And only 1852m at sea level; since it's an angular distance it's a bit longer in the air and a bit shorter underwater (~ 29 cm per km of elevation change).
Nuclear power had already collapsed due to its own costs and timelines.
In hindsight it’s much easier to blame the accidents rather than face the structural problems nuclear power has.
Which has only been exacerbated by renewables and storage disrupting the global energy markets, forcing ”baseload” plants to become peakers. Against their will.
The problem is that we attempted to build nuclear power. It just didn’t deliver. There was massive state support behind it.
It is hard looking at Vogtle, Virgil C. Summer, Olkiluoto 3, Flamanville 3, Hinkley Point C, Hanhikivi and the countless cancelled projects and think: ”That’s what I want some more of!!”
Yes, then you become a landlord for 5 or 10 years. Once the rights are given out by whatever method and set for 10 years, then anyone else who wants one in the next 10 years has to buy or rent one from whoever has one. That's landlordism.
But that would trend to cutting out the middle man due to the inefficiencies they create.
Middlemen will only work if either these middlemen make the utilization more efficient or you make the requirements to bid so onerous that only these specialized middlemen have the competency to do fulfill them.
No, middlemen would happen if it's profitable to be a middleman. Extreme case: one person bids just enough to get all the rights, then charges double that to fishermen to use them.
Which means in the next bidding round the fishermen would bid somewhere between the double they were charged, and could still apparently have a working businesses with, and what the middleman bid.
All it means is that they were expecting too large profit margins and someone called their bluff.
No idea. But it is quite similar to how public transport works for archipelago ferries in Scandinavia.
15 year contracts when large investments are required. Otherwise 5-10 years.
And you get a ”quota” for a guaranteed traffic to run for that period based on the requirements in the contract.
Just took the same idea and applied to fishing, to prevent the ”legacies” from monopolizing it while giving the public the income of their shared resources.
The difference is that there isn't a limited number of ferry licenses. They aren't rivalrous. Sure the government is paying for one to make sure there's at least one, but anyone could.
Limited port capacity? Erosion? Limit disturbance of wild life?
Either way it is a public resource. On one side access to a countries fishing grounds to make money from it. On the other side access to a countries tax money to make money from it.
I get a feeling that you think fishermen should have some special heritage rights guaranteeing large profit margins rather than having to pay the public for the access to a shared resource.
Iceland already has fishing fees, which is effectively a tax to use the national resource.
If you introduce capitalism into the equation you are just opening the doors for the rich to exploit the workers in a systemic manner, and the workers in this case are fishermen.
Just do a standard fishing license you apply for and pay a nominal fee which can be refunded after some conditions are met, and then hand out quota evenly (or based on capabilities, history, etc.). Iceland already has a system similar to that called Strandveiðar for small fishing boats during a small window.
In most European countries we don’t vote for prime minister/presidents.
The representatives from the parties are free to choose whoever they want, but generally it becomes a leader of the largest party in the governing party/coalition.
A) I am an electrical engineer who makes a living designing control systems for renewable generation. I know more about most of this than just about anyone in this conversation.
B) the post I am replying to is specifically calling for a 98% solar grid.
You replied to: "The most cost efficient new-build grid is 90-98% solar/wind/battery depending on your locales insolation & wind coverage. (Source Ember Energy)"
There's a big difference between "letting the facts guide the path" and tilting at strawmen built out of straw nobody else even brought into the discussion.
If you'd like to make the point that "cost of panels" can be misleading when supporting components and interconnects begin to take up the lion's share of costs then that sounds like a noble thing to remind folk of, but ideally not as a segway into shilling more fracking which includes untold environmental costs as externalities.
It also seems like they are constraining the system to have no overproduction.
It’s like assuming that a fossil based system has all its producers generating the expected capacity factor and then smoothing out the season and daily demand changes with storage. Due to the difference between summer and winter demand such a fossil system would also need to have months of storage to compensate.
Which of course is absolute stupidity. When you can just overbuild production capacity and leave a far simpler problem to solve.
The underlying demand and production has not changed so much since then. The requirements for storage still exist, and strongly depend on when the power is delivered as well as needed.
> a fossil system would also need to have months of storage
Coal and gas also get produced in the winter at a relatively constant rate. Plus we know how to handle piles of coal, caverns full of gas, tanks full of LNG, and linepack for shorter duration gas storage.
> you can just overbuild production capacity and leave a far simpler problem to solve
Sure, you then have an economic problem. The effective capacity factor of the intermittents get driven down. How are they going to be paid for, if much of the time the market is saturated?
I find it telling that you call it an ”economic problem” and ”intermittents”. It seems like you have an axe to grind, but not much backing your standpoint anymore. So you’ve fallen to using derogatory.
Those same fossil fuels have the same economic ”crowding” out problem when cheaper sources in the same class delivers.
A single cycle gas turbine would love to get paid running at 100% all year around. It doesn’t because CCGT plants with higher efficiency undercut it.
Just like what happens in renewables. They start crowding out each other. Storage steps in and solves the peaks. More renewables come online until they ”crowd each other out” and around we go.
That’s called being a market. Which you nuke fans seems deathly afraid of given the economics of new built nuclear power.
It is interesting to see how large-scale nuclear is handled.
120% and 60% increase in cost for FOAK and NOAK (Table 2-1), plus no learning rate for nuclear construction beyond that (Table C.2).
Interest rates during construction unfairly penalise nuclear as "GenCost uses the simplest way which is to increase the capital cost by the assumed discount rate raised to the power of the construction time" (page 97)." This results in ~20% increase in capital costs against other simple scenarios like equal construction costs across each year.
30 year plant lifetime, rather than say 60 years. That results in ~10% increase in capital costs.
> Those same fossil fuels have the same economic ”crowding” out problem when cheaper sources in the same class delivers.
That line of reasoning only works if there is something to make one plant more expensive to produce electricity than another. For natural gas the cost of fuel is far greater than the CAPEX. For intermittents only the variable OPEX can distinguish between generators, which is mostly for wind and I guess most severely for offshore wind. Cannibalisation is the big problem for intermittents. The notion of succession doesn't work for them.
Now you’re desperately trying to rationalize new built nuclear power.
GenCost has an amazing FAQ section you evidently either ignored, or did not peruse.
For example here they discuss economic life vs operational life, when you live in reality rather than grasping for straws:
> Why is the economic life used in LCOE calculations instead of the fulloperational life?
> The LCOE calculation converts all upfront and ongoing costs to annual costs which is then divided
by annual production. The capital cost component of a technology is converted to an annual
repayment to the debt and equity providers. The annual repayment amount is determined using
the economic life and the weighted average cost of capital. The economic life is shorter than the
asset life for some technologies such as coal, nuclear and hydro. Some stakeholders have queried
why this is so.
> Debt and equity providers require a shorter payback period than the total asset life for some
technologies to avoid the risk that part of the equipment might fail or might need new investment
(sometimes called refurbishment or extension costs) to keep operating safely and reliably. To
determine the economic life, debt and equity providers might look to the warranties provided
with the equipment. They might also look at the typical timing of refurbishments or life extensions
for that technology. The economic life is an input provided by the engineering firm that AEMO
commissions each year as an input to GenCost.
> Some stakeholders suggested that coal and nuclear could access special financing arrangements to
move the economic life closer to the asset life. However, our preference is not to introduce special
arrangements for technologies where there is limited Australian evidence. A common approach to
the LCOE calculation is important to maintain comparability. The 2024-25 report does explore the impact of longer capital recovery periods in Section 2. It finds there is no significant benefit from
the longer operational life of nuclear relative to shorter-lived technologies whose costs have been
falling over time.
Even looking at China and South Korea they see essentially zero learning effects across plants after the FOAK build. Small ones at the same plant.
Crying about FOAK vs NOAK is not even close to solving the absolutely stupidly large subsidies new built nuclear power needs.
Again with the loaded terms. Sad. The market is limited until for example Jevons paradox expands it. Which will never happen with new built nuclear power due to how expensive the electricity is, that leads to energy poverty for generations instead. But I digress.
Look at Texas or California. About all new renewable projects in those markets are coupled with storage.
What you call cannabilisation, and try to paint like the end of the world, is simply the market working. Now pure renewable projects aren’t enough, instead you need to sell the electricity when the consumers demand it.
In just a year or two storage has massively smoothed out the price swings in Texas.
But again, that would require curiosity rather than desperately trying to poke holes the study already answered.
2.2 * 1.25 * 1.1 = 3.025x LCOE for the first nuclear power station.
1.6 * 1.25 * 1.1 = 2.2x LCOE for the second plant.
1.0 * 1.25 * 1.1 = 1.375x LCOE for remaining plant.
Wind/solar is heavily dependent on the required storage (which depends on matching supply and demand), additional transmission and backup generation prices.
Finding the price tipping points is the point of the exercise. When you catch someone's fingers on the scales you realise what the game is.
>For example here they discuss economic life vs operational life, when you live in reality rather than grasping for straws:
It's essentially just saying the market can't think long term enough leading to drastic differences in your calculations. But hence it's typically governments pushing these projects forward.
>The market is limited until for example Jevons paradox expands it. Which will never happen with new built nuclear power due to how expensive the electricity is
But it did happen for nuclear power in the past.
Now you see essentially the opposite.
>Why are you so afraid of renewables and storage?
I'm not. I think it's a great set of technologies. But I think if one tries to get to 100% everywhere one's going to stub their toes on the scenarios where it's not all roses.
Why? Because the storage part is hard at scale in a lot of places and the intermitency more pronounced.
In Texas and Cali are incredibly sunny places in the south of the US.
Silicon valley where it's already an issue gets 3 times as much sunshine hours during winter as let's say berlin and those hours are far less usefull.
>Crying about FOAK vs NOAK is not even close to solving the absolutely stupidly large subsidies new built nuclear power needs.
Is this not intentionally sidestepping the ludicrous amount of subsidies that have been handed out to renewables in aggregate?
Berlin would need to overproduce insane amounts in summer to handle it's winters.
The flip side is that what you are saying is that nuclear power will be commercially viable into the 2100s. And betting the house on that. While knowing that the electricity they provide is expensive enough to lead to energy poverty for generations.
That seems absolutely insane.
Jevons Paradox did not happen for nuclear power. What happened was crazy cost overruns, cancellations and the industry collapsing into its current state.
Who cares if we get to 95%, 97, 99% or 100% carbon neutral electricity when we still need to decarbonize agriculture, aviation, chemicals, industry, construction and so on?
Don't let perfect be the enemy of good enough. Transition that final firming to whatever carbon neutral sources we land on when their emissions matter in the late 2030s and 2040s.
We need to optimize decarbonization per dollar spent with the shortest time to market.
You do realize that renewable subsidies are being phased out all over the world? They aren't needed anymore. Complaining about "equality" because your desired solution didn't deliver in time is a kindergarten level argument.
We've spent the past 70 years subsidizing nuclear power. It just never delivered on its promise.
The relevant question is: Where does Germany spend the next €100 billion today to avoid the most emissions?
And that is certainly not new built nuclear power.
>While knowing that the electricity they provide is expensive enough to lead to energy poverty for generations.
What are you on about?
>Jevons Paradox did not happen for nuclear power. What happened was crazy cost overruns, cancellations and the industry collapsing into its current state.
And the opposite happened in the past whilst europe was building bunch more of them.
>Who cares if we get 95%, 97, 99% or 100% when we still need to decarbonize agriculture, aviation, chemicals, industry, construction and so on?
Funny you say that when some of those are significantly harder. Are you going to turn on steel plants only in summer? Do you think that might have some effect?
>You do realize that renewable subsidies are being phased out all over the world? They aren't needed anymore. Complaining about "equality" because your desired solution didn't deliver in time is a kindergarten level argument.
You should tell my government and the neighbouring governments.
>We've spent the past 70 years subsidizing nuclear power. It just never delivered on its promise.
It did exactly that?
>The relevant question is: Where does Germany spend the next €100 billion today to avoid the most emissions?
it has spent €700 billion to $1 trillion on the energywende (a metric which doesn't properly include a lot of private investment) and ends as one of the worst emitters in europe whilst deindustrialising due to high energy prices.
They jerk eachother off about how high their renewables share of the economy is every summer and then import and fire up the browncoal and gasplants again troughout the other seasons. When that solar panel is producing a 10th of it's average summer output (already below the capacity everyone loves to roll with for articles) in winter there's only one big winner possible.
People like to point out how france's electricity production is subsidised when they come out looking good even when the gov intentionally puts a stick in it's wheels by essentially forcing it to subsidise pricing to competition.
> You do realize that renewable subsidies are being phased out all over the world?
CfD is going strong in the UK; it seems about the only way of deploying it, given the revenue uncertainty associated with market saturation/cannibalisation.
Of course, other subsidies exist. Feed in tariffs. Transmission charges. Capacity and ancillary service payments to provide services that solar/wind do not.
This tells me you are not serious. The easiest nuclear reactors to restart, as per that same nuclear lobby group, were those in the north.
Northern Germany is already overproducing electricity, leading to curtailment of renewables.
What problem are you solving with even more overproduction in the north leading to re-dispatch?
> CfD is going strong in the UK; it seems about the only way of deploying it, given the revenue uncertainty associated with market saturation/cannibalisation.
I love you now are trying to smear off-shore wind costs on everything. Of course not lookign at solar, storage or on-shore wind.
Lets lookat those. In Germany, which still do CFD bids for solar, even though a ton get built on pure market value, the CFD bids today are below the market price for the capture-rate of their electricity.
The CFDs are also structured to not pay out when electricity is zero or negative. They trade money for a tiny bit of certainty. That is how far we've come.
> Of course, other subsidies exist. Feed in tariffs. Transmission charges. Capacity and ancillary service payments to provide services that solar/wind do not.
Who pays when half the French nuclear fleet is offline? Who pays when the majority of the eastern european nuclear fleet is offline? Who pays for the N+1 requirements coming from nuclear power being enormous single points of failures leading to large reserves being necessary?
People like you love to complain about these things, but you can never formulate a solution where nuclear power is required to pay for the problem large single points of failures cause in the grid.
> Northern Germany is already overproducing electricity, leading to curtailment of renewables.
Overproducing some of the time. And pulling electricity from Sweden and Norway at other times.
> I love you now are trying to smear off-shore wind costs on everything.
Why is Denmark running the CfD auction if everything is so rosy for onshore wind and solar (plus batteries)?
> the CFD bids today are below the market price for the capture-rate of their electricity.
OK, they are betting on the future value of the electricity they produce being lower than today.
> The CFDs are also structured to not pay out when electricity is zero
So existing generators with older CfDs have priority over new generators with CfDs? Interesting.
> Who pays when half the French nuclear fleet is offline?
Why were they offline?
> Who pays for the N+1 requirements coming from nuclear power being enormous single points of failures leading to large reserves being necessary?
So the 1.X GW of standby is bad, but the whole-system sized standby required for intermittents is fine? Also let's not confuse the capacity factor of nuclear (including scheduled maintenance) with the odds of nuclear being offline unexpectedly.
> you can never formulate a solution where nuclear power is required to pay for the problem large single points of failures cause in the grid.
Wait, is this where I am meant to talk about SMRs? Or nuclear peaker power stations?
The problem is that you can’t assume ”always on” anymore.
Why should consumers choose expensive nuclear powered electricity when cheap renewables, or stored renewables are available?
They don’t and now capacity factors crater.
Leading to what was once seen as ”baseload” plants being forced to become peakers. And running a nuclear plant with those fixed costs as a peaker/firming becomes stupidly expensive per MWh produced.
See this Australian ”baseload” coal plant forced into a peaker role or be decommissioned.
Baseload is simply the lowest wattage your grid demands in a time period. Solar and wind have not made it irrelevant at all. All of the demand from data centers very much assumes constant reliable power which is in fact a perfect match for nuclear.
What solar and wind have made irrelevant is the assumption that constant supply of the baseload is an addressable market for a power plant. That only works if the supply is the cheapest on the market (something nuclear has even historically struggled to achieve without big subsidies), and solar and wind will supply the baseload much cheaper than any other source when they're running, causing a lot of problems for any plant on the grid that wants to run at a constant output.
There needs to be a market mechanism to ensure there is enough dispatchable spare capacity to meet demand when solar and wind can't supply it. More reliable sources of power are inherently more valuable.
The flawed economics of nuclear are largely do the NRC basically making it as hard as possible to make a new reactor. China and Korea can build reactors for reasonable cost per watt.
Data centers are only 5-10% of all US electric power demand. A significant fraction of that load is responsive to spot market price. DCs incorporate their own battery storage infrastructure for backup purposes and some even sell stored energy back to the grid during times of high demand.
it is not at all a perfect match for nuclear. Solar produces incredibly cheap power for the daytime hours, pushing the nuclear off the grid (why would a data center buy expensive nuke power in the hours when cheap renewables are available?). Nuclear needs to be running and selling power at its high price 24/7 for it to be even close to economically viable. Only supplying power that people want(due to its high price) during the night is fatal to nuclear.
Thats what OP means by baseload generation being irrelevant.
Perfect reliability is not worth the squeeze. In Sweden, which is a very electrified country with harsh winters, the figure is that it is acceptable to have 1.52 hours per year of not matching demand with production. Paying for more reliability is simply not worth it.
The research has lately focused on system costs. Finding renewable systems vastly cheaper than if involving new built nuclear power.
Not sure where this fixation on new nuclear comes from?
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