The article is called “German Chancellor Scholz speaks out against new nuclear power“, not “ German Chancellor Scholz speaks out against keeping old nuclear plants running”, so no, this is just shifting the goalposts.
It is not, the past and current failures of German energy policy is a very good basis for criticism, especially when they seem to have a continued reliance on fossil fuel power. But, as I said, we seem to have starkly different opinions on German electricity policy, and you seem to have a specific idea of the existence of “goal posts” in that particular discussion, and what they are, which many of us disagree with. Let us put that discussion to rest. It is clear to me that it will go nowhere.
–
Now, on the topic of new power, I fully understand where you’re coming from with your frustration, because I’ve been there, many many times, discussing with folks who refuse to give any background to their claims. So, I’ve called upon a reddit comment from past me (ca. 2021) for some reliable sources and updated the meat of the text a little to be more suitable to you. Hence, below follows the wall’o’text you have been so sorely missing out on, because I was a lazy boy posting from me phone yesterday, properly addressing each of the arguments in your original comment and backing up my previous statements.
So, where to start? Perhaps the costs of 100% renewable systems in practice, as the portion of electricity sourced from variable renewable energy (henceforth VRE) approaches 100%. I’ll start by addressing your wikipedia source, all of the examples of “near 100% renewable” there rely almost entirely on hydropower (which is highly geography dependent) or are very small grids (thousands or tens of thousands of people). This makes their significance for this discussion debatable, as our scope is rather in the size of millions or tens of millions of people.
A key problem with examining these scenarios is that the number of data points where VRE exceed ~45% are incredibly few, and additionally these few systems still have significant portions of electricity generated by cheap, dispatchable fossil fuelled power plants. This means their statements regarding cost are a lot less relevant for a scenario where we want a clean energy grid and VRE portions start approaching higher levels. I’d really love to see if you can refer me some sources which examine such grids.
Following along this path, comparing the LCOE of VRE to other dispatchable plants is not particularly straightforward. Here is some critique towards a study made by Lazard, which highlights the fact that renewables can effectively outsource their system costs in grids with a high degree of dispatchable power generators (hence creating hidden costs for the systems). This method of using only LCOE without accounting for system costs is prevalent in many studies on the costs of new electricity production, and thus skews the available data. This skewing is not necessarily a problem when adding a small amount of VRE to a system, but becomes a severe issue when they start representing a plurality of electricity produced.
We can follow up by examining this study by the oecd which calculates estimations on grid level system costs comparing VRE and nuclear. It’s very interesting, but also like… 200 pages, so I haven’t read the entire thing, but below you’ll find a few very short take-homes from what I did have time to read.
The integration of large shares of intermittent renewable electricity is a major challenge for the electricity systems of OECD countries and for dispatchable generators such as nuclear. Grid-level system costs for intermittent renewables are large ($8-$50/MWh) but depend on country, context and technology (onshore wind < offshore wind < solar PV). Nuclear related system costs are $1-3/MWh.
They make several very interesting observations regarding how improper implementation of VRE in a system leads to an economic environment that favors fossil fuel peaker plants to solve intermittency problems, due to their low capital costs and ability to ramp up and down with relative ease. Unlike green solutions such as pumped hydro storage, other energy storage solutions and nuclear power. The closer our goal approaches 0% fossil fuel energy production, the more nuclear power makes sense.
Now, based on the above and a few other sources, I will deconstruct the arguments you made in your original comment. I’ll use hydropower as comparison for a lot of these points. It is often considered the holy grail of renewable energy.
Cheaper - See above. A system which uses some mix of nuclear power and renewables is often a cheaper system than one that demands 100% renewables.
Lower emissions - Nuclear emissions are comparable to hydropower, and entirely from infrastructure & supply chain emissions, something expected to disappear in a 0% fossil fuel economy.
Faster to provision - Individually, yes, but a construction time of 5-15 years is still reasonably fast for the huge amount of power that a single NPP adds to the grid (consider constructed MW/time). Additionally, construction times are expected to go down if the nuclear industry is revitalized.
Less environmentally damaging - Debatable, renewables in general have huge land usage, and affect the ecosystems in which they are built to a significant degree.
Not reliant on continuous consumption of fuel - Yeah, a benefit, but also not problem for nuclear. Known supplies of Uranium can supply the entire world for some 70 years, which is longer than known oil supplies will last us. That’s not accounting for improvements in utilization, newly discovered resources or other nuclear fuels. Besides, renewables use lots of other resources such as copper. Our limited supplies of these are a far more pressing problem in our clean energy efforts.
Decentralised - I don’t see how this is relevant. The benefits and costs of decentralized power are situational. It is useful in areas with spotty infrastructure (large parts of Africa and Asia), but creates system level costs in developed countries, where most of our electricity consumption is centralized.
Much, much safer - Not really. Casualties and damages from nuclear power are far lower than those from hydropower, and depending on your data source and opinions, even on par with wind power.
Much easier to maintain - I don’t have any good sources of the top of my head here, but many of the nuclear power plants running today are pushing past their designed life spans due to the maintenance being worth it. Closures are more often related to political decisions than actual end-of-life status.
More reliable - not really
Much more responsive to changes in energy demands - not really
Hope this is more to your liking :)
P.S, apologies if there are any typos, didn’t have time to proofread this time around.
Firefox, been using it on my PC as long as I’ve had one. Been forced to use Chrome, I.E & Edge on work computers and don’t fancy them particularly.