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All Applications for Nuclear Energy at COP26 Rejected

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Re: All Applications for Nuclear Energy at COP26 Rejected

#121

Post by domsom »

malthuswaswrong wrote: post #97
arrrg wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but you don’t want to do that. Nuclear is monstrously expensive already. For it to have any chance of being economically viable at all you have to run it all the time. It doesn’t make sense as an on-demand power source.

Nuclear is totally economically viable. It's not viable in the current regulatorily climate. Investing $1 billion in a nuclear plant that will return profits for 80 years is an easy financial decision. Investing $1 billion in a nuclear plant that will be shut down by moonbats every 4 years when the next batch of princess unicorns is voted into office is not economically viable.

Indeed the regulatory climate is missing to put the costs of handling nuclear waste onto the producers. I doubt it would be economically viable to operate a nuclear plant if those costs were fully factored in.

Re: All Applications for Nuclear Energy at COP26 Rejected

#122

Post by atroche »

apendleton wrote: post #86
SllX wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A century, I could maybe see. A century and maybe a plural amount of decades, perhaps. Gonna need you to cite that plural centuries though.

Coal was already in reasonably widespread use in industrial processes 200 years ago, and produced unpaid-for externalities then just as it does now (actually worse ones, presumably, given that air quality was not yet regulated in any meaningful way).

But was it being "propped up" two centuries ago?

Re: All Applications for Nuclear Energy at COP26 Rejected

#123

Post by domsom »

sandGorgon wrote: post #89
mytailorisrich wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China can build nuclear power plants and indeed is building a large number of them. But as you mention the demand for energy is vast and they can't 'just' get rid of coal.

China's nuclear power plants come from the US. Westinghouse's bankruptcy set back the targets for many years. Of course, the big problem is also geopolitical concerns here. I would say that India is in a better position here (on geopolitics), however the tech transfer from US even to India has been iffy at best. Here's a bigger problem - India has set a goal to switch to electrical vehicles by 2030. If that happens,…

> Which means that switching to EV will double India's pollution norms. Unless nuclear power takes over.

Why is nuclear the only alternative?

Re: All Applications for Nuclear Energy at COP26 Rejected

#124

Post by BenoitP »

Azsy wrote: post #56
japanuspus wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This argument does not make a lot of sense without detailing which power sources that can turn on and off quickly you are talking about. The only ones I can think of are hydro and gas-powered thermal? So you want natural gas over nuclear? On the other hand, your comment presumes that there is such a thing as too much power. Once hydrolyzers mature, we could use all of the current renewable power in Europe just for pr…

You're missing a lot of background on how these markets work. And i'm not remotely qualified to explain them. But, very broadly and simplistically speaking. We are not even remotely close to living in a "We have too much power" world. ( Markets will change drastically then.) All the nuclear supply has already been sold and is being constantly used 100% of the time. It never makes sense to turn off the nuclear power p…

> All the nuclear supply has already been sold and is being constantly used 100% of the time.

This couldn't be further from the truth, at least for France: hover over the lower graphs to animate the source upper graph here: https://app.electricitymap.org/zone/FR

Every single day nuclear oscillates between 60% and 80%, in strong anti-correlation with wind, solar and border exchanges.

With hydro and pumped storage, this margin is well enough for attending to peak demand. And it is economically viable; This is the thing about nuclear: it costs practically the same wether you're at 20% or 95% of the plant's capacity. You consume your fuel faster, but it is only a small fraction of the cost (15% IIRC). And you still get 0 CO2 emission.

And with current gas prices this is the cheapest solution we have at the moment. (not the cheapest in terms of political will, but educating masses can solve that)

Re: All Applications for Nuclear Energy at COP26 Rejected

#125

Post by unsung »

catlikesshrimp wrote: post #106
asteroidbelt wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Renewables need to be combined with power sources that can be turned on and off quickly and on demand. No they don’t. Wind and solar energy output can be very well predicted for hours and days ahead.

First, you can't predict solar or wind days ahead in the same way you can't predict rain, days ahead. There are "weather forecasts", not cloud reading. Second. Even if you knew two days ahead about wind speed fluctuations that lasted for 10 to 20 minutes. What, then? You can't inform the population there will be 10 minute outages, in advance, or ask them to turn off appliances for exactly 10 minutes, in advance. Sola…

On a technical note, the first point is not really true. Using atmospheric models like WRF get you pretty good irradiance forecasts that are roughly proportional to PV output. I (very briefly) worked with a group doing just that for power companies in the southwest, and it was pretty decent out to 5 days or so. It eventually got picked up into another program [1] that would contract out to big PV installations.

[0] https://www2.mmm.ucar.edu/wrf/users/

[1] https://forecasting.energy.arizona.edu/sveri/

Re: All Applications for Nuclear Energy at COP26 Rejected

#126

Post by Brian_K_White »

arrrg wrote: post #33
japanuspus wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This argument does not make a lot of sense without detailing which power sources that can turn on and off quickly you are talking about. The only ones I can think of are hydro and gas-powered thermal? So you want natural gas over nuclear? On the other hand, your comment presumes that there is such a thing as too much power. Once hydrolyzers mature, we could use all of the current renewable power in Europe just for pr…

Gas and nuclear can’t replace each other. So that instead I’m your sentence is completely misplaced. We certainly need gas in the short term. Sure. But you can’t let nuclear take over the role of gas (and other potential on demand power sources, pumped hydro and maybe batteries in the future). That just doesn’t work. Also, I‘m all for producing an overabundance of power and using that in a meaningful way. But that’s…

"Nuclear and renewables don’t work well together."

If so, you've failed to convincingly articulate how. It's a meaningless assertion to me.

The power available from nuclear is useful full stop.

Re: All Applications for Nuclear Energy at COP26 Rejected

#127

Post by catlikesshrimp »

glogla wrote: post #78
beders wrote: post #46

Good. Focus on renewables + storage. Anything else is too costly and too late. (BTW, 10 countries are running on 95%-100% renewables now. Why can't the US?)

Can you share what is your storage solution that will be needed to make renewables without coal and gas practical? Where can I see storage handling gigawatthours to terawatthours in the real world? Or are you relying on some magical technology we don't have?

I have read in theglobeandmail forums comments from some people who think that building battery parks is a great idea, and that it is a huge oversight that solar + batteries aren't pushed as the final solution to all energy needs in Canada.

And they seem as sincere as they are earnest. It is very hard to argue with that logic. Where do we start? Just saying batteries are really expensive doesn't reach people who want a perfect magic solution.

Re: All Applications for Nuclear Energy at COP26 Rejected

#128

Post by VyperCard »

apendleton wrote: post #79
arrrg wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With renewables baseline doesn’t make sense. Nuclear doesn’t combine well with renewables, not in a way that would complete the picture. Meaning: you can’t build something that works with only those two building blocks. Even more: baseline is not at all needed with renewables. Renewables need to be combined with power sources that can be turned on and off quickly and on demand. Nuclear emphatically cannot provide tha…

> Renewables need to be combined with power sources that can be turned on and off quickly and on demand. Nuclear emphatically cannot provide that. That's true of current nuclear, but it's not an intrinsic property of nuclear power. Proposed plants that use molten salt as a working fluid, for example, give you the option to run the plant all the time, but at any given time either use the heat in the molten salt for po…

We could just store the surplus renewables in molten salt and don‘t need nuclear for anything.

Re: All Applications for Nuclear Energy at COP26 Rejected

#129

Post by m0zg »

catlikesshrimp wrote: post #118
m0zg wrote: post #34

Of course. Think of it in terms of cui bono. You're on the precipice of convincing a bunch of folks they should shut down their economies and give you trillions of dollars to send to your donors as you please. Then a guy comes along and says that your shit won't work (which will be amply demonstrated in Europe this coming winter) and offers something that actually does work. It's like that meme - the guy will fly str…

What is with "The winter is coming" vibe? Your comment is too vague for me to understand.

Did you not read about the European energy crisis? Here, let me help you out: https://search.brave.com/search?q=european+energy+crisis&sou...

Re: All Applications for Nuclear Energy at COP26 Rejected

#130

Post by catlikesshrimp »

whatever1 wrote: post #103
mlindner wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pop science articles like that mistake "proven reserves" with "how much is actually in the ground". When geopolitics talks they look at proven reserves as that's how much we know is available and accessible in the short term, but it's not how much is actually available. Proven reserves expand whenever there is a shortage as effort is made to find additional amounts of the stuff. Additionally, most countries in the wo…

So now we went from abundant down to potentially abundant.

Then it makes sense to build as many plants as there is fuel to run them.
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