This must be peak nuclear cultism? Trying to downplay that any evacuation was needed to happen when Fukushima was out of control actively melting down and going through hydrogen explosions.
You are also missing that the evacuation was expanded in stages:
- Accident day: Loss of cooling, 3 km evacuation.
- 1 day after: 10 km. Followed by extended to 20 km when unit 1 exploded. Followed by unit 3 and 4 exploding as well.
What did Japan's nuclear regulators do after Fukushima? They expanded the emergency planning zone from roughly 8 - 10 km to 30 km.
Not sure why you're restricting yourself to only solar and batteries in northern european climate.
We also have, wind, firming and you know. Relying on fossil fuels for the once a decade emergency.
There's no point having the grid be an ideological purity test when we still have agriculture, aviation, shipping, construction, chemicals, heavy industry and so on to decarbonize.
System studies from Australia to Denmark are converging on finding that new nuclear makes the system vastly more expensive. Even when assuming your "NOAK" costs. Because no one would be stupid enough to build new nuclear at Vogtle or Flamanville prices.
Because the problem for nuclear is that it never solved dispatchability. It always relied on fossil fuels to solve the hard times.
You raise the floor, but that's quite meaningless when the hard times are far far above the yearly baseload requirement. Even when factoring in scheduling maintenance around it. And theen adding that your nuclear fleet may be like the Swedish or French one and have half the capacity offline when it is needed.
The person you are responding to is famous on the r/climateshitposting subreddit for making a post per day to take cheap potshots at "nukecels" and responding to every single comment. It's either a bot or someone who doesn't have a job and is extremely vested against nuclear. I'd rather you not engage with them because they (this account and its alt-accounts ?) are relentless and I want you to keep your sanity
Given that you've carved out the "realistic" exception for yourself I now presume you will keep shifting goalposts. But I digress.
System costs have been the central argument against renewables ever since they became competitive on LCOE. Which is why energy-system researchers have spent years developing, validating, and publishing models that account for hourly balancing, storage, transmission, flexibility, and sector coupling.
From Denmark to Australia system cost studies find renewable energy systems vastly cheaper than if involving new nuclear. Even when sensitivity testing very low nuclear costs.
The problem with nuclear is that it still needs the same firming to match an actual grid load. It still needs storage and gas turbines.
A smaller quantity than for renewable grids sure. But given how expensive new nuclear is it doesn't matter in the end.
Your final comment conflates dispatchability with operational flexibility.
Nuclear output is controllable, and French reactors load follow. Although using a fleet controlling which reactor takes which day, and managing their fueling cycle so they can do it.
Conventional nuclear plants are economically optimized for high utilization, cannot start from shutdown on short notice, and don't eliminate the need for capacity that can respond to sudden shortages, demand peaks, and unexpected outages.
There is a significant difference between supplying dependable energy throughout the year and economically covering the relatively few hours when residual demand becomes exceptionally high.
I am not going to follow you Gish gallop and debunk every single "study" that uses the same old wrong assumptions to make nuclear look bad.
As an example, the Australian CSIRO "study" you cite is deeply flawed.
1. Incorrect lifetime assumptions
It assumes nuclear power plants only last 30-35 years. In reality they last 80-100 years. So they are actually 3x cheaper than reported. Same trick as used in the infamous Fraunhofer ISE "study"
2. Incorrect assumptions about sunk costs
The report incorrectly treats already spent capital costs (on renewable infrastructure) as "free".
3. Underestimation of system costs
The report incorrectly averages metrics over longer time periods and thus vastly underestimates the costs of intermittency.
4. Incorrect capacity factors for nuclear.
Capacity factors between 50-80% are assumed. In reality even the world-wide average is over 80% and well-run fleets like in the US are over 90%. Again, same shady trick used in the infamous Fraunhofer ISE "study"
So same-old same-old. And as I said before: not going to debunk every single instance of always-the-same disinformation.
Denmark is now looking at nuclear, because the renewables-only strategy has failed.
> How many hundreds of billions in subsidies and decades wasted until we reach "NOAK with an experienced workforce and robust supply chain"
None. Nuclear is cheap and quick and investments in nuclear not wasted.
We have wasted decades going down the wrong path. As an example, Germany has spent almost 25 years on the failed "Energiewende" and we haven't even completed the easy half. Nuclear did not require subsidies. Intermitten renewables anywhere from €30-50 billion just in subsidies. Per year.
France converted its electricity grid to nuclear in 15 years. For a total of €228 billion in 2011 money. Not "per year", not "subsidies". But total investment.
This does not seem at all grounded in reality? Just all around misinfomration.
The existing French nuclear fleet was built with enormous state support. Germany pays €18B in EEG support. And that is decreasing as old extremely expensive renewables are leaving the problem.
What you are doing is crying about late 2000s and early 2010s renewables being expensive. Let me ask you, what relevance does that have in 2026? We don't pay those prices today.
The reality in 2026 is the outcome of Flamanville 3, Vogtle, Hinkley point C. Then we have modern projects, and proposed subsidies like:
- Darlington SMR: Close to Vogtle
- Polish AP1000: Vogtle like
- Czech APR1000: A step below Vogtle.
- French EPR2 fleet: Absolutely insane at €100 per MWh and interest free loans alreay assuming large learning effects.
And that is before the usual timeline and budget overruns for new nuclear has happened.
Given this reply it seems like you are straying farther reality since the prospect of new nuclear is crumbling. You're not even presenting a logically sound argument. Its just victim complex and dreaming about times past.
The question to answer still remains: Poland. €100 billion. 2026. What cuts the most cumulative CO2, fastest?
A government press release, a financing conference, an academic abstract and a WEF panel. None of those links demonstrates that new nuclear is cheap or quick.
If new nuclear was cheap and quick, why are the recently proposed western subsidies tens of billions per reactor? This just doesn't add you. You realize that right?
Your own financing conference link acknowledges construction costs in the tens of billions, timelines exceeding a decade and unresolved financing.
The DOE fact sheet lists billions in government support. Does that sound cheap and quick to build?
All the links you've presented looks like an industry despereately public handouts from tax money.
But this is not surprising. The nuclear industry doesn't deliver new projects, it currently has product market fit living on tax money handouts. Presenting PowerPoints they hope to never have to flesh out the details on, since that would requrie them to admit to the costs. Just like mPower and NuScale were forced to do. The now shunned previous golden boys.
The question remains unanswered:
Poland. €100 billion. 2026. What cuts the most cumulative CO2, fastest?
> If new nuclear was cheap and quick, why are the recently proposed western subsidies tens of billions per reactor?
They aren't, and some guarantees are necessary, because VEE subsidies have dramatically distorted the markets. Even the cheapest producer cannot compete with subsidized overproduction that drives prices to zero or negative, with the government picking up the decidedly non-zero cost for just those producers that are causing the problem.
And you are projecting the reality of VEE subsidies onto nuclear.
I asked Google AI if subsidies for intermittent renewables in Germany will fall:
Total volatile renewable energy (VRE) subsidies in Germany are projected to rise significantly in the short-to-medium term (peaking around 2029 at over €22 billion), driven by falling wholesale electricity prices and legacy contract obligations.
In the long term, direct generation subsidies are legally structured to fall as older contracts expire, but the total public financial burden will likely remain high or shift into different mechanisms—such as grid infrastructure funding, battery storage incentives, and backup power plant strategies—to keep the structurally unprofitable intermittent energy system viable.
Renewable subsidies are being phased out all over the world. They aren't needed anymore.
And now you've shifted the goalposts again. First, nuclear was supposedly cheap and quick. Now it needs enormous government guarantees because renewables have somehow "distorted" the market.
So which way is it? Is new nuclear cheap and competitive, or does it need taxpayers to absorb its financial risks?
You can't have it both ways.
Why should we waste our limited resources on ruinously expensive new nuclear that won't deliver meaningful decarbonization?
The question remains unanswered:
Poland. €100 billion. 2026. What cuts the most cumulative CO2, fastest?
Much earlier. The early nuclear industry, which was shared military and civilian, was incredibly nasty. While also covering up issues. Leaving us with enormous clean up bills to this date.
Sellafield's current expected bill is £127B over the next 100 years. Hanford is looking at a cost between $364B and $589.4B.
The imagined economics sold to the public never delivered followed by accidents like Windscale, TMI and Chernobyl.
With climate change the nuclear industry saw the possibility of finally having actual product market fit. So another round of subsidies were created in the 2000s and 2010s. At the same time renewables were seen as the upstart, and storage barely crossed any minds.
The outcome being ruinously expensive plants as seen in Vogtle, Virgil C. Summer, Olkiluoto, Flamanville 3, Hinkley Point c and so on.
What we're seeing now is a token investment to subsidize the necessary industry for military research and reactors. But no one expects it to deliver electricity at a relevant price, or point in time, compared to renewables and storage.
But not anywhere near the nuclear frenzy seen online.
Hanford could be handled for far less (no idea about the UK's sites but probably the same situation). Its the result of making the atomic bombs during WWII. The acids could be neutralized and the uranium separated out. However, a contract that just keeps putting the material in new containers every few years is much more profitable. The idea it should take hundreds of billions to do is pretty much about an nearly infinite time horizon of maintenance instead of just cleaning up the site.
Also, Hanford has nothing to do with civilian NPPs and the processes used there would never be done as part of power generation.
Finally, the cost of NPPs is almost always about the lawsuits. Look at how much Korea and China payed for their NPPs. It was less than 20% of what we pay, they were online in less than 5 years and they are producing 2.8GW for each country for the last decade.
PS The UK has never deployed a standardized design for a NPP. All of their NPPs are different types of experimental designs. Just buy a AP1400 and be done with it for far cheaper.
This revisionist history about military and civilian nuclear being two completely different spheres is getting tiresome.
They were deeply entwined, and still are. The AEC established in 1946 was responsible for both nuclear weaposn and peaceful nuclear technology.
There's been a bunch of civilian dual purpose reactors ran at hanford.
Yes. Much of the waste is from the weapons program. But saying that the site has nothing to do with civilian nuclear plants is just you making stuff up.
It is sad when the premier example touted is South Korea. The country where 68 people received prison sentences totaling 253 years and 9 months from the corruption scandal involving falsified safety certificates, fraudulent components and bribery.
China is also especially funny. Despite the nuke bros perfect environment of stable regulations, cheap workforce, state financing, authoritarian rule and so on nuclear remains insignificant. Sitting at 4% of the grid mix and shrinking. While renewables and storage are absolutely exploding in scale.
I think "baseload" has almost lost its meaning in these discussions.
Renewables have been displacing traditional baseload generation for years. What grids actually need is reliable dispatchable capacity, peaking power and firming.
People keep bringing up winter cold spells and claiming we need "baseload" to handle them, apparently without realizing that nuclear never solved those demand peaks either.
Historically that's been the job of dispatchable generation.
Which means new nuclear is about the worst thing we can spend our limited resources on since it won't be coming online until the 2040s, and then at a ruinosuly expensive price.
Meanwhile renewables and storage are reshaping our global energy system due to being the cheapest globally scalable energy source in human history.
We also need to keep in mind nuclear supply chains. After 21 sanction packages the EU still haven't sanctioned Russia's nuclear industry.
We're simply too deeply entangled across the entire supply chain: nuclear fuel, enrichment, reprocessing, technological partnerships, reactor maintenance, new construction and more.
Why is it irrelevant? There has been recent research on just this question. It is still in its infancy with simplified models but their findings suggest that as grids decarbonize, storage will increasingly take over the price setting role traditionally played by conventional generators.
The new merit order: The viability of energy-only electricity markets with only intermittent renewable energy sources and grid-scale storage
Which is why we have ancillary services and grid regulations.
We aim for those to be real-time markets as well. But for some services that doesn’t fit so we instead buy the services on longer contracts.
The goal is of course to have the ancillary services to be as small and few as possible since it is a supplement creating market based pricing for the things the marginal net energy market itself doesn’t provide adequately today.
You are also missing that the evacuation was expanded in stages:
- Accident day: Loss of cooling, 3 km evacuation.
- 1 day after: 10 km. Followed by extended to 20 km when unit 1 exploded. Followed by unit 3 and 4 exploding as well.
What did Japan's nuclear regulators do after Fukushima? They expanded the emergency planning zone from roughly 8 - 10 km to 30 km.
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