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129 points mpweiher | 15 comments | | HN request time: 0.002s | source | bottom
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DarkNova6 ◴[] No.46247903[source]
So you want to create a completely new industry. From the ground. With all existing experts having retired. Demanding high quality, no-fault tolerance production. Dependent on resources not found in Europe.

Look, I love nuclear technology. But time has moved on. The costs to rebuild this industry is astronomical and means we lose out on key-future technology like batteries.

Edit: But then there are bombs. And especially French love their nukes due national security. This is the only reason to keep pushing for nuclear, since Russia, the US and China are not gonna change direction on this either. But the very least we could do is be honest about it.

Edit 2: Changed from "World has moved on" to "time has moved on", since evidently China has invested for a good 2 decades to build their own fully functional nuclear-industry. Proving my point that it takes dedicated investment, network effects and scale to rebuild this industry. After all, they too want to mass produce nukes.

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nixass ◴[] No.46247968[source]
> Look, I love nuclear technology. But the world has moved on.

Come again?

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iknowstuff ◴[] No.46248065[source]
We deploy 10x the capacity in renewables and batteries than we do in nuclear and its only accelerating. We are trending towards 1/10th the cost of nuclear per GW. There is no going back just due to the sheer scale of mass manufacturing renewables.

We are below $1B/GW for solar. China just opened a $100/kWh ($100M/GWh) battery storage plant. All deployable within a year.

Contrast this to $16B/GW for recent nuclear plants, and you don’t benefit from starting a build for another 20 years

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1. nixass ◴[] No.46248071[source]
Use case: Germany

It's going great!!!11

https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/DE/live/fifteen_min...

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2. notTooFarGone ◴[] No.46248269[source]
Ok let's link Germany when the sun is not shining and the wind is not blowing.

Thanks for cherry picking and not linking averages.

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3. lawn ◴[] No.46248375[source]
You still need electricity when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing you know?
replies(1): >>46249987 #
4. nixass ◴[] No.46248465[source]
You can move slider for last 24hrs, there were sunny bits in Germany. CO2 is constantly shit over here. And yeah.. what am I supposed to do when it's not sunny or no wind? Fart into windfarm?
5. Phil_Latio ◴[] No.46248558[source]
Then look at the the average and compare with France. Germany causes 6 times more Co2 stemming from energy production.

The energy mix in Germany leads to a situation where electric cars are dirtier than diesel (for the first ~200000 km / 125000 miles driven).

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6. Archelaos ◴[] No.46249565[source]
This! Don't be disappointed by the downvotes. The fussile+nuclear energy lobby is desparte because of Germany's success. This industry is the equivalent of the tabacoo and pestizide industry of the past. Everything is fine, cheap and under control -- until it isn't ...
7. Archelaos ◴[] No.46249647{3}[source]
Citation needed. I don't belief a word of this.
8. nosianu ◴[] No.46249764[source]
That's what this is for, in general: https://energy.ec.europa.eu/topics/infrastructure/trans-euro...

Also, Germany currently has the problem of much more and more reliable wind generation in the north, but not enough network capacity to send it all south when needed. It is being addressed, but as expected, it is very complicated because infrastructure across the whole country touches the interests of a lot of groups with very different interests.

We might need much better tunnel building equipment and a deep sub-terranean network... (useful sci-fi idea, needs to be able to cope with mild earth quakes in some regions).

9. derriz ◴[] No.46249819{3}[source]
> The energy mix in Germany leads to a situation where electric cars are dirtier than diesel (for the first ~200000 km / 125000 miles driven).

Renewable share of electricity production is about 56% so this claim is not at all credible.

https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/germany-covers-nearly-5...

10. nuxi ◴[] No.46249863[source]
We need more Kohl, that'll do the trick...
11. Archelaos ◴[] No.46249987{3}[source]
Gas-fired power plants are planned for load balancing, and these are already being built in such a way that they can be converted to hydrogen operation at a later date.
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12. lawn ◴[] No.46252762{4}[source]
Gas... How "great" for the environment.
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13. ViewTrick1002 ◴[] No.46253607{5}[source]
Perfect is the enemy of good enough. We still need to decarbonize construction, agriculture, aviation, maritime shipping etc.

Let’s not stare us blind at perfect in one sector wasting money and opportunity cost which needs to be spent on harder to abate industries.

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14. lawn ◴[] No.46253859{6}[source]
Seems weird to say that while arguing against nuclear.
15. seec ◴[] No.46271604[source]
Germany shows how trying to rely solely on renewables is a fool's errand.

They can go from having over 50% of their electricity generated from renewables, but then suddenly it falls to barely over 20% in a single day. But the low production can last multiple days (for reference, look at the 3rd, 4th, and 5th of December 2025).

For reference, to store a single day of Germany's electricity at the current battery storage price ($66/kwh) you would need over a hundred billion dollars. Even if battery storage is to be divided by 3 in the coming years, we are still talking tens of billions of dollars for something that isn't even reliable and has a hard limit (go over the 3 days of storage capacity, too bad, you're fucked).

Even considering how nuclear construction is stupidly expensive nowadays, that would still be cheaper and more reliable (in large part thanks to German bureaucracy, fuck you by the way for the sabotage at Flamanville).

Renewable is the German superiority complex applied at scale. They can't help themselves from overengineering cars, so that makes sense.