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Comment by nothercastle | Hacker News Reader

Do we need nuclear power anymore? It dose not seem to occupy a very efficient spot as part of the grid anymore due to long spool up and power down times it has to always run at a steady load where what the grid really needs is something that can quickly spool up and down like gas or battery.

Its also really expensive because you need all the infrastructure for nuclear plus the infrastructure for steam turbines which all needs to be built and maintained and is very expensive

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Unless it becomes viable to build enough storage under any format (be it green hydrogen, pumped hydro, batteries) that could provide enough energy to withstand each locality/groups of localities' prolonged natural disasters, yes, nuclear is still needed.

Even a very varied grid (solar, wind, offshore wind and tidal) could struggle with e.g. a big storm. E.g. last summer a big part of norther Germany was hit by a storm with very strong winds, which made solar and wind stop generating power reliably over around a week. There was the rest of Germany plus the neighbours (including France's nuclear) to compensate.. but if it coincides with something else, like France being hit with a heat wave lowering rivers' level and increasing their temperature, forcing the shutdown of nuclear reactors, things can get complicated.

It's expensive but also the only technology that can provide large amount of electricity on demand regardless of the natural resources available (hydro is limited by the need for mountains; should still build as much as possible but it's not enough).

NPPs can do load following: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Load-following_power_plant#N...

Of course if we don't care about the climate gas and coal plants are cheaper (assuming cheap gas and cheap coal)

Coal is about as safe as nuclear except more radioactive but occupies a similar spot in being non demand based. Gas has no good alternative all grids need some gas right now.

Coal isn't as safe as nuclear. More people have died in coal power generation incidents that nuclear power ones; add in the deaths due to the air pollution from coal and it's not even close to being comparable.

> Gas has no good alternative all grids need some gas right now

Batteries are good peaked plant replacements.

Blinky, the three-eyed fish, disagrees. ,:) There's no point bothering with an inherently riskier and more expensive technology when cleaner, safer, and cheaper alternatives exist.

Gas also becomes obsolete with peaking-capable renewables with battery and/or PES.

> There's no point bothering with an inherently riskier and more expensive technology when cleaner, safer, and cheaper alternatives exist.

Not sure how to simultaneously maximise the three metrics. How many tonnes of CO2 is equal to one life or 1M USD?

https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/impacts-of-energy-sourc...

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-p...

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/cost-of-e...

The tipping point for solar and wind being cheaper (LCOE) and cleaner to deploy and maintain rapidly overtook all other forms of energy (coal, gas, nuclear, and hydro) in more and more markets over time thanks to the economies-of-scale of more deployments and improved manufacturing processes. There are some markets where coal or gas is the cheaper and expedient solution for now where local LCOEs are different, but not for long.

https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth

How about the cost in wild-life and nature? The required area and kill count of enough wind mills to replace a single nuclear plant is absolute insanity. And idk where you live, but we just had a university leader here who had to go because the wind lobby paid her scientists off to falsify reports in favour of wind. Wind and solar have their places sure, but the future is nuclear.

How nasty is producing Solar Panels? Have you looked at the etchants used?

I don't think we have a full account of the cost of the chemicals involved in semi-conductor construction.

I know its an inconvenient fact....

We all want to hate nuclear power but have no good storage plans for these new variable green power sources.

Nuclear may take a long time to spin up but it is constant and reliable.

Electrify the economy they say....

They forget wind and solar are part time producers.

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