this post was submitted on 07 Aug 2023
89 points (97.8% liked)

Europe

8484 readers
1 users here now

News/Interesting Stories/Beautiful Pictures from Europe 🇪🇺

(Current banner: Thunder mountain, Germany, 🇩🇪 ) Feel free to post submissions for banner pictures

Rules

(This list is obviously incomplete, but it will get expanded when necessary)

  1. Be nice to each other (e.g. No direct insults against each other);
  2. No racism, antisemitism, dehumanisation of minorities or glorification of National Socialism allowed;
  3. No posts linking to mis-information funded by foreign states or billionaires.

Also check out [email protected]

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

@Ardubal @MattMastodon @BrianSmith950 @Pampa @AlexisFR @Wirrvogel @Sodis Second generation reactor designs that would never be built today. Vulnerable to climate change because they were built on rivers. Also, Britain is not France.

Right now, renewables essentially build themselves. They do not require a state subsidy - the "contract for difference" level is set at roughly the wholesale price of electricity.

Whereas no nuclear is ever built without massive state involvement.

Not that that's bad. We need more state intervention in e.g. insulation. But it's slow. We can't afford to stop installing renewables now on the basis of a few reactors that may well be cancelled by a future government.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

@matthewtoad43 @MattMastodon @BrianSmith950 @Pampa @AlexisFR @Wirrvogel @Sodis

At least Germany never had subsidies for commercial nuclear power.

On the other hand, »renewables« are still subsidized heavily, and there is much moaning right now because the build-out is slowing down, as the best places are taken.

And France has no /real/ problem with its riverside plants. Last year (much bemoaned) had 0.05% (one twentieth of a percent) curtailing for river temperatures.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

@Ardubal @MattMastodon @BrianSmith950 @Pampa @AlexisFR @Wirrvogel @Sodis Farm scale solar, onshore and offshore (non-floating) wind cost approximately £50 per MWh in the last CfD auction. That's half the CFD agreed for Hinkley C.

Mature renewables are already cheaper than nuclear. By a factor of two, compared to first-of-a-kind over-budget new nuclear.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

@matthewtoad43 @MattMastodon @BrianSmith950 @Pampa @AlexisFR @Wirrvogel @Sodis

Again, £50 per MWh is at current penetration levels of volatiles. This doesn't scale linearly.

See that you get to more-of-the-same-kind nuclear reactors. This does.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

@Ardubal @MattMastodon @BrianSmith950 @Pampa @AlexisFR @Wirrvogel @Sodis What do you mean it doesn't scale linearly?

If you need to over-build by 3x, then it costs £150/MWh.

If you need to use £170/MWh storage for 10% of demand (plausible for hydrogen), you still get a very reasonable figure.

There's no obvious non-linearity here. Switching off renewables is trivial, unlike thermal plant.