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Comment by lispm | Hacker News Reader

The article is old and outdated.

Since Nuclear does not scale, it is no solution to climate change, for example.

The World Nuclear Status Report says:

https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/The-World-Nuclear-Industr...

--- Non-Nuclear Options Save More Carbon Per Year. While current nuclear programs are particularly slow, current renewables programs are particularly fast. New nuclear plants take 5–17 years longer to build than utility-scale solar or onshore wind power, so existing fossil-fueled plants emit far more CO2 while awaiting substitution by the nuclear option. Stabilizing the climate is urgent, nuclear power is slow. ---

Just look at the electricity production trends of China:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_China#/m...

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worldnuclearreport.org is an anti-nuclear activist organization, FYI. They are not an official body of any kind.

There are a number of flaws in the conclusions they advocate.

1. They compare raw generation costs, but always neglect storage costs for renewables - which is the MAJORITY problem with most renewables.

2. They claim that nuclear takes long and is expensive, while continuing to advocate regulations to make nuclear more expensive and take longer. I call this the "push someone off a cliff and then accuse him of being clumsy" strategy.

3. Nuclear scales better than any other solution. Storage (at least in North America) is trivial - we have a massive facility capable of storing ALL the waste from the US & Canada, just sitting closed because of politics and fearmongering.

4. Building a nuclear plant takes 10-15 years. The most ambitious "New Green Deal" plan from environmentalists has a timeline of 10 years (despite have no solution to the storage problem). Frankly, if we get to 100% nuclear and hydro in 20 years, that is very much in line with preventing climate change. Note also that China is currently building 24 GenIII nuclear plants.

> Note also that China is currently building 24 GenIII nuclear plants.

Too slow. What is it? 30 GW production capacity? 40? 50?

China is going in the direction of total 1300 GW production capacity with just coal.

> Building a nuclear plant takes 10-15 years.

A single one. I was taking about scale. To replace the coal power plants of China, one would need to build 1000 reactors.

> A single one.

You think they are built in series? Like one after the other? Do you place that same requirement on renewable plants?

> To replace the coal power plants of China, one would need to build 1000 reactors.

The Chinese plants under construction will bring nuclear from 2% of the current grid to 20% by 2030. So, no, it's not 1000 reactors, it would be 100 - which is entirely doable. ...and indeed they are planning for an additional 1500GW of nuclear power construction AFTER this current set is finished.

[source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_China#Nu...)

> You think they are built in series?

They need a ramp up. Which is much easier for renewable.

> The Chinese plants under construction will bring nuclear from 2% of the current grid to 20% by 2030

Renewable is there already.

See here for nuclear:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_China

--- As of March 2019, China has 46 nuclear reactors in operation with a capacity of 42.8 GW and 11 under construction with a capacity of 10.8 GW.[4][5] Additional reactors are planned for an additional 36 GW. China was planning to have 58 GW of capacity by 2020.[3] However, few plants have commenced construction since 2015, and it is now unlikely that this target will be met.---

Nuclear will be far from providing 20% in 2030. Probably not even 10%:

https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-pr...

---By 2030 nuclear capacity will be 120 to 150 GWe, and nuclear will provide 8% to 10% of electricity.---

> Nuclear does not scale

Tell that to France, who have been sourcing the vast majority of their energy from nuclear for decades and, other than territories with the geography to support large amounts of hydro, are the only country to ALREADY have a low-carbon, stable energy supply.

So, instead of opting for a low-carbon solution which is already in place and proven to work, we want build renewables alone, depending the on decades-away storage technology needed to stabilize their intermittence. In the meantime, we either back renewables with nuclear, or we back them with fossil fuels. They are your options.

That was decades ago with outdated technology. We have 2020.

Checkout the current demand and current capabilities of France. France has only one extremely expensive reactor under construction (though it soon needs to replace many), with cost overrun, time delays and technology problems.

If France, a modern economy, can't deal with it, how should countries like China or India, which are each 20 times larger deal with it? France has less than 70 million people. The actual growth is in Asia and Africa - and the growth is about countries with a billion people, like China or India.

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