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Nothing like this will be built again (2002)

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Re: Nothing like this will be built again (2002)

#261

Post by LargoLasskhyfv »

tda wrote: post #252
otagekki wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You really think it'd be that easy? Europeans, especially France and the UK backed off from that part of Africa mostly because they don't want massive uncontrolled immigration. For over 50 years now France has been corrupting those countries' elites at the expense of more than 90% of the population. For 50 years those countries' cooperation level with each other have been hindered and their industries dilapidated to…

Easy? No. Also highly unlikely and against every treaty etc. But bigger wars have been fought over energy security, so not entirely impossible. And with Russia, China and USA fighting injust wars left and right, it seems Europe is the only major power that still cares a bit about internationally acceptable.

No overthrowing of anyone necessary, it seems. Have you heard of

https://xlinks.co/morocco-uk-power-project/ ?

(Give it time, it loads slowly. Maybe refresh after a minute, or so.)

Re: Nothing like this will be built again (2002)

#262

Post by wolfram74 »

bayesian_horse wrote: post #255
wolfram74 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not one of those physicists, mind you. I think keeping all the problems substantively in liquid or solid phase gives us a better chance than automatically pumping them in gas form into the atmosphere. not to mention the transport efforts go from a daily coal train per powerplant to a single semi every 18 months. All the logistics up stream similarly impacted. I'll grant it's not as straight forward as disassembli…

That's still not accounting for all the trouble you might run into when scaling up nuclear power. It would also not be enough to do this in highly stable western-style democracies. It's not accounting for all the cost that goes into developing the nuclear industry and dealing with all the consequences. All those cost calculations are either very optimistic or fraught with uncertainties.

It doesn't matter if it's hard, it's the steady state power option that doesn't have any marginal carbon output and is essentially site agnostic. We've been deficit spending our power budget for a century and now we're surprised things are going to get a bit harder?

Re: Nothing like this will be built again (2002)

#263

Post by mlindner »

Symmetry wrote: post #208
mlindner wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Texas of all places are building tremendous numbers of wind turbines primarily driven by market forces.

Having their own grid has some serious downsides as they found out last February but the upside is that they get to run things so that their installed base of renewable power is larger than the backlog of projects waiting for approval which is the case most of the country is in.

Moving quickly to renewable energy with only a few downsides sounds like a great tradeoff. Especially if they're downsides that consumers can work around.

Re: Nothing like this will be built again (2002)

#264

Post by pfdietz »

andrewaylett wrote: post #258
teamonkey wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The design of the plant was really old - construction began only 33 years after the death of Marie Curie, and the design was older than that. That's the point, though, isn't it? One of the richest and most developed nations failed to decommission the plant in a timely manner, even under excellent conditions, in order to save costs. It's not the technology that's the problem.

There's a circular problem here, though: anti-nuclear activists block development and deployment of new technologies and plants, then complain that everything's old and outdated. The cost of nuclear has to include all the decommissioning costs while Coal and Hydro get to externalise their major environmental costs. I understand that single incidents are more visible than long-term low-level harm. But as a civilisatio…

Or, anti-nuclear activism would be as ineffective as most other activism if nuclear actually made economic sense. Nuclear's economic fragility renders it vulnerable to external negative influences.

Re: Nothing like this will be built again (2002)

#265

Post by tonyarkles »

akiselev wrote: post #106
mikepurvis wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think part of what's wild about that for me is just imagining the risk analysis that would lead to that kind of thing. Like, obviously not an explosion that's over in seconds, but everyone would be dead anyway. And not a normal fire because then you'd just evacuate as usual and carpool if you can't find your keys. But there's a class of refinery-specific disasters where I guess you have tens of seconds to get out,…

A refinery can leak explosive gasses that form a plume in or around the refinery that rises off the ground. Once detected, there's a fairly high chance that one small spark will set it off but it could be many seconds or minutes until it's ignited and it could take multiple smaller explosions to mix in enough oxygen to cause the big one. This gives the staff "plenty" of time to evacuate but it's still an emergency si…

Yup, or even if just one of the vehicles is in the way and the person with the keys is nowhere to be found it could cause a huge problem during an evacuation.

Re: Nothing like this will be built again (2002)

#266

Post by tonyarkles »

mikepurvis wrote: post #61
tonyarkles wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spent some time at an active petroleum refinery a few years ago and one of the safety things that surprised me a little was that every vehicle inside the complex must have the keys in the ignition at all times. Not turned on, but in the event of an evacuation they didn't want anyone to have to futz around looking for keys.

I think part of what's wild about that for me is just imagining the risk analysis that would lead to that kind of thing. Like, obviously not an explosion that's over in seconds, but everyone would be dead anyway. And not a normal fire because then you'd just evacuate as usual and carpool if you can't find your keys. But there's a class of refinery-specific disasters where I guess you have tens of seconds to get out,…

You've touched on something else that I found extraordinarily impressive there: how amazingly thorough their risk analysis process is and how well thought out their mitigation plans are. When they had the problem I came to help work through (not immediately safety critical, but a big deal, intentionally being vague here), step one was to reach up to the shelf and grab the binder labelled "Business Continuity Plan: Problem $X" and start executing the plan from page 1. It wasn't a plan to fix the problem so much as a plan for how to continue operations until the issue was fixed. Very very impressive.

I learned a lot on that gig, and it's really helped influence the way I think about business "disaster planning", whether caused by floods, or data centres burning down, or a rogue sysadmin deleting backups, or whatever. That industry is 100% the opposite of "cowboy".

Re: Nothing like this will be built again (2002)

#267

Post by pfdietz »

soperj wrote: post #232
Gwypaas wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is very expensive. Given that they came online in the 70s and early 80s we can assume the initial capital investment is paid off by now and that cost is only the marginal running cost. (OPEX) Now, currently we are building solar farms in desert areas for ~1.5 cent per kWh. Including both CAPEX and OPEX. On-shore wind is built at ~3 cents per kWh and ~6 cents per kWh for off-shore. This is where the explosion of…

Sorry, that's what the consumer pays. It includes transmission to the home.

That does not appear to be correct.

https://www.oeb.ca/consumer-information-and-protection/elect...

Re: Nothing like this will be built again (2002)

#268

Post by _dain_ »

Miraste wrote: post #251
_dain_ wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Pretty much all space programmes prior to the commercialisation of space. We're only at the start of that, too: today imaging satellites and internet connections, tomorrow potentially heavy industry, solar power generation and mineral extraction. Who knows what else. Those had *direct* benefits at the time, immediately: satellites of all kinds, classified military stuff, and the dickwaving pleasure of putting a man…

An interesting article, but rather undercut by the fact that he highlights quantum computers as the same situation. Twelve years later, they exist. They work. They have APIs! Yet the development process displayed all the negative symptoms he highlights. How can we be confident fusion is different?

they're still toys, you can't do anything useful with them.

Re: Nothing like this will be built again (2002)

#269

Post by bayesian_horse »

wolfram74 wrote: post #110
bayesian_horse wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear reactors are just bigger pains than even the coal plants they might replace. Especially to replace enough fossil fuel one would have to scale up the problems with mining, waste disposal, and risks of accidents or malicious interference. I know this isn't a popular idea here, but there also lots of physicists who don't believe in nuclear fission as a mid-term or near-long-term solution.

I'm not one of those physicists, mind you. I think keeping all the problems substantively in liquid or solid phase gives us a better chance than automatically pumping them in gas form into the atmosphere. not to mention the transport efforts go from a daily coal train per powerplant to a single semi every 18 months. All the logistics up stream similarly impacted. I'll grant it's not as straight forward as disassembli…

With the slight difference that the "gas form", meaning CO2 can eventually be reabsorbed by plants... the radioactive waste not so much. It has to be kept separate from animal and Human life for millenia ...
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