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Comment by mpweiher | Hacker News Reader

The US is one of the 22 signatories of the COP28 pledge to triple nuclear capacity by 2050.

With the failure of Germany's Energiewende, countries have drastically re-evaluated their nuclear stances.

France just did an about-face and cancelled their plans to drastically reduce nuclear capacity or even get out of nuclear entirely. Instead they are now investing into a nuclear renaissance.

Poland is getting into nuclear power big time, they are buying reactors from South Korea (and possibly also the US).

The Finnish Green Party has recently come out to endorse nuclear power.

Japan, who was also getting out of nuclear power after Fukushima has also made an about face and is now going to reactivate more plants and even build new ones.

etc.

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Pretty much all relevant ceuntries also pleged to triple renewable capacity in 8 years, which seems mostly doable, while with the typical (western) construction timelines for nuclear they would have to pretty much start tendering the new plants now, while currently mostly only vague promises exist.

China, which the country building the most nuclear right now, is falling behind its own plans and downscaling its nuclear ambitions in favour of renewables.

I've heard rumors that you can do both at the same time.

I heard facts that people don't so.

You heard wrong.

So, all the statistics about installed capacity of NPPs, wind, solar, hydro, coal and so on are wrong? Because those numbers show everywhere renewables outpace nuclear by orders of magnitude, including China.

No. Your conclusion is wrong.

Renewables being installed does not imply nuclear not being installed.

Nuclear is getting installed for sure. Just orders of magnitude less than renewables, and it is more expebsive. And the vast majority of new NPPs replace those being shut down, meaning the new net nuclear capacity is much less than the new NPPs total capacity. This shows cleary, if you were willing to look at the numbers, in which direction the funding goes.

> Nuclear is getting installed for sure

1. To my "I've head rumors that you can do both" you replied "I heard facts that people don't so."

Glad we are now agreed that your comment was not true, and mine was true. Doing "more" of one does not imply one is not doing the other at all.

2. It's not "orders of magnitude less" once you account for capacity factors.

And once again: the nuclear under-investment of the last few decades is well known, and so that is what we are seeing in the stats now. The policy shifts just started happening at earliest a year ago, most this year. While nuclear doesn't take nearly as long as anti-nuclear advocates claim, it also doesn't happen in a few months either.

Let's see then:

PV load factor for utility scale solar was 16%. China installed 230 GW, Europe 75 GW and the US 40 GW -> 55 GW incl. load factor and excluding the rest of the world

Wind:

Let's use 40% as a load factor, which seems reasonable. Globally, around 100 GW added -> net 40 GW

NPP grid connections in 2022 (if you have 2023 numbers, please share them): 8.3 GW, with a load factor of aeound 80% for 2022 -> 6.6 GW. At the same 2.2 GW, around 1.8 GW of NPPs were shut down, resulting a net gain of 4.8 GW.

In total we have 90 GW of wind solar vs. not even 7 GW of nuclear. Excluding load factors we have 440 GW of wind and solar vs. 8.3 GW of nuclear globally. In the western world, those numbers fall even more towards wind and solar.

And looking at estimates until 2035, these numbers are looking even worse for nuclear.

So no, countries are not doing both, countries, especially in Asia, are very, very slowly adding new NPPs while overall net added nuclear capacity is negligible and barely replacing shut down reactors.

In other words, one year worth of new NPPs is added every two weeks using wind and solar.

Feel free to argue those numbers...

X > Y does not imply Y does not exist.

And you are using nameplate capacity again (after a brief nod to reality)

All my numbers above are including load factors... And I never said nuclear projects don't exist, only that their net added capacity is negligible compared to wind and solar. And that those historical numbers show us that the investment money is mainly going into wind and solar instead of nuclear, and did for years now.

You could accept these facts as reality, which would make this whole discussion a lot less frustrating... Or at least engage with the numbers, which you didn't neither...

> All my numbers above are including load factors...

Nope.

>>> Excluding load factors we have 440 GW of wind and solar vs. 8.3 GW

> I never said nuclear projects don't exist

Yes you did.

>>> I've heard rumors that you can do both at the same time.

>> I heard facts that people don't so.

> only that their net added capacity is negligible compared to wind and solar.

Nope, see above. But they are also not negligible.

> ...and did for years now.

And I've told you a number of times now that the historical under-investment in nuclear the last few decades or so is a well-known fact that in no way contradicts the fact that policy has now changed.

Linearly projecting a past trend into the future is ... unwise. Particularly if there has been a major policy shift. Which there has.

Arguing that the policy shift that just happened hasn't happened because it had no effect in the past is even less wise.

It’s hard to see how these non-binding pledges mean anything. France, in particular, already generates ~75% of their electricity with nuclear. They’re really going to triple that and generate 225% of their current generation? The US is going to go from a small handful of planned reactors to hundreds? Where is the money for this coming from?

Most of these countries are implementing policies.

France had a law to slowly phase out nuclear and switch to renewables. They've rescinded that law and instead passed legislation to build more nuclear plants, and make building those plants easier, putting into action Macron's call for a "nuclear renaissance". Also extending the life of existing plants.

Japan, site of the second worst nuclear accident, had all, then most of its reactors shuttered (after political pressure). They are now reactivating more and more of them, have rescinded the policy to get out of nuclear and instead are planning to build more plants.

Poland is getting into nuclear power in big way. They currently don't have any and have just approved building 24 small reactors at six sites. I think they're also in talks with the US's Westinghouse to build more.

Ukraine, site of the worst accident in history, continues to operate its plants, and is talking with Rolls-Royce to convert some of their coal plants to nuclear. Rolls-Royce wants to build these reactors in a factory (economies of scale!) and ship them to sites. There are a lot of coal power plants that either already are decommissioned or soon will be. So quite the market for mass-produced reactors.

The US just approved the first new kind of nuclear reactor in 50 years, a molten fluoride salt-cooled reactor. China just gave an operation license for their first molten salt reactor (completed ahead of time), and their pebble bed reactor started delivering electricity to the grid this year.

etc.

France has a fleet of 56 reactors, about 14 of which are scheduled to be decommissioned in the 2030s or before. They currently plan to build 6 more reactors and “possibly” another 8 by 2050, which seems more like maintenance than expansion. By contrast, France constructed all of its current 56 reactors over a 15-year period, and the current plans do not look remotely comparable to that effort.

Japan generated 30% of its electricity from nuclear before 2011, and is now aspirationally hoping to generate 20% by 2030 when considering decommissioned reactors and restarts.

Poland has two planned reactors with construction targeted to begin in 2026 and a couple of additional proposed reactors. There are some plans to deploy SMRs in Poland, but the reactors aren’t even in the design stage yet and I can’t determine how many GW these small reactors will actually produce in total. I also can’t figure out where Rolls Royce is in the product cycle, except that they’re still somewhere in the design stage. Any deployments in Ukraine seem likely to be decades out.

The Hermes molten salt reactor looks pretty great, but it won’t generate electricity and the Hermes 2 project will also be a 28MW test reactor. I’m very bullish on this sort of research, including the SMR stuff, since — unlike the 1970s-era plants being built, it at least has the potential to take off. But it’s all very much at the research and design stage: actual commercial production may be decades out. Who knows where battery storage tech will be in two decades.

As part of the very recent switch back to nuclear, the lifetime of France's existing reactors will be extended.

> Poland has two planned reactors

Incorrect.

"Poland has given the green light for the construction of 24 new small modular reactor (SMR) units across six sites"

https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/poland...

Anyway, nobody claimed that this was in advanced stages, how could it be?

Just two years ago, pretty much everybody was getting out of nuclear, some more quickly, some more slowly, but the direction had been consistent for the last two decades or so. Then Ukraine happened, and the house of card that was the German Energiewende, built on a solid foundation of cheap Russian gas, collapsed.

Not sure how quickly you expect turnarounds in energy policy to happen, but let's just sat that the Energiewende was made officially announced in the 1990s. And look how far we've gotten.

I personally find the development in the last year, year and a half remarkable quick.

Lifetime extensions do not result in additional capacity.

Regarding the Energiewende, the initial plan from the SPD-Green government was decent. It was then revised, before being rushed in again by a CDU/CSU-FDP government after Fukushima. By the way, no new reactors were planned during that time anyway.

And please, do everyone a favour, look up the numbers of reactors under construction, reactors planned and proposed, the number of planned shut downs, the corresponding capacities and then compare those to the nameplate capacity of other sources going online.

And yes, I know the load factor for solar and wind is lower. But what these numbers tell you is, that the money does not go nuclear, not even close.

And all that is before we talk actual costs, construction times and delays.

"out 14 of which are scheduled to be decommissioned in the 2030s or before. "

That was the start of the post I replied to.

Lets put it in a formula:

- comparison of net additional capacities: total name plate capacity of new NPPs being build + total nameplate capacity of new NPPs planned and proposed - nameplate capacity going offline vs. new solar + wind capacity being installed, do that on a yearly basis intil, say, 2035

Run the math, provide sources for the numbers, come back and share the result and your interpretation of it. Takes about max. an hour if you don't where to look for input data yet, much less if you do already.

Why should I do that?

The policy shift was announced was announced December 2nd of this year. So 26 days ago.

And your counter is "so where are all the new nuclear plants, I don't see them".

Seriously?

Glad we agree that so far there was no nuclear build out, anywhere!

Edit: COP28 agreed on triplong renewable capacity to 11 TW by 2030. If we consider pledges for future NPPs, I think it is just fair to do the same when it comes to renewables, right?

Also incorrect.

There was quite a bit of nuclear built. For example France nuclearized its electricity grid.

In the last 20 years, policy shifted away from nuclear and there was very little built.

This hasn’t been in dispute in the least bit.

Just now we have witnessed a policy shift by most countries where nuclear is or was relevant back towards nuclear.

To argue that this policy shift hasn’t happened because we didn’t see its effects in the last 20 years seems weird, unless there was some important time travel news I missed.

To argue that the policy shift hasn’t happened because we haven’t seen new nuclear plants pop up since the few weeks or months since the shifts happened and were announced is also…odd.

And you seem to be under this impression that for nuclear to be built up, renewables must somehow be reduced.

This is simply not the case.

There was no real build out since the, what, 80s? And no projection I have found hinted at one in the future. If those policy changes are supossed to any effect by 2035, those new NPPs would have to be at least in planning stage by now, which they are not.

Unless you assume all those future reactors are magically planned, approved, built and connected at a fraction of the time all others are. In which case, please specify how exactly that is aupposed to happen. Otherwise, all you have is claims, unfounded ones at that, and pipedreams.

The projections you read are the ones that precede the current policy shift.

> If those policy changes are supossed to any effect by 2035

They are not. 2050 is the target date for tripling.

> those new NPPs would have to be at least in planning stage by now, which they are not

A lot of the policy changes just happened this year. Some announcements were made this month. OK, no new plants were built in the last 3 weeks. You win.

How long are these lifetime extensions? A solid 20 year extension still has them closing by ~2050s which is about how far the construction plans I listed go.

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