Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#371

Post by nickelpro » Sun, May 22, 2022, 9:24 AM UTC

jhgb wrote: post #304

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 [increasing coal and imported electricity to pick up the slack]. No, they did not -- look at the fourth chart in https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-c... . There's no "increasing coal". The recent changes in nuclear and coal generation correlate rather than anti-correlate. You'd need them to anti-correlate for the thing that…

Coal and other carbon sources would have been able to dive much more sharply if the nuclear capacity had remained online or been replaced appropriately. By taking down nuclear capacity, the Germans _kept_ coal and other non-renewables online and prevented them from being replaced by rising renewable sources.

More important to the discussion, note the sharp rise in coal when there is a renewable availability dip. This need to burn coal and gas when renewables have less-than-perfect availability is the conundrum for the Germans.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#372

Post by thematrixturtle » Sun, May 22, 2022, 9:26 AM UTC

jillesvangurp wrote: post #349

seydor wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what is the yield of solarwind in germany though? looking at their energy stats , it is underutilized https://energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&... https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/installed_power/chart.... https://sminpowergroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Renewa... and what happens to that massive coal+gas infrastructure?Apparently , wind+solar don't work at night and you will always need…

Wind works just fine at night.

Winds do tend to decrease at night, because wind is driven by heated air trying to move to an equilibrium and cooling is more rapid than heating.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#373

Post by colinmhayes » Sun, May 22, 2022, 9:27 AM UTC

froglets wrote: post #369

FooBarWidget wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually China seems to be the only country where nuclear is alive and thriving. There were some hiccups for some years due to lack of experience with 3G designs, as well as US sanctions (forcing some companies to drop France's AP-1000 design and to design their own), but they have now solved those problems and are ramping up nuclear fast because they are serious about 2030 peak carbon target. Source: David Fishman,…

UAE are building nuclear plants as well.

I believe the UAE's plants are being built by the south Koreans, who have been the biggest builders this century. Unfortunately even with so many plants being built south Korea has been unable to lower costs.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#374

Post by drunkpotato » Sun, May 22, 2022, 9:30 AM UTC

thematrixturtle wrote: post #370

natmaka wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear isn't better on this account: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/exclusive-us-utiliti... This is even true for France, as most of its uranium comes from Kazakhstan.

Kazakhstan is not Russia, and in fact they're rather alarmed by recent Russian sabre-rattlijg about reclaiming land in northern KZ to protect Russian speakers etc (heard this one before?). The current leadership is very much indebted to Putin though for saving them during a recent near-revolution, so they're walking a tightrope.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Russia had encouraged the very unrest that made them worried and indebted. Not because Putin is a Bond villain super genius but just because encouraging chaos and unrest and then playing all sides of a conflict is a standard technique of Russian foreign relations.

Edit: and also used in Russian domestic affairs, didn’t mean to leave that out!

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#375

Post by lispm » Sun, May 22, 2022, 9:30 AM UTC

shakow wrote: post #320

arinlen wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Uh...Germany's actually recarbonized by shutting down their nuclear [increasing coal and imported electricity to pick up the slack]. Wikipedia contradicts your claim. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Germany From wikipeda's article, Germany has been constantly shutting down it's carbon-based energy sources for the past half decade, with dropping to a fraction of its contribution in the past six o…

I don't know what Wiki says, but this here[0] says that right now, Germany is both producing one of the dirtiest electricity in Europe, all while still importing over 1GW. [0] https://app.electricitymap.org/map

Germany has been a large net exporter of electricity for years. 18.9 TWh in 2020. Of that 52.5 TWh were exports and 33.6 TWh were imports.

What you may have missed is: Germany is in the middle of Europe surrounded with a bunch of neighbor countries. Most of them are in the European Union which worked for years on building a joint energy market. Thus various electricity exports and imports are NORMAL. Note also that electricity may travel through more than one country in Europe.

Germany imports huge amounts of energy from other countries, given that it doesn't have much own resources of Gas, Oil, Uranium - it has some coal, though. Coal, too is imported.

Exchanging electricity with other countries will increase massively. In my region there is now a 1 GW power line to Norway to exchange electricity both ways.

Another example: Germany, Denmark, Netherlands and Belgium are investing 135 Billion Euros in a joint offshore wind project.

https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy/news/germany-denmark...

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#376

Post by colinmhayes » Sun, May 22, 2022, 9:31 AM UTC

nimbius wrote: post #8

investment cost and payoff. a gas turbine plant can deliver returns in as little as six years and requires minimal oversight. a nuclear plant may take as long as 30 years before it returns a profit, and it lives under a government regulatory and security magnifying glass. personal opinion but the modern american investor has no patience for anything but instant profits. nuclear could be great but the executives you h…

WHy would any executive be interested in an investment that takes a decade to even pay its first dollar when renewable prices are dropping exponentially? For all we know solar, which is already cheaper than nuclear, will be cheap enough by the time a nuclear plant is done to make that plant completely obsolete.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#377

Post by concordDance » Sun, May 22, 2022, 9:32 AM UTC

arinlen wrote: post #300

seydor wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what is the yield of solarwind in germany though? looking at their energy stats , it is underutilized https://energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&... https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/installed_power/chart.... https://sminpowergroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Renewa... and what happens to that massive coal+gas infrastructure?Apparently , wind+solar don't work at night and you will always need…

> 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

Here's what types of storage we have available and their costs and benefits:

https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2019/07/f65/Stora...

Depending on how reliable you need your energy you'll need various energy storage mixes. Judging by the uk, wind can spend an entire month producing at 15% of it's normal output and can spend days at 3%. So you need a LOT of storage if you want to be sure the lights stay on. In the high hundreds of billions of Euros (and considerable ongoing costs given they need the equivalent of replacement eveey 10-20 years) in the case of Germany.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#378

Post by jiggawatts » Sun, May 22, 2022, 9:33 AM UTC

Maursault wrote: post #174

systemvoltage wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're mixing up the matters and has gotten it backwards. The industry has been regulated to teeth after scare mongering by environmentalists post Chernobyl/3-mile-island. It has wiped out any hopes for private industry to build and hope to bring down costs by economies of scale. Too much regulation leads to death of economies of scale. If software was regulated like nuclear power, say because of hypothetical AI risk…

Except, it was never the regulations. A nuclear power plant costs between $6B - $9B to build, before it generates any electricity, that is just the construction cost these days for a 1100MW plant Regulatory costs for a nuclear power plant will range between $7M - $15M annually. Do the math: it is definitely not the regulations. Any time someone complains about regulations, you know there is a Republican agenda. We ne…

This is disingenuous.

A nuclear power plant is "just" a steel cylinder in a concrete building, attached to a very ordinary steam turbine hall and a set of transformers.

The expensive part is not the building! That steel is not some unobtanium, and while the concrete is the highest grade, it's not $billions expensive. The fuel pellets are surprisingly cheap also. That's... kind-of the point! You're not burning thousands of tonnes of coal in these things. The low fuel costs are a selling point.

The reason for the expense is because every single nut, screw, and bolt needs to have a mile high pile of paperwork. Because every pipe, pump, and filter needs to be certified. Every sensor needs to be purpose-built and documented by expensive PhD-wielding scientists, not just obtained at the local engineers shop. And so on, and so forth.

The Westinghouse design paperwork specified the type of paint used for the dividing lines between the parking lot divisions.

Not to mention the lawsuits by NIMBYs, which means you often can't even start construction for 6-15 years. No other business in the world is held up in red tape for as long, or as intensely.

PS: This is why China can slap down AP1000 reactors down half a dozen at a time, like they're playing Sim City. Over there, with an authoritarian government, they simply don't have these red-tape / certification problems. Some high-up politicians simply make the decision, and that's... it. Time to start pouring the foundations.

PPS: It seems that on further research, China is having troubles with the high base cost of the plants, even with the reduced overheads due to mandates at the highest levels: https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/12/12/138271/chinas-lo...

... so the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. Nuclear is expensive, but too expensive in western countries. Realistically, they're probably not worthwhile long term unless subsidised by the nuclear weapons industry...

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#379

Post by legulere » Sun, May 22, 2022, 9:33 AM UTC

Emma_Goldman wrote: post #266

jillesvangurp wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany Actually, Germany did not have a long term increase in coal/gas due to the nuclear shut down but a decrease. Coal has been in a slow but steady decline in Germany (mainly due to cost); which is on track to decline all the way to 0 as Germany is committing to getting rid of coal based production completely by 2035 or so. Gas production did grow but mainly to offset decli…

> "Actually, Germany did not have a long term increase in coal/gas due to the nuclear shut down but a decrease" > "Gas production did grow but mainly to offset declines in coal" This is dishonest at two levels. First, nuclear power fell and, at the same time, renewables and gas sharply rose in Germany's energy mix. Power is fungible. It is not as if power generated by renewables substitutes for nuclear, but power gen…

I think we're discussing semantics there. Coal use fell, coal and gas combined fell, but gas alone has risen. Which goes against predictions that coal would replace nuclear, that somehow some people claim have come true when there is obvious data that shows the opposite.

I agree with the point that we should have phased out coal before nuclear, but you have to state it like that and not cling onto some dream that nuclear and not renewables are the way forward for decarbonization.

> 2030 That's the international deadline for coal in advanced economies

Of the countries that have a pledge of a phase-out of coal, most have an even earlier deadline. However a lot of countries like the US or Poland don't even a deadline.

https://beyond-coal.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Overview-o...

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#380

Post by nosianu » Sun, May 22, 2022, 9:34 AM UTC

qiskit wrote: post #159

sanxiyn wrote: post #129

I live in South Korea. One thing people miss about nuclear power in South Korea is that natural gas is expensive in South Korea, because there is no pipeline connection and it is imported liquified. The article quotes $25/MWh for natural gas in PJM, where comparable number in South Korea is $100/MWh. Truth is, if South Korea had pipeline connection to Siberian natural gas field (not an absurd supposition, there was f…

If pipelines between russia and germany ( who had ties stretching centuries and pipelines for decades ) are such an issue for the US, any pipeline between russia and korea or russia and japan are non-starters. After fukushima, we allowed japan to buy lots of gas from russia. There was even talk about Japan and Russia building pipelines. But that got squashed real quick. Instead we forced japan to build LNG terminals…

Yes, Russia has all those great resources.

Unfortunately it also has the paranoid aggressive Russian security apparatus in charge that brought us to where we are, which for some strange reason you entirely omit.

Also, we have climate change, remember? We are supposed to not use up all the available fossil carbohydrates! The more we bring up the more even more large-scale issues we will have. Making fossil fuels cheap and easy does not lead us to somewhere good.

> It's an example of politics trumping economics.

Which is good especially in this case, so I don't understand your point.

One thing I don't understand is why nobody in German government (I'm German), not even the Greens, mentions that the kick in the rear that we get from the threat of Russia cutting gas is actually good for us, otherwise we would happily continue to rely on lots and lots of cheap natural gas and climate goals be damned because it's soooo convenient.

We would need to make big changes to our (German) economy to use significantly less fossil fuels even if Russia had a nice and peaceful government.

> Russia has the largest gas reserves in the world by far.

Which should remain where it is, underground! Or 50 °C will be the new normal in some heavily populated areas of this world, and other very inconvenient changes.

The plan for some seems to be to ignore the laws of thermodynamics and spend even more resources and energy on collecting carbon from the atmosphere and returning it underground using technology, instead of just letting it sit where it already has been sitting for several hundreds of millions of years. Funnily enough, this inefficient and leaky and destructive busywork adds much to GDP, compared to doing nothing (leaving the carbohydrates and not raising and using them).