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Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

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Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#421

Post by realusername »

geysersam wrote: post #389
dsnr wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can't convert about 40 million households [1] in a year or two. Who's talking about a year or two? Germany has been pushing for russian gas since the 90's, against all logic.

It's against logic if your only consideration is geo politics. And even then, many have argued economic cooperation builds peace and security through mutual trust and dependency. In the light of current events, this way of thinking has been discredited, but it's far from self evidently irrational.

It was against any geopolitics or environmental logic either.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#422

Post by stingraycharles »

cycomanic wrote: post #394
jhgb wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're confusing German gas consumption and German electricity consumption. It couldn't escape my attention that many people especially from the US make this fatal mistake (presumably because of the prevalence of natural gas electricity generation in the US - almost 40% in the US, compared to ~15% in Germany). In Germany, the vast majority of gas is being used for heating or for industrial purposes (chemistry etc.).…

The other aspect of the Ukraine war used for advocating for nuclear, which the nuclear proponents like to omit is that 25% of European uranium comes from Russia, so Europe's dependence on Russia is even stronger for Uranium than for gas. It's simply dishonest to use the current situation as an argument for nuclear. If anything it shows that we should have invested into renewables much more strongly, but nuclear propo…

> so Europe's dependence on Russia is even stronger for Uranium than for gas

I’d argue that it’s not about % coming from Russia that reflects dependence, it’s how easy you could switch to another supplier.

How difficult would it be to find a different provider for that Uranium?

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#423

Post by trashtester »

Archelaos wrote: post #337
Gravityloss wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ha…

> But it is usually not black and white.

I would agree in 99% of cases. But when it comes nuclear power vs coal and gas, the only data I can find seems to make this issue completely black and white (at least for developed countries).

As far as I can tell, nuclear is not only safer, but even MUCH safer than coal and gas, regardless of what parameters you look at. All argument to the contrary, seem to follow one of the following patters: - Not understanding the science and math (claims about how long used fuel will be dangerous) - Not even tryting to understand the science and math (not willing to even listen to arguments) - Worst case interpretation of findings (ie assuming the LNT model for cancer risk) - Treat Nuclear as an alternative to renewables instead of as an alternative to coal and gas. - Demanding orders of magnitude more safety from Nuclear than from other energy sources. - Some argue that from a scientific point of view, nuclear is obviously better than coal and gas, but it is not realistic to move the public opinion

Obviously a lot of this is generated from (irrational) fear of the unknown. But there is so much of this anti-nuclear propaganda being spread, that I wonder if there could be bad actors involved. It's almost like some climate activists and politicians don't want nuclear for some other reason.

Maybe they are worried that the replacement of coal with nuclear would make people less worried about the climate, remove the support for environmentalist organizations, and that this could cost them their jobs? Or it could be that the particular people who support environmentalists happen to be especially irrational on this topic, so even if the leaders understand the science, their base would not accept nuclear energy?

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#424

Post by gtirloni »

cycomanic wrote: post #394
jhgb wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're confusing German gas consumption and German electricity consumption. It couldn't escape my attention that many people especially from the US make this fatal mistake (presumably because of the prevalence of natural gas electricity generation in the US - almost 40% in the US, compared to ~15% in Germany). In Germany, the vast majority of gas is being used for heating or for industrial purposes (chemistry etc.).…

The other aspect of the Ukraine war used for advocating for nuclear, which the nuclear proponents like to omit is that 25% of European uranium comes from Russia, so Europe's dependence on Russia is even stronger for Uranium than for gas. It's simply dishonest to use the current situation as an argument for nuclear. If anything it shows that we should have invested into renewables much more strongly, but nuclear propo…

Can't Uranium be easily sourced from somewhere else or is Russia the only viable supplier?

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#425

Post by [deleted] »

neilwilson wrote: post #346
Dma54rhs wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

France doesn't accept EU law supremacy either despite being a founding member.

EU law is always supreme. If a law in France violates EU law, then any foreign EU national in France with standing can use French courts to have the law annulled. > The revolutionary case of NV Algemene Transport-Expedite Onderneming Van Gend en Loos v Nederlandse Administratie der Belastingen (9), addressed this matter, but also the issue of supremacy. In regard to Article 12 EEC (now Article 30 TFEU), The ECJ held…

[deleted]

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#426

Post by natmaka »

lazide wrote: post #135
jazzyjackson wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

at current costs of fuel maybe power would be too cheap to meter, but is uranium really so abundant to meet demand? I thought I read there was only a couple hundred years supply, but maybe that was propaganda one way or another... I know it exists in seawater but is it easy to extract?

A couple hundred years of proven reserves, with massive deposits known but not proven. It’s never been worth doing more than scratching the surface. If uranium was used much more, there are economic amounts that are filterable from seawater even.

Seawater: "pumping the seawater to extract this uranium would need more energy than what could be produced with the recuperated uranium" Source: http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2017/ph241/jones-j2/docs/e...

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#427

Post by gtirloni »

pvaldes wrote: post #325
Gravityloss wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> saving face is more important [for Germany] than Ukrainian lives. I understand that the propaganda works, but lets not fall in the error of blaming Germany for this war. Germany are victims in this situation, not aggressors. This narrative just divert the focus from the only responsible. Paying somebody for a product will not force him/her to invest the money in crimes. Russia could have spent this money in buying…

It's somewhat Europe's fault when it's obvious what will be done with the money.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#428

Post by postingawayonhn »

Archelaos wrote: post #337
Gravityloss wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ha…

> Even Ukraine itself is not shutting down the Russian gas pipeline on its territory "to save Ukrainian lives".

Because that would anger their western benefactors.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#429

Post by tuatoru »

robocat wrote: post #133
tuatoru wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While the governments' (plural, all the recent ones) car-centrism and lack of action on new energy are disapppointing ( so 20th century), I disagree for a couple of reasons. Main reason: end-user subsidies of any kind (whether for cars or for rooftop solar or $asset) are merely a transfer from poor taxpayers to high-income or wealthy people, those who own their homes or can afford to purchase the asset. They entrench…

Yeah, I mostly agree with your gist, although I feel you have straw-manned me with the points you brought up;) > NZ doesn't actually have a lot of land suitable for solar that doesn't have higher-value uses Do you have any references? I know somebody involved with a bid, and solar could heavily outbid farming ($ per hectare per annum) for the location they looked at. A solution only needs some land, not “a lot of lan…

No, I don't have specific references - you got me! :-)

I live not far from "NZ's largest grid-connected solar power plant" (2.1 MW nameplate: feeble), and also not far from one of the larger wind farms. The solar plant is on valuable dairy land, that's true. I wish Todd would publish some figures for it, although it hasn't been operating for long.*

When I wrote "higher-value", I had just been thinking about NZ's trade problem: it exports dried milk, red meat and a few other low-value-add bio-materials in order to buy everything else. Land is valuable to the country as a whole for its export revenue.

I had also been re-reading Vaclav Smil's Energy in Nature and Society, in which he says the areal (per square meter) power intensity of PV production is approximately the same as the areal power consumption of cities, so we need the same order of magnitude of land that cities take up if we use PV primarily. And it can't be too erosion-prone.

That (value/national interest) is also an issue (and this is specifically what I had been thinking about) for carbon farming conversions of hill country sheep and beef stations into Radiata monoculture plantations. Privately profitable, but probably against the national interest, and due to policy.

> Private markets can’t make long term investments if the cost of utility scale infrastructure is dropping too fast.

Design, legal, permitting, interconnect, civil, structural and electrical balance of system, and present value of O&M collectively dominate now,* and they are not subject to the same rate of cost decline as panels and inverters (and batteries), so overall, the cost isn't dropping super fast any more. (The PV version of Amdahl's law, perhaps.)

* Total installed capacity of wind power seems to be at least two, possibly three orders or magnitude higher than that of PV solar in NZ. Maybe this is due to the "social licence to operate" / nimby factor, but maybe not. It does suggest that rooftop solar is a tiny niche in the ecosystem, so maybe the market structure isn't all that bad?

* In NZ finance costs a lot too, because policy privileges residential real estate investment so greatly.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#430

Post by eukgoekoko »

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…

> Nuclear in Germany was always pretty minor.

This is simply not true. According to https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/29295/umfrage... nuclear's share in Hermany's total power generation was 30,6% in 2000, staying around 30% until 2009.

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