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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

#221

Post by mdavis6890 »

ncmncm wrote: post #135
Sharlin wrote: post #54

Some context: The Green Party had long been diametrically opposed to nuclear, to the extent that they have twice exited a coalition government in protest of granting additional reactor permits. Over the past ten years their position has gradually shifted though, thanks to STEM-oriented Greens in particular, as it has become obvious that AGW is a bigger threat than nuclear. This in spite of several setbacks: – Obvious…

Now all the people who insisted the Greens had been co-opted by Big Oil will be completely silent about their having now been co-opted by Big Nuke. But Big Oil/Gas/Coal loves new nuke projects; each represents a decade or more of still buying fossil fuels, instead of incrementallly displacing fossil with renewables. What this really means is probably that their position is moot, because no new nukes are planned or li…

While these comments probably do apply to a great many government sponsored/financed projects like bridges and such, probably not as much in the case of for-profit nuclear power.

The company in charge of the plant project will be eager to get the power revenue flowing.

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#222

Post by ncmncm »

simion314 wrote: post #186
Krasnol wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany is right in the middle of the biggest and most stable grid on this planet. They don't have to build storage within a year because they don't have to store all that stuff. They can take their time and continue to expand their national grid. Something they've been doing even during the last 16 years where the conservative government has been crippling the expansion of renewable energy.

This makes no sense, the other countries will not build storage for Germany and also they will want to build renweables, you present a fake solution.

Building out renewables is the correct action right now. In the readily foreseeable future, building storage will be correct. In the meantime, building factories to build storage is beginning.

All these things take time. Repeating that things still yet to be done have not already been done sheds no light.

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#223

Post by Krasnol »

simion314 wrote: post #186
Krasnol wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany is right in the middle of the biggest and most stable grid on this planet. They don't have to build storage within a year because they don't have to store all that stuff. They can take their time and continue to expand their national grid. Something they've been doing even during the last 16 years where the conservative government has been crippling the expansion of renewable energy.

This makes no sense, the other countries will not build storage for Germany and also they will want to build renweables, you present a fake solution.

"The other countries" do that and they're happy to do it. We just recently got a significant boost from Nordlink. But you don't care about all that don't you? You just want to forcefully project your own attitude and hope that the other side is just as bad informed as you are because this is how that nuclear astro turf works...

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#224

Post by belorn »

ncmncm wrote: post #135
Sharlin wrote: post #54

Some context: The Green Party had long been diametrically opposed to nuclear, to the extent that they have twice exited a coalition government in protest of granting additional reactor permits. Over the past ten years their position has gradually shifted though, thanks to STEM-oriented Greens in particular, as it has become obvious that AGW is a bigger threat than nuclear. This in spite of several setbacks: – Obvious…

Now all the people who insisted the Greens had been co-opted by Big Oil will be completely silent about their having now been co-opted by Big Nuke. But Big Oil/Gas/Coal loves new nuke projects; each represents a decade or more of still buying fossil fuels, instead of incrementallly displacing fossil with renewables. What this really means is probably that their position is moot, because no new nukes are planned or li…

I would not invest in fossil fuel in a country that is heavily investing into nuclear power. Most of the costs associated with nuclear is in the constructions, so once they are built those costs are already sunk and they will deliver maximum energy at what ever price point that the market sits at. Fossil fuel can not compete against nuclear power on price after construction is completed, especially if paid by a budget a few governments ago.

I would however consider fossil fuels as a great investment if a country is heavily invested in renewables. Someone has to operate as reserve energy for when the weather changes and the season change to winter. Politicians in northern countries has already demonstrated a great unity in spending a lot of subsidies on "reserve energy" plans. You do not even need to spend fuel to get paid. And then we the market price do rise above that of fossil fuel costs, you get paid again by producing energy at the point where the market is at its highest. It is hard to optimize more for profit than those operating a fossil fuel power plant in those reserve energy plans.

The Swedish environmental minister last winter, who was also the spoke person for the green party, said something like: Oil power plants are and will continue be a natural part of the Swedish reserve energy plan. It is nothing abnormal to use oil when demand exceeds supply. It is hard to get a better political endorsement than that.

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#225

Post by ncmncm »

hgomersall wrote: post #95
Tade0 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The story for storage looks better than it ever has but it is still orders of magnitude more expensive more expensive than it needs to be to be practical. Storage is already cheaper than peaker plants and that's all it needs to be for now. Meanwhile HVDC lines appear to also be a viable solution: https://www.power-technology.com/projects/morocco-uk-power-p... Not mentioned in this article is the projected cost of t…

Do you have some references about cheap storage. I'm keen to learn more about the current state of the art.

The Wikipedia article on pumped hydro mentions some perhaps surprising variations that do not depend on mountain geography.

CAES -- compressed air -- is quite mature. Until recently it was considered to have insufficient round-trip efficiency, but that doesn't matter so much anymore. Again, there are numerous interesting variations, including pumping air into a vessel anchored to the sea floor via a pipe from an onshore compressor, and others where heat of compression is banked and added back when extracting power, for better efficiency.

In Chile, a big air liquification system is under construction. In principle this is similar to compressed air storage, but without need for pressure vessels. LN2 can be shipped, and is industrially useful directly.

A float can be attached to a cable looped through a pulley at the sea floor, and winched down from on shore. This, like several other undersea systems, would work scaled down to local utility size.

There are numerous projects preparing to push hydrogen into underground cavities, in some cases cavities natural gas was recently extracted from.

A UK company has a system with a thousands-of-tons weight winched up and down in a disused mineshaft. There are a great many disused mineshafts worldwide. They can often be used to keep compressed air or hydrogen in at the same time.

Ammonia may be synthesized electrically, and stored or shipped in liquid form under light pressure. Ammonia is massively useful industrially, so synthesis equipment would be idle only when stocks are being drawn down.

Form is building out factories to make iron-air batteries.

Ultimately, we will end up using a few that turn out to be cheapest, or otherwise (e.g. ammonia, LN2) valuable. We just don't know which those will be. We do know that Energy Vault, a publicly traded pump-and-dump scheme, will not be among them.

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#226

Post by simion314 »

ncmncm wrote: post #213
simion314 wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The topic is utility-scale storage. The topic of this thread is storage that you can have built in 1 year, at max 2. Hydro storage takes a lot more time to be built from scratch.

We don't have enough renewable generating capacity to charge storage from, and won't two years from now, either.

You mean Germany has enough storage now that is unused and would also be enough to cover the case where gas is replaced with solar? Any numbers that show this , including say 1 winter week for residential and industry consumption?

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#227

Post by Const-me »

ncmncm wrote: post #211
RealityVoid wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This, to me, sounds like a pipe dream. We can become carbon neutral with the tech we have _right now_ whereas I fail to imagine how these necessarily exponential improvements in storage capacity will happen. The _one_ thing that gives me hope for storage is maaaaybe synthetic fuels. But currently it's unproved.

If you mean using nukes, nukes started today will ensure burning fossil fuel for at least ten more years while we wait for them to come online. Money (including cost overruns) spent on them will be unavailable to build out renewables that would displace fossil fuels immediately. Electric synthetic ammonia is mature tech. It just takes a long time to build the factories to produce the needed amount of synthesis equipm…

> Electric synthetic ammonia is mature tech

I'd prefer a nuclear plant nearby, ammonia is toxic: https://abc13.com/ammonia-truck-disaster-houston/1332062/

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#228

Post by ncmncm »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #144
PaulHoule wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> The story for storage looks better than it ever has but it is still orders of magnitude more expensive more expensive than it needs to be to be practical. Source on this claim, please. Strange that this "orders of magnitude more expensive than it needs to be to be practical" technology is seeing massive growth: https://www.google.com/search?q=energy+storage+market+growth

It is hard to interpret the "orders of magnitude" assertion as anything but a deliberate lie.

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#229

Post by DANK_YACHT »

Krasnol wrote: post #220
DANK_YACHT wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This source says that natural gas was 25% of Germany's energy consumption: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-c... Your link only covers electricity generation, which is only a part of total energy consumption.

It covers electricity because this is the only sector where nuclear could be relevant. The other sectors like heating and industry use of gas can't be covered by nuclear since electrical heating is negligible in Germany. Didn't you look that up?

You can use nuclear or stored renewables to power a heat pump, which could heat homes for most of the German winter. You’re saying heating is “negligible”, but the fact remains that 25% of all energy consumed in Germany comes from natural gas. There is nothing negligible about that. Also, it seems like you might not be aware, but natural gas has other uses besides heating and electricity. Natural gas is necessary to make hydrogen, which is a key component in making ammonia used for fertilizer. It has other industrial uses as well.

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#230

Post by belorn »

wongarsu wrote: post #89
PaulHoule wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can name some peaker plants but I struggle to name storage facilities other than a handful of oddities like https://damfailures.org/case-study/taum-sauk-dam-missouri-20...

For facilities with more than 1GW capacity Wikipedia has a list [1] (though note that that's merely the turbine's capacity, the total amount stored is the GWh figure that's missing for half of the entries). There's also a list specifically with installations that aren't pumped hydro, but none of those would make the list above because of their limited capacity [2]. Pumped hydro dominates the storage game so far, both…

Last time I checked there doesn't exist a commercial operated pumped hydro that buy renewables when supply is high and sell when the weather/season has changed.

I found one plant on the wikipedia list that is at least operated commercially by an private energy company, but they use it to balance their network of fossil fuel power plants when they shut down or start up. During starting/stopping the grid need to stabilize, and doing it themself is cheaper than paying third parties. They stated that in the future when the time is right then they might start to fill the pumped hydro by using renewables, but for now it is power by fossil fuels. Looking at who paid for that storage, it seems to be mostly through subsidies so it was likely a pretty nice deal for them and on paper it look green.

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