> Nuclear power plants struggle with economics already at highest possible capacity factors (running 90% of the time).

In Ontario, Canada they are the third-cheapest (after hydro, and nat/methane gas); see Table 2:

* https://oeb.ca/sites/default/files/rpp-price-report-20241018...

In previous years they have often been second-cheapest (after hydro): their 'ranking' depends on methane gas commodity prices.

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natmaka 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

Nuclear can be apparently cheap (its TCO is difficult to establish because gov funding, hot waste potentially breaking havoc in a distant future...) but never is when load-following, because load-following reduces the load factor, and a low load factor bumps up production costs.

Moreover nuclear's aptitude to load-following is vastly over-stated because it has too much inertia (even hot). Even France (shock-full of reactors) always needs to produce approximately 10% ( https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/energy?Metric=Share+of+... ) of its juice thanks to fossil fuel, for a non-negligible part ensuring load-following.

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throw0101a 2 days ago | parent [-]

> Moreover nuclear's aptitude to load-following is vastly over-stated because it has too much inertia (even hot).

There is load-following thermally and load-following electrically. Newer nuclear designs allow for the steam to be diverted and quenched so they don't reach the generators.

Of course this is inefficient, but as you can see in the following link:

* https://www.ieso.ca/power-data § Supply

the Ontario nuclear plants basically run at full-tilt 24/7 to provide base load.

Hydro-electric is also supplying a bunch of base load, so if more nuclear can be built so that it takes up more of that hydro is doing, hydro can then be used in a more variable fashion (so perhaps (nat/methane) gas can be reduced and we have fewer GHGs released).

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natmaka 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Yes, there are two types of load-following: "bump up the power", or "lower it". This also applies do renewables: not producing (many wind turbines are equipped with a braking system) or wasting an excess of power isn't as challenging as quickly producing more power, then less, then more... fine-tuning and for extended periods of time.

Yes, running at full-tilt 24/7 is way easier for a nuclear reactor than doing the load-following game (on every account: total cost, maintenance, risk...). They are built for it!

Hydro: yes, to an extent because load-following hydro is mainly done by pumped-storage, many dams are of the "run-of-the-river" type and cannot always load-follow: if there is no incoming (upstream) water they cannot produce any power.

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ViewTrick1002 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Which is a quirk of hindering renewable deployment.

All over Europe nuclear reactors are throttled down or even shut down for days/weeks because renewables lead to too low prices for the reactors to even cover wear and tear and fuel costs.

Given that renewables are the cheapest energy source in human history this will happen in every grid that is based on a free market principle.

In the monopolized markets the distributed aspects of renewables will mean that rooftop solar and storage enables home owners to largely disconnect from the grid if the monopoly starts to force new built nuclear power costs on the ratepayers.

In other words: Nuclear power is fucked unless it can either get the marginal cost to zero like a solar panel, i.e. impossible or get CAPEX low enough to act like a fossil gas peaker which again seems near impossible given the past 70 years of nuclear powers history and commercialization.

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throw0101a a day ago | parent | next [-]

> Given that renewables are the cheapest energy source in human history

Not according to the energy contracts in Ontario as shown in the OEB report linked above.

	▲	ViewTrick1002 a day ago \| parent [-]
		Yes, the OEB report is for a paid off fleet. Sure, some investment in recent years but not even close to a new build. The cost for the Darlington SMR is somewhere in the 25-35 cents/kWh range with the calculation assuming large learning effects to subsequent reactors and that the entire project goes on time and on budget. Does that sound cheap to you?

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natmaka 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Indeed!

Experts (International Energy Agency, McKinsey, etc.) are clear: renewables will produce the majority of electricity by 2050.

https://www.iea.org/commentaries/tripling-renewable-power-ca...

https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/energy-and-materials/our...

This is inevitable (no other possibility is realistic), and this applies to France, where RTE (EDF's subsidiary that manages the electricity grid) has emphasized that 100% nuclear power is out of the question, and that more than 60% nuclear power would be utopian.

This trend is already clearly visible and welcomed by investors.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-fossil-renewa...

The cost of producing renewable electricity is increasingly lower than that of nuclear power.

https://www.lazard.com/research-insights/levelized-cost-of-e...

During their operation, they do not consume fuel, produce waste, or expose people to a major accident, and are therefore and will be preferred.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-04-09/european-...

The surplus electricity sometimes produced by renewables will be leveraged by increasing storage capacity (electric vehicles, hydro pumped storage, etc.) as well as green hydrogen. It will gradually replace nuclear electricity, which is supposed to compensate for their variability, especially since the latter cannot adjust its production quickly and frequently enough ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41796580 ).

All of this will reduce the nuclear load factor and therefore increase its production cost (it is only profitable with a high load factor), with strong feedback (the higher the load factor, the more likely it will be).

This will increasingly favor the deployment of a system based primarily on renewables, meaning that nuclear electricity will become less and less useful and more and more expensive, making its fate (and therefore the profitability of the heavy investments required for its infrastructure) easy to predict.

A renewable-nuclear mix will doom the latter.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udJJ7n_Ryjg

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pfdietz 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The figures you give don't appear to reflect the fully loaded cost of providing power from new nuclear power plants. It looks to me like they just reflect operating costs on assets that are already paid for, or mostly paid for.

	▲	throw0101a 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		> It looks to me like they just reflect operating costs on assets that are already paid for, or mostly paid for. In Ontario there used to be a government-owned utility, Ontario Hydro. They built all the nuclear plants (and everything else). But at some point things were re-jigged so parts of Ontario Hydro could be privatized (the government still owns shares), but because of how it was broken up its debt could not be split up or given to any of the resulting components. * https://www.oefc.on.ca/debtmanage.html So a separate legal entity was created where the debt is now held, and rate payers give money to that corporation to pay off old debt (both nuclear and non-nuclear) as part of their rate. Also worth noting that the nuclear plants in Ontario are going through a refit currently, so it's not like the plants were built and nothing has done with them except for OpEx; there's a whole bunch of CapEx happening right now (and has been for the last few years): * https://www.brucepower.com/life-extension-program-mcr-projec... * https://www.ans.org/news/article-6280/bruce-power-refurbishm... * https://www.opg.com/projects-services/projects/nuclear/darli...

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bryanlarsen 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yes, nuclear can be cost competitive if you ignore the bulk of the costs: aka construction and decomissioning.

Ontario is now planning on building another plant. Their own document says it won't pay for itself for 50 years, and that's assuming there are no cost overruns, which is a laughable assumption.

	▲	throw0101a 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		> Ontario is now planning on building another plant. Their own document says it won't pay for itself for 50 years, and that's assuming there are no cost overruns, which is a laughable assumption. Well the current plants have been running for 4-5 decades and are in the middle of being refurbished to run for another 4-5 decades. Only paying for itself for the life of the plant is actually a good thing: it means that it is basically being run at-cost with minimal profits being extracted from the public.

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AtlasBarfed 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

No wind? In Canada? With or without subsidies?