Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login
Nuclear energy is cheaper than solar in India (twitter.com/arvv)
6 points by eitau_1 on May 17, 2023 | hide | past | favorite | 3 comments



The LCOE calculator at the Nuclear Energy Agency suggests that the build costs in India are broadly similar (they give a slight advantage to Solar and Wind but minor changes in base rate can swap positions):

https://www.oecd-nea.org/lcoe/

(can't link directly to a data subset but the best way to view is to choose "low carbon only", "by country", "india" in the drop downs at the top)

But when you add the slightly higher operating costs, and fuel costs, wind and solar are clearly ahead, with nuclear and hydro trailing behind (though still ahead of combustion based sources)


That's just a calculator. What this guy is saying is actual construction costs, not estimated. Well, it's a bit of an estimation too, but one of the 2 reactors he mentions was actually built and hooked to the grid.

In any case, this is great news. Other recently built reactors were horribly delayed and over-budget. India shows the entire world you can deliver on time and on budget, and it does not have to be expensive.

About two years ago, some random blogger, Austin Vernon [1] wrote a piece that lots of people here on HN read, and which basically stated that there's no way for nuclear to become cheap. Among other arguments one was that half of a nuclear power plant is basically the steam turbine and generator of a coal power plant. And since coal power plants have been around for hundreds of years, and they are still expensive, there's no reason to expect they'll become cheaper anytime soon, so even if the nuclear part of a nuclear power plant comes for free, you couldn't compete with solar. Lots of people on HN bought that argument. It's incorrect, but for a subtle reason: nuclear power plants work at low temperatures (less than 350 Celsius), and have low thermal efficiency. That's not a big problem, because uranium has one million times the energy density of coal. But with coal, if you want to be competitive, you want as high efficiency as possible (above 50%), and for that you need supercritical, or even ultra-supercritical steam. And that technology is very expensive. But Austin Vernon does not mention anything about these nuances.

Regardless, theory is theory and practice is practice. India is showing that cheap nuclear power plants are possible, so something must be wrong with Austin Vernon's arguments.

[1] https://austinvernon.site/blog/nuclear.html


The costs of breaking down the power plant are often overlooked, when making these kind of calculations. Breaking down costs an enormous amount of money, and more than two decades to accomplish, from start to finish.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: