Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

New nuclear plant at Sizewell set for green light

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 285 posts

Re: New nuclear plant at Sizewell set for green light

#261

Post by belorn »

jnxx wrote: post #204
belorn wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is where a market solution should be used. Set up the conditions for minimum delivery of carbon-free power for a given period and let private companies bet on it. If people can deliver a battery solution that exclusively use renewable to charge them, and do this cheaper than nuclear, then they win the bid. They don't get to use natural gas as a backup. They also need to be held liable to maintain the minimum cap…

In the EU there is actually already a market of different contingents of electrical energy with different availability guarantees. Sources with high availability are more expensive and this helps to finance the required technology. And all this works rather in an evolutionary way. For example, we can, today, predict how much wind power will roughly be generated within the next days, and we can adjust reserve capaciti…

Yes, we do have that system and people do bid to deliver energy. We do however allow fossil fuels to be used when wind power is not producing, and such, the carbon-free reserve capacities are competing against fossil fuels on production cost without the external cost of climate change being added. The economical outcome of that is an constant increase in fossil fueled capacity in practically every country in EU, with new fossil fueled power plant being built today even when we know that the climate can't take it.

Re: New nuclear plant at Sizewell set for green light

#262

Post by godelski »

7952 wrote: post #251
godelski wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 ?

We're concerned about storage in this part of the conversation. Since we're talking about being bullish on batteries. But sure, we can move the target.

Re: New nuclear plant at Sizewell set for green light

#263

Post by opo »

pfdietz wrote: post #258
opo wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>...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.

Where did they say that?

Re: New nuclear plant at Sizewell set for green light

#264

Post by AnthonyMouse »

sir_bearington wrote: post #247
nicoburns wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear does suffer from the duck curve. It has the opposite problem of what to do with the excess power when demand is lower.

No it does not. The Duck curve refers to the sinusoidal production of solar power (and wind power, to a lesser extent) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_curve . The duck curve refers to the problem of the fact that energy consumption is mostly flat, but solar solar produces a big curve from dawn to dusk. This is why renewables need so much storage, to take overproduction during peak hours and use that excess energy…

Another option is to not waste the heat, and use thermal storage. A well-insulated vat of salt is cheap, can be made arbitrarily large, and will hold heat over a 24 hour period with reasonable efficiency. So you store the heat during below-average demand and use it to generate extra electricity during above-average demand.

But the same solution also makes solar interesting again when it's used in combination, because you can store heat from nuclear during the times when solar is generating and then use it during the times when it isn't.

Re: New nuclear plant at Sizewell set for green light

#265

Post by sir_bearington »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #264
sir_bearington wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it does not. The Duck curve refers to the sinusoidal production of solar power (and wind power, to a lesser extent) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_curve . The duck curve refers to the problem of the fact that energy consumption is mostly flat, but solar solar produces a big curve from dawn to dusk. This is why renewables need so much storage, to take overproduction during peak hours and use that excess energy…

Another option is to not waste the heat, and use thermal storage. A well-insulated vat of salt is cheap, can be made arbitrarily large, and will hold heat over a 24 hour period with reasonable efficiency. So you store the heat during below-average demand and use it to generate extra electricity during above-average demand. But the same solution also makes solar interesting again when it's used in combination, because…

Sure, but thermal storage remains in the prototyping stage. Besides solar thermal generation I'm not aware of any grid scale thermal storage facilities. It's a potential future option, but it's not a presently extant option.

Re: New nuclear plant at Sizewell set for green light

#266

Post by nicoburns »

sir_bearington wrote: post #247
nicoburns wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear does suffer from the duck curve. It has the opposite problem of what to do with the excess power when demand is lower.

No it does not. The Duck curve refers to the sinusoidal production of solar power (and wind power, to a lesser extent) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_curve . The duck curve refers to the problem of the fact that energy consumption is mostly flat, but solar solar produces a big curve from dawn to dusk. This is why renewables need so much storage, to take overproduction during peak hours and use that excess energy…

I stand corrected.

Re: New nuclear plant at Sizewell set for green light

#267

Post by florimondmanca »

jnxx wrote: post #211
florimondmanca wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So even the company with a financial incentive to under-estimate the cost is saying that the electricity it produces will be at best as expensive as wind energy already is. ... And be low-carbon (~10gCO2/kWh). Whereas the £40/MWh estimate for wind included gas power generation, which is at 400gCO2/kWh. Given how wind has a typical load factor of 20-30% max in Western Europe, you’d be using gas at best 70% of the ti…

Using gas backup is a transition technology which is the most effective and available thing we have right now, and it won't stay that way. Demanding zero emissions right now is like to maliciously demand perfection in order to kill of something good.

I do recognize the value of renewables + gas as a transition strategy. :) And do appreciate what the UK has been doing there (using gas + renewables to eradicate coal).

My comment was addressing the pre-conceived idea that nuclear is too costly to be a long term solution. (Which I’m actually not sure the original comment meant, heh...)

Re: New nuclear plant at Sizewell set for green light

#268

Post by vkou »

AlchemistCamp wrote: post #188
vkou wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you seriously proposing that CO2 be capped per country, as opposed to per capita? That's a fascinating proposal. I don't think that will be particularly favorable to the US, though. There are 195 countries in the world, yet the US accounts for 14% of all of the world's emissions.

You have to look at who is polluting the most. If country A represents 2x the emissions of country B, then it's twice as important to curb their pollution. Country borders mean nothing to the planet in ecological terms. How about looking at emissions per square kilometer as a target, but focusing treaty efforts on the largest CO2 emitting countries (or coalitions of countries that can be dealt with as a block)?

> If country A represents 2x the emissions of country B, then it's twice as important to curb their pollution.

Capping emissions per capita accomplishes just that. Why are you so opposed to it?

> How about looking at emissions per square kilometer as a target

So, Canada (Population 38 million) should get to pollute three times more, in absolute values than India (Population 1.35 billion), because it has three times the land area?

> Country borders mean nothing to the planet in ecological terms.

Country borders don't mean anything to the planet, but they mean everything to how we must solve this problem.

People need energy to live.

The world has a limited carbon budget.

Distributing it equally, per capita is the least you can do to be fair about it. (In order to actually be fair about it, you must also count historic emissions, which means that the western world has long blown its share of that budget.)

Re: New nuclear plant at Sizewell set for green light

#269

Post by florimondmanca »

phaemon wrote: post #174
florimondmanca wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So even the company with a financial incentive to under-estimate the cost is saying that the electricity it produces will be at best as expensive as wind energy already is. ... And be low-carbon (~10gCO2/kWh). Whereas the £40/MWh estimate for wind included gas power generation, which is at 400gCO2/kWh. Given how wind has a typical load factor of 20-30% max in Western Europe, you’d be using gas at best 70% of the ti…

> £40/MWh estimate for wind included gas power generation No, they're totally separate things. It's not "wind and gas" as a single entity, it's "wind farms supply power to the grid at £40/MWh and gas plants also provide power to the grid at £40/MWh". In other words, it just means they cost about the same which is half the cost of nuclear. There is no 30/70 split as you imagined. Which makes sense. Scotland gets aroun…

Right! My “40 includes wind + gas” was confusing, and if that’s “40 on average”, my bad.

My point was to address the idea that nuclear is too costly as a long term solution, which I think (?) OP was using that cost/MWh comparison to intent.

FTR though, I do appreciate that gas + renewables can be a nice transition strategy (like the UK seems to have done to eradicate coal).

> There is no 30/70 split as you imagined.

It seems you understood I was talking about a 30/70 split in cost. That is not what I said: I was talking about a 30/70 split in usage.

But FTR, even in the sense I intended, you’re right, the number 30/70 is wrong, or at least it can only be valid under specific conditions that I’m not really able to quantify (electricity mix, coverage of demand, etc), and I hadn’t thought it through a lot.

Re: New nuclear plant at Sizewell set for green light

#270

Post by evgen »

skitout wrote: post #229
evgen wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those installations are borderline profitable because either they are a small drop in the bucket of the required storage capacity (c.f. Tesla battery farm) or are heavily subsidized to make renewables appear viable. You are also making some large assumptions regarding battery improvements that may turn out to never be realized -- there may be interesting new chemistries and techniques that work for smaller scale but…

Battery prices (for different battery technologies) are currently in free fall, and the market is booming, so we are 100% sure to see important economy of scale there. This in currently not the case at all of SMR... When it comes to technology at pilot scale, price and capacity improvement may turn out to never be realized... But there are dozens of promising tech, so it seems unlikely that all tech will "fail"... an…

SMR is based upon well-known technology that we have spent decades working on and improving. Other than pumped hydro and batteries there is no potential grid-scale energy storage mechanism that exists beyond desktop models and toy pilots.

Battery prices are dropping but the easy low-hanging fruit has been plucked so now the rate of price decline is dropping -- 83% last decade but only 33% predicted over next five years. Production is also a long way off from where it would need to be. There are a couple of GWh plants coming online, but that is still only a fraction of what is needed if battery is going to scale up to handle grid storage.

Lots of hand-waving examples you have there, very little in production. A more likely long-term outcome will be to push the storage burden on to the renewable production plants -- only accept power from a producer at a rate they can provide over the next 24 hours with the grid only needing a small surge capacity built into it to smooth out demand spikes.

Post reply on HN