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Comment by fefe23 | Hacker News Reader

I'm stunned by the price difference. 1-1.5 billion for this power plant, but only 300-400 million for wind or solar.

We really have come a long way in bringing down prices for wind and solar!

Keep in mind that wind and solar power figures typically quoted are for max effect. For solar that means noon on a cloud-free day. Most hours of most days, and all the nights, are not like that. So if you want a realistic comparison with something like a nuclear reactor, which can run steadily for months on end, you need to apply a significant multiplier for additional area and batteries.

The problem being you can only cry when there's no wind (or solar) while nuclear works 24/7/365 (minus maintenance)

Or according to another comment: spend the saved money (vs nuclear) on storage and smile instead? I don't know a lot about it, but what I know is enough to be pretty sure dismissive single-line statements (in either way) are usually not at all the full picture.

What storage? What tech? How would you scale up? You see, it's easy just to write things down and live in a dream that's enough to solve problems. But actually it's not.

I thought by mentioning explicitly 'either way' I made it clear that the only dream I'm living is is the skeptical one, not leaning one way or the other, merely observing and pointing out that indeed it's very easy to write things down as if they are the sole truth. While they actually aren't.

Multiply those by the actual production and you'll get an equivalent cost.

Per the article, they estimate wind and solar to produce at ~40%. The reactors will operate at ~98%, some downtime for maintenance.

Like the maintenance in Fukushima?

I don't think handwaving away the long term storage of nuclear waste and the risk of contaminating large areas can just be ignored, especially with a new unproven reactor design.

Long term storage is solved from a technical perspective, it's a political problem at this point. Deep holes in geologically stable places are ideally fit for purpose, and most of the really nasty stuff isn't' danger after about 200 years.

The Fukushima disaster is expected to kill precisely no one from the surrounding area due to radiation exposure, and the highest exposure among 36,478 dosimeters in Fukushima city in 2011 was 2.7 millisieverts with an average of 0.26 millisieverts. The 2.7 millisievert is believed to have come from a badge left in luggage that was x-rayed. A dose of 0.26 millisieverts is the same as the exposure from to round trip flights between NYC and London.

At least double the renewable estimate to add storage to make them truly viable.

Add 50% to the nuclear cost because they always go over cost and time budgets.

That's probably a fairer overall estimate.

This is why nuclear is dying and you don’t need the tinfoil hat explanations for why. Just like always, it comes down to money.

Considering those produce 20-25% (at random) of time, are you adding he cost of storage to this?

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