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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

#591

Post by AtlasBarfed »

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…

.... and by the time any reactor design I'd be interested in seeing built (aka not old solid fuel rod plants susceptible to meltdowns), it would be ... 10 years? 20 years?

wind/solar/storage are on actively improving cost curves that even gas turbine is losing to. No one knows the price target of wind/solar/battery in 10-20 years, but I'd guess it is at least half the cost in real dollars of today.

Nuclear proponents are pushing all the media outlets because they are in the same boat as coal: LCOE is so much lower for wind/solar that electric companies lose money on them relative to alt energy. Only base load is a viable role onthe grid, and gas turbines beat them at that handily (although with a carbon tax who knows).

I'm not opposed to keeping existing nuclear plants online with some subsidies, but new nuclear plants? Come on. And I am a huge fan of those LFTR presentations and strongly believe next gen nuclear will be viable once a stable price point can be targeted.

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

#592

Post by AtlasBarfed »

danielrpa wrote: post #556
smaddox wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, the process involves production of Pu-239, which is weapon-grade and may raise proliferation concerns. Not if you use Thorium breeder reactors.

I'm interested in nuclear energy but it appears that I don't know enough. Thorium breeder, processes generating pu-239... Is there a relatively accessible book I can read to understand all of this better?

The LFTR presentations (lots of youtubes) showed how their isotope chains were proliferation resistant.

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

#593

Post by Jistern »

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…

No post body was provided.

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

#594

Post by AtlasBarfed »

philwelch wrote: post #112
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…

French electrical power is 70% nuclear and has an installed capacity of 135 GW of power today. That comes out to 94.5 GW of nuclear power in France alone. Is there any country in the world that can supply hundreds of gigawatts to the grid from batteries today? If not, then the problem of grid power storage is unsolved at scale compared to nuclear.

At a minimum, the EV demand will solve this. 150 wh/kg Sodium Ion (good enough for likely 300 mile cars) is coming next year, and 230 wh/kg LFP is coming later this year (350-450 mile cars). Grid storage should be a core use case of Sodium Ion.

Lithium Sulfur looks VERY PROMISING, and other schemes and grid-specific chemistries will be developed.

Within the timeframe of any new nuclear construction, you cannot predict the cost targets with respect to any of these industries/technologies: they all are in prime economies of scale and technological improvement curves. I don't think they will improve as well as the last decade where solar dropped double-digits per year, but we'll see.

Nuclear keeps trying to say the scale isn't solvable with wind/solar/battery. That is a completely unproven/unsubstantiated claim. It's basically FUD. The materials being targeted for near-term alt energy will be massively scalable.

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

#595

Post by SgtBastard »

makeitdouble wrote: post #514
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…

> Nuclear technology has been up to the task for the past fifty years. Nuclear's position at this point is "we had a meh run, but next generation will be better, pinky promise". On a global scale for the past fifty years we had 2 meltdowns, a country attacking another's nuclear facilities as a threat, and no clear replacement plan for the aging reactors in most countries even as they are way past the set date for dec…

In the same 50 years we’ve had the largest period of economic expansion in history, with virtually the entire economy directly dependent on cheap and plentiful energy.

There is an argument to say that on balance the pros outweigh the cons.

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

#596

Post by basicplus2 »

trashtester wrote: post #315
layer8 wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mushrooms in Germany are still contaminated today from the Chernobyl fallout: https://www.bfs.de/EN/topics/ion/environment/foodstuffs/mush...

EVERYTHING around us is contaminated in some way or another. We are constantly bombarded by cosmic radiation with doses far in excess of the expose you will get from eating those mushrooms. Below 100mSv, there is "no evidence" that exposure leads to any elevation of cancer risk. At levels covered by the article, ie 1000Bq/kg / 80000 Bq/mSv = 0.0125 mSv/kg. In other words, you can eat 8 tons of those mush before there…

These different radiation types are NOT equivalent.

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

#597

Post by bob29 »

Manuel_D wrote: post #252
ncmncm wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As has been explained to you numerous times, intermittency is a trivial technical matter that cannot justify diverting capital to nuke construction or operation. Repeating your falsehoods here does not make them true.

And as has been explained to you numerous times, intermittency is an incredibly difficult problem and cannot be solved without some miraculous storage mechanism that makes energy storage effectively free. It's so trivial to solve, yet you neglect to mention the solution. As per your previous comments, you assume that hydrogen, compressed air, or some other form of energy storage will be this silver bullet. This is a…

Interesting that you can understand this concept when its applied to development of grid-scale storage.

But you think its easier and risk free to develop from where we are to R&D plus supply chain, operating procedures, and workforce for safe and cost effective nuclear power?

Grid storage has no cost history. Nuclear power has a known cost history of being too expensive, and its had trillions of dollars of investment so theres no low hanging fruit.

Grid storage has existing components used in other industries and applications, nuclear power doesn't.

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

#598

Post by Krssst »

merb wrote: post #445
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…

> If you want to eliminate your dependence on natural gas, then, the only feasible option is nuclear. no. you need gas for nuclear AND renewables. it really does not matter. it's bullshit to argue against it unless you show the world a way to have an on/off button for a nuclear plant. (if you do, you might be very very very rich)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Load-following_power_plant#Nuc...

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

#599

Post by TaylorAlexander »

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.

> So you see a doubled cost for nuclear.

I don’t know what you mean. I proposed spending the same total amount.

> 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.

This was already factored in to the calculation I was agreeing with. They said that to get sufficient capacity in renewables considering reduced availability, it still costs 1/2 what nuclear costs.

I will copy and paste the relevant section from that comment for clarity:

>> "To illustrate this point, the 2,430 MW Vogtle nuclear plant could be expected to generate 21 million MWh per year. That is enough to power about 1.75 million residential households. Meanwhile, a hypothetical 3,500 MW solar power plant would be able to produce just under 6 million MWh of electricity per year. This number is enough to power only 500,000 homes, which is considerably less than nuclear power. For solar to produce as much electricity as is generated by a nuclear power plant, it would require about 13,000 MW of utility-scale solar capacity, which about four times as much as built in the existing plants. However, 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."

> https://www.solarfeeds.com/mag/solar-power-vs-nuclear-power/...

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

#600

Post by cycomanic »

philwelch wrote: post #538
cycomanic wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They are completely unrelated and yes in general they would be much smaller than baseload. Why wouldn't it? What the GP described is essentially what gas peakers do.
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