Finland starts much-delayed nuclear plant, brings respite to power market • Hacker News Board

Re: Finland starts much-delayed nuclear plant, brings respite to power market

#391

Post by Retric » Sun, Mar 13, 2022, 4:07 AM UTC

secondaryacct wrote: post #379

Retric wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grid solar is statistically significantly safer than Nuclear. Climbing on rooftops can be dangerous, but solar is much better in a dessert than on top of a roof. Nuclear takes longer, is more expensive, has lower ROI, and higher risks. Solar has a lower capacity factor, but having 1/3 the availability at 1/15th the cost is a net win. Especially as we need vastly more power in the daytime and idling Nuclear is really…

Not for the people who would have liked to drink the water used to clean the panels (cf the projects in deserts). Everything has some drawbacks and it s useful to diversify.

Your off by orders of magnitude. Nuclear uses vastly more water than solar power per kWh.

“Nuclear Energy consuming roughly 400 gallons of water per megawatt-hour, 320 billion gallons of water were consumed by United States nuclear power plant electricity generation in 2015.” And that’s direct consumption in cooling towers, nuclear indirectly uses power in other ways.

By comparison the 550-megawatt Desert Sunlight project in Riverside County estimated 2/3 cup of water per megawatt hour.

Re: Finland starts much-delayed nuclear plant, brings respite to power market

#392

Post by kuhewa » Sun, Mar 13, 2022, 4:09 AM UTC

liketochill wrote: post #389

kuhewa wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> so it doesn’t point out how uneconomical this nuclear project is. It does insofar as it matters for capital. Who wants to invest in a plant that will take at least ten years (but probably more with cost overruns in the billions) before they see a ROI? Especially when the cost per MWH from a renewable project that will be online in 2 years with less risk is already comparable if not more competitive.

You have a great point. Who is funding the building new nuclear plants these days? I imagine it is mostly governments or government backed utilities. I would absolutely never invest in a nuclear project but I sure am glad they are there to keep the lights on when the weather doesn’t cooperate for wind and solar. A mix of different sources is the key to a robust grid, and nuclear is a great part of that mix. As a side…

I reckon that's a reasonable way to think about it. I often see people blaming irrational nuclear fear or environmentalists for the lack of nuclear development, but really if they want to see it be optimized as part of the solution in the future, they should be advocating for expanded government subsidies or direct funding because right now that's the obstacle, the fact that nuclear isn't part of a purely market solution.

Re: Finland starts much-delayed nuclear plant, brings respite to power market

#393

Post by ncmncm » Sun, Mar 13, 2022, 4:17 AM UTC

cm2187 wrote: post #228

jahewson wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Outside of pumped hydro, storage is very expensive. Would need something like a 15x reduction in storage costs to be competitive with nuclear.

And where do you build that hydro? I hear some people suggesting Europe using the valleys in Sweden and Norway. Imagine the EU electricity grid at the mercy of one of Putin’s submarines. The rest of Europe doesn’t have many valleys left to flood.

All you really need for pumped hydro is a hill. It's cheaper if there is a natural basin up there, but you can build sides of you need to.

Re: Finland starts much-delayed nuclear plant, brings respite to power market

#394

Post by Maursault » Sun, Mar 13, 2022, 4:20 AM UTC

shagie wrote: post #333

liketochill wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without including storage and overbuilding of solar and wind to provide the same capacity factor as nuclear it is not a fair comparison, so it doesn’t point out how uneconomical this nuclear project is. The attractiveness of 1.6 GW of nuclear power is that it is carbon free, statistically the safest, it is firm energy that can be depended upon 24x7x365, and fuel costs are so trivial nobody even brings them up. All of…

> Without including storage and overbuilding of solar and wind There's also the aspect of "how much sun is there?" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_energy_in_Finland There are a number of issues with photovoltaic solar cells that close to the Arctic Circle.

> There are a number of issues with photovoltaic solar cells that close to the Arctic Circle.

What they need up there is a way to generate electricity from darkness.

Re: Finland starts much-delayed nuclear plant, brings respite to power market

#395

Post by ncmncm » Sun, Mar 13, 2022, 4:28 AM UTC

lazide wrote: post #290

ncmncm wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> many types of trees are very, very strong Now you are just making things up. The bigger and stronger trees are, the more valuable they are as timber. But there is plenty of non-forest land to use, and wind is wholly compatible with mixed use with developed farm and pasture, which is why we see that instead.

What exactly am I making up? Timberland owners (at least in my experience owning a lot of timberland) need to time market conditions quite a bit to make a profit. If someone is lucky, an offer for the land CAN coincide with good market conditions for the specific timber they have at the state they have it, but that is far from guaranteed. All the species I happen to have a good stock of went crazy high earlier last y…

And it is pointless to talk about when there is no need to build there.

Re: Finland starts much-delayed nuclear plant, brings respite to power market

#396

Post by ncmncm » Sun, Mar 13, 2022, 4:37 AM UTC

jpgvm wrote: post #297

ncmncm wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This "250" number for China keeps being trotted out, but nobody knows how many of those will actually ever be built or operated. There is anyway not fuel for that many, at present. It would be more honest to cite the much smaller number that have actually broken ground. Nobody knows how many of those will be completed, or how many of those completed will be fueled or operated continuously, or where operated actually…

The pebble bed reactors are pretty much useless for making weapons grade material. The design was built with non-proliferation in mind. If they wanted to do that they would have just built more of their LWR design. What do you mean there isn't enough fuel? Not enough pellets/pebbles? Well ofcourse.. there is only 2 operational reactors right now... not enough uranium? Yeah no. There is way more than enough uranium to…

Xi is old. Will the next dictator share Xi's enthusiasm for high-cost power when the rest of the world is on low-cost power?

Any organization as big as the Chinese gov't makes lots of plans, and changes them as conditions change. It is one thing to be prepared to build a lot of nukes, entirely another to start building them, and entirely a third to finish them. The last will depend on conditions in the world, and of political alliances at the time.

Re: Finland starts much-delayed nuclear plant, brings respite to power market

#397

Post by pavlov » Sun, Mar 13, 2022, 4:41 AM UTC

chii wrote: post #369

phatfish wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like there are two colossal wastes of energy that need to be fixed.

it's not a waste if the receiver of the service is paying for the service.

That’s… not the definition of waste.

Have you ever worked at a big corporation? They pay for some stupid useless shit just because it’s nobody’s job to stop paying for the service.

Re: Finland starts much-delayed nuclear plant, brings respite to power market

#398

Post by ncmncm » Sun, Mar 13, 2022, 4:48 AM UTC

Manuel_D wrote: post #302

ncmncm wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Storage is a solved problem, and only needs to be built out. No such "breakthrough" is needed. Storage cost is falling much faster, even, than solar and wind generation. The only question today is whether to put a euro into solar or wind now, or into storage that will be much cheaper next year. Thus far, in most places, the former is still favored. More carbon tax can help move the choice the other way. As solar and…

And which solution is that? Lithium ion batteries? To put this in perspective, global lithium ion battery output [1] annually doesn't amount to 1 hour's worth of US electricity usage (500 GWh). Hydroelectric storage? You essentially need to repurpose an alpine lake as a dam. That's geographically dependent, and it's dubious it'd scale well as viable hydro sites become more and more remote. The remaining things like e…

Obviously not lithium batteries. Even suggesting it demonstrates you are not serious.

And, obviously hydrogen will not continue to be made from hydrocarbons. It will instead be feedstock for synthesizing hydrocarbons. Carbon would need to be extracted from air, or at least from exhaust, to get carbon credits.

Re: Finland starts much-delayed nuclear plant, brings respite to power market

#399

Post by liketochill » Sun, Mar 13, 2022, 4:53 AM UTC

kuhewa wrote: post #392

liketochill wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have a great point. Who is funding the building new nuclear plants these days? I imagine it is mostly governments or government backed utilities. I would absolutely never invest in a nuclear project but I sure am glad they are there to keep the lights on when the weather doesn’t cooperate for wind and solar. A mix of different sources is the key to a robust grid, and nuclear is a great part of that mix. As a side…

I reckon that's a reasonable way to think about it. I often see people blaming irrational nuclear fear or environmentalists for the lack of nuclear development, but really if they want to see it be optimized as part of the solution in the future, they should be advocating for expanded government subsidies or direct funding because right now that's the obstacle, the fact that nuclear isn't part of a purely market solu…

If you look at the electricity market in Ontario, zero development of new plants is part of a market based solution. They had to form a new government agency the Ontario power authority to sign long term contracts so that companies can secure loans to build infrastructure. The market price was politically influenced with many charges being hidden outside of the hourly price in an “uplift” charge and nobody had confidence that prices would be high enough for long enough to get their ROI.

Markets are interesting for economic dispatch based on marginal cost, but then real world constraints such as rivers that must flow and a lack of infinite transmission capacity in all directions kick in and it starts to look a lot like what it replaced. I guess it works where it works

Re: Finland starts much-delayed nuclear plant, brings respite to power market

#400

Post by ncmncm » Sun, Mar 13, 2022, 4:54 AM UTC

Ekaros wrote: post #345

ncmncm wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Geothermal boreholes are suddenly much more practical than anybody had guessed, with laser drilling. Its operating cost will necessarily be quite a bit more than solar, but it works in the Arctic winter, 24x7, and provides cogen heat.

Knowing that we have test plant with geothermal and the depth required is 6,4km even with laser drilling the effectiveness might not be so great.

We will need to wait and see.

It might end up cheaper to ship in ammonia synthesized from solar in the tropics. Most likely it will be a combination of several: normally, delivery by transmission line because cheapest, but with geothermal held ready for strategic backup, and stockpiled ammonia for load peaks.

Shipping will get cheaper as fuel does, but is already astonishingly cheap.