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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

#381

Post by ncmncm »

philwelch wrote: post #367
cycomanic wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well nuclear proponents handwave away the massively higher costs, the still unsolved long term storage problem (it's been >70 years of nuclear power and there still does not exist a long term storage facility in the world), and insurance for the case of a disaster.

> it's been >70 years of nuclear power and there still does not exist a long term storage facility in the world It's bizarre how anti-nuclear activists point at problems caused by anti-nuclear activism and ask, like Eric Andre, "how could nuclear power do this?"

Nukes' problems are not caused by activists. They have nowhere near that much influence. Nukes' problems are inherent.

Biggest, by a large margin, is capex which simply prices it completely out of the market.

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

#382

Post by cycomanic »

philwelch wrote: post #370
cycomanic wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear has the same issue of intermittency. You have to either overprovisioning if you use nuclear or use battery storage. Nuclear is much more expensive than wind/solar so if you follow an overprovisioning strategy the best is to build wind/solar capacity, because it buys you more. Moreover, the larger and more integrated grids become (this is happening already for economic reasons in Europe) the less this is an is…

> You have to either overprovisioning if you use nuclear or use battery storage. Whereas with solar and wind, you need to do both, because you need the overprovisioned capacity to recharge the batteries.

No with a reasonably large grid you only need to overprovison no need for battery.

But this is really a question of economics, the mix of how much storage you want to include is really a question of cost and the specific grid. One should also say that pretty much every grid already has some level of overprovisioning, because otherwise you run into problems when some exceptional events hit.

In the end why would you pay for more expensive nuclear if you can get more capacity for the same price with wind/solar. So it is cheaper to build the overprovisioning with that. Moreover if the current trends for storage prices continue then things become cheaper still.

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

#384

Post by ncmncm »

carry_bit wrote: post #328
aidenn0 wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might make more sense to have either fossil-fuels as backups for such times, or for HVDC lines to connect geographically disparate regions (it's always sunny or windy somewhere ).

As we're seeing from Russia and Europe, depending on someone else means you can find yourself being threatened or actually being cut off.

There will be plenty of tropical suppliers of synthetic anhydrous ammonia competing, if transmission capacity or availability falls short.

People might even keep a stock on hand.

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

#385

Post by [deleted] »

ncmncm wrote: post #335
hushpuppy wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. If you eliminate gas and coal powered plants then the costs of nuclear plant lifecycle is incidental compared to economic losses that a country would encounter if th…

False.

[deleted]

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

#386

Post by cycomanic »

philwelch wrote: post #367
cycomanic wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well nuclear proponents handwave away the massively higher costs, the still unsolved long term storage problem (it's been >70 years of nuclear power and there still does not exist a long term storage facility in the world), and insurance for the case of a disaster.

> it's been >70 years of nuclear power and there still does not exist a long term storage facility in the world It's bizarre how anti-nuclear activists point at problems caused by anti-nuclear activism and ask, like Eric Andre, "how could nuclear power do this?"

Even a superficial glance would tell you that this doesn't make sense. We have had >70 years of peaceful nuclear power. A significant anti nuclear movement has existed for maybe 40 years and it has clearly not been influencial until maybe the last 20 years. So why has the nuclear power industry not solved the issues in the first 30 years? Moreover, why has France which hasn't had a significant antinuclear movement ever solved any of the issues?

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

#388

Post by ncmncm »

philwelch wrote: post #368
cinntaile wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You generally use peaker plants or backup fossil fuel or hydro for that use case, at this point in time batteries are used to supply power for a couple of hours at best. You need that backup power anyway for when the nuclear plant is out of commission for some reason.

Regardless of how you're generating your power, you're going to need to overprovision your generation capacity slightly to account for downtime. You only need storage if all of your generation capacity is offline at the same time, which is inevitable with solar power (nighttime), possible with gas (pipeline failure?), but less inherently likely with nuclear. > backup fossil fuel In practice this means fossil fuels be…

> In practice this means fossil fuels become the baseload power source.

False. In the immediate future, synthetic anhydrous ammonia will displace it. Extracting NG will be too expensive to compete, because the only cost of ammonia will be capex. The more you make, the less it costs.

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

#389

Post by tomp »

pydry wrote: post #375
tomp wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A far better plan for Europe would be to go 100% renewable asap, meaning no need for fossil fuel imports from any party. “asap” LOL Here in the real world, we have Germany, which has the strongest pro-green anti-nuclear agenda in Europe, but is (1) building coal plants, (2) financing Russian war and (3) blocking sanctions on Russia to save its economy (along with Hungary who are doing it for political reasons). The…

Germany is not building more coal plants it it shutting them down.

Let's not argue semantics. Building new plants, extending existing ones, digging more coal or importing it from abroad.

It's all the same. "Green" energy failed, even for one of its biggest proponents.

https://www.dw.com/en/germany-coal-tops-wind-as-primary-elec...

> In the first half of 2021, coal shot up as the biggest contributor to Germany's electric grid, while wind power dropped to its lowest level since 2018.

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

#390

Post by [deleted] »

aidenn0 wrote: post #267
Ajedi32 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It might make more sense to have either fossil-fuels as backups for such times, or for HVDC lines to connect geographically disparate regions (it's always sunny or windy somewhere ).

[deleted]
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