”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".

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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mpweiher a day ago | parent | next [-]

That's his usual MO.

	▲	littlestymaar 20 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Is he well known here?

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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?

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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.

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ViewTrick1002 16 hours ago | parent [-]

Please go ahead and tell me where I am wrong, give us some sources. Be my guest.

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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.

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ViewTrick1002 5 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?

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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.

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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 31 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 …