Comment by ViewTrick1002 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ViewTrick1002 | Hacker News Reader

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System studies find that renewable energy systems are cheaper than involving new nuclear from Australia to Denmark and Finland.

Denmark, 2026: system-level LCOE including storage, flexibility and system integration; renewables substantially cheaper than nuclear.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S036054422...

Finland, 2025: nuclear scenarios 71–84% higher system cost; unrestricted least-cost optimization builds zero new nuclear.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S036054422...

Australia, CSIRO + AEMO GenCost 2025–26: whole-system modelling including transmission, storage and firming; renewables + storage remain the lowest-cost net-zero pathway.

https://www.csiro.au/en/research/technology-space/energy/Ele...

What are these grid operators and researchers missing that you know?

They suggest gas peaker plants to cover such climate scenarios (long cold windless winter weeks). Literally their solution for zero carbon is “build gas power plants”. And this isn’t just a coupe but several GW worth and also they only run during those week to two so price is in euros (not cents) per kWh.

Also their listed cost of nuclear power is a lot higher then actual real cost (TVO lists these publicly but every study still uses numbers that are much higher)

Edit: and again if someone wants to build (and pay for it) let them. Electricity production here (Finland) isn’t some single system where someone has control over all the investment but a free market where everyone is free to compete. If you think that you can compete with your solution (and can convince the investors/banks) why should we be saying no you can’t? In electricity production where there is actual cost for CO2 this actually works.

For the record I am against the government giving some guaranteed tariff price (or any other direct subsidy like that) to any production method. If new nuclear can’t be built without such subsidies then we should not build it.

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