| ▲ | monegator 4 hours ago |
| > time and cost as much as anything else you people have been saying that for at least twenty years. In the meantime the renewables have failed to produce a noticeable change in my part of europe, sentiment is increasingly pro-nuke but your adage keeps things still. Of course yf you never start, you never finish. |
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| ▲ | pjc50 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| > In the meantime the renewables have failed to produce a noticeable change in my part of europe Skill issue in your part of Europe, then. In my part of Europe, https://grid.iamkate.com/ is currently reporting 95% non-carbon sources, 85% renewables, and a power price of −£12.03/MWh. > twenty years When it comes online, Hinkley Point C will have taken 20 years from first approval. Too slow. |
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| ▲ | herecomesyour_ 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | Heartening to see someone talking about both the pros and cons. I find here and on, for example reddit or twitter, that people are unanimously in favour of Nuclear. I really don't think costs and delays are well understood. The costs are astronomical and in the UK the cost of energy has been monstrously subsidized. Consumers (public) are paying for this before the plants are running and for hundreds of years after they are running. I wouldn't call myself anti-nuclear however as in terms of base load, sovereignty and environmentally it strikes me as hitting the sweet spot. But I don't think people really appreciate how expensive it costs the public over the lifetime (even if "day to day" cost per MWh compares favourably with other sources), and how long it takes to get running. Even small modular reactors fail to address this. | | |
| ▲ | pjc50 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > Even small modular reactors fail to address this. I'd be willing to engage with SMRs on the merits of actually constructed systems, but if you open https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-power-... and restrict to "operational" all but two of the projects disappear. | | |
| ▲ | matthewdgreen 42 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | Not only this, but the benefit of SMR is based on the possibility that they can be mass-produced at low cost. Until that happens, the benefit doesn’t exist. Solar and batteries and wind have already passed that threshold, but cheap mass-produced SMRs don’t exist yet, even if someone can point to a couple of expensive, bespoke SMRs. | |
| ▲ | marcosdumay an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | One in China and one in Russia. I doubt they are talking about the same thing as the US companies. So it would be useless to extrapolate their economics. |
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| ▲ | matthewdgreen 44 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | It doesn’t really matter if people on HN or Reddit are in favor of nuclear. At the end of the day, nuclear will get built if someone thinks the cost is worth it over the alternatives. The Internet fan club is mostly irrelevant. |
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| ▲ | crote 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > renewables have failed to produce a noticeable change in my part of europe More electricity in Europe comes from renewables than from either nuclear or fossil, with renewables rapidly approaching 50% market share. Several countries (even the non-hydro-heavy ones) are already showing multi-day periods where renewable electricity exceeds 100% of demand. If your part of Europe isn't showing a noticeable change, perhaps it might be because your part isn't trying? |
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| ▲ | StreamBright 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | Renewables are not suitable for replacing nuclear, coal and other traditional sources of energy due to the fact that you cannot control production. | | |
| ▲ | abenga 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Why do you need to control production? Why not over provision and store? | | | |
| ▲ | triceratops 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Tell me you've been in coma the past 10 years without telling me you've been in a coma the past 10 years. |
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| ▲ | chpatrick 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| In my part of Europe (Hungary), on a sunny day we have more energy produced from solar (on top of about 50% nuclear) than we can actually use. Sometimes we're 110% zero-carbon and it's because of solar and nuclear. As of writing this comment our energy mix is 35.69% solar, 23.19% nuclear, 26.66% nuclear imported from Slovakia. The rest is hydro and solar from Austria and about 5% gas and biomass. In my opinion clean electricity is an almost solved problem, especially as storage gets better. |
