this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2023
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[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago (4 children)

If Sweden did an honest investigation and found that renewables would be more costly and take longer, let em get nuclear.

Bullshit. Renewables are cheap as chips.

Think of a traditional power plant. There are 4 main cost catagories: Construction, Maintenance, Fuel, Demolition.

  • In a traditional plant, over the life of the plant Fuel will by far be the biggest cost.

  • For renewables, Construction, Maintenance and Demolition cost more (issues such as remote locations, weather, smaller generators means more generators which increases the mean time to failure) however they have ZERO fuel cost.

Renewable generation is profitable as fuck, moreso than nuclear. Your average wind farm pays itself off in less than 5 years.

This is a right wing government backing the interests of fossil fuels, by implementing policy that delays any meaningful reduction in fossil fuel use.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

For renewables, Construction, Maintenance and Demolition cost more

This is less true as time goes on. CCGT and coal has substantial overlap with all-in cost of firmed PV and onshore wind just in terms of capex and FOM. Nuclear O&M overlaps with all-in cost of wind or PV (although not the latter in sweden).

SMRs (most of the proposals to reduce cost) are also substantially less efficient than full sized reactors and the high grade Uranium or Uranium in countries you can pollute without consequence is mostly tapped out so prices are increasing (currently about $3/MWh for full scale or $6/MWh for an inefficient small reactor). By the time an SMR finally comes online, just the raw uranium will cost as much as renewables, let alone the rest of VOM (which is still a minority of O&M which is far, far less than Capex).

Anyone suggesting new nuclear should be regarded as either someone lying to maintain a nuclear weapons program, a scammer, or a russian agent trying to sell dependence on rosatom.

The first is potentially defensible, but they could also not lie instead.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

This is a right wing government backing the interests of fossil fuels, by implementing policy that delays any meaningful reduction in fossil fuel use.

Simply incorrect and ignorant and I could leave it at that.

But I won't so here:

  1. Nuclear is carbon neutral

  2. The majority of Swedens energy production is still renewable and will continue to grow

  3. Nuclear is absolutely necessary for load balance

  4. Current nuclear plants are nearing their end of life and needs to be replaced

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)
  1. I'm not critising nuclear for not being green.
  2. Renewables should grow (they're profitable), but there should be further incentivised growth to help reduce reliance on fossile fuels more quickly.
  3. Yes, nuclear is brilliant for voltage and frequency stability. Large turbines have momentum in their spinning mass, when loads are switched on and off they keep spinning the same speed. However there are other options, eg rotating stabilisers, often used on very large ships but land installations are now being made also. These can be built without the nuclear red tape.
  4. Replacing existing nuclear plants is always a decent thing to do. You skip over many of the hurdles by building on the same site under the same nuclear permits. However taking money away from renewables to pay for this is questionable at best.

I think Sweden does have some geographical complications, along with a lackluster transmission network. These are much harder to get private investment for. However if there was a decent transmission network then there would be more utility of renewable generation in the north as well as the capability for import of energy from neighbouring countries or even export when Sweden has an excess.

Putting my balls on the table, I reckon if Sweden put all the money they've got in nuclear into transmission first and then renewables, I reckon they could switch off more fossil fuels more quickly.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The points I listed are the strongest arguments to expand nuclear power which both the left and right of Riksdagen generally agrees on.

So how this is a right wing conspiracy to further the fossil energy industry as you point out is still to me a mystery, that's all you need to explain.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

The fact that left and right wing parties both currently (in the middle of soaring energy prices and a cost of livings crisis) agree with measures that support fossil fuel interests does not change the fact that the Swedish government (which is currently right wing) is implementing policies that benefit the fossil fuel industry.

Also, I question the nuance in that - I'm sure many in the left that support nuclear investment, but are less happy about renewable targets being scrapped.

However I apologise if I came on a bit too hard with it being a left vs right wing issue. It's wealth vs society.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

i heard that nuclear still kind of heats up the earth since its not outputting what has been put in by the sun before. Supposedly thats a problem since space is a good insulator.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

It's a negligible amount of heat. Something like 0.000001% of the greenhouse effect from fossil fuels. Almost unmeasurable.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

have you ever been in Sweden? it is a a rocky mountainous and mostly dark region. they only renewables that they can easily manage is geothermal and iirc they do not have the correct crust for it

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

According to another comment they have plenty of renewables up in the north but only use about 30% of that capacity. So it seems the main issue is with the transmission network for the country, its ability to get power from one place to another.

Instead of investing in 20 year nuclear power plant plans, they should be looking at accessing and expanding the available renewable generation in the short term.

[–] [email protected] -4 points 1 year ago

the wind mills would be in inaccessible areas so you are better to just go with nuclear and invest in transmission from settlement to settlement instead to the turbines