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Why nuclear energy is our best option at the moment

energyrealityproject.com

271–280 of 393 posts

Re: Why nuclear energy is our best option at the moment

#271
post #267

Or just install solar roofs with power walls in every single american home for 1 trillion dollars and be done with it. No need to occupy extra land or run expensive machinery and power lines all over the country. Distributed energy is the future.

Maybe for some applications (low usage residential), but not for all. Certainly not for energy-intensive industrial applications. And if you're running lines to industrial sites--which are located all over the country in all sorts of areas--you might as well hook up residential developments to the grid as well to be more efficient and cost effective. That's not to say that distributed generation is a bad idea, or that it isn't going to happen. It's not, and it will. But it'll still be connected to the grid. No one's really proposing doing away with grid connections, outside some very limited and specific types of situations.

Re: Why nuclear energy is our best option at the moment

#272

The article is completely unprofessional. The tone itself is very one-sided - which is bad enough. However, the factual omissions are ridiculous. Here are a few examples: the area used for wind turbines is large, but it is usually re-usable for agriculture, or increasingly off shore official nuclear death are low - but there is a lot of dispute on the "long tail" of long term deaths from the big nuclear disasters of…

Could you clarify the "huge problem of load-following" for nuclear power plants? My understanding is that it's mostly a licensing issue rather than a technical issue, and in practice hasn't had a big impact on CF[1]

[1] https://www.oecd-nea.org/nea-news/2011/29-2/nea-news-29-2-lo...

"Most of the currently operating Generation II nuclear reactors were designed to have strong manoeuvring capabilities. Nuclear power plants in France and Germany operate in load-following mode."

"The economic consequences of load-following are mainly related to the reduction of the load factor... In France, the impact of load-following on the average unit capacity factor is sometimes estimated at about 1.2%."

"Licensing of load-following is specific to each country. In France and in Germany, for instance,load-following is considered early in the licensing process, and no further authorisation needs to be obtained by the utility to operate in manoeuvring regime. In other countries, load-following restrictions apply: for example in the United States, automatic load-following is not authorised"

Re: Why nuclear energy is our best option at the moment

#273
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't make any sense. Wind and Solar PV have to be financed for probably 99% of the upfront cost. All power generation is like that - very capital intensive.

Of course that does make sense. To build a wind mill and to distribute the costs is a totally different kind of economic endeavor than to build and finance a nuclear power plant, which can only be profitable with state subventions anyway.

Which grid-scale wind or solar projects are profitable without being subsidized by the government?

I'm not aware of any.

Re: Why nuclear energy is our best option at the moment

#274
post #216

Solar PV is less than 3 cents and nuclear is at least 15 cents. A nuclear meltdown is called a "sacrifice zone" and a solar meltdown is called a sunny day. Make me proud, go solar!

I think you are going to need to add some citations (from a source without an agenda).

Each country is going to have different costs for energy usage so it isn’t clear why you are claiming the costs you do without putting them in context. For example, as might be expected, solar PV is more expensive in Canada. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_nuclear_power_pla...: “...Independent reviews rarely show that nuclear power plants are necessarily very expensive,[21][22] but anti-nuclear groups frequently produce reports that say the costs of nuclear energy are prohibitively high.[23][24][25][26] This is despite the fact that the cost of electricity in nuclear France is approximately half of that in Germany and Denmark.[27][28][29] In Ontario, hydroelectricity and nuclear have by far the cheapest generation costs, at 4.3c/kWh and 5.9c/kWh respectively, whilst solar costs a massive 50.4c/kWh.[30][31] "

For example, on the wiki page, the Brookings Institute (which doesn’t appear to have a financial stake in supporting or attacking nuclear power):

“...In 2014, Brookings Institution published The Net Benefits of Low and No-Carbon Electricity Technologies which states, after performing an energy and emissions cost analysis, that "The net benefits of new nuclear, hydro, and natural gas combined cycle plants far outweigh the net benefits of new wind or solar plants", with the most cost effective low carbon power technology being determined to be nuclear power.[106][107] Moreover, Paul Joskow of MIT has determined that the "Levelized cost of electricity"(LCOE) metric is a poor means of comparing electricity sources as it hides the extra costs, such as the need to frequently operate back up power stations, incurred due to the use of intermittent power sources such as wind energy, while the value of baseload power sources are underpresented.[108]”

Also the EU found: “...An EU-funded research study known as ExternE, or Externalities of Energy, undertaken from 1995 to 2005, found that the cost of producing electricity from coal or oil would double, and the cost of electricity production from gas would increase by 30% if external costs such as damage to the environment and to human health, from the particulate matter, nitrogen oxides, chromium VI, river water alkalinity, mercury poisoning and arsenic emissions produced by these sources, were taken into account. It was estimated in the study that these external, downstream, fossil fuel costs amount up to 1-2% of the EU's Gross Domestic Product, and this was before the external cost of global warming from these sources was included.[109] The study also found that the environmental and health costs of nuclear power, per unit of energy delivered, was lower than many renewable sources, including that caused by biomass and photovoltaic solar panels, but was higher than the external costs associated with wind power and alpine hydropower.[110]”

In the US: “...In 2014, the US Energy Information Administration estimated the levelized cost of electricity from new nuclear power plants going online in 2019 to be $0.096/kWh before government subsidies, comparable to the cost of electricity from a new coal-fired power plant without carbon capture, but higher than the cost from natural gas-fired plants.[98]”

>...A nuclear meltdown is called a "sacrifice zone" and a solar meltdown is called a sunny day.

Installing/maintaining PV solar (particularly on roofs) is not as safe as you imply in your comment. Even including Chernobyl, the deaths from nuclear power have been significantly less: http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-so...

Re: Why nuclear energy is our best option at the moment

#275
post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, I'm actually surprised that the battery comes that close. When one of the newer battery technology materializes those numbers might reverse.

Don't forget Li your down capacity after just 3 years and you might get 15 years total. Pumped storage is good for 50 years before a refit and the reservoir is probably good hundreds if not thousands of years.

Of course, pumped storage (or any kind of hydro) is many orders of magnitude more dangerous and environmentally destructive than fission.

The Banqiao Reservoir dam failure alone killed over 170,000 people and made over 11 million homeless.

I worry far more about the hundreds of millions of people living downstream of the Three Gorges Dam than I do about people living near fission plants.

Re: Why nuclear energy is our best option at the moment

#276
post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget Li your down capacity after just 3 years and you might get 15 years total. Pumped storage is good for 50 years before a refit and the reservoir is probably good hundreds if not thousands of years.

Of course, pumped storage (or any kind of hydro) is many orders of magnitude more dangerous and environmentally destructive than fission. The Banqiao Reservoir dam failure alone killed over 170,000 people and made over 11 million homeless. I worry far more about the hundreds of millions of people living downstream of the Three Gorges Dam than I do about people living near fission plants.

Pumped storage probably makes more sense when it is paired with fission than when not. The power companies built this one that isn't quite so scary:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludington_Pumped_Storage_Power...

Re: Why nuclear energy is our best option at the moment

#277
post #140
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The startup capital required for nuclear fission is so immense that it doesn't make sense from an economic time-value perspective. The problem with most renewables (excl. thermal and hydro) is that they are incapable of meeting 100% of electricity demands by their nature without better storage technology. The economics are pushing towards renewables but I feel that nuclear makes more sense for our society in the near…

99% of the worlds grid storage is pumped hydro because nothing else works out. Pumped storage is 70% to 85% efficient, can come online within 15 seconds, and works at scale. The reservoir can provide about 13 GW·h of stored gravitational potential energy (convertible to electricity at about 80% efficiency), or about 2% of China's daily electricity consumption. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tianhuangping_Pumped_Storag…

You can run the numbers for thermal storage. It's not fantastic. Probably a 60-70% return on input + plus waste heat. However thermal storage are very compact. Rough estimate I get; 100MW for 10 hours with a 2.5 acre footprint. One also gets about 40MW of waste heat which could be used for commercial or industrial heating.

Currently though, complaining about storage has a cart before the horse aspect. Since for the immediate future photo voltaic plants are competing with gas fired peaking plants not nuclear or coal fired base load plants. (If you ever wonder why the Koch brothers really don't like Solar plants it's because solar cuts into the market for natural gas)

Re: Why nuclear energy is our best option at the moment

#278
post #261

The article is completely unprofessional. The tone itself is very one-sided - which is bad enough. However, the factual omissions are ridiculous. Here are a few examples: the area used for wind turbines is large, but it is usually re-usable for agriculture, or increasingly off shore official nuclear death are low - but there is a lot of dispute on the "long tail" of long term deaths from the big nuclear disasters of…

Most importantly, IMHO, they completely ignore the learning curve for solar & wind. This is a proven trend, over last decades, appears to be set to continue, and completely changes the discussion. By 'learning curve,' I guess you mean the rapidly increasing efficiency curves these technologies are on, and in the case of solar(maybe wind as well, not sure) exponentially so. I certainly agree with you, this is the most…

Equating nuclear (in all it's forms) and fracking is not particularly helpful. They're very different approaches, with radically different considerations, not to mention that some reactor designs can actually consume existing stockpiles of nuclear waste as fuel.

I'm as big a critic of fracking as you're going to find, but being overly emotional and applying the fallacy of equivocation isn't helping anything here - and might be hurting if the appropriate application of modern nuclear technology can actually solve many of our issues (or at least help). For that we do need solid analysis which does take into account the "huge costs in the form of negative externalities" - which is bound to come from outside the pro-nuclear industry.

Re: Why nuclear energy is our best option at the moment

#279
post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, Britain did that. They dumped most of their waste in the channel. Result, 20 years later: The waste did not dilute, the radiation in the channel is damaging the local animals.

It's not supposed to dilute. It should stay put and not spread around. Most human activities tend to displace natural ecosystems. Waste dumps (nor windmills) are no exception. The question is, is the damage lesser than greater than in proposed alternatives? Though I do not understand why did they choose to dump the waste to the channel? If I would dispose the waste by sinking, I would use a kilometers deep trench to…

Well, they did it because it was easy. And cheap.

If you want safe nuclear power, including demolishing the reactors safely, safely getting rid of all the materials, nine nines safety, etc, then it won’t be profitable.

If you want for-profit nuclear power, then either the government has to subsidize it, or it has to be unsafe.

Usually, it’s both unsafe (companies save money everywhere, including stuff like not securing the generator cough Fukushima cough) and barely profitable.

Re: Why nuclear energy is our best option at the moment

#280
post #177
post #165

The word "centralized" does not appear anywhere in their post, which tells me that they are not thinking about that as an issue. But it is an important bias of nuclear energy, the bias toward centralization. One of the benefits of solar is that it can be either centralized, or decentralized, or a hybrid of the two. Being less biased in this way, it opens up more flexible options. Another important aspect of solar is…

>The word "centralized" does not appear anywhere in their post, which tells me that they are not thinking about that as an issue why is centralized power an issue? It was only recently that power generation became decentralized (through renewables such as wind and solar)

For one, the argument that "solar takes a ridiculous amount of area" becomes less compelling if you realize that each home can supply its own energy using existing roof area.
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