211–220 of 632 posts
Good job Finland. I respect the opinions of the environmentalists and agree with most of what they say, but until we have something more reliable that can put out power 24/7 year round, we need more new, modern nuclear plants.
Nuclear won't solve the climate crisis as it's too slow to build.
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If those EVs are mainly charging at night, where does the extra peak load come from? Or is this just a case of not being able to shut off as much NG/Hydro generation at night (since nuclear can’t really be turned on and off at will)?
Electrification goes beyond cars. Think of how much fuel they need for heat in Finland. Electrification means replacing that fuel with electricity. And many reactors are able to modulate their output, either by absorbing neutrons to slow the chain reaction, or by letting steam bypass the turbines. https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/3-ways-nuclear-more-flexi...
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It doesn't work in every country but renewables with storage can provide 24/7 power. And it's a fraction of the price of nuclear.
Do you have a source regarding your pricing claim? Renewables are usually cheaper per W, but way more expensive in real world usage (battery storage + full life cycle costs)
The area around Finland and Eastern Europe is one of the worst in the world for renewables, though.
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Electrification goes beyond cars. Think of how much fuel they need for heat in Finland. Electrification means replacing that fuel with electricity. And many reactors are able to modulate their output, either by absorbing neutrons to slow the chain reaction, or by letting steam bypass the turbines. https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/3-ways-nuclear-more-flexi...
Nuclear reactors could modulate their output, but they would take a grievous economic hit if they do so, because most of their costs are fixed, independent of the power setting.
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Something like this. The project started in 2000, construction began in 2005 and should have been completed in 2010. Original cost was 3 billion euro but landed on over 10 billion euro. It is the first nuclear reactor in Europe for 15 years so not much working experience or available sub contractors. Apparently, China, South Korea, Japan and Russia can build at a third of the cost and time of that. If nuclear energy…
I think this is vastly misunderstood in the (artificial) renewables vs nuclear conversation. We keep building effectively one-off complex machines, and then flushing all that knowledge down the drain by saying it cost too much and took too long. Like yes, the first one always takes longer and costs more...
I don't think there is any reason to think it will be different for future ones if any. We'll see what happens for the British one (Hinkley Point C), but they already know there will be large delays and cost overrun.
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When an article starts with chernobyl as example of what mistakes we're likely to make when building a new plant today, it makes me itch to just close the tab and dismiss the opinion of the person who linked it. Not sure why I even bothered digging into it, but for example one later point is also misleading: "uranium resources will be depleted by the end of this century". I think I found the source (not that they lin…
> Accidents in nuclear power plants can have disastrous implications. As in the case if Chernobyl, large areas around the site remain unusable forever What exactly about this do you not buy? And what is your solution for storing nuclear waste safely for hundreds of thousands of years?
> And what is your solution for storing nuclear waste safely for hundreds of thousands of years?
While it's a problem, it's actually a fairly tractable one, because the volume of high level waste is small and it doesn't leave the plant as part of normal operations. For coal power, for contrast, we store much of the waste in peoples' lungs.
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Plus proliferation of material for nuclear weapons.
I'm thinking proliferation as positive. Just think of countries recently in war had nuclear deterrent. They might not have been invaded in first place. Everyone having nuclear weapons would make world much more peaceful and safer place. That is unless we sanction all nations that have nuclear weapons and blockade them from international trade until they get rid of them and subject themselves to being open to inspecti…
That's the happy path.
The failure path with an unhinged dictator causing global destruction also gets much more likely.
Comming from a country where nucler power is nowhere near the radar, what is the case against nuclear power? it seems such a nobrainer for me to use
Fear based on feeling, not on facts. That's it. By any objective metric, nuclear is by far the best choice for stable base power generation. "But what if it explodes" - and there goes all rationality. Humans will take constant death from coal power plants rather than a minuscule chance of a larger catastrophe in a nuclear plant.
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The difference is that nuclear is the only one where the first one’s cost is measured in the the tens of billions. Nuclear is just too big for a privatized energy market’s participants.
what happened to the micro nuclear?
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Cooling a house is more energy efficient than warming one
Isn't it the other way round?