alt Hacker NewsI wish that Meta would pay for the extension of Diablo Canyon in California. They have had to jack up already sky-high electricity rates to keep it going, after deciding nearly a decade ago that it would be uneconomical to try to extend its lifetime.
Meta's nuclear intention is a perfect example of how tech is willing to pay far more for energy than other customers, and how it's driving up everybody's costs because we are all paying for that increase at elevated prices.
Nuclear is extremely expensive, higher than geothermal, renewables backed by storage, and natural gas. Nuclear is good for virtue signaling in some communities, but from the technological and economical perspectives, nuclear is very undesirable and unattractive. It's only social factors that keep alive the idea of new nuclear in advanced Western economies, not hard nosed analysis.
Here's a new preprint from Germans showing that even for Europe, a continent with very poor solar resources for many countries, new baseload is not the most economical route:
https://www.cell.com/cell-reports-physical-science/fulltext/...
Replies
Meta's nuclear intention is a perfect example of how tech is willing to pay far more for energy than other customers
Diablo Canyon in particular is big (https://www.pge.com/en/newsroom/currents/energy-savings/diab...). It might be too big for their balance sheet. I imagine they picked the most economical sites to expand?
Nuclear isn't extremely expensive; in China it costs around $2/watt of power (compared to up to $14/watt in the US). It's just expensive in America because America's shit at building nuclear power plants efficiently.
> Nuclear is extremely expensive
Nuclear compliance and certification is extremely expensive. The actual construction and maintenance costs are fairly trivial.
The largest cost associated with a new nuclear plant are the interest payments given that a plant may need to spend 10+ years sitting idle before it can be activated.
Geothermal energy is highly location-specific (it's great if you have a handy volcano nearby, of course), storage cannot meaningfully "back" intermittent renewables because it's only good for a few hours load from the grid (aside from pumped hydro which is effectively built out), natural gas peaker plants are very expensive and increase CO2 emissions. There isn't much of an alternative to nuclear.