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Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

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Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#501

Post by Gwypaas »

natmaka wrote: post #435
jillesvangurp wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I would say no. Your expensive battery on wheels with a complete integrated system is not something you want to abuse. Unless it can take for the entire lifetime of the car without significant degradation.

Compare this to racks on land with far less stringent requirements.

One the other hand, EVs can fill the same role by simply being smart consumers. You don't even lose any round trip efficiency - because storing energy in the car's battery is the work being done.

Consider a future where you can set your car to have at least 60% each morning and then 100% on Saturday, because you are going on a trip. The car will then optimize the charging times for the lowest cost. Thus balancing the grid.

Dynamic demand has the same effect on the grid as dispatchable energy. No need to complicate it further.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#502

Post by biorach »

mdp2021 wrote: post #227
epistasis wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These points are either inaccurate or irrelevant We can not build nuclear at $10/GW, that's a fantasy. The use of the land is quite different too. When a wind farm "uses" 100x-1000x the land (and I am not accepting those numbers, just quoting you), that land is still available for other uses. The fraction of "used" land is so neglible as to not matter at all. So to discuss it in the same terms as a reactor doesn't ma…

> land is still available for other uses How many uses are there that exclude prolonged presence of living things?

On fertile land there is still limited grass growth beneath and between solar arrays - more than enough for e.g. sheep to graze.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#503

Post by logifail »

pstuart wrote: post #131
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…

I can understand reluctance to build more nukes, but Germany shutting down nukes that were already paid for and working seems crazy. disclaimer: I'm pro nuke if we can do it right, a la LFTR/SMRs etc.

> reluctance to build more nukes, but Germany shutting down nukes that were already paid for and working seems crazy

Is this statement about climate change, or nuclear safety, or a bit of both?

At least for those worrying about safety, isn't this simply the wrong way round? New nuclear plants would have to be constructed to the latest safety standards, older ("paid-for") plants are the ones which were built in an era before them and have grandfathered-in approvals which might not be granted today.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#504

Post by Emma_Goldman »

uecker wrote: post #497
Emma_Goldman wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Actually, Germany did not have a long term increase in coal/gas due to the nuclear shut down but a decrease" Arguably this is semantics. But that's because the semantics of your claim is unhelpfully ambiguous. In absolute terms coal and gas make up approximately the same share of Germany's capacity as it did in 2010. In relative terms, because the total output has increased, it's share has fallen. But I say it is…

Assumptions are all wrong. Total output decreased from 632 TWh in 2010 to 588 TWh in 2021. Coal and lignite decreased substantially 117 TWh + 146 TWh in 2010 to 55 TWh + 110 TWh in 2021 (with a substantial reduction in CO2 emissions). gas use remained stable with 89 TWh in 2010 and 90 TWh in 2021. At the same time nuclear decreased from 141 TWh and 69 TWh and renewables increased from 105 TWh to 233 TWh.

Difference might be accounted for by capacity versus actual factor use - though 2021 might not be a representative year because of COVID if you are referencing the latter. But I can only guess. Your statistics are useless without a source. Mine:

https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/p...

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#505

Post by logifail »

lispm wrote: post #375
shakow wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 e…

> Most of them are in the European Union which worked for years on building a joint energy market.

Germany and Austria severed their single electricity pricing zone in October 2018[0]. "Slow grid expansion" was identified as one of the major factors in this decision.

[0] https://www.apg.at/api/sitecore/projectmedia/download?id=24f...

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#506

Post by roenxi »

trashtester wrote: post #443
cycomanic wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I would say that comparing the purchase of gas to the purchase of uranium is uninformed, if not dishonest, for two reasons: - Fuel costs for nuclear is only 15-20% of the total cost, half of which is the uranium itself [1]. For natural gas, the majority of the cost is the fuel, even during "normal" times. In other words, natural gas imports generate a lot more $ per GWh of energy produced, even if imported from the s…

3 reasons, I suspect - if someone wants an enormous stockpile of uranium fuel they can probably do that. The volumes check out - uranium is very dense and so will not take up much space. I'm not sure if it has a shelf life, but being a rock I expect something can be sorted out.

I can't pretend to know how feasible it is in practice, but long term strategic uranium stockpiles should be doable. Long enough to weather any reasonable war. Much, much more doable than trying to store a decade of nat gas.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#507

Post by pharke »

cycomanic wrote: post #284
LilBytes wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're going to have to source this because there's been absolutely no need for gas plants in the two cities I've lived in that were both powdered by nuclear in Europe.

It's right there in the article, but it seems many here commenting did not even read it: Many US nuclear plants are incapable of cycling power output up or down without changes to procedures or equipment.

Where? Searching for 'peak' returns no results and going through the results for 'gas' doesn't turn up anything about peaker plants for nuclear.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#508

Post by morelandjs »

A common theme I see, is tech venture capital types without any physics background complaining about the over regulation of nuclear energy. If there's one technology you'd rather over regulate than risk a catastrophic externality, it's nuclear.

I'm just imagining what a shit show it would be if the "move fast and break shit" Silicon Valley mentality was applied to nuclear energy. No thanks.

I would strongly prefer a cautious but ambitious government plan spear headed by physicists from the national labs.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#509

Post by legulere »

Emma_Goldman wrote: post #400
legulere wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 nuc…

> "Actually, Germany did not have a long term increase in coal/gas due to the nuclear shut down but a decrease" Arguably this is semantics. But that's because the semantics of your claim is unhelpfully ambiguous. In absolute terms coal and gas make up approximately the same share of Germany's capacity as it did in 2010. In relative terms, because the total output has increased, it's share has fallen. But I say it is…

> In absolute terms coal and gas make up approximately the same share of Germany's capacity as it did in 2010.

You're being very disingenuous here talking about capacity. What matters is how much fossil fuels actually are getting burned:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Germany_electricity_produ...

Electricity production from fossil fuels went down from 360.3 TWh in 2010 to 328.5 TWh in 2021, which is a reduction of almost 10%, while increasing electricity export from 15 TWh to 19.3 TWh.

https://ag-energiebilanzen.de/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/STR...

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#510

Post by legulere »

Emma_Goldman wrote: post #504
uecker wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assumptions are all wrong. Total output decreased from 632 TWh in 2010 to 588 TWh in 2021. Coal and lignite decreased substantially 117 TWh + 146 TWh in 2010 to 55 TWh + 110 TWh in 2021 (with a substantial reduction in CO2 emissions). gas use remained stable with 89 TWh in 2010 and 90 TWh in 2021. At the same time nuclear decreased from 141 TWh and 69 TWh and renewables increased from 105 TWh to 233 TWh.

Difference might be accounted for by capacity versus actual factor use - though 2021 might not be a representative year because of COVID if you are referencing the latter. But I can only guess. Your statistics are useless without a source. Mine: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/p...

2021 is very similar to 2019. Only 2020 had extraordinary low energy use:

https://ag-energiebilanzen.de/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/STR...

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