German goals to cut greenhouse emissions by 65% by 2030 are likely to be missed, meaning a longer-term net zero by a 2045 target is also in doubt, reports by government climate advisers and the Federal Environment Agency (UBA) show.
From the article: “Climate Minister Romina Pourmokhtari said […] that the government believed that new nuclear power equalling 10 conventional reactors would need to go into service in the 2030s and 2040s.”
Assuming that a conventional reactor is around 1 GW, adding 10 would more than double their current capacity.
It took Finland nearly two decades to complete Scandinavia’s newest reactor. Sweden can remove the cap, but good luck finding private companies willing to invest in that. Not without guaranteed profits and subsidies. Of course Sweden could just build it themselves. But it’s not cheap.
Yeah, nuclear is quite expensive, just like batteries, hydrogen, and long-distance transmission are expensive. The effects of climate change will be incredibly expensive. The best way to make technology cheaper is to build a lot of it, and just building something is step one.
Because building lots of solar and wind farms is not sufficient. You also need stuff like batteries, hydrogen, and long-distance transmission to make the grid reliable without fossil fuels.
Though it seems like Europe overall is planning for enough diversity that the nuclear countries can sell to neighbors in times of shortage. Hopefully some US states will make similar plans.
Usually it’s renewables that’s sold over the border rather than nuclear energy. Also, nuclear and batteries, for example, are not comparable. Batteries have an ROI of less than three years. It’ll be profitable long before nuclear is even constructed. That’s presuming private companies are interested in them. Are you aware of a single nuclear power plant, anywhere in the world, that is unsubsidised? Or even an insurance company that’s willing to insure a plant in full? Usually not, usually it’s subsidised by the government, with guarantees of profitability to private companies, and at least partially insured and decommissioned by the government. Because nobody wants anything to do with nuclear. Not even nuclear companies. EDF’s renewables part of the company, is subsidising the nuclear side. On top of all this, studies are clear on what is faster and more effective at reducing emissions.
Renewables are sold over the border more because they are naturally geographically distributed. I want to see nuclear on the grid as a power source of last resort, so we can destroy the fossil fuel infrastructure, yet keep civilization running if a volcano blocks out the sun or climate change turns the deserts cloudy, or who knows what the future holds.
Fossil fuels are incredibly subsidized, both explicitly and through unpriced externalities. If we must subsidize the alternative, then so be it. Nuclear should get cheaper as we build more.
Most nuclear plants today will melt down if left unattended. That’s pretty stupid. We should let engineers make them orders of magnitude safer, with passive air cooling or huge water reserves, so they can be insured at reasonable cost. There is no shortage of ideas on that front.
It’s actually the opposite. Just look at France. They are massively overproducing most of the time, even when they run checkups and maintenance on a lot of their plants in summer, they have huge amounts to export. And yet they still need imports in the coldest weeks of winter (while even winter on average sees overproduction).
So no, nuclear countries will not sell any power in times of shortage. They will be the ones needing imports from countries with storage. Or they need to start up storage themselves, too. Because enough nuclear base load to survive the few weeks with high demand without imports or storage when your renewable half of production is underperforming is insanely expensive. As it means having a lot of overproduction the rest of the time… but with no market to export anymore like they have today, because all countries will have high demand and low supply in the same time frames.
(Speaking about France: Their grid provider ran a big study about future electricity production. And the only reason nuclear (even more than the minimal required base load) was economically viable was because they plan with hydrogen production all year. For industry, for export (because -as I said- they need a way to export when not everyone has high production but low demand) and as storage…)
PS: Yes, the conclusion is that nuclear needs storage to be economicaslly viable. Just like they need a lot of complementing renewables. But don’t tell that to the nuclear cult pretending storage is impossible and renewables don’t work, because their heads might explode. Wait… Do tell it to them, as these exploding heads would be an improvement.
Wholesale power prices are cheaper in Germany than they are in France. Last year France had to shut down half their reactors for maintenance and weather. Germany had to export to them. Before the French government bailed out the nuclear industry again, there was talk of splitting up EDF from their profitable renewables investments, away from its loss-making nuclear problem. EDF’s CEO resigned because of the vast cost of the UK’s HPC nuclear plant. And now, under agreement with the UK government, EDF can make a profit from HPC without it actually being constructed with their RAB model.
I’m not from Sweden, but they currently have 6.8 GW of nuclear.
From the article: “Climate Minister Romina Pourmokhtari said […] that the government believed that new nuclear power equalling 10 conventional reactors would need to go into service in the 2030s and 2040s.”
Assuming that a conventional reactor is around 1 GW, adding 10 would more than double their current capacity.
It took Finland nearly two decades to complete Scandinavia’s newest reactor. Sweden can remove the cap, but good luck finding private companies willing to invest in that. Not without guaranteed profits and subsidies. Of course Sweden could just build it themselves. But it’s not cheap.
Yeah, nuclear is quite expensive, just like batteries, hydrogen, and long-distance transmission are expensive. The effects of climate change will be incredibly expensive. The best way to make technology cheaper is to build a lot of it, and just building something is step one.
and building lots of solar and wind farms is cheaper and faster than nuclear, so what?!
Because building lots of solar and wind farms is not sufficient. You also need stuff like batteries, hydrogen, and long-distance transmission to make the grid reliable without fossil fuels.
Though it seems like Europe overall is planning for enough diversity that the nuclear countries can sell to neighbors in times of shortage. Hopefully some US states will make similar plans.
Usually it’s renewables that’s sold over the border rather than nuclear energy. Also, nuclear and batteries, for example, are not comparable. Batteries have an ROI of less than three years. It’ll be profitable long before nuclear is even constructed. That’s presuming private companies are interested in them. Are you aware of a single nuclear power plant, anywhere in the world, that is unsubsidised? Or even an insurance company that’s willing to insure a plant in full? Usually not, usually it’s subsidised by the government, with guarantees of profitability to private companies, and at least partially insured and decommissioned by the government. Because nobody wants anything to do with nuclear. Not even nuclear companies. EDF’s renewables part of the company, is subsidising the nuclear side. On top of all this, studies are clear on what is faster and more effective at reducing emissions.
Renewables are sold over the border more because they are naturally geographically distributed. I want to see nuclear on the grid as a power source of last resort, so we can destroy the fossil fuel infrastructure, yet keep civilization running if a volcano blocks out the sun or climate change turns the deserts cloudy, or who knows what the future holds.
Fossil fuels are incredibly subsidized, both explicitly and through unpriced externalities. If we must subsidize the alternative, then so be it. Nuclear should get cheaper as we build more.
Most nuclear plants today will melt down if left unattended. That’s pretty stupid. We should let engineers make them orders of magnitude safer, with passive air cooling or huge water reserves, so they can be insured at reasonable cost. There is no shortage of ideas on that front.
It’s actually the opposite. Just look at France. They are massively overproducing most of the time, even when they run checkups and maintenance on a lot of their plants in summer, they have huge amounts to export. And yet they still need imports in the coldest weeks of winter (while even winter on average sees overproduction).
So no, nuclear countries will not sell any power in times of shortage. They will be the ones needing imports from countries with storage. Or they need to start up storage themselves, too. Because enough nuclear base load to survive the few weeks with high demand without imports or storage when your renewable half of production is underperforming is insanely expensive. As it means having a lot of overproduction the rest of the time… but with no market to export anymore like they have today, because all countries will have high demand and low supply in the same time frames.
(Speaking about France: Their grid provider ran a big study about future electricity production. And the only reason nuclear (even more than the minimal required base load) was economically viable was because they plan with hydrogen production all year. For industry, for export (because -as I said- they need a way to export when not everyone has high production but low demand) and as storage…)
PS: Yes, the conclusion is that nuclear needs storage to be economicaslly viable. Just like they need a lot of complementing renewables. But don’t tell that to the nuclear cult pretending storage is impossible and renewables don’t work, because their heads might explode. Wait… Do tell it to them, as these exploding heads would be an improvement.
Wholesale power prices are cheaper in Germany than they are in France. Last year France had to shut down half their reactors for maintenance and weather. Germany had to export to them. Before the French government bailed out the nuclear industry again, there was talk of splitting up EDF from their profitable renewables investments, away from its loss-making nuclear problem. EDF’s CEO resigned because of the vast cost of the UK’s HPC nuclear plant. And now, under agreement with the UK government, EDF can make a profit from HPC without it actually being constructed with their RAB model.