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    The time has finally come for geothermal energy

    (www.newyorker.com)
    160 points riordan | 12 comments | 17 Nov 25 13:55 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source | bottom
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    bryanlarsen ◴[17 Nov 25 17:07 UTC] No.45955571[source]▶
    Baseload generation is useless in 2025. It's in the name; it's called "base load", not "base generation".

    Base generation was a cost optimization. Planners noticed that load never dropped below a specific level, and that cheapest power was from a plant designed to run 100% of the time rather than one designed to turn on and off frequently. So they could reduce cost by building a mix of base and peaker generation plants.

    In 2025, that's no longer the case. The cheapest power is solar & wind, which produces power intermittently. And the next cheapest power is dispatchable.

    To take advantage of this cheap intermittent power, we need a way to provide power when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing. Which is provided by storage and/or peaker plants.

    That's what we need. If added non-dispatchable power to that mix than we're displacing cheap solar/wind with more expensive mix, and still not eliminating the need for further storage/peaker plants.

    If non-dispatchable power is significantly cheaper than storage and/or peaker power than it's useful in a modern grid. That's not the case in 2025. The next cheapest power is natural gas, and it's dispatchable. If you restrict to clean options, storage & geographical diversity is cheaper than other options. Batteries for short term storage and pumped hydro for long term storage.

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    1. cbmuser ◴[17 Nov 25 21:05 UTC] No.45958287[source]▶
    Or just build out nuclear like France and pay just 20 Cents per kWh.

    https://particulier.edf.fr/content/dam/2-Actifs/Documents/Of...

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    2. danw1979 ◴[17 Nov 25 21:29 UTC] No.45958549[source]▶
    Yes please from the UK, where it’s 27 euro cents per kWh currently.
    3. testing22321 ◴[17 Nov 25 22:41 UTC] No.45959240[source]▶
    The two nukes that recently came on line in the US were so over budget and timeline that all customers now pay a “surcharge” on their bill to pay for it.

    Western counties building nukes is so expensive it makes the cost of electricity go up.

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    4. dalyons ◴[17 Nov 25 23:20 UTC] No.45959602[source]▶
    State subsided construction and maintenance doesn’t pass straight through to consumer prices.

    Also, France can’t build new nuclear for cheap/fast anymore either. They have a program for new reactors, even if they go ahead the first one won’t come online till 2038 by the earliest. We can’t wait that long.

    5. aloha2436 ◴[18 Nov 25 00:20 UTC] No.45960008[source]▶
    France is a western country with its own economic and labour troubles. The enormous expense of building nukes in the US is entirely its own making and much more complicated than just "western" inefficiency.
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    6. dmix ◴[18 Nov 25 00:33 UTC] No.45960077{3}[source]▶
    Hyper administrative state-capitalist economies all have the same problem with infrastructure. The US has an image of being more capitalist and efficient, which is true to a degree, but once you get a large-scale project that hits all fed->state->municipal politics it's not much different than France. It's just minor variations of who the mandatory 'stakeholders' are ...who demands a cut and who delays/blocks progress.

    As soon as some project is being pitched by politicians as "creating thousands of local jobs" it's either DOA or will be many years late and over budget.

    7. hvb2 ◴[18 Nov 25 01:54 UTC] No.45960524{3}[source]▶
    You might want to look up flammanville. They built a new reactor there and that also took 20 years or so and was way over budget.

    We've built a lot of nuclear in the last century and then largely stopped. A lot of the know how is gone which is what we're paying for now.

    Also, in France, all those reactors were largely the same leading to economies of scale when building them. Everything we build today is essentially a one of so you don't get to spread that cost over multiple.

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    8. ViewTrick1002 ◴[18 Nov 25 08:45 UTC] No.45962817[source]▶
    The French are wholly unable to build new nuclear power.

    Flamanville 3 is 7x over budget and 12 years late on a 5 year construction program. The EPR2 program is in absolute shambles.

    Currently they can’t even agree on how to fund the absolutely insanely bonkers subsidies.

    Now targeting investment decision in H2 2026. And the French government just fell and was reformed because they are underwater in debt and have a spending problem which they can’t agree on how to fix.

    A massive handout to the dead end nuclear industry sounds like the perfect solution!

    9. ViewTrick1002 ◴[18 Nov 25 08:46 UTC] No.45962824{4}[source]▶
    The French were also practicing negative learning by doing.

    https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03014...

    10. superultra ◴[18 Nov 25 08:55 UTC] No.45962890[source]▶
    Can confirm, I live in Georgia.

    The real stickler is that just from pure lucky timing, data centers will likely be the direct beneficiaries of the third reactor coming online at the Vogle plant here in Georgia. So taxpayers foot and will foot the bill, and meanwhile our governor and mayor are tripping over themselves giving tax breaks to data centers.

    11. rldjbpin ◴[18 Nov 25 11:04 UTC] No.45963616[source]▶
    does it matter much when in the end pricing is decided by merit-order system [1]? i.e. when you are dependent on other sources or neighbouring markets with very different composition.

    not to say it is remains costlier than conventional sources, albeit not accounting for externalities.

    [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merit_order

    12. zeckalpha ◴[19 Nov 25 04:02 UTC] No.45975717[source]▶
    I pay 21 cents per kWh and only 11% of my grid is nuclear.