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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

#301

Post by pfdietz »

nonethewiser wrote: post #17
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…

Sunlight and wind distribution is quite uneven.

Heavy industry is going to tend to move away from places with inadequate renewable energy. Why should they stay where energy is more expensive?

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

#302

Post by ZeroGravitas »

SECProto wrote: post #265
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are no paths to clean energy by 2050 without nuclear power. This is either stupidly wrong or stupidly right. Stupidly right, there's fairly new nuclear plants in operation that there's no real reason to shut down, so will probably be running in 2050. Stupidly wrong, it seems to be placing some entirely unwarranted implication that without nuclear we'd be lost, when most serious analysis agree that renewables…

Expecting global energy consumption to drop 8% in the next 30 years (while also reducing fossil fuel usage to 20% and all of that with carbon capture and underground storage) is... hilariously unrealistic (or very pessimistic for overall energy usage trends). Here[1]'s a visualization of world energy usage over time. Here[2]'s a sketch I just made to show what the IEA apparently thinks will happen to get to net zero…

It's easily possible because most energy we produce today is wasted as heat when burning it and dumping the carbon into the atmosphere.

Since we're going to stop doing that, by electrifying lots of things that currently burn fuel, we can achieve both goals at the same time.

The text on top of the graph you cite says this:

"Primary energy is calculated based on the 'substitution method' which takes account of the inefficiencies in fossil fuel production by converting non-fossil energy into the energy inputs required if they had the same conversion losses as fossil fuels."

It would be clearer to reduce the fossil fuel amounts by that percentage, since we currely don't use that energy, and in fact expend more energy trying to get rid of it as waste heat in many cases.

And, note the difference betwene energy and electricity, they say electricity will grow by nearly 3x ("To achieve this, total electricity generation increases over two-and-a-half-times between today and 2050").

You should look up recent graphs of renewable growth, with hydro seperated out, to see that your quick mock-up looks positively sedate by the recent standards of growth.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-change-renewables?...

global renewables including hydro. Solar and Wind are barely noticeable until 2000, when wind, then solar (in 2010) grow from nothing to octuple previous hydro within about a decade:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-change-solar?tab=c...

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-change-wind?tab=ch...

They have an article about why this is occuring too: https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth

I didn't choose IEA to demonstrate because they are the only outlier that support my point. My whole claim is that even the boring, cautious industry analysts are saying broadly the same thing.

I think their assumptions about carbon capture are silly and more renewables will be built instead, but even their numbers make it clear than nuclear is a sideshow at best.

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

#303

Post by goodpoint »

jlkuester7 wrote: post #71
Jorge1o1 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Nuclear in inherently vulnerable to politics, mismanagement and attempts at cover-up. As it happened in Fukushima as well as Chernobyl.

Because it's centralized, quite isolated from the public eye and with the potential to cause invisible environmental impact.

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

#304

Post by xienze »

pfdietz wrote: post #232
ElectronCharge wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with a cost comparison is that currently renewables account for less than ten percent of global energy generation. What do you think will happen to the cost there as available resources dwindle, and demand for equipment increases? Also, I’m not sure those comparisons take into account the ~20 year lifespan of solar panels and windmills, versus the ~40-50 year lifespan of nuclear plants. Finally, another f…

They'll build more factories to make the renewable equipment. What, you think there's some inherent limit on the number of factories that can be built?

> What, you think there's some inherent limit on the number of factories that can be built?

No, but there are limits on the amount of raw materials that said factories can use to produce equipment.

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

#305

Post by ben_w »

mlyle wrote: post #275
ben_w wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even at 10% capacity factor, and with a sudden cessation of the long term exponential trend in PV, and assuming the 2021 numbers for new nuclear power while ignoring that more was shut down, that still leaves more than twice as much new PV as new nuclear.

Sure, but I think we already know that we build a lot more PV than nuclear. The question is, should we build a bit more nuclear? Even a small change would be equivalent to a lot of PV production, and provide power at times when PV can't.

Well on that point I agree completely, although mainly because I think it's a good idea to have a diversity of supply and not because it's the most cost effective.

From what I've seen, the cheapest solution is a few square meters' cross section of HVDC encircling the planet, but that would almost certainly take a big increase in global metal mining even on these time scales and even when ignoring the political issues.

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

#306

Post by pfdietz »

trashtester wrote: post #292
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It gets a mention, just not a starring role: > By 2050, almost 90% of electricity generation comes from renewable sources, with wind and solar PV together accounting for nearly 70%. Most of the remainder comes from nuclear. So "no path to clean energy without solar" and "no path to clean energy without wind" are a bit more defensible, though in both cases, we'd just build more of the other one. "no path to clean ener…

> By 2050, almost 90% of electricity generation comes from renewable sources, with wind and solar PV together accounting for nearly 70%. Most of the remainder comes from nuclear. In other words, IPCC counts nuclear as "renewable"?

No, the "remainder" that is nuclear is the 10% that renewables don't cover. The renewables other than solar/wind are things like hydro, geothermal, and waste/biomass.

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

#307

Post by moogly »

sofixa wrote: post #220
phh wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We know what to do, every single scientist from the ASN knows what to do, every economist knows what to do. The ones who underestimated Flamanville's cost by 80%? (and it's still not in production) Let's maybe not trust them completely, and have our eggs in other baskets as well.

> The ones who underestimated Flamanville's cost by 80%? (and it's still not in production) It's an entirely new design of a complicated piece of technology, of course it will be over budget and delayed. Grand Paris Express and the Paris Philharmonic were also over budget and delayed, does that invalidate the opinion of all experts involved in both projects?

> does that invalidate the opinion of all experts involved in both projects

demonstrably, yes?

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

#308

Post by ohgodplsno »

phh wrote: post #124
ohgodplsno wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Those plants are nearly all close to death. No, these plants are close to the end of their original grant for exploitation. Many of them get renewed for 10, 20 years easily. The US has had plants renewed for 40 years and are still running just fine. > France isnt quite sure what to do. We know what to do, every single scientist from the ASN knows what to do, every economist knows what to do. The non-renewal of nucle…

> We know what to do, every single scientist from the ASN knows what to do, every economist knows what to do. The ones who underestimated Flamanville's cost by 80%? (and it's still not in production) Let's maybe not trust them completely, and have our eggs in other baskets as well.

No, you don't know what you are talking about. The budget, that's EDF. EDF builds things, the ASN ensures the safety is up to standards. Hell, the ASN _is_ responsible for these costs because they are the ones ensuring everything is up to par. There are many EPRs running, in Finland, in China, but none of these have safety requirements as drastic as the Flamanville EPR.

Additionally, EDF offered multiple estimates at the time of construction, from "everything goes well" to "oh dear god so many delays". Many of these estimates were perfectly in line with the current costs. It is, once again, political decisions that only allocated the minimal budget, while knowing full well that it would go over (but that EDF would take the blame, and not the government).

And once again, this is also a result of letting our nuclear industry decay for 40 years, losing every single person that has the knowledge on how to build nuclear plants either to retirement or other countries.

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

#309

Post by ZetaZero »

dosenbrot wrote: post #262
Brometheus wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its only mid-november til mid-february that really sees a strong dip in production.

And the other months it's a not-so-strong dip in production (Jan 16%, Feb 31%, Mar 57%, Apr 94%, Jun 100%, Jul 100%, Aug 87%, Sep 60%, Okt 41%, Nov 22%, Dec 13%). This means (for germany) we have to install more than 170% PV and store 3 months worth of energy for half a year (or install 800% and don't store anything). It's just a very rough estimation, but it's clear that one can't compare the cost of 1kWh PV to 1kWh…

No one is suggesting PV alone. My understanding is that Germany already gets more power from wind. Wind still works at night and in the winter, right?

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

#310

Post by pfdietz »

philwelch wrote: post #22
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. Storage is the main cost barrier for 100% renewable-powered grids, but this is also an area where technological development is possible. Sure, if you handwave the unsolved-at-scale technical problems with grid energy storage and make a series of generous assumptions about future technology, that's probably true. Nuclear te…

Complains about renewables handwaving at scale, then suggests seawater uranium extraction and breeder reactors.

They have very high double standards in Nuclearstan.

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