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Nuclear Power in France

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Re: Nuclear Power in France

#251

Post by namibj »

Manuel_D wrote: post #239
derriz wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear plants are also "intermittent" - the average US reactor spends 32 days offline per year. Does that mean a grid relying heavily on nuclear needs massive amounts of storage? No - it means you need to have redundant capacity which is the solution also used for wind and solar. The benefit of nuclear in this regard isn't that it's "non-intermittent" - it's that the most common failure modes for a nuclear nuclear a…

A capacity factor of over 90% is exceptionally good. Wind and solar are 35% and 25% respectively [1]. And this down time for refuelling and other tasks is scheduled in advance. This not at all comparable to solar and wind's uncontrollable intermittency. A nuclear grid requires vastly less overproduction than a renewable grid. As you point out, renewable sources end up falling back on fossil fuels to pick up the slack…

Hydrogen requires minimal modifications to gas turbines, notably the combustors need to be swapped out.

Storage and distribution works the same as for fossil methane (pressurized in cave systems/old gas wells).

Production is simple, and we yes, the efficiency is around 20-30% round-trip. But that's enough to handle up to ~30% of electricity supply with less than 2x overcapacity.

And that's assuming you don't just slap carbon capture on a gas turbine you feed with fractionally distilled oxygen (>99% should be easily enough) and enough exhaust back-feed to not melt the turbine blades. A diesel would probably deal better with the combustion temperatures, though.

And Fischer–Tropsch can turn captured carbon into piston-engine-suitable liquid fuel, if you'd need to.

Re: Nuclear Power in France

#252

Post by himinlomax »

andrewxdiamond wrote: post #19
redm wrote: post #2

"Government policy is to reduce this to 50% by 2035." I'm no expert on Nuclear power but it seems to me were going in the wrong direction. At a time when we're investing so much money in other fuels, we could be investing that in better nuclear power, like Small Modular Reactors [1], Sodium Cooled Fission, Small Pellet reactors, etc. [2] [1] https://www.energy.gov/ne/advanced-small-modular-reactors-sm... [2] https://…

Nuclear is always touted as such a good idea on this site, but I want to take the opposite stance. - Nuclear power has inherit risks that are not present in other forms of modern energy generation. You can claim that todays designs are 99.9999999% safe, but there is no such thing as 100%. If humans build it, it will fail, and a single catastrophic nuclear plant failure isn’t acceptable. - Nuclear waste is difficult t…

> Nuclear power has inherit risks that are not present in other forms of modern energy generation

Aviation has inherent risk that are managed more than adequately, making it the safest mode of transportation around.

Similarly, nuclear power has inherent risks that are managed more than adequately, as evidenced by the fact that the only major accident in the last 30 years, Fukushima, caused one (1) victim.

Re: Nuclear Power in France

#253

Post by digianarchist »

forty wrote: post #143
woko wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For instance, it is discussed in this press article [1] published in 2016 and available in French. It is mentioned that nuclear power costs 60€/MWh, compared to 80€/MWh for wind power. It is also mentioned quite often in the French press: I have seen it mentioned a few days ago. The source mentioned in the 2016 press article is an official report [2] published in 2014. However, it is true that the maintenance cost in…

Yeah I feel the end of life has not yet been factored in the price (ie the cost of dismantling the reactor or maintaining it alive forever). It would be very aligned with the general philosophy of nuclear ^^ (ie "the next generations will either figure it out or pay the price")

Decommissioning costs are huge and were kicked into the long grass in the UK instead of being factored in at the start like here in Canada.

Re: Nuclear Power in France

#254

Post by godelski »

01100011 wrote: post #97
logicalmonster wrote: post #25

> However, 58% thought that nuclear power caused climate change while only 46% thought that coal burning did so This raises some interesting thoughts about the nature and importance of democracy.

I remain a supporter of democracy but do have serious doubts regarding the ability of the majority of humankind to maintain a sufficient understanding of the increasingly complex world they control. Large portions of the US population seem to have problems with basic reasoning skills. I'm not sure the school system or western culture is capable of rectifying that anytime soon.

I think the bigger issue is that everyone feels they need to be an expert on every subject. Look at any of these conversations on nuclear and/or climate. Climate is the most complex problems humans face today yet we all pretty much act like we're experts and all pretend it's purely political will to solving the problem. Even on a tech forum where the average person is much more tech literate these beliefs and actions are common.

The problem isn't that the world is getting more complex. The problem is that we're unwilling to admit it.

Re: Nuclear Power in France

#255

Post by whimsicalism »

_ph_ wrote: post #192
whimsicalism wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

South Korea hasn't forgotten. They have gotten the costs down quite a bit.

How far?

https://www.vox.com/2016/2/29/11132930/nuclear-power-costs-u...

This has some useful charts.

It shows that nuclear still has economy of scale to improve, if we give it the chance.

The big difficulty for nuclear is public pressure/fear of accidents. People are much more afraid of "big scary nuclear accident" vs. probabilistic deaths caused by air pollution, even if the deaths from the latter is in the tens of thousands and the former is in the dozens.

That fear of public/policy backlash makes raising capital in order to actually benefit from those economics of scale very difficult.

Re: Nuclear Power in France

#256

Post by it_citizen »

the8472 wrote: post #180
_ph_ wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I have not made that point clear enough in my post: currently they are failing to build replacement plants at a cost at which they could replace all of the existing reactors. Unless they can come up with an entirely new design which considerably cuts cost compared to what is considered a "current design" right now, there will be a reduction in capacity.

Building them in series tends to make per-unit cost come down.

Surprisingly, experience has shown that building more nuclear plants, even standardized, don't make them cheaper to build but more expensive.

2010: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03014...

2020: https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/11/why-are-nuclear-plan...

Re: Nuclear Power in France

#257

Post by Gwypaas »

lm28469 wrote: post #231
bildung wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Germany is firing up coal plants because they're decomissining their nuclear reactors in favour of intermittent energy sources No they aren't, they are decomissioning coal plants, too, and at a much faster rate than nuclear. From 2013 to 2020 nuclear as share of Germany's energy mix went from 17% to 13%. https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy_pie/chart.htm?l=en& ... During the same time, coal went from 45% to 23%…

These aren't the numbers I have https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/p...

That's capacity, the interesting side is usage which as you can see also has declined, while total capacity has increased.

https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/g...

Re: Nuclear Power in France

#258

Post by dane-pgp »

asdff wrote: post #246
cesarb wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When environmentalist types rail against nuclear power, they reveal their true preferences. They care more about dismantling technological civilization than they do about reducing emissions. If they really cared about emissions as much as they claim to care, they'd support nuclear power out of necessity. They don't, so it's fair to conclude they have unstated goals. There's an alternative explanation: that their "t…

There hasn't been a nuclear detonation on the planet in almost 29 years. At this point that argument is out the window.

29 years may seem like a good record, but by the Doomsday Argument[0] we shouldn't necessarily assume that this lull will last more than another 29 years.

Also, I think your choice of time frame is a little strange. It's true that the last US nuclear test was 1992, but North Korea as recently as 2017 tested a hydrogen bomb[1]. I don't know if by "on the planet" you mean "above ground", but the 1992 US test occurred in a tunnel.[2]

Anyway, when the stakes are "billions of people are killed by radiation and famine", I think it's fair to want greater guarantees than "no nuclear detonation in the past 4 years". Similarly, "nuclear weapons haven't been used to kill people in the past 76 years" isn't much more comforting.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_argument

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_North_Korean_nuclear_test

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Julin

Re: Nuclear Power in France

#259

Post by PeterisP »

Gupie wrote: post #220
corban1 wrote: post #69

Nuclear is clean, it is safe but it is not cheap. It's safe and clean because of it's moderately priced. I stand by nuclear because it's cleanness and safeness which can't be compared to anything else. What will we generate electricity with in non-windy cloudy days? Coal? LNG? ESS? Note that all of those options are more dangerous, more expensive and more dirty than nuclear.

Is it safe considering the 1000 square miles of Ukraine that Chernobyl made uninhabitable? How safe are they against terrorist attacks, an attack by a rogue state or in a conventional war?

Yes, even including Chernobyl and all the other accidents, nuclear power causes less deaths per GWh and less environmental damage than coal (which is the type of electricity used to fill in the gaps when e.g. Germany stopped it's nuclear plants). If you're worried about the habitable land, Hydro power is relatively "green", but each major hydro plant wrecks habitability and ecosystems in an area that's smaller than but comparable on scale with the Chernobyl exclusion zone.

Like, this is a reasonable question to ask, but it has been asked and analyzed a lot and the practical answer to it is overwhelmingly against fossil fuels, it's not even close. Coal causes far more cancer than radioactive disasters, but we simply aren't (yet?) holding them accountable for this damage.

Re: Nuclear Power in France

#260

Post by mhermher »

kazinator wrote: post #104
lm28469 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We do people focus so much on the danger aspect of nuclear energy only? Because nuclear = bad word / bombs / chernobyl They don't mind living in cities and breathing cars exhaust all day long even though it shaves years of their lives though. Real world boiling frog situation

Indeed, the word nuclear is so bad that nuclear-magnetic resonance (NMR) has to be called just magnetic in medicine. You go for an MRI, not NMRI. When nuclear-magnetic resonance is used in a scientific or industrial setting for analyzing the chemical content of a sample, it is properly called NMR. [Source: organic chemistry prof pointed this out, almost 30 years ago.]

ah! I always wondered about this distinction, but I guess it makes sense that it's due to people's fear over "nuclear".
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