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A first for Canada: New type of nuclear plant opening by 2028

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Re: A first for Canada: New type of nuclear plant opening by 2028

#281

Post by tintedfireglass »

flgb wrote: post #131
jp0d wrote: post #4

This is really exciting. I wish we had nuclear power here in Australia. I know I might get downvoted for this comment. But with advancement in technology and large amount nuclear fuel (Uranium deposit) available, it's a great choice. 1. Vast swathes of uninhabited land can absorb some of the risks/fears associated with a nuclear accident. With technology like this, the risks are even lower. 2. It's lot cleaner than c…

Reasons why Australia doesn't and won't have nuclear: 1. Nuclear is a more expensive sources of energy than our alternatives (uranium ore is a small proportion of the cost stack, and Australia would still need to import nuclear fuel) 2. Nuclear isn't commercially viable in energy markets with very high levels of variable renewable energy where they have to be economically curtailed on an almost daily basis (our coal…

AFAIK Australia has the highest uranium reserves on the whole planet. Why do they need to import?

Re: A first for Canada: New type of nuclear plant opening by 2028

#282

Post by esja »

justatdotin wrote: post #88
jp0d wrote: post #4

This is really exciting. I wish we had nuclear power here in Australia. I know I might get downvoted for this comment. But with advancement in technology and large amount nuclear fuel (Uranium deposit) available, it's a great choice. 1. Vast swathes of uninhabited land can absorb some of the risks/fears associated with a nuclear accident. With technology like this, the risks are even lower. 2. It's lot cleaner than c…

> Vast swathes of uninhabited land ugh ffs : mabo was 30 yrs ago last month

There have always been vast swathes of uninhabited land in Australia. 7.6 million square kilometres divided by a few hundred thousand indigenous people, even allowing for movement = a lot of empty space. And that's even truer today than it was in 1770.

Re: A first for Canada: New type of nuclear plant opening by 2028

#283

Post by tobylane »

supert56 wrote: post #89

My only question about nuclear is why is it okay to bury the nuclear waste? I can understand that it might be fine to bury small amounts in specific stores but if countries slowly adopt nuclear energy at scale then over time won’t we be burying a lot of waste that, correct me if I’m wrong, has to be stored for thousands of years? I don’t understand how this can be sustainable long term. I also think it’s maybe arroga…

I think it becomes palatable when compared to the alternative. Coal power puts out nuclear material into the air. I would rather see it buried in the stable locations picked so far.

Re: A first for Canada: New type of nuclear plant opening by 2028

#284

Post by tintedfireglass »

dghughes wrote: post #243
flgb wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reasons why Australia doesn't and won't have nuclear: 1. Nuclear is a more expensive sources of energy than our alternatives (uranium ore is a small proportion of the cost stack, and Australia would still need to import nuclear fuel) 2. Nuclear isn't commercially viable in energy markets with very high levels of variable renewable energy where they have to be economically curtailed on an almost daily basis (our coal…

There's a place in Australia where an Indigenous people's legend is there is a sacred serpent under the earth and people are to not dig there. It was discovered that there are huge deposits of uranium in that region and just under the surface.

We shouldn't awake the dragon's tail

Re: A first for Canada: New type of nuclear plant opening by 2028

#285

Post by tintedfireglass »

tenuousemphasis wrote: post #273
mnw21cam wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. If you're going to be heating all those houses with electricity, instead of gas, coal, or wood, then you'll likely need much more than 1kW per home. Especially when winter hits -30C.

If you build your house better, you won't need very much energy at all to heat or cool it. The passive house standard used in Sweden calls for a maximum of 20 kWh/(m²yr), which translates to ~3,700 kWh per year for a 2,000 ft² home.

Here in asia we use 1.5KWh approx per year. It is a real thing

Re: A first for Canada: New type of nuclear plant opening by 2028

#286

Post by pydry »

DennisP wrote: post #237
pydry wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a form of carbon free energy costs 3x as much as carbon free alternatives, takes 3x as long to build and occasionally goes boom requiring an $800 billion clean up bill why build it? The additional pumped storage needs of solar and wind are more than offset by their vastly lower cost. If nuclear power could compete on a level playing field it'd be great but it sucks up subsidies like nothing else and puts the taxpa…

Crappy reactors from the 1970s occasionally go boom. We have much better designs now, like the one in the article: > The radioactive materials stay fully encased for their entire life and beyond. It's a very robust, strong fuel that's designed to make sure it indefinitely keeps the fuel safely inside the pellet. > Some of the main differences that the MMR has from conventional nuclear plants is that the reactor canno…

I'll be convinced once they start shouldering the accident liability. Not before.

Crappy reactors from the 70s are the only financially viable reactors these days. Also the ones Germany is being raked across the coals for trying to shut down.

Re: A first for Canada: New type of nuclear plant opening by 2028

#287

Post by ncmncm »

Sinidir wrote: post #204
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They cannot be even half as efficient - the process of electrolysis is only 40% efficient, then hydrogen must be compressed to insane pressure (which can require up to 20% of the enrgy contained withing) and transporting across the country. Only like 25% of energy you started with ever arrives to the fuel station

Its actually around 70-80% efficient depending on method. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolysis_of_water#Efficien... Not that this changes the picture of hydrogen powered personal vehicles. Still the only viable option for grid level seasonal storage.

Hydrogen is very, very far from the only viable long-term storage.

Liquified ammonia will also be popular.

But we don't need any seasonal storage at all, just as we don't have seasonal storage of oil. We only need enough storage to hold out until a shipment of LH2 or LNH3 arrives from the tropics.

Efficiency of H2 needs to fold in the cost of getting the power back out: Cf. "round-trip efficiency". But as I said, it doesn't matter very much, anymore, since generation is getting so cheap. Gasoline engines were never efficient, but few have cared much about that.

Hydrogen won't, in any case, be "transported to the fuel station". It will be made right on the spot, or just down the street. And, won't be compressed, but will be poured in and allowed to boil up to pressure.

That said, cars will be using batteries for the foreseeable future. In 20 years, H2 might get another chance, if batteries don't improve enough. Which seems unlikely.

Re: A first for Canada: New type of nuclear plant opening by 2028

#288

Post by shawnz »

wasmitnetzen wrote: post #267
shawnz wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't human failure and bad planning an even bigger concern for the handling of the 1000000x larger amount of coal that nuclear could replace?

No, not really. If a coal plant is designed or run badly, it might burn down, and that's it. If a nuclear plant is designed or run badly, whole countries might be unlivable for centuries. The risks are not the same.

That's only if you look at the worst case of individual incidents. You also need to consider the rate of incidents (due to the hugely greater consumption of coal plants for example) and other failure modes like long-term mishandling of fuel and waste.

Re: A first for Canada: New type of nuclear plant opening by 2028

#289

Post by InitialLastName »

Retric wrote: post #223
kevingadd wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"occasionally goes boom requiring an $800 billion clean up bill why build it?" is an absurd way to describe the small number of incidents we've had in the past - they can all be attributed to egregious chains of human errors and/or bad planning. To quote: But some 18 years before the 2011 disaster, new scientific knowledge had emerged about the likelihood of a large earthquake and resulting major tsunami of some 15.7…

The fact people in government and private industry knew the risk 18 years without addressing it it probably the most damming thing about nuclear power. The public simply can’t trust the industry or regulatory bodies. Which means they must assume avoidable disasters are going to be a regular thing. I don’t have an issue with nuclear power but IMO the industry should be forced to pay for a ~1T insurance policy to avoid…

> IMO the industry should be forced to pay for a ~1T insurance policy to avoid bad incentives rather than the government simply taking on the associated risks.

Good idea; let's start by applying that incentive to the externalities generated by the fossil fuel industry first though, so that the playing field is fair.

Ed: spelling

Re: A first for Canada: New type of nuclear plant opening by 2028

#290

Post by jjoonathan »

michaelt wrote: post #251
thecopy wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have never understand the economics argument. Either climate change and global warming are serious issues, and then slightly more expensive electricity should not matter - or they are not serious issues and we can keep burning coal and oil.

The economics argument has to be understood in the larger political context. Nuclear doesn't have a big support base. It's basically only supported by educated technocrats. And those educated technocrats are already holding their nose, because they know big government projects are often late and over budget. And the designs that are intrinsically safe haven't been built before. And if there was a meltdown, the taxpay…

Yeah, renewables have gotten a lot cheaper. They weren't viable, but now they are, and waiting is a sunk cost.

I think it's unconscionable that we chose to emit ~20 gigatons of CO2 instead of pushing nuclear from 20% of our electric supply to 100% -- we would be there today if we had just kept up the pace -- but what's done is done. We killed nuclear and waited for renewables to become viable. We paid the price. The CO2 is in the air. Now we can move forward.

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