Hacker News Reader

Comment by Scea91 | Hacker News Reader

1) Increased investment in nuclear energetics should bring the cost down

2) 2x cost for these attributes does not seem particularly bad to me.

3) I am not aware of any production ready options that have been deployed at scale somewhere. I know there are a lot of ideas however. If you have time can you please point me to the most promising ones? I am genuinely interested.

View on HN

Nuclear is way too expensive, it essentially has lost. It will certainly will play a part for decades, but e.g. wind turbine parks are already at the same price level and have none of the disadvantages of nuclear. Plus several wind parks in a grid work just fine as base load providers, see e.g. https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.475...

The intermittency is the one thing nuclear does better than wind. Nuclear can run 24/7 for multiple years on one fuel load on a tiny land footprint with very few raw materials. No other low-carbon source can do that.

But real world nuclear plants seldomly run for years. I just posted links in another comment, nuclears capacity factor in France (the country with a high nuclear buildout) is about 72%, while that of wind is about 50%. The nuclear plants in France routinely have to be shut down / throttled during the summer heat - just at the times of high energy demands.

In the US the nuclear capacity is over 90% across 100 plants. Just because France chooses to curtail doesn't mean they have to. Wind cannot be higher than the wind itself. The characteristic of coming on and off when you want is called being dispatchable.

In the us northwest there's a fairly regular 2-week wind outage across a 4 state area each winter.

It's unavoidable that if you get almost all of your power from some source, but demand varies, you will have a lower capacity factor for that source, unless you have utility-scale power. France does indeed have to curtail nuclear power plant output, because they get almost all their electrical power from nukes, and they don't have big enough resistors to burn up the excess electrical energy that would be produced otherwise. The US has a higher nuclear capacity factor because it gets most of its power from other sources.

> This characteristic is called being dispatchable.

While I mostly appreciate your contributions to this conversation as being informative, a dispatchable plant is one that you can turn on and off to respond to demand, not one that cannot be higher than the wind itself.

If we do get serious about intermittent renewable scale-ups without fracked gas backup we will have to build giant energy storage systems that the nukes will be able to feed into just like the solar PV and wind.

Additionally, nukes can be used for district heating, seawater desalination, hydrogen production, and lots of other non-electric things when the electricity demand is low by using steam bypass techniques.

Regarding correction: I meant to say that but thank you for pointing out that it made no sense as written. I have edited accordingly.

That's an excellent point about the fungibility of energy storage. But I don't think the lower capacity factor of nuclear plants in France is a reasonable argument against nuclear energy anyway.

The non-electric uses of nuclear thermal energy you mention are potentially interesting, but essentially they're just a slightly different form of demand response. If you're doing demand response in your desal plant, you can do it regardless of whether it's an MSF plant driven from nuclear thermal power or an RO plant driven by electric pumps. (And RO is usually considered more efficient.) I think it's more common for waste heat from power plants to be a nuisance that results in cooling towers rather than an asset that results in district heating, although I'm not entirely sure why that is.

You are completely wrong on your numbers, in France in 2018 nuclear has a capacity factor of 71% and wind of 21,1%

https://bilan-electrique-2018.rte-france.com/eolien/

Also there is currently no offshore wind park, as only offshore would approach the 50% capacity factor, but they won't, they will be in the 43% as estimated by renewables.ninja

Throttling nuclear power happens only a few days in the summer, once every few years, with only a few percent because it only impact a few reactor on some rivers for environmental norms, during the lowest electricity usage of the year.

> in France in 2018 nuclear has a capacity factor of 71%

Which is the same number I wrote?

This is what I said, I was talking about the ludicrous 50% capacity factor for onshore wind.

There are a number of onshore wind farms that reach 50%, but a better average for onshore wind is 35%. But offshore wind can reach 60%, and so 50% is a reasonable overall average, depending on where you expect wind farms to be built in the future.

And the onshore wind in France is 21%, and that is a fact you can easily check on the internet with public numbers.

Well I never said "onshore". Nevertheless, wikipedia has an example of an onshore wind farm with 60.2% in 2015: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacity_factor#Wind_farm

There is currently no offshore wind park in France.

Maybe you mean to compare wind in France with world best wind, but this is what you wrote.

"nuclears capacity factor in France (the country with a high nuclear buildout) is about 72%, while that of wind is about 50%"

Nuclear is more expensive than building a combination of wind turbine parks and natural gas plant. That is a fact.

People theorize that nuclear could be more expensive than a grid that relies on over capacity wind turbine parks in combination with thermal or hydro batteries, but no country has gone that route yet. We have countries that are almost 100% nuclear and we have a bunch that are a mix between wind/solar which falls backs to fossil fuels when needed.

The cost of running a energy grid is the total cost, not individual megawatts being produced in isolation.

Ban fossil fuels and the real costs comparison between clean energy becomes apparent.

Nuclear has shown no particular inclination to come down in price whereas renewables have.

It's just not cost effective without both massive implicit and explicit government subsidies.

Renewables are cost effective now and will only become more so.

They're cost effective when the sun is shining or wind is blowing but are strongly tied to increased high carbon fracked natural gas otherwise. When batteries are used the Energy Return on Investment drops below what's necessary to sustain industrialized civilization (around 5:1).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esr.2019.100399

Even without including cost overruns and decomissioning, wind energy costs the same per kilowatt of capacity[0,1].

And the actually produced energy as share of capacity (= the capacity factor) is way better than most think. For the nuclear plants in France it currently is just over 70%, while it is about 50% globally for offshore wind parks [2,3]

[0] http://www.windustry.org/how_much_do_wind_turbines_cost

[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-edf-nuclear-epr/frances-e...

[2] http://css.umich.edu/factsheets/wind-energy-factsheet

[3] https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/IMG/pdf/20170912wnisr2017...

Edit: Changed phrasing because it apparently sounded like the 50% capacity factor also referred to France.

You are completely wrong on your numbers, in France in 2018 nuclear has a capacity factor of 71% and wind of 21,1%

https://bilan-electrique-2018.rte-france.com/eolien/

Also there is currently no offshore wind park, as only offshore would approach the 50% capacity factor, but they won't, they will be in the 43% as estimated by renewables.ninja

The price of the MWh of offsore park will be from 44 to 150€/MWh, where EDF is forced to sell its nuclear at 42€/MWh, average price of wind in 2020 93€/MWh.

It sounds like you confirmed their nuclear capacity factor ("just over 70%") and pointed out that French wind farms have a lower capacity factor (21.1%) than wind farms on average. I don't think that constitutes evidence that they are "completely wrong on [their] numbers".

Price and capacity factor where completely wrong for wind, also current wind subsidies are about 93€/MWh.

They were citing worldwide capacity factors and prices for wind, not French ones, which I agree are much worse.

That was not obvious, it was written like a French nuclear with French wind comparison. And also that is misleading because comparing the low capacity factor of French nuclear because it is used for load following and curtailed in summer because it is scaled for winter usage using restive heating. And comparing it to offshore with intermittent power, not dispatchable in the best location, does not make sense. With penetration wind will also be curtailed, and is already happening in china and Germany.

Let's look at actual and current numbers for construction costs, ignoring subsidies:

Wind: "The costs for a utility scale wind turbine range from about $1.3 million to $2.2 million per MW of nameplate capacity installed." http://www.windustry.org/how_much_do_wind_turbines_cost

Nuclear: " Companies that are planning new nuclear units are currently indicating that the total costs (including escalation and financing costs) will be in the range of $5,500/kW to $8,100/kW or between $6 billion and $9 billion for each 1,100 MW plant." https://www.synapse-energy.com/sites/default/files/SynapsePa...

I was giving actual current feed in tariff for French wind.

Then it's now my turn to call your numbers misleading ;) I don't think you can directly compare the two that way because a) The French government heavily invested in nuclear for strategic reasons, not directly economical ones. The EDF still is essentially state-run. We can't really infer cost arguments from this. b) Practically all nuclear plants in France are decades old, and had many years for recouping initial investments. Current market prices for energy are therefore not a good argument for costs of newly built plants.

If we look at the costs of constructing new nuclear plants (which the article we comment on is about), France is a particularly bad example, with current costs already at $11B for 1600MW of capacity for the Flamanville project. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-edf-nuclear-flamanville/e...

I'm a bit confused where we disagree? You posted the same capacity factor for nuclear. Here is a real world example of a Danish wind farm averaging 47.7% over 7 years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horns_Rev_Offshore_Wind_Farm#H...

I disagree that current onshore wind in France is not 50%, only 21%; also maybe you were comparing the low capacity factor of French nuclear because it is used for load following and curtailed in summer because it is scaled for winter usage using restive heating. And comparing it to offshore with intermitttent power, not dispatchable in the best location. Totally misleading.

You are right, it wasn't my intention to imply the 50% refer to France. I'll try to edit the phrasing.

I don't get why you think comparing to offshore wind is misleading, though. Could you expand on that?

Comparing worst capacity factor (for cited reasons) with best CF without saying it is offshore in some of the best location is misleading. Also is comparing dispatchable and intermittent/fatal. There a other factors to consider like reserve ratio, or how the production can cover the power needs over the year, it gives hints at how you need to scale seasonal storage.

I see, thanks. 50% isn't that much of an outlier, though, as the average over both onshore and offshore farms seems to be 42% for younger projects: http://css.umich.edu/factsheets/wind-energy-factsheet

Reply on news.ycombinator.com