[thatsit]

Imho it’s a good thing to not block other countries approach to clean power from a german perspective.

However, there is just no way new nuclear power makes any sense for German grid. Just last week we had negative prices for _every_ day during peak demand (yes, peak demand is usually around noon, it’s just not visible because there is so much solar self-consumption) https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=en&c...

What‘s really needed is more batteries. At lot more batteries soon.

[AustinDev]

>What‘s really needed is more batteries. At lot more batteries soon.

Germany would have one of the biggest batteries on the continent if they controlled Lake Geneva @ ~341bn liters of water.

Pumped hydro storage is infinitely superior to Li-ion battery storage where it is available. Batteries are good for instantaneous response but lack the stability of water turning a large mass.

Solar creates a difficult environment for base load generators such as hydro, nuclear and nat gas. When it's sunny they nuke the price down to zero or negative but produce nothing when it is not sunny. As evidenced by Spain's recent blackouts you need a healthy mix of generation because renewables are seasonal in nature and not very stable compared to a large mass spinning at the correct frequency.

[codingbot3000]

fyi, the root cause of the Spain blackout (not blackout) is not yet known.

I won't deny that solar and wind make things harder, but linking the recent blackout to renewables without the facts is only done by fossil/nuclear propaganda orgs and their useful idiots.

The Spanish network had much wilder days before and did not break down. First insights point to possible design flaws in the network.

"healthy mix of generation" is quite funny to read, thinking about nuclear and coal which are not too healthy for the people living close to the plants :-D

[AustinDev]

You're likely not an electrical engineer by training so I will assume you don't know much about power generation and distribution. (It's worth noting my training in this field is nearly 2 decades old so I'm a bit rusty but I still follow several publications in the field) Engineers have been warning about inertia and voltage control being neglected as renewable penetration has soared. These aren't normally of much concern when you are spinning a large mass to generate AC power.

> fyi, the root cause of the Spain blackout (not blackout) is not yet known.

While the final official reports may not be out initial data has been released and indicates frequency and/or voltage oscillations got out of hand causing generation disconnection and cascading blackouts. Renewable penetration in that area of the grid likely contributed to the brittleness especially in voltage control and inertia management.

"Inertia management is increasingly critical for grids with high renewable penetration. Many such systems now implement inertia floors to limit the maximum rate of change of frequency during disturbances. While inertia is often considered primarily for frequency stability, it also plays a crucial role in preventing loss of synchronism between different parts of the grid. As conventional synchronous generation decreases, careful monitoring and management of system inertia becomes essential to maintain stability during disturbances." [1]

>"healthy mix of generation" is quite funny to read, thinking about nuclear and coal which are not too healthy for the people living close to the plants :-D

I'll give you coal as unhealthy but natural gas is much cleaner and nuclear is entirely clean, save waste management which is a solved problem.

How does nuclear effect residents living nearby? I'm not aware of any reporting of systemic illness near any of Europe's nuclear plants but, I may just be ignorant of the latest research. Care to provide a link?

[1] https://www.powermag.com/understanding-the-april-2025-iberia...

[codingbot3000]

Thanks for your factful reply :)

Regarding the nuclear risk - it is driven by incidents. If the plant had not incidents, there would be no risk.

E.g. the childhood leukemia risk is double inside a 5km radius, and there is no good explanation for this (except the occasional release of radioactive exhaust in case of incidents). (https://www.bfs.de/DE/bfs/wissenschaft-forschung/wirkung-ris..., link is in German, sorry)

Same is true for the nuclear plant workers. Their cancer risk grows linearly with their exposure - which I assume is also an effect of minor incidents, especially if you exclude lung cancer (smoking was quite popular in the 20th century...). See e.g. https://www.aerztezeitung.de/Medizin/Krebsrisiko-im-Kernkraf...

[AustinDev]

The childhood Leukemia link is something I didn't know. Very interesting.

On the worker front it makes sense that there is some linear correlation. I wonder how radiation exposure for workers compares to say a fighter jet pilot with 10,000 hours. In a fighter jet you have very little if any protection from radiation present at higher altitudes.

[ethbr1]

In the context of interia and frequency syncing, I'm guessing nuclear has pretty high capacity, given that the physical-thermal generation side is decoupled from the electricity generation side.

I.e. you can control the amount of thermal you're feeding your turbines, to get the electrical output characteristics you want?

[AustinDev]

You're correct, nuclear power plants have high inertia and significant flexibility in managing their output due to the decoupling of the thermal generation from the electrical generation.

[codingbot3000]

Yet they did not help to stabilize the network in Spain, and had to be shut down.

[ViewTrick1002]

Yes. That is all very important but we have time and time again seen spinning metal grids collapse in similar ways as the Iberian grid.

Instead caused by plants tripping, bugs in software, lack of maintenance etc.

Again. Let’s wait for the final report before drawing any conclusions.

[nradov]

Batteries are not too healthy for the people living close to the (flammable) plants.

https://www.ksbw.com/article/residents-moss-landing-battery-...

To be clear I'm not at all opposed to grid scale battery storage if it can be built out safely and economically. But let's not pretend that it's safer than nuclear power. Modern nuclear plant designs with proper containment and backup systems have an excellent safety record.

[codingbot3000]

Good point about the flammability, wasn't aware of that.

The safety mechanisms are part of why nuclear is so ridiculously expensive. I think every major power needs nuclear infrastructure for their nuclear weapons, but I don't think it is economically viable anymore as a power source, whatever the propaganda says. Maybe for the US, China, and Russia who have enough empty wastelands to dump the nuclear waste at low cost. Finland and Sweden their granite. Everyone else has to do sth. expensive.

[izacus]

I wonder if the Spanish also looked at numbers during the day of a very sunny spring week when they designed their power network to fail.

[ashoeafoot]

Germany is old, and paying its pensions from however the taxed economy is currently running. And its addicted economically to russian gas. The piggybank is spent, the "make belief can come true by the power of surplus money" philosophy ran out of steam as idealistic projects have to be payed for by holding back on the pensioner feeding trough. The generation that bend it all to their will finally ran out.

[dapf]

Do you have the pixie dust needed to make enough of them at a reasonable price?

[matthewdgreen]

The Pixie dust is called China. BNEF is tracking 7.9 TWh of annual battery manufacturing capacity for the end of 2025 [1]. Chinese manufacturers' all-in costs for BESS are now down to $66/kWh and still dropping [2]. We (or at least China) have crossed the "knee" of the exponential for battery production, and loads of people don't seem to realize this.

[1] https://about.bnef.com/blog/china-already-makes-as-many-batt...

[2] https://cleantechnica.com/2024/12/24/what-are-the-implicatio...

[Schiendelman]

It's less pixie dust than nuclear capacity - the cheapest additional nuclear capacity costs more than the most expensive grid scale batteries.

[chickenbig]

> the cheapest additional nuclear capacity costs more than the most expensive grid scale batteries.

Nuclear capacity and grid batteries do different things, so the word capacity is rather too imprecise. Otherwise one could argue that a lightning rod has higher capacity and is cheaper than a battery.

[ViewTrick1002]

Let’s look at Vogtle.

With Vogtles $36.9B we are able to build the equivalent supply in renewables (in TWh) and 10 days of storage at Vogtles 2.2 GWe output.

Spending nuclear money on storage leads to the same thing.

And it puts in context just have horrifically expensive new built western nuclear power is.

[chickenbig]

> With Vogtles $36.9B we are able to build the equivalent supply in renewables (in TWh) and 10 days of storage at Vogtles 2.2 GWe output.

I can't see what you are proposing to do with the $36.9B. How does this break down into GW of wind and solar and GW (and GWh) of storage?

[ViewTrick1002]

Lets compare the $36.9B [1] spent on Vogtle with the same money spent on renewables and storage:

Batteries:

- $63/kWh [2] installed and serviced for 20 years = $0.063B per GWh

Large-scale solar:

- A range of $850-$1400/kW [3] = $0.85B - $1.4B per GW

- Capacity factor of 15-30%

Say $1B per GW and 20% for easy round numbers.

Large-scale onshore wind:

- $1300 - $1900/kW [3] = $1.3B - $1.9B per GW

- Capacity factor 30-55%

So say $1.5B/GW and a capacity factor of 40%.

Nuclear power has a capacity factor of ~85% so to match Vogtle's new reactors we need to get to 2.234 GW * 0.85 = 1.9 GW

Solar power:

- 1.9/0.2 = 9.5 GW solar power = $9.5B

Wind power:

- 1.9/0.4 = 4.75 GW wind power = $9B

Compared to Vogtle's $37B we have $28B left to spend on batteries.

- $28B/$0.063B = 444 GWh

444 GWh is the equivalent to running Vogtle for.... 444 GWh/1.9 GW = 233 hours or 9.8 days.

This even ignores nuclear powers O&M costs which are quite substantial. By not having to pay the O&M costs and instead saving them each year after about 20 years we have enough to rebuild the renewable plant.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vogtle_Electric_Generating_Pla...

[2]: https://www.ess-news.com/2025/01/15/chinas-cgn-new-energy-an...

[3]: https://www.lazard.com/media/gjyffoqd/lazards-lcoeplus-june-...

[barbazoo]

The term is technology agnostic, just fyi. There are many ways to store energy.

[rasz]

> negative prices for _every_ day during peak

What was the price at midnight? Afaik there were days last year when Germany peaked at 1000 EUR/MWh at night.

[exabrial]

> Just last week we had negative prices for _every_ day during peak demand

Burning coal for negative prices is not a good thing.

[ZeroGravitas]

Inflexible generation getting fined for inflexibility leads to innovations like running two shifts of coal generation. The UK pioneered it in their now totally shut down coal plants and Australia is now implementing it.

[exabrial]

uh... yeah, so, back to burning 1/2kg per kw/h?

[realitycheck99]

how is uranium not already a "battery"

[AustinDev]

You can't put the alpha particles back into the chunk of Uranium. Well, not easily or efficiently.

[barbazoo]

Isn’t Uranium more like a fuel?