New nuclear plant at Sizewell set for green light • Hacker News Board

Re: New nuclear plant at Sizewell set for green light

#61

Post by manfredo » Sat, Oct 31, 2020, 3:08 AM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #50

manfredo wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is that peak power consumption occurs after sundown in most countries. Nuclear power also costs the same to generate power 24/7 as it does to generate power intermittently. So if you build enough nuclear power to fill in the gap in the duck curve, then you could just run those plants all day and ditch renewables. This is why people invested in renewables are often very adverse to nuclear power.

> So if you build enough nuclear power to fill in the gap in the duck curve, then you could just run those plants all day and ditch renewables. If you build enough nuclear power to fill the gap in the duck curve without storage, and remove fossil fuels, you're basically running entirely nuclear and hydro, and mostly nuclear. You end up building almost double the amount of capacity that you actually use, because you n…

The point is that nuclear is the only known geographically independent way of generating carbon free energy that isn't subject to intermittency. The redundancy isn't an issue with nuclear, it's an issue of the notion that we need nuclear and renewables. Just cut out the renewables, and only use nuclear. Using nuclear to fill in the duck curve makes renewables redundant, thus the aversion to nuclear of many proponents of renewables.

If storage does become cheap and available, then renewables could be cheaper depending on the price of land and capacity factor of the energy sources. But that's a question of if. We have nowhere near the amount of storage required and no solid plan for reaching the required scale. So it's a matter of burning fossil fuels until we're able to build out orders of magnitude more energy storage.

Re: New nuclear plant at Sizewell set for green light

#62

Post by socialdemocrat » Sat, Oct 31, 2020, 3:11 AM UTC

belorn wrote: post #6

LatteLazy wrote: post #3

The others are already over budget and behind schedule, the private companies meant to be heading them are dropping like flies. This won't end well... https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-54158091 https://www.pbctoday.co.uk/news/energy-news/toshiba-withdraw... https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/sep/25/hinkley-poin...

Regardless how expensive it get, it won't burn tons of fossil fuels. Government should just set the conditions for new power and heating infrastructure. No fossil fuels. Zero carbon. A minimum and peak capacity based on current and projected demands. Private companies can bid, but they can't change the conditions. If a private company can more cheaply and faster build massive amount of battery and use exclusively win…

Cost matters. If you can build renewable power at a fraction of the price, why go nuclear? We can keep gas as backup until storage solutions are better developed.

If money was no issue you could just build a ton of pumped hydro in Scotland and or batter storage.

And if you absolutely want to spend on nuclear power, spend it in SMRs and molten salt reactors. ThorCon is probably not that far from a working solution if given enough funding.

Re: New nuclear plant at Sizewell set for green light

#63

Post by 1337shadow » Sat, Oct 31, 2020, 3:11 AM UTC

socialdemocrat wrote: post #59

I am not all negative to nuclear power but large nuclear reactors is not the way. They are always over budget and delayed. Put the money in next generation nuclear power like small molten salt reactors, batteries and renewables.

How long and how much will take to build a next generation nuclear power plant like with a small molten salt reactor ? Will it be like, twice cheaper and twice faster to build ? If so, why is it not happening ?

Re: New nuclear plant at Sizewell set for green light

#64

Post by socialdemocrat » Sat, Oct 31, 2020, 3:13 AM UTC

AlchemistCamp wrote: post #41

rllearneratwork wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only countries could work together to institute a global carbon tax. Pollute too much - pay the tax. Don't pollute - great and, if you are poor/developing, here is help (funded by polluters) to stay that way while still being able to develop.

The problem is the largest CO2 polluting country is unwilling to join any such agreements. This is true now and it was true 30 years ago.

Put taxes on imports from big polluters. That will make them tow the line. Frankly it should have been the approach from the start to avoid need for cooperation.

Re: New nuclear plant at Sizewell set for green light

#65

Post by MikeAmelung » Sat, Oct 31, 2020, 3:16 AM UTC

pfdietz wrote: post #58

samschooler wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What should we replace consistent reliable baseline energy with?

Renewables + storage (both short and long term). At the current rate of improvement of these technologies, this will be cheaper. Building expensive baseload now is a recipe for stranded assets not far down the road.

Can you explain a little more about the storage part of this? I see renewables and storage mentioned every time this topic comes up. It seems like we've got the solar panels and wind turbines figured out, but I'm skeptical on the storage part. I tried doing some research myself, but everything I find reads like a press release from a company that is attempting some kind of storage. As far as I can tell, there is no actual large-scale storage operating anywhere, other than pumped hydro, which we've known about for a long time, and can't be scaled unless we start building mountains.

I mentioned I'm skeptical, but I'm genuinely asking, because I've never seen anyone ask about it.

Re: New nuclear plant at Sizewell set for green light

#66

Post by natmaka » Sat, Oct 31, 2020, 3:18 AM UTC

lostlogin wrote: post #54

belorn wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regardless how expensive it get, it won't burn tons of fossil fuels. Government should just set the conditions for new power and heating infrastructure. No fossil fuels. Zero carbon. A minimum and peak capacity based on current and projected demands. Private companies can bid, but they can't change the conditions. If a private company can more cheaply and faster build massive amount of battery and use exclusively win…

> Regardless how expensive it get, it won't burn tons of fossil fuels. Maybe it won’t be a lot once built, but fuel extraction and processing are energy intensive. Also, 10 years of construction and the vast quantity of steel and concrete are going to burn one hell of a lot of fossil fuel. It would be interesting to compare the lifetime fossil fuel usage of all power generators, including construction and disposal (a…

Nuclear and offshore wind are equivalent (median: 12 gCO2eq/kWh)

Source: IPCC, 2014

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life-cycle_greenhouse_gas_emis...

Re: New nuclear plant at Sizewell set for green light

#67

Post by socialdemocrat » Sat, Oct 31, 2020, 3:19 AM UTC

1337shadow wrote: post #63

socialdemocrat wrote: post #59

I am not all negative to nuclear power but large nuclear reactors is not the way. They are always over budget and delayed. Put the money in next generation nuclear power like small molten salt reactors, batteries and renewables.

How long and how much will take to build a next generation nuclear power plant like with a small molten salt reactor ? Will it be like, twice cheaper and twice faster to build ? If so, why is it not happening ?

Inertia of the industry combined with risk aversion. Nuclear regulation is not really setup for small modular reactors and nuclear power still has a bad name.

The nuclear fanboys still push the big reactors. I think renewable fans like me favor next gen rectors because we are okay with not building reactors right away. We can build renewables until they are developed. Nuclear fans OTOH hate renewables and just want to build whatever is possible right now.

So we are in a situation where nuclear fans are not pushing it and most renewable fans think all nuclear power is like the current shitty big reactors.

Re: New nuclear plant at Sizewell set for green light

#68

Post by korantu » Sat, Oct 31, 2020, 3:22 AM UTC

pfdietz wrote: post #58

samschooler wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What should we replace consistent reliable baseline energy with?

Renewables + storage (both short and long term). At the current rate of improvement of these technologies, this will be cheaper. Building expensive baseload now is a recipe for stranded assets not far down the road.

> At the current rate of improvement of these technologies, this will be cheaper.

As you imply here, it is not cheaper now, and plan something on hopes that it will be seems not very prudent.

Past performance is not indicative of future one.

We don't know what technical and engineering problems will surface when building battery packs orders of magnitude bigger than current biggest ones.

Re: New nuclear plant at Sizewell set for green light

#69

Post by socialdemocrat » Sat, Oct 31, 2020, 3:26 AM UTC

manfredo wrote: post #61

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So if you build enough nuclear power to fill in the gap in the duck curve, then you could just run those plants all day and ditch renewables. If you build enough nuclear power to fill the gap in the duck curve without storage, and remove fossil fuels, you're basically running entirely nuclear and hydro, and mostly nuclear. You end up building almost double the amount of capacity that you actually use, because you n…

The point is that nuclear is the only known geographically independent way of generating carbon free energy that isn't subject to intermittency. The redundancy isn't an issue with nuclear, it's an issue of the notion that we need nuclear and renewables. Just cut out the renewables, and only use nuclear. Using nuclear to fill in the duck curve makes renewables redundant, thus the aversion to nuclear of many proponents…

Renewables are already widely deployed and payed for. It is nuts to build nuclear to replace fully functional wind turbines and solar cells.

Nuclear fans just have no economic sense. It is all about nuclear no matter the cost.

Re: New nuclear plant at Sizewell set for green light

#70

Post by Jedd » Sat, Oct 31, 2020, 3:29 AM UTC

roenxi wrote: post #22

LatteLazy wrote: post #3

The others are already over budget and behind schedule, the private companies meant to be heading them are dropping like flies. This won't end well... https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-54158091 https://www.pbctoday.co.uk/news/energy-news/toshiba-withdraw... https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/sep/25/hinkley-poin...

> The others are already over budget and behind schedule The reason why is important though. Is it because of: 1) Political issues, where the government has set up incentives for the builder to lie? 2) Social issues, where environmentalists attack the project to drive up costs? It seems unbelievable to me that nuclear plant planners are unable to plan because ... dunno, maybe they hear nuclear and lose the ability to…

There may well be other contributing factors than the quite narrow two you offer.

Reading some of Jeremy Leggett's analysis of nuclear in the region, notably Flamanville and Hinkley, is highly enlightening.

From inability to plan or produce sufficiently high quality components, and then challenges getting them into place without damaging them, low quality work being undertaken in the construction process [1], government hiding details of contractual arrangements, a consistent (and predicted) drop in the price of power before and through the lives of these projects, industry players being painted into a corner where they must [try to] grow their business despite the above [2], combined with a surfeit of hubris all round.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/apr/10/edf-warns-o...

[2] https://jeremyleggett.net/2016/06/03/the-nuclear-white-eleph...