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We Need a Nuclear New Deal, Not a Green New Deal

thebellows.org

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Re: We Need a Nuclear New Deal, Not a Green New Deal

#341

Post by 7952 »

0xy wrote: post #281
pydry wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the UK Hinkley point C got a strike price of £92.50 per megawatt hour guaranteed for (i think) 35 years. By contrast wind got about £39-£41 for two years. Future years will likely be even lower.

Ignores the price of inconsistent delivery and the inevitable huge costs of batteries and/or gas peaking plants to supplement the inconsistent power from wind. Nobody ever factors in these costs to the price of solar or wind, and I find it extremely disingenuous. Nuclear can still be pumping power on a windless sunless day with 100% green energy. Solar and wind? Either use batteries (expensive, not really renewable)…

Well actually a lot of people think about this kind of thing all the time. There is an entire market and industry dedicated to power grids. Sure, that price is not a complete picture. But does any price completely encapsulate externalities? But that low price is extremely positive.

Re: We Need a Nuclear New Deal, Not a Green New Deal

#342

Post by skitout »

polote wrote: post #244
DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With energy from wind farms 1000 km away, hydro and biofuels closer by, and nearby storage. At the beginning, you'll probably also have a small amount of "dirty" generation as backup, but which sits idle most of the time.

> biofuels "Allocating 10% of arable land to biofuels would allow a net production of something like 4% of the present consumption of oil products." https://jancovici.com/en/energy-transition/renewables/could-... >hydro "Increasing the hydro production from 10% (present value) of the electricity generated to 80% seems clearly impossible, and even a multiplication by 2 might be out of reach. " https://jancovici.com/en…

If you seek the truth, diversify your sources and don't take article from 2013 or even 2000 when talking about energy and grid.

For wind power he is taking the example of a wind turbine of 175 kW of nominal power... Most onshore turbine are 10 more powerful, and Siemens Gamesa has a 14 MW offshore turbine in the works

For storage, he is taking totally stupid hypothesis (nobody want to use 100% onshore old wind turbine with no change to the current demand and 1 week of total backup), and one old technology, and is never mentioning demand response or thermal storage...

A 100% renewable grid, would require big (profitable) energy efficiency investment, big investment in thermal storage and demand response, some onshore wind, some offshore wind, some solar facing different direction, some biomass, a bit of geothermal power when available, and hydro power like now... Some smart grid and a bit of electrical storage (many different technology available).

Re: We Need a Nuclear New Deal, Not a Green New Deal

#343

Post by skitout »

manfredo wrote: post #145
sradman wrote: post #97

> Reactors from civilian plants don’t blow up like atomic bombs... No they don't, but they do blow up like industrial hydrogen gas explosions. Loss of coolant accidents are unforgiving in boiling water reactors and quickly fail catastrophically (in the engineering sense). > the 1950s design CANDU reactor is small enough to be considered “modular” Ummm, no. I stood in front of reactor #4 at Darlington just before it w…

Yes, nuclear power is more expensive than natural gas. But natural gas still emits carbon dioxide. If our goal is to curtail climate change, then our goal is to decarbonize our economy. There are additional culprits too like methane and some refrigerants. But carbon dioxide accounts for the lion's share of climate change.

And nuclear is much much more expensive than solar or wind ! https://www.lazard.com/perspective/lcoe2019/

Re: We Need a Nuclear New Deal, Not a Green New Deal

#344

Post by skitout »

polote wrote: post #237
ip26 wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In addition to other points made, I wanted to add, at the altitude large turbines reach, there is almost always wind, around the clock.

This is not the case, wind is not enough, the production depends on the strength of the wind "In particular the occurrences of wind blowing below à 8 m/s (4 Beaufort, blue line) are far from being negligible, and that winds of 7 Beaufort or over, which are necessary to get the full power of the above wind turbine, blows much less than 50% of the time." https://jancovici.com/en/energy-transition/renewables/how-ma...

Your reference is a totally outdated article, with outdated facts (even if of course you need a minimum speed of wind to get full power... but we don't rally care about full power)

Re: We Need a Nuclear New Deal, Not a Green New Deal

#345

Post by redis_mlc »

pydry wrote: post #74
ebalit wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a source for those $500 billions cleanup costs? I'm interested in what is included in order to reach this figure.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/clearing-the-radi...

Even using a number like $500 billion or $1 trillion or more ...

- TEPCO expects to spend 40 or more years on the cleanup

- 250,000 residents were displaced for years

- the Japanese army and political structure were stressed by this, and will be for generations

- one could go on endlessly. It was preventable by having a qualified facility auditor spend a couple days looking at the backup generators, common with any data center audit.

Re: We Need a Nuclear New Deal, Not a Green New Deal

#346

Post by andrewjl »

tertiary wrote: post #30

First off, you can have both. Green new deal doesn't ban reactors or anything. Second, I'm on the fence over whether I support more reactors and not because nuclear==bad. I trust the technology, but my concern is whether we can maintain a stable political environment for the decades/hundred years required to responsibly take care of nuclear. Buying into a fission reactor means you pay billions up front, but you also…

> whether we can maintain a stable political environment for the decades/hundred years required to responsibly take care of nuclear.

And if that's not the case then what do you think will happen to the other programs critical in keeping climate change at bay? Taken to its ultimate conclusion this line of thinking leads to analysis paralysis, i.e. to shut down our government and do nothing. Which may be good thinking; especially for government policy likely full of unintended consequences. I don't think this should stop perfectly good technology from being developed and built out though. Or for the government to effectively kneecap it via regulation so restrictive it's tantamount to a ban, as the US has done with nuclear power.

> Nuclear is amazing and could solve all of our short term energy needs, but it's ultimately people and our political structures that I don't trust, not the science.

I agree yet have drawn strikingly different conclusions. Nuclear development should be encouraged to proceed. Collectively we need to figure out how to incentivize the actors to behave safely without kneecapping their ability to do something.

Re: We Need a Nuclear New Deal, Not a Green New Deal

#347

Post by [deleted] »

wutbrodo wrote: post #52
tertiary wrote: post #30

First off, you can have both. Green new deal doesn't ban reactors or anything. Second, I'm on the fence over whether I support more reactors and not because nuclear==bad. I trust the technology, but my concern is whether we can maintain a stable political environment for the decades/hundred years required to responsibly take care of nuclear. Buying into a fission reactor means you pay billions up front, but you also…

> First off, you can have both. Green new deal doesn't ban reactors or anything. Am I crazy, or did the Green New Deal have as an explicit goal the decommissioning of all nuclear plants? EDIT: Ah, apparently that was in the initial released plan, but they changed the language to technically leave the door open for nuclear, without supporting it (and with occasional statements expressing disfavor towards nuclear as a…

[deleted]

Re: We Need a Nuclear New Deal, Not a Green New Deal

#348

Post by skitout »

tertiary wrote: post #30

First off, you can have both. Green new deal doesn't ban reactors or anything. Second, I'm on the fence over whether I support more reactors and not because nuclear==bad. I trust the technology, but my concern is whether we can maintain a stable political environment for the decades/hundred years required to responsibly take care of nuclear. Buying into a fission reactor means you pay billions up front, but you also…

"Nuclear is amazing"... but much much more expensive than wind and solar https://www.lazard.com/perspective/lcoe2019/

Re: We Need a Nuclear New Deal, Not a Green New Deal

#349

Post by xupybd »

skitout wrote: post #339
xupybd wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is desirable however impractical given currently available technology. We need significant developments in energy storage to make it work. We could have zero carbon now using nuclear with no new technologies.

Why impractical??? Whith a diversified mix, energy efficiency, a big market for demand response, thermal storage, and a bit of electrical storage, there is no problem with current technologies. Coming tech could decrease the cost and make it easier to implement. And nuclear is much much more expensive than most renewable now ( https://www.lazard.com/perspective/lcoe2019/ )

Yes we are getting there but some countries are at the point of diminishing returns with current renewables. For example, Germany has to pay it's neighbours to receive peak generation.

Coming tech will improve that but we could get to carbon zero far quicker and cheaper with a mix of nuclear and renewables. One problem with nuclear is that safety concerns. However nuclear has caused less death than coal generation. It does require a huge capital investment but it pays for itself over the long run. Waste is an issue but it produces a tiny volume of waste compared to any other form of generation.

We could get rid of all current coal and gas plants and have power when it's required with nuclear. Until we have a better storage option the true can't be said of any renewables (unless you are lucky enough to have abundant geothermal options). With wind and solar you have too much during peak supply and too little during peak demand.

Even the article you linked states whole sale solar and batteries are not yet economically viable.

If there is a viable thermal storage option, I'm wrong but I've not heard about it. I would love to be wrong if that is the case.

Re: We Need a Nuclear New Deal, Not a Green New Deal

#350

Post by andrewjl »

skitout wrote: post #339
xupybd wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is desirable however impractical given currently available technology. We need significant developments in energy storage to make it work. We could have zero carbon now using nuclear with no new technologies.

Why impractical??? Whith a diversified mix, energy efficiency, a big market for demand response, thermal storage, and a bit of electrical storage, there is no problem with current technologies. Coming tech could decrease the cost and make it easier to implement. And nuclear is much much more expensive than most renewable now ( https://www.lazard.com/perspective/lcoe2019/ )

> thermal storage, and a bit of electrical storage

I'll acknowledge that renewable generation costs have been falling at an impressive rate. However you're understating the problem for storage. Besides cost, there are far more complex regulatory and political hurdles. Just read about the public response to "smart meters" when they were proposed a while back.

We'll likely have price-competitive storage technology by the middle of the next decade, maybe even sooner, but it will take another two or three decades to deploy it thanks to the patchwork of regulatory complexity we're left over with from the 20th century.

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