| ▲ | littlestymaar 2 days ago |
| It's not the regulations, it's the financing scheme: if it's not state backed with a long investment horizon, it's very expensive because private investors expect 10% yields in the middle of a ZIRP to cover from the possible political reversal. The Hinckley Point C EPR reactor would have produced electricity at a rate below £20/MWh instead of a planned £80/MWh if it was financed by government bonds. |
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| ▲ | pfdietz 2 days ago | parent | next [-] |
| It's not just political reversal risk; there's the risk of technological obsolescence. It's very much a stretch to assume a nuclear plant will remain operationally viable (in the sense of being competitive) for 40 years, never mind the 60 or 80 years sometimes mentioned, because the competition isn't standing still. |
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| ▲ | littlestymaar a day ago | parent [-] | | The only credible competition against a state funded nuclear plant is hypothetical next gen geothermal power though. Nuclear won't save the planet, as few countries can develop a nuclear industry. But for countries that have one, it should be a no brainer if not for irrational nuclear bomb fears. | | |
| ▲ | pfdietz a day ago | parent | next [-] | | > The only credible competition against a state funded nuclear plant is hypothetical next gen geothermal power though. If we extend renewables and batteries on historical experience curves they could become incredibly cheap, with solar well below $0.01/kWh. Nuclear couldn't even make an operating profit in an environment with solar that cheap. | | |
| ▲ | littlestymaar 20 hours ago | parent [-] | | Price is irrelevant when you need most of your electricity in a season when there's barely any sun. Most of the European population leave on places that are more northern then Montreal, we have less than 8 hours of daylight per day, and a significant fraction of it is cloudy. There's no storage solution that can store the excess summer solar exposure (when we get more than 16hours on sun per day) to reinject it into the grid in winter. That's literally science fiction tech, and that's what you'd need to make solar + storage a reliable source in Europe. Solar in California, India or the middle east? Sure. Solar in Europe, Canada and even Japan, good luck (and yes, these countries constitute most of nuclear power plants operators). | | |
| ▲ | pfdietz 19 hours ago | parent [-] | | Even taking into account intermittency and seasonality, nuclear would have a very hard time surviving in a $0.01/kWh PV world. | | |
| ▲ | littlestymaar 19 hours ago | parent [-] | | Again, price is irrelevant if there's no electricity available at all when you need it. | | |
| ▲ | pfdietz 19 hours ago | parent [-] | | The implication that the energy couldn't be available when you need it is utter codswallop. At $0.01/kWh, PV electricity, if converted to resistive heat, would be below the cost of Henry Hub natural gas heat. And this heat would be very storable in artificial geothermal at maybe 600 C, where it would lose < 1% of stored energy per month. Would this have low round trip efficiency if converted back to electricity? Sure. But if the PV electricity is that cheap, so what? When levelized cost is low enough, there's plenty of room for engineering to work around intermittency and seasonality. | | |
| ▲ | littlestymaar 17 hours ago | parent [-] | | > At $0.01/kWh, PV electricity, if converted to resistive heat, would be below the cost of Henry Hub natural gas heat. And this heat would be very storable in artificial geothermal at maybe 600 C, where it would lose < 1% of stored energy per month. HN crank solves global warming with one weird trick. |
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| ▲ | mastermage a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | looking at the current Geopolitical Climate this does not seem like an Irrational Fear. And I do not mean the fear of a reactor meltdown. But if you refine Uranium for a Powerplant you can also Refine it for a bomb. | | |
| ▲ | littlestymaar a day ago | parent [-] | | Any country that can make a nuclear bomb could decide to make one whether or not they chose to have a civil nuclear industry (Israel being the prime example). And in the current geopolitical climate, expect more countries to build a bomb. | | |
| ▲ | TheOtherHobbes a day ago | parent [-] | | If we're talking about war, what does more damage to the surroundings - dropping a nuke on a solar plant, or dropping a nuke on a nuclear plant? | | |
| ▲ | littlestymaar a day ago | parent [-] | | Dropping a nuke on a city where nuclear plants aren't … And it's not even close. That'd be exactly like the difference between the sole victim of the Fukushima nuclear accident vs the 19 000 dead from the tsunami that caused the accident. If nukes get involved, all bets are off no matter what, millions of people would die and the consequences of a subsequent reactor meltdown would be negligible compared to the mess you've got already. And even compared to a conventional war, nuclear accidents are benign next to armed conflicts. (Not only during the war, but also decades after: most people are familiar with the Chernobyl red zone, but there's red zone in France due to the eternal pollution caused by WWI ammunitions). | | |
| ▲ | pfdietz a day ago | parent [-] | | > the sole victim of the Fukushima nuclear accident This is a misrepresentation. There is a single person who the courts have established was (to their satisfaction) killed by nuclear exposure from Fukushima, although even that is quite debatable. But that doesn't mean there weren't any victims, just that they could not (or could not yet) be identified. The estimated ~200 cancer deaths from Fukushima will mostly be lost in a sea of cancers from other causes. This doesn't mean they can be, or should be, ignored. Regulation is not like criminal law; one does not have to prove a technology is guilty beyond reasonable doubt to regulate it. | | |
| ▲ | littlestymaar 20 hours ago | parent [-] | | > The estimated ~200 cancer deaths from Fukushima will mostly be lost in a sea of cancers from other causes. This doesn't mean they can be, or should be, ignored In comparison to the 19000 persons who died directly from the Tsunami? Yes it can be neglected. That's two orders of magnitude smaller! > Regulation is not like criminal law; one does not have to prove a technology is guilty beyond reasonable doubt to regulate it. No industry on earth is even remotely as regulated as nuclear industry. Over the span of the period your “200 excess death” have been calculated, more people in that particular region of Japan will have died from industrial causes, from any other industry (you should check how many people die each year from professional deceases in places as mundane as hairdressing saloons … Should we ban hair coloring?) | | |
| ▲ | pfdietz 19 hours ago | parent [-] | | What nonsense. Of course we cannot ignore the 200 estimated deaths from radiation, just because people die from other reasons. You might make a cogent case that the value of 200 lives isn't all that great compared to the benefits of nuclear, but whether 19,000 people died in a tsunami is irrelevant to that argument. | | |
| ▲ | littlestymaar 17 hours ago | parent [-] | | Of course it is relevant: the “nuclear accident” was caused by the tsunami in the first place! It has never been a nuclear accident to begin with, it was just a negligible (<1% in the pessimistic estimates) aggravation of the consequences of natural disaster. Also nobody died from radiations. The additional cancer is caused by contamination, which is an entirely different health hazard for all intent and purpose. |
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| ▲ | ViewTrick1002 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
| ”If we compare apples to oranges nuclear power is cheap”. You can finance the competition in the same way and get similarly cheaper prices. Hinkley Point C just got a loan at a 7% interest rate to finish the plant. That is after about all uncertainty should already have been discovered. Now add making a profit and factor in the risk on top and you’ll end up with electricity costing $400 per MWh |
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| ▲ | mpweiher a day ago | parent | next [-] | | HPC is 2 EPR reactors. At their design CF they will produce 25 TWh per year. Over the expected operating life of 80 years that will be 2000 TWh. At the $400/MWh you are postulating, that would be €800 billion of income. Although I am sure the operators wouldn't mind (15% ROI per year over 80 years is...nice) I am going to go with "your numbers are BS". | |
| ▲ | thatcat 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | If risk and disposal is factored into coal, gas, solar power, what would be cheaper? Nuclear has recyclable fuel processes and fail safe systems available. | | |
| ▲ | ViewTrick1002 2 days ago | parent [-] | | That cost doesn’t even factor in disposal because no one knows the true cost yet. Not sure what risk you think come from renewables and storage? | | |
| ▲ | littlestymaar a day ago | parent [-] | | > That cost doesn’t even factor in disposal because no one knows the true cost yet There's still some cost factored in, unlike any other industry where the government is expected to clean up after the fact. > Not sure what risk you think come from renewables The grid collapse risk (See what happened in Spain last year, which caused 8 deaths, more than every nuclear power plant accidents in the Western world combined…). Grid operators are currently investing a trillion Euro in the EU alone in order to adapt the grid to the new challenges caused by intermittent and distributed energy sources, and this will never be accounted for in renewable electricity prices… (hence the paradox: the more “cheap energy” is being deployed in Europe, the more expensive the electricity prices become). > and storage "Storage" doesn't exist yet as a most people imagine it. Batteries can help ease a few hours of peak load/low supply but that's pretty much it, pumped storage is very situational with limited deployment capabilities. So the risk is that the technology simply never materialize. | | |
| ▲ | TheOtherHobbes a day ago | parent | next [-] | | It's €1.6tn up to 2040. And it's not being built to fix problems "caused by intermittent sources" so much as a complete overhaul of a grid for 27 countries, some of which are relatively backward, with standardised digital control, plus significant new interconnectors. The finished grid will be far more robust, better able to handle local outages and issues, and generally more adaptive and open to development in various directions. As for "cheap energy" raising prices - prices rose a little after Covid, but there's been no constant march upwards. The main driver of higher prices is gas, and eliminating gas dependence, for both for financial and strategic reasons, is a key goal. The current situation in Iran is likely to increase that motivation. A key point about renewables is that power doesn't rely on imports from war zones. | |
| ▲ | ViewTrick1002 a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | It is not included. In my part of the world the authorities can demand a clean up bond as part of giving permission to build the project. That is done to ensure that you can’t skimp on your responsibilities. Then I just see misinformation on the Iberian blackout. Please go ahead and tell me how thermal planes not delivering the expected reactive power was caused by renewables. Please tell me how renewables can’t deliver reactive power when the US and all other sane grids have required them to do it for close to a decade. And with that we’re solving high 90s% of the grid. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good enough when we still need to solve agriculture, construction, aviation, maritime shipping, industry and so on. All ignoring that storage on larger scales already exists. | | |
| ▲ | littlestymaar a day ago | parent [-] | | Wow, there's literally not a single accurate sentence in your comment. Not a single one! I'm stopping here since you don't seem to be interested in facts at all. | | |
| ▲ | mpweiher a day ago | parent | next [-] | | That's his usual MO. | | | |
| ▲ | ViewTrick1002 a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | Read the report and tell me that the cause is renewables and not reactive power through a Swiss cheese model of mismanagement. https://www.entsoe.eu/publications/blackout/28-april-2025-ib... And then you deny the local law in my jurisdiction, because you can’t accept the outcome. Then you say that this FERC requirement for renewables managing reactive power from 2016 does not exist. https://www.ferc.gov/sites/default/files/2020-06/RM16-1-000.... Then you say that storage does not exist on any relevant scale. While this is reality. https://blog.gridstatus.io/caiso-solar-storage-spring-2025/ https://en.cnesa.org/latest-news/2026/1/23/an-additional-664... Why are you so afraid of renewables and storage? Why can’t you stay with the truth? | | |
| ▲ | littlestymaar 17 hours ago | parent [-] | | You may believe that copy pasting sources that have been given to you by a sicophantic chatbot and that you didn't read makes you look smarter. But this is also wrong. | | |
| ▲ | ViewTrick1002 16 hours ago | parent [-] | | Please go ahead and tell me where I am wrong, give us some sources. Be my guest. | | |
| ▲ | littlestymaar 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | You're not going to read them, so why bother since you live in a parallel universe. But if you wanted, you could ask your chatbot so you don't have to put the efforts to read anything. | | |
| ▲ | ViewTrick1002 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | You do realize that it’s quite telling that you still haven’t been able to point out a single of these ”falsehoods” nor been able to provide any factual information of your own? Why are you so afraid of renewables and storage? | | |
| ▲ | littlestymaar 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | > You do realize that it’s quite telling that you still haven’t been able to point out a single of these ”falsehoods” nor been able to provide any factual information of your own? Brandolini's law. And I'm not going to spend any effort with someone who use "sources" they haven't even read… > Why are you so afraid of renewables and storage? I'm not afraid of them. I'm afraid of people making wrong decisions based on idealistic views of technologies. Renewable (outside of hydro) are a very good complement to fossil fuels. And they are a key tool to half emissions from electricity production in most of the world where electricity production is mostly done through fossil fuels. And that's great. But also that's it. They aren't going to carry the grid on their own, they aren't going to cure cancer or bring world peace. | | |
| ▲ | ViewTrick1002 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | I have read all the sources I linked. Well, to be perfectly honest, for the ENTSO-E final report I read the summary and the relevant sections and for the actual FERC regulation, rather than the news posts I used to find the true root source, I left it at the introduction which says "non-synchronous sources must provide reactive power as per this technical specification from Y date". But that's of course not good enough. But you know that I am right, which is why you're trying to avoid facing reality and pretending everything I say is false, rather than dare to face it. The consensus among grid operators and researchers is that renewable grids are a solved problem. They’ve moved on to the implementation details instead. Reddit is firmly stuck in the past though. But, if you are curious, the modeling lands on a combination of this depending on local circumstances: - Wind, overbuilt - Solar, overbuilt - Demand response - Long range transmission to smooth out variability - Existing nuclear power (for the grids that have them) - Exising hydro - Storage - In places with district heating: CHP plants running on carbon neutral fuels. - An emergency reserve of gas turbines. Run them on carbon neutral fuel if their emissions matter. Why do you want to waste tens of billions of euros on handouts per new built large scale reactor? | | |
| ▲ | littlestymaar 32 minutes ago | parent [-] | | > I have read all the sources I linked. “I've spent 5 hours reading official materials before responding to a comment on HN”, yeah, sure. > The consensus among grid operators and researchers is that renewable grids are a solved problem. The consensus is that you have no understanding of the topic. I recently followed this [cycle of conferences on the future of electricity grids]( https://www.college-de-france.fr/fr/agenda/seminaire/la-tran...) and the researchers's opinion is the litteral opposite of what you've just said. Who should I believe, the professional or the HN crank using perplexity. Though question … |
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