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Comment by DavidVoid | Hacker News Reader

Nuclear power, when done right, is good and safe. But right now it's much too financially and politically risky when compared to the alternatives.

Look at Finland for example. They're building two new power plants:

Olkiluoto Unit 3: Under construction since 2005, commercial operation delayed by at least 13 years now and the initial delivery price of €3 billion is estimated to end up at €8.5 billion.

Hanhikivi: Won't be operational until at earliest 2028 and is expected to cost €6.7 billion. 34% of the plant is/will be owned by the Russian state coorporation Rosatom, because all the alternative suppliers were too expensive. If the plant eventually becomes operational then Rosatom will supply 3% of Finland's total electricity production.

Would it not have been much more reasonable to spend this money on developing and investing in renewable energy sources?

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Hanhikivi is 1000 MW and will supply 10% of Finland’s energy needs according to Wikipedia.

Olkiluoto is 1600 MW and should therefore supply 16% of Finland’s energy needs. Wikipedia says it will Be online in February 2022.

So for 16 billion euro Finland gets 26% of their energy from a firm source with no carbon Emissions.

British Columbia is spending 16 billion CAD on a 1000 MW hydro dam callers site C, in a system with a peak load of 16,000 MW that is 90% hydro.

16 billion euros for two nuclear plants that will make Up a quarter of the Finnish system doesn’t seem that bad to me? You need something for the cloudy week with no wind.

I’m not saying don’t also pursue renewables, but nuclear is part of the solution. It isn’t an either/or, it’s both.

On a per kWh basis, whoch is the metric that matters, wind and solar got cheaper in 2019 than the latest nuclear projects in the UK. Existing nuclear plants are a stop gap solution, and a very good one, to combat climate change if they were used to close down coal and oil power plants asap. They can be replaced by a later date with renewables, starting with oldest reactors.

I am sure nuclear is just about the most expensive power if we are counting construction, operation, and decommissioning. But also consider that it is a firm source of power not subject to the weather. The value of a kWh is quite high when otherwise there would be none.

I suppose if you add to the the cost of a solar or wind plant the cost of a battery system to make the output 100% constant like a nuclear plant that would be a better $/kWh comparison.

Nuclear power would be more competitive if the CO2 tax was implemented.

But it is in the EU - there's a cap and trade scheme in place.

Over the course of 2018 the price of allowance for 1t of CO2 emissions shot up from ~€8 to €25 and so far hasn't dropped.

Not really, Nuclear is the only clean non-intermittent energy source that is also fossil free available.

Can you give hard reasons for the delay? As in this concrete needed to be poured 6" thicker than originally speced and what the upgrade provides?

The couple times I've actually seen these changes described, they are changes enacted to stall the development, not because of a hard technical reason in the design.

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