
German solar and wind are triple the cost of French nuclear, last half as long - garyclarke27
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2019/11/france-spent-less-on-nuclear-to-get-about-double-what-germany-gets-from-renewables.html
======
brmgb
No one knows the actual cost of French Nuclear. France has yet to dismantle
one of its end of life reactor.

Everyone know that the provisioned costs don't make sense. It was pointed by
the national court of auditors in 2012 and 2014 [1] and again in a report from
the national assembly in 2017 [2]. We are not even taking about puny mistakes.
Even the actualisation ratio used is garbage.

[1]
[https://www.ccomptes.fr/sites/default/files/EzPublish/201405...](https://www.ccomptes.fr/sites/default/files/EzPublish/20140527_rapport_cout_production_electricite_nucleaire.pdf)

[2] [http://www2.assemblee-
nationale.fr/documents/notice/14/rap-i...](http://www2.assemblee-
nationale.fr/documents/notice/14/rap-info/i4428/\(index\)/depots)

~~~
littlestymaar
This is true but people tend to forget one thing: decommissioning doesn't
necessarily means dismantling. Dismantling is a tough challenge (mainly
because of the civil engineering part btw, which becomes difficult to manage
when you add the constraints from nuclear: “What do you mean when you say we
can't use dynamite? oO”) but it's only a legal obligation not an absolute one.
With government support to change the law, EDF could just unload the fuel
(price is well known, they do it all the time), and pickle the primary circuit
in place (the price is also known, they did it a few times already) and now
you have a place where all contamination (which comes from neutronic
activation) is trapped inside the structure (Co60 in the rebar of the
structure mostly) and the biggest risk is asbestos… (like your nearest
decommissionined building in your neighborhood, even houses).

This option leaves you with a few ugly buildings in the middle of nowhere, but
the cost unbeatable (even way less than decommissioning thousands of wind
turbines).

~~~
eqvinox
> This option leaves you with a few ugly buildings in the middle of nowhere,
> but the cost unbeatable (even way less than decommissioning thousands of
> wind turbines).

Aren't you forgetting something? Buildings slowly deteriorate, even if not
used. So now you have to maintain the disused reactor, for ... how long
exactly?

(Amendment: wind, rain, sunlight, rodents, ... idiots with power tools ...
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident)
)

~~~
littlestymaar
> Buildings slowly deteriorate, even if not used. So now you have to maintain
> the disused reactor, for ... how long exactly?

And here comes radioactive decays to the rescue! Half-life of Co60 is a little
bit more than 5 years, for instance. The important thing to consider is that
dangerous radioactive materials are also the ones with the shortest half-life
(because the same number of atoms emits more radiation per second), so as long
as you took out the fuel[1] you don't have anything really dangerous for too
long. It could still be a problem when decommissioning (because you spill
everything out in a short time and you have workers just nearby) but if you
let the building just decay slowly, you don't have issues.

[1]: the fuel is a bit special, because it has long half-life but it's still
dangerous for two reasons. 1) it's alpha emitters, the worst kind of
radioactive substance. 2) the concentration is enormous.

~~~
eqvinox
Co-60 isn't the only side product though. A quick Google search yields me
[https://mitnse.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/radiation_npp_07....](https://mitnse.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/radiation_npp_07.pdf)
which lists:

Krypton-85 Beta/Gamma 10 years

Strontium-90 Beta 28 years

Iodine-131 Beta/Gamma 8 days

Cesium-137 Beta/Gamma 30 years

Carbon-14 Beta 5770 years

Zinc-65 Beta/Gamma 245 days

Cobalt-60 Beta/Gamma 5 years

Iron-59 Beta/Gamma 45 days

Tritium Beta 12 years

I'm also not sure where you got the idea that alpha emitters are the worst
kind of radioactive substance; alpha radiation is easily shielded.

On the other hand, sure, just leaving the reactor there for 50 years may be
part of a cost effective solution.
[https://www.dndkm.org/DOEKMDocuments/BestPractices/26-EFCOG%...](https://www.dndkm.org/DOEKMDocuments/BestPractices/26-EFCOG%20Best%20Practice%20-%20SRS%20P%20and%20R%20Reactor%20Basins%20ISD%20Final.pdf)
(linked from
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_decommissioning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_decommissioning))
claims a 71% reduction in decomissioning costs. However, this includes neither
fuel waste disposal costs nor future costs for full dismantling at some point.

~~~
MrEldritch
Alpha radiation is easily shielded from external exposure, but for that exact
reason it's also the most damaging; gamma radiation, for instance, will mostly
pass right through you, while alphas will deposit all of their energy right
into your cells. They're shielded by your dead skin, but if you _ingest_ or
_inhale_ them, then there's no dead skin to protect you, and all that
radiation goes straight into your cells.

In fact, according to the weighting system that converts joules of energy
absorbed (Grays) to severity of radiation dose (Seiverts), a joule of alpha
radiation is _20 times worse_ than a joule of X-rays, beta radiation, or gamma
rays.

And it's _ingestion or inhalation_ that we're worried about from environmental
contamination; not that the environment itself would become so radioactive,
Fallout-style, that you'd take rads just from standing around - but that
radioactive dust from demolition might get into the air, or that contaminants
might leak into the groundwater.

~~~
eqvinox
Yeah, but - context. We're talking about leaving a disused reactor around in
some type of safe manner. Ideally it won't be leaking... but some radioactive
material is still in it. Aren't the beta & gamma radiators more dangerous,
even as far as irradiating other parts of the structure itself is considered?

~~~
MrEldritch
Neither beta nor gamma radiation will "activate" other parts of the structure
to make them radioactive themselves; only neutron radiation (which can convert
stable isotopes into unstable isotopes with more neutrons in them) can do
that.

Nor will they weaken the structure.

So as long as people don't enter the reactor without proper precautions,
there's really no reason to worry about radiation inside it. And this problem
can be solved pretty well with a fence and warning signs.

~~~
littlestymaar
> So as long as people don't enter the reactor without proper precautions,
> there's really no reason to worry about radiation inside it. And this
> problem can be solved pretty well with a fence and warning signs.

The buildings being designed as a bunker also helps. Just add a single
guardian and his dog just to be sure nobody is actively trying to break
through the concrete walls and you're good to go.

------
hannob
There's a major flaw in the argument of this article. They calculate what
Germany has payed in the past decades, including the very early phase of
solar+wind development. You can of course compare any number of things,
whether it makes sense or not.

But for the question how to proceed with future energy it's completely
irrelevant what solar+wind costed in 2005. We only care what it costs now and
in the future. "Solar was super expensive in 2005, so we shouldn't build cheap
solar in 2019" is not a useful or logical argument.

The key thing about the german renewable subsidies (and a few other countries,
but particularly for solar it was mostly germany) is that they brought
wind+solar from being overly expensive exotic technologies to cheap mass
technologies.

~~~
ThomPete
However nuclear is calculated at true cost, solar and wind is not.

And nuclear is also calculated in the past plus its been underdeveloped the
last 30 years.

Backup energy for wind and solar is not included wich have to be either coal,
gas, oil or nuclear to compensate for the low capacity factor wind and solar
which is at 20-40 compared to nuclear which is at 90.

So even if wind and solar were cheaper it only provides at the will of the
weather.

I would love to se a proper non-partisan calculation where everything gets
calculated in.

~~~
the_why_of_y
How exactly is the insurance that nuclear gets for catastrophic events priced
in? You know, the insurance that no private insurer is willing to offer, so
what's going to happen is the nuclear operating company declares bankruptcy
and the tax payer pays for the cleanup.

~~~
ThomPete
The operating company is insured and pays for the cleanup.

~~~
whalebird
Insured by whom? You need to understand how insurance companies operate: They
gather data, they calculate the risk vs. the cost of paying out, they add a
markup - that's your price. There is not enough data to do this with
catastrophic nuclear accidents.

~~~
ThomPete
I understand how they work and I have done work both for insurance companies
and re-insurers, nuclear power plants are insured a little different.

Here are some facts on how it works.

 _" Currently, owners of nuclear power plants pay premiums for $375 million in
private liability coverage for each nuclear reactor they own. If there is an
incident at a nuclear plant, and the $375 million in coverage is not
sufficient, the owner’s coverage is supplemented by the second layer of
protection, which is supplied by the nuclear power industry as a whole. Under
the Price-Anderson Act, all reactor owners are committed to paying their share
of any damages that exceed the incident reactor owner’s first-tier limit of
$375 million—up to $111.9 million per reactor. Since are currently 104
reactors in operation, the amount that would be available in the industry pool
to pay claims totals $12.6 billion (2011). "_

It works because nuclear accidents are extremely rare and less dangerous than
wind and solar let alone coal, oil and gas.

[https://www.iii.org/article/insurance-coverage-nuclear-
accid...](https://www.iii.org/article/insurance-coverage-nuclear-accidents)

~~~
the_why_of_y
Thanks, this reminds me that I read this article half a year ago and forgot...
my point is that it's not sufficient as the Fukushima Daiichi accident cost a
lot more than $12.6 billion, let me just lazily link to my old comment on
that:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20014159](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20014159)

~~~
ThomPete
But what's the point though? Three Mile Island was fully paid by the
insurance.

With regards to Fukushima the powerplant didn't kill anyone, the tsunami, on
the other hand, did and of course, the public needs to pay for as it was force
majure not the actual nuclear power plant that created the disaster.

And Tjernobyl was in a country which didn't have any private ownership so of
course the public paid for it.

What other cases can you come up with where insurance didn't cover it?

It's pretty important to get things into proper perspectives here.

------
thawaway1837
Germany basically started the shift to renewable energy. As a result, theirs
is probably amongst the most expensive solar/wind build outs ever.

Solar and wind energy costs have dropped exponentially since a decade ago, to
the point where even if the author is correct about the German costs being 3
times more expensive than the French costs, wind and solar will be cheaper
than nuclear today, since their costs have reduced dramatically in the last
decade. Utility scale solar, for example, is about 90% cheaper today than it
was in 2009 when Germany started building out the bulk of its solar energy
infrastructure.

In other words, with no other differences, simply the drop in prices of wind
and solar means that wind/solar built out today would be about 2-3 times
cheaper than France’s nuclear buildout.

Of course, other things have indeed changed since France started building out
its nuclear infrastructure. Primarily, nuclear’s negative learning curve has
kicked in to the point that even after adjusting for inflation, nuclear today
is far more expensive than nuclear when France built out the bulk of its
nuclear energy.

Finally, Germany is not even close to the best candidates for solar and wind
energy, whereas France is one of the best candidates for nuclear (by
definition, it’s one of 10 or so possible candidates, and any new state is
likely to be worse at nuclear than France was).

~~~
unstrafed
Solar and wind require a huge geographic footprint to generate significant
energy. Because of this constraint, the cost of wind and solar is almost
entirely opportunity cost, not the mere accounting cost of producing an extra
panel/turbine. The basic problem is twofold: First, as you keep adding
solar/wind capacity, you inevitably get diminishing returns from worse
wind/sunshine conditions, so additional installation is less productive.
(Think about solar panels in valleys or windmills in low-wind areas.) Second,
as wind and solar cannibalize land area to provide energy, the price of that
land increases substantially as other uses are displaced. For example, let's
say that a country had to displace 40% of its productive arable land in order
to install wind & solar. Then the price of its farmland would skyrocket as the
country continued to deploy wind & solar. In both cases, solar and wind become
much more expensive per deployed panel than simply the cost per panel, which
is indeed pretty inexpensive. FWIW, the article attempts to make this point,
but it frankly isn't very well written, and so the point is a bit hard to
understand.

As to your point about countries situated for nuclear vs wind+solar, what do
you mean? Do you have any metrics? If I were to guess, wind and solar are
extremely sensitive to the geography of a country (including physical and
political-economic); I'd guess nuclear is mildly sensitive to political
geography. Splitting the atom is not significantly harder in Indonesia or Peru
than it is in France. The fact that much of French land area is rural might
make nuclear marginally more useful there than in a place like e.g. Germany or
the UK, with several major cities dotted across the relatively densely
populated landscape. (Based on this inference, I'd imagine that the US, China,
Canada and Russia would be the top four countries for nuclear, and Monaco or
Luxembourg might be the worst?)

~~~
adrianN
We have a lot of unused land that could be filled with solar panels: rooftops.
Until every suitable roof is plastered with them, I don't think that we have a
land issue. Similarly for wind, the problem is not that we don't have the
land, the problem is NIMBYs that don't want turbines to "ruin their view".

~~~
natmaka
Off-shore wind farms haven't so much of a geographical footprint problem, and
their efficiency is neat.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_offshore_wind_farms_in...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_offshore_wind_farms_in_Germany)

~~~
baud147258
Off-shore wind farm have a geographical footprint, especially in area with
heavy ship traffic

------
ClumsyPilot
Nuclear lives or dies by Project Management and some countries just suck at
it. When you need a reactor, it's a controversial big-ticket item/government
project. Countries with strong central planning can handle that (France and
China).

In UK our government can't build a train line without fucking it up[1]. If we
had open-source Fusion reactors tomorrow, they would commission it, then
cancel it, then privatise it, then find out it was built upside-down. There
would be a chain of 15 contractors involved and they would all be suing each-
other. Then the taxpayer would cover the cost anyway.

We really need SMRs [small modular reactors]. Those would be ~100 ton devices
built at a factory, and all quality controls would be done there. They are
subject to normal market mechanisms. Nuclear would become more like solar and
wind. When you need them, you just buy them, get them delivered and follow
instructions to install them.

You don't need to create a 20-year old political football for party politics.

[1]
[https://www.ft.com/content/27ab2f5c-a976-11e9-984c-fac8325aa...](https://www.ft.com/content/27ab2f5c-a976-11e9-984c-fac8325aaa04)

------
greatpatton
Strange that the article is not talking about the latest french reactor
Flamanville 3. This EPR reactor is already 10 years late and will cost more
than 13b€ For 160MW. And this just for construction cost and not for
running/dismantling it.

Then I wonder what practical exemple would support that after 15 years a solar
PV installation has to be rebuilt.

~~~
grumpydba
It's the first of its generation and is quite a failure on many aspects. It's
not representative of all the nuclear reactors in France, far from it. Thus it
is quite insignificant.

~~~
lispm
> It's the first of its generation and is quite a failure on many aspects.
> It's not representative of all the nuclear reactors in France, far from it.

It's the only new one, based on designs of early 90s and earlier. The others
are mostly all old and many with completely outdated designs from the 70s.
Many wouldn't survive the crash of a larger airbus or boeing aircraft.

~~~
grumpydba
I don't judge a software on an alpha release.

~~~
draw_down
It isn’t software

~~~
grumpydba
To stay in France, it's a bit as if you said the cathedrals construction was a
total failure basing your judgment on the Beauvais cathedral which also
suffered of the second system effect.

------
barney54
This article is an interesting thought exercise and it makes some good points
about how expensive Germany’s renewable build out has been. However, these are
all sunk costs and don’t matter going forward. What matters is the cost today.

Also, the total terawatt hours isn’t nearly as important as keeping the lights
on. Nukes are great and renewables are great, but this isn’t a contest to see
which generates the most electricity over the course of a year, but rather we
need to keeps the lights on by using the sources that make the best sense to
do that at lower cost or lower co2 emissions.

~~~
leetcrew
> However, these are all sunk costs and don’t matter going forward. What
> matters is the cost today.

one of the major points from the article is that Germany's renewable build out
is _not_ a one time capital cost. according to the article, the German power
infrastructure is more expensive and has half the expected lifetime compared
to France. unless solar and wind decrease in cost much faster than nuclear,
there's no way it ends up being cheaper in the long run for Germany.

I'm not knowledgeable enough to say whether the figures quoted in the article
are actually correct/complete, but if you accept them, it seems France is
getting a lot more bang for its buck.

~~~
pfdietz
The short lifespan of renewables is deliberate and correct.

When technology is changing rapidly, optimizing for long lifespan is stupid.
The long life of a nuclear reactor is an illusion now, since solar and wind
are improving so fast that they would not operate their full 40+ years.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
Once a new plant is already constructed, shutting it down early would only
make sense if the average generation price fell below the _operating_ cost,
excluding the construction and decommissioning costs which by that point are
already historical costs. Solar panels could be free and not be able to match
that price, because they still require land and energy storage and labor to
install and maintain, so the nuclear plant would still operate the full 40+
years and have that long to amortize the construction.

~~~
imtringued
I think you are not properly emphasizing the differences. A nuclear powerplant
MUST run for more than 40 years. Renewable energy CAN run for more than 20
years but since costs are going down and efficiencies going up it makes more
sense to upgrade your infrastructure. This is not a bug it's a feature.

~~~
pfdietz
This also means that when PV costs finally flatten out, there's a final cost
reduction to be had from uncompressing their lifespan to the 40+ years nuclear
is already counting on.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
Neither of those things are true.

The reason you replace solar panels after 20 years rather than 40 is that they
degrade and stop producing as much power. There is no option to run them for
40 years at their original generation capacity. The alternative is to keep
using the old panels but add more panels on top of that to make up the
difference. But then you still have to buy _some_ new panels and on top of
that you need to use more land instead of reusing the existing land, which may
not be any cheaper than reusing the existing land by replacing all of the old
panels.

And the cheaper the panels get the _shorter_ their lifespan gets because the
point when the generation loss from older/degraded panels exceeds the
replacement cost comes sooner. It doesn't suddenly get longer when the price
flattens out, it just stops getting any shorter than it already is by that
point.

------
danielharan
"France completed construction on 76% of its current 58 reactors at an
inflation-adjusted cost of $330 billion (€290 billion). The complete buildout
of the 58 reactors was less €400 billion."

Whoever managed to build plants in the past must have retired. "Flamanville is
just one of three projects being built in Europe using the next-generation EPR
technology. The other two are the Olkiluoto project in Finland, which is more
than a decade late, and the UK’s Hinkley Point, which is also delayed and
mired in controversy over its high costs."
[https://www.ft.com/content/877eedae-f987-11e9-a354-36acbbb0d...](https://www.ft.com/content/877eedae-f987-11e9-a354-36acbbb0d9b6?fbclid=IwAR39vkPiK-
TEBF5gmzoTe5gc9r6xXez8uFpbjMPwGCfF5NOCadq4BEsYcpY)

Yes, in theory new nuclear plants could be small, modular and safe.

In practice, the biggest challenge is political rather than technical. How do
you set up institutions that can deliver these projects on time and on budget?

In the time these plants have been delayed, solar prices have dropped more
than 80%. By the time they're scheduled to be finished, solar should cost 50%
less than today.

Germany overpaid by a lot, which is the price for building a local industry
and being pioneers in a new technology. I hope it works out for them. Either
way, humanity will owe them a debt for this.

~~~
reedx8
I so happen to disagree, but well reasoned point. However, please abstain from
using theory in that context. What you mean is a conjecture, or hypothesis.
Anything substantiated by evidence is in fact a theory. Those that are not are
hypotheses. In fact, theories work in practice. That’s why they are theories -
quantum theory, germ theory, general and special relativity theory. Etc..

~~~
therealdrag0
Words have multiple meanings. This use of "theory" exists in all dictionaries
and is well used and accepted.

Instead of trying to control language, we should encourage appropriate
interpretation of context and meaning.

------
just_steve_h
Fascinating that an article with so much detailed information doesn't include
a discussion of waste and the costs associated with handling and storing it
safely for [checks notes] 10,000 years.

~~~
CptFribble
All the nuclear waste we've ever made in the USA stacks about 3 barrels high
on a single football field, about .002 square miles.

One of USA's deserts is around 190,000 square miles.

I'm sure we can find someplace to store it all.

~~~
giomasce
If it is so simple, I wonder why the problem takes so much discussion to be
solved...

~~~
grumpydba
Because of the irrational fear of nuclear.

~~~
maweki
The waste is irrationally still radiating for 10.000 years? A reactor might be
safe in some sense, but the waste certainly is not.

~~~
DuskStar
I mean, the chemical waste from photovoltaic production is also still poison
for 10,000+ years - lots of heavy metals and other nasty shit there. But we
don't seem to be quite so afraid of it...

------
pfdietz
Germany pushed PV ten years ago to help drive it down its experience curve.
This was spectacularly successful. PV modules are now nearly an order of
magnitude cheaper than they were then, and PV is delivering at a fraction of
the levelized cost per kWh of new nuclear plants.

~~~
patfla
I think China played a much more important role in driving down PV module
costs than Germany. Germany was one source of demand - China has amounted to
about all of the supply.

Germany has an important coal industry and lobby and remains a large user of
coal.

~~~
lispm
Germany invested a lot very early into technology building for mass production
of efficient PV. The cheap mass production in China came later...

~~~
patfla
Actually if one looks it up (I have many times), as the Chinese industry was
developing (meaning a while ago now), a large part of the key cell technology
that China used came from a research group at the University of New South
Wales in Australia.

There's useful research done around the world.

I think where German companies felt they might maintain a manufacturing
presence was in machinery infrastructure - whether the machines that populate
the factory floors that manufacture either cells of modules or machines (say,
inverters) or that are used downstream of electrical production in a module.

I was last in this space some yrs ago but it's not clear to me just how much
of a presence German companies have been able to keep in either.

One industry web site is here:

[https://www.pv-tech.org/](https://www.pv-tech.org/)

and if I wanted to ascertain German presence in the industry (including some
aspects of research) I might look through this site.

------
aussiegreenie
What total bullshit.

No country would commit to any new nuclear plants unless it is a cover for a
weapons program. (UK)

Here is a simple test, would any privately-owned utility buy a new nuclear
power plant without a government guarantee? No.

A nuclear plant if ever finished as half are abandoned takes about 20 yrs to
build (eg Flamanville / Olkiluoto)

A 1G PV plant with storage with 25% utilisation would be built in a year. With
a capital cost of 7%-10% of nuclear or about 1/3 adjusting for utilisation.

There are three costs for a powerplant:

1\. Capital costs - most are 20%- 30% equity and the rest debt.

2\. Fuel costs - How much is the coal, gas or other fuels used to create the
power.

3\. Operations and Maintenance (O&M) - All thermal plants (solar thermal,
nuclear, gas or coal etc) use high-pressure steam. The O&M on steam is about
USD 20 per MW-h.

So, if you had a solar thermal plant (Ivanpah) the steam O&M is about the same
price as total generation from PV.

Based on the average of Flamanville, Olkiluoto and Hinkley Point here are some
reasonable guesses.

Capital Cost: USD 15 per watt (pv with storage USD 0.50)

O&M - USD 40 per MW-h (Ops 10 + steam 20 + closure 10)

Fuel - USD 10 per MW-h

~~~
mc32
Taiwan, Japan have nuclear power plants and do not have weapons programs.

~~~
buzzkillington
Also: Belgium, Spain, Holland, Switzerland, Chehia, Sovenia, Romania,
Bulgaria, Sweden, Finland, Ukraine, and others:
[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9b/Nuclear_...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9b/Nuclear_power_percentage.svg)

OP is wrong, and wrong on every sub claim.

~~~
audunw
Where do all these countries get their reactors from? I don’t know about most
of them, but I remember reading that Swedens was Westinghouse, and Finland is
getting their latest one from France?

~~~
kalleboo
The majority of the Swedish reactors were designed and built by the Swedish
ASEA (now ABB), but their nuclear division was sold to Westinghouse in 2000

------
acd
But the nuclear waste lasts for thousands of years. Unless we feed the nuclear
waste into breeder reactors which can utilize the waste.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste)
"High-level waste"

Solar panels needs to be designed to be recycled.

------
deeviant
This just in, the cost of new green energy is more expensive than mostly
amortized, entrenched nuclear power that has yet to enter it's least
profitable period.

~~~
belorn
That is not what the article claim. The argument is that Germany spend more
money for a solution that results in 46% green energy and 56% dirty energy
than France that get 92% green energy and 8% dirty energy.

If they are correct is up to debate, and one worthy to have considered the
political aspect of the claims. It is also important to note that they are
defining green energy based on green house emissions. Still, if we are to have
any meaningful discussion it is important to discuss the claims they make.

------
mncolinlee
It's worth noting that Germany has less solar energy potential anywhere in
their country than in any single state in the USA, including Alaska. Yet they
had more solar deployed in watts than the entire USA for a long time.

~~~
therealdrag0
Ya I was gonna 'complain' about solar being constrained by geography, but then
I saw this map
[https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/solarwa/pages/93/attac...](https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/solarwa/pages/93/attachments/original/1466049471/NREL-
pv-map-us-germany-spain.jpg?1466049471)

------
foxylad
One massive differentiator that is often ignored is scalability - as in can it
be scaled DOWN?

Nuclear has to be done in massive scale, which causes all sorts of problems:
project complexity and cost; security; security of supply; transmission costs.
Renewables are very attractive in that light.

~~~
x220
Has human electricity consumption scaled down?

>Renewables are very attractive in that light

Yes, and only in the light. Once the sun goes down and the wind dies down,
you'll have to turn off your heaters and turn off your televisions.

~~~
chess_buster
Yeah, which does not happen on grid scale.

------
ajross
This is comparing the cost of building new power capacity in Germany to the
cost of operating existing plants in France! You can't get any more spun than
that.

That is, renewables are new technology and being built out rapidly. Nuclear
capacity is 3-4 decades old and the build-out investment was recouped long
ago. France _absolutely cannot_ build new reactors 3x cheaper than Germany can
put up equivalent windmills, and to argue that is absolutely laughable. This
is a ridiculous article.

~~~
briwang2050
It compared the cost of building the nuclear reactors in France to the cost of
building Solar, Wind and biomass in Germany. It also looked at the cost and
amount of energy produced from the last five years of construction in Germany.
So the newer and cheaper solar and wind. 160 billion euros for 70 TWh per
year. France built 400 Terawatt hours per year from 290 billion euros. France
has run them for over 30 years.

China's more recent nuclear construction was also cited. $150 billion for 300
TWh per year.

80% of the world's new nuclear reactors are being built in China, India,
Russia and South Korea. Those are coming in at a price of $2000-3000 per KW. A
gigawatt nuclear reactor at $2-3 billion each built in 4-6 years. A gigawatt
nuclear reactor can generate 8 Terawatt hours per year.

[https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-
library/economic-a...](https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-
library/economic-aspects/economics-of-nuclear-power.aspx)

A fully amortized nuclear power plant generates power at about 2 cents per
kwh. [http://www.world-
nuclear.org/uploadedFiles/org/info/pdf/Econ...](http://www.world-
nuclear.org/uploadedFiles/org/info/pdf/EconomicsNP.pdf)

Germany, between 2006 and 2017, increased the cost of electricity for
households by 50%. (per OECD)

[http://www.oecd-nea.org/ndd/pubs/2019/7299-system-costs.pdf](http://www.oecd-
nea.org/ndd/pubs/2019/7299-system-costs.pdf)

French electricity costs are just 59% of German electricity prices. France
produces one-tenth the carbon pollution from electricity compared to Germany.

~~~
strainer
If nuclear plants really do generate at about 2 cents per kWh, how come the
most established and respected power industry pricing analysis finds that it
costs over six times that - between 12 cents and 19 cents per kWh ?[1]

Where does the 2 cents figure come from? - A website commissioned explicitly
to promote nuclear power industry. Have some discernment, please.

[1] [https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-
energy-...](https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-and-
levelized-cost-of-storage-2019/)

------
lispm
> Nuclear plants can last 40-80+ years

French nuclear power plants will need >>$100 billion investments in the near
future to keep them running.

Many of them will reach their projected life time in the coming 2020 decade.
Let's see how France will replace them or keep them running. My bet is that
they keep them running, because they have little chance to replace them in the
20-30 decade. For the French government, which owns most of the plants though
EDF, the problem to replace them is greater than the perceived security
problem.

If France would NOW start to plan (plan -> build -> operate) for additional
nuclear plants, then it would take at least 15-20 years until a new one is
operational.

(edit) France may want to decide in the early 20s about six new EPR 2 with 15
years construction time... Thus the current nuclear landscape has to be kept
running until the end 30s.

> 80 nuclear reactors would now cost €1600 billion euros for Germany. This
> would still be cheaper than the estimated costs for the solar and wind
> buildout that is underway.

It's difficult to set up the renewable energy landscape in Germany, but it
comes with decentralized lower-risk technologies. Stuff a less state-oriented
economy can built. Germany by far has not a centralized state controlled
economy like France. Thus the German Energiewende is also a way to
decentralize energy production and to get away from a state controlled
oligopoly for energy production - currently the electricity production is
still largely controlled by four large companies which have their own regions.

[https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_großen_Vier_(Energieversor...](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_großen_Vier_\(Energieversorgung\))

For several years none of these big four companies has really invested in and
supported the Energiewende - because they surely want to keep their monopoly
in their region. Which is the opposite of an open market for energy
production.

For 80 new nuclear power plants there is no space in a relatively densely
populated country like Germany with a short coast.

The local acceptance in the population of new and large-scale nuclear is
around zero. Null. Nothing. Every new nuclear will face much longer delays in
court than any wind turbine ever will. Nuclear is a technology that's dead in
Germany. If we look at the US, there hasn't been much progress on nuclear
power plants either - even though the country is much larger, less dense
populated AND has a need for nuclear technology in the military. Nuclear
worked better in a centralized France which needs nuclear technology for its
military or in more authoritarian countries like China where independent
control does not exist.

> 80 nuclear reactors would now cost €1600 billion euros for Germany.

and would take >4 decades to be rolled out. By then Germany is 90% renewable
for electricity production. But with a decentralized modern grid.

France is currently struggling to build ONE new nuclear power plant:
Flamanville. A technical design of the early 90s. Four times more expensive
than projected and going online maybe in 2023 - with a construction start from
2007. Largely state financed and state controlled.

[http://world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/EDF-warns-of-added-
co...](http://world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/EDF-warns-of-added-costs-of-
Flamanville-EPR-weld-r)

~~~
Mirioron
If there's no space for nuclear power plants, how are you going to find space
for renewables? I can't think of any renewable sources that would take less
space than nuclear, especially in Europe since we're further north than the US
and that makes solar take up even more space.

~~~
lispm
> If there's no space for nuclear power plants

Renewable energy production and nuclear power plants have very different space
requirements.

> find space for renewables

Germany has more than 30000 wind turbines. For example here in North Germany
it's planned to increase the offshore wind energy production by a factor of
three in the coming decade. This offshore space is available.

~~~
loeg
> Renewable energy production and nuclear power plants have very different
> space requirements.

Chiefly, that wind and solar require _much more_ of it.

~~~
adrianN
You can only put nuclear power plants next to sufficiently large rivers that
can provide cooling. On the other hand you can put solar panels pretty much on
every roof and wind turbines in any place with sufficiently low NIMBY density
and a bit of wind.

------
Johnny555
_Germany’s solar farms will have to be rebuilt every 15-25 years_

Why is that? Do solar panels really degrade to the point where they are
unprofitable to run after 15 - 25 years?

~~~
pgeorgi
There are multiple factors at work: There's ongoing maintenance as with
everything, and you can probably accumulate its costs into it meaning "you're
paying for a new one every 40 years through maintenance alone". Yield is going
down over time (solar panels are sold with guarantees like "80% efficiency
after 20 years"). And finally, technology is improving: replacing these 2006
solar panels in 2020 not only gives you back the base yield of a 2006 panel,
but the base yield of a 2020 panel (see
[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b8/CellPVef...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b8/CellPVeff%28rev191101%29.png)
for a research level comparison over time. That won't translate directly into
industrial use though, but the direction should be evident)

So the situation is less that is "has to be rebuilt" but that it's economical
to rebuild every 20-ish years (factoring in the maintenance costs: a panel
that you replaced due to physical damange 10 years in needn't be scrapped just
10 years later) rather than letting the stuff hang around for arbitrarily long
times.

With a proper recycling chain that shouldn't be too bad (there's little reason
why the silicon can't be purified, and the doting material be refurbished),
and ongoing maintenance is a concern with all types of power plant.

------
roenxi
Without any particular rancour, this sort of thing is why the
environmentalists keep experiencing a mysterious and conspiracy-like
resistance to their plans. Their plans are ineffective and expensive.

France has cheaper, more technically excellent, safer and cleaner energy than
Germany _for military reasons_. That is a massive egg on the face of the
German environmentalists. And it turns out the people saying solar was very
cheap were not being straightforward; although hopefully the march of research
will prove them right in time.

My personal belief is that the people complaining about nuclear waste are
struggling to tell which of two numbers is bigger - I'm happy to guess that
waste from solar panels is more damaging due to the large scale they are
produced at. Lead-acid battaries too.

------
simonCGN
What a terrible article. We have a liberalised energy market in Europe.
Therefore energy prices in this market are not that different between Germany
and France. Also, the writer is missing the costs of disposal of nuclear
waste.

------
chiefalchemist
To be clear, this is cost to build and maintain. But with nuclear there's also
the cost of shut down and storage. To say nothing of a nuclear accident
somewhere along the line.

------
downrightmike
Somewhat of a tangent: With the much longer half-lifes of heavier elements,
given their decay is longer than human history, would it be the best long term
solution to put them in a literal vault made of precious metals like gold or
titanium? Burying them in the ground isn't working especially since the early
sites were largely just cement or housed in wood supported tunnels and those
are already a huge problem we can't deal with.

------
tyzerdak
The people who chose not to build nuclear plants are either retarded or get
money from russian natural gas exporters for doing so shit decisions. Maybe
both.

------
meor
# France (population: 66,89 million) \- 76,5% nuclear 8% non hydro renewables
10% hydro 3,7% natural gas 1,9% coal 0,4% oil \- CO2 emmisions: 124 milion
tones

# Germany (population: 82,79 million) \- 34,9% renewables (hydro and non
hydro) 22,5% lignite 12,9% natural gas 12,9% hard coal 11,8% nuclear 4,2%
others 0,8% mineral oil \- CO2 emmisions: 725,7 milion tones

------
paule89
What about the costs of a broken solar or wind turbine. Easy replaceable. But
calculate the cost of a nuclear fallout...

------
franzmafka
Does this factor for the potential cost of a disaster though, or the
environmental costs of uranium mining?

------
typeformer
Thank God there are a few smart folks on HN to push back on all the mediocre
pro-nucleur weak arguments and propaganda here as of late.

------
anoncake
Does this take into account the risk of making a huge part of the country
uninhabitable? Please note that:

\- The average number of deaths caused by a nuclear each year is neither
"risk" (for a country) nor "of making a huge part of the country
uninhabitable".

\- Past accidents may have been caused by human error. Unfortunately we have
run out of übermenschen that don't make errors so that doesn't help.

~~~
felixfbecker
The worst part is, we can become as green as you can get in Germany, if our
direct neighbor country France has one of their so-low-carbon nuclear plants
blow up, we are just as inhabitable, for eternity.

~~~
anon4242
So because you (Germans) have an irrational fear of a black swan event (there
has been seven nuclear accidents with fatal outcome in the 60 years we have
been nuclear [1] with a very low death toll), you instead are participating in
killing off nearly 1 million ppl per year by burning coal [2]. Heck, even if
you went all wind & solar the annual death toll would be higher per TWh [3].

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_and_radiation_accident...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_and_radiation_accidents_and_incidents)
[2] [https://endcoal.org/health/](https://endcoal.org/health/) [3]
[https://www.energycentral.com/c/ec/deaths-nuclear-energy-
com...](https://www.energycentral.com/c/ec/deaths-nuclear-energy-compared-
other-causes)

~~~
anoncake
The average number of deaths caused by a nuclear each year is neither "risk"
(for a country) nor "of making a huge part of the country uninhabitable".

~~~
anon4242
The acid rains we get here in northern Europe thanks to the Germans insistency
with burning coal sure doesn't improve the habitability of the country either.
I much rather take a minuscule risk of making my country uninhabitable than
the _certainty_ of doing so (even if done slowly over time).

~~~
anoncake
Since we aren't going to burn coal forever acid rain won't make any country
uninhabitable.

