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0 pointssofixa5y ago0 comments

What do you mean hidden costs of nuclear? All of those you listed are a well defined part in the costs, and considered from the start of a nuclear power plant, with provisions required for decomissioning and storage.

As for Germany, nuclear is their only CO2-free base load power option, so comparing costs to solar that only works when sun shines isn't apt. A good winter storm and tidal, wind and solar are out for hours - what do you do then? Coal? Gas? Or just have nuclear for base to start with? And yes, one day there could be massive grid-scale storage, maybe.

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FooHentai5y ago

"Decommissioning options for a retired nuclear plant may be chosen based on availability of decommissioning funds, operation of other reactors at the same site, or availability of waste disposal facilities."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAFSTOR

Today, about half the EoL reactors in the USA are on the SAFSTOR track instead of the one where they are immediately decommissioned. There is a single waste disposal site available, WIPP, that will close in the next couple of years. Only a handful of reactors on the SAFSTOR track are there because they sit adjacent to operational reactors.

So plans are one thing, reality is quite another.

mlyle5y ago

Nuclear power plants in the US have been charged massive fees to establish funds for decommissioning. The cost is baked into the energy, even if the political will to spend the funds and store the waste isn't.

https://www.nrc.gov/waste/decommissioning/finan-assur.html

bigfudge5y ago

That isn't true in Europe, but even accepting your argument: this is a problem for the nuclear industry. Unless we can see evidence that the system as a whole (i.e. nuclear industry plus government of various levels of corruption) can function to process and store waste safely, this is a black mark against the nuclear industry. It doesn't matter if this is 'unfair' in some sense... at the end of the day the waste will exist and after 40+ years there is no evidence of a combined political-industrial system with the capacity to do the right thing.

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pydry5y ago

Germany uses a combination of demand shifting, overproduction, imported power and dispatchable power.

>A good winter storm and tidal, wind and solar are out for hours - what do you do then?

Design for the storm. In Texas everything except solar could in theory have worked fine (wind often overproduces in storms) and yet every power source failed.

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