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Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

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Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#471

Post by freemint »

Drblessing wrote: post #240
dboreham wrote: post #163

Because nuclear power plants and the associated fuel cycle industry is incredibly dangerous and the participants have consistently lied about that danger for all of history? Note: not a tree hugger. I believe nuclear power (in conjunction with significant restrictions on consumption) must play a big part in decarbonization. But...so many lies for so long. Put down the Kool-Aid and admit these things are not safe and…

Question: How many people does coal burning kill a year?

Will putting $10^x in nuclear save more lives then putting $10^x into renewables,grid updates and batteries?

You are proposing an intervention so it should be benchmarked against other interventions.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#472

Post by jillesvangurp »

dsnr wrote: post #278
croes wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gas has more use cases than just electricity. These can't easily be replaced by nuclear power.

Actually, gas heating can _easily_ be replaced with heat pumps assuming cheap electricity is provided.

That's a trick the Germans will have to do about 50 million times to get rid of their gas dependence in all their households. That's going to be bottle necked on the availability of heat pumps and trained people to install those. It will be interesting to see how quickly that industry can scale.

Providing the electricity for those pumps is the easy part of the problem. That just requires doing a bit more of what they are already doing at scale, which would be installing wind and solar all over the place.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#473

Post by freemint »

SemanticStrengh wrote: post #27

Russophobia aside, the next-gen russian nuclear model (first exporter in the world, of nuclear plants) is built in 3.5 years, which is state of the art. And at the same time has a high throughput (1300MWe) (much higher than the billion dollar mini-reactor fad) and state of the art longevity. It's very difficult for me to find the actual prices, of the different nuclear plants models competitors, but since most of the…

I don't get why Germany gets shit for importing gas from Russia when whoever supports that (or depends on Russian nuclear fuel) directly finances the russian nuclear weapons program which is being led by the very same company, Rosatom.

Competitively priced to renewables is a moving target. You do not just need to match it the moment you build it but over the expected life time.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#475

Post by sto_hristo »

pfdietz wrote: post #459
sto_hristo wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering power density meaningless puts you in direct confrontation with reality. In physics you can't create energy, you can only convert it. So from what you're converting from is the key consideration to take as that also determines the cost. And while nuclear is expensive at first, its longevity and reliability pays for itself. As it's further developed, that initial tax will only be reduced. As if you guys do…

What nonsense. I'm not denying power or energy density of nuclear is higher, I'm denying that this bare fact is relevant to any decision that we might make about using nuclear to power civilization. And no, power and energy density do not determine cost, in general. They might if all else were equal, but all else is NOT equal. Renewable sources can omit entire categories of equipment that thermal power plants require…

> Why are you choosing a meaningless metric to decide on the technology?

Learn to express yourself better. It's like building a house - your first choice is what ground you build it on - quick sands, swamp, or solid rock. If you don't take power density into consideration you're not going to make the right choice and then all your efforts will be meaningless.

Denmark is almost 100% renewable (it imports some). France is 70% nuclear (net exporter). Denmark household pays 170.5% more than french household. https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

Here's a lecture on nuclear economics https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbeJIwF1pVY

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#478

Post by Gwypaas »

sokoloff wrote: post #439
cycomanic wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

On a continent scale?

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#479

Post by dsq »

unknownaccount wrote: post #477

I think it has to do with a declining IQ score among Western nations. There are simply not enough employees with the education and competentency level required to safely operate these plants anymore.

This is probably a very real problem. Perhaps not biological IQ per se, but culturally Western populations have been dumbed down significantly over the past few decades. This is actually my only objection to nuclear power: it requires a certain level of technical savvy in the populace to supply the engineers and technicians, which sadly our lawyer-ruled society does not appreciate.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#480

Post by concordDance »

cycomanic wrote: post #242
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…

Seriously did nobody read the article?! Is this reddit or Slashdot?! The article goes through the calculations, it shows that even with deregulation LWRs would not be competitive. It says that other designs might be, if they ever get off the ground. And let's not discuss the fact that regulation affects many markets which work perfectly fine and when lifes depend on it they should be. I'd rather not that the CRT give…

> And let's not discuss the fact that regulation affects many markets which work perfectly fine and when lifes depend on it they should be.

I'm unconvinced a sane person could look at the other most heavily regulated market, healthcare, and say it works "perfectly fine".

> The article goes through the calculations, it shows that even with deregulation LWRs would not be competitive.

The numbers given in the article of $53/MWh are currently less than half the current UK wholesale electricity price and renewables impose increasing costs as they become a larger share of your electricity mix (renewables are not even remotely competitive if you also had to pay for even a single day of electricity storage, which would cost at least $4000/kw[1]).

Deregulated nuclear would be much cheaper than wind&solar+storage.

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

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