China's quiet energy revolution: the switch from nuclear to renewable energy • Hacker News Board

Re: China's quiet energy revolution: the switch from nuclear to renewable energy

#91

Post by pfdietz » Sun, May 05, 2024, 11:16 AM UTC

hackerlight wrote: post #31

spacebanana7 wrote: post #10

It’s very difficult to estimate the true cost of nuclear power because so many resources are spent on safety features rather than the basic stuff essential to power generation. New construction cost per energy out can vary by 5x, even against the grain of expected purchasing power parity advantages: https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-britain-is-building-...

That is the true cost of nuclear, though. Costs associated with social licensing are just costs, no different from labor or materials. The safety requirements may be excessive and irrational, but they're not going away while the general public remains fearful. Any cost that can't go away in a realistic universe is ... just another cost. Another social licensing risk is early plant closure. The levelized cost of nucle…

Or, what happens if renewables fall so much in cost your nuclear plant is cash flow negative?

Following historical experience curves, when the world is solar powered energy from PV will be below $10/MWh.

Re: China's quiet energy revolution: the switch from nuclear to renewable energy

#92

Post by pfdietz » Sun, May 05, 2024, 11:19 AM UTC

bboygravity wrote: post #24

spacebanana7 wrote: post #10

It’s very difficult to estimate the true cost of nuclear power because so many resources are spent on safety features rather than the basic stuff essential to power generation. New construction cost per energy out can vary by 5x, even against the grain of expected purchasing power parity advantages: https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-britain-is-building-...

It's also very difficult to estimate true cost of solar at a massive scale. Most/all solar panels that exist currently can not be recycled in a way that makes ecological or economical sense. Their operational lifetime is NOT "sustainable", nor is their economical lifetime. Then there's death's per kWh, required energy storage (with its own ecological and economical issues), mining, transportation, CO2 per kWh, etc et…

> Then there's death's per kWh,

Given the value of a statistical life (which is something like $12.5M in the US), the value of putative lives saved from going nuclear (using motivated numbers from nuclear advocates) would provide no justification for building nuclear plants instead of renewables. The value would be utterly dwarfed by the excessive cost of the nuclear plants.

Re: China's quiet energy revolution: the switch from nuclear to renewable energy

#93

Post by simonebrunozzi » Tue, May 14, 2024, 8:29 PM UTC

janalsncm wrote: post #9

It is telling that a country with basically none of the American barriers to nuclear (NiMBYism, slow construction) is also shifting focus to solar and wind. It’s just simpler. You can put up a solar panel tomorrow and start generating power. A solar panel is a self-contained prefab power generating unit. Even with all of the advancements in nuclear, we still don’t have anything like that.

You are forgetting energy storage, the grid, the duck curve, etc.

But I don't necessarily disagree with you.