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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

#371

Post by shakna »

paranoidrobot wrote: post #77
throwawaylinux wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Australia has abundant uranium, dry geologically stable uninhabited space, bauxite, iron ore, and thermal and coking coal. Australia really should have developed large steel and aluminum industries powered by coal and uranium, rather than shipping all the raw materials out with no value add.

> Australia really should have developed large steel and aluminum industries powered by coal We did. BHP had massive steelworks in Newcastle and Wollongong (~150KM north and south of Sydney), aside from others. BHP found it was cheaper to do it in other countries where environmental, safety and labour laws weren't such as hassle to deal with (aka: Paying a living wage, avoid killing your workers, and limiting the imp…

We still do.

Alcoa is the largest employer in South Australia, and operates the world's largest integrated bauxite mining and aluminium refinery.

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

#372

Post by ncmncm »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #366
ncmncm wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"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." Are the efficient machines you are talking about affordable and portable enough to be locally owned? Also you are talking about hydrogen being poured in - so that would be cryogenic cooling, right? that incurrs an energy cost as well?

Yes, liquifying hydrogen also consumes energy.

But by the time we are doing that on every street corner, the whole grid will be driven from renewables, and joules will be very cheap vs. other concerns. In particular, the LH2 will be banked during peak generation time, so almost free.

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

#373

Post by _hypx »

wumpus wrote: post #33
jp0d wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm all for renewable power and environmentally sustainable technologies. This includes Solar, Beach, Wind power and Nuclear power. Preferably Hydrogen fuel cell cars over battery powered cars (purely for less batter and less toxic material to recycle and also logistically more feasible for long distance driving). We Australians need to raise awareness about its effectiveness. The new compact fusion reactor designs f…

It's a shame that so many people are still pushing hydrogen for individual vehicles despite its total failure in the marketplace... despite significant subsidies.

Hydrogen will be the future of cars. It is the only one that is sustainable. EVs are themselves the result of massive government subsidies and legal mandates. It is very likely a failed product without those market distortions as very few people can justify paying $45k for a small car and $60k for a large one.

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

#374

Post by _hypx »

ben_w wrote: post #143
wumpus wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a shame that so many people are still pushing hydrogen for individual vehicles despite its total failure in the marketplace... despite significant subsidies.

The hydrogen path is less energy efficient than the battery path, so it’s only useful if you have really cheap electricity. If the batteries themselves were to remain expensive even as the electricity to charge them/electrolyse water became cheap, I can imagine a scenario where the lifetime cost difference between batteries and hydrogen tanks might be more than the cost of the energy wasted as heat by making the hydr…

Renewable electricity will be nearly free. It makes the argument in favor of hydrogen nearly overwhelming.

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

#375

Post by eternauta3k »

ip26 wrote: post #302
eternauta3k wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Waste heat is not free to the degree that you're not cooling your cold side as efficiently. If "sending heat to homes" has the same thermal resistance as "just dissipate it", then sure. However, I find it elegant that heat is directly used to heat homes, rather than turning it into low-entropy electricity just to turn it to heat again (which is inelegant, even with heat pumps).

Burning natural gas to make electricity to run a heat pump isn’t elegant- but it is more efficient. We need a heat pump that is heat-powered…

There are old propane refrigerators which do exactly that (heat powered heat pumps).

Have you done the math to check whether it's more efficient?

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

#376

Post by ZeroGravitas »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #365
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear is more expensive than renewables. If we spent the same money on renewables we'd get more done. It's not overly complicated. The vast majority of people advocating for nuclear simply cannot hold in their criticism of renewables. That's because believing lies about renewables is a basic requirement for thinking nuclear is a useful solution in a world rapidly deploying renewables.

"Nuclear is more expensive than renewables. If we spent the same money on renewables we'd get more done. It's not overly complicated." By that logic, we could be taking money people spend on casinos and spending it on renewables - we'd get more done and that money was being wasted by definition. Budget of a country is not like budgeting your personal expenses, and we are limited by resources other than just Money. Li…

Ignoring nuclear for a moment, wind and solar both compete and complement each other. At a certain point, in a certain area, it stops making sense to spend money on wind/solar and start spending it on solar/wind instead. Because for the same money, you get more if what you want.

You could do similar for tidal power, but since it's so much worse than wind/solar in terms of efficiency/cost you basically don't build any.

Not because it's competing for steel, but because you have better option(s) for achieving the same goal.

Now, swap nuclear for tidal power and you have the same situation.

The main problem for renewables in the UK is the same main problem for them everywhere. Fossil fuel lobbying. All the bullshit about wind turbines was generated by the same political groups funded by fossil fuel interests.

It's great that lots of people have put a lot of effort into getting past "There's no problem", "There is a problem but we can't do anything about it", "we can do something about it but it's too expensive", to get to the current "it's cheaper but the people don't like it".

Imagine how much further on we'd be if we didn't have to wade through all that BS to get here.

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

#377

Post by hkt »

arcticbull wrote: post #156
hkt wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, wind turbines do produce heat but we generally let it dissipate. It may be that it is not really usable, but wind turbines that only produce heat are a thing historically: https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2019/02/heat-your-house-with...

I think the issue is you can’t really move heat too far physically, and turbines are located usually pretty far from houses themselves. Certainly relative to rooftop solar.

No argument here, I was just being a pedant really

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

#378

Post by Schroedingersat »

arcticbull wrote: post #241
dale_glass wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that ceases to make any sense the second you have renewables cheaper than nuclear. Then renewables start cutting into that base load as well, whenever they can.

Depends on your goals. Cost isn't the be-all, i'd rather have three nuclear plants than a thousand square miles blotted out by panels, for instance.

Yeah, you'd need about 1000-2000km^2 covered in solar to cover australia's electricity consumption.

Luckily that's almost exactly the roof area of detached dwellings.

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

#379

Post by Schroedingersat »

makk wrote: post #297
pjc50 wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The nuclear plants need to be built near water, which means they're likely to end up near habitation. Like renewables, much of the cost of nuclear is in construction - unlike renewables, this has gone up not down over the years. > Of course the coal companies won't like that. This is a fairly important reason why it's not going to happen in Australia.

> The nuclear plants need to be built near water, which means they're likely to end up near habitation. Does it? Article says this new reactor is helium cooled and vents heat. No mention of water cooling.

> Article says this new reactor is helium cooled

So it's non-functional without a methane industry tuen. Got it.

Water or salt or sodium sounds more sustainable.

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

#380

Post by Tepix »

DennisP wrote: post #255
Tepix wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We had a TRISO fuel nuclear reactor in Germany, it had a lot of problems and was an expensive failure. Among other things the balls broke. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THTR-300 or if you can read german: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kernkraftwerk_THTR-300 with a lot of details.

The balls sound a lot tougher in the new design. From your wiki link: > spherical fuel compacts each 6 centimetres (2.4 in) in diameter with particles of uranium-235 and thorium-232 fuel embedded in a graphite matrix And from the article on Canada's reactor: > The fuel inside of this vessel are solid kernels made from a mix of uranium, carbon, and oxygen, with each being roughly the size of a poppy seed. These kernel…

Agreed, they hopefully fixed that particular issue.

However, it is prudent to expect other problems in new technology. And nuclear reactors need a huge initial investment (they seem to be vastly over budget and time these days) and take a long time until they are available. It seems to be cheaper, safer and faster to go with renewables, doesn't it?

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