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Making Nuclear Energy Smaller, Cheaper And Safer

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51–60 of 116 posts

Re: Making Nuclear Energy Smaller, Cheaper And Safer

#51
post #15

I have a hard time accepting their premise that they are designing for "cheaper" based on that artists rendering (which I assume is based on some real design elements). Curvy roofed buildings and arced cooling ponds are not at all the most cost effective construction methods. I want truly cheap nuclear that sits in unobtrusive cheap concrete boxes like the old Bell telephone exchange buildings.

The issue right now is every plant is a unique one-off. Meaning the inspectors need to pour over the plans, construction crews need to learn how to build each design specifically, fabricators providing parts need to make each plant's run of stuff special. If we could have just one standard nuclear plant design, even if it was silly curved roofs or whatever, it would massively decrease plant construction costs by taki…

>Now France's problem is it has too much electricity, as it over-estimated how much energy demands would ramp up going into the 21st century, and so now sells excess wattage to Germany.

Um, that doesn't exactly sound like a "problem", especially since Germany gave up on nuclear due to nuclear fears, and still has a lot of coal plants.

Re: Making Nuclear Energy Smaller, Cheaper And Safer

#52
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Union of Concerned Scientists are an anti-nuclear lobbyist group. Anything they say should be dismissed out of hand. They have 0 credibility and have spent the last 50 years spreading lies and fear about nuclear energy. The problem here is actually that the people at 'Union' are deeply convinced that nuclear is bad and no nuclear project no matter how much time was spent on safety has ever been endorsed by them. This…

> Union of Concerned Scientists are an anti-nuclear lobbyist group. Or maybe they are just concerned about a power source which has proved catastrophic multiple times in the past.

Compare the number of deaths due to nuclear accidents to the health effects of us all breathing in coal pollution.

Re: Making Nuclear Energy Smaller, Cheaper And Safer

#53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% safe is never the metric. Nothing is 100% safe. Every form of energy generation has risks that have to balance the good the energy source brings. Nuclear is nearly unique in that it can produce carbon-free energy (unlike fossil and biomass), continuously for 2 years on end between reloads (unlike wind/solar/coal), and it can be deployed in a wide variety of geographic locations (unlike hydro and geothermal). The…

Yeah, even Sun will blow and destroy our Solar system, so solar energy is not safe too. BTW: Will you move to Chornobyl to demonstrate that radioactivity is safe? Land is cheap here.

Sure, if my family and job were there. Its a thriving wildlife refuge now. Check it out.

https://thoughtscapism.com/2019/05/08/worlds-worst-energy-ac...

Re: Making Nuclear Energy Smaller, Cheaper And Safer

#54
post #18

Their webpage [0] has the construction cost at $3 billion for a ~700 MW reactor. This is about the same as the originally projected cost for the Flamanville EPR with 1600 MW, which now is expected to end up costing ~$10 Billion. Now even if we assume - and thats a big assumption - they really can build the reactor for $3 Billion, that still equals ~$7 Billion in construction costs for a Flamanville sized reactor. The…

>They do not put any number on their operating costs which makes it impossible to calculate the electricity price they need to break even...

You can kind of get an idea though, if you know a little about the industry. So we know each one of their modules will need to be refueled every 2 years. That's one cost, and a major one, that we have a pretty good idea of. We know that the design, (again according to the salesman), does not require renewed water for cooling. That's a not so major cost that we don't need to worry about. Etc etc etc.

But yeah, at 720 MWHe and refueling every two years, that's enough to tell you that it's obviously not cheap. It's more accurately characterized as cheap-er than current designs.

My own guess, build price once they get the build process down will come in right around 6 Billion. The first one will end up costing way more, but I do believe the price will come down provided the "modularity" boast is at all true. (6 Billion sounds expensive, but it's a major upgrade from the, so far, 28 Billion that has been spent at Vogtie for instance.) Expenses related to refueling are going to kill you, but hey, it kills you for a normal reactor in any case.

So yeah, obviously this thing won't be beating out wind any time soon. But it is wayyyy cheaper than nuclear is currently. If you're a poor area, Wind with some innovative pumped hydro storage designs seems like a better fit for your pocketbook. But if you're a area flush with a lot of cash, some of these may work out for you. They're definitely what you might call luxuries. They're future is, basically, to be used as ultra expensive storage solutions for wind. So over service lifetime, I'd suspect wind/pumped hydro to be much less expensive. (Plus, who knows what will happen with other storage tech development in the interim?)

The great irony here is that the places flush with the most cash, Texas, Cali, New York, Minnesota, etc., are also the places least likely to use this. The places with little cash, your Iowas, your Wisconsins, aren't likely to use it either because obviously wind/pumped hydro is cheaper for them long term. (And wind/gas or coal is acceptable to them as a transition tech.) They wouldn't have had the money anyway though, so no real loss there.

Upper middle class states not close to the Great Lakes might be your best bets? Georgia? Utah? Etc. It'll be a tough sell. But if they find the right marks, they can probably sell it.

Re: Making Nuclear Energy Smaller, Cheaper And Safer

#55
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to consider stuff like terrorist attack and so on. Nobody is so incentivized in making your backyard pool leak.

What if a dam explodes? More people have died due to dam failures (both intentional and accidental) than have died to nuclear power, but there is nowhere near the freaking out over the safety of dams compared to nuclear power. For comparison, the Banqiao Dam failure (the largest dam failure in history) killed as many people as the sum total of every nuclear power plant failure and every atomic bomb ever used, combine…

While dam break cost lives, there is crucial differences that are never mentioned by the pro-nuclear crowd on HN.

1.) Dam breaks devastate much smaller areas. So even if the human toll is the same, the amount of infrastructure lost is smaller.

2.) The area is unlivable (or even inaccessible) for a much smaller duration of month instead of millenia.

Maybe land lost "forever" (on the timescale of individual human lives) is not a big problem in some part of the world, but in densely populated areas (any they need the most power, so would have MORE reactors per area) you can not simply block off an area the size of Belgium because a reactor exploded. This makes nuclear power a lot less attractive in India, Europe or (coastal) China.

Re: Making Nuclear Energy Smaller, Cheaper And Safer

#56
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About the water vaporizing: I'm guessing the pool is so "huge" that the sheer amount of energy required to vaporize the water can't be found in the fissile fuel alone. That doesn't account for the possibility of a leak, though.

In an accident scenario, the heat that is problematic is not from the fissile material (i.e. U235, Pu239) but from the fission products' decay heat - the isotope soup remaining after the fissile atoms split. It is much less intense than the heat/energy produced during normal operation and drops off significantly after a couple days. So the pool's purpose in terms of accident mitigation is to keep things cool enough d…

While you are correct that it is less than the nominal heat output, we are still talking about 50MW a minute after shut down and 5MW one day after the shutdown of a 700MW reactor. So even a day after the shutdown you are able to boil of 2kg of water every second.

Re: Making Nuclear Energy Smaller, Cheaper And Safer

#57
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue right now is every plant is a unique one-off. Meaning the inspectors need to pour over the plans, construction crews need to learn how to build each design specifically, fabricators providing parts need to make each plant's run of stuff special. If we could have just one standard nuclear plant design, even if it was silly curved roofs or whatever, it would massively decrease plant construction costs by taki…

>Now France's problem is it has too much electricity, as it over-estimated how much energy demands would ramp up going into the 21st century, and so now sells excess wattage to Germany. Um, that doesn't exactly sound like a "problem", especially since Germany gave up on nuclear due to nuclear fears, and still has a lot of coal plants.

It's a good problem to have but it is still a "problem." Nuclear plants have huge fixed costs in security (due to international treaties and so on), even if the reactor never runs, let alone the cost of operations and maintenance, so if you overbuild, it drastically increases your energy prices due to the ratio of fixed costs to production - unless you can sell enough electricity to other countries to make it economical for your own population.

Re: Making Nuclear Energy Smaller, Cheaper And Safer

#58
post #15

I have a hard time accepting their premise that they are designing for "cheaper" based on that artists rendering (which I assume is based on some real design elements). Curvy roofed buildings and arced cooling ponds are not at all the most cost effective construction methods. I want truly cheap nuclear that sits in unobtrusive cheap concrete boxes like the old Bell telephone exchange buildings.

The issue right now is every plant is a unique one-off. Meaning the inspectors need to pour over the plans, construction crews need to learn how to build each design specifically, fabricators providing parts need to make each plant's run of stuff special. If we could have just one standard nuclear plant design, even if it was silly curved roofs or whatever, it would massively decrease plant construction costs by taki…

Pore not pour

Re: Making Nuclear Energy Smaller, Cheaper And Safer

#59
post #11

Although I'm not a big nuclear power fan for various reasons, I'm really happy to see someone approaching it with an eye to realistic safety, modern economics, and compatibility with a renewable-based grid. It'll be interesting to see if this can compete financially with batteries.

May I ask why you aren't a fan?

Re: Making Nuclear Energy Smaller, Cheaper And Safer

#60
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to consider stuff like terrorist attack and so on. Nobody is so incentivized in making your backyard pool leak.

What if a dam explodes? More people have died due to dam failures (both intentional and accidental) than have died to nuclear power, but there is nowhere near the freaking out over the safety of dams compared to nuclear power. For comparison, the Banqiao Dam failure (the largest dam failure in history) killed as many people as the sum total of every nuclear power plant failure and every atomic bomb ever used, combine…

Nuclear has the lowest deaths per petawatt-hour of any generation method: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents

Lower than wind and solar.

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