Comment by cure | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cure | Hacker News Reader

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> Please correct me if I'm wrong but my understanding is that nuclear doesn't ramp up/down very well either.

Correct. Nuclear reactors can't be turned on/off quickly. They are suitable to handle the base load, in other words, but can't be used as peakers.

> Wind and solar don't even make sense for Germany given their climate/geography.

Uhm, respectfully, that is a load of nonsense. Cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_Germany

> Germany should ditch the green and use its amazing engineering to build better nuclear reactors, IMO.

Well, if they start that plan today, it may be done in 30 years. Which is way, way, way too late.

Imo, the more sensible path here is to keep the existing nuclear plants running, decommission the that awful lignite power generation asap, while building out energy storage capacity (grid scale batteries - there are many kinds of approaches, e.g. electrical batteries, reservoir storage and some seriously weird ones involving lots of blocks of concrete). That could be done in the space of a decade.

Any new nuclear plants would not even be out of the design stage in 10 years.

I never understood the argument that nuclear takes too long, so instead we implement new technologies that have never been done at scale.

What if we run into unexpected problems with energy storage that push their timeline out even longer than 30 years? Seems better to do both, and accept the risk that we paid for too much clean energy in the end.

French nuclear plant can ramp up/down 80% in 30min, but it's true that many nuclear plant can't

I know they generate a moderate fraction now, that's the point of my post. I think they are backing themselves into a corner.

The problems to date include very high energy prices. Even larger challenges await; these will grow as renewables they become a larger fraction of total output. Renewable variability isn't a problem when they are a small fraction, but a very large one when they are a large percentage. These are unsolved problems. Land use is also an issue.

This is wrong. Nuclear reaction output can be modulated on the order of milliseconds, practically visible as the temperature of the core, which varies on seconds to minutes. They can be used as peaker plants if so designed. In the US at least, the issue is that energy output must be telegraphed 4+ hours in advance.

If I had to guess this is a constructed incentive to make nuclear less desirable than coal or gas under the guise of safety.

The technical ramp up/down issue is often conflated with amortized capital cost.

Nuclear, in order to provide electricity at a competitive rate, needs >90% capacity factor. That means it can't ramp up/down and stay in business, not that it can't ramp up/down. Since the fuel is trivially cheap, ramping down does not provide any economic savings. The opposite is true for an CCGT plant.

... and that is the fundamental reason why there isn't any pressure to build new nuclear in the US (I am less familiar with PPAs and grid regulation in the EU).

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