The difference is a solar farm consists of 4 million identical modules and a quarter billion identical cells. If a cell is faulty, it decreases output of that module by 2%. If a module is faulty it either decreases the string output by 5% or costs $80 and 15 minutes to replace. If many modules are found to have a long term fault later, repowering comes at a cost penalty of about 1c/kWh. Building terawatts of solar involves trillions of identical cells, and trillions of trials to practise making them cheaply with zero penalty for iteration.
A nuclear reactor consists of many thousands of bespoke parts. If one is faulty, at the very least the whole thing is shut down while millions are spent replacing it, or possibly it kills a lot of people. Building terawatts of nuclear involves making each part thousands of times, and the penalty for iteration is thousands of man hours for validation as well as potentially shutting down every power plant with that part. If there is a major systematic flaw you are out 5-20c/kWh and years of output.
There's also the camp that noticed that everything the pro-nuclear propagandists say about the supposed upsides is either paltering or an outright lie, and they constantly resort to slimy rhetorical tricks like saying:
> Those who oppose nuclear power fall in two camps: people who honestly believe there is something insurmountable about nuclear technology, and antihumanists, who think humanity as a whole is bad, and the planet would be much better if we were fewer, the fewer the better (see for example Club of Rome [1]).
> There's also the camp that noticed that everything the pro-nuclear propagandists say about the supposed upsides is either paltering or an outright lie
At this point, both camps are blatantly lying. That's the very nature of a polarized discussion that has lasted for decades with very few new elements.
I guess you can't blame GP for being sour about discussions he's had on that topic. But at the same time, it's kind of odd he didn't notice people from his own side peddling blatant lies.
Yes. The capacity factor is a blatant lie given that units 1 & 2 are about 60%, and the costs are an old estimate of overnight cost without escalation or inflation.
Comparing overnight costs to final all-in prices is one way nukebros love to lie.
You're also pretending operating costs don't exist.
You're also pretending that costs for a solar project in 2015-2019 are costs today. This is another blatant lie.
Longevity is another lie. The median and mean ages of the plants that actually get completed is around 30 years, not 60. The average for nuclear plants that are paid for is even lower because so many do not open at all.
But, can you please do me a favor and tell people around here where you stand?
Do you believe that the technology underlying nuclear reactors is simply uncompetitive and you oppose it because of that? Or you would be very unhappy for nuclear technology to succeed no matter what?
And more importantly, are you happy that humans exist on this planet? Would you prefer for us to be fewer?
What do you think of someone who has 3 children? Is this moral? Or is it a crime?
We've banned this account for repeatedly and egregiously breaking the site guidelines. That's not allowed here, regardless of how right you are or feel you are.
We warned you about this once before (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30275782). Normally I'd have posted another warning rather than banning you, but you've been breaking the rules so shockingly and so frequently that I think we have to.
There's another issue too: single-purpose accounts are not allowed here, so when an account is using HN primarily for battle on one specific topic, as yours has, we end up banning them as well. But although that's an important rule, it's less important than the rules asking people not to attack and abuse others.
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
So a 100MW plant in the US quoted at $110 million including the cost of finance, profit margin, regulatory compliance, insurance and transmission with a capacity factor of 27% has 130MW DC of modules. Some other countries will quote DC so there may be a discrepancy. You can find harmonized comparions in things like the IRENA generation costs report, the ITRPV or the frauenhofer photovoltaics report. The US is also almost all single axis tracking where other countries may have fixed tilt as dominant.
New fixed tilt utility solar in 2023 is about 50-60c/Wdc or 80c/Wac. Single axis is about 70c/Wdc or $1/Wac.
The chinese nuclear project doesn't include inflation since 2008 (40%), cost of finance/escalation, chinese-government-accounting, or insurance. The (admitted) costs per watt of the chinese nuclear program have also increased substantially since 2008. Even with these, the claimed capex per MWh is comparable to solar in the west, but the O&M would make it much more expensive. Solar in china is 20-50% cheaper than the west.
Similarly costs for older nuclear plants in the US tend to exclude the cost of finance/escalation, as well as costs that were paid after they were "finished" due to upgrades needed for reliability (early capacity factors were <50%) and safety due to lessons learnt in incidents like browns ferry.
In the west O&M is about $30/MWh, which overlaps with the all-in cost of solar.
Also note that the cost of the Turkey facility you mentioned includes a factory which will produce many times more modules.
You're amortising the cost over a time period that is in direct contradiction to reality, at an EAF that is in direct contradiction to reality at a cost of capital that doesn't reflect the likelihood of project failure or early closure. On top of excluding all the indirect subsidies.
€11bn for 1.6GW on a European nuke that will run about 70% of the time and statistically will close in around 30 years while costing $30/MWh for O&M is around 16c/kwh
> The local Wikipedia says nuclear ramps up or down at 5%/min. This is faster than any other method of generation.
How is paying extra to ramp at 5%/min once a day "faster than" being able to switch off in seconds and back on in a minute like a wind turbine, or turn on and off in milliseconds as many times as you like like a PV inverter or even stopping starting in minutes like a reciprocating or OCGT peaker or ramping 0-100% in minutes repeatedly like hydro?
Why do that, when you can just present the surplus/deficit coldest-sunniest day in late spring and pretend it is an essential aspect of all renewable generation?
Cube square law also makes small scale hydrogen storage more expensive than batteries.
Then you're back to limited niche uses, or needing expensive, leaky distribution.
The best use of hydrogen for seasonal arbitrage is making it into sponge iron and ammonia for steel and fertiliser then storing that. Then your seasonal-cadence variability is gone.
The mirai has worse range, has less power, is heavier, has less internal space, is bigger, requires more mining if rare minerals for fuel cells, lasts fewer miles before replacing the storage/fuel cell system, refuelling for daily use is much more cumbersome and it costs ten times as much to fuel as current gen EVs.
The supposed overwhelming advantage results in saving 20 minutes on a 1000km trip (if nobody else used the hydrogen station before you, otherwise fuelling times are the same).
With current state of the art batteries being put into next model cars that last bit goes away too.
In what possible world do hydrogen passenger cars have a future?
A nuclear reactor consists of many thousands of bespoke parts. If one is faulty, at the very least the whole thing is shut down while millions are spent replacing it, or possibly it kills a lot of people. Building terawatts of nuclear involves making each part thousands of times, and the penalty for iteration is thousands of man hours for validation as well as potentially shutting down every power plant with that part. If there is a major systematic flaw you are out 5-20c/kWh and years of output.