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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

#571

Post by Teknoman117 »

anton96 wrote: post #500
SequoiaHope wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the cost to build this 13,000 MW facility would be $12.1 billion, which is still just 50% of the cost of the $25 billion Vogtle nuclear plant. Yes this is generally my argument. If you take the money you would spend on nuclear and spend it instead on solar, wind, gridscale storage, as well as EV and home battery rebates, you end up with a much more robust distributed energy production grid with very low maintenance…

So you see a doubled cost for nuclear. But you need to add that Renewable solution only last 20 years vs 60 for nuclear. That can be seen like triple the cost you factored in already. And also, your renewable energy source won’t work 100% of time and not at 100% of the capacity. Which also implies that you need to build multiple time what you planned to really get that planned capacity.

I'm not sure what the service life of a wind turbine is, but 20 years is about right for a photovoltaic solar panel. The power output begins to fall off drastically at that point.

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

#572

Post by pfdietz »

DennisP wrote: post #566
pfdietz wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, Europe (and particularly eastern Europe) are better places for nuclear, because of higher latitude and (away from coasts) lower winds. This is all just delaying the crossing point though. Nuclear fans are betting nuclear's costs fall while renewables and storage run into brick walls and stop getting cheaper. It's not clear why one should assume this, or why an investor should bet on that outcome. And it is just…

Ok, but "I think renewables will get cheaper faster than nuclear" is a very different claim than "renewables are way cheaper than nuclear right now."

It's a different claim. It's looking at trends rather than at a specific point.

Solar historically declines in cost by 24% for each cumulative doubling of production (of the solar hardware). Solar is about 4% of global electricity production now, so scaling it to saturation (just for current electricity demand, which will grow as the world becomes richer and more electrification replaces fossil heat) would drop the cost by another factor of 3.

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

#573

Post by Manuel_D »

pfdietz wrote: post #567
Manuel_D wrote: post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You correctly point out that air separation is made efficient by transferring the heat from the output stream to the input stream. After cooling air enough to isolate whatever chemical is needed (like nitrogen) the cold output stream is run back through the warm input stream to help cool the input stream. This also has the effect of warming the output stream back to ambient temperature. This is fine if you're separat…

You tell me: which component of a cryogenic energy storage system is not already in use in some process (air separation or otherwise)? One of the attractions of this sort of thing is it's composed entirely of things that are already quite mature, and that have existing supply chains.

And for the third time, just because the individual components are used in different applications doesn't mean it's going to be cheap or scalable to use them in energy storage. The cost history of existing cryogenic storage plants indicates that no, it's not effective for energy storage it's 4-5x more expensive.

We build plenty of flywheels. Does that mean energy storage based on giant flywheels is guaranteed to be efficient at scale because we have experience using flywheels in other applications like automobiles?

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

#574

Post by mlyle »

pfdietz wrote: post #532
mlyle wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

> Utility scale solar is greater than small scale (Your graph shows in total generated energy per year it's roughly even--- not in nameplate power. Because the capacity factor is worse, you need a lot more nameplate power at non-utility installations to get the same energy out.

> This is good, because utility scale solar is cheaper per unit output than small scale solar.

Yup. Small scale solar really needs to stop, other than for installations that have special requirements (e.g. need for power backup / diversity).

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

#575

Post by runlevel1 »

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…

Overview of the economics of a nuclear reactor:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbeJIwF1pVY

Duration: 23 min

Speaker: David Ruzic, Prof of Nuclear Engineering at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

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

#576

Post by BurningFrog »

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…

> So why has the nuclear power industry not solved the issues

The technical issues are solved.

The political issue is that the "green lobby" will not accept any nuclear waste storage solution.

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

#577

Post by cinntaile »

Teknoman117 wrote: post #571
anton96 wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you see a doubled cost for nuclear. But you need to add that Renewable solution only last 20 years vs 60 for nuclear. That can be seen like triple the cost you factored in already. And also, your renewable energy source won’t work 100% of time and not at 100% of the capacity. Which also implies that you need to build multiple time what you planned to really get that planned capacity.

I'm not sure what the service life of a wind turbine is, but 20 years is about right for a photovoltaic solar panel. The power output begins to fall off drastically at that point.

It's about 15-20 years for wind turbines, depending on the circumstances.

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

#578

Post by cinntaile »

anton96 wrote: post #500
SequoiaHope wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the cost to build this 13,000 MW facility would be $12.1 billion, which is still just 50% of the cost of the $25 billion Vogtle nuclear plant. Yes this is generally my argument. If you take the money you would spend on nuclear and spend it instead on solar, wind, gridscale storage, as well as EV and home battery rebates, you end up with a much more robust distributed energy production grid with very low maintenance…

So you see a doubled cost for nuclear. But you need to add that Renewable solution only last 20 years vs 60 for nuclear. That can be seen like triple the cost you factored in already. And also, your renewable energy source won’t work 100% of time and not at 100% of the capacity. Which also implies that you need to build multiple time what you planned to really get that planned capacity.

LCOE is usually used to more easily compare the investment cost. While this leads to more resource usage... Because of economies of scale, wind turbines from 20 years into the future will be less expensive, more efficient and overall better.

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

#579

Post by jimmydorry »

belorn wrote: post #519
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…

Grid scale storage need two things to be viable. Capacity and duration. The battery solutions being rolled right now are those that operate on the scale of hours, being charged each day and then discharge each night. When you can reliable assert that you can fully charge the storage each day, and reliable know you can sell the full charge each night at the price point when the market peaks, it becomes fairly trivial…

>The battery solutions being rolled right now are those that operate on the scale of hours

The state where the mega batteries are installed uses about ~32 GWh total a day. An 850 MWh doesn't even come close to covering their needs. Covering ~2.6% of their load is equivalent to keeping power on for about 40 minutes.

>Solar + battery is great in those locations, and basically no one is aruging using nuclear when solar and battery is viable for 365 days of the year. Australia has a fairly large desert where such assumption would be true.

Deserts actually make for the worst place to install solar. Dust / sand covering panels substantially lowers their efficiency (to near zero), and keeping them clean involves a lot of water (Can you guess where it's hardest to get water? Yep, a desert). And lastly, because the deserts are so far away from everyone else, there is significant transmission loss.

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

#580

Post by jimmydorry »

Johnny555 wrote: post #495
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…

850MW doesn't tell you how much energy it can store -- if you need 850MW to power your grid and your battery can supply 850MWh, where do you get power for the other 11 hours until the sun comes out?

For some reason, these journalists tend to drop the "h" portion of the rated capacity of energy projects. The battery capacity (I believe this will actually be a group of stand-alone installations) will be 850MWh, which is about 2.6% of that Australian state's daily consumption.
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