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Bill Gates promises to add his own billions if Congress does nuclear power push

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Re: Bill Gates promises to add his own billions if Congress does nuclear power push

#221

Post by antt »

eigenvector wrote: post #201
antt wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This works well for the current 30 minute market. At 5 minutes there are no non-battery plants, other than hydro, which can start up fast enough to provide power to the market.

True for cold start, but gas plants can ramp in the 5 minute window if they are already running. But the market conditions would have to such that it makes economic sense for them to be in that operating condition.

Right and it takes them five minutes to ramp down, and the price market window will be 5 minutes. Which means they will have to bet on the price being high the next windiw too. Which means higher prices sustained longer because gas units won't be quick enough any more.

Re: Bill Gates promises to add his own billions if Congress does nuclear power push

#222

Post by gwbas1c »

captainbland wrote: post #132
TomMckenny wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aside from urgency, it's also likely that wind, solar and hydro, even if deployed maximally, might not be able to meet the total peak demand every where. Renewable are obviously superior but for that gaps, we will need fission anyway. Fission plants have a finite lifespan anyway so if fusion or space laser or whatever appear, openings will be appearing constantly.

It might just be right that if renewables can't meet current demand, prices go that bit higher to keep usage in line. It's not a given that we must consume as much as we do (or more) forever given the finite nature of the planet and everything.

That really hurts the crowd that lives paycheck to paycheck. Price goes up: someone goes without.

Re: Bill Gates promises to add his own billions if Congress does nuclear power push

#223

Post by eigenvector »

antt wrote: post #221
eigenvector wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True for cold start, but gas plants can ramp in the 5 minute window if they are already running. But the market conditions would have to such that it makes economic sense for them to be in that operating condition.

Right and it takes them five minutes to ramp down, and the price market window will be 5 minutes. Which means they will have to bet on the price being high the next windiw too. Which means higher prices sustained longer because gas units won't be quick enough any more.

If they're ramping as part of a system reliability service, then should be doing it under automatic generation control, not betting on the energy market, and they would have committed a certain amount of up and down regulation some hours in advance. The cost question is whether it makes sense for them to bid for that reliability service to begin with.

Which goes back to my argument that this is to a large extent about market design and not technology.

Re: Bill Gates promises to add his own billions if Congress does nuclear power push

#224

Post by coddingtonbear »

justatdotin wrote: post #191
javagram wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The energy storage problem isn’t solved for current generation renewables as far as I know. Laying out a ton of solar panels everywhere is great but if we have rolling blackouts when it’s too cloudy for a while people will be very upset.

At home, some of my excess power is syphoned off to neighbours, but I'm also using an amazing energy storage technology called batteries. Our government has just announced a number of new large-scale battery farms, as already deployed in neighbouring states.

I hear people say this sort of thing all the time, "All we need is bigger batteries", but I think the thing folks don't realize is really how small even the worlds biggest batteries are when faced with the actual amount of electricity we use.

One of the worlds biggest batteries (currently under construction nearby LA) stores the huge-sounding amount of 400MWh of energy. What isn't clear to folks who don't do the math is that battery is really only big enough to help out with peak load periods. The peak consumption of LA has reached as high as 6,393 MW (about double their average peak). At that rate, that battery -- literally one of the biggest ones in the whole world -- will last just 3.8 minutes.

Re: Bill Gates promises to add his own billions if Congress does nuclear power push

#225

Post by AnthonyMouse »

Jedd wrote: post #207
roenxi wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hang on, are you absolutely sure that renewables are less damaging than nuclear? The footprint for nuclear is tiny, it might be competitive. Fukashima was a level 7 nuclear distaster, so that is as bad as it gets. The actual damage done is objectivly not that bad compared to a lot of things we have accepted in the past with only increased safety regulation (like dam failures). 2 lvl 7 accidents in 35 years; and desig…

> The footprint for nuclear is tiny, it might be competitive. Parent noted distinction between nuclear fission and nuclear fusion. I'm assuming here you're talking about nuclear fission exclusively. In any case, how sure are you that the footprint for nuclear is tiny? As I understand it the construction / commissioning costs are enormous - more than a coal or gas plant (eg. a breathtaking volume of concrete). The cos…

> As I understand it the construction / commissioning costs are enormous - more than a coal or gas plant (eg. a breathtaking volume of concrete).

The construction costs are high predominantly as a result of inefficient (or in this case purposely obstructive) legal requirements. The government has literally been known to change the requirements a new reactor must be built under after the portion of the reactor subject to those requirements has already been built. This predictably leads to cost overruns, but it is also an artificial problem.

> The costs of acquiring fissionable material seem to often be overlooked, but mining (currently) requires fossil fuels.

It's overlooked because it's tiny. The energy produced through fission from one pound of uranium is the same as from burning 2.7 million pounds of coal. In other words, the weight of coal vs. uranium to operate a coal fired power plant for an hour would run a nuclear reactor for more than 300 years.

Moreover, the fuel rods we already have sitting around at existing reactor sites that we don't know what to do with? Can be used as fuel in newer generation reactors. Plus all we have from decommissioned nuclear weapons that we also need to get rid of.

Everyone currently alive will die of old age before we have to mine any more uranium for newer generation reactors.

> That's before you get to decommissioning costs (which may not be within the 'footprint' category) or waste management.

Decommissioning costs are a thing invented to make nuclear seem more expensive by counting it in one place but not the other. Do you know how much it costs to clean up the superfund sites left at the mining operations for coal and the raw materials that go into solar panels?

And long-term waste management is only a thing for legacy reactors. The newer reactors use their "waste" as fuel, solving both problems.

Re: Bill Gates promises to add his own billions if Congress does nuclear power push

#226

Post by vkou »

addicted wrote: post #220
avar wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What we've got right now is on the order of a million people dying prematurely every year because of the human issue of people worrying too much about concentrated risk (nuclear) and not understanding the diffuse risk (coal). Sure, we can improve fission in various ways, but this sort of skepticism is way riskier in the aggregate as it translates into public policy.

Most nuclear renewable energy competitors are cheaper than nuclear. Sure, nuclear provides baseload energy in a way its cheaper competitors cannot, but as long as you have more than 20-30% fossil fuel the baseload is not really a concern anywhere. It seems foolish to divert money intended to reduce polluting sources of energy into the more expensive nuclear alternative, until the share of coal and natural gas is low…

All non-nuclear renewable energy competitors require us to derive ~40-60% of our energy generation from burning natural gas, that generates GHGs. This natural gas comes from either fracking, or Russia.

Climate change is an exsistential threat to our way of life.

> Sure, nuclear provides baseload energy in a way its cheaper competitors cannot, but as long as you have more than 20-30% fossil fuel the baseload is not really a concern anywhere.

Yes, it is a concern. We need to hit net zero emissions in the next five years, or net negative emissions, with massive carbon sequestration, in the next 15. How exactly are we going to do that between shipping, air travel, AND fossil-fuel baseload power?

Re: Bill Gates promises to add his own billions if Congress does nuclear power push

#227

Post by AnthonyMouse »

Nition wrote: post #182
roenxi wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hang on, are you absolutely sure that renewables are less damaging than nuclear? The footprint for nuclear is tiny, it might be competitive. Fukashima was a level 7 nuclear distaster, so that is as bad as it gets. The actual damage done is objectivly not that bad compared to a lot of things we have accepted in the past with only increased safety regulation (like dam failures). 2 lvl 7 accidents in 35 years; and desig…

I think people rightly fear a type of damage they can't see. Radiation is scary because you could get a dose of it and not even know it, or have no idea how bad it is. People are taking the devil they know.

> I think people rightly fear a type of damage they can't see. Radiation is scary because you could get a dose of it and not even know it, or have no idea how bad it is. People are taking the devil they know.

By this logic people should be deathly afraid of coal and what it puts into the air.

Re: Bill Gates promises to add his own billions if Congress does nuclear power push

#228

Post by cam_l »

avar wrote: post #104
est31 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, coal is even worse than nuclear. So let's have neither but renewables instead :). Compared to europe, the USA is a big country and it is also further in the south which means more sun for solar collectors.

Yeah that's fortunately increasingly an option we can take, but the world would sure suck less if we weren't dealing with the compounded effects of 50-70 years of the sort of nuclear skepticism expressed in your comment upthread. But still, even if we're going to aggressively build out renewables there's still room for a lot more nuclear in the energy mix. There's use-cases for it where solar, wind etc. isn't a subst…

We have had 30+ years of skepticism in coal power, which made near enough to approximately fuck all difference (until perhaps very recently). I would suggest the historical stagnation of nuclear has sfa to do with activism and quite a lot to do with the astronomical costs of building, mining and operation.

Also just a thought re. your eg. on shipping.. I read a random blog a while back that suggested that a couple of large cargo ships go missing every week (sinking or piracy mostly). Not a thing I would like to see with nuclear reactors and material on board.

http://actuarialeye.com/2014/03/30/how-many-ships-disappear-...

Re: Bill Gates promises to add his own billions if Congress does nuclear power push

#229

Post by willio58 »

uncoder0 wrote: post #167
pjc50 wrote: post #59

Three serious problems with nuclear, globally: - too slow. Break ground now and you'll be producing energy by 2030. - political instability. Hands up who supports the switch of Iran and Saudi Arabia to nuclear? It would reduce a lot of carbon emissions. Let's not overlook Ukraine either: https://www.neimagazine.com/features/featurenuclear-plants-i... - budget instability: Wylfa has stopped https://www.independent.co.…

>Is the US really able to build nuclear plants with the occasional total budget shutdown for 3 months? When did the US Govt Shutdown for 3 months (90 days)? Source please.

Considering we just ended the longest one ever that lasted 3 weeks.. maybe they meant 3 weeks.

Re: Bill Gates promises to add his own billions if Congress does nuclear power push

#230

Post by kbad1000 »

est31 wrote: post #92
avar wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What we've got right now is on the order of a million people dying prematurely every year because of the human issue of people worrying too much about concentrated risk (nuclear) and not understanding the diffuse risk (coal). Sure, we can improve fission in various ways, but this sort of skepticism is way riskier in the aggregate as it translates into public policy.

Indeed, coal is even worse than nuclear. So let's have neither but renewables instead :). Compared to europe, the USA is a big country and it is also further in the south which means more sun for solar collectors.

Yes, the real solution is solar energy combined with a world Power grid.
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