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Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

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Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#431

Post by natmaka »

jiggawatts wrote: post #378
Maursault wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 thousan…

In China nuclear's progress is in fact quite slow: 2 to 6 new reactors/year. Nuclear now produces 6% of the electricity, and the plan is to reach 7.7% by 2035 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_China#1964%E2...

Electricity generation by renewables: 27.3% in 2020, growing at an astounding pace. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_China

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#432

Post by emteycz »

cinntaile wrote: post #326
ohgodplsno wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1 event does not make a rule. French nuclear reactors were turned off for maintenance, yes, but over the past 30 years, it is clearly Germany depending on French power

That's kinda the point of an interconnected electricity grid, it allows you to import the cheapest energy available. I don't get the argument here. Sometimes it's renewable, sometimes it's gas, sometimes it's coal, sometimes it's hydro, sometimes it's nuclear...?

The argument here is that a country that keeps talking about green energy, ecology and renewables for decades is now using much less ecological methods of power generation than nuclear, and they keep badmouthing nuclear too.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#433

Post by patall »

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…

To add to that, Rosatom was even set to build a new nuclear power plant in Finland [0]. Supposedly, because the french built one is taking too long to be build.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanhikivi_Nuclear_Power_Plan...

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#434

Post by natmaka »

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.

Indebted, indeed... If you really think Kazakhstan can disobey to Russia then let's agree on not living on the same planet.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#435

Post by natmaka »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #366
seydor wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. They need 2-3x renewable capacity to charge 2. You need to buy the batteries

1) nonsense. Charging batteries is very efficient. About 90-95% efficient. The idea is to use peaks in power to charge the batteries. Those peaks already exist and don't require new capacity. Every time people complain about broken wind mills, what's actually happening is that they are being turned off to reduce the output: grids are currently bad at handling supply peaks from wind and solar. 2) Yes, lots of them. Lu…

Indeed, "vehicle-to-grid" has a huge potential: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle-to-grid

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#436

Post by diegocg »

concordDance wrote: post #404
Maursault wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It has nothing to do with economics Nuclear power is not profitable. It has nothing to do with regulation and everything to do with economics. If nuclear power were profitable, you could not stop it. If nuclear power were profitable, the regulations would change with a quickness, because motivated investors remove any and all roadblocks to their money. If it wasn't for the absurdly bad economics, bad track record p…

> Even if the nuclear industry were entirely unregulated, it still couldn't generate profit. I recommend doing some simple arithmetic here. This is simply false: As the article points out, reactors used to be under $2000/kw (this is with some regulation, just not onerous amounts). The UK electricity wholesale price is currently at £100/MWh, so at current prices your new plant in the deregulated world (which will take…

Regulations aren't some random worthless bullshit imposed by bureaucrats. They are the consequence of nuclear accidents. Dreaming of a world without regulations in the nuclear sector is just as stupid as a world without regulations in the airline industry. It just won't happen and pretending that there some kind of environmentalist plot behind the regulations won't make these regulations less necessary.

There is no way you can recover the investment costs of a modern nuclear plan in two years. It takes a very long time to recover the money (decades), and this is the main reason why investors are just not interested in nuclear plants. They have to lend money long term, and in that time lots of things can happen - from renewable technology being discovered, to changes in prices of nuclear fuel and geopolitics. You essentially can't predict the profit of a nuclear plant in the far future, and that means you can't predict how fast the investment is going to get repaid. It's just not an attractive investment, which is why some modern nuclear plants can't go ahead without some kind of government support.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#437

Post by natmaka »

freemint wrote: post #401
varajelle wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the same period, France went from 10 to 4.2 t/capita (Source: https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/germany?country=DEU~F... )

Germany has a lot of heavy industry.

Exactly, France (sadly) lost most of its industry since the 1980's, and it shows: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-co2-embedded-in-tra...

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#438

Post by gtirloni »

dirkt wrote: post #324
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.

Nuclear power plants can't be used for residential heating, residential cooking, chemistry, and industrial processes like making glass for solar panels. At least not without changing the infrastructure for that completely. Which is not going to happen overnight. And even then it can't replace chemistry. So, no, Germany couldn't have. No matter how many Internet armchair commenters repeat this.

> At least not without changing the infrastructure for that completely

Was replacing that infrastructure considered when plans were made to shutdown nuclear a decade ago? At some point you have to show you're better than "armchair commenters" and actually do what needs to be done.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#439

Post by sokoloff »

cycomanic wrote: post #416
ohgodplsno wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A whole 5GW in the entire world? Crazy, it almost matches the 400GW of just nuclear output, and the many more of every other power source. Wind + solar isn't a reliable energy source, period. You need a base load, whether that comes from hydroelectric, nuclear or, unfortunately, fossil fuels. Wind and solar are great at topping off things and should be deployed as much as possible for individuals to reduce the demand…

The whole argument about base supply (not load), only made sense in the old times when there were expensive variable supplies which could quickly follow load, and cheap base supplies which would run constantly at the same output (typically coal, nuclear...). The situation completely changed now the highly variable loads are cheaper now than the former base supplies. So you would always use your money to overbuild on…

It seems unreasonable to think that wind and solar could be overbuilt to an extent they could serve as a sole supply.

Everyone has had the experience of walking around on a windless night. You can have many such nights in a row.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#440

Post by fallingknife »

jhgb wrote: post #173
JoeyBananas wrote: post #122

It has nothing to do with economics, nuclear energy is stagnant because the industry is a regulatory hell. From eia.gov: Of the 104 operating nuclear power reactors in the United States: The last construction permit for a nuclear power plant was issued in 1978 for Progress Energy Inc.'s Shearon Harris plant, near Raleigh, North Carolina. The last operating license for a nuclear power plant was issued in 1996 to the T…

> because the industry is a regulatory hell That's weird, since many believe that the US nuclear industry is a fine example of regulatory capture.

You know that's the same thing, right?
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