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

Re: New nuclear plant at Sizewell set for green light

#251

Post by 7952 » Sat, Oct 31, 2020, 7:55 PM UTC

godelski wrote: post #246

7952 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder which is easier? Large scale battery deployment or scaling nuclear. I think there are good reasons to be bullish about battery storage. It is already an area of massive research. It is something we need to scale anyway due to electric cars. And it is very easy to deploy to the existing grid. You just need a concrete pad, some power gear, and a substation. Being optimistic about nuclear does not mean we canno…

> I think there are good reasons to be bullish about battery storage. That's not my issue. My issue is that we currently have working nuclear technology. That we can build and deploy now. Bullish means we're relying on future inventions. With the potential catastrophe we have ahead of us I don't think it is a good idea to put all our eggs in one basket. It may not pan out. It may not pan out in the timeframe we need…

The UK already has around 1GW deployed and has 10GW+ in the pipeline. All of Which should be built before Sizewell C starts to generate.

I dont doubt that we can build nuclear plants. But right now the number of nations that can actually pull it off is small. Changing that would require new tech, modularisation, mass production etc. That is great and we should do that. But will it happen quickly?

Re: New nuclear plant at Sizewell set for green light

#252

Post by jnurmine » Sat, Oct 31, 2020, 8:27 PM UTC

_Microft wrote: post #109

manfredo wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Middle Ages called, they want their concepts back. Why is "geographical independency" desirable here? We ditched the concept of self-sufficiency long ago for almost every other product. Your iPhone was not built here. Your banana was not grown here. The corn might have been grown half a country away. The drugs you might have been prescribed were maybe not produced in your country at all. Why would energy be so differ…

Self-sufficiency is coming back, I think.

The SARS-NCoV-2 epidemic showed how brittle the worldwide supply chains really are. China is a production powerhouse, producing all kinds of everything, and everyone and their neighbour wants to produce in China, but unfortunately this had created a single point of failure. Once the virus stopped things in China, the disruption cascaded along the supply chain networks; demand existed but production was stopped.

Resiliency in supply chains won't happen through adding massive inventories to handle a months long disruption, instead it will happen by moving some of the production away from Asia back to USA, Europe, Great Britain, and so on.

Naturally bananas and corn won't get this treatment, but technological goods will.

Re: New nuclear plant at Sizewell set for green light

#253

Post by opo » Sat, Oct 31, 2020, 8:30 PM UTC

jnxx wrote: post #226

_Microft wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flatten all the curves! \o/ Our daily routines are so synchronized that we see these massives peaks everywhere. Not only in energy consumption but also in road use (congestion), commuting services (packed subway cars) or in super markets (low fraction of total available checkouts needed during most times of the day because their number was dimensioned for peak times). I'm sure you can find other examples if you think…

In fact, in the 1950 and 1960s it was attempted to make more use of nuclear by using electrical night storage heaters with cheaper tariffs over the night. If you remember the pro-nuclear argument at that time, hold on, it was "electricity from nuclear energy will be so cheap, it will be useless to install a meter in privates homes".

>..."electricity from nuclear energy will be so cheap, it will be useless to install a meter in privates homes".

That was simply a statement from the head of the AEC at a meeting with science writers along with a lot of other bold statements about the future:

>...It is not too much to expect that our children will enjoy in their homes electrical energy too cheap to meter, will know of great periodic regional famines in the world only as matters of history, will travel effortlessly over the seas and under them and through the air with a minimum of danger and at great speeds, and will experience a lifespan far longer than ours, as disease yields and man comes to understand what causes him to age.

>...A later survey found dozens of statements from the period that suggested it was widely believed that nuclear energy would be more expensive than coal, at least in the foreseeable future.[6] James Ramey, who would later become the AEC Commissioner, noted: "Nobody took Strauss' statement very seriously

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

Re: New nuclear plant at Sizewell set for green light

#254

Post by pfdietz » Sat, Oct 31, 2020, 9:33 PM UTC

Udik wrote: post #189

pfdietz wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You didn't look at that link, did you? It has models using predicted costs for wind, solar, nuclear, batteries, and hydrogen storage, and computes the minimum cost system to produce reliable baseload power using real historical weather data (at 5 minute intervals). You can alter the assumptions and see what the costs optimize to. Nuclear is "Dispatchable 2" in the advanced settings.

No, I didn't look at the link- you could have at least described what it contained. I gave it a quick look, but frankly it would take me a lot of time to check if the model and assumptions make sense (it also seems to reply "job failed" whenever it doesn't have a cached answer). But I think real costs can be estimated only from working plants. Do we have, now, renewable energy plants that are capable of delivering a…

> Do we have, now, renewable energy plants that are capable of delivering a constant amount of energy by storing the excess production?

As long as we are burning fossil fuels (and in particular natural gas) it doesn't make much sense to build such things, even if we could. The natural gas provides pre-stored energy.

Re: New nuclear plant at Sizewell set for green light

#255

Post by pfdietz » Sat, Oct 31, 2020, 9:34 PM UTC

jnxx wrote: post #201

pfdietz wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SMRs are being touted not because they are particularly promising, but because they are the last option nuclear supporters have. Traditional reactors have run out of chances, so now it's either the Hail Mary Reactors or give up.

Are there any known problems or difficulties with them? I guess the materials science aspect is extremely difficult as it is already a huge problem in conventional designs...

The big problem is diseconomies of scale in construction and operation. They require more material per MW of power, and more staff too. The story is that economies of scale of manufacture, and changes to regulations about operation, can counter this, but that remains to be demonstrated.

Re: New nuclear plant at Sizewell set for green light

#256

Post by pfdietz » Sat, Oct 31, 2020, 9:45 PM UTC

manfredo wrote: post #234

jnxx wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reliable cooling is also a big problem for the nuclear plants in the US East coast. They are away from the shore but well in reach of different types of disasters, like hurricanes, winter storms and flooding. They need reliable cooling and for that they depend on a working electrical grid. There are many ways in which the Fukushima disaster could repeat itself there - in a region which is rather densely populated.

The US east coast does not suffer from earthquakes. A tsunami is a geological event, not a weather event.

While earthquakes on the east coast are uncommon, they do occur. For example, Virginia experienced a magnitude 5.8 quake in 2011.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Virginia_earthquake

The US east coast faces a tsunami risk from undersea avalanches on the edge of the continental shelf:

https://www.livescience.com/24813-east-coast-tsunamis.html

"An offshore earthquake of magnitude 4.5 or above could cause submarine avalanches and create dangerous tsunamis with waves higher than 26 feet (8 meters), [...] Underwater canyons and bays could focus these waves and make them even bigger."

Re: New nuclear plant at Sizewell set for green light

#257

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Oct 31, 2020, 9:45 PM UTC

skitout wrote: post #129

jodrellblank wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If money was no issue you could just build a ton of pumped hydro in Scotland and or batter storage. Wikipedia says " The potential for further practical and viable hydroelectricity power stations in the UK is estimated to be in the region of 146 to 248 MW for England and Wales,[4] and up to 2,593 MW for Scotland.[5] However, by the nature of the remote and rugged geographic locations of some of these potential site…

There are many other solutions than traditional pumped hydro when it comes to electrical storage : new pump hydro on isolated reservoirs (eg gordon butte), battries (eg flow batteries), compressed air, liquid air, stacked bloks, heat to energy come in mind And you can store energy as heat or cold, which is easier and cheaper, with a bigger potential And you can have an impact on the demand side, with energy efficienc…

[deleted]

Re: New nuclear plant at Sizewell set for green light

#258

Post by pfdietz » Sat, Oct 31, 2020, 9:48 PM UTC

opo wrote: post #237

pfdietz wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exelon has stated that for new nuclear plants in the US to compete with NG CC, CO2 taxes would have to be $300-400/ton. To compete with NG for filling in around renewables, CO2 taxes would have to be much higher than that. Other projections have the economy basically decarbonizing (without needing nuclear) at a CO2 tax of just $200/ton. There's a good reason Exelon is tryin to spin off all its NPPs.

The Exelon proposals I've seen are for a carbon tax of $40 increasing 5% a year. Where are they proposing a $200 tax?

I didn't say they were.

Re: New nuclear plant at Sizewell set for green light

#259

Post by pfdietz » Sat, Oct 31, 2020, 9:49 PM UTC

jnxx wrote: post #223

opo wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>...It is all about nuclear no matter the cost. Oddly, this is the exact sort of behavior I sometimes see with the advocates for renewables. Cost should always be a consideration, but when people conveniently ignore some costs and focus on others, it does a disservice to the goal of decarbonizing the grid. The levelized cost for residential rooftop solar is at least as high as nuclear, but that cost doesn't seem to m…

Rooftop solar is cost-effective. It is already starting to get below the price people pay for getting electricity from the grid.

Yeah, no.

Rooftop grid-connected solar is a way to get the reliability benefit of being on the grid without having to pay your fair share of the cost of providing that reliability.

Re: New nuclear plant at Sizewell set for green light

#260

Post by pfdietz » Sat, Oct 31, 2020, 9:51 PM UTC

godelski wrote: post #250

pfdietz wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Land costs are not a big issue, especially when looking at the world as a whole. In much of the US, for example, the cost of putting solar equipment on some land is nearly two orders of magnitude higher than the cost of the land itself. If a country is land constrained, then in an era of cheap solar they'll lose heavy industry to other countries with more land. If land cost ever did become significant globally for re…

Relying on another country for your energy needs isn't a great idea. We've long sought to be energy dependent. Doing so has led to less wars and less influence from outside governments. Are you really going to base your entire economy and civilian well being (because let's be real, we live in an electric world) on the promise that another country will always sell that energy to you at a fair price? Always? Never deci…

It's not relying on the other country, it's having your industry become uncompetitive and die. It's not something you'd have a choice about.