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- Hacker News
- I see that here a viewpoint is widely reflected that we can substitute nuclear with solar/wind. And maybe today it could be feasible in certain areas albeit not always economical. What this viewpoint misses, is the fact that we will need an increasingly more power, as we always did, and I am certain that if we would have a chance to go 100 years into the future, power demand will be so high that our current abilities to supply power via nuclear and solar/wind combined will not be enough to cover the demand.by graphenus
- Nuclear energy is pure economic madness in a context where wind and solar power are generating a surplus of electricity. Today, May 1, electricity prices in Europe are in some cases at the technical minimum of minus €500/MWh.
Thermal power generation, which is difficult to control, is completely unnecessary in an environment where we have negative electricity prices practically every day from March to October. In Europe, we need rapidly controllable energy sources—obviously more storage capacity.
Due to the many hours during which electricity prices are close to zero, the economically viable full-load hours of a nuclear power plant are reduced to barely 3,000 hours per year, effectively tripling the real levelized cost of electricity (LOCE). In addition to the high costs of nuclear power plants, there is also the enormous expense incurred by the government for military and police security at the facilities.
Since the government prioritizes nuclear power, this leads to heavily manipulated electricity prices, with homeowners with solar panels being among the biggest losers, as they are required to feed electricity into the grid but are effectively paid the full negative prices (usually via weighted average pricing methods)
by boshomi - There's a very dark scenario where for some reason or another (all out nuclear war or asteroid hit) sunlight is blocked, in which case having stable base load energy production from nuclear would be very useful. I know this is an unlikely scenario and hopefully it never happens, but it's always good to think about tail risks like these.by lifty
- Surely you must realize that the fuel for nuclear power plants is not more freely available than sunlight. In the event of "all out nuclear war or asteroid hit", you're not getting those shipments from Kazakhstan.by kibwen
- Volcanic winters are far more frequent than catastrophic asteroid blasts. Disregarding a volcanic winter possibility and its impact is like disregarding the possibility of a pandemic.by jlnthws
- The world doesn't even have the foresight of doing something basic, like mitigating against fuel crisis scenario, let alone what you have suggested.by NL807
- If sunlight is blocked the amount of people who die due to starvation from crop failures will probably more than make up for the difference in lost solar power energy. That is to say, we'll have much larger issues than a stable power grid to contend with.by sheauwn
- I just want Belgium to go all-in on renewables, we [already have a pretty good electricity production make-up](https://statbel.fgov.be/en/themes/energy/electricity-product...) but we're still [too dependent on oil](https://www.iea.org/countries/belgium/energy-mix).
Hopefully the current energy crisis is a wake up call.
- the choice here was nuclear or new gas from engieby Moldoteck
- just FYI - unfortunately HN doesn't have markup like reddit so your hyperlinking doesn't workby shlant
- That is about production. The story that you don't get from these graphs is that Belgium is highly dependent on imported energy because the production is just too low.by efdee
- Compared to other countries I've lived in, Belgium doesn't do too bad of a job in promoting 'green energy'. Although I've not lived there for some years, they used to subsidize things like solar panels on roofs (at least when my parents installed them 20-ish years ago). And there are 'green energy' companies as far as I'm aware, so you don't have to stick with the larger energy providers.
That said, my information is outdated.
by Insanity - > want Belgium to go all-in on renewables
I want everyone to go all in on anything that isn't a fossil fuel. The problem with gatekeeping new energy is upgrading the grid to accomodate wind and solar, and waiting for batteries to be delivered, creates a gap that gets filled with fossil fuels. The pragmatic solution to the energy problem is all of the above; joined with climate change, it's everything above but fossil fuels.
- Yes. A nuclear power plant should be considered a national treasure, like a mine or hydro power plant, or any other large scale resource.
To demolish a functional nuclear power facility is pure lunacy.
by Gud - especially when it is NOT an RBMKby p0w3n3d
- I'll feel even more sad when I drive past San Onfre on the 5 now
- If you think that's lunacy, let me add some extra info on top of it: It was the green party that lead the closure, and then replaced it with gas power plants.by koonsolo
- It is not lunacy. Polish professor Krzysztof Meissner (https://www.fuw.edu.pl/~meissner/home.html) in one of the interviews called the whole process of turning off nuclear power plants as result "of the pressure of the other forces". It was well crafted plan developed by Germany and Russia. According to this plan Germany suppose to be the hub for gas imported from Russia over Baltic Pipe - man in the middle for all UE countries. War on the Ukraine and Baltic Pipe being destroyed by "unknown people" makes this plan obsolete.by belint
- Good. It's time we realised that we need a good strong stable power grid and clean nuclear energy is absolutely going to be a massive part of this.by deanc
- I'm always wondering how long it will take for popular sentiment to finally shift. So many years of things like Blinky the fish in the Simpsons really did a number on our shared consciousness.by Pigo
- I think I'm super pro nuclear everything now. See the new Russian built nuclear plant in Bangladesh. Crazy populated country currently not able to import adequate fossil fuels due to the strait conflict.
Nuclear energy is a God send if managed with extreme care.
by techteach00 - I love that you mention 'extreme care'. I was enthralled with this look inside a plant and the operations involved. Truly a sight to behold. And extreme care is not an overstatement.by jpb0104
- Interesting fact: Belgium's neighbor Germany has commenced a search for a suitable place to store nuclear waste indefinitely in the 1970s. Given that such a place must be safe for hundreds of thousands of years, they have not yet found one.
All the nuclear waste they've got is stored in temporary places (above ground) at former nuclear reactor sites.
The search is not expected to conclude before 2040 at the very earliest.
by kleiba2 - The most bureaucratic thing ever done... search for a place to store something for 56 years. still not doneby dbvn
- > Given that such a place must be safe for hundreds of thousands of years, they have not yet found one.
Pah! We have a lot of those places but excessive federalism has every German state blocking any concrete plan.
- I wonder where they store coal waste.by jlnthws
- Yes, nuclear power regulations are unreasonably strict because that was the method we used to soft-ban it.by EdiX
- Most of the "danger" from nuclear waste passes in a few years as the most radioactive isotopes decay quickly (which is obvious when you think about it).
Interestingly the US/UK/USSR dumped loads of nuclear waste in the ocean in the 1950s-70s and I recently read that there was basically no trace detectable of any of it.
by martinald - This sounds like a "perfect is the enemy of good" situation. There are certain types of reactors that can reuse uranium to further reduce its half life to around 6000 years so the one million years legal requirement is an unreasonable target.by cbg0
- Interesting fact: Finland just built one, for €1 billion.
How can that be, if it's so incredibly difficult that Germany has not managed to do this?
The simple fact is that it has virtually nothing to do with any "difficulty" of finding a repository site, the problems are purely political, same as the US:
"The Government Accountability Office stated that the closure was for political, not technical or safety reasons.[6]" -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_r...
Some German state governments even made this explicit, stating that they would not allow a repository to be designated until the German nuclear exit was finalized in their official coalition agreements.
Another nice little trick was changing the language to require the "best possible" site, rather than a suitable one. Sounds innocuous, but anyone with a bit of experience in algorithms know that in theory, this actually makes the task impossible, because how can you definitively prove that there isn't an even better site that you haven't looked at yet?
In practice it has made the process of finding a site incredibly lengthy, difficult and expensive. It doesn't help that the BASE, the Germany federal agency for nuclear waste has been completely taken over by the Green Party, so there is no interest in actually finding a site, and they spend almost their entire budget every year on spreading anti-nuclear propaganda.
by mpweiher