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Nuclear is back on the table for a green future

nytimes.com

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Re: Nuclear is back on the table for a green future

#71

Post by jlkuester7 »

Jorge1o1 wrote: post #56
adrianN wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

France is currently not building enough reactors to replace those that will need to be shut down due to age in the near future. They would need to build a lot more if they wanted to satisfy demand for heating and transportation. I assume they have good reasons not to build more reactors.

The reasons are political… just like in the United States. HBO with their Chernobyl miniseries single-handedly undid years of progress in the perception of nuclear energy.

> HBO with their Chernobyl miniseries single-handedly undid years of progress

Wait, seriously? That miniseries was not perfect, but I thought it did a pretty good job of pointing out the issues with Chernobyl were largely political and not technical. (Sure the RBMK reactors were flawed, that is a technical issue. But the only reason that escalated into a disaster was due to gross mismanagement and flagrant disregard of safety systems...)

Re: Nuclear is back on the table for a green future

#72

Post by sofixa »

pydry wrote: post #53
unchocked wrote: post #32

I will hazard that the problems with nuclear are not technological but political, and the economic problems with nuclear are there because of political reasons. France gets ~75% of its power from nuclear, safely and economically. France inhabits the same physical world as the rest of us, but is different politically. If there were a will, there would be a way. If the environmental movement had paid more attention to…

France has nuclear plants because in the 1970s it decided it didnt want to be dependent on middle eastern oil. It was very very expensive. It was also nothing to do with global warming. Those plants are fully paid off but nearly all close to death. Replacing them will still be very very expensive. Extending their lives will be dangerous. France isnt quite sure what to do. If there's unlimited money and patience for y…

> France isnt quite sure what to do.

Yes it is ( big nuclear buildout to replace most of the current fleet, while also doing lots of renewables and experimenting with small modular reactors):

https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20220210-announcing-new-r...

Re: Nuclear is back on the table for a green future

#73

Post by pydry »

Jorge1o1 wrote: post #56
adrianN wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

France is currently not building enough reactors to replace those that will need to be shut down due to age in the near future. They would need to build a lot more if they wanted to satisfy demand for heating and transportation. I assume they have good reasons not to build more reactors.

The reasons are political… just like in the United States. HBO with their Chernobyl miniseries single-handedly undid years of progress in the perception of nuclear energy.

If something cant operate without lavish subsidies it automatically becomes political.

E.g. Bill Gates' nuclear startup would be dead in the water without its subsidies. That makes it political.

Re: Nuclear is back on the table for a green future

#74

Post by Retric »

Jorge1o1 wrote: post #56
adrianN wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

France is currently not building enough reactors to replace those that will need to be shut down due to age in the near future. They would need to build a lot more if they wanted to satisfy demand for heating and transportation. I assume they have good reasons not to build more reactors.

The reasons are political… just like in the United States. HBO with their Chernobyl miniseries single-handedly undid years of progress in the perception of nuclear energy.

The reasons are economic. France has been heavily subsidizing nuclear for years and can swap to cheaper alternatives for less money.

It’s not that nuclear is any worse, it’s just that the alternatives got better.

Re: Nuclear is back on the table for a green future

#76

Post by lelag »

adrianN wrote: post #49
unchocked wrote: post #32

I will hazard that the problems with nuclear are not technological but political, and the economic problems with nuclear are there because of political reasons. France gets ~75% of its power from nuclear, safely and economically. France inhabits the same physical world as the rest of us, but is different politically. If there were a will, there would be a way. If the environmental movement had paid more attention to…

France is currently not building enough reactors to replace those that will need to be shut down due to age in the near future. They would need to build a lot more if they wanted to satisfy demand for heating and transportation. I assume they have good reasons not to build more reactors.

That's in large part due to the work of the german-influenced green movement which did manage to get France to stop building reactors for 30 years or so. In the meantime, the french nuclear industry lost the competency to build new one as demonstrated by the struggling EPR project in Normandy. But at least the many older reactors have been producing low-carbon power since then...

Germany's electricity production has emitted about 8 times more CO2 emission than France over the last 30 years: I blame the german political ecologists for being directly responsible for a massive amount of our current ecological woes by demonising the nuclear industry and limiting it's spread across the world for the last 30 years.

It's really a sad story to be so misguided to end up contributing to destroy the one thing you wanted to save...

Re: Nuclear is back on the table for a green future

#77

Post by mgfist »

pydry wrote: post #38
mgfist wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The amount of proposed solar and wind and battery projects in the United States at the end of 2021 was 1000s of time larger than the amount of proposed nuclear power projects Because the public has been anti nuclear energy for the past 4 decades. > And one big difference is the renewables are actually built, while the fission projects never make progress. Nuclear energy regulations are an absolute nightmare and mak…

It was always too expensive. It wasnt hippy peaceniks that killed it. It was money. The odd catastrophe didnt help though. Why there is a resurgence of interest now when dirt cheap solar and wind have effectively rendered it a costly relic of the past is somewhat puzzling. I guess PR campaigns like the OP's link are one reason.

It's expensive when you rely on cheap Russian/ME fossil fuels

> Why there is a resurgence of interest now when dirt cheap solar and wind have effectively rendered it a costly relic of the past is somewhat puzzling.

If cheap solar/wind was enough right now Europe wouldn't be going through an energy crisis.

Re: Nuclear is back on the table for a green future

#78

Post by otherme123 »

mgfist wrote: post #27
jeffbee wrote: post #4

I know HN is just desperate for that i-told-you-so moment when fission rises from irrelevancy to save us all from climate change, but it's just not going to happen. Look at this figure [1]. The amount of proposed solar and wind and battery projects in the United States at the end of 2021 was 1000s of time larger than the amount of proposed nuclear power projects. And one big difference is the renewables are actually…

> The amount of proposed solar and wind and battery projects in the United States at the end of 2021 was 1000s of time larger than the amount of proposed nuclear power projects Because the public has been anti nuclear energy for the past 4 decades. > And one big difference is the renewables are actually built, while the fission projects never make progress. Nuclear energy regulations are an absolute nightmare and mak…

Regulations are a nightmare for good reasons. Nuclear power is safe because regulations are a nightmare. Yes, we could build Chernobyl-like power plants with soviet-like regulations, that are cheap. That leads sooner or later to Chernobyl-like accidents.

If nuclear power depends on lowering the safety regulations to be economically viable, it is not economically viable, at least for now.

Take for example the infamous Flamanville third reactor: it could be opened by 2014, but "nightmare" regulations detected flawed components. A year later, regulations detected faults in cooling valves. Three years later, the secondary cooling systen didn't meet regulations. A year later, a failure in steam pipes delayed more the opening, literally more than 100 defective welds. All of the delays combined more than tripled the costs, but to me they sound valid requirements.

Re: Nuclear is back on the table for a green future

#79

Post by adrianN »

BenoitP wrote: post #69
adrianN wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

France is currently not building enough reactors to replace those that will need to be shut down due to age in the near future. They would need to build a lot more if they wanted to satisfy demand for heating and transportation. I assume they have good reasons not to build more reactors.

6 + an additional 8 are being planned at the moment. It is still dependent on legislative elections (starting this weekend), and on the EU energy taxonomy (currently going final rounds in the EU parliament) Both should be sort of ok, fingers crossed. But this is only replacement. If we're serious and want to reduce iron ore with hydrogen for our steel needs, and use the same electrolytic hydrogen for fertilizers, we…

France has over fifty nuclear plants, most of them older than 40 years. You probably want to replace most of them in the next twenty years or so. Since building one can easily take a decade or two from planning to power output, you would want to have a couple of dozen in the planning stage right now if you expect to continue producing the same amount of power. Since only about a third of France's primary power consumption is satisfied by nuclear, realistically they'd need to drastically increase the number of reactors in the next decades to reach climate goals.

Re: Nuclear is back on the table for a green future

#80

Post by nickles »

jeffbee wrote: post #35
nabla9 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make huge order of magnitude errors in your thinking Nuclear provides the so called base load (the minimum level of electricity demand required). To replace base load with renewables + energy storage requires so much CAPEX and battery manufacturing that you don't have money to fill gaps between caseload needs and renewable energy production.

The state of California has built more battery capacity in the last six months than the entire nation has built of fission power plants in the last 25 years. It is extremely easy to build batteries for fixed service, and bulk semiconductor manufacturing is the #1 thing that humans are good at. These problems are absolutely solved, the whole industry thinks so, that's why the whole industry is behind pv+wind+storage,…

> However, much of this proposed capacity will not ultimately be built. Among a subset of queues for which data are available, only 23% of the projects seeking connection from 2000 to 2016 have subsequently been built. Completion percentages appear to be declining, and are even lower for wind and solar than other resources.
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