Renewables correct prices downward from where a fossil-only system would price electricity …

They would, if they weren’t four times more expensive than nuclear, and 13 times more expensive than gas.

… so that’s the heart of the matter: Russia’s actions increasing the price of fossil fuels.

It’s certainly one of the issues, but not the only issue. The gas price is close to historical averages now, yet UK electricity prices remain very high.

And does that make any sense at all, given Russia’s domination of nuclear supply chains? France’s nuclear program is mortally dependent on Russian cooperation in a lot of ways too.

Russia controls approximately 22% of the world’s uranium conversion capacity and 44% of its enrichment capacity. This is hardly insurmountable. It should spur investment from other nations. China accounts for approximately 70–90% of the global market across all stages of the lithium-ion battery value chain. Does that mean the world should give up on EVs and battery storage? Surely not.

Meanwhile over here in Germany, the designated chancellor and his “Christian Democrat” party quickly stowed away their pre-election rhetoric about building new nuclear plants/reviving existing plants, after an informal paper from their own party made the rounds, outlining that reviving nuclear in Germany would necessitate massive state aid or even having the state itself run the plants.

I don’t know what you mean by “stowed away,” but their policy shows they are still very much open to nuclear energy.

But realistically, I think they’d need 2 or 3 times that, right? Afaik, France is currently building just a single domestic plant and they’re not exactly executing there. Neither are they executing on the Hinkley Point project. And Olkiluoto was a massive shitshow where French taxpayers financed the 3/4 of the costs that constituted the cost overrun. There are basically two countries that still know how to build nuclear reactors, those are Russia and China, everyone else just incurs perverse cost and build-time overruns. And it does make sense: A centralized, dangerous, expensive technology that works best for centralized, authoritarian regimes that can afford to put all their state power behind these projects. (And yet, China is building out solar/wind much more aggressively than nuclear.)

France definitely doesn’t need 2-3 times that based on current implementation of renewables.

You won’t catch me defending the speed of large reactor roll-outs. Despite this, and the high costs, it’s still much cheaper than renewables. SMRs will be much faster to deploy, much more flexible, much cheaper, and require much less planning.

China is also building two “mega” coal lignite power plants per week. I don’t think we should use them as a role model.

New nuclear plants are also completely useless against climate change, given their decade/multi-decade build times, especially compared to renewables where plants can be rolled out in a matter of months. Meanwhile, existing French reactors need to be taken offline in summer because their water consumption is woefully ill-adjusted to climate change and they turn France’s rivers into bouillabaisse.

CO2 production is expected to continue to climb for 50-100 years, and we won’t reach CO2 neutrality for hundreds of years, if ever. A 7-10 year timespan is very little compared to the enormous environmental benefits.

Nuclear capacity has been flatlining (at best) for two decades, while renewables have exploded. Even if you assume just 10% utilization for the renewable plants, yesteryear’s addition of 6GW nuclear capacity pales in comparison to the 600GWp PV/wind capacity.

This is a political decision, not one based in science or finance. Despite renewables being far from ready to replace Germany’s nuclear generation, the public voted to switch to much more environmentally damaging gas generation. That gas was primarily coming from a hostile, authoritarian nation. The public voted to place the economic prosperity of Germany in the hands of Russia. It was one of the most tragic examples of democratic self immolation in all of history.

Even the author of that study admits to (latently pro-fashy shitrag) NZZ that cheaper batteries would solve the issue. Incidentally, what we’ve been seeing over the past decade is steadily decreasing battery prices, as scale goes up and cheaper materials substitute more expensive ones.

And I fully agree with the author. In 30-50 years when battery technology becomes cost effective at grid scale, we’ll be having a very different discussion.

I don’t really want to know what else is wrong with that study of his, given that the largest part of it is concerned with the near-pointless thought experiment of using 100%/95% exclusively solar+batteries. It seems massively more pertinent to worry about the final 10% renewables when the time has come. One major bit that I don’t see reflected in the study is flexibilization of demand e.g., which is a thing already. I recently saw a documentary that e.g. included a cold warehouse that could scale up/down its cooling in response to renewables availability. I visited a company producing electric componentry which is doing its electronic component testing on sunny days where they have a lot of solar. I know similar concepts exist for aluminum smelters.

That’s fair. It expands on the even more flawed LCOE metric which is widely (and incorrectly) used to compare wind/solar with nuclear/gas/coal.

Are there even SMR projects that haven’t been cancelled?

Rolls Royce isn’t due to deliver commercial SMRs until the early 2030s. Until then designs are either bespoke (and expensive, and untested), or using the GE Hitachi BWRX-300, which is also very expensive because it’s only licensed, and built on site to spec. It has many of the same issues as traditional large reactors. GE began licensing that design in 2020, and the most advanced project is I think in Canada, due to be completed in 2028. Once RR figures out their production lines, I think we see huge efficiencies of scale and much easier planning.

I’m much more optimistic about nuclear power in Europe. Given the high pricing volatility induced by renewables and the gas supply shock after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, nine European countries are now intending to build new reactors. Even Denmark is softening its stance on nuclear power, with the entire right wing bloc proposing lifting the ban. France intends to build 14 new reactors by 2050. While conventional reactors are expensive, they’re four times cheaper than solar and wind with all costs imputed. Further, we are about to enter a new age of SMRs, and all preliminary data suggesting a per unit capex cost of almost half, and the ability to extend networks as needed far more flexibly to better align with modern grids comprised of more renewables.

Well spotted. The difference between the UK and the rest of the EU is that the latter relies more heavily on contracts for difference. Renewable projects and installations negotiate a strike price up front (and often on an ongoing or scheduled basis). If the highest bid price (e.g. gas) exceeds the strike price, the renewable installation repays or foregoes the difference. The UK is very slowly moving in this direction, but has been criticised for its lack of action on older installations (which retain their direct pricing mechanisms), and slow pace of change for newer installations.

This is compounded by the UK’s comparative lack of EU interconnections which help these other countries smooth out volatility. By, for example, relying more on France’s nuclear power generation. This means the UK more frequently sees high clearing prices.

This one is pretty good.

While I agree that energy-intensive business should always be pushed onto flexible-pricinv contracts, as a private consumer, uniform pricing is an advantage imo. You don’t need to think about whether running the washing machine will cost you 0.2¤ or 0.6¤ or whether there’s a price surge, and it’s even more expensive.

Fixed pricing happens in Europe too. The retailer prices the volatility into a fixed pricing plan. It still ends up much cheaper than how the UK has structured their grid, which ensures electricity companies are making massive piles of money.

UK’s uniform pricing is intended to ensure renewables are artificially profitable, incentivising more production. In most other countries, suppliers charge competitive rates, and brokers buy on an open market. This allows demand-based generators (like gas) to charge more during high demand periods (when wind isn’t blowing and sun isn’t shining). The flip side of this is that prices crater during high wind and sun periods. This leads to volatility which can be smoothed with futures contracts. The net effect is that renewables become less profitable, but consumers pay a lot less for electricity.

The UK needs to restructure their energy market to better align with the rest of Europe. It would significantly reduce prices for everyone.

I can explain the delta. The article is referring to capacity. It’s a trick used by activists to overrepresent the contribution of renewables to the grid. Renewables are of course highly volatile and their peak capacity is much higher than trough. Grids require reliable base load generation, so little of the renewable peak capacity is actually useful or consumed. What’s important to measure is actual consumption, which your report measures.

Docker isn’t hard if you use a compose file. It’s easy to read syntax.

This is giving me “yaml isn’t hard to use if you use a compose file!” It is, actually. It’s easy for you because you understand the technology. The vast majority of people do not.

One does not need an internet connection for offline use. Check this if you’re having issues.

One does not need to pay for multiple user accounts. As per this update, they are actually removing the one-time fee for non family member mobile apps. Now it’s all free, provided the server owner has a Plex Pass.

Plex has been supporting hardware transcoding since 2017.

To be clear, I’m not saying Jellyfin is bad. I think it’s great to have competition and I understand plenty of people like it.

I feel like I’m getting more than what I paid for. I understand it was a legal contractual exchange. I’m merely commenting on the value I’ve received relative to what I paid. Especially given the continued improvements over time.

I’m seeing a lot of negativity but I think they offer a great service and deserve to be paid for their work. I bought a lifetime pass many years ago and I almost feel guilty how much value I have received over that time.

You highlight the issue: Linux users like it to be fragmented. So unless Valve forces consolidation, it will stay a mess, and it will continue to repel average users. If that’s what we want, cool. Let’s just stop calling every year the year of Linux, because that will never be the case.

Now all we’re missing is the universal enforcement piece, which I think is non-trivial. It might take off organically but as per my example above, I’m not hopeful.

I agree with Linus Torvalds. Linux is too fragmented. This makes consistent software deployment and support expensive and far too varied. Maintaining documentation alone requires an unlimited number of distros. From a user’s perspective, I really think Linux needs a universal install method like .exe. No user should ever need to use the CLI install software, no matter their distribution. Radarr, for example, is a very popular home media server application. It is one-click install on Windows. It is fucked on Linux.

Because they’re not going to do that. You can’t call them terrorists and expect logical reasonable action or reaction.

So we shouldn’t call them terrorists and hope they stop killing people? I’m sorry that doesn’t make any sense. Israel isn’t about to stop their war on Hamas, yet it doesn’t stop the world criticising them.

The Palestinian people by and large did not vote Hamas in, over 50% of the people in Gaza were not alive during the last election.

While technically true, almost 70% of Gazans support armed attacks on Israeli civilians.](https://pcpsr.org/sites/default/files/Poll 89 English Full Text September 2023.pdf) I know it doesn’t fit the oppressor/oppressed narrative, but the vast majority of people in Gaza support what Hamas is doing. If elections were held today, according to that same poll, they would vote Hamas back in.