The lifetime difference is a standard talking point that sounds good if you don't understand economics but doesn't make a significant difference. It's the latest attempt to avoid having to acknowledge the completely bizarre costs of new nuclear built power through bad math.
CSIRO with GenCost included it in this year's report.
Because capital loses so much value over 80 years ("60 years + construction time) the only people who refer to the potential lifespan are people who don't understand economics. In this, we of course forget that the average nuclear power plant was in operation for 26 years before it closed.
The difference a completely absurd lifespan makes is a 10% cost reduction. When each plant requires tens of billions in subsidies a 10% cost reduction is still... tens of billions in subsidies.
So you've managed to cherry pick the one study showing nuclear power in any kind of possible light. Typical.
You do know that the study is only applicable to running your off-grid cabin from a sole source and battery storage based on 2020 costs. The study also assumes 100% uptime for nuclear power.
It does not deal with demand shifts, it does not deal with transmission, it does not deal with backup power.
It also managed to finds a nuclear LFSCOE of $106/MWh. Even though it doesn't adapt to peaks or breakdowns when Hinkley Point C sits at $170/MWh when running at full tilt for 35 years.
Whenever we do quality research on the subject the results end up being that nuclear power is horrifically expensive.
See for example:
See the recent study on Denmark which found that nuclear power needs to come down 85% in cost to be competitive with renewables when looking into total system costs for a fully decarbonized grid, due to both options requiring flexibility to meet the grid load.
> Focusing on the case of Denmark, this article investigates a future fully sector-coupled energy system in a carbon-neutral society and compares the operation and costs of renewables and nuclear-based energy systems.
> The study finds that investments in flexibility in the electricity supply are needed in both systems due to the constant production pattern of nuclear and the variability of renewable energy sources.
> However, the scenario with high nuclear implementation is 1.2 billion EUR more expensive annually compared to a scenario only based on renewables, with all systems completely balancing supply and demand across all energy sectors in every hour.
> For nuclear power to be cost competitive with renewables an investment cost of 1.55 MEUR/MW must be achieved, which is substantially below any cost projection for nuclear power.
Or the same for Australia if you went a more sunny locale finding that renewables ends up with a grid costing less than half of "best case nth of a kind nuclear power":
I think you misinterpreted my comment. I'm advocating for an energy mix where the majority of energy is supplied by intermittent renewables with a small amount of low-cost (i.e. not nuclear) dispatchable generation. This avoids the extortionate "last mile" of costs when utilising 100% intermittent renewables.
If you don't see the money being spent, then you're not paying attention, particularly since you then (incorrectly) chastise the poles for ... er ... spending money
The first Polish plant is not a "single reactor". It is 3 reactors.
It seems like you are dreaming up a fantasy not matched by reality.
The poles haven’t spent money, that is an application for the EU commission to review the subsidies.
Not a single final investment decision is taken.
Even the French are postponing the EPR2 program due to the horrific costs. Now it might begin in 2026, if they can politically agree to the mindbogglingly large subsidies.
With no final investment decision taken. Like I said.
It is a program championed by the previous hard right authoritarian government with not as enthusiastic interest by the current polish government.
> And French nuclear is not subsidized. Unlike renewables.
Why do you keep making stuff up which is easily findable? Is accepting reality that hard?
The EPR2 program hinges on absolutely massive subsidies. The French auditing agency said that even assuming insanely low capital costs and profit margins it makes a large loss.
Taking real figures it just becomes stupid.
The French auditing agency recommended to postpone the EPR2 program due to the low value and incredibly high costs.
What they said about EPR2 is that they were refused the information to even make an estimate of its profitability. Translation (using DocLingo) from page 25:
"In its 2020 report on the EPR sector, the Court recommended
that EDF 'calculate the projected profitability of the Flamanville 3 reactor
and the EPR2 and ensure its monitoring' (recommendation no. 6).
EDF has deliberately and persistently refused to provide the Court
with information on the projected profitability and production costs,
which leads to considering this recommendation as not implemented.
work.
Based on the information at its disposal, the Court's calculation
predicts a poor profitability for Flamanville 3. For its part, the EPR2
program is still characterized by the absence of a finalized estimate
and a financing plan."
Any claims of profitability of EPR/EPR2 should be taken with heavy skepticism, given that the official auditors have been stonewalled.
Just like everything else you've written so far, this is also patently untrue.
The French auditors said that Flamannville 3, the solitary EPR prototype, will be "marginally" profitable. This is one of the most catastrophic builds in recent history. And it will still be more profitable than any of the intermittent renewable projects in Europe.
EDF does in fact, receive subsidies from the French government. For their renewables projects. Not for their nuclear projects. Which pay for all this nonsense.
Compared to the EPR, the EPR2 is vastly simplified, for better buildability. The complaint there was that they were moving too quickly for the auditors, as they didn't have all the documentation they would like to have.
Compare this with the absolutely devastating report of the Bundesrechnungshof, the German auditors, on the failed German Energiewende.
Nuclear energy has had a massive research advantage over its entire lifetime. It simply never delivers due to being horrifically expensive.
You just keep making empty promises that never work out in reality. Just look at Flamanville 3 being 7x over budget and 13 years late on a 5 year construction schedule.
If you build enough nuclear capacity to run the country when the renewables don't produce anything you might as well run the country the whole time on nuclear. Building a nuclear plant and then using it at 10% capacity is an egregious waste of money. Literally any storage technology is cheaper.
They could always build more nuclear plants to fill additional demand. Again, non intermittent sources don't need supplemental sources of energy, as long as there's sufficient supply. By comparison, a country cannot possibly run their grid entirely with solar on account of intermittency.
I'd suggest reading people's comments in greater detail, before accusing people of lying.
So now you suggest that we should build peaking nuclear plants in an attempt at covering your previous blunder with pure insanity.
Lazard expects peakers to run at 10-15% capacity factor because you know, how often do we have cold spells in France or whatever other reason causes them to run? A couple of weeks a year at most. Lets say 15%.
Lets calculate what Hinkley Point C costs when running as a peaker. It has a CFD at $170/MWh for 30 years. Lets assume it runs at a 85% capacity factor and that $20/MWh are O&M costs.
153/0.15 + 20 = $1040/MWh
You want to solve the problem by forcing electricity costs on the consumers at double of the peak of the energy crisis.
All because you view the world in nuclear fanclub fantasy land glasses.
If you've already provisioned enough nuclear plants to meet peak energy demand, producing less energy has no marginal cost. Alternatively, you can just keep operating at full capacity, and give energy away for free and use it for energy-intensive tasks like desalination or arc furnaces. The idea that we'd build nuclear plants that only operate a few weeks per year is a strawman of your own construction.
You're right that nuclear is more expensive than continuing to burn fossil fuels. And the reality is nobody has a plan to build fossil fuel free grid based on wind and solar. Absent a miraculous breakthrough in energy storage, solar and wind will always have to be deployed in tandem with fossil fuels. If we're looking at actually eliminating carbon emissions, nuclear is the only viable option besides geographically limited sources like hydropower.
> They could always build more nuclear plants to fill additional demand.
And then
> If you've already provisioned enough nuclear plants to meet peak energy demand, producing less energy has no marginal cost.
If the magic tooth fairy comes with free nuclear plants... Nuclear cult member fantasy land.
So at what capacity factor will the entire fleet run at when built out to manage both outages and cold spells requiring 30 GW of fossil fuels to handle?
France currently run their fleet of 63 GW at a ~70% capacity factor. Add another 30 GW (lets call it 100% reliable when a cold spell hits) and the capacity factors vastly lower due to extremely low utilization factors of the last 30 GW.
You can spread out the lower of capacity factors across the entire fleet or just let the peakers bear them.
But in the end the results are the same because you still need to finance the your fleet now delivering a measly 45% capacity factor.
Lets translate a 45% capacity factor to Hinkley Point C numbers:
Now you are forcing the consumers to pay $355/MWh or 35.5 cents per kWh for all electricity delivered the whole year.
All you have done is take the ~$1000/MWh cost from 15% of the time and spread it out over the whole year.
Do you see the pure insanity of what you keep proposing now?
For the third time, I never said nuclear was cheaper than contuing to burn natural gas. It has the distinction of being the only non-intermittent source of carbon-free electricity besides geographically contrained sources like hydroelectricity and geothermal power. It is the only viable path to decarbonization for most countries.
What's the alternative to nuclear power for reaching a carbon-free grid? No doubt, your plan will assume a breakthrough in energy storage that delivers orders-of-magnitude more scale than existing solutions.
Why do you keep trying to alter what you said? Can't you stick to the truth?
> It is the only viable path to decarbonization for most countries.
The research disagrees with you.
See the recent study on Denmark which found that nuclear power needs to come down 85% in cost to be competitive with renewables when looking into total system costs for a fully decarbonized grid, due to both options requiring flexibility to meet the grid load.
> Focusing on the case of Denmark, this article investigates a future fully sector-coupled energy system in a carbon-neutral society and compares the operation and costs of renewables and nuclear-based energy systems.
> The study finds that investments in flexibility in the electricity supply are needed in both systems due to the constant production pattern of nuclear and the variability of renewable energy sources.
> However, the scenario with high nuclear implementation is 1.2 billion EUR more expensive annually compared to a scenario only based on renewables, with all systems completely balancing supply and demand across all energy sectors in every hour.
> For nuclear power to be cost competitive with renewables an investment cost of 1.55 MEUR/MW must be achieved, which is substantially below any cost projection for nuclear power.
Or the same for Australia if you went a more sunny locale finding that renewables ends up with a grid costing less than half of "best case nth of a kind nuclear power":
You are being purposefully aggravating here because your argument is weak but it's been socially supported for some time now. Nuclear power lagged behind renewables due primarily to proliferation fears and subsequent over-regulation in most of the world, not technical flaws, missing out on innovations like modular reactors. China’s pushing ahead with 150 GW by 2030, leveraging nuclear’s advantages: it’s compact (1-4 sq mi/GW vs. solar’s 10-20), reliable, and resilient to extreme (and simply changing) weather, without reliance on rare earths or massive storage (with their own host externalizations and supply risks). Costs can drop to $50-100/MWh with new tech and long lifespans, rivaling renewables when accounting for their hidden expenses (storage, grid upgrades). Proliferation risks exist but can be managed with oversight. Nuclear remains the best bet for scalable, clean energy.
Nuclear power has famously had negative learning by doing throughout its entire life.
There was a first large scale attempt at scaling nuclear power culminating 40 years ago. Nuclear power peaked at ~20% of the global electricity mix in the 1990s. It was all negative learning by doing.
Then we tried again 20 years ago. There was a massive subsidy push. The end result was Virgil C. Summer, Vogtle, Olkiluoto and Flamanville. We needed the known quantity of nuclear power since no one believed renewables would cut it.
How many trillions in subsidies should we spend to try one more time? All the while the competition in renewables are already delivering beyond our wildest imaginations.
China is barely investing in nuclear power. At their current buildout which have been averaging 5 construction starts per year since 2020 they will at saturation reach 2-3% total nuclear power in their electricity mix.
China is all in on renewables [1]() and [2] storage.
Then rounding of with some typical ”SMRs” nonsense!!!
SMRs have been complete vaporware for the past 70 years.
It's too costly to build high speed rail in many parts of the world (California for instance). It's not because high speed rail isn't a viable solution, it's regulation.
The article you posted from sciencedirect supports this. The study points primarily to a changing complex regulation landscape as a primary driver of costs. Meanwhile, France is in an excellent position in the EU in terms of energy in large part because it stuck with nuclear instead of attempting unsuccessfully to transfer to wind and solar like some of it's neighbors (who now burn lignite to meet energy demands).
Solar panels, for instance, are mostly made in places where actual costs of construction are externalized to the environment and workers with depressed wages. Nuclear plants need to be built and decommissioned in the same place - places that are often actively hostile with complex regulation meant to curtail nuclear specifically for the sake of non-proliferation. SMRs help sidestep a portion of this hostile regulation but there are countless reactor designs that are possible that we can't even begin to explore until regulation is made reasonable.
Given that Flamanville 3 being 7x over budget and 13 years late on a 5 year construction schedule even the French are wholly unable to build new nuclear power.
We should of course keep our existing fleet around as long as it is safe, needed and economical.
Then you round of with an endless stream of excuses as to why nuclear power does not deliver.
The only thing hindering nuclear power is its economics. Otherwise less regulated countries would pounce on the opportunity to have cheaper energy. That hasn’t happened.
Where nuclear power has a good niche it gets utilized, and no amount of campaigning limits it. One such example are submarines.
So stop attempting to shift the blame and go invest your own money in advancing nuclear power rather than crying for another absolutely enormous government handout when the competition in renewables already deliver on that said promise: extremely cheap green scalable energy.
Unsubsidized renewables are today cheaper than fossil fuels. Lets embrace that rather than wasting another trillion dollars on nuclear subsidies.
Your figures for China's mix are meaningless because you don't bother to mention when you think "saturation" occurs. They are on track to build far more Nuclear than 2-3% of their current mix in the next 20 years - and this is as the world's top manufacturer of solar and wind products.
Again, why are you talking about cost, when the real question is viability? How does the study you linked plan to accommodate intermittency? The answer is just a vague statement about storage mechanisms:
> Storage of energy is an important element of 100% RE systems, especially when using large shares of variable sources
like solar and wind [14], [40]–[42], and it can take various forms [43]–[45]. Batteries can supply efficient short term storage, while e-fuels can provide long-term storage solutions. Other examples are mechanical storage in pumped hydro energy storage [46], [47] and compressed air energy storage [48], [49], and thermal energy in a range of storage media at various temperature levels [43], [50].
Nowhere do they actually outline how much storage of each system they will provision. How many TWh of batteries? How many TWh of pumped hydro? Totally unanswered. They just mention the existence of storage, and avoid any tangible discussion of scale. Like I said, there's no realistic plans for a grid primarily powered by intermittent sources. The storage required for such a grid is orders of magnitude larger than what can be feasibly provisioned.
This isn't a tiny insignificant detail. It's is a foundational part of a primarily renewable grid. And nobody has a plan to solve it that doesn't amount to "assume some different system, which has never been deployed at scale, can tens of terawatt hours of storage".
Love that you try to avoid the issue of cost. Yeah, in the land of infinite money and resources you can do anything.
In the real world the energy crisis was a cost crisis. But you seem to no care the slightest about massively increasing the ratepayers bills and by that creating a new self made energy crisis. This time fueled by nuclear subsidies.
So you skipped the first two studies. I suppose because you found nothing to complain about in them. Good to know.
Then you go on a meta-analysis on the entire field and demand them to produce a TWH figure for some energy system you can't even specify.
You truly are grasping for the straws.
Here's the quote you missed:
> Much of the resistance towards 100% RE systems in the literature seems to come from the a-priori assumption that an energy system based on solar and wind is impossible since these energy sources are variable. Critics of 100% RE systems like to contrast solar and wind with ’firm’ energy sources like nuclear and fossil fuels (often combined with CCS) that bring their own storage. This is the key point made in some already mentioned reactions, such as those by Clack et al. [225], Trainer [226], Heard et al. [227] Jenkins et al. [228], and Caldeira et al. [275], [276]. However, while it is true that keeping a system with variable sources stable is more complex, a range of strategies can be employed that are often ignored or underutilized in critical studies: oversizing solar and wind capacities; strengthening interconnections [68], [82], [132], [143], [277], [278]; demand response [279], [172], e.g. smart electric vehicles charging using delayed charging or delivering energy back to the electricity grid via vehicle-to-grid [181], [280]– [282]; storage [40]– [43], [46], [83], [140], [142], such as stationary batteries; sector coupling [16], [39], [90]– [92], [97], [132], [216], e.g. optimizing the interaction between electricity, heat, transport, and industry; power-to-X [39], [106], [134], [176], e.g. producing hydrogen at moments when there is abundant energy; et cetera. Using all these strategies effectively to mitigate variability is where much of the cutting-edge development of 100% RE scenarios takes place.
> With every iteration in the research and with every technological breakthrough in these areas, 100% RE systems become increasingly viable. Even former critics must admit that adding e-fuels through PtX makes 100% RE possible at costs similar to fossil fuels. These critics are still questioning whether 100% RE is the cheapest solution but no longer claim it would be unfeasible or prohibitively expensive. Variability, especially short term, has many mitigation options, and energy system studies are increasingly capturing these in their 100% RE scenarios.
With the conclusion based on the meta-analysis:
> The main conclusion of the vast majority of 100% renewable energy systems studies is that such systems can power all energy in all regions of the world at low cost. As such, we do not need to rely on fossil fuels in the future. In the early 2020s, the consensus has increasingly become that solar PV and wind power will dominate the future energy system and new research increasingly shows that 100% renewable energy systems are not only feasible but also cost effective. This gives us the key to a sustainable civilization and the long-lasting prosperity of humankind.
Since the study was released in mid 2022 has it become easier to harder to create 100% renewable energy systems? Easier.
The cost of nuclear is primarily from regulation/human decision making that prevents it from externalizing its costs onto the environment (decom costs, waste handling) not physics. Wind and solar are limited severely by physics and they are much more vulnerable to a changing climate. China eating its own dogfood with heavy investments in renewables is meaningful but only illuminates some of what is happening. A significant amount of this stuff is going into the ground in 25 years and it won't be handled with nearly the safety and care as waste streams from nuclear power.
And don't come and tell me that the Uranium supply chain is cleanest thing known to mankind. It currently is generally outsourced from the west because the enormous amounts of cost managing the externalities adds. Especially the processing steps from raw uranium to fuel rods.
Nowhere in that quote does it list how much of each type of storage is required. Again, they just list a range of storage systems, most of them never deployed at scale, and just don't even bother to lay out a concrete plan. The quotes you're posting are fitting this pattern of vague statements about storage and a total absence of concrete plans.
How many TWh of batteries? How many TWh of pumped hydro? How many TWh of some more exotic storage systems like compressed air or hydrogen? There's a reason why plans for a renewable grid don't go into this detail and stick to vague statement: actually sketching out how much storage would be required would show just how infeasible it really is.
Like I said, proponents of a mostly renewable grid don't have a plan to address intermittency. Or rather their plan is, "assume something solves storage, and don't worry about it".
I have already given you all that but you keep dodging instead single mindedly focusing on what is outside the scope of a meta studie of the entire field.
Trying to frame it like you disprove something when you truly don’t. You can go and read the individual studies it sources the statements from, which are then used to build those arguments arguments.
But I suppose that is too hard when you gotta find any possible straw to grasp instead of accepting reality.
Lets go back to the to studies you’ve decided to completely ignore. Likely because they answer your complaints and you haven’t found any nitpick to paint as the end of the world.
So again:
See the recent study on Denmark which found that nuclear power needs to come down 85% in cost to be competitive with renewables when looking into total system costs for a fully decarbonized grid, due to both options requiring flexibility to meet the grid load.
> Focusing on the case of Denmark, this article investigates a future fully sector-coupled energy system in a carbon-neutral society and compares the operation and costs of renewables and nuclear-based energy systems.
> The study finds that investments in flexibility in the electricity supply are needed in both systems due to the constant production pattern of nuclear and the variability of renewable energy sources.
> However, the scenario with high nuclear implementation is 1.2 billion EUR more expensive annually compared to a scenario only based on renewables, with all systems completely balancing supply and demand across all energy sectors in every hour.
> For nuclear power to be cost competitive with renewables an investment cost of 1.55 MEUR/MW must be achieved, which is substantially below any cost projection for nuclear power.
Or the same for Australia if you went a more sunny locale finding that renewables ends up with a grid costing less than half of "best case nth of a kind nuclear power":
> I have already given you all that but you keep dodging
No, you have not. The quotes you posted just list various storage systems and don't bother to set specific capacity requirements. I'll ask again:
How many TWh of battery storage are provisioned in your hypothetical 100% renewable world?
How many TWh of pumped hydro?
How many TWh of other storage? And what are these alternative storage systems?
The posts you link only talk about the cost of storage, but not the total capacity requirements. This is important, because 12 hours of storage for global electricity consumption is 30TWh. Only about 1 TWh of batteries are produced each year globally. So actually trying to provision grid scale storage would massively increase battery demand and drive up prices. This is the a reason why nobody wants to talk about the total capacity requirements for a primarily renewable grid.
12 hours of storage is likely more than needed. With a 20% nuclear, 40% solar, 40% wind generation mix (for a very simplified example), you will have solar producing solid power for 10 hours, with wind and nuclear keeping up overnight.
However lets say that it is 12 hours/30TWh. In 2023, the world produced ~1.1 TWH of batteries. In 2014, the world produced 0.05 TWH of batteries (with steady growth year over year while prices fell by 10x). If you give grid scale batteries a 5 year lifespan (before recycling), that means we need 6TWh/year of grid scale battery production, which at current rates of increase in battery production, we are 5-7 years away from.
For comparison, 5-7 years is roughly the time it takes to build a single nuclear reactor.
Unfortunately 12 hours of storage is still going to be a shortfall, even with overproduction. Researchers analyze historical weather data and simulate how renewable grids would perform on that historical trends, measuring periods of underproduction. Even with 50% overproduction and 12 hours of storage, we're still looking at an unacceptably unreliable grid: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-26355-z
> However lets say that it is 12 hours/30TWh. In 2023, the world produced ~1.1 TWH of batteries. In 2014, the world produced 0.05 TWH of batteries (with steady growth year over year while prices fell by 10x). If you give grid scale batteries a 5 year lifespan (before recycling), that means we need 6TWh/year of grid scale battery production, which at current rates of increase in battery production, we are 5-7 years away from.
Even ignoring the fact that 12 hours is insufficient, you're making the following assumptions:
1. The production of batteries will sextuple in the next 5-7 years.
2. 100% (or close to 100%) of battery production will be dedicated to grid storage.
3. Electricity consumption will remain static.
The first one may or may not pan out. Battery production is already bottlenecked by resource extraction, and it's unclear if the rate of extraction can keep up. The nature of extraction is that once easily accessible deposits are exhausted, companies shift to the harder-to-access deposits. This is only economically viable if cost increases enough to incentivize that investment. The HN crowd tends to assume that everything adheres to Moore's law, but that doesn't work in reality. The price of steel, for instance, doesn't exponentially decline.
The second two are certainly not true. EV are predicted to make up the vast majority of battery sales. Redirecting batteries to grid storage would necessitate delaying EV adoption, ultimately increasing emissions. Stationary storage accounts for a small fraction of battery production (https://rmi.org/the-rise-of-batteries-in-six-charts-and-not-...). Electric vehicles only account for a bit under 20% of vehicle sales worldwide. With many countries slated to stop sales of ICE vehicles in the next 5-10 years, we're still looking at most future battery production going to satisfy EV demand even if it grows to 6TWh per year as per your assumptions.
And electricity use will certainly increase. Both as poorer countries develop and start deploying air conditioning and other electricity consumption. And as other sources of primary energy consumption is shifted to electricity. Remember, electricity generation only makes up ~40% of total energy consumption. The remainder will have to be converted to electricity as part of full decarbonization.
That nature paper is garbage. It's imagining a grid that is 100% solar+wind, which no one is proposing building. Changing that to a grid that has 20% nuclear/geothermal would completely change the figures (in that it would dramatically shift the wind/solar ratios).
Also my battery assumptions were missing the fact that the world already has ~5TWh of hydro which can be used as a battery (even when not pumped hydro by releasing only when you need power).
Dams don't double as energy storage in the same way as batteries. Their rate of recharge is limited by precipitation. You can't run a dam turbine in reverse and fill the dam with excess power (you can with pumped hydro, but we have way less than 5 TWh of that). The best you can do is totally shut them off and let them refill. And in reality, dams have to constantly release a minimum amount of water to avoid creating a totally dry riverbed.
Open the study. It provides a Sankey diagram showing the entire energy flow of the Danish energy system. You know, all those TWh you want.
Why do you keep dodging? Because you truly can't bring yourself to read anything that would disprove your nuclear fanboyism? You truly keep tumbling strawmen instead of disproving the studies.
Pathetic.
I'll add the studies without any picked out quotes:
See the recent study on Denmark which found that nuclear power needs to come down 85% in cost to be competitive with renewables when looking into total system costs for a fully decarbonized grid, due to both options requiring flexibility to meet the grid load.
Or the same for Australia if you went a more sunny locale finding that renewables ends up with a grid costing less than half of "best case nth of a kind nuclear power":
CSIRO with GenCost included it in this year's report.
Because capital loses so much value over 80 years ("60 years + construction time) the only people who refer to the potential lifespan are people who don't understand economics. In this, we of course forget that the average nuclear power plant was in operation for 26 years before it closed.
Table 2.1:
https://www.csiro.au/-/media/Energy/GenCost/GenCost2024-25Co...
The difference a completely absurd lifespan makes is a 10% cost reduction. When each plant requires tens of billions in subsidies a 10% cost reduction is still... tens of billions in subsidies.
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