low too, because in renewables/battery heavy grid the actual quantity of gas needed is relatively small. The problem arises in importing gas from unstable places.

Saying gas has relatively little emissions reminds me of the joke german car manufacturers are making about their latest combustion cars using relatively little fuel ('hocheffizienzverbrenner'). It's marginal gains. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/carbon-dioxide-emissions-... Gas is 200gCO2e/kWh, plain old diesel is 260. Better than nothing but not going to make a big dent Maybe if you happen to live in a country…

GP is saying gas has relatively little emissions in this scenario because we wont use it much total in a year. Not because its cleaner.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#737

Post by skybrian »

socalgal2 wrote: post #732
skybrian wrote: post #651

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their safety record is good, but can they generate power at a cost that's commercially competitive? If it's too expensive then the plan doesn't work.

They're expensive because of, arguably, over regulation. The are not inherently expensive, we've just declared them so. The next response will be "all that regulation is needed" but it's arguably that the over regulation is killing people by the unintended consequences of keeping things like coal viable, etc...

I meant, the particular way the Navy does it might be too expensive for some reason. Do you know anything about that?

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#738

Post by frollogaston »

yawaramin wrote: post #652
sunaookami wrote: post #636

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone is entitled to their opinions.

But they're not entitled to their own facts.

There's not much trust in anyone who says nuclear is completely safe, "we fixed it now," etc. That shouldn't be the motto. But fossil fuel is already killing more people, coal puts more radioactive uranium dust into the air even, and that's before getting into climate change.

I think people who are anti-nuclear and environmentalist are wrong, but it's not an insane opinion to have. There's no fact you can point to that says nuclear is safer than renewables. I just don't see how the world is realistically going to switch to renewables. We've already seen oil companies use those as distractions from nuclear.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#739

Post by Manuel_D »

dalyons wrote: post #734
Manuel_D wrote: post #712

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More like a few decades, if ever. Battery production is estimated to reach 6.8 TWh per year in 2035 [1]. But only 12% of this is expected to go to battery storage systems, yielding just 800 GWh. 12 hours of storage worldwide at current electricity demand is 30,000 GWh. And by 2035, electricity demand is going to be more than that, as transportation and industry is increasingly electrified and migrated off of fossil f…

wind runs through the night, and so does hydro and existing nuclear. So lets say, 15,000gwh that needs shifting? Still a big number, but... BESS increased 45% y/y in 2025, and is looking like higher growth than that in 2026 already ~60% (1). Im optimistic that the mckinsey conservative linear estimates of growth are missing the s-curve of scaling new tech, just like they did for solar. They only have to be wrong by a…

Wind doesn't cut out at night, but it also experiences long periods of low production: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=46617 It is unquestionably an intermittent source that would require overprovisioning and large amounts of storage to even out periods of underproduction.

The projections for battery growth might be off, sure. But it's also possible the growth is a little bit under the projections year over year, and then we're looking at much less battery production five years. You're invoking uncertainty, but only considering it in one direction.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#740

Post by [deleted] »

frollogaston wrote: post #738
yawaramin wrote: post #652

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they're not entitled to their own facts.

There's not much trust in anyone who says nuclear is completely safe, "we fixed it now," etc. That shouldn't be the motto. But fossil fuel is already killing more people, coal puts more radioactive uranium dust into the air even, and that's before getting into climate change. I think people who are anti-nuclear and environmentalist are wrong, but it's not an insane opinion to have. There's no fact you can point to th…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN