[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.