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Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

allianceforscience.cornell.edu

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Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#121

Post by _ph_ »

kalleboo wrote: post #91
actionfromafar wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Base power is nice, but I think we need to be more creative in setting up infrastructure that can work with varying price.

So in the winter everyone just freezes to death since they can't afford heat? That's a solution?

There should be some limit on how far the price varies, but it is an illusion, that electricity costs the same independent of time. For normal household appliances, there isn't too much flexibility - you need light, when it is dark, cook for the meals etc. But with heating and especially with electric cars, flexible costs make a lot of sense.

Even more in the industry, which is the larger consumer of electricity and needs incentives, to shape there consumption on availability, as far as it makes sense. It could make sense, for a company to invest into battery storage, if it saves costs. Or alternatively pay the utility companies for providing this service.

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#122

Post by lessname »

I think one of the biggest issues with nuclear power is that they are designed to last decades yet they need to bee maintained properly operate safely over time, which can be a bit expensive and responsibility shifts over time so it gets "forgotten" easily and leaders can blame their predecessors if something bad happens.

Here is a research about the safety status of nuclear power plants in switzerland: https://correctiv.org/top-stories/2018/09/12/brandgefaehrlic... - sadly in german only

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#124

Post by _ph_ »

wumpus wrote: post #120
qiskit wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> yet to make the electric grid work they have to burn natural gas when renewables aren't available. Also, keep in mind most renewables are biomass ( aka burning trees for energy ).

Europe allows biomass to count as renewable, but they're going to phase it out. The US didn't make as bad of a mistake. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/17/climate/eu-burning-wood-e... https://archive.ph/Xm4fb

Depends a bit on the nature of the bio mass. If we are talking about the non-edible parts of groceries or the manure produced by raising animals for meat, that is quite renewable. However, I don't think explicit farming for energy production is a good idea.

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#126

Post by FunnyBadger »

lessname wrote: post #122

I think one of the biggest issues with nuclear power is that they are designed to last decades yet they need to bee maintained properly operate safely over time, which can be a bit expensive and responsibility shifts over time so it gets "forgotten" easily and leaders can blame their predecessors if something bad happens. Here is a research about the safety status of nuclear power plants in switzerland: https://corre…

The same issue with roads and bridges in the US.

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#127

Post by skybrian »

PaulHoule wrote: post #30
epistasis wrote: post #16

This is great, and hopefully it will stop the premature shutdown of existing nuclear reactors. But it's pretty tiny climate news overall. Nuclear reactors are aging out and nobody in Western Europe or the US seems to know how to build in a cost competitive way anymore. Deploying 5GW of solar and storage, or 3-4GW of wind, is far easier, faster, and cheaper than trying to build a new reactor, which won't come on line…

It's not that simple. People quote low prices for renewables today that we might be scoffing at in 50 years just like we scoff at the early claim that "nuclear power is too cheap to meter" Specifically, you can't compare a nuclear reactor that delivers predictable power to solar and wind systems that deliver power when they want to deliver power. Germany has already had episodes where the spot price for electricity w…

If power rates become very cheap during the day and when the wind is blowing, nuclear power economics get worse too.

It seems like intermittent sources of energy increase capital costs for every alternative? What energy sources win this other than peaker plants?

Maybe paying a lot more for backup capacity needs to be a thing.

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#128

Post by Aachen »

Aachen wrote: post #117
pimpampum wrote: post #103

Fision power is no long term solution https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kahih8RT1k

Cookiewalled video is on the channel Sabine Hossenfelder (German theoretical phycisist), titled "Is Nuclear Power Green?" The conclusion chapter transcription: > What speaks in favor of nuclear is that it's climate-friendly, has a small landuse and creates power on demand. What speaks against it is that it's expensive and ultimately not renewable. The disadvantages could be alleviated with new technologies, but it's…

What I'm missing in this conclusion is weighing it against other options. At all.

Sure, it's expensive. It is also expensive as compared to buying farmland for solar panels and getting food from elsewhere? And as compared to finding enough people that are okay with wind turbines nearby? (If you can't just get it all from the sea of course.) From my point of view we ought to work on both fronts, I'm not sure this was addressed elsewhere in the video but at least it's not hinted at in the conclusion.

The suggestion of leaving it to the market sounds good in principle, but forgets that we've been using the "low hanging fruit" space so far, making nuclear seem like a terrible investment for any market party that optimizes short/medium-term gain. It also ignores the political aspect: try building one of these things and getting a license to handle enriched uranium or whatever and see what the German government suddenly thinks about leaving it to the market. No sane investor is going to waste billions on that gamble, so a government needs to publish assurances at minimum. Both of these things ought to be factored in when you want to create a level playing field to let the market figure it out. Kinda weird to opine that creating a level playing field is "insane".

That said, it's a more accurate conclusion than I expected from a link-only comment. Usually such comments link sources rather than speaking for themselves due to extreme opinions, but that's not exactly the case here.

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#129

Post by bryanlarsen »

dahfizz wrote: post #106
bryanlarsen wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No generator provides base load, because load is usage, not power. Lots of places in the world satisfy base load with dispatchable power.

Instead of nitpicking terminology, let's talk about the issue directly: What do you do when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing? There isn't enough batteries on earth to even make a dent in the storage you would need. We don't want to burn any more hydrocarbons. What are our other options? Massive pumped hydro might get us there, but that construction is on a similar time horizon to a new nuclear plant a…

We'd need about 50 TWh of batteries. We can build that faster than we can build a single nuclear plant.

And what do nukes do during peak periods of they are supplying base power?

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#130

Post by hericium »

_ph_ wrote: post #108
hericium wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also coal electricity from Poland and France seems to be nuking up to serve as Europe's reserve battery for when greens aren't producing or a large exporter misbehaves in politics next time.

Often enough, France cannot even power itself, less so export electricity 24/7. And the number of operational reactors is going down, not up. France is only a strong exporter in the times where there is low demand - exporting surplus nuclear energy is of course far better than regulating the reactors down - both from an economic standpoint as well as an ecologic one.

Macron announced[1][2][3] plans to build 14 new reactors.

[1] https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/11/business/nuclear-power-france...

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/10/world/europe/france-macro...

[3] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/10/france-to-buil...

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