[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?

[Moldoteck]

Why only 40y for new nuclear? When min license is 60 for gen3 and many gen2 already got extensions to 80y. And where did you get the 100% 24/7 number? The min profitability of FLA3 doesnt assume that. And that's for an ultimately failed project which could have been much better if not EDF incompetence

[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