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Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

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Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#641

Post by ZeroGravitas »

gregwebs wrote: post #636
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #626

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The site actually has several articles about why this specific criticism is silly. To summarize: we already have gas plants, and gas storage, leaving them turned off except as a fallback insurance is the sensible option. Even when building new plants, gas plants are the cheapest to build and simplest to run which matters a lot if they're mostly idle, which is why they get used as peakers. https://austinvernon.site/bl…

That’s another mostly great article you linked to. Still though it doesn’t mention the dramatic cost increase of natural gas plants when used as a peaker instead of always-on, and it assumes we can produce as many batteries as we want. It also assumes we can continue producing massive amounts of natural gas in the US and export huge amounts to the rest of the world. The author's article on renewables and batteries st…

I'm not aware of anything occuring in the last couple of years that put a hard limit on battery construction due to material constraints. Could you be more specific about what you mean?

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#642

Post by jhgb »

trashtester wrote: post #637
jhgb wrote: post #633

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, they could just shut down their nuclear plants and the problem with nuclear fuel stockpile goes away as well. And in fact, this is vastly easier to accomplish, and exactly the thing they're already doing.

If you scroll up the thread a bit, the context was that someone claimed that Germany would be less dependent on Germany if they had kept more of their nuclear power plants. That is something they might have figured out in 2014. Going as heavy on natural gas as they have over the last generation, more or less ensures that they are in Russia's pocket. Shutting down nuclear plants does not make that better. In fact, I a…

> the context was that someone claimed that Germany would be less dependent on Germany if they had kept more of their nuclear power plants

Except I'd already refuted that claim, so it didn't make sense to labor under this misconception any further to begin with.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#643

Post by lazide »

natmaka wrote: post #620
lazide wrote: post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve usually heard it in reference to an add on process to other reasons we move seawater around - desalination, power plant cooling, etc. very good point though on end cycle efficiencies!

Indeed, and there AFAIK were some "tandem" (desalination+uranium) projects, however nothing appeared therefore there may be severe practical constraints or technical hurdles. Maybe later(?)

Part of it I think is Uranium is easy to get economically right now, and has a pretty limited set of potential buyers (and the set isn’t growing very quickly).

Most Uranium mines (15000 worked claims in the Midwest in particular) no one even bothers with. Cool or not, if one of the 5 major mines decides to cut prices, you’d better be awfully efficient right now.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#644

Post by webXL »

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #607
acidburnNSA wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we should be building the best LWRs right now to decarbonize immediately: ABWR, APR-1400, AP1000. My favorite decarbonize rapidly at scale idea is to build a shipyard-based nuclear reactor gigafactory and mass-produce floating PWRs. (This was actually almost done in the 1970s in Jacksonville Florida. They had a manufacturing license from the NRC, the world's largest gantry crane installed and, everything [1])…

Existing plants are barely competitive with the worst wind/solar from the LCOE graphs I've seen. There's NO WAY a new LWR will ever beat LCOE of solar + wind + battery. And that is current day prices that doesn't count forthcoming sodium ion storage, LFP, and solar/wind cost improvements. And it won't come online for a decade at best, with inevitable massive cost overruns. LWR/PWR is all the crap with waste, fuel rod…

Targets to ban internal combustion engines will put an enormous strain on battery costs. Someone mentioned "massive pumped storage" but there's hardly any water where you'd want to build solar plants.

Industry and even the modest of living standards depends on energy density & reliability. So there's really no way to get completely off of fossil fuels without nuclear or literally starving people. That's your choice.

If Fukushima wasn't an outlier, then I wouldn't want to live anywhere close to a traditional reactor. Yet accident statistics & population trends don't really support that conclusion.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#645

Post by Manuel_D »

ncmncm wrote: post #628
Manuel_D wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intermittency requires the use of dispatchable energy sources. This can be delivered through hydroelectric power, for those regions that have hydroelectric potential. But for those that don't have the right geography for hydroelectricity, fossil fuels are the only dispatchable source. Energy storage could theoretically avoid the need for alternative energy sources during periods of non production. But storage solutio…

You insist, vociferously, that renewable energy storage infrastructure has not been built out yet. But we all knew that already . It has already been explained to you numerous times that spending on storage would be foolish until we have enough renewables built out to charge it while also meeting demand; for now, money is much better spent on generation capacity. When it does become useful, storage will be radically…

The gating condition has been met several different places. California, Hawaii, and parts of the southwest. But the assured transition to energy storage has not happened, despite energy prices going negative on a regular basis. Why? Because storage remains nowhere near cost effective. Batteries and hydroelectric storage aren't cheap enough, and the former is actually getting more expensive as supply chains get clogged. Real world examples disprove your claim that storage will be built once a surplus of intermittent energy is produced. There is no solution. Only prototypes and wishful thinking, and hostility to those that point this out.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#646

Post by gregwebs »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #641
gregwebs wrote: post #636

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s another mostly great article you linked to. Still though it doesn’t mention the dramatic cost increase of natural gas plants when used as a peaker instead of always-on, and it assumes we can produce as many batteries as we want. It also assumes we can continue producing massive amounts of natural gas in the US and export huge amounts to the rest of the world. The author's article on renewables and batteries st…

I'm not aware of anything occuring in the last couple of years that put a hard limit on battery construction due to material constraints. Could you be more specific about what you mean?

The price of the raw materials for batteries is going up dramatically and the supply is not increasing accordingly. That's with today's demands- not a future where we need 10x the battery capacity.

There's been a lot of attention paid to nickel recently, but nickel may have enough availability with Tesla getting New Caledonia mining back online and Indonesia being ready to mine their nickel deposits. Still, the price of nickel is up ~2x right now. Cobalt is also up ~2x and has major ethical issues. But let's assume the industry can move at least grid storage applications to the LFP chemistry and reduce the pressure on these minerals.

The price of lithium is up ~5x. It's easy for this author or Elon Musk to say that there is plenty of lithium in the ground, but it's a lot harder to actually produce it. Tesla is experimenting with new lithium extraction techniques in Nevada- this will take a lot of time to come to fruition. The easiest scenario is existing mines increasing their production, but even in these cases it can be a long process to satisfy environmental concerns. Historically commodity super cycles last 10+ years with metals being much longer.

I would be interested in someone with more knowledge than me projecting the future here on both the demand and supply side, but instead in the article you linked we get "Lithium is not rare, but demand is growing so fast mining may take a few years to catch up". I don't think the author appreciates how long it takes to bring significant mining capacity online. And certainly the stated assumption that the "cost of these batteries is plummeting" is completely untrue at this point. Those with a deeper understanding are warning of a possible battery shortage [1].

[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/rivian-ceo-warns-of-looming-ele...

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#647

Post by [deleted] »

qiskit wrote: post #638
nosianu wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, Russia has all those great resources. Unfortunately it also has the paranoid aggressive Russian security apparatus in charge that brought us to where we are, which for some strange reason you entirely omit. Also, we have climate change, remember? We are supposed to not use up all the available fossil carbohydrates! The more we bring up the more even more large-scale issues we will have. Making fossil fuels cheap…

Quoted post unavailable.

[deleted]

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#648

Post by ZeroGravitas »

gregwebs wrote: post #646
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #641

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not aware of anything occuring in the last couple of years that put a hard limit on battery construction due to material constraints. Could you be more specific about what you mean?

The price of the raw materials for batteries is going up dramatically and the supply is not increasing accordingly. That's with today's demands- not a future where we need 10x the battery capacity. There's been a lot of attention paid to nickel recently, but nickel may have enough availability with Tesla getting New Caledonia mining back online and Indonesia being ready to mine their nickel deposits. Still, the price…

There's nothing new there. Musk has been talking about how many "gigafactories" making batteries the world would need for a long time. And even battery manufacturers were a bit taken aback by the scale proposed.

> Three years ago, when the Gigafactory was first proposed, "I thought it was crazy," said Yamada. "At that time, production capacity of this Gigafactory would exceed total production of the industry. Not Panasonic. Not Japanese companies. All Japanese, Korean, and Chinese companies combined. I thought it was a crazy idea.

"But I was crazy. And I was wrong. After seeing extraordinary success of the announcing of Model 3, there is a strong demand for this battery. So, three years ago I thought this was a crazy idea. But I was crazy at the time

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#649

Post by fallingknife »

jhgb wrote: post #574
fallingknife wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know that's the same thing, right?

I thought it meant the opposite, especially in context. Surely the problem of US nuclear construction doesn't lie in the NRC making concessions.

The point of regulatory capture is that regulatory hell is actually good for the established businesses in an industry. Sure it costs them money to comply, but the regulatory hell keeps new entrants out of the market completely, so the protection from competition is well worth the price.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#650

Post by gregwebs »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #648
gregwebs wrote: post #646

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The price of the raw materials for batteries is going up dramatically and the supply is not increasing accordingly. That's with today's demands- not a future where we need 10x the battery capacity. There's been a lot of attention paid to nickel recently, but nickel may have enough availability with Tesla getting New Caledonia mining back online and Indonesia being ready to mine their nickel deposits. Still, the price…

There's nothing new there. Musk has been talking about how many "gigafactories" making batteries the world would need for a long time. And even battery manufacturers were a bit taken aback by the scale proposed. > Three years ago, when the Gigafactory was first proposed, "I thought it was crazy," said Yamada. "At that time, production capacity of this Gigafactory would exceed total production of the industry. Not Pan…

It's not the battery cell production that is the real issue. Battery cell production is a big issue, but production can be increased in a few years to keep pace with demand if the raw materials are available.

The new aspect is the price signal that Lithium is now sending. This means that lithium will limit the ability to increase battery production and that battery prices are not going to decline as they have in the past. The history of commodities means this situation is more likely to hold for a decade than a year.

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