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| ▲ | defrost 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | China has those luxuries .. with a land area some what larger than Denmark, Norway, and Sweden combined it has areas in sunlight when others are dark, areas that are windy when others are not, large hydro schemes internally, a good number of nuclear plants to draw from and, perhaps most importantly, an ongoing build out of HVDC transmission lines across long distances and the means to keep building battery farms. | | |
| ▲ | phil21 10 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Sure, but their energy budget includes everything. They don’t have the luxury of importing energy others invested into decades ago when convenient and having it be off balance sheet like Denmark does. China would actually have to build stuff to do that. Denmark can just pretend it doesn’t exist. |
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| ▲ | smallerize 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Denmark's power generation from wind is around 20TWh/year, Norway hydro 140 TWh/year, and Swedish nuclear 50 TWh/year. China's wind power is at 1,000TWh/year, hydro 1,500 TWh/year, nuclear 326 TWh/year. (Stats mostly from statbase.org which is a couple years out of date.) So on the one hand, it's less likely that all of the wind power in China will lull at the same time. Then on the other hand, their hydro and nuclear can't absorb nearly as much % fluctuation. Maybe they could make up the difference with batteries though. | | |
| ▲ | bobthepanda 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | The Chinese strategy right now is to just massively overbuild renewables so that even fallow periods generate a substantial amount of energy. | | |
| ▲ | smallerize 14 minutes ago | parent [-] | | China's power generation is still >50% coal, so I don't know if I would call renewables "overbuilt" yet. | | |
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| ▲ | AnthonyMouse 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | If Sweden can build nuclear, why can't China? | | |
| ▲ | thinkcontext 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | China has 38 reactors under construction and are leaders in advanced designs. | | |
| ▲ | AnthonyMouse 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | The main issue is that China is really big (emits around three times as much total CO2 as the US), so "38 reactors" sounds like a lot but meanwhile they're operating >1000 coal power plants. | | |
| ▲ | bobthepanda an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | Also, it is a good idea to see where Chinese leaders are expanding focus to see what their thoughts on viability are. Nuclear has declined as a share of power being built out in 5 year plans. The projected output of nuclear in 2030 is 100GW vs 2800GW for solar+wind. | |
| ▲ | tialaramex 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | China is also a Command Economy. The Party has decided that it will run more coal plants more intermittently, allowing it to decarbonize at low risk. 500GW of power at 40% utilisation gets you the same amount of energy as 250GW of power at 80% utilisation, and [roughly] the same CO2 emissions. But 500GW of Solar PV is shadowed effectively by the former where it would not be possible with the latter (without ludicrous amounts of storage). You couldn't choose that in the US or Europe without some kind of sophisticated compensation scheme because it's not profitable, but China does not need to care whether it is profitable only whether it can be done. I think for places like the US there will be a lot of stranded energy generation and related assets and Capitalism will struggle to make that work even if somebody competent was in charge which of course today they are not. | | |
| ▲ | AnthonyMouse an hour ago | parent [-] | | > You couldn't choose that in the US or Europe without some kind of sophisticated compensation scheme because it's not profitable "Not profitable" often has a strong correlation with "not efficient". To begin with, you don't want to be burning coal even 40% of the time. The US generates ~15% of electricity from coal, China ~50%. Coal is the worst for both CO2 and air pollution, significantly worse than even natural gas. It's also worse than natural gas for non-continuous use because gas turbines at least respond quickly to load changes, whereas coal uses steam turbines that respond slowly the same as nuclear. And if you're going to do that in your "command economy" then why aren't you doing it with nuclear instead of coal? > I think for places like the US there will be a lot of stranded energy generation and related assets and Capitalism will struggle to make that work even if somebody competent was in charge which of course today they are not. The things that become stranded assets are the fossil fuel (especially coal) power plants, because they aren't viable to operate at times when the price of electricity is below their fuel cost. It basically means they can't compete with solar during the day (unless it's cloudy and solar isn't available), whereas nuclear can because the negligible fuel cost means it can take any current price as long as it hits a given average price, and it can bring the average up at night. Which means that coal isn't even competitive with nuclear, since nuclear is getting something during the day whereas coal gets nothing, requiring coal to receive an even higher price than nuclear when renewable output is low and then gets out-competed by nuclear. But the obvious solution to this is to stop burning coal whatsoever. Use nuclear for baseload, solar and wind for cheap variable generation with storage to smooth it out over the course of a day, and hydro or natural gas peaker plants combined with demand pricing to handle extended periods of low renewable output. In capitalism, coal dies, so why is the "command economy" keeping it alive? |
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| ▲ | ViewTrick1002 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | The Swedish nuclear can’t do much since it doesn’t adapt to the load generally. Except turning off when prices are too low for too long. And recently the reliability has been awful. It does help a bit with other consumers feeling the price differences and turning down their consumption though. Swedish, Norwegian and Finnish hydro are doing the heavy lifting. But Denmark also has enough thermal generation, mostly biofuels, to do without imports. But imported hydro is of course far cheaper. | | |
| ▲ | AnthonyMouse 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The benefit of nuclear here is that its output doesn't correlate with the others. If you have 1/3 nuclear and 2/3 solar but solar output is at 50% of normal then total output is at 2/3 of normal instead of 1/2. It leaves you that much less to have to make up with peaker plants and demand-based pricing. It also leaves you with that much less need for battery storage at night. | | |
| ▲ | ViewTrick1002 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | The problem with that is all consumers ask themselves why they should pay for expensive nuclear electricity when renewables or stored renewables deliver. We are already seeing coal plants add storage since they can’t cope with the grid demands, to squeeze a few extra years out of their legacy plants. Thats where nuclear is headed. And nuclear doesn’t really help with cold spells, huge aircon loads or other strained situations. Nuclear just pushes up the bottom, leaving everyone else to still solve the hard part. | | |
| ▲ | AnthonyMouse 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | > The problem with that is all consumers ask themselves why they should pay for expensive nuclear electricity when renewables or stored renewables deliver. The answer is obviously that it delivers when they don't. Every power plant has to hit a certain average price per kWh, and the ones with a variable operating cost (fossil fuels) also need a minimum price in order to generate right now, since the cost of fuel is a significant part of their costs. What this means is that nuclear does pretty well in a market with high volatility, because its fuel cost is negligible so it can sell for $0.04/kWh when other supply is available and $1/kWh when it isn't, and end up at a viable average. Meanwhile solar never gets the $1/kWh because the reason the price is that high then is that the sun is down and the batteries are low. > We are already seeing coal plants add storage since they can’t cope with the grid demands, to squeeze a few extra years out of their legacy plants. This is just putting a battery storage unit at the site of an existing power plant because it already has a stout grid connection. > Nuclear just pushes up the bottom, leaving everyone else to still solve the hard part. Pushing the bottom up during the times when other generation methods have low output does help with the hard part. | | |
| ▲ | no-name-here 28 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Regardless of whether nuke fuel cost is negligible, nukes were already quite expensive even under the previous model where nukes were highly utilized (expensive due to the very expensive non-fuel parts of building/running nukes). (And I'm not even sure if those existing high costs assumed the government handled the costs of insuring (or otherwise paying) if the nuke plant has a disaster, or if it included decommissioning/safe nuke disposal costs?) But if we're talking about moving from a model where nukes run ~100% of the time (excluding maintenance) to one where they just cover the 1/x portion of the time that zero-fuel-cost renewables (+ storage) can't, then wouldn't nuke's cost per kwh end up 'x' times higher than before as a result because we still have the same amortized costs split over fewer generating hours per year, and nuke fuel cost is negligible? | | |
| ▲ | AnthonyMouse 2 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | > But if we're talking about moving from a model where nukes run ~100% of the time (excluding maintenance) to one where they just cover the 1/x portion of the time that zero-fuel-cost renewables (+ storage) can't Nobody is talking about doing that. Nuclear plants are baseload. They always run 100% of the time because even if the current price of electricity is low, their incremental cost savings from reducing output is basically zero, so any positive price means they remain at full output. This means you don't want 100% nuclear generation, because you don't have constant load. If you have 10GW of demand at night and 20GW during the day then you don't want 20GW of nuclear and nothing to do with half of it at night. But having 5 to 10GW is good, because you never need less than that anyway. | |
| ▲ | dalyons 10 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | yeah the math doesnt work. On top of the running costs you mentioned, You are trying to pay back the ridiculous capex over a reasonable timeframe (say 30 years). Nukes already have trouble doing that at 100% high power price sales. Saying "oh they can keep selling power but at a fraction of price" is technically true but fatal to the economics of nukes. |
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| ▲ | crote 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > Except turning off when prices are too low for too long Even that is unlikely. Most nuclear power plants operate with a "strike price": they negotiate a fixed price, and the government makes up the difference between that fixed price and the actual market price. For example, Hinkley Point C in the UK has negotiated a strike price of about €160/MWh. When the market trades at €100/MWh, the taxpayers will pay them an additional €60/MWh for every unit they produce. To make it even worse: the contract is for every unit they could produce. If the reactor is technically able to generate power but the grid operator, for whatever reason, decides to source it elsewhere, the taxpayers are still on the hook for €160/MWh for every MWh the reactor could've generated but didn't. The result of this is that reactors aren't turned off when the prices go low and will always be the last to get throttled down. Low grid demand? The expensive reactor will keep running at full blast, it'll be the dirt-cheap solar which gets turned off. This is why building new nuclear is such a horrible idea from an economic perspective: you are essentially locking in those high power prices for the next ~60 years, no matter what happens. Someone could invent a magical zero-point energy warp drive and provide us with unlimited free power, and we'd still be paying for those nuclear power plants! Want to build additional nuclear? First convince an investor to take the risk and operate on the free market, don't come begging the government for a giant guaranteed-profit handout. | | |
| ▲ | fodkodrasz 33 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | > Want to build additional nuclear? First convince an investor to take the risk and operate on the free market, don't come begging the government for a giant guaranteed-profit handout. Guess you just explained how one investor was convinced: the government. Why? Because governments don't think in quarterly reports and short term profits, but also have to make strategic investments in stability. Ignoring the existence of baseload power needs is classical fallacy of "solar-pilled" westerners with the luxury of having 24/7 power from sources they are willing to ignore. I'm saying this with solar panels on top the house I'm living, and charging an electric car from them. Solar and wind are not a panacea, and batteries won't solve all power needs, it is the same mindset as outsourcing polluting and humanely taxing industries to China or the third world and acting if we solved environmental or ethics problems, because we can now conveniently nott see them. If we stop our industry, and civil infrastructure for the night, sure, no need for baseload, just some batteries... wish nobody wants to make a tea, make food, smelt aluminum at night... | |
| ▲ | matkoniecz 22 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > Someone could invent a magical zero-point energy warp drive and provide us with unlimited free power, and we'd still be paying for those nuclear power plants! yes, if magic unlimited free power arrives nuclear will turn out useless if it will not, then it provides some stability to energy grid and ensures that low polluting, resilient source of power exists somehow I think that risk of magic unlimited free power appearing is low - and if it appears, then costs of contracted power will be now negligible personally I prefer to pay a bit more for reduced risk of blackouts | |
| ▲ | 41 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | [deleted] | |
| ▲ | ViewTrick1002 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | That’s for new nuclear. Existing nuclear reactors operate on the whim of the markets. For that we have energy futures, or just bidding negative, if you don’t want to turn off. But anyone buying the electricity will ask themselves why they should pay a premium for nuclear electricity at the height of summer when the continent is flooded with solar Here’s an article in Swedish how a reactor was turned off for about a week due to consistently low prices. While another reactor at the same plant was already having maintenance done. https://www.nyteknik.se/energi/forsmark-2-ur-drift-pa-agarna... |
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