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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

#161

Post by ben_w »

creato wrote: post #95
ben_w wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the unsolved-at-scale technical problems with grid energy storage What are these problems, exactly? I see videos and news stories about grid batteries being successfully deployed for short term management and how pumped hydro is basically a big cheap gravity battery, but I'm not a civil/electrical engineer, so I accept there could easily be elephants in the room here.

It’s just scale. Those batteries and pumped hydro stories seem big. Relative to your house, they are. Relative to the grid as a whole, they are small.

That doesn't answer the question. What exactly is the problem that needs to be solved?

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

#162

Post by lelag »

Brometheus wrote: post #142
lelag wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thinking about it makes me mad. For all their renewable production capacity they still average over 300g of CO2 / kwh with all the gas and coal they burn. All of it, credit to the german green movement trying to save the planet from... Not sure. Even assuming the occasional Chernobyl/Fukushima-level disaster, as terrible as those catastrophes are, nuclear plant accidents are localised and will never threaten mankind…

/remindme 10years

/remindme in 80 years

If I have to choose between an additional 3 Fukushima and the loss of thousands of costal cities due to sea level rise, I know what I'm choosing.

This study predict than sea level could rise by 2m by 2100 displacing up to 187 million people. Fukushima displaced about 160 thousands.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6561295/

Pick your poison, wisely.

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

#163

Post by legulere »

lelag wrote: post #131
traveler01 wrote: post #60

Don't know how germans thought that closing down nuclear plants in favor of natural gas was a good idea, both politically and environmentally

Thinking about it makes me mad. For all their renewable production capacity they still average over 300g of CO2 / kwh with all the gas and coal they burn. All of it, credit to the german green movement trying to save the planet from... Not sure. Even assuming the occasional Chernobyl/Fukushima-level disaster, as terrible as those catastrophes are, nuclear plant accidents are localised and will never threaten mankind…

A big percentage of mushrooms and game is still not fit for consumption today in Germany because of Chernobyl. So it's not just local.

And even if, Germany is more densely populated than the Ukraine. The Chernobyl exclusion zone in Ukraine is the same size as the state of Saarland.

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

#165

Post by Ajedi32 »

philwelch wrote: post #112
photochemsyn wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'handwave the unsolved-at-scale' ? All you have to do is look at Australia: https://www.pv-magazine.com/2021/08/10/worlds-largest-grid-f... > Battery rollout: "AGL Energy has committed to build 850 MW of battery-based assets by 2024. To that end, Torrens Island marks the first project to be constructed at the site of a fossil-fuel power plant. It won’t be the last, however, as big batteries are planned for New South…

French electrical power is 70% nuclear and has an installed capacity of 135 GW of power today. That comes out to 94.5 GW of nuclear power in France alone. Is there any country in the world that can supply hundreds of gigawatts to the grid from batteries today? If not, then the problem of grid power storage is unsolved at scale compared to nuclear.

Not just hundreds of Gigawatts, but also tens of thousands of Gigawatt-hours. Unless you're willing to accept regular black-outs, you need to build enough capacity to account for the occasional long, sustained period of cloudy days with low wind. The cost of that extra necessary-but-rarely-used capacity needs to be factored in to any comparison of wind/solar vs other energy sources.

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

#166

Post by losvedir »

One thing I don't understand is the uninhabitable zone around Chernobyl is not that big, and the U.S. has plenty of space. And electricity can be transmitted decently far, right?

So... is it unreasonable to have lots of fairly low-regulated nuclear power plants in, say, 50 mile uninhabited areas (maybe even make it a nature preserve or something for animals)? And if one or two meltdown, oh well?

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

#167

Post by ghusto »

traveler01 wrote: post #60

Don't know how germans thought that closing down nuclear plants in favor of natural gas was a good idea, both politically and environmentally

The Germans take any opportunity to "do the right thing". I won't go into my beliefs on where that comes from, other than to say it's an emotional place, and not a logical one. So they often end up doing the wrong thing.

I actually feel sorry for them.

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

#168

Post by adrianN »

philwelch wrote: post #160
adrianN wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's a common use of "unsolved at scale". We know how to do it, it just doesn't make economic sense right now. I mean, suppose you have hundreds of GW of storage of some form installed. You could just claim it's still not "solved at scale" because the global energy consumption is even higher.

The global supply chains for lithium batteries are already struggling to keep up just with current demand. Where are we going to get enough cobalt? Hopefully not DR Congo.

Who says Lithium batteries are the best technology for grid scale storage? (Besides Elon, I guess?)

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

#169

Post by philwelch »

adrianN wrote: post #155
thereddaikon wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Transmitting power over long distances has its own problems and infrastructure costs. It isn't trivial.

Building pipelines for oil and gas isn't trivial either but we managed to do it.

Oil and gas pipelines do not normally leak. Power lines do leak. It's called "line loss" and it's a significant factor in power distribution.

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

#170

Post by cycomanic »

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #51
photochemsyn wrote: post #12

Funny article in that it doesn't discuss lifecycle costs. A side-by-side comparison of the cost of grids powered by nuclear power plant relative to those powered by wind/solar/storage is what I'd expect to see from a 'paper of record' like the NYTimes. Except in some specific cases (Finland, other Arctic regions with long periods of low sunlight) I'm pretty sure this cost comparison comes down firmly on the side of w…

> I'm pretty sure this cost comparison comes down firmly on the side of wind/solar/storage. Very unlikely. Nuclear costs are sky high only because in the last decades it was suppressed rather than invested in and improved. Had it seen the same level of support the wind and solar energy have, we'd have a dirt-cheap abundance of nuclear power, with very little carbon emissions. Take away the red tape and scaremongering…

> > I'm pretty sure this cost comparison comes down firmly on the side of wind/solar/storage.

> Very unlikely. Nuclear costs are sky high only because in the last decades it was suppressed rather than invested in and improved. Had it seen the same level of support the wind and solar energy have, we'd have a dirt-cheap abundance of nuclear power, with very little carbon emissions. Take away the red tape and scaremongering, and wind/solar/storage combination will be left very far behind in costs and efficiency.

And your sources are? Nuclear power has received significantly more subsidies than solar and wind combined [1] (note you can find similar numbers for Europe) . The myth that somehow solar and wind received more subsidies is just propaganda.

[1] https://cen.acs.org/articles/89/i51/Long-History-US-Energy-S...

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