Hacker News Reader

Comment by Moldoteck | Hacker News Reader

It's not just restart. It's investing money to restart. The north area still has coal and gas plants so restarting nuclear still makes sense. That's how it'll help.

Also. Why get less decarbonization by wasting money and opportunity on new built nuclear power when we still need to decarbonize construction, agriculture, shipping, showroom, industry? - in this case let's spend zero money on ren deployment too. Electrification will bring much greater results due to efficiency gains even if the grid is powered in it's current form. Such arguments are silly.

Germany does in fact seem to have tons of money. It spent on EEG alone so far double the cost of entire french nuclear fleet. In the meantime it got highest household prices in EU after Ireland. From this year govt decided to funnel additional 6bn/y on transmission. I'm not even talking about tons of fossils subsidies

View on HN

Exactly? We are removing renewable subsidies all over the world because they aren't needed anymore?

In Germany the recent solar renewable subsidies are lower than market price for their electricity, but it offers longterm stability for the producer which is why they sign up.

This is not driven by subsidies:

> Driven by record solar growth, low-carbon power generation increased by 887 TWh in 2025, outpacing electricity demand growth of 849 TWh. Solar power alone met 75% of the net increase in electricity demand. Together with wind, the two sources met almost all (99%) demand growth. For the first time since the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, and only the fifth time this century, fossil generation did not rise, recording a small fall of 38 TWh (-0.2%).

https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/global-electricity-...

Followed by still only being able to look back. Complaining that 2010 solar is expensive. To what relevence you still haven't been able to explain.

You do realize that to decarbonize society, no matter the source, we need to 2-3x our grid size depending on local industry? The transmission uprating is coming no matter the source of electricity.

Again. Are you suggesting that Germany would be better off by keeping their current emissions until the mid ~2040s waiting for horrifyingly expensive new built nuclear power to come online?

Why are you so afraid of renewables and storage?

Removing subsidies? Are you aware that UK increased ren CFDs for latest AR rounds? Are you aware that offshore projects without CFDs are already facing problems? Germany still pays 18bn/y on EEG and the amount is projected to rise due to more frequent payments

Transmission upgrade requirements are far smaller with not so distributed generation. This can be clearly seen in case of Germany vs France. You need vastly more transmission for distributed power put based on fertile weather patterns and even more to reduce curtailment with projects like sudlink

I didn't suggest it to keep current emissions what a nonsense. I've suggested tp expand nuclear in parallel with renewables instead of expanding renewables+gas

Please stop asking this stupid question about being afraid of renewables and storage because that's not the topic of the discussion. German pathway includes gas and the fact you leave this "small" detail makes me think you either don't mind it or you haven't read the proposals of Fraunhofer ISE/Habeck/Reiche

I love that you now deflect to off-shore wind subsidies. Not daring to face onshore wind, solar or storage.

Followed by again complaining about 2010 solar being expensie. To absolutely no ones surprise.

In Australia CSIRO assuming a status quo energy system, i.e. not electrified society, put the extra costs for a renewable Australian grid at ~€12B. That's less than the subsidies a single new built nuclaer reactor requires.

Isn't it funny how entire country scale transmission systems becomes cheap when compared to the subsidies required new built nuclear power?

When means you lock in hundreds of billions of euros in nuclear handouts from tax money which could have vastly larger impact if invested in renewables. You know, opportunity cost.

It is this graph:

https://imgur.com/a/WrLUrwK

It scales from a single reactor to a grid. If you waste money on a reactor which could have vastly larger impact if invested in renewables then you will never catch up to the emissions that could ahve been avoided.

You framing the question as stupid is because it hits too close to home. You truly are afraid of renewables and storage. Is your income dependent on the nuclear industry? Is that the issue?

Again. Who cares if we include an emergency reserve of fossil gas? Don't let perfect be the enemy of good enough, especially not when we need to consider cumulative emissions.

Do you even grasp the concept of cumulative emissions?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com