dalyons

No, it doesn’t.

Every kWh hour of solar entering the grid is a kWh of fossil generation that is no longer produced. Batteries just move existing power around. This is not very complicated, I’m not sure why the semantic crusade?

The article is about recorded actual supply contributions over a year, actual kWh, regardless of instantaneous capacity at various times.

Every kWh of produced and accepted(not curtailed) solar power is directly responsible for reducing our emissions

We don’t really have to give these things up now though, renewable energy and EVs can guve us all this for no emissions. We for the first time ever, have the technology.

We just aren’t applying it fast enough for terrible & lazy reasons.

A kWh is a kWh is a kWh in terms of removing a kWh of fossil emissions off the annual totals. Which is the story here.

Solar is now displacing more kWh of fossil emissions per year than nukes, despite whatever complaints you may have.

> It's uncompetitive due to overregulation and gold plating.

This is an oft repeated point by pro nuclear folk, but it’s not true. There are many regulatory regimes all over the world, and new nuclear is competitive in effectively none of them. Even in single party state china with few regulations , nukes are a declining share of total power every year.

They’re just giant big complex pieces of machinery. With huge ongoing security, insurance and deferred decommissioning costs.

A kWh is a kWh. A kWh of either solar or nuke means a kWh of coal or gas was not burnt. Seems like apples to apples to me.

The massive battery buildout in places like California and Australia are seriously eating into these night time windows already, and we’ve really just gotten started. California will exit 26 with roughly ~20% fossil, and still dropping fast every year as batteries move deeper into the night. The opportunity for nuke to sell at higher prices during the night is being eaten fast. Batteries filled with cheap excess daytime solar are cheaper than nukes already, and can be deployed instantly. The niche won’t exist soon, which is why noones building nukes.

(Yes there is a small amount of legacy nuke in California too.)

yeah the math doesnt work. On top of the running costs you mentioned, You are trying to pay back the ridiculous capex over a reasonable timeframe (say 30 years). Nukes already have trouble doing that at 100% high power price sales. Saying "oh they can keep selling power but at a fraction of price" is technically true but fatal to the economics of nukes.

It’s not very hard to make solar panels. Almost any country could spin up a plant if they had to. Or buy from a diverse set of other countries.

This oft quoted idea that nukes are only expensive because of incompetent regulations, and if they just got out of poor nuclear a way it would be affordable, doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.

There are a lot of different regulatory regimes all over the world and nukes are expensive in all of them. The only way to make them cheapish is if the state builds , secures and insures them (eg china) , but that’s just hiding the costs in govt subsidies . And even then chinas % share of nukes continues to decline because they cost more than anything else.

Building expensive power sources (nuclear) is inevitably going to result in raised electrical rates for the working class.

And yet, progress marches forward and people want great efficiency and flexibility.

And you know what the customer needs? Or is this just a personal feeling. There’s multiple people from the industry chiming in on these threads as to why this is needed.

Freetaxusa still can’t import many and various investment account forms. Sadly It’s still worth paying a little to TurboTax so I folding have to manually input all my betterment , etfs, etc

yeah i have no objection to them apart from cost, and time to first watt.

Paying a market price for a wage is not abuse.

Keeping highly educated and productive foreigners, whom which another country paid to raise and school, IS America acting on behalf of its citizens. These grads will pay tons of tax, create economic activity, perhaps even new companies. And it cost America zero. It’s an insanely good deal.

~47% of Latinos voted for trump in 2024. What are they skewing exactly?

Coincidentally the mid 90s was when the US GDP really started to outpace the EU

TIL, thanks! I didn’t realize the “routine” heat exchanger part was such a high % of cost.

Oh, I was aiming at the people in this comment section that need convincing. On a site populated by people paid by SV companies you’d think it wouldn’t need explaining. And yet

It’s unclear from your comment as to whether you know, but you can absolutely already buy exo legs for skiing. They’re quite good apparently

I mean yes but also there’s a lot more engineering and materials in a NPP beyond the heat exchanger part that makes it so expensive.

how is it abuse if they're paid the same?

pretty easy. over 50% of silicon valleys unicorns have an immigrant founder. if you cut off their ability to stay, you wouldn't have those companies, and there wouldn't be nearly as many high paying tech jobs.

over 50% of silicon valleys unicorns have an immigrant founder. if you cut off their ability to stay, you wouldn't have those companies, and there wouldn't be nearly as many high paying tech jobs.

nuclear base load makes sense from a pure grid engineering PoV, which i think is why it appeals to so many HN folk. Sadly, it makes no sense economically anymore, so it will probably never be built at scale.

batteries allow cheaper energy costs. How does that hurt industry

It’s not semantic, that implies it’s just a name difference. it’s economic. Base and backup aren’t used in the same way and they have very different economic models. Eg you run a backup gas peaker very rarely and charge a fortune for the power provided during those windows. Base relies on you selling every day, all day for a cost competitive with other sources.

And nuclear can technically be ramped yes, but not economically. it has to run and sell at 100% 24x7 of the time to make the economics of a nuke plant work. The enormous capex and high fixed opex make nukes terrible as a backup power source

You are right that most modern grids do still have and depend on some legacy fixed supply, eg old nukes, non-peaker gas, or hydro. That is changing fast though, as batteries will eventually push cheap solar through the night and eliminate that economic niche too.

This isn’t theoretical - look at Californias grid. It’s going to exit 2026 at roughly only 20% fossil (gas). As the massive battery and wind rollout is covering more and more of the nightly part of demand. If they keep it up within the next 5-10 years there will be zero fossil on the grid in a regular daily cycle. Leaving gas as a true backup for weather events and suchlike.

the answer to your question is a quick google away, plenty of studies. the answer is roughly;

yes solar+storage is cheaper than new coal

maybe solar+storage is cheaper than existing coal, they are similar, depends where you are

yes solar+storage is (much) cheaper than new nukes

no solar+storage is cheaper than old paid off nukes