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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

#411

Post by sudosysgen »

cesarb wrote: post #324
cnlevy wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Storage for 3 months https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/29/sse-says-low-wind-dry-condit...

> Storage for 3 months The parent comment said overprovisioning and storage. With enough overprovisioning, you'd need storage for half a day at most (keep in mind that the parent thread was talking about pure solar with storage, not wind). The question on this sub-thread is: what would be the optimal (minimum cost) balance between overprovisioned solar and storage, and what would be the cost of that solution (the que…

The issue with wind is that lulls in wind and solar are often correlated. In reality you'd need somewhere are 3x provisioning and a day of storage.

Re: All Applications for Nuclear Energy at COP26 Rejected

#412

Post by Jensson »

phicoh wrote: post #364
chuckee wrote: post #3

It's so frustrating seeing nuclear pitted against renewables, while fossil fuel powerplants are still operating/being built, whose baseline power could be replaced by nuclear. But somehow the idea took hold that nuclear would be built instead of solar, and not instead of coal.

The problem is that hardly anybody does a clear cost calculation of a nuclear powerplant. We know roughtly what it costs to build solar or wind. There is a bit of subsidies and commercial parties take care of the rest. In the short term we need natural gas as a backup for solar and wind. But even that is not hard to build. And then we have nuclear. Projects that are late, projects cost way more than projected. Buildi…

Every big construction project type has big cost overruns etc, even coal powerplants. For example:

https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2015/05/billion-dollar...

> And as the plant blows through deadlines, the cost has ballooned dramatically: An original price tag of $1.8 billion has swelled to $6.2 billion.

Re: All Applications for Nuclear Energy at COP26 Rejected

#413

Post by vlovich123 »

evgen wrote: post #373
vlovich123 wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China is shifting their entire coal production to nuclear. America is shutting down nuclear and replacing it with? Coal. Wind and PV cannot handle the load requirements so you end up having to build coal anyway. I’m not against wind and PV. I’m just realistic about where the energy mixture has to look like to actually accomplish the goal of sustainable energy production. The earth can’t handle us dithering yet more o…

No, the US is not replacing nuclear with coal. It is shutting down nuclear that is aging out, but all energy growth in the past 20 years in the US has been renewables and gas. Mostly gas. The US is drowning in cheap natural gas from fracking and because of this switch away from coal it is one of the few major western nations to actually reduce its CO2 footprint over the past couple of decades.

I hope you realize that natural gas production produces methane instead of CO2. Methane is a far more potent greenhouse gas.

Re: All Applications for Nuclear Energy at COP26 Rejected

#414

Post by dragonwriter »

vlovich123 wrote: post #413
evgen wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the US is not replacing nuclear with coal. It is shutting down nuclear that is aging out, but all energy growth in the past 20 years in the US has been renewables and gas. Mostly gas. The US is drowning in cheap natural gas from fracking and because of this switch away from coal it is one of the few major western nations to actually reduce its CO2 footprint over the past couple of decades.

I hope you realize that natural gas production produces methane instead of CO2. Methane is a far more potent greenhouse gas.

> I hope you realize that natural gas production produces methane instead of CO2. Methane is a far more potent greenhouse gas.

Natural gas is (primarily) methane, but burning natural gas converts methane into CO2 and water.

Re: All Applications for Nuclear Energy at COP26 Rejected

#415

Post by sandGorgon »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #115
sandGorgon wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

Actually the majority of China's nuclear power plants are a local design based on French technology (there's been a long term cooperation with France, which has built a couple of nuclear power plants there, including recently)

The point is - if westinghouse transfer had happened, this would have already been in place. I'm not disputing what they are doing now.

Eventually all countries will have the ability to make gen 5 reactors...but the COP26 is today. And we lost time.

That's the reason why coal usage will double or triple in the next 2 years primarily from India or China.

Re: All Applications for Nuclear Energy at COP26 Rejected

#416

Post by dmitriid »

dv_dt wrote: post #379
dmitriid wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because we all have enough batteries, right? You need enough batteries to provide hundreds of megawatts of quick power daily. See Figure E.2 https://www.oecd-nea.org/ndd/reports/2011/load-following-npp...

If batteries fill the need we can ramp up production of batteries. Lithium ion in the short term, and flow batteries or other utility scale batteries (Eg iron air), in the medium to long term. There are multiple utility scale competing battery technologies becoming quite mature and Thats a good thing. Especially if one or more of them are viable. It’s almost certainly easier and faster to scale battery tech than it h…

> If batteries fill the need we can ramp up production of batteries.

No we can't. Not in the amounts required. We're not talking about 100kW Tesla batteries.

> There are multiple utility scale competing battery technologies becoming quite mature

You mean, there are multiple competing battery technologies that are barely at the theoretical level with multiple significant challenges and no implementations beyond theoretical or impractical for the use case in question.

Flow batteries: low energy density, requires large tanks to be anywhere useful. Low charge and discharge rates, so are not practical for load following applications

Iron-air: only theoretical so far with first small plant potentially in operation by 2023, and its efficiency is yet to be seen (so far it's mostly marketing materials and hype).

> t’s almost certainly easier and faster to scale battery tech than it has been nuclear.

Ah yes, it's certainly easier to scale non-existent and non-scalable tech.

Re: All Applications for Nuclear Energy at COP26 Rejected

#417

Post by viktorcode »

rglover wrote: post #14

Read between the lines. It's not about the best solution(s), it's about _their_ solution. Nuclear solves the problem they champion, which means, it negates the need for their efforts and existence (economic). Ironically, the rejection of nuclear as a viable option seems to be the result of a psychological existential threat to the supposed "elite" of our world. The mask is off. Protecting the future of humanity isn't…

The original title "Message: Nuclear must be represented at COP26, says World Nuclear Association" reminds of meme "The cat is being starved, according to cat".

Re: All Applications for Nuclear Energy at COP26 Rejected

#418

Post by viktorcode »

DisjointedHunt wrote: post #171
adrianN wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which part of the statement that fossil fuels have been subsidized directly and by not paying for their externalities is wrong?

I didn’t say it’s wrong. I said it villianizes those fuels. We needed fuels as a society for those 3000 mile flights over the pacific that ships your iPhone here. Energy “subsidies” are a strategic investment in securing your lifestyle. Just look at Europe right now as they head into winter with sky high natural gas prices. They’d go ahead an strike any deal that secures their supplies so they do t freeze half to dea…

You don't need coal for those flights.

Comparing to gas burning power stations coal is very inefficient in terms of energy produced per per ton of CO2 emitted.

Re: All Applications for Nuclear Energy at COP26 Rejected

#419

Post by jillesvangurp »

g8oz wrote: post #284
sp332 wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China has 50 nuclear plants running and over a dozen plants under construction right now. Kinda seems like they're ramping up to me.

They are ramping up everything, solar and wind included. It's not clear to me that they regard nuclear as a panacea.

China is also still building coal plants. But that doesn't mean they see that as the future either. Like everybody else, they are not putting all their eggs in one basket but at the same time they like wind and solar a lot more than nuclear and coal. The bulk of their investments are going towards those at this point.

Re: All Applications for Nuclear Energy at COP26 Rejected

#420

Post by mnw21cam »

legitster wrote: post #18
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…

I don't understand. One of the benefits of nuclear is that it can be turned on and off quite easily. There are several mechanisms to throttle on and off the reaction.

I'm an advocate for nuclear power, but I have to point out that this isn't actually true. A nuclear plant can load-follow to a certain extent if it is designed to do so, but if you reduce the power output of a nuclear reactor below a certain threshold then the reactor will need a decent period of time (around a day) to cool down before it can be started up again.

The fundamental problem is nuclear physics itself. Running a nuclear reactor produces Xenon-135, which has a huge potential to soak up neutrons, and therefore given half a chance will try to shut down the nuclear reaction. When the reactor is going full pelt, then there are enough neutrons flying around to burn up the Xenon, and all is good. When you reduce power output, then there is still a large amount of Xenon in the reactor, and it will soak up lots of the neutrons and reactivity of the reactor, shutting the reaction down. The Xenon takes about a day to decay by itself down to a level where it is safe to restart the reactor again. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenon-135 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_poison

One of the contributing factors towards the Chernobyl accident was the reactor controllers trying to overcome the effects of Xenon by pulling the control rods of the reactor out. This made the reactor highly unstable, because as the reaction rate increases the Xenon will be burned off increasing the reactivity, which can lead to the reaction ramping up very quickly.

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