I find it very suspicious that the debate has been framed as "renewables vs nuclear" while we keep burning fossil fuels.

I wouldn't be surprised if the FF industry was driving this narrative, but I can also see it happening organically. A lot of the "green" people, especially in Germany are fanatically anti-nuclear. At the same time, the right-wing populists seem to have adopted the position that climate change can only be countered with nuclear power. I'm not sure why that is, probably because it's an easy answer and positions them against the green parties - after all, they cannot agree with their perceived enemies.

I think the German "green" case (to a degree) comes from the Chernobyl meltdown happening relatively nearby. It is in living memory for those power so it's understandable that they shy away from it.

I should add that meaningful advances have been made in nuclear power station design. But unfortunately these advances can't withstand other problems e.g. Russia putting operational power stations at risk as they invade Ukraine.

The problem is that renewables and nuclear are economically incompatible. They compete for the slice that is the cheapest and most inflexible, both requiring dispatchable power to fill the gaps. Renewables easily win this battle as the cost for new built renewables are in the same range as operations and maintenance for paid off nuclear plants.

For nuclear this inflexibility comes from pure economics. It is economic suicide to build a new plant and operate it at 100%, now try operating it at less than 50% on average.

Yep, and that's what we are currently seeing unfold. However, there must be use cases for nuclear as base load or some kind of supplementary power with mini reactors. I only hope these options get considered as viable alternative, rather than being dismissed ideologically.

The ideological perspective would not exist if nuclear was economic. It is simply an easy boogeyman to blame.

SMR are not looking that hot either, looks like the prevalent truth from the 70 years of nuclear construction: that bigger is better due to the large fixed costs, stays true even in 2023.

https://www.wired.com/story/the-dream-of-mini-nuclear-plants...

That sounds very reasonable. However, where I've seen this ideological aspect is for example in Finland where the permits for nuclear plants are very difficult to obtain. So once a permit is granted, they want to make as massive plants as possible, leading to big risks in construction (see Olkiluoto 3 for example, one of the most expensive constructions in history).

> see Olkiluoto 3 for example, one of the most expensive constructions in history

Dimensioning of Olkiluoto 3 is unrelated to Finnish regulation, the reactor was designed by France and Germany based on economies of scales, not specifically for a local project.

Yes, but only 1 permission for a plant was given in what, 20 years?

How many plants applied for permission and were turned down? 0?

I can't say and can't even guess where to find that information. However, I believe if there was a concentrated effort to develop and build small-scale reactors, there would be use for them. But if the permission process is heavily regulated and political, who will invest in such reactors?

I still remember when Olkiluoto 3 was approved, the Green party left the government out of protest. And in 2014 they threatened to leave the government again if they approve some change in another plant's permit. That's the level of ideological opposition we're talking about.

Luckily, the tide is turning, but it's highly annoying that this needs to be an issue.

The nuclear solution is framed as non economic because of decades of ideologically-driven sabotage; when nuclear plants were build en masse they were cheap. Now every reactor is apparently it's own research project since practical expertise in this field became scarce.

EPR's debacle is good example here.

Meanwhile, Koreans have been steadily building new plants without giant cost overruns and delays.

Nuclear power plants were never cheap. Sometimes they appeared that way if you offloaded most of your costs onto the taxpayer, like decomissioining expenses.

And in the West they never enjoyed economies of scale either. France's nuclear plants kept getting more expensive, even in the heyday when they were building lots of them.

> Sometimes they appeared that way if you offloaded most of your costs onto the taxpayer, like decomissioining expenses.

On the other hand you can offload most of your cost to customers if you just stop providing electricity.

The point of stable power generation system is not to haggle over 10% more or less, it's to stop price graphs looking like that: https://i.imgur.com/iJslMUa.png

Periodical gigantic deficiencies in case of just bad weather in December are much higher problem than relatively small costs spread over decades.

You mean a giant supply chain chock coming from transitioning away from Russian natural gas.

They weren't.

> The costs of the French nuclear scale-up: A case of negative learning by doing

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

Meanwhile in South Korea, is this the method you propose to get "cheap nuclear"?

> In November 2012 it was discovered that over 5,000 small components used in five reactors at Yeonggwang Nuclear Power Plant had not been properly certified; eight suppliers had faked 60 warranties for the parts. Two reactors were shut down for component replacement, which was likely to cause power shortages in South Korea during the winter.[25] Reuters reported this as South Korea's worst nuclear crisis, highlighting a lack of transparency on nuclear safety and the dual roles of South Korea's nuclear regulators on supervision and promotion.[26] This incident followed the prosecution of five senior engineers for the coverup of a serious loss of power and cooling incident at Kori Nuclear Power Plant, which was subsequently graded at INES level 2.[25][27]

> In 2013, there was a scandal involving the use of counterfeit parts in nuclear plants and faked quality assurance certificates. In June 2013 Kori 2 and Shin Wolsong 1 were shut down, and Kori 1 and Shin Wolsong 2 ordered to remain offline, until safety-related control cabling with forged safety certificates is replaced.[28] Control cabling in the first APR-1400s under construction had to be replaced delaying construction by up to a year.[29] In October 2013 about 100 people were indicted for falsifying safety documents, including a former chief executive of Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power and a vice-president of Korea Electric Power Corporation.[30]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_South_Korea#H...

Turns out everything works properly, everything is operational. So much hanging at straws.