• Buffalox@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    Nuclear is the single most expensive form of power generation

    That’s because of the cost of establishing it, not the running cost. The cost of establishing it are not recouped by closing them down.

    • CyberEgg@discuss.tchncs.de
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      1 month ago

      Debatable. There are still costs for maintenance, uranium imports, safety and security, waste storage etc. And, most importantly, in Germany nuclear power is replaced by even cheaper renewables. Again, nuclear phase out is not a factor for electricity costs in Germany. Grid infrastructure and an anti-renewables policy (that plays into bad grid infrastructure) are.

      • SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca
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        1 month ago

        Debatable

        No, not debatable, nuclear is cheaper once infrastructure is paid off. Much cheaper with SMRs on new builds. Darlington was recently expanded with SMRs.

        Real life costs can diverge significantly from those estimates. Olkiluoto block 3, which achieved first criticality in late 2021 had an overnight cost to the construction consortium (the utility paid a fixed price agreed to when the deal was signed of only 3.2 billion euros) of €8.5 billion and a net electricity capacity of 1.6 GW or €5,310 per kW of capacity.[28] Meanwhile Darlington Nuclear Generating Station in Canada had an overnight cost of CA$5.117 billion for a net electric capacity of 3512 MW or CA$1,457 per kW of capacity.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source

        Germany shit their pants after Fukushima and knee jerked to shut down nuclear. How many Tsunami’s have hit Germany?

        • CyberEgg@discuss.tchncs.de
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          1 month ago

          Germany shit their pants after Fukushima and knee jerked to shut down nuclear. How many Tsunami’s have hit Germany?

          Wrong. Nuclear phase out in Germany was decided first years before Fukushima.

          No, not debatable, nuclear is cheaper once infrastructure is paid off.

          How come waste disposal/storage is never accounted for in these calculations?

          • KevinOnEarth@mstdn.io
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            1 month ago

            @CyberEgg @SaveTheTuaHawk
            Which calculations are you referring to?
            Nuclear waste disposal/storage is unavoidably accounted for in France as it is part of the budget and the responsibility of the generators of the waste themselves.

            • CyberEgg@discuss.tchncs.de
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              1 month ago

              The calculations of operating and maintenance cost. I have yet to see calculations of those where the cost of waste disposal and management is listed. It’s not a small factor, in Germany it costs around 1 billion anually after the end of nuclear, plus the ongoing search for a permanent storage site.

              Also, this is about Germany, not France. But since you bring up France, what are the betting odds for how many NPPs are going to be shut down this summer due to overheating river systems? How much are the cost of downtime, the environmental damge done to these rivers etc?

          • plyth@feddit.org
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            1 month ago

            Wrong. Nuclear phase out in Germany was decided first years before Fukushima.

            By the Greens, in a way that could be and was undone. Merkel committed the majority to it.

            How come waste disposal/storage is never accounted for in these calculations?

            Permanent waste disposal is unnecessary. Keep doing what we do now and temporarily store it for the forseeable future.

            Ironically there would be no global warming if we had fully switched to nuclear energy in th 70ies. In a way, the Greens fought for the destruction of the environment.

            • CyberEgg@discuss.tchncs.de
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              1 month ago

              Any law can be undone and no policiy is safe from a power shift.

              Don’t blame the Greens for climate change you dishonest nuisance.

              Nuclear was never the answer, just different problems.

              Ironically there would be no global warming if we had fully switched to nuclear energy in th 70ies.

              A main driver of climate change is the meat industry btw. How would nuclear change that?

              • plyth@feddit.org
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                1 month ago

                Don’t blame the Greens for climate change you dishonest nuisance.

                Do you think the Greens are different than the SPD who sold out the worker protection? With cheap nuclear energy we could have had electrical cars in the 70ies. Not going fully nuclear is the reason that electricity was not so cheap that people started buying electric cars.

                The nuisance is that there is no rational reason for the Greens to be against nuclear energy unless they were influenced by the oil industry.

                • CyberEgg@discuss.tchncs.de
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                  1 month ago

                  No, the nusance is a Russia luldefender smearing shit and blame over everything but the actual facts and derailing any discussion. I really don’t know why I haven’t blocked you yet and I correct that mistake now.

        • HaraldvonBlauzahn@feddit.org
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          1 month ago

          , nuclear is cheaper once infrastructure is paid off.

          The marginal costs for renewables - that is the cost of producing one more MWh if the plant is up and running - is zero. With merit-order pricing, this is their market price. Nuclear cannot compete with that price. Also, while wind energy provides cheap base load, solar electricity production matches the daily demand curve very well. Because of this, it needs less of relatively expensive storage. It was never the plan to use pure nuclear power - that would have been way to expensive. It was always only meant for base load, which is a small fraction of the daily peaks or the daily average demand. Because of that, it was never planned to replace most fossil energy with nuclear - it would have been way too expensive. Nuclear was touted as cheap base load, remember?

          Germany’s problem is an entirely different one: Consevative goverments have deliberately obstructed and hampered the extension of renewable energy and power networks. This still needs to happen, and is costing money now. And the conservative government, again, lowers prices and network fees for big companies, and charges citizens for that. That’s why it is expensive.

    • macniel@feddit.org
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      1 month ago

      Uuhm… No. Germany doesn’t have uranium deposits which renders any nuclear power generation unviable and prohibitively expensive.

      • SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca
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        1 month ago

        Germany can buy uranium like every other country. France is all nuclear, without any uranium mined in France. Germany also has no gas or oil .

        • macniel@feddit.org
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          1 month ago

          Germany can buy uranium like every other country.

          Or… OR, we invest those running costs in the infrastructure (storage and lines) to harvest unbound energy via photovoltaic solar arrays, tide power and wind farms.

          • KevinOnEarth@mstdn.io
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            1 month ago

            @DmMacniel @SaveTheTuaHawk
            Sure. But that is deflecting the argument. Purchase of Uranium is no more expensive for Germany than it is for France.
            By decommissioning nuclear, Germany LOST the investment it had already made & then had to invest AGAIN to build alternatives (+to fossil fuel, its immediate fall-back), after public panic over “Fukushima”. (1 death directly attributed to date – Most people still don’t know the name of the thing that actually killed 20k people.)
            Yes, 👍 Renewables!

            • KevinOnEarth@mstdn.io
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              1 month ago

              @DmMacniel @SaveTheTuaHawk
              France did not panic (they were 71% nuclear-powered already so immediate decommissioning would have been virtually impossible), but they are managing a transition to renewables anyway as nuclear is gradually phased out.

    • poVoq@slrpnk.netM
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      1 month ago

      The plants shut down were all over or near their design lifespan and about half a century old.

      Even if Germany had decided to continue with nuclear power it would have had to replace all of them with new reactor blocks.