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Russian gas flows via Yamal pipeline to Germany halt, bids remain

reuters.com

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Re: Russian gas flows via Yamal pipeline to Germany halt, bids remain

#131

Post by greendesk »

hcks wrote: post #60
greendesk wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Putin’s and his inner circle’s plan was that it will take 1-4 days to take Kiev and two weeks to take most of Ukraine. Minimal resistance was expected. The window of opportunity with this expectation is from mid-December until end of February. They picked a date with this plan.

> Putin’s and his inner circle’s plan was that it will take 1-4 days to take Kiev and two weeks to take most of Ukraine. This is being said a lot these days, but I haven't seen any proof of it. I'm not saying that proofs don't exist nor that it's wrong, just that I've been reading it everywhere, and haven't seen evidence. So I'd be happy if someone reading this could point out to some clues

To give an example where the expectations come from, note that when Russia annexed Crimea, they could retain some but not all, of the officers. Now when the Russian forces march in, they have common relatives that live in Ukraine, and some defect. The expectation of a ‘common big brother’ from Russia coming in and taking over government has been consistently shared by Russian officials. It is through the resistance of the invasion that desire for independence is shown.

Re: Russian gas flows via Yamal pipeline to Germany halt, bids remain

#132

Post by Nacraile »

throw_a_grenade wrote: post #63
jahabrewer wrote: post #53

Tangential: is the unit kWh/h a standard in the industry? It hurt my brain until I canceled the hours and got kW. (Yes I know kWh is a widely used unit of energy)

Gas in European pipeline systems is measured in kWh (not in m³ or kg), because it's the energy in the gas that we're after. Hence the funny unit.

Sure, but they why kWh/h instead of kW? If you're inclined to measure the quantity of gas in terms of its energy, why not measure its flow in terms of power? (of course kWh/h _is_ power, but why denote it so strangely?)

Re: Russian gas flows via Yamal pipeline to Germany halt, bids remain

#133

Post by The_rationalist »

Joeri wrote: post #105
The_rationalist wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear is a lot cheaper than solar, it simply depends on the nuclear plant model. Russians are the world leaders regarding nuclear plants time to market and costs (4 years).

Which would be great if we could invite russia to build nuclear plants in the U.S. and EU. Right now that might not be the best plan. We need a model that is cheap and safe everywhere, in every country, not just in china and russia. Also, I wouldn’t put too much faith into Russian numbers for their nuclear projects. They’ve pretty much got the patent on propaganda.

> Also, I wouldn’t put too much faith into Russian numbers for their nuclear projects. It's not propaganda because we are talking about a free market here. Countries around the world buy nuclear reactors from Russia. They are by far the biggest exporter.

Russia is not needed though, China is very cost effective and their popular model is in fact American based. Their other popular model is a french derivative. Their secret sauce is to build refined second generation models with added safety instead of building 4th generation economic ineptia because of absurdly high safety bloat. The answer to how to make nuclear reactors costs effective is simple: 1) Do not fire all competent and trained nuclear engineers 2) Make nuclear reactors maximally secure, not absurdly secure.

Re: Russian gas flows via Yamal pipeline to Germany halt, bids remain

#134

Post by exabrial »

Gwypaas wrote: post #118
exabrial wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The real reason for this is likely continue have an industrial base for their naval submarine reactors by subsidizing a complementary civilian industry. Interesting, I've never read about that angle. Nuclear is a great complement to Wind/Solar as it provides a steady base load.

The thing is, they don't complement each other at all. They both compete for the same share of the market: the cheapest most inflexible power generation. Renewables win there and force nuclear plants to be more flexible. Due to the extremely high fixed costs and lower marginal costs of nuclear plants they then have to make the money back in fewer hours, driving cost even higher. The other issue is the costly steam tu…

That is not true. They do not compete for the some market segment.

The problem is most renewables fall off before peak load subsides. That's why cheap energy storage would be a huge boon for transient renewables as they could keep providing energy after the sun is down and the wind has subsided.

Take a look here: https://nuclear-power.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Base-Lo...

Re: Russian gas flows via Yamal pipeline to Germany halt, bids remain

#135

Post by finnh »

KarlKemp wrote: post #108
Majromax wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not quite it. The bottled water / tap water comparison is still transporting exactly the same commodity. Liquefied natural gas, however, is much denser than its non-liquefied equivalent. Per Wikipedia, Nordstream 1 can deliver 55 G(m^3)/yr of natural gas. Per a US government source ( https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=50598 ), the United States has an LNG export capacity of about 12 G(ft^3)/day, o…

The conversion is wrong. 12 Gf*3 =~ 1.2 Gm*3

That would be f^2 => m^2, wouldn't it? You divide by ... 35 to go from cubic feet to cubic meters.

GP did that while also going from day to year, and the math checks out

Re: Russian gas flows via Yamal pipeline to Germany halt, bids remain

#137

Post by Gwypaas »

exabrial wrote: post #134
Gwypaas wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, they don't complement each other at all. They both compete for the same share of the market: the cheapest most inflexible power generation. Renewables win there and force nuclear plants to be more flexible. Due to the extremely high fixed costs and lower marginal costs of nuclear plants they then have to make the money back in fewer hours, driving cost even higher. The other issue is the costly steam tu…

That is not true. They do not compete for the some market segment. The problem is most renewables fall off before peak load subsides. That's why cheap energy storage would be a huge boon for transient renewables as they could keep providing energy after the sun is down and the wind has subsided. Take a look here: https://nuclear-power.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Base-Lo...

They do. This graph shows the nuclear "baseload" being crowded out of the market by cheaper renewables. (Or in this case mostly coal, but they are about equal on the electricity market in terms in inflexibility and cost structure.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_load#/media/File:Renewabl...

So, this means that nuclear is crowded out of the market during the sun hours, and later all windy hours. Take a low-ball nuclear cost of ~$130 per MWh. [1] Say that wind + solar can fulfill 12 hours per day, this is a low estimation. Current estimates is that ~80% is easily feasible without storage.

That means the nuclear plant has to make do with the 12 hours left. The nuclear plant has now, based on napkin math, entered a LCOE of $260 per MWh. It was already hilariously uncompetitive at $130 per MWh, now try $260. Now you can do power 2 gas and then burn it or any other extremely inefficient energy storage and still come out ahead.

> While historically large power grids used unvarying power plants to meet the base load, there is no specific technical requirement for this to be so. The base load can equally well be met by the appropriate quantity of intermittent power sources and dispatchable generation.

> Grid operators solicit bids to find the cheapest sources of electricity over short and long term buying periods.

> Nuclear and coal plants have very high fixed costs, high plant load factor but very low marginal costs, though not as low as solar, wind, and hydroelectric. On the other hand, peak load generators, such as natural gas, have low fixed costs, low plant load factor and high marginal costs.

> According to National Grid plc chief executive officer Steve Holliday and others, baseload is "outdated".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_load

[1]: https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-...

Re: Russian gas flows via Yamal pipeline to Germany halt, bids remain

#138

Post by caeril »

csee wrote: post #80
ls612 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Makes you wonder if one side or the other will “accidentally” damage those pipelines. Like obviously they can’t overtly do it but you know, stuff gets damaged every day in combat zones… it would certainly immensely hurt Russia’s strategic position to have their gas exports cut off.

Why would Russia damage it? They can just shut it off voluntarily on their side and use that for leverage.

> They can just shut it off voluntarily on their side and use that for leverage.

The sanctions have conveniently carved out exceptions for settling energy, wheat, barley, and other commodity contracts, and it's these contract settlements that have prevented the Ruble's 50% collapse from becoming a 90% collapse.

Starving the West of energy and food would definitely be a fun bargaining chip and/or tit-for-tat escalation play, but I don't think the Russian economy has the stomach for it.

Re: Russian gas flows via Yamal pipeline to Germany halt, bids remain

#139

Post by qiskit »

skadamat wrote: post #12

I never knew until recently how tied up Russia's oil strategy was to their military / political thinking. If others are interested, this video has a great overview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=If61baWF4GE

> I never knew until recently how tied up Russia's oil strategy was to their military / political thinking.

Oil strategy is tied to everyone's military/political thinking. Especially the top oil producers like Russia, US, etc. US was the top oil producer from 1850s to 1950s. It's one of the reasons we became a world power. We aren't maintaining military bases in saudi arabia because we are fans of islam. We didn't invade iraq because of freedom or democracy. We've been trying to topple venezuela for 2 decades because they have the largest oil reserves in the world. Some even think we are suddenly concerned about muslims in xinjiang because the chinese found oil there.

Germany invaded the soviet to take the baku oil fields. Oil has been central to most major world invents the last 150 years. What do you think our issue with iran is? Their huge oil and gas fields. You could argue the ukraine war is about oil and gas too.

If we ever got fusion energy or anything like that, one of the major sources of war would be gone.

Re: Russian gas flows via Yamal pipeline to Germany halt, bids remain

#140

Post by sydthrowaway »

KarlKemp wrote: post #111
sydthrowaway wrote: post #62

What are the real plans available to get abundant and cheap energy for the world, and why aren’t startups working on this?

Solar + wind & thousands of startups are working on it.

Why not fusion
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