[wongarsu]

Batteries are deployed quickly, but high-capacity grid connections can take a decade in the planning phase alone. Everyone wants one, and NIMBYs are quick to oppose them. Locating at a decommissioned nuclear plant is a great solution avoiding this issue

[pjc50]

Yup. Another good option is co-locating with renewables. In Scotland, there's several BESS projects that are being built on the north/renewable side of a big grid bottleneck between Scotland and England, because the grid upgrades take a long time.

(maps https://www.spenergynetworks.co.uk/pages/cross_border_projec... - it's an odd area, mostly beautiful in that stark empty way a lot of Scotland is, but there's really not a lot of human use already there apart from marginal sheep farming because the land is too steep to till.)

[eigenspace]

This installation is actually also co-located with renewables:

> It cooperates with a 53-hectare ground-mounted PV system operated by Solizer in direct proximity, which is supposed to deliver a peak output of 72 MW (MWp). Due to changes in tender conditions, large solar power projects and battery storage systems are increasingly being planned together.

___________

As obliquely referenced with the "changes in tender conditions", solar overproduction now causes negative midday electricity prices on a near daily basis in Germany from April through to October so long as it's not super cloudy.

Therefore, anyone with a solar installation that doesn't get a special constant feed-in rate for their electricity (no longer available for commercial entities) would actually pay money to feed their solar into the grid.

Therefore it's absolutely vital for new solar in Germany to have batteries on-site so they can sell later in the day, otherwise they're simply unprofitable.

[KaiserPro]

Part of the reason why its good is that the HV link is already there.

For solar as well, the time you need the battery is usually when the solar ain't solarin

[AngryData]

We got so many disused industrially polluted sites too that would be great areas for putting battery packs. Ideally they will never pollute or anything, but if one does catch on fire it would be nice if the land it sat on was already polluted and not pristine ground.

[panick21_]

Turning the nuclear plant back on would have been even better. And then putting a battery next to it would have been even better then that.

With batteries one could argue building them in a more distributed way might make more sense for overall resiliancy.

A fleet of like 70 nuclear plants at maybe 50 location could likely power all of Germany. For batteries you would likely go to 100 to 1000s of locations.

But that said, using the existing connections in some places does make sense.

[jagermo]

No. the battery storage will deliver more power than the plant.

But, there are other issues: Atomic power keeps rising in cost. The plant was decomissioned and to turn it back on, you would basically have to rebuild it from the ground up - with people and knowledge that does not exist. Also, you would need the fuel from some place - as with oil and gas, you are depended on that place, since you can't easily switch uranium.

We would need about 55 power plants in Germany. At its height, Germany had 38 plants, all of that trash is still not solved. And we are not even thinking about the lawsuits that the reactivation or building of new plants would entail. People are suing against solar farms, what do you think a Nimby would be triggered by a nuclear plant?

In addition, none of these plants can be insured, all the risk is with the tax payer. As russia currently shows, you are also creating about 50 targets that to destroy a country. You don't even have to send a rocket, a few drones with grenades will make sure the plant has to shut down.

Personally, I do not want them. I remember Tchernobyl and the fallout afterwards. We have alternatives, like these battery storages, and can use water, wind, solar and hydrogen to not create potential nuclear issues, i am fine with that.

< For batteries you would likely go to 100 to 1000s of locations.

Yes, ideally de-centralized and build where power is generated. A battery park can be set up almost anywhere, a power plant not so much.

Nevertheless, I like the idea of using these old plant sites for storage, they have pretty good connections to the grid, so it makes a lot of sense. Can't use that space for anything else, really.

[themafia]

> No. the battery storage will deliver more power than the plant.

Which it can only do if it consumes more power than the plant was going to deliver. They don't supply power, they can only displace time of use against generation.

> Atomic power keeps rising in cost.

Why? And why won't those same factors increase all energy generation and delivery costs?

> You don't even have to send a rocket, a few drones with grenades will make sure the plant has to shut down.

Batteries are immune to grenades?

> A battery park can be set up almost anywhere

You know, the thing you want next to a battery, or any energy generation and storage system, is going to be a Fire Department.

[torpfactory]

Atomic power is in a bit of a sour spot as a technology. The large size of plants means we don’t build very many means we don’t get much cost reduction from learning curves. Wind and solar are getting much much better cost reductions over time. Batteries are in the same boat- small, modular, benefitting from learning curves.

A small number of large plants are much easier to target during war than distributed wind, solar, or batteries. It’s not that batteries are immune to grenades. It’s that you’d need to put grenades in orders of magnitude more places to get to all the batteries as compared to large nuclear plants.

Batteries do pose a fire risk, but so do petrol cars. We pump flammable gas into our homes in large parts of the west and have designed ways of keeping ourselves safe. I see no reason why batteries won’t follow the same path.

[Moldoteck]

Depends. People don't understand the idea of learning curves related to nuclear. If you don't fix your problems in second build you'll still make same mistakes. On the other hand if you do proper planning you can achieve instantly N of a kind costs, like first japanese ABWR.

Ren infra has own risks too. For example concentration in best weather areas. Most ren infra in Ukraine was in the south and was either captured or destroyed by Russia. There are similar risks in for north sea/offshore projects

[jagermo]

>> Atomic power keeps rising in cost.

> Why? And why won't those same factors increase all energy generation and delivery costs?

Wikipedia has a good article on it that explains it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source

and I don't think that includes the cost of trash storage. Someone has to pay for that.

[Moldoteck]

No you dont rebuild it from ground. You do refurb which is relatively cheap. Canadian Darlington refurb costed about 3bn/unit with major components replaced fully. That's dirt cheap for ±1gw of firm power. Other refurbs costed less.

Sourcing uranium is not an issue. In fact per kwh nuclear requires least amount of materials and hence, imports https://ourworldindata.org/low-carbon-technologies-need-far-... Heck Germany can even extract it from seawater in worst case. Nowadays it's not that much more expensive vs land mining. But soon Sweden will be a player too, along Canada/Australia

Npp in germany were insured by law with insuring pools. On top, operators had full asset liability, again, per law. Closest catastrophe event would be TMI. Cleanup there is merely 1bn...

Russian war shows nuclear is great regardless. Ukraine's grid still has power even though most ren infra got destroyed/captured because most was deployed in south with better weather. Germany is in similar situation with northern offshore parks

You remember chernobyl which is expected to kill at most 4k ppl or much less per UNCSEAR but you are probably fine with german car industry which kills same amount of persons in merely 2y from impacts, right? You are fine with coal still operating which killed even more? You are fine with gas being used for firming? (habeck, reiche, fraunhofer) Phaseout was a terrible decision https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10640-025-01002-z

France has decentralized grid with centralized multiunit locations. This reduces heavily grid investment needs. There's a reason Germany spends 10x vs France on transmission and curtailment

[kybb4]

Batteries are not magic. Or new. Check emissions in producing them and cost of recycling them at end of life. Those cost multiply as you scale up to handle grid level load.

[KaiserPro]

> No. the battery storage will deliver more power than the plant.

I mean it wont. it only stores power. The problem for germany is that they still have shitty coal plants. If they'd kept the nuclear and yeeted the coal, they'd have a much cleaner grid. they could have been able to turn off half thier gas and entirely oil free

[joe_mamba]

>all of that trash is still not solved.

How did UK and France solve it? Just ask them and do what they did?

> People are suing against solar farms, what do you think a Nimby would be triggered by a nuclear plant?

Simple. You make it against the law to sue a giant energy projects because energy is a national/existential issue like defense. There, problem solved.

Why do we act like there isn't a switch we can flip when needed to make our problems go away, and instead need to succumb to the whims of a few anti-intellectual nimbys who got brainwashed by anti nuclear propaganda, because "they can sue"?

>Personally, I do not want them. I remember Tchernobyl and the fallout afterwards

Do you also remember the other power plants in the world that didn't blow up?

Imagine if prehistoric humans stopped using fire because someone burned his house down once and "they remember the fire".

[marmarama]

> How did the UK and France solve it?

Remove the fuel elements, reprocess what's useful, and store the reprocessed materials and nuclear waste somewhere "temporarily" that isn't really suitable for long-term storage.

Remove intermediate and low level waste from site and also store it "temporarily".

Remove any non-contaminated plant and sell for scrap.

Punt the main part of the problem (scrapping the main reactors and reactor buildings) down the road for a hundred years or so until radiation levels are acceptable for demolition to proceed.

Re-use other parts of the site for projects that can use the existing HV connection, like another reactor, or battery storage.

That's essentially all you can do unless you want to risk a radiological accident.

[M95D]

> "they can sue"

That's one of the features of a free country. What you propose is close to tyranny.

[raverbashing]

Ah yes a "free country" is where some (at best) annoying person or (at worse) a fifth column annoyance can disrupt projects that would benefit most people

[joe_mamba]

Living under the whims of a handful of stupid NIMBYs is also close to tyranny.

[ndr42]

Why do you think it would be better or even possible to turn on an old nuclear power plant that is 4 years out of service and decommissioned (10 years left until the decommission is finished)?

Even if it is possible I have no confidence that Germany is able to come up with a solution to nuclear waste. The federal states that are proponents of nuclear energy like Bavaria refuse to even examine whether a nuclear waste repository could be located in their territory.

Not that far away from the former nuclear plant in the article the "Schacht Asse" [1] is located where the problem of nuclear waste im Germany becomes painfully obvious.

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

Edit: Grammar

[panick21_]

The plant was not broken and it could absolutly be turned back on. They would just need to catch up on some delayed maintance.

Nuclear 'waste' has plenty of solution and all these 'but the repositoy' is just what anti-nuclear people use to scare people that don't know any better. Nuclear 'waste' doesn't need a repository, its perfectly fine to just store it above ground for as long as needed.

The Asse mine is completely irrelevant to the discussion as this is not how anything is done anymore for a long time and many countries have proven capable of managing waste fine, including Germany since then. The fact is, basically nobody has died from waste managment.

Asse risk is overplayed, even if nothing was done, the likelyhood is that in the next few 100 years nobody would die because of it it. They are removing it because maybe in a few 100 years there could be a slight impact on ground water. Even the is if you make some worst case assumtions. Spend the billions it would cost to empty the mine on gold and put it into the ground. People in few 100 years can dig up and spend on what they think is their most important problem. In the incredibly unlikely case that its radiation, they can use their technology to do what they think is best.

[ndr42]

Again: How can it be turned on, when it is actively decommissioned ("Rückbau") since 2024?

What are the costs (without omitting storing radiactive waste securely[1] above ground for some thousand years ? Are they less than batteries + solar + wind?

[1] think terrorism, drone strikes, ...

[Moldoteck]

Terrorism and drone strikes are irrelevant. Casks can withstand train/rocket impacts.

It can be turned on by pursuing refurbs like Darlington in Canada which would be closest conceptually since a lot of stuff got replaced there. Refurbs would be cheap vs building anything new providing same TWh/year. Germany needs much more than just batteries. It needs gas firming on top (coming from Habeck, Fraunhofer and now Reiche)

[ndr42]

Dozens of above ground areas need to be secured for thousand of years.

Great if there would be no way for terrorists to get into just one of these facilities in this timeframe and get their hands on radioactive material to build a dirty bomb.

Great if this would be cheaper than just build solar, wind and batteries without the liability of radioactive waste.

[ndr42]

Maybe we have a slightly different understanding what it means if the gp says "it could absolutly be turned back on".

I certainly wouldn't have expected that someone would propose to shop around for refurbished parts (including to try to get permission to create a german-canadian-chimera-npp).

[Moldoteck]

yes, you can do refurbs which arent that expensive.

Nuclear waste storage is politically killed centrally. Look even at formulation in the law which demands "best" location. Germany could solve this problem in a second if it allowed storing waste in facilities where toxic chemicals are stored like Herfa Neurode.

Asse was an experimental facility that didnt have a plan of what to do if experiment goes sideways. It has nothing to do with final repositories like Onkalo. Still, it killed noone. Nor will it. Most of the waste there is from medical and research sectors and is LLW.

[egr]

Why would it have been better to turn back on the nuclear plant? What would be the specific advantages of nuclear plant back in operation versus battery project realisation? Or would battery + reactivated plant be the best overall solution?

[panick21_]

> Or would battery + reactivated plant be the best overall solution?

Given how much renewable is already deployed, battery makes sense.

So I think both would be best.

[close04]

> And then putting a battery next to it would have been even better then that.

An NPP doesn't benefit that much from a battery. They're generally used to provide base load which fits their constant supply profile. Peaks and quick variations can be supplied by more flexible renewables together with a battery to buffer it.

[ZeroGravitas]

Pumped hydro has been built to work with Nuclear in the past precisely because the flat output of nuclear doesn't actually fit the shape of demand.

Of course these days, you can feed the pumped hydro or batteries with much cheaper renewables.

[close04]

If your NPP output is lower than the base load (I think this is almost always the case) then the NPP will always feed all its constant production to the grid to satisfy the constant base load. If you have a battery and what to put it somewhere with the most impact, it should go next to the variable power supply, where it makes sense to store and supply later. That's what batteries do, store what you can't use now to supply it when you can't produce.

Look at this picture [0] of the German grid. Same for France [1]. Why would you store any of the nuclear output when all of it is guaranteed to be absorbed by the grid real time, day or night? You can, but it doesn't make economic sense. Batteries shine where they can smoothen peaks, like solar and wind.

The big reason to put batteries next to NPPs is the existing grid infrastructure. You can't supply GW-level power from just anywhere. It's like building a large warehouse next to a major transportation route.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_load#/media/File:Renewabl...

[1] https://www.rte-france.com/en/data-publications/eco2mix/powe...

[bryanlarsen]

There are lots of times and places where renewable production is higher than demand. When that's the case "the NPP will always feed all its constant production to the grid to satisfy the constant base load." increases costs.

[close04]

> increases costs

“Increases costs” for who, the producer, the consumer, the distributor? If you have data on that I’d love to read about it.

I think the article mentions that recently batteries are always together with renewables. The reason this battery was built there has nothing to do with the NPP but with the proximity to the already developed power distribution infrastructure. You can assume they’ve all done the math when choosing to not build batteries next to working NPPs.

[Moldoteck]

how much would costs increase? German nuclear was cheapest firm power in merit order

[cbmuser]

France is proving every day that load-following is a thing for nuclear reactors.

I don’t understand why people keep spreading this nonsense.

Just stop it, it’s simply untrue!

[Moldoteck]

a npp benefits a lot from the batteries. Nuclear can be flexible and flexibility can be boosted with BESS buffers. Basically BESS would act similar to hydro in this case

[triceratops]

> Turning the nuclear plant back on would have been even better

Sure if it's the same price.

[torpfactory]

You can scale battery installations basically arbitrarily to the size of the grid connection you have. Put the batteries at the end user if you can. Then they get power outage protection and the grid gets much of the same flexibility.

[shellfishgene]

NIMBYs are the reason why large parts of the mentioned new 700 km Südlink connection are being built as below ground cables, adding enomous costs.

[joe_mamba]

> and NIMBYs are quick to oppose them

I have a solution: higher energy prices for those opposing NIMBYs and cheaper for YIMBYs .

So many issues in politics would be solved if the voters of certain policies were the only ones affected by them instead of writing cheques everyone else has to cash.

[jacobgorm]

In Denmark, wind mills were initially quite popular, because locals owned them and benefited. The iconic wind farm Middelgrunden on the waters outside of Copenhagen is 50% owned by a co-op.

https://www.middelgrunden.dk/