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Ultra Safe Nuclear

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Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#371

Post by jeffreyrogers »

ajross wrote: post #237
hairytrog wrote: post #156

Two interesting things to see here, of many. They are really planning the sites to be temporary compared to the solar/wind/ and other industrial power plants that have little or no plan for returning their sites to the original virgin soil. And two, they seem to use a molten salt loop like in concentrated solar to meet variable demand without changing the power level of the reactor, which you can't really do because…

And unlike a natural gas plant, it costs 3-10x what the equivalent generating capacity in renewables would cost. I come to post this Same Thing every time this discussion comes up. It's not about safety. Everyone serious understand nuclear, even current technologies, is "safe enough" to be useful to build out. Nuclear is outrageously expensive , though. And new reactor designs don't seem to be making much progress on…

And renewables are cheap because peaker plants exist, which allows the price of storage to be externalized to the peaker plants.

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#372

Post by orthecreedence »

Udik wrote: post #233
xibalba wrote: post #3

Assuming nuclear truly can be ultra safe, how do you convince a public that has seen Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Fukushima to get on board? Particularly when the "competition" (solar, wind, etc) has such a strong tailwind.

Just ask people if they think climate change is an existential threat. If they answer yes (as will most people who are opposed to nuclear energy) then ask them if they think nuclear energy is an existential threat too or just extremely dangerous. If the answer is "just extremely dangerous" then the choice is simple. Actually, I can't understand why all those who are predicting doomsday scenarios because of climate ch…

> Actually, I can't understand why all those who are predicting doomsday scenarios because of climate change aren't storming the streets with big pro-nuclear energy signs.

Agreed. Without being a primitivist, I don't think you can be both pro-environment and anti-nuclear at this point. Solar and wind just don't have the output to keep up with industry. If we're fine living in mud huts and it taking 6 months to produce a laptop, then fine (and honestly that might be the place we end up in 100 years). But as it is, solar and wind cannot sustain our current economy.

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#373

Post by sparkie »

pfdietz wrote: post #369
sparkie wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As stated, that is "at most". A usual UPS is 80-89% efficient. Even still, assuming they were 90% efficient, is it worth the extra 10% energy consumption just so you can run your computer for 1 hour at night when the solar energy provider ups their rate? You still need to consume the additional energy in the day to charge the battery. For me to label it efficient, I'd be looking for 95%+, but 99% would be preferable.…

Of course it's worth it. Losing 10% of the energy in storage is close to trivial, particularly if that energy is otherwise curtailed excess production. It would be worthwhile to use far less efficient storage for long term load leveling, if the capital cost were low enough. Hydrogen with cheap electrolysers and combined cycle turbines might have a round trip efficiency of 33% -- and that would be GREAT as a last comp…

But this is missing the elephant in the living room (this thread), which is nuclear.

One of the main issues with nuclear is that it isn't cost effective to turn on/off to meet demand changes in day and night. Nuclear power stations usually only generate energy for the baseload. If we were to cut energy consumption down at night (by increasing costs), the baseload would also drop, and leave an even larger gap to meet for peak, which must be met by other means like solar or fossil fuels.

If anything, we want to shift some energy consumption to off-peak times like early hours, so that the baseload is higher and can be met by cheaper nuclear, along with other solutions like tidal. If this happens, the gap between peak and baseload during the day/evening will be smaller, and can be met with solutions like (concentrating) solar which are more environmentally friendly than photovoltaics + batteries.

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#374

Post by s9w »

merb wrote: post #187
s9w wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Germany we have a thing called Ewigkeitskosten ("eternal costs"). That's how we call the expenses that still arise as a consequence from the coal mining operations, especially in the west of Germany. That are things like constantly pumping around water. About a fifth of the western coal region would be underwater without it. They're called that way because we already knew that they will never go away. That was acc…

I'm german. and yes I know about that. It's even worse that our politics fought that it is a good idea to keep coal alive that long, worse we keep lignite alive that long, which is probably even worse than anything on the market. (we are the biggest in lignite and it's the worst thing you can do to your environment. Hambacher forst is a eyesore for our country [1]) but as already said it should not be a tradeoff betw…

I didn't want to take any side, just wanted to add some context to the discussion as in: This is not the first time we did accept future costs for energy production.

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#375

Post by petertodd »

pfdietz wrote: post #370
Raidion wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not an expert in this, but isn't this just a really extra lossy type of battery? Hydrogen takes energy to create, so if you're creating hydrogen from renewable energy sources during peak load, you have to go energy -> hydrogen -> energy with efficiency losses both ways. I remain unimpressed by hydrogen, as it seems to only be practical if you don't any other options for existing stores of energy. For instance a l…

Yes. The advantage of hydrogen is the extremely low cost per unit of stored energy. That is the cost you want to minimize for a storage case with few charge-discharge cycles, like rainy day or seasonal storage. For diurnal storage, batteries or other more efficient storage technologies would make more sense, since there would be more charge-discharge cycles over which to amortize the cost of the system.

Do you have a source on that low cost?

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#376

Post by Lazare »

dongobongo wrote: post #317
Lazare wrote: post #315

Eh. In my view, nuclear is very clearly safe enough, and has been for some time. What's more interesting to me is whether it's cheap enough.

1% of commercial reactors Have failed catastrophically. Seems like terrible track record.

> 1% of commercial reactors Have failed catastrophically.

That seems a bit high to me. There have been a lot of commercial reactors.

> Seems like terrible track record.

Even if true, everything fails sometimes. Rooftop solar has a surprisingly high death rate from people falling off of roofs while installing it.

Ultimately it's a question how safe nuclear is relative to other power methods, probably in terms of deaths per terawatt hour. And even counting those catastrophic failures, it turns out it's actually extremely safe. (...which really underscores just how horribly dangerous some of the alternatives are...)

None of which means nuclear power is economic.

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#377

Post by leptons »

remote_phone wrote: post #335
ajross wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And unlike a natural gas plant, it costs 3-10x what the equivalent generating capacity in renewables would cost. I come to post this Same Thing every time this discussion comes up. It's not about safety. Everyone serious understand nuclear, even current technologies, is "safe enough" to be useful to build out. Nuclear is outrageously expensive , though. And new reactor designs don't seem to be making much progress on…

I’m okay with costs being 3-10x for something with zero emissions. And the more we build the cheaper it gets. We have to invest in the future technology. Solar is a good 20th century technology but it is poisonous and degrades over time. Wind is useless.

There are quite a few ways to generate electricity from solar, and not all of them degrade over time or are "poisonous".

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

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#378

Post by p1mrx »

dongobongo wrote: post #317
Lazare wrote: post #315

Eh. In my view, nuclear is very clearly safe enough, and has been for some time. What's more interesting to me is whether it's cheap enough.

1% of commercial reactors Have failed catastrophically. Seems like terrible track record.

100% of fossil plants fail catastrophically; the catastrophe is just a bit slower.

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#379

Post by johnisgood »

ajross wrote: post #237
hairytrog wrote: post #156

Two interesting things to see here, of many. They are really planning the sites to be temporary compared to the solar/wind/ and other industrial power plants that have little or no plan for returning their sites to the original virgin soil. And two, they seem to use a molten salt loop like in concentrated solar to meet variable demand without changing the power level of the reactor, which you can't really do because…

And unlike a natural gas plant, it costs 3-10x what the equivalent generating capacity in renewables would cost. I come to post this Same Thing every time this discussion comes up. It's not about safety. Everyone serious understand nuclear, even current technologies, is "safe enough" to be useful to build out. Nuclear is outrageously expensive , though. And new reactor designs don't seem to be making much progress on…

Well, I am still hoping for ITER.

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#380

Post by johnisgood »

godelski wrote: post #308
grawprog wrote: post #8

So why has nuclear waste become a thing that's not mentioned anymore? It was a pretty big thing in the 90's, now it seems to get brushed under the rug for all this 'safe' nuclear power marketing. It's mot just meltdowns and containment breaches that are a problem with nuclear power. None of the renewable alternatives produce radioactive waste that needs to be stored and dealt with. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rad…

> So why has nuclear waste become a thing that's not mentioned anymore? - It still is the number 1 talking point. - It is a solved problem (you put it in a hole). - The "problem" is vastly overstated. We're talking about 60 years of waste can sit on a football field 1.5m high. That's tiny. Bringing up (generically) waste on a technical forum is often associated with not knowing much about the subject. - Economics is…

Yup, thorium-based nuclear power does not generate much nuclear waste at all, for example, and nuclear waste can be recycled, called "nuclear recycling"[1].

Nuclear waste is NOT an issue.

[1] https://whatisnuclear.com/recycling.html

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