[pfdietz]

A NPP is an order of magnitude more expensive than a combined cycle power plant of the same power output. So even if electricity prices are high now because of gas constraints, that doesn't mean a NPP would have been a good idea.

Europe should perhaps have diversified their gas suppliers, with more LNG.

[jabl]

> Europe should perhaps have diversified their gas suppliers, with more LNG.

If climate change is supposed to be an existential threat, we shouldn't be doing major investments into fossil infrastructure.

Anyway, if we spend all that money to build LNG infrastructure, like terminals, ships, and having contracts with suppliers etc. just for the few and far between situations where the price of LNG drops below Russian gas, the price/kWh is going to be pretty high as well due to all that capital sitting idle most of the time.

A bit like this, per se sensible, argument someone in this thread made that keeping a nuclear plant around just to balance wind/solar output is pretty expensive.

[PeterisP]

One of considerations for LNG is that it's not purely an economic concern as from a country perspective energy independence might be considered just as important as climate change (in the short term) and it's worth paying some premium to secure it. Just as Europe has farming subsidy policies that essentially result in Europe paying a premium for food over what would be a "global market price" (importing more food from e.g. Africa and exporting less food), mostly in order to ensure long-term food supply independence.

[jabl]

I fully agree. Energy, particularly gas, is certainly seen as geopolitics in the Kremlin.

That being said, I think the focus should be on (massively!) building out wind/solar/nuclear/transmission/storage, allowing Europe to tackle both climate change and dependency on a not-entirely friendly Russia at the same time.

[me_me_me]

Its more expensive to build because you know... a nuclear meltdown is a thing to avoid.

[pfdietz]

And also because combustion turbines are a seriously nice technology. Heat exchangers are expensive. A NPP transmits heat across many fluid/solid interfaces: fuel rods to coolant, primary to second coolant heat exchanger, secondary loop to steam generators, and steam to cooling water in the condenser after the turbines. A simple cycle combustion turbine avoids all that. Even a combined cycle power plant puts much less heat through its steam bottoming cycle for a given power output.

[pfdietz]

Correction: I added an extra loop there. Silly -- the primary loop drives the steam generators. I may have been thinking of MSRs, which have a sterile salt loop between the steam generator and the fuel bearing salt.

[retzkek]

Also worth noting that Boiling Water Reactors (about half the current fleet) eliminate the steam generators and secondary loop, at the cost of increased nuclear and mechanical complexity in the reactor.

[cbmuser]

Russia’s brand-new Novovoronezh II NPP with 2x1200 MW costs $4 billion to build.

Germany is paying 24 billion Euros of renewable energy subsidies through its electricity prices - every year.

Nuclear can be cheap if you don’t mess it up.

[Scoundreller]

LNG gets expensive because it’s a globalize market. Cheaper to use pipelined Russian gas and try not to think too hard about the repercussions.

[pfdietz]

The price of NG in Europe is now well above the price of LNG.

[foepys]

Considering what the US and Australia did to France a few days ago, the EU might not want to depend on LNG from the US. With Russia they know with whom they are dealing.

France and Germany are the EU's most influential countries and the US is continuing to meddle in EU matters even after Trump left. From the EU point of view there is next to no change since Biden took office and now even France is questioning NATO.

[pfdietz]

LNG is a global market now, so one is not locked into LNG from just one supplier. It used to be that LNG required long term contracts, but there's enough sloshing around now that the market is more like oil.

[cbmuser]

Nuclear doesn’t need any backup plants or grid extension. The capital costs are high, but the electricity production is almost a 100% planable and reliable.

I mean, Germany’s electricity situation is basically proving you wrong. We have the highest electricity prices, worldwide.