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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

#531

Post by Mlller »

tomp wrote: post #132
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…

> 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…

Sanctions blocked specifically by Germany and Hungary (and noone else)? The oil ban, FWIW, was blocked or watered down by Hungary, Slovakia, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic (and supported by Germany):

https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2022/05/09/hungary-slovak...

https://www.politico.eu/article/eus-russian-oil-ban-stalls-a...

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

#532

Post by pfdietz »

mlyle wrote: post #509
r00fus wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mi…

Utility scale solar is greater than small scale (https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=50357

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

#533

Post by belorn »

cinntaile wrote: post #489
philwelch wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. As the name baseload power implies, it would have to be providing power all the time and that's not what is needed.

That is correct. The term I see by my government is "reserve energy". In practice this mean a country subsidize a fossil fuel plant to keep engines running when demand is low, and then the plant get paid a second time if and when the plant is running.

It is one of the main reason why investing in fossil fuel energy when countries turn to wind power is fairly good choice. The plant has lower costs in terms of fuels, when it burn fuel it does so when the market price is at the highest possible, and it get paid regardless from the government. The government are also locked into continuing this scheme as the alternative is to not have the reserve energy when needed which makes voters very angry.

Burning fossil fuels when the price is lowest and without any government subsidies is just something people with too much fossil fuel can afford to do.

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

#534

Post by sanderjd »

californical wrote: post #505
sanderjd wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm interested in those alternative technologies, but I suspect they won't scale as well as batteries. Pumped hydro has been around a long time but it hasn't scaled because it is just very geographically specific.

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

#535

Post by philwelch »

cycomanic wrote: post #386
philwelch wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 ev…

The US had a solution at Yucca Mountain, except the solution has been legally and politically sabotaged by activists.

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

#536

Post by sanderjd »

zdragnar wrote: post #501
sanderjd wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do you think those technologies will be scaled such that batteries are a "negligible fraction" of utility storage, or are you just giving examples of possibilities?

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

#537

Post by pfdietz »

Manuel_D wrote: post #513
ncmncm wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many billions of dollars are today going into constructing factories worldwide to produce equipment for storage of numerous kinds. It takes time to build the factories, and then time to run them to build out the storage capacity. There is, thus far, little use for storage, because there is not enough renewable generating capacity yet to charge up storage. (Charging it by burning fossil fuels would be stupid.) By the…

Note that none of these exotic storage systems have ever actually been deployed commercially. Yes, liquid nitrogen is used for things like cooling. But no one has deployed a grid-scale storage system using liquid nitrogen. Liquid hydrogen has been used in rocket launches, but has not been used for energy storage. These technologies are mature in applications besides energy storage . They are not at all mature in the…

Every air separation plant (you know, the kind used to make oxygen for steelmaking) employs expanders for recovering energy from cryogenic nitrogen. This is an off the shelf technology.

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

#538

Post by philwelch »

cycomanic wrote: post #408
philwelch wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Your argument does not follow at all. I have the impression that you don't know what baseload is. Baseload is the minimum amount of demand over a given time (it is not a measure of supply at all). The previous poster talked about using fossil (or any other means) to supply the mismatch between the supply and demand at the times where such a mismatch might exist. This is completely unrelated to baseload, it could in f…

It could be larger than baseload, but it's unlikely to be any less than baseload.

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

#539

Post by philwelch »

pfdietz wrote: post #310
philwelch wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... 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.

We've had breeder reactors for decades, what are you talking about?

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

#540

Post by pfdietz »

Brometheus wrote: post #159
gfodor wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China is going to do it, and you seem to believe the safety profile of nuclear energy technology has been frozen for 50 years. It's extremely strange to think something as broad as the process of nuclear fission can be spoken about as having a universal, never changing risk-profile, regardless of technological advancement. We don't do this for any other technology. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-11-02/c…

China is building out mostly solar and wind.

And very large amounts of pumped hydro too.
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