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Canadian provinces band together to develop nuclear reactor technology

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Re: Canadian provinces band together to develop nuclear reactor technology

#111

Post by kortilla »

Spooky23 wrote: post #60
creato wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is missing the point. The point is that your house or car would be outrageously expensive too if the engineering cost of the design was amortized over very few units.

That's precisely the point. Once the direct subsidy of nuclear via the military's nuclear weapons buildout went away, new plant construction... went way. The capital costs of any traditional power plant are massive, and fix high costs of goods sold for the life of the plant. This Canadian effort may find a way to build more smaller units, which will be great if they succeed. Solar and wind are disruptive because the…

Solar and wind aren’t disruptive to base-load though, which is the problem. You can build all of the solar/wind you want, but you’re just falling back to fossil fuels at night and during less windy days.

Re: Canadian provinces band together to develop nuclear reactor technology

#112

Post by cf498 »

StillBored wrote: post #23
thawaway1837 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if the “green energy” people actually had that much power... In reality there are 2 forces that have stopped nuclear. NIMBYism. And terrible economics. But the green energy people are an easy punching bag for the nuclear advocates who are simply unwilling to face up to the reality of why nuclear keeps failing to take off.

The costs to built the plants dominates the price. Once built the actual operation and fueling costs are best in class https://www.expressnews.com/business/eagle-ford-energy/artic... The majority of the cost to build the plants are due to the crazy uncertainty about the design/build timeline every-time one is built. Given that conceptually they aren't any more complex than your average coal plant those costs are mass…

Reading the article (and hoping i didnt just read over the part), they never mention the word waste once when it comes to the cost calculation. Thats rather convenient seeing as the number of functioning deep repository sites today is rather limited. What good are small operating costs when the build costs are this expensive and we dont have a viable solution for waste management (yet?). In practice these costs are externalized to the tax payers and next generations of tax payers. As long as we dont have a functioning waste management, waste is a constantly running cost that wont stop at the end of the reactors lifetime. As long as we dont realistically factor in the waste management cost, nuclear is highly subsidized by the following generations who have to pay for the running cost of waste management. That just doesnt make sense.

Dont get me wrong, i am not anti- nuclear. It just doesnt make sense to me at this point from an economics perspective. When factoring in the cost of waste management and decommissioning the power plants after the end of its lifetime, they are absurdly expensive. All this not to mention the absurd follow-up costs of having to dig out collapsed long time storage yet again. I dont see how nuclear today is not just another technology that offers a unsustainable, quick and cheap energy source that externalized the costs to the next generations. The running costs of all those waste management failures is starting to add up, and when looking at Germany, who set an exit date for nuclear power, the cost of decommissioning the power plants themselves is going to be a massive loss for the tax payer, even if everything would work as planed. Which, when looking at the history, we can be sure it wont.

I am not convinced yet that nuclear doesnt just look good on paper. Get me a realistic calculation for the actual energy price without externalizing the cleanup costs to the tax payer and we can talk. Dont factor in waste management at a fixed price the state offers and dont just assume that no meltdown cleanup will ever be necessary. But i have yet to see anyone make the argument that way, which lets me assume, that nuclear is a wonderful technology to research until someone finds out how to run plants economically viable without just externalizing costs.

Re: Canadian provinces band together to develop nuclear reactor technology

#113

Post by roenxi »

natmaka wrote: post #84
Reedx wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear energy languished largely because of fear, I think. Our failure to invest in nuclear the past several decades was a huge mistake that future generations will rightfully scorn us for.

After a bunch of mishaps (Fukushima being the more recent) it becomes more and more difficult to pretend that nuke plants aren't dangerous. It justifies fear. Moreover the waste management problem is not solved. During the last decades more and more citizen are less and less willing to pay for nuke plants. In democracies imposing is pretty difficult, and IMHO it's a good thing. In the same timeframe wind, and even mo…

> more difficult to pretend that nuke plants aren't dangerous.

Nobody can pretend that nuclear plants aren't dangerous. The argument is that a Fukushima somewhere in the world once every 20 years would be substantially less dangerous than a coal fired plant in every country operating for 20 years. And it doesn't seem to be likely that we get a Fukushima every 20 years. So why is Fukushima used as a reason to use coal plants??? The logic is barely coherent, and even then only assuming that someone has no understanding of the background risk they face every day.

I've lived in a coal mining region. I would have statistically better health outcomes if I had lived next to Fukushima.

EDIT And you linked the Fukushima outcomes page - it says that even only considering Japan the lives saved from not using coal probably outweighed hypothetical maybe-deaths from Fukushima that cannot be detected. Footnote 75.

> Moreover the waste management problem is not solved.

It is kinda difficult to describe a scenario where nuclear waste causes much more damage than say a tailings dam failure at a heavy metals mine. Or a gas leak in a built up area. Or a bad wildfire. There is not a lot of nuclear waste and there is a lot of desert out there if it comes to it.

People have largely been ignoring the waste for 40 years and that strategy is working pretty well.

Re: Canadian provinces band together to develop nuclear reactor technology

#114

Post by kortilla »

buzzkillington wrote: post #105
Reedx wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear energy languished largely because of fear, I think. Our failure to invest in nuclear the past several decades was a huge mistake that future generations will rightfully scorn us for.

It's rather bold of you to assume that future generations will be around to scorn anyone with the apocalyptic climate change we've already locked in.

Not really bold at all. The climate change we are on track for is very disruptive but even the worst case doesn’t show anything that would threaten civilization itself.

We could lose 90% of the human population and be back to the numbers of when the US became a country.

Re: Canadian provinces band together to develop nuclear reactor technology

#115

Post by cjslep »

Spooky23 wrote: post #60
creato wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is missing the point. The point is that your house or car would be outrageously expensive too if the engineering cost of the design was amortized over very few units.

That's precisely the point. Once the direct subsidy of nuclear via the military's nuclear weapons buildout went away, new plant construction... went way. The capital costs of any traditional power plant are massive, and fix high costs of goods sold for the life of the plant. This Canadian effort may find a way to build more smaller units, which will be great if they succeed. Solar and wind are disruptive because the…

> Once the direct subsidy of nuclear via the military's nuclear weapons buildout went away, new plant construction... went way.

This is easily false. When you look at historical nuclear powerplant construction via the NRC, you see a flatline of new reactors starting 1979: Three Mile Island accident year.

In fact, Ford and Carter (a nuclear engineer himself) banned reprocessing of spent nuclear fuels even before that! Due to nonproliferation concerns (NPT had been around since 1970).

The USA kept building nuclear weapons through the 80's, so where were those "subsidies" for civilian powerplants?

The answer is the strong anti-nuclear movement in the 80's society that was the culmination of several different political, disaster, and cultural events. Not because we stopped building nukes in the 80's (we didn't stop).

Edit: One of the defining features of the US's civilian power fleet of reactors is exactly because of its adherence to non-proliferation, independence of military, and economic viability of "standing on its own two legs". Contrast the PWR designs with the power+breeder designs of the RBMK, the Soviet design to accidentally produce power while also producing weapons grade materials. This is why, in contrast, in the USA the reactors at national labs and military sites are so secure and secretive, and why the fuel used in US civilian powerplants are very tame in comparison: only the military is subsidizing it's own reactors for its own weapons grade fuel.

Re: Canadian provinces band together to develop nuclear reactor technology

#116

Post by kortilla »

natmaka wrote: post #98
Reedx wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except nuclear energy is the safest form of power: https://ourworldindata.org/what-is-the-safest-form-of-energy As for Fukushima, more died as a result from it being shut down than in the disaster: https://www.economist.com/asia/2019/11/07/was-shutting-japan... Furthermore, it lead to a surge in imports of dirty fuels. More coal and oil.

Once the last reactor decommissioned and the last nuke waste inert we may try to evaluate the impacts. Until them everything can happen, even the worst. As for Fukushima there are many hypothesis about the real impact until now, and even more for the future. Believing the effects are already fully known is at best 'weird'. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disa... Thinking that we can only repla…

Stop comparing solar and wind to nuclear. That’s a cudgel to ignore the fact that being anti-nuclear means being pro-fossil fuels. Bringing online solar and wind does not displace nuclear because they do not provide a stable base.

You highlight that storage is a challenge, but it’s the entire blocker at this point. Until storage is solved, solar/wind do nothing more than displace some peaker plants.

Re: Canadian provinces band together to develop nuclear reactor technology

#119

Post by chefkoch »

arkh wrote: post #97
Krasnol wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A few years ago Toshiba was going to build a small reactor in Alaska. What an understatement. Let's quote one of the sources there: > But the project never began the mandatory, lengthy and extremely costly process of gaining approval by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. > This would include a site license, which takes tens of millions of dollars and several years, as well as a design permit. No design of this type…

> Fission has been in development for many decades. You're thinking of fusion. Reading the comments here from France where 80% production is nuclear with a nuclear waste reprocessing site it feels like the USA problem has more to do with local regulations than technology.

And even they struggle to come up with replacements for their agying fleet of reactors.

Re: Canadian provinces band together to develop nuclear reactor technology

#120

Post by ptaipale »

ekianjo wrote: post #29
Ididntdothis wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fukushima was a good reminder that these “regulations” exist for good reason.

> Fukushima was a good reminder that these “regulations” exist for good reason. As if the Japanese nuclear market was deregulated? Japan is a developed country that loves bureaucracy so don't be afraid, there is plenty of regulation in every sector here.

And Fukushima was built to the requirements of 1970's, not those of today (which are much stronger).
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