Why are they putting it in a region that has Earthquakes? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_earthquakes_in_Romania
https://earthquaketrack.com/p/japan/fukushima/biggest
One of them did it though.
U.S. moves toward supplying Romania with a new style of nuclear plant
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Re: U.S. moves toward supplying Romania with a new style of nuclear plant
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://earthquaketrack.com/p/japan/fukushima/biggest
One of them did it though.
Yes, but no:
> In the late 1990s, three additional backup diesel generators for Units 2 and 4 were placed in new buildings located higher on the hillside, to comply with new regulatory requirements. All six units were given access to these diesel generators, but the switching stations that sent power from these backup generators to the reactors' cooling systems for Units 1 through 5 were still located in the poorly protected turbine buildings. Meanwhile, the switching station for Unit 6 was protected inside the only GE Mark II reactor building and continued to function.[54] All three of the generators added in the late 1990s were fully operational after the tsunami. If the switching stations had been moved to the interior of the reactor buildings or to other flood-proof locations, power would have been provided by these generators to the reactors' cooling systems and thus the catastrophe would have been averted.[54]
Earthquake didn't did it, tsunami what flooded the generators which weren't moved/protected as ordered so (ie banal corruption) is what did it.
And the purposed location is far enough from the coast.
Re: U.S. moves toward supplying Romania with a new style of nuclear plant
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
One point is that you can't replace an entire grid with renewables due to their intermittent nature. They're also building out renewables so perhaps the nuclear generators are intended to offset some of their reliance on coal/gas on-demand generators?
This is always said, but never true. After you have built out enough renewables for day load and to charge storage, you build out storage. Not batteries, those are super expensive. Stuff that is super-cheap, instead. There are lots of choices. But you don't need to choose immediately. Prices are plummeting at different rates, and nobody knows which will be cheapest by then.
> but never true
Ehhhh, sorta? Wind power can be useful as a base load generator if you over provision by a large amount. But the problem is that during the summer months you will get ridiculously high generation and then in winter it drops like a rock. What's worse is that solar follows this same trend.
Typically pricing per kwh is averaging across the year. But during the winter you will have terrible shortfalls. So you need to double or even triple that price because you will have to double or triple the wind turbines and solar panels to achieve the same stable load.
Unfortunately, power storage for months worth of power is even more expensive than just over provisioning. Batteries are great for grid stability, but not for long term energy storage.
You can get a good idea of what renewables look like over the year here: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=16851
So unless we want to keep running natural gas in the winter, or we want to pay 3x as much for renewables, geothermal and nuclear would make a lot of sense when paired with renewables.
Re: U.S. moves toward supplying Romania with a new style of nuclear plant
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is always said, but never true. After you have built out enough renewables for day load and to charge storage, you build out storage. Not batteries, those are super expensive. Stuff that is super-cheap, instead. There are lots of choices. But you don't need to choose immediately. Prices are plummeting at different rates, and nobody knows which will be cheapest by then.
Can you cite what this super cheap storage is? My understanding is that li-on is the only existing option, however won't work at scale due to cost, longevity, etc.
I wouldn't call pumped-storage Hydro[1] super-cheap but it is the default and less expensive than trying to scale lithium. There are also cheaper battery chemistries than lithium when weight doesn't matter.
[1]: https://www.energy.gov/eere/water/pumped-storage-hydropower
Re: U.S. moves toward supplying Romania with a new style of nuclear plant
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is always said, but never true. After you have built out enough renewables for day load and to charge storage, you build out storage. Not batteries, those are super expensive. Stuff that is super-cheap, instead. There are lots of choices. But you don't need to choose immediately. Prices are plummeting at different rates, and nobody knows which will be cheapest by then.
> but never true Ehhhh, sorta? Wind power can be useful as a base load generator if you over provision by a large amount. But the problem is that during the summer months you will get ridiculously high generation and then in winter it drops like a rock. What's worse is that solar follows this same trend. Typically pricing per kwh is averaging across the year. But during the winter you will have terrible shortfalls. S…
You build out a few days or weeks of storage, and also transmission lines. Where it looks like your storage is going to run dry, you order a shipment of ammonia to burn, synthesized at any solar farm in the tropics, or a wind farm anywhere.
The appealing quality of synthetic fuel like ammonia is that there is always an eager market for as much as you can produce, so once your local tankage is full, excess power produces reliable revenue. Your synthesizers are idle only when you are drawing down banked energy, and not necessarily even then if you have plenty.
Re: U.S. moves toward supplying Romania with a new style of nuclear plant
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is always said, but never true. After you have built out enough renewables for day load and to charge storage, you build out storage. Not batteries, those are super expensive. Stuff that is super-cheap, instead. There are lots of choices. But you don't need to choose immediately. Prices are plummeting at different rates, and nobody knows which will be cheapest by then.
Can you cite what this super cheap storage is? My understanding is that li-on is the only existing option, however won't work at scale due to cost, longevity, etc.
Li-ion is the most expensive storage.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31485229
Energy storage, chemical methods aside, is freshman-level physics: pump against pressure, lift something heavy, draw down against buoyancy -- E = fx, E = mgh -- using processes already used at industrial scale in billions of cases. The only open question is what exact scheme will end up cheapest. But you don't need to know that to start building. You might switch over to building something cheaper, later, but anything already built still works.
(But NB: Energy Vault is the Theranos of storage. Steer clear!)
The Black Sea is deep, making underwater methods attractive. Romania also has high mountains, making conventional pumped hydro also practical. The reservoir for pumped hydro need not encompass a watershed, unlike regular hydro, so can be minimally disruptive, environmentally.
Re: U.S. moves toward supplying Romania with a new style of nuclear plant
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
We Romanians will wait to see energy at German prices and pay billions upon billions to buy batteries to store the energy. And btw wind, is really damaging to the birds in the area
Like the green hydroelectric power is killing all the fish and destroying the rivers? Still happens almost everywhere. Priorities.
There are better choices.
Re: U.S. moves toward supplying Romania with a new style of nuclear plant
#28Does anybody have some insight into the performance and safety of this type of design? Romanian media is mostly silent on the topic. When it does happen to come up, the conversation seems to get stuck either at "the Americans are finally coming to save us" or "the globalist elites are experimenting on us". Neither position is helpful or informative.
There is no safety. This reactor does not exist. Not even a POC. I fear this will be another Bechtel story.
Re: U.S. moves toward supplying Romania with a new style of nuclear plant
#29Does anybody have some insight into the performance and safety of this type of design? Romanian media is mostly silent on the topic. When it does happen to come up, the conversation seems to get stuck either at "the Americans are finally coming to save us" or "the globalist elites are experimenting on us". Neither position is helpful or informative.
No one can answer really because it is new. In theory it's perfect, like all nuclear reactors. In practice, who knows, like all nuclear reactors. It will come down to people's ability to manage every complex systems, to politics and economics over the next 50ish years and to luck...
Even in theory looks questionable to say the least. And no, no nuclear reactor is perfect. That's why they (some of them at least) have safety mechanisms.
Re: U.S. moves toward supplying Romania with a new style of nuclear plant
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
One of them did it though.
Yes, but no: > In the late 1990s, three additional backup diesel generators for Units 2 and 4 were placed in new buildings located higher on the hillside, to comply with new regulatory requirements. All six units were given access to these diesel generators, but the switching stations that sent power from these backup generators to the reactors' cooling systems for Units 1 through 5 were still located in the poorly p…
You missed my point. Despite all the planning surrounding the earthquakes in Japan, one of them still did damage in an unexpected way. For every nuclear catastrophe, you can easily say that if something was done differently, it would have been averted. Well, it wasn't.