[esarbe]

It's also incredibly expensive and brittle and cannot be moderated without additional costs[1].

At this point nuclear is just a dead horse. It hasn't managed to displace fossil fuels in over 70 years - a feat that renewables have done within 20 years. Nuclear is too slow and too expensive.

https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/france...

[rayiner]

It’s only expensive and brittle because environmentalists have choked it to death. They’re the third biggest villains of climate change, after consumers and oil companies.

If the whole developed world had nuclearized the way France did, our discussions about climate change would be entirely different. We would have decades more runway to avoid 2C+ scenarios. We would have already electrified vast swaths of the economy, like home heating. We’d have extremely mature technology to give to developing countries that need massive baseload for industrial production. Today, we’d be discussing how many older nukes we could retire and replace with wind and solar plants.

[tfourb]

> It’s only expensive and brittle because environmentalists have choked it to death.

The only reason why "environmentalists" were able to influence the debate around nuclear is because nuclear is uneconomical and studded with actual, real problems.

Look at fossil fuels. Environmentally and in terms of public health it is way worse than nuclear (at least a current respective buildout levels). And environmentalists have campaigned against it for decades. Still, it is not only used, its use has expanded until very recently.

That is because fossil fuels were incredibly cheap (as its environmental costs have been externalized), while nuclear has been incredibly expensive, even with massive government subsidies. Fossil fuels are also very practical, while nuclear is cumbersome and comes with real security issues (terrorists and planes and such) that have nothing to do with some hippies blockading nuclear fuel transports.

"Cheap nuclear" is a pipe dream that has never been realized. Not even Chinese nuclear (no environmentalists there) is anywhere near as cheap as solar.

[throw0101c]

> "Cheap nuclear" is a pipe dream that has never been realized. Not even Chinese nuclear (no environmentalists there) is anywhere near as cheap as solar.

In Ontario, Canada, 50% of all power comes from nuclear and costs CAD 0.12/kWh (USD 0.08/kWh); see Table 2:

* https://www.oeb.ca/sites/default/files/rpp-price-report-2025...

On the spectrum from "cheap" to expensive, where would that fall?

For many years it was actually cheaper than (methane/natural) gas:

* https://www.oeb.ca/sites/default/files/rpp-price-report-2023...

[ViewTrick1002]

Now Ontario wants to double the electricity bills to finance its nuclear refurbs and new builds.

https://reneweconomy.com.au/ontario-utility-wants-to-double-...

[throw0101c]

Ontario's Financial Accountability Office, which reports to provincial parliament and is independent of the government, concluded that at least for the refurbs:

> * The FAO estimates that the Plan will result in nuclear generation supplying a significant proportion of Ontario electricity demand from 2016 to 2064 at an average price of $80.7/MWh in 2017 dollars. (For reference, the 2017 Nuclear Price is $69/MWh and the current price of electricity for most residential and small business ratepayers is $114.9/MWh.)

> * The Nuclear Price will be higher than the average price of $80.7/MWh during the majority of the time that the reactors are being refurbished from 2016 to 2033. Post refurbishment, ratepayers will benefit from a lower than average Nuclear Price.

> * Overall, despite near-term Nuclear Price increases, the Plan is projected to provide ratepayers with a long-term supply of relatively low-cost, low emissions electricity.

> * OPG will realize a financial return from the operation of the DNGS and PNGS. OPG is owned by the Province and any return would improve the Province’s fiscal position. There is no significant fiscal impact to the Province from the refurbishment of reactors at the BNGS as it is operated by Bruce Power, a private sector organization.

* https://fao-on.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Nuclear-Refurb...

I was not able to find a similar report (pro or con) for new build, though I think the current plan with some SMRs in Ontario is dumb: if we decide on more nuclear, we should stick with big(ger) CANDU, as there's little point in small reactors in a large grid like Ontario.

Renewable programs have also cost Ontario ratepayers quite a bit of money, for not a lot of electricity generated:

* https://ospe.on.ca/advocacy/green-energy-contracts-fao-repor...

[ViewTrick1002]

Last time Ontario built CANDU’s the utility went into bankruptcy and the taxpayers still haven’t paid off that debt.

[tfourb]

> In Ontario, Canada, 50% of all power comes from nuclear and costs CAD 0.12/kWh (USD 0.08/kWh); see Table 2:

The website does not open for me. Are the quoted prices consumer prices including tax or wholesale prices before tax?

If it’s the latter, 8 cents is not that cheap and comparable to the average price per kWh (all sources) in Germany. In most cases in most places, the lion’s share of electricity costs is tax and infrastructure refinancing, not actual production. Levellized cost of PV+storage is well below new nuclear virtually in every deployment scenario.

> For many years it was actually cheaper than (methane/natural) gas:

Because NG is one of the most expensive ways to produce electricity, if you are not producing NG yourself locally AND don’t have to pay for environmental costs.

[Moldoteck]

Germany spends 10x more than france on transmission precisely because of ren expansion. Curtailment payments are much higher too. So you are right that taxes are different - depending on your pathway, you have no choice. Germany has highest household prices in EU after ireland despite 18bn/y in EEG subsidies to lower them.

[bryanlarsen]

That's because the utility went bankrupt and its construction costs were absorbed onto the public debt.

Nuclear is cheap to operate. It's expensive to build and expensive to decommission. Any analysis that doesn't include those two costs is highly misleading.

[throw0101c]

> That's because the utility went bankrupt and its construction costs were absorbed onto the public debt.

Ontario Hydro did not go bankrupt.

It was broken up into "constituent" components in 1998, and the a lot of the nuclear plant construction financing debt didn't fit neatly into any one of them, so a separate legal entity was created: Ontario Electricity Financial Corporation (OEFC).

Ratepayers pay their electrical bills, the money goes to local utilities and entities like OPG and Hydro One, which in turn pay OEFC.

The claim that it was bankrupt was a line used by Mike Harris et co to justify privatization.

[Moldoteck]

decomission is cheap too. All german plants are decom with operator money except soviet/experimental units. There are price breakdowns if you wish for opex https://www.kkg.ch/de/uns/geschaefts-nachhaltigkeitsberichte...

[MoonWalk]

Nobody said it would be as cheap as solar. But "renewables" can't fulfill ALL power needs ALL the time.

When you actually need to generate electricity rather than gather it, what's better than nuclear?

[jfengel]

Renewables don't need to fulfill everything all the time. If they need assistance from fossil fuels 10% of the time, that's a 90% cut in greenhouse gas emissions. The last 10% won't be the biggest issue to deal with.

So you can build expensive nuclear plants for that small fraction of the time, or you can continue to use existing fossil fuel plants for free. The difference to the carbon bottom line is small.

[Moldoteck]

"Renewables don't need to fulfill everything all the time. If they need assistance from fossil fuels 10% of the time, that's a 90% cut in greenhouse gas emissions. The last 10% won't be the biggest issue to deal with." - so funny seeing environmentalists accepting parallel gas infrastructure when countries like France/Sweden don't have it.

[sehansen]

France does have parallel gas infrastructure though. It's, funnily enough, at around 10% of their electricity supply.

[rayiner]

> "Cheap nuclear" is a pipe dream that has never been realized. Not even Chinese nuclear (no environmentalists there) is anywhere near as cheap as solar.

France went 75% nuclear in the 1980s. If we had built all those nuclear plants back in the 1980s when France did, they would be fully depreciated by now. And we'd be having this conversation about "cheap solar" in a far more favorable position where we had avoided huge amounts of CO2 emissions for 40+ years while we waited for solar technology to improve.

[frm88]

This is so shortsighted. We'd still have the nuclear waste problem and - more importantly - the cost. Germany alone is facing a bill of €26B to €45B for nuclear waste management, decomissioning and cleanup. All of that goes into your electricity bill, because the government pays only 25% of it: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/nuclear-clean-cos...

[Moldoteck]

nuclear waste is not a problem. It can be made a problem if the chiefs responsible for it (BASE?BMUV) have certain political affiliation...

All german plants are decomissioned through operators money except soviet/experimental units. Operators also paid into KENFO, an autoinvesting fund about 24bn and it keeps it's value despite the state taking about 2bn/y from it for interim storage and 'searching'. Meanwhile Finland built Onkalo for 1bn...

[ncruces]

German Greens have managed the feat of presiding over extending strip coal while closing nuclear power plants. But hey, they fought for it since the 70s, and finally won; we all lost.

[Perseids]

> It’s only expensive and brittle because environmentalists have choked it to death. They’re the third biggest villains of climate change, after consumers and oil companies.

Do note, though, that it was the unbelievable irresponsibility of past operators that has spurred the anti-nuclear movement in the first place. See e.g. https://youtu.be/929B8sgOOTM?si=FttZr_MsbQ1hB4Nj&t=1664 from 27:44 to 31:35.

[triceratops]

> It’s only expensive and brittle because environmentalists have choked it to death

How did they succeed with nuclear energy but fail so miserably with everything else - fossil fuels, meat, even whaling?

[throwthrowuknow]

It’s easy to make the general public fearful of nuclear because they have no direct experience with it in daily life.

[triceratops]

People take on dangers all the time if the benefit (perceived or otherwise) outweighs the risk. That just tells me nuclear's economics didn't make it a clear winner over fossil fuels.

It's just weird to me that environmentalists get blamed for killing nuclear more than the group that actually made it happen and had something to gain - the fossil fuel industry. They funded the environmentalists to protest against it, and they funded the politicians to write laws against it.

[crote]

Right, because the general public has direct daily experience with... whaling?

[throwthrowuknow]

People have more experience with hunting and with wildlife than they do with nuclear power. Though I’m not sure why whaling is included since commercial whaling is banned by most countries as a result of anti-whaling protests.

[coryrc]

Because they were useful idiots funded by fossil fuel companies.

(also US whaling is nearly banned by the US and most countries, and we're not going to go to war with Japan over it)

[triceratops]

I'm not asking where they got funding. I'm asking why anyone else listened to them on this topic alone. You don't find that strange at all?

The elites, powers that be, whatever you want to call them, had their own reasons for killing nuclear power. And nuclear's economics, compared to fossil fuels, didn't make it a slam dunk to adopt despite powerful opposition. So it had no one to defend it.

Environmentalists weren't just useful idiots then (and I hesitate to call people acting in good faith, without any self-interest, "idiots"). They're convenient fall guys today. The fossil fuel industry killed nuclear power and pinned it on the environmental movement. That had the double benefit of keeping their hands clean while discrediting future environmentalists.

[jfengel]

Environmentalists did have the nuclear industry's help with a few high profile disasters. Plus the lingering connection to nuclear weapons. That makes it easier for people to take the threat seriously.

But that's still insufficient to explain it. If the fossil fuel industry had wanted nuclear power we'd have it. They could use lobbying to reduce the push for nuclear, and then blame it on the environmentalists. Who were happy to take a rare win.

[coryrc]

> I'm asking why anyone else listened to them on this topic alone

First, it wasn't this topic alone; whaling too. You also don't need 100% of people to listen. You just need to shift from 45% to 55%. If people were already skeptical about nuclear because they conflate nuclear weapons and nuclear power, then they only need to shift ~10% on the issue. And money gets their message out much stronger.

> That had the double benefit of keeping their hands clean while discrediting future environmentalists.

Washington State had I-732, which would make taxes less regressive and efficiently tax carbon. Both issues liberals pretend to care about. Most state environmentalist groups fought against this! It got defeated because of that opposition, then those groups put up a different carbon tax initiative which would funnel the money to them to spend as they want. Also shot down with a shift of who voted for and against. Environmentalists are sometimes the villains.

[triceratops]

> And money gets their message out much stronger

And yet you blame the messenger more than the money. If environmentalists didn't exist do you think fossil fuel wouldn't have found a different way to get the message out there? When money talks, people listen.

[LinXitoW]

So its really safe, but also the evil regulations make it expensive. I'm certain there's ZERO correlation between regulations that make it expensive and regulations making it safe....................

So, where is the free market shitting out nuclear power? Anywhere?

[ethbr1]

> So its really safe, but also the evil regulations make it expensive

Yes, with extra steps.

Regulations, more so than their impact on price, cost calendar time.

Time, especially for already-lengthy and complicated infrastructure projects, costs volume.

And low volume means high prices and a slow pace of improvement.

Henry Ford wouldn't have built many automobiles, or improved them as quickly as he did, if every one needed to be individually permitted by multiple government agencies.

The failure of nuclear is that it never standardized and scaled to industrially-efficient volumes (outside of arguably France) at exactly the point that it could have technologically done so (~1970s). Had Offshore Power Systems^ begun producing floating reactors at volume in Jacksonville, FL in the late 70s, we'd be having a very different conversation about cheap American nuclear power today.

^ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offshore_Power_Systems

[tancop]

there are regulations that make it safe and the ones that make it expensive. its two different groups. radiation limits and design safety with meltdown prevention is one thing but then you get rules like radiation needs to be as low as possible until you run into a cost limit. that basically means setting a price floor for the whole project.

nuclear being expensive is also kind of a self fulfilling prophecy. the costs for certified equipment are high because the market is small and not competitive, because nobodys building nuclear, because everyone knows its too expensive to build and not worth it.

the only solution i see is massive state investment like what france was doing in the 70s. that would upset the market purists but its more practical than trying to push the industry with a neoliberal hands off approach.

[jrflowers]

> The Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program has over 7,500 reactor years of cumulative reactor operation, and nuclear powered ships have steamed over 175 million miles. Since the inception of the program, there has never been an accident involving a naval reactor nor a release of radioactivity to the environment which has adversely affected public health or safety.

https://www.nr-ha.org/history

[crote]

The program led to the Three Mile Island accident, which is one of the largest releases of radioactivity in US history.

Naval reactors are inherently safer due to their small size and unlimited supply of cooling water. A meltdown is virtually impossible, worst-case scenario you could always use a firehose and a diesel pump to inject sea water into the reactor. On the other hand: you really don't want to overfill the reactor: a naval reactor "going solid" rips itself apart, killing the ship.

Commercial reactors are the exact opposite. Overfilling them is not a huge deal as there are plenty of ways to relieve pressure, but underfilling them can easily lead to a meltdown. Even after shutdown it needs active cooling for a decent while to prevent residual decay from overheating it.

The TMI reactor operators were trained on naval reactors, but they were operating a commercial reactor. During the incident they were too busy trying to prevent it from overfilling to notice that it was actually cooking itself dry - so they intentionally shut down the emergency cooling system!

So no, saying that the Navy Nuclear Propulsion Program has led to zero accidents is both wrong, and completely irrelevant to the subject here.

[jrflowers]

Three Mile Island was never owned or operated by the US Navy. To place the blame on the Naval Reactor program you would have to prove that the operators would have acted the same way if they knew that the PORV had not closed when it was supposed to.

https://large.stanford.edu/courses/2016/ph241/alfieri1/

To put it another way, the only way to blame the Naval Reactor program is if you believe in a scenario where equipment failure of the control panel to notify operators of the exact problem that you described did not contribute to the incident. Once you get to “equipment failure doesn’t cause problems, the United States Navy causes problems” you’re pretty squarely in fantasticism territory, though.

Lmao at “three quarters of a century of institutional knowledge isn’t relevant because I don’t think you can build a nuclear reactor by water for some reason” while talking about a nuclear power plant on an island

[lolc]

> ... which has adversely affected public health or safety.

Why would they tack that on at the end of a very long sentence? Because they don't want to talk about the loss of USS Scorpion. They mention the sub once on the whole page and even misspell it as "Scorpian". Would not trust them as a source.

[gmanley]

>Since the inception of the program, there has never been an accident involving a naval reactor nor a release of radioactivity

None of the theories put forward about the loss of the USS Scorpion have involved the reactor. Maybe they didn't discuss it because it wasn't relevant?

[jrflowers]

> Would not trust them as a source.

Ok

https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2025-06/Gray%20Bo...

[esarbe]

Ah, yes - "the evil environmentalists." Congratulations, you really torched that straw man.

We stopped building nuclear reactors in the early 1970ies[0], long before there was any large organized civil movement organizing against it - because with the required additional complexity to make them safe, the technology was just too expensive.

(As always - it's the capitalists that messed things up, not civil society.)

Despite having 70 years of progress, nuclear today is more expensive than ever. It just doesn't scale.

France's nuclear operator EDF is €50 billion in debt. They make about €3 billion per year - and have between €150 - €200 billion investments on the table for the next 10 years. Go figure.

[0] https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/Nuclear-Reactor-Construct...

[fc417fc802]

I'm not sure I agree but lets set that aside for now. Are you seriously suggesting that $50 billion per France equivalent over half a century would have been an unreasonable price to pay to avert climate change? It's just not a logically consistent or even remotely sensible position. The environmentalist movement undeniably got this one wrong and I say that as someone with views that would generally be categorized as such.

[esarbe]

These €50 billion is just what EDF is in debt, not what building and operating these reactors actually cost. Just in the next 10 years EDF will have in invest about €150-200 billion to replace and refurbish their reactors. That's just to keep the current capacity, not to expand it.

Unfortunately "the environmentalist movement" didn't have the information regarding the dangers of climate change and the information about the near-zero threat from low level nuclear radiation in 1970ies. Hindsight is 20/20.

That said; planning and construction of new nuclear reactors peaked in the early 1970ies, before large scale accidents (Three Mile Island and Chernobyl) really mobilized civil society against nuclear power.

The reason the West stopped building is because even with state support, it's not such a financially attractive investment. That's why "the East" continued building more and more reactors until the big incident. (Arguably their reactors were also much less safe and thus probably cheaper by quite a bit.)

[uxp100]

I mostly agree with your larger point, but the anti-nuclear movement predates the 70s by quite a bit.

[TimorousBestie]

> Congratulations, you really torched that straw man.

Who are we to begrudge a man his decade-long windmills-tilting: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

[adjejmxbdjdn]

Ah yes, environmentalists have been running the world for the last few decades.

Nuclear has never been financially viable and to the degree there has been “environmental” opposition it’s been NIMBY opposition to either the siting of the reactors or the siting of the disposal.

But again, the primary reason no one is building nuclear is because it’s incredibly expensive.

[rayiner]

> Nuclear has never been financially viable

We literally have a whole-ass G7 country that went 75% nuclear back in the 80s.

[BadBadJellyBean]

A country can do things that are not financially viable.

[onraglanroad]

Because it was paid for by the taxpayer.

Why are you suddenly in favour of socialist projects? Shouldn't you be saying they should be privately funded and lets see if they can make a profit selling their electricity?

[TimorousBestie]

Winning arguments on the internet is more important than ideological consistency.

[fc417fc802]

Or alternatively a reasonable person will accept the observation that sufficiently large problems with sufficiently bad consequences need to be socialized. However even then there is still going to be disagreement about where exactly to draw the line. That nuclear and climate change falls far to one side of it should not be a surprise.

[palata]

> Ah yes, environmentalists have been running the world for the last few decades.

No need to run the world: in the last decades, some environmentalists have been lobbying against nuclear energy and in the end, the people in many countries have become opposed to it by fear of it. And that feared is fuelled (among others) by environmentalists for sure.

> Nuclear has never been financially viable

If it's about comparing energies financially (and many other dimensions actually), nothing gets remotely close to oil. But oil is limited and oil is destroying the world.

Also not to forget: everything nowadays depends on globalisation and therefore oil. We like to compare renewables to oil, but we forget that they totally depend on oil at the moment. Without oil, we don't build much renewables anywhere. So an important question is: without oil, do we need nuclear energy or not? I believe we do. I believe we also need renewables, to be clear.

[pydry]

>environmentalists have choked it to death.

Those regulations you despise were written in blood.

Moreover, Nuclear power enjoys free catastrophe insurance. If a Fukushima style meltdown happens, the taxpayer is always on the hook for 95%+ of the cleanup costs.

So yeah, all you have to do is let them keep their freebie insurance, lavish them with subsidies and water down the regulations which make it vastly more likely that they'll need to use it.

Or just build some solar, some wind and some storage, save a mountain of cash and have new generation projects take under five years to finish instead of more than 20.

[TimorousBestie]

> If a Fukushima style meltdown happens, the taxpayer is always on the hook for 95%+ of the cleanup costs.

An apt reference. In both India and China it was the Fukushima disaster that spurred protests and stalled nuclear power growth. Organized environmental activism in both countries is basically nonexistent.

I would rank US-led nonproliferation policies above environmental activism as a cause for slow nuclear adoption as well. (Nonproliferation was primarily a military objective, by the way, not an environmentalist one.) Many countries only have nuclear power programs because France decided to occasionally proliferate them, many times over US objections.

[pydry]

The effect environmentalists have on adoption is a rounding error compared to the humongous cost of nuclear power.

Most non nuclear powers have a few for the same reason Iran does: having some nuclear scientists and a developed nuclear industry around is handy in case of a, uh, geopolitical "emergency". This is why Poland suddenly became interested in 2023 specifically.

Most countries do not want a lot though - it's too expensive.

[TimorousBestie]

I agree, I also believe the overall startup cost and low ROI is more relevant than the occasional tree-hugger’s limited political influence.

[Gud]

Every time this argument comes up, “it’s too slow and expensive “, I ask that person to please explain to me how my home country Sweden managed to build all those reactors in the 70s and 80s both fast and cheap?

They’ve been amazing for us, despite the fact that some of them was recklessly shutdown prematurely by an ignorant political class.

[adjejmxbdjdn]

1. Nuclear has a negative learning curve. It’s gotten more expensive with time. Part of the reason is increasing geopolitical risks (the U.S. just launched a war on Iran because of the possibility it may upgrade nuclear material to weapon capabilities), lost knowledge and expertise, and also the increasing relative cost of financing in the cost of energy projects.

2. Nuclear was built at a time when governments were much more likely to directly invest in energy projects. It didn’t have to compete with Labubus for private dollars.

3. Its current competition didn’t exist, given how much cheaper solar and wind have gotten, and how much cheaper battery tech has gotten with signs all of them will only get even cheaper. And on the non renewable side, natural gas has become incredibly cheaper as well.

[palata]

> given how much cheaper solar and wind have gotten

In a world with a lot of oil. How does that evolve when we don't have enough oil anymore?

Feels like renewables are extremely distributed, which sounds like it may be harder to manage without the happy globalisation brought by accessible oil.

To be clear, I believe we also need renewables. But I also believe that we won't remotely replace oil, so we need absolutely everything we can imagine, and that includes nuclear energy.

[Gud]

1. I personally believe the “lost knowledge “ is overstated. Europe knows very well how to manage large scale infrastructure projects. It still has a healthy nuclear industry.

2. Once the vote is there(Switzerland is a direct democracy), the public funds will be there. Sweden has recently chosen to invest ~40B Euro.

3. Solar, really? In Switzerland? Many parts of the industrialised world receive very little sun, especially in winter, where coincidentally, energy usage peaks.

And intermittent power generation like wind is no competition to nuclear.

These are very weak arguments. Good luck replacing Oskarshamn with solar panels…

[Moldoteck]

weapons are unrelated to plants. Weapons are more about enrichment.

[tialaramex]

What counts as "fast and cheap" ?

For the renewables "Fast and cheap" turns out to mean you get the paperwork in the winter and you build a solar farm that summer, it's not quite sowing wheat - teams of competent people building the farm isn't the same thing as just chucking the seeds into the dirt with a machine, but the timeframe isn't so different.

Sweden's nuclear plants seem to have taken maybe 6+ years from breaking ground (not paperwork) to first power, so if you begin today you might have a plant in 2032 at the earliest. I can't see any prices, not even a CfD strike price for Sweden's new proposed plants.

The UK agreed £92.50 strike price (2012 prices) for the new nukes it may never actually receive, but unlike Sweden the UK has never pledged to relinquish nuclear weapons so to some extent having a native "nuclear" capability is relevant to national security.

[Gud]

It took 5 years from construction start to grid connection for Oskarshamn R3, at the time the reactor with the world’s highest rated output. Since it began operating it has produced 350TWh.

That nuclear power must take forever is a myth and is only due to dysfunctional politics.

That “you get a permit in the winter and it’s done by summer” is a totally bogus claim. Perhaps for some tiny installation compared to a power plant with 1.5GW output.

https://world-nuclear.org/nuclear-reactor-database/details/o...

[ViewTrick1002]

And now France target 2038 at the earliest for the first reactor in the EPR2 fleet. With a 11 cent per kWh CFD and interest free loans, summing to over 20 cents per kWh.

It is easy to dream about what could have been half a century ago, but that doesn’t change reality today.

[Moldoteck]

Yes, EPR2 is overcomplicated mess. But the subsidy is not that great either... considering many EU countries are subsidizing biomass today at 18ct/kwh...

[ViewTrick1002]

Always the false comparisons.

Please do tell me the expected capacity factor of these biomass plants, even if 18 cents per kWh is correct, after renewables, storage, hydro if available and existing nuclear plants with 80 year LTOs do the heavy lifting.

Can you see the difference compared to new built nuclear power which requires that absolutely insane price when running at 100% 24/7 for 40 years?

[Shitty-kitty]

Utility-scale solar projects in California are experiencing interconnection delays averaging 3 to 5 years, primarily due to grid congestion, slow utility study pipelines, and aging substation equipment.

[tokioyoyo]

Process works if you keep building, expanding and making it safer. If you don’t build it for decades, you’re basically starting from scratch.

It is a hard sell when you have to front a good chunk of money, without a track record of successful build ups. It applies to other infrastructure stuff like HSR.

[Gud]

So let’s learn from that lesson and rebuild nuclear power in Europe?

Let’s hope Switzerland takes the lead here, Sweden are already building.

The political will is there. Let’s do it?

[Scroll_Swe]

Fellow Swede here, what is crazy is I also learned this from this thread.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_France

The electricity sector in France is dominated by its nuclear power, which accounted for 71.7% of total production in 2018, while renewables and fossil fuels accounted for 21.3% and 7.1%, respectively.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France

SVT or SR has never shown me this, wonder why...

And what is crazy is we, in Europe, act and talk as if we cannot do anything without sucking up to USA or China.

We also have massive Hydro in Sweden. We can see what is currently giving us electricity.

https://www.svk.se/om-kraftsystemet/kontrollrummet/

oh and dont get us started on the electricity zones and germany...

Turn on Barsebäck again... absolute asenine they shut it down. Will never happen, been too long, also owned by Uniper... (Germans)

And sadly S+MP+V will win this election it looks like. Say goodbye to any new nuclear power. Also it will be 2015 all over again but that is off topic...

[esarbe]

The same way that France did it; by building quite safe nuclear in series with massive government subsidies. A bit like China today.

After the accidents showed that these designs where just not quite safe enough, redundancy in the safety systems were added. The thing is; as soon as those reactor designs got a bit more safe, they got much more expensive quite quickly. Just look at France's history of nuclear reactor development.CP0, CP1 and CP2 were somewhat cheap and they were able to churn out the things in quite a number.P4 and P'4 were already much more complex, more expensive and it just wasn't possible to mass produce these things like before. By N4 the economy of scale had broken down almost completely.

That's the problem with nuclear reactors. They are simple in principle, but fiendishly difficult in practice and enormously complex. So complex indeed that the learning curve doesn't yield any compounding returns. That's what we've seen play out in the last 50 years.

I don't know how things evolved in Sweden, but I assume that Swedish reactors don't have all the safety features of modern reactors. I guess that's what made them cheap, just like the CP-series in France.

[Moldoteck]

Gen2 units are expensive, but how do you explain ABWR as a FOAK costed far less than N-OAK gen 2 units?

It's not about safety but features and wishes to have. French reactors were cheap even at P4 level but the demand hasn't increased as planned and electrification was not great, so construction stopped. EPR is a complicated mess trying to cater to all regulations at once, especially the harsh german ones. That's why EPR2 has some stuff stripped apart

[palata]

> It hasn't managed to displace fossil fuels in over 70 years - a feat that renewables have done within 20 years.

Renewables are not remotely displacing fossil fuels. Look at fossil fuel consumption.

[Moldoteck]

Nuclear managed to make France and Sweden cleanest grids in EU as late as 90's while Germany is still one of the worst emitters in EU with ren-only approach and plans gas expansion fro firming. Yes, tell us more about who did better

[UltraSane]

Nuclear reactors can last up to 80 years. The main reason nuclear hasn't displaced fossil fuels over the last 70 years is due to relentless irrational opposition.

[esarbe]

No reactor has yet even reached the operating age of 60 years. That 80 years number is wholly speculative.

We stopped building nuclear reactors in the 1970ies[0] because with the additional complexity to make them safe, the systems were just too expensive.

It has nothing to do with "relentless irrational opposition".

[0] https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/Nuclear-Reactor-Construct...

[throw0101c]

> No reactor has yet even reached the operating age of 60 years. That 80 years number is wholly speculative.

Ontario's Bruce A site (Units 1-4) have an age of ~45 years, and has just finished refurbishment (ahead of schedule and under budget) to run for another few decades:

* https://www.ctvnews.ca/london/article/refurbishment-of-bruce...

Ontario's Pickering B nuclear site (Units 5-8) have an age of ~40 years, and are about to be refurbished to run another 30+ years:

* https://archive.is/https://www.thestar.com/politics/provinci...

So while the 60-80 years has not been hit, it is probably less on the "speculative" side of spectrum and more on the "probable" side.

[palata]

> the systems were just too expensive.

Maybe, but the world is changing. What is safer: some nuclear incidents once in a while, or +4 degrees in the world and a whole strip of land around the equator becoming unlivable to the human species? We're talking billions of refugees here.

I think we need to realise how bad the situation is and how worse it is going to be before we say that nuclear energy is "risky".

[inigyou]

The American regime has recently solved this problem by removing safety requirements - they have de-recognized the linear no-threshold model of radiation damage, which means the official fact is that there is a threshold of radiation that's safe to receive. That threshold is, of course, just above whatever one of the nuclear reactors they're about to build will emit. They removed the "as low as reasonably possible" design goal which means it's now allowed to dump radioactive waste into a river to save money

[UltraSane]

The linear no threshold model is not supported by actual evidence. More accurate models include

Linear-Quadratic (LQ) Model

Threshold Model

Hormesis model

The linear no-threshold model is less realistic than threshold or hormesis-based models: An evolutionary perspective

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000927971...

"They removed the "as low as reasonably possible" design goal which means it's now allowed to dump radioactive waste into a river to save money"

This is just an incredibly stupid lie that completely destroys your credibility.

The ALARA (As Low As Reasonably Achievable) principle paired with hyper-sensitive detection technology requires nuclear operators to spend billions on redundant safety features and extensive permitting for infinitesimal health benefits. This regulatory burden prices nuclear energy out of the market.

[inigyou]

Sounds like it wasn't reasonably possible?

[UltraSane]

It wasn't reasonably affordable!

[coryrc]

"safe" is a spectrum. While coal is allowed to kill millions of people a year, the safety level of nuclear in the US was raised to "no matter whatever happens no one ever anywhere must have harm come to them" and that's not realistic. Solar kills orders of magnitude more people than nuclear! But we haven't regulated rooftop solar out of existence, plus that wasn't even an option 50 years ago. That's 40 years we didn't have to be poisoning the Earth with coal.

[UltraSane]

Thankfully the US has now removed the linear no threshold model and the As Low As Reasonably Achievable radioactive emissions goal which were irrational and made nuclear much more expensive than it should be.

[UltraSane]

Georgia nuclear power plant cleared for 80-year operating life

https://world-nuclear-news.org/articles/georgia-nuclear-powe...

[wat10000]

Your link says increased modulation adds 1.5-3.75 million euros/year in maintenance costs. That's utterly insignificant for the electricity supply to a nation of 70 million.