It’s still not earning you money to spend electricity because you still have to pay the transfer fee which is around 6 cents / kWh but it’s pretty damn cheap nevertheless, mostly because of the excess in wind energy.
Last winter because of a mistake it dropped down to negative 50 cents / kWh for few hours, averaging negative 20 cents for the entire day. People were literally earning money by spending electricity. Some were running electric heaters outside in the middle of the winter.
What’s wrong with nuclear?
People still buying into oil company FUD from the 70s
It’s a poor solution for what people like to call “baseline power”.
The argument goes: solar and wind don’t provide consistent power, so there has to be some power generation that doesn’t fluctuate so we always have X amount of power to make up for when solar/wind don’t suffice. Nuclear is consistent and high-output, so it’s perfect for this.
Unfortunately, reality is a little different. First problem is that solar/wind at scale don’t fluctuate as much. The sun always shines somewhere, and the wind always blows somewhere. You have to aggregate a large area together, but that already exists with the European energy market.
Second issue is that solar/wind at scale regularly (or will regularly) produce more than 100% of the demand. This gives you two options: either spend the excess energy, or stop generating so much of it. Spending the excess requires negative energy prices so people will use it, causing profitability issues for large power plants. As nuclear is one of the most expensive sources of energy, this requires hefty subsidies which need to be paid for by taxpayers. The alternative is shutting the power plant down, but nuclear plants in particular aren’t able to quickly shut off and on on demand. And as long as they’re not turned on they’re losing money, again requiring hefty subsidies. You could try turning off renewable power generation, but that just causes energy prices to rise due to a forced market intervention. Basically, unless your baseline power generator is able to switch off and on easily and can economically survive a bit of downtime, it’s not very viable.
Nuclear is safe. It produces a lot of power, the waste problem is perfectly manageable and the tech has that cool-factor. But with the rapid rise of solar and wind, which are becoming cheaper every day, it’s economic viability is under strong pressure. It just costs too much, and all that money could have been spent investing into clean and above all cheap energy instead. I used to be pro-nuclear, but after seeing the actual cost calculations for these things I think it’s not worth doing at the moment.
As for what I think a good baseline power source would be: I think we have to settle for (bio-)gas. It’s super quick to turn off and on and still fairly cheap. And certainly not as polluting as coal. We keep the gas generators open until we have enough solar/wind/battery/hydrogen going, as backup. If nuclear gets some kind of breakthrough that allows them to be cheaper then great! Until then we should use the better solutions we have available right now (and no, SMRs are not the breakthrough you might think it is. They’re still massively more expensive than the alternatives and so far have not really managed to reduce either costs or buils times by any significant margin).
Maybe fusion in the future manages to be economically viable. Fingers crossed!
What’s your opinion on smaller scale power plants? It seems like a decent way to cut the costs and still get that extra power in those seasonal low power periods. Or do you think it’s not worth pursuing at all?
I’m in the US which is quite large. I’ve always thought small scale power plants in conjunction with solar and wind would be good.
Especially since a lot of states turn the land surrounding the power plant into wildlife sanctuaries since nothing can be built in the safety zone anyway.
It’s like bird watching heaven at the power plant near me. I guess I just really like the idea of a power source that also incidentally protects forested areas.
SMRs (or small-scale nuclear plants in general) solve some problems with nuclear power. If you were to build a single design very often, the principles of economies at scale would apply and drive down costs.
I like the theory. But in practice there’s a couple problems that so far I’ve not seen addressed very often. First is the issue that not all costs of building a nuclear power plant can be brought down by simply having more of them. Particularly infrastructure costs can rise significantly, because instead of building one large plant with a connection to the grid, necessary buildings for operational control, infrastructure for the coolant water, roads, security etc… you have to build several instead, which multiplies the costs of these.
Then there’s the issue of personnel. You need people to operate and maintain the plant, security, management, etc… Per reactor you may need less people, but because you have so many reactors you end up needing more people overall. Most countries have a hard enough time as it is to get enough qualified staff, you’d also need to heavily invest in education for the next generation of nuclear engineers.
You also have these container-sized reactor concepts that basically promise to run themselves, requiring almost no maintenance other than the occasional refueling. But those are very much still in the concept-stage and also need to address the security issue. An unmanned container with nuclear fuel and expensive equipment inside could very well make a worthwhile target for criminals.
I like the utopian vision that nuclear promises but I worry the path to get there is full of pitfalls. I also don’t see the cost of nuclear coming down any time soon, and if we want to remain competitive in manufacturing for example, cheap energy is absolutely key.
Personally, I prefer investments in renewables and battery tech. Particularly battery tech I’m hopeful about. In theory there’s so much to gain still on that front, and it has the potential to improve so much other technology, from phones to drones to pacemakers to reliable, decentralised power. Nuclear tech is cool, but it only really promises to result in more nuclear power, rather than improvements in other areas as well. Fusion is interesting (and almost worth investing in just for the cool “it can be done”-factor) but at the same time still so far away. Too risky to rely on for now.
Haha, I can see why that makes you more inclined to support nuclear! Though it does make me a little sad that in order to protect our forests and wildlife we first need to build a nuclear reactor next to it. Can’t we just designate them wildlife sanctuaries regardless of that power plant being there or not?
That was a wonderfully in depth explanation! Thank you! I have a lot to think about(in a good way)
I also wish we could have more wildlife sanctuaries without the power plants basically forcing them into existence, but I guess I’m at the point where I’ll take what we can get. However, I shouldn’t forget that we can do better too.
Hopefully we as a species can figure out our energy problems globally… and work together on it instead of fighting each other over which one is best.
Thank you again for your really informative answer! I really appreciate it!!
Hey thanks! I certainly don’t claim to know everything here, but I mostly dislike how the discourse regarding clean energy, nuclear etc… has… devolved so much. You always hear the same fairly boring catchphrases, arguments and rebuttals, but there’s genuine issues and questions that need all of us to come together and find the answers to. It’s developed its own little “politics” almost.
I hope we can breathe some new life into the discussions, as it’s a super-interesting problem to think about and I certainly hope we as a species find a solution.
In Finland they’ve been developing small scale reactors about the size of a shipping container but they’re not intented to produce electricity but instead just heat water and then push it into the district heating grid. This way the powerplant would also be much simplier to produce and maintain as well as safer due to the lower pressures and temperatures it operates at. Basically a nuclear powered kettle.
That really fucking cool! Whoever came up with that application for nuclear power is a genius.
The sun always shines somewhere and wind always blows somewhere. Now we just have to install x-times the global energy demand in production capacity and also the infrastructure to distribute it around the world and also make sure that this hyper centralized system is not used against us and then already we have a perfect solution without nuclear. Ez pz, no more CO2 in 500 years.
You don’t need to install X-amount of global demand. Battery/hydrogen storage can solve the issue as has been demonstrated repeatedly in various research. And with home battery solutions you can even fully decentralise it.
I don’t understand your centralisation argument, nuclear is about the most centralised power source there is. And it can be threatened, as seen in the current Ukraine-Russia war.
Solar and wind can scale up to the demand. Nuclear actually has a much harder time doing that, as materials are far more rare and expensive, and it takes much longer to build. If anything, the time argument works against nuclear, not in favour of it.
Hydrogen storage, you have got to be kidding me. It is abysmally inefficient and the same kind of FUD spread by the fossile industry.
Batteries are so extremely expensive that also has to be a joke. How much does a battery for a single day cost? Say, relative to the GDP?
Nuclear is far more local than solar and wind transfer in-between continents, obviously.
Batteries are becoming less expensive every day. The market doubles almost every year, which is impressively high-paced.
You also don’t need battery storage to last a day. Most places only need approx. 6 hours, with particularly sunny countries being able to get away with having only 4 hours.
You maybe also be confusing local generation with centralised power generation. Nuclear is local, but also extremely centralised. Solar/wind transfer is very decentralised, same goes for battery storage.
Hydrogen is in its infancy. The tech is promising but whether or not it will prove its worth is still to be seen.
There are about 2 weeks without sun and wind in the whole EU every once in a while (don’t remember, like every 3 years?). How are 6 hours supposed to help? How much would these only 6 hours of storage capacity cost (pick some country, perhaps not Norway or Iceland).
I doubt that’s true. Especially no sun sounds highly dubious, I don’t think the Earth stops spinning every now and then. Oh, and do note that solar panels are still producing even in cloudy conditions.
There’s no period during which renewables stop producing. “6 hours” refers to the capacity if renewables stopped producing entirely, but in reality this never happens. At worst efficiency drops far enough to dip below demand, at which point the storage would have to kick in to make up the difference.
Building that much storage still costs a lot of money. I haven’t seen many cost estimates actually, probably because the market is developing at a very quick pace at the moment, driving costs down. A decent home battery solution costs 4000-10000 euros per household, but doing it at a larger scale may be cheaper.
Why would you even say something so stupid? I highly doubt that you are interested in a discussion.
But just in case, it is called “Dunkelflaute”. And no, we do not constantly produce so much more energy that losing a lot of capacity makes us “dip below demand”. We constantly only produce as much as we need. But why even discuss this here? People spend their whole career figuring this out, it is obviously not as simple as you make it out to be. Here a report from the EU. Just to show the scale of the project:
Weird, I’ve never seen these magical two weeks.
The toxic and deadly trash it makes. Deadly for centuries.
In Germany we still search for an area to dig for ages. We search since 30 years.
In the mean time, you seem to be a big fan of burning coal instead, which only pollutes the atmosphere instead of easily storable material to be buried when we feel we have found a sufficient deep hole that no one is going to look in.
Most nuclear waste issues are vastly over-exaggerated. Most of the nuclear waste is not long term waste. It’s not things like spent fuel rods, it’s things like safety equipment and gear. Those aren’t highly contaminated, and much of it can almost be thrown away in regular landfills. The middle range of materials are almost always kept on site through the entire life of the nuclear plant. Through the lifetime of the plant that material will naturally decay away and by the time the plant is decommissioned only a fraction will be left to handle storage for a while longer from the most recent years.
Nuclear waste can be divided into four different types:
Despite safety concerns, high-level radioactive waste constitutes less than 0.25% of total radioactive waste reported to the IAEA.
These numbers are worldwide for the last 4 years:
Your entire argument is a fallacy of saying it is either nuclear or coal, when in reality it is either renewables or coal+nuclear.
It is the same companies that want to continue both coal and nuclear, because it requires similar components in the power plants and similar equipment for mining.
Also the same government in Germany that expanded the nuclear power slashed the build up of renewables, resulting in the long time for coal in the first place.
Stop being a fossil shill. If you shill for nuclear you shill for coal too.
Congrats you’ve fallen for oil company FUD from the 70s.
In what world is nuclear + renewables not a possibility. Nobody here is wanting nuclear + coal. You sit here and bitch and whine about fallacies while your entire argument relies entirely on a strawman.
If you look at the actual stats it isn’t really closed nuclear plants being replaced by coal, they got replaced by other renewables, while coal still kept going at about the same rate as while the nuclear plants were active.
I. Germany we haven’t found this sufficient deep hole since 30 years.
And yet, Germany prefers to pollute the atmosphere with the smoke of coal and other fossil rules, than to simply maintain the storage of nuclear waste until a hole can be found or created.
At least we‘re on a track to carbon zero as you can see here: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-consumption-and-power-mix-charts
It‘s not perfect and could be faster. However, we‘re way better than other countries that don’t move.
Edit: I forgot to mention, that half the year Germanies power is over 50% from renewables. Share is increasing every year.
Still your corrupt politicians are rather taking people’s homes in a town i forgot the name of (with police going there daily so people sell their homes) and clearing forests to mine coal… fucking stupid corrupt politicians.
Yes, that was close to where I live in Western Germany. Last outburst of old thinking (I hope). Meanwhile, the power company said in the news, it doesn’t need that entire area and forest anymore, because renewables have gone too competitive. Coal is too costly now.
If you like to see a moon-alike area in a densly populated area in Western Germany - the open field coal area Hambaxh: https://maps.app.goo.gl/H47EKatEDyKut3XZ6?g_st=com.google.maps.preview.copy
As big as city of Cologne. I‘m happy that this is going to stop by 2030. Or even faster
The nuclear energy made up about 1.5% of our entire energy production in 2023 the final shutdown didnt really made any difference, since we were able to replace this fairly easy with renewable energy. This year we had the lowest use of fossile energy since about 60 years(if I recall correct). Yes, we still use coal and this is bad, but the nuclear energy didnt had any noticeable difference for our energy production. Also: the shutdown of nuclear energy was planned after Fukushima happened, so its nothing that was anywhere in the power of our current government.
Fukushima, Tchernobyl.
It’s been a while since I read about it, but iirc Chernobyl is suspected to have been sabotage because they turned all the safeties off and then basically walked away until it started melting down.
Fukushima was doomed from the start. Iirc they were told not to build the plant there due to extreme earthquake and tsunami risk, but they did it anyway.
Those two disasters were caused by stupidity and negligence. You can argue that humans can’t be trusted with radioactive materials, but the process itself is pretty safe. Meanwhile coal plants release significantly more radiation over their lifetimes than nuclear reactors do.
Sure. They did a test in Chernobyl, with an unexperienced operator. And the plant at Fukushima was there after all, warning ir no warning, so why in hell should that be safe? Ok, next one: Zaporizhzhia. Atomic plant as hostage in a conventional war. Safe? Maybe not, with that whacko as Russian president. They even blew the dam that basically provided the cooling water supply for the plant. Now downvote me again.
btw: Interesting read: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c984l87l2w6o
You can’t separate humans from any process. The risks with nuclear are the risks of the most reliable person to eventually work at the plant. It might not be today or tomorrow, but it’s a possibility.
It’s entirely possible for a natural nuclear reactor to occur. So yes, you can separate humans from the process. Make a reactor that a human can’t reasonably open and has zero chance of melting down, and you have safe nuclear.
Also yes, you can make a reactor that can’t melt down (without human interference). It’s called an RTG and they’re commonly used on spacecraft.
Many active reactors rely on old designs, we have new ones now that are far cleaner. Some even use existing waste as fuel, so we would be able to get rid of those old stock piles.
Ofc the oil industry is fighting that tooth and nail since it doesn’t jive with their FUD campaign
Not only doesn’t it follow their FUD, but their existing business cannot easily transition to it since the entire process is completely different. Oil, coal, and natural gas are all fairly similar from their perspective.
The only thing I’m curious about in terms of using waste as energy source is how much it costs. If we can build reactors that have a good efficiency and don’t cost too much its great. However if it costs way to much it isn’t really useful even if the Idea of reducing our waste is good, since ain’t anyone is paying for it if you can much cheaper renewable energy.
Yeah and because those new designs are so great we see them installed all over the world. Except the projects take decades, skyrocket in costs and get delayed for decades on top.
Advocating for nuclear power now is in the best interest of the oil lobby. And it is simply impossible to solve the urgent energy transition with it, even if all the miracles promised about it were true.
You’re literally spreading oil lobby propaganda, the only reason it’s like that is because of excessive regulation and red tape lobbied for by the oil execs and citizen pushback due to their fear mongering campaign
France is doing just fine with none of those issues.
https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy-environment/news/frances-edf-faces-uphill-battle-as-europes-demand-for-nuclear-reactors-grows/
In Finland we have Onkalo
Yepp, that is the luck of geology.
Kiitos. That took me down an interesting rabbit hole. There’s even a song inspired by it.
Onkalo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repository
Song https://invidious.private.coffee/watch?v=amn3kn0XPLQ
Lyrics https://www.songlyrics.com/emperor-x/10000-year-earworm-to-discourage-settlement-near-nuclear-waste-repositories-don-t-change-color-kitty-lyrics/
Look at the clean-up cost of Fukushima, it’s mental. Then look at the set-up costs, and how long it takes. Compare that to renewables.
Look at costs of dam failures. Or how many people they killed. Or look at the cost of climate change. Fukushima is nothing in comparison. You can also compare it to the cost of the tsunami that actually caused the issue to begin with.
What does the damage of the tsunami have to do with this?
Dams seem an awfully convenient thing to bring up since I didn’t mention them.
Because thousands died from it. How many died from the nuclear power? Ah about 0? 1? here the article about it 360 billion damage (vs <200 billion clean up) 20’000 dead (vs. 0 or 1) By 2015, 4 years after the flooding, still more displaced than Fukushima ever did!
Why should the “what about” about the power plant be do important but not the bigger disaster that caused it? Like who cares about 50’000 dollar cash that is lost when a house burns down and people die?
Why are you bringing up deaths of a tsunami and nuclear power? You’re very transparent; your straw man attempts are way too obvious.
Not that I want to disagree with you, but even without comparing to two of the biggest fuckups in human(energy) history nuclear energy is always much more expensive than renewable energy, because it needs a lot of safety mechanisms a much longer and more complicated supply chain, and then finally the costs of decontamination.