[otherme123]

By reliability he refers to french nuclear plants stopped for months due to mantainance and repairs (mainly leaks that couldn't be scheduled).

Painting nuclear as a 100% free of problem energy makes people sound as car salesmans. As of today, nobody want to finance or insure them. As soon as you say "ok, build them reactors if they are so perfect", nuclear advocates want the state to jump in and asume the costs, the consumers to pay an extra price, the safety regulations back to 1960 and the future people to deal with the residues.

[formerly_proven]

> the consumers to pay an extra price

The (botched) green energy transformation has given the country I live in top 3 highest electricity prices in the world and it's not even particularly green at all. Literally cannot get worse. And it seems to me that one half doesn't understand how incredibly bad high energy prices are both for people and industry, while the other half cheers at the prices because it causes deindustrialization and pushes towards degrowth - mainstream talking points of the current generation of climate activists here.

[Gelenoto]

If you talk about Germany than this has nothing to do with nuclear.

[Gud]

No, this has everything to do with nuclear(and energy politics in general). Since at least the 80s, nuclear power has carried a huge political risk in Northern Europe including Germany. Reactors have been shut down prematurely - instead coal and oil power plants have been kept operational.

[Ringz]

Do you have a source for these claims? A peer-reviewed study would be best? All statistics of the last years indicate that Germany has replaced reactor capacity with renewables. And at the same time, it has cut back on coal. The current negative development has to do with the war and the gas supply stop and not with the dismantling of nuclear power plants.

[tmp20230324]

If you are going to ask for a source, would you mind providing sources for your assertions as well? As an outsider, I would be interested in seeing numbers/evidence for both view points. (Although looking at the parent comment, I'm not exactly sure what you would like a peer-reviewed study of.)

Also, would you please not copy-and-paste the same response multiple times as you've done in the thread? It comes across less as thoughtful discussion and more as spam. (I'm not trying to be rude, but that's how it came across to me.)

[eftychis]

I will agree with the sibling comment -- as an anecdotal opinion I guess. It has everything to do with nuclear.

Since a few days ago, Germany's policy to reduce or keep energy prices and meet demand depends inextricably to France's building more nuclear reactors. (I am talking about the last industrial nuclear reactors going offline, and the future energy budget planning related to that.)

[Ringz]

Do you have a source for these claims? A peer-reviewed study would be best? All statistics of the last years show that Germany has replaced reactor capacity with renewables. And at the same time it has cut back on coal. The current negative development has to do with the war and the gas supply stop and not with the dismantling of nuclear power plants.

[artemonster]

Germany?

[TheLoafOfBread]

Could be Denmark too.

[cyberax]

> By reliability he refers to french nuclear plants stopped for months due to mantainance and repairs (mainly leaks that couldn't be scheduled).

That's not quite correct. France deferred maintenance during COVID and scheduled the downtime in advance. The inspections then found potential problems, so other reactors did additional maintenance and checks.

They could have been deferred further if needed, but politicians were not willing to make the call.

> Painting nuclear as a 100% free of problem energy makes people sound as car salesmans.

Nuclear energy is the one that is actually proven to work and be reliable enough to completely displace fossil generation. Nothing else is coming close to that, including solar and wind.

> As of today, nobody want to finance or insure them.

Russia is busy exporting nuclear power plants. A nuclear reactor can be built within 6 years, two reactors within ~9 years (they're built in parallel).

[formerly_proven]

Nuclear is not really suitable for load-following, at least not the installed capacity. Some are technically capable but load-following seems to be quite taxing on the equipment due to pressure and temperature cycling.

However it is very suitable for base load generation, there's a reason why oil and coal companies lost their marbles in the 50s and astroturfed anti-nuclear into existence.

I'm not sure if that's their most-effective campaign ever or if it's a tie with BP's popularization of the carbon footprint, which atomizes responsibility for climate change and has successfully delayed systematic action for decades. And even managed to get greens and climate change activists to do their work for them. Just like with nuclear. It's actually, genuinely incredible.

[cyberax]

> Nuclear is not really suitable for load-following, at least not the installed capacity.

That's not quite the case. You can load-follow with nuclear, but it requires reactors to be designed for that. France does this, for example.

You also can simply keep reactors working at a constant level and just dump excess power into their cooling system. This is not as bad as it sounds, because fuel is just about ~5% of the total cost of the produced nuclear energy.

Most nuclear power plants do not do this because they don't need to do it.

[pydry]

>This is not as bad as it sounds, because fuel is just about ~5% of the total cost of the produced nuclear energy.

Therein lies the problem. Capital costs dominate nuclear plant costs and they are high.

If you load followed such that you kept the reactor at an average of, say, 50% nameplate capacity that would lead to a levelized cost per MWh of about 2x$168 = $336.

(LCOE listed here is $168: https://www.reuters.com/breakingviews/green-surge-is-circuit...)

For reference, Bhadla solar park sells a MWh for roughly $30, so even if you charged $300 to store and retrieve it you could still provide cheaper electricity than a load following nuclear power plant running at 50% of nameplate.

[cyberax]

I question your estimation of the capital cost. LCOE for most nuclear power plants is way below that: https://www.oecd-nea.org/lcoe/

For the US it's $33 per MWh, so doubling it still gives reasonable cost.

As for wind, it simply can not compete right now for guaranteed capacity. The adequacy rating for most wind power plants is around 10%, so you need 10x overbuild to even compete.

[pfdietz]

Many of the entries in that table (LTO) are for 20 year life extensiom of existing plants, not new plants.

[locallost]

It's been proven to work and the only able to displace fossil fuels, yet it's existed for 70 years and not even reduced the amount of fossil fuels used in electricity production. Renewables have been pushed for 20 years and have started to accelerate only 10 years ago, yet they are already displacing fossil fuels in many countries.

[TheLoafOfBread]

Displacing? I see increasing use of fossil fuels to backup up renewables.

[locallost]

Check numbers for Germany, Denmark, Scotland, Portugal etc.

[TheLoafOfBread]

Yep, coal goes up.

[locallost]

Maybe you're reading the data upside down. Take care.