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Nuclear is back on the table for a green future

nytimes.com

501–510 of 818 posts

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

#501
post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Batteries will be a negligible fraction of utility storage, so that is moot.

Why? What will the rest be?

Kinetic (water gravity, flywheel) or thermal (molten salt baths which can be supplemented with solar thermal).

None of these things exist at a large scale except for pumped hydro / water gravity, and that requires very convenient topography and geology to work. Generally, any non-chemical storage system is overpriced (too inefficient) or a maintenance disaster.

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

#502
post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The new Korean plants are designed for a lifespan of 60 years. If governments provide guarantees for the loans, a discount rate of 3% is not unreasonable. Set it like that, and it spits out a price of €32.6/MWh. Now, to make it even more reasonable to emerging economies, assume that through mass production and a relaxation of security requirements to less paranoid levels, the overnight cost can be reduced to €1500, y…

When your argument depends on all existing trends reversing, that tells us all we need to know about your conclusion.

Trends and fashions come and go. My daughter is wearing pants that look that the ones my mother wore some years before I was born. At that time, nuclear power was still popular. And now, perhaps, it is becoming so again.

Indeed, the NYT article in the topic is discussing this very question.

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

#503
post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Chernobyl power plant did not have a containment building around the reactors until after the meltdown. Every Western nuclear power plant has a containment building around the reactors. That's the single biggest factor.

TMI and Fukushima had containment, for all the good it did.

It did a lot of good? TMI slagged the core but the containment held, and Fukushima's cores (the ones that melted, obviously) was still mostly covered, the hydrogen explosion was the major problem.

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

#504
post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

8% reduction sounds incredible considering our energy usage patterns, but if you yearly world google energy usage, key areas like coal/petro are actually down over the past 5 years. Correspondingly NatGas and Renewables are up. Conversion efficiency of Solar/EV/battery storage vs. extraction/refining/storage/burning just for transportation is like 10x better. If EVs go with their curve (especially with petrol prices)…

> key areas like coal/petro are actually down over the past 5 years.

The source I provided (current to 2019) does show coal down a hair (Peaked at ~45000 TWh in 2013, hovering around 44,000 TWh in 2019), but oil continuing to increase (49700 to 53600 over same period) and natural gas increasing even more (33700 to 39300). Renewables all increasing (solar 356-1793, Wind 1628-3540, even hydro 9765-10,455).

The part that I think is unrealistic is dropping the fossil fuels to 20% and simultaneously restricting growth to negative 8%. Increased energy usage is desirable for anyone, so while decreasing renewable cost will certainly encourage wider adoption, I think a more realistic prediction would be at least 20-30% growth over the next 30 years (compared with ~75% growth over the last 30 years, ~20% over the last 10 years alone). Fingers crossed we can do this simultaneously with abandoning current fossil assets.

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

#505
post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Batteries will be a negligible fraction of utility storage, so that is moot.

Why? What will the rest be?

I know there are options like pumped water, compressed air, spinning disc. No idea how feasible they are at scale, but I can imagine a world where physical storage like that could be lower maintenance & cost in the long-term compared to chemical batteries.

Even if less efficient, you can get enormous potential storage from pumped water with relatively simple machines compared to massive battery farms.

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

#506

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…

> A far better plan for Europe would be to go 100% renewable asap, How is this possible, technologically or economically? It sounds like absolute fantasy in anything less than a decade. > plausibly due to exports of crude oil from the USA Our refineries are at max capacity. How is hoarding crude going to help anything? Exporting crude allows foreign refineries to assist with relieving the global shortage of refined p…

I also don't think that Europe will and can go 100% renewable within a decade, though the current development of breeder reactors seem promising. When the technology will be ready, it can scale (relatively) fast and help get us off coal and gas way faster than wind and energy could.

https://you.com/search?q=Thorium%20breeder%20reactors

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

#507
post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basic physics 101. The US produced 4 10^9 MWh in 2017 [1] That's roughly 11 10^6 MWh / day or 11 10^12 Wh /day So to power 50% of the US for half a day, we need : 11 10^12 Wh /day * 0.5 day * 0.5 = 2.75 10^12 Wh = 275 10^10 Wh The energy storage of a Lithium Ion battery is roughly 270 Wh / kg [2], let's round this up to 275, I am feeling nice here. This means we need : 275 10^10 Wh / 275 Wh / kg = 1 * 10^10 kg of Lit…

Ah, so the basic physics problems are twofold: 1) You don't know how little lithium is contained in a li-ion battery cell; and 2) You don't know that li-ion is less than half the global battery market.

You are right, I double checked.

    275 10^10 Wh are needed as per my comment above and there is 160g of Lithium in a battery per kWh of capacity [1]
    275 10^10 Wh = 275 10^7 kWh => 275 10^7 kW * 160 g / kWh = 45375 10^7 g = 453 750 tons
This is far less than half the resources of the planet, but it's still a non negligible 1/40. To power half the American, for half a day, assuming that we willing to mine all the Lithium on earth, and assuming we don't need Lithium anywhere else the supply chain (hello solar panels !), and disregarding that the rest of the batteries are also using some valuable metals / rare earth (We will still need those 20 millions tons of batteries, that part is correct, they just won't be made of Lithium alone !)

As you can see, Lithium-Ion batteries are not remotely sustainable if they aim to help replace the baseline production that is currently provided by fossil/nuclear with intermittent renewable. They can only be considered at the top of the curve to help renewable manage the peak power, where their ability shine and where the total needs are far, far lower.

Other battery type do exist, I am willing to admit that, but grand parent projects all involve Lithium Ion batteries....because the other types are even less economically practical (more loss, less energy density, ...).

Rechargeable batteries (Lithium Ion or otherwise) are perfectly fin to store intermittent energy. They just aren't remotely practical to run an entire country off their output, which is why we leverage "natural batteries" aka: fuel (plutonium, oil, coal or otherwise).

[1] https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-much-lithium-li-ion-vehic...

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

#508
post #482
post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > The thing is, 183GW from PV is like 20-30GW of nuclear, because nuclear's capacity factor is near 100% and PV's is often near 10%. > Renewables' capacity factor is much greater than 10%, in practice. If you need falsehoods to make your case, you have no case. Residential/commercial PV -- e.g. rooftop solar-- very often is 10% or less. If you want to only look at utility-scale fixed tilt, instead, recent deploymen…

Shipping power 2000 miles is absolutely super-practical. China has a project to send it 8000 miles from solar farms they are building in Chile, for use during nighttime in China.

> Shipping power 2000 miles is absolutely super-practical.

DC interconnect makes it more practical, and it's better than storage, but losses and costs accumulate.

> China has a project to send it 8000 miles from solar farms they are building in Chile

Chile has proposed a project to do just that. It is in exceptionally early conceptual planning stages-- but look at you acting like it's a fait accompli!

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

#509
post #472
post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > The thing is, 183GW from PV is like 20-30GW of nuclear, because nuclear's capacity factor is near 100% and PV's is often near 10%. > Renewables' capacity factor is much greater than 10%, in practice. If you need falsehoods to make your case, you have no case. Residential/commercial PV -- e.g. rooftop solar-- very often is 10% or less. If you want to only look at utility-scale fixed tilt, instead, recent deploymen…

How much solar capacity is actually residential? I'd say quite small since solar is hard to deploy residential + lack of home value improvement. Nuclear should be part of the equation (it has it's own issues with wastewater) but if adding nuclear means not investing equally or more in solar/wind renewables, that's completely misguided.

> How much solar capacity is actually residential?

I'm not sure how much is residential, but about 25% is utility-scale projects. The rest is stuff on commercial buildings and homes-- which have an average capacity factor around 12%.

> Nuclear should be part of the equation (it has it's own issues with wastewater) but if adding nuclear means not investing equally or more in solar/wind renewables, that's completely misguided.

I totally agree. I think our priorities should be, in order:

- Wind

- Pumped storage

- Improved utility interties

- Demand-side management

- PV

- Nuclear

- Battery storage

- Electrolyzers, etc

But even the lowest priority item should be aggressively pursued.

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

#510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A far better plan for Europe would be to go 100% renewable asap, How is this possible, technologically or economically? It sounds like absolute fantasy in anything less than a decade. > plausibly due to exports of crude oil from the USA Our refineries are at max capacity. How is hoarding crude going to help anything? Exporting crude allows foreign refineries to assist with relieving the global shortage of refined p…

I also don't think that Europe will and can go 100% renewable within a decade, though the current development of breeder reactors seem promising. When the technology will be ready, it can scale (relatively) fast and help get us off coal and gas way faster than wind and energy could. https://you.com/search?q=Thorium%20breeder%20reactors

edit: wind and solar of course
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