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Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

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Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#331

Post by smueller1234 »

Gravityloss wrote: post #303
jillesvangurp wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany can't wave a magic wand and switch off Russian imports overnight. But they did just commit a few hundred billion to accelerate their plans to get rid of coal and gas based generation. That's a direct consequence of the Ukrainian situation. Like the US, Germany was overly depending on cheap gas until recently. Now that it has to import the gas in liquid form from the US (and a few other places), it's going to…

Germany could have cancelled their nuclear shutdown process. But saving face is more important than Ukrainian lives.

That's a very simplistic way to look at the situation.

At a large trade show, I once ran into a retired nuclear engineer and we had a long conversation: he had been called back into service by the state out of desperation. There weren't enough knowledgeable folks who could do safety audits of the plants for TüV. This was 14 years ago and things would be far worse today.

Restarting a complex industry (and it's ageing plants) that's been out of favor for literally decades is difficult and in this case also dangerous.

I'm a (German) physicist by training and worked at a nuclear research facility at the time.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#332

Post by webmaven »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #100
jmyeet wrote: post #41

This is a solid write-up. I particularly like this part: > Most fusion concepts are just a more complicated way to heat water. It's kind of wild that our means of power production do ultimately mostly boil down (pun intended) to turning a turbine with steam and, as the article notes, this is an inherent cost problem whereas solar is a direct form of energy. I hadn't really thought about it in those terms but it's tru…

> 3. We still don't have a good long-term plan for dealing with processing waste at scale; Who is 'we' that should come up with the plan? Government? Most westerners don't like government planning - your own post considers government involvement as a downside. We expect the market to manage most things, but markets don't come up with long term plans, that's not their function. If you come with a subject at random and…

> Who is 'we' that should come up with the plan? Government? Most westerners don't like government planning - your own post considers government involvement as a downside.

I think an even broader we was implied, that of human civilization as a whole.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#333

Post by Tretioh »

Gravityloss wrote: post #303
jillesvangurp wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany can't wave a magic wand and switch off Russian imports overnight. But they did just commit a few hundred billion to accelerate their plans to get rid of coal and gas based generation. That's a direct consequence of the Ukrainian situation. Like the US, Germany was overly depending on cheap gas until recently. Now that it has to import the gas in liquid form from the US (and a few other places), it's going to…

Germany could have cancelled their nuclear shutdown process. But saving face is more important than Ukrainian lives.

No we could not have.

The process of shutting down or reactivating a nuclear plant is not something you just do.

You should look for statements from our Minister habeck.

Also nuclear like in France has huge keeping up issues.

For whatever reason nuclear is always depicted as the simple solution but nothing is easy with nuclear.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#334

Post by jhgb »

himinlomax wrote: post #313
arinlen wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apparently , wind+solar don't work at night (...) This line of argument is either disingenuous or ignorant. https://m.dw.com/en/new-energy-storage-facilities-in-high-de... https://www.iea.org/reports/energy-storage

Ignorant? Energy storage is not a short or medium term solution. Pumped hydro is already maxxed out pretty much everywhere it's possible as not all dams are suitable -- in fact most aren't. Battery storage for large grids currently covers minutes of use, a few hours may be attainable. But wind can be absent for days or weeks, and there's such a thing as winter when you're as far from the equator as Germany. Ignorant.…

> Pumped hydro is already maxxed out pretty much everywhere it's possible

The Australian National University recently disagreed: https://www.anu.edu.au/news/all-news/anu-finds-530000-potent... . But even very large amounts of pumped hydro storage are probably not the cost optimum -- according to https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001429211... , the optimum lies in the direction of significant overgeneration, which reduces storage requirements massively (even while allowing opportunistic consumers of electricity such as for example hydrogen production).

> But wind can be absent for days or weeks, and there's such a thing as winter when you're as far from the equator as Germany.

Interestingly enough for Germany, the period less likely to suffer from prolonged lack of wind is winter. So the more likely periods of decreased wind happen in summer, where they're interrupted daily by significant solar generation. At the very least in German conditions, these two events (lack of wind and lack of sun) are not only not independent, but they're actually anticorrelated. That also helps deal with the whole situation.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#335

Post by tralarpa »

RealityVoid wrote: post #224
pg_bot wrote: post #64

I will start this off by saying I am very pro nuclear. However, I think it is likely that the last nuclear power plant to be built in the United States will be built in the next 5-10 years. Looking at the trajectory of renewables and energy storage it seems that every other method of generating power will slowly be priced out of existence. Given the politics (fission) and uncertainty (fusion) of nuclear, I think it i…

I have nothing against solar, except I am not persuaded by its promise. Would like for it to be able to deliver all that it promises. But right now, you have diminishing output as panels age, you don't have a storage solution that works at scale, you will have a large volume of panel waste at the end of panel lifetime. I seriously doubt even the average life time of a solar panel will be enough. I just looked up some…

> you have diminishing output as panels age

The degradation seems to be quite slow in practice. Below 0.5% per year, i.e. less than 15% after 25 years.

> on average 850kw per year (again, looked it up online, if you have better figures, please!)

I think the number is closer to 900-1000kWh per year for Central Europe and 1200KWh/year for Southern Europe and California, but I don't know whether the higher average temperature at those places increases aging.

> This means you need to run your panel for 4 years

Sounds good to me?

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#336

Post by ben_w »

planetsprite wrote: post #14
ben_w wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While true, this does not make it popular or lead to NIMBYs changing their mind. How important this is varies by nation, but it’s not nothing in most places.

Nuclear power is unpopular because of media messaging. Coal releases more radiation into the environment on average, even accounting for Chernobyl and Fukushima.

Also because of the naturalism fallacy, and because of word association between “nuclear power” and “nuclear weapons”, and because of the zero-risk bias (most people have a preference for reducing a small risk to zero over a greater reduction in a larger risk).

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#337

Post by Archelaos »

Gravityloss wrote: post #303
jillesvangurp wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany can't wave a magic wand and switch off Russian imports overnight. But they did just commit a few hundred billion to accelerate their plans to get rid of coal and gas based generation. That's a direct consequence of the Ukrainian situation. Like the US, Germany was overly depending on cheap gas until recently. Now that it has to import the gas in liquid form from the US (and a few other places), it's going to…

Germany could have cancelled their nuclear shutdown process. But saving face is more important than Ukrainian lives.

Such a simplification is very hypocritical in my eyes. Even Ukraine itself is not shutting down the Russian gas pipeline on its territory "to save Ukrainian lives". And the sanctions against Russia are not so complete that the West is blocking every cooperation. For example, no one wanted to immediately stop the cooperation regarding the International Space Station "to save Ukrainian lives", because the cost would have been too high as the station might have been lost.

Reasonable politics is always about weighing effort against benefit. Of course, anyone can have her or his own opinion where to draw the line in a particular case. But it is usually not black and white. In my opinion, the German government has done an excellent job in the last months in reducing dependence on Russian primary energy imports. It rather failed in another area: military support for Ukraine.

BTW: Does anybody know whether US's extensive uranium supplies from Russia and its sphere of influence (Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan)[1] have now ceased? I could not find any recent information about it.

[1] 46 % in total as of 2020: 16 % Russia, 22 % Kazakhstan, 8 % Uzbekistan -- see: https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/nuclear/where-our-uraniu...

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#338

Post by holoduke »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #252
oceanplexian wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Recent events in the Ukraine are cutting off cheap Russian supply of both coal and gas This is not the impression I have gotten from recent events. The reason Germany hasn’t experienced blackouts is because they are funding the Russian Federation’s war in Ukraine in exchange for energy. Germany has advocated for the continued purchase of Russian gas and has pushed back against the EU admitting Ukraine to the union.…

Germany can't wave a magic wand and switch off Russian imports overnight. But they did just commit a few hundred billion to accelerate their plans to get rid of coal and gas based generation. That's a direct consequence of the Ukrainian situation. Like the US, Germany was overly depending on cheap gas until recently. Now that it has to import the gas in liquid form from the US (and a few other places), it's going to…

And those plans will be reconsidered in 5 years from now. Cheap Russian gas will likely flow again. And don't forget Ukrainian recent found giant gas reserves. One of the reasons for this conflict.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#339

Post by _fizz_buzz_ »

uranium wrote: post #66

"Recently, places as diverse as Texas, California, Oklahoma/Iowa/Kansas/Nebraska (SPP), the UK, and Germany have rapidly decarbonized without nuclear." Uh...Germany's actually recarbonized by shutting down their nuclear [increasing coal and imported electricity to pick up the slack]. "The nuclear electricity production lost in Germany's phase-out was primarily replaced with coal electricity production and electricity…

> Uh...Germany's actually recarbonized by shutting down their nuclear

Germany has most definitely not recarbonized. Germany has consistently reduced CO2 emission over the last few years, it would have been quicker if Germany had kept nuclear online no question, but that's really how impressive renewables have become. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/production-vs-consumption...

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#340

Post by arinlen »

himinlomax wrote: post #313
arinlen wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apparently , wind+solar don't work at night (...) This line of argument is either disingenuous or ignorant. https://m.dw.com/en/new-energy-storage-facilities-in-high-de... https://www.iea.org/reports/energy-storage

Ignorant? Energy storage is not a short or medium term solution. Pumped hydro is already maxxed out pretty much everywhere it's possible as not all dams are suitable -- in fact most aren't. Battery storage for large grids currently covers minutes of use, a few hours may be attainable. But wind can be absent for days or weeks, and there's such a thing as winter when you're as far from the equator as Germany. Ignorant.…

> Ignorant?

Either disingenuous or ignorant, yes.

> Energy storage is not a short or medium term solution.

The primary role of energy storage systems in renewable energy sources is to balance supply and demand. Your assertion makes no sense because it ignores even the most fundamental aspects of the problem domain.

> Pumped hydro is already maxxed out pretty much everywhere it's possible as not all dams are suitable -- in fact most aren't. Battery storage for large grids currently covers minutes of use, a few hours may be attainable. But wind can be absent for days or weeks, and there's such a thing as winter when you're as far from the equator as Germany.

Irrelevant. You're trying to put up a strawman based on a fictitious scenario where energy production comes from a single source: wind. It's the tired old meme from two decades ago.

Meanwhile, back in the real world not only are power grids distributed at a continental level but there also multiple sources of power feeding into that grid, including imported energy generated from renewable sources.

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