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160 points riordan | 4 comments | | HN request time: 0.201s | source
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bryanlarsen ◴[] 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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cbmuser ◴[] 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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testing22321 ◴[] 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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1. aloha2436 ◴[] 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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2. dmix ◴[] No.45960077[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.

3. hvb2 ◴[] No.45960524[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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4. ViewTrick1002 ◴[] No.45962824[source]
The French were also practicing negative learning by doing.

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