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   Charlie Stross (cstross@wandering.shop)'s status on Tuesday, 24-Dec-2024 02:13:14 JST Charlie Stross

   France connected the Flamanville 3 nuclear reactor to its grid on Saturday morning, state-run operator EDF said, in the first addition to the country's nuclear power network in 25 years. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/france-adds-first-nuclear-reactor-25-years-grid-2024-12-21/

   (It's way over budget and 13 years late but it's the first EPR in France, so effectively a prototype. 17% less fuel per kWh power output, extensive passive safety features. These are EPR1 designs; the EPR2 is a simplified, cheaper design but none have been built yet.)

   • Embed this notice
     Charlie Stross (cstross@wandering.shop)'s status on Tuesday, 24-Dec-2024 03:59:38 JST Charlie Stross

     in reply to

     • FredricT #NouveauFrontPopulaire

     @FredricT Yup. Follow-on EPR builds using the same design (I note, not the newer-and-might-be-cheaper EPR2) *should* be a third the price, but they'll take a decade ... and meanwhile, photovoltaic costs are following the same exponentiating price curve as computing power did for a few decades.

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     FredricT #NouveauFrontPopulaire (fredrict@imaginair.es)'s status on Tuesday, 24-Dec-2024 03:59:40 JST FredricT #NouveauFrontPopulaire

     in reply to

     @cstross And the state accountants have concluded that its energy is one of the costliest of the country, because renewable energy costs have sunk since this EPR project started...

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     Charlie Stross (cstross@wandering.shop)'s status on Tuesday, 24-Dec-2024 04:00:58 JST Charlie Stross

     in reply to

     • Knud Jahnke

     @knud You could pave France in PV panels for that price ... using TODAY'S PV panel costs. Back when EPR development started (2005-ish?) it was a different matter.

     This is a classic case of "old tech lapped by new tech before it realizes it's in a race".

   • Embed this notice
     Knud Jahnke (knud@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 24-Dec-2024 04:00:59 JST Knud Jahnke

     in reply to

     @cstross

     In actual money ~€23b... They could have plastered most of France with solar panels for that pricetag.

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     Charlie Stross (cstross@wandering.shop)'s status on Tuesday, 24-Dec-2024 04:04:01 JST Charlie Stross

     in reply to

     • happyinmotion

     @happyinmotion Yup. I note there's another EPR in China which came in a lot cheaper ... because China, I guess? (There may have been some corner-cutting. Or there may just have been less bloated cost-plus contracting.)

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     happyinmotion (happyinmotion@mastodon.nz)'s status on Tuesday, 24-Dec-2024 04:04:02 JST happyinmotion

     in reply to

     @cstross Except it's not the first EPR reactor. The first is Olkiluoto in Finland which is... overbudget and late. Expected cost €3 billion, acutal cost €11 billion. Completion date was supposed to be 2009, actual completion 2023.

     In that time, LCOS for solar dropped by 83%, for wind by 65%. Even if storage doubles those costs (it doesn't), both are cheaper than nuclear.

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     Charlie Stross (cstross@wandering.shop)'s status on Tuesday, 24-Dec-2024 19:30:33 JST Charlie Stross

     in reply to

     • kravietz 🦇
     • Bruno Nicoletti

     @kravietz @bjn You missed: the US PV industry relied on state subsidies and didn't bother tool up and try to compete in the world market—they were left standing.

   • Embed this notice
     kravietz 🦇 (kravietz@agora.echelon.pl)'s status on Tuesday, 24-Dec-2024 19:30:34 JST kravietz 🦇

     in reply to

     • Bruno Nicoletti

     @bjn

     As a reminder, Russian gas was also “damn cheap” for a while, and then it got very expensive. That’s the cost of relying on a single supplier and in case of China they now control 80% of the whole supply chain (!) - that is, even if you open PV factory in EU you still depend on China for the resources to make them. China achieved this very low cost by a number of factors - slave labour, low environmental protection, cheap electricity from coal and state subsidies, which declaratively seem to be at odds with EU values, yet nobody has a problem with that and nobody wonders how come they’re so cheap.

     @cstross

   • Embed this notice
     Bruno Nicoletti (bjn@mstdn.social)'s status on Tuesday, 24-Dec-2024 19:30:35 JST Bruno Nicoletti

     in reply to

     • kravietz 🦇

     @kravietz @cstross Thank Putin and COVID for those problems, everything was affected, including nukes. Actual data says average cost overruns for nukes is 120%, for solar it is 5%. Solar deployments are increasing year on year, because they are so damn cheap. Eg. in the first nine months this year Pakistan, installed 17GW of solar, causing reductions in grid demand. Over the year, they will produce the equivalent of a 3.5GW nuke, trying building one of those in 9 years, let alone 9 months.

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     kravietz 🦇 (kravietz@agora.echelon.pl)'s status on Tuesday, 24-Dec-2024 19:30:36 JST kravietz 🦇

     in reply to
     @cstross
     
     It the other news, the costs and schedules for Denmark off-shore wind hub and PV island have skyrocketed and delayed by years. Dozens of PV and wind projects failed globally (eg Solyndra). Of course, that’s different 😉
   • Embed this notice
     Charlie Stross (cstross@wandering.shop)'s status on Wednesday, 25-Dec-2024 04:45:08 JST Charlie Stross

     in reply to

     • kravietz 🦇
     • happyinmotion

     @happyinmotion @kravietz Besides which, the UK has potential for pumped storage: not just hydro (although we have that), but the exhausted gas fields under the North Sea could be used for offshore compressed air storage. Horribly low efficiency, but huge capacity.

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     happyinmotion (happyinmotion@mastodon.nz)'s status on Wednesday, 25-Dec-2024 04:45:10 JST happyinmotion

     in reply to

     • kravietz 🦇

     @kravietz @cstross The UK cheapest solution for reliable power is imports and heat pumps and wind and demand-side management. But it is just a mess coz monopolies and historical commitment to nukes.

     At the end of the day, battery prices came down another 20% this year, just as they do every year. Plus solar and wind getting cheaper, year-on-year. Building a nuke will take a decade, minimum. By then renewables & storage will demolish that nuke on price. 3/3

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     happyinmotion (happyinmotion@mastodon.nz)'s status on Wednesday, 25-Dec-2024 04:45:11 JST happyinmotion

     in reply to

     • kravietz 🦇

     @kravietz @cstross Aus? Wind and solar are anti-correlated. Their problem is finding new uses for midday excess solar. Buy electrons midday at negative price, sell evening at high price means net cost of storage is negative, ie profitable.

     North America has enough metrological diversity that they can build a fat grid and transmit power across the continent for reliable cheap supply. But that would be unAmerican so it's lots of regional batteries. 2/3

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     happyinmotion (happyinmotion@mastodon.nz)'s status on Wednesday, 25-Dec-2024 04:45:12 JST happyinmotion

     in reply to

     • kravietz 🦇

     @kravietz @cstross The nuance is that cost of storage/LFSOE depends upon firmness of rest of the grid at a all timescales. That depends on dispatchable generation, how uncorrelated renewables are, and what imports are possible. There's no single number - grids are all unique and so are their storage costs

     NZ has run-of-river hydro so we already have more hour-to-month storage for free than we need. Our problem is dry winters. Our cheapest solution is over-building wind & PV & geothermal. 1/3

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     kravietz 🦇 (kravietz@agora.echelon.pl)'s status on Wednesday, 25-Dec-2024 04:45:13 JST kravietz 🦇

     in reply to

     • happyinmotion

     @happyinmotion

     100% agreed on the latter. The latter is true for any public utilities - water, healthcare etc. It’s only the US-derived fixation on private funding that makes things expensive that otherwise would be quite cheap. In the UK even water & sewage networks are private and they’re now getting bankrupt (e.g. Thames Water) in spite of the natural monopoly.

     I’m all for public investments in wind and solar, especially that they have to be balanced at the grid level. And this cost (LFSOE - levelized full system cost of electricity) cannot be ignored. Otherwise you end up with PV/wind generation curtailing when it’s excessive, or massively redundant generation capacity when they don’t work.

     When the balancing cost is accounted for, you end up with numbers that are not only not higher than nuclear, but actually much higher. Note that this model assumes LFSCOE calculated for the exclusive use of given source, so e.g. calculation for wind assumes 100% wind, storage and nothing else. A hybrid system where renewables are coupled with nuclear are both low-carbon and much cheaper than either of these sources alone.

     Not that nuclear alone is very expensive - it has the large initial capital cost, but LCOE is actually quite low due to long lifetime and high electricity output. That crazy $160/MWh number that everyone uses comes from Lazard study which openly admits it comes from a single (!) project in the US (!), so it’s extremely biased.

     @cstross

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     happyinmotion (happyinmotion@mastodon.nz)'s status on Wednesday, 25-Dec-2024 04:45:14 JST happyinmotion

     in reply to

     • kravietz 🦇

     @kravietz @cstross yes, nuclear is capital-heavy and gets cheaper if the state provides low-interest loans. But that's also true for solar and wind.

     If you compare on the basis of constant weighted average capital cost then renewables still beat nuclear.

     Or the West could realise what China has realised - the cost of electricity in the 21st century depends upon the cost of loans, so state funding of generation makes electricity cheaper and makes your nation more economically competitive.

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     kravietz 🦇 (kravietz@agora.echelon.pl)'s status on Wednesday, 25-Dec-2024 04:45:15 JST kravietz 🦇

     in reply to
     @cstross
     
     Taishan 1 and 2 were the first EPR reactors in the world, operating since 2018. Much cheaper than EU because of public funding (interest makes up to 60% cost in privately funded projects), lower cost of everything thanks to mostly coal-powered grid and absence of ETS and stable regulatory environment - in EU the problems started after the Fukushima hysteria fuelled largely by Russian gas brokers
     
     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taishan_Nucle...