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Nuclear energy is clean

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Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#411

Post by belorn »

pydry wrote: post #368
belorn wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "While in reality renewables are on an exponential cost reduction trajectory " And now we are looking of some development in the future. The usual argument I keep seeing is that with the exponential cost reduction in solar and green hydrogen we will have in the future a combination that will be cheaper than the nuclear costs of today. A comparison of the current state of nuclear to some future potential solar + sto…

>The usual argument I keep seeing is that with the exponential cost reduction in solar and green hydrogen we will have in the future a combination that will be cheaper than the nuclear costs of today. Thats what its like today. That's probably why the nuclear PR articles almost never try to compare costs or speed of construction with demand shaping + solar + wind + storage. It does not stack up well.

The average cost of green hydrogen is 6 euro per kg, putting the price per kw/h around 18 cent. That is about 7 times more than the cost of nuclear per kw/h.

No one is burning green hydrogen commercially for grid power, through a lot of people would be happy to pay the average nuclear cost (~3 cent per kw/h) if you want to provide it. Selling green hydrogen for $1 per kg would be very welcome in Europe right now, with a basically bottomless demand if someone would be willing to provide it at current nuclear prices.

Demand shaping + solar + wind + storage is not economical viable in Northen Europe, but if you have any evidence to support the opposite then provide them. The fact is, if it was then the crisis that currently exist would not be a crisis, it would be an investment rush.

Of course, if you personally want to offer green hydrogen for $1 per kg this winter, and sign a liability contract for supplying the many tons needed, then sure. Lets do it!

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#412

Post by donny2018 »

liuzs wrote: post #262
donny2018 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, we can build a nuclear plant in a desert country (where I live), but not much hydro. In fact, our hydro plants are generating less and less energy every year as our rivers are drying up.

Sadly nuclear plants cannot run without cooling water from rivers or sea.

True, but again there is Palo Verde nuclear plant that is located in the middle of the desert in Arizona and is cooled by sewage water from nearby cities.

Some new fast reactor designs don't even need water for cooling. Also, China has built an experimental thorium reactor in Gobi desert which also doesn't need water for cooling.

I believe a lot if interesting stuff is coming in a few years.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#413

Post by beanjuice »

jokoon wrote: post #351
cycomanic wrote: post #289

This article perfectly exemplifies the arguments in discussions. Lets just concentrate on the waste discussion. The article says heavy metals in solar panels are a problem (I kind of agree, although the way it is described makes it out like we are talking about huge amounts, in reality the lead in solar panels is largely from soldering so very small amounts. Orders of magnitude more are being used for other applicati…

Renewables are not baseload. If you add batteries to the mix, nuclear is better. Not to mention the quantity of power produced. Nuclear is expensive because it's long term investment. Renewables also cost more in resources (concrete, steel, copper), there are sourced charts about this. Renewables are better than coal and gaz, but not better than nuclear. There's nothing wrong with renewables, but it's not enough to o…

> there are sourced charts about this

If you wouldn't mind, could you please source the charts?

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#414

Post by iso1631 »

pydry wrote: post #368
belorn wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "While in reality renewables are on an exponential cost reduction trajectory " And now we are looking of some development in the future. The usual argument I keep seeing is that with the exponential cost reduction in solar and green hydrogen we will have in the future a combination that will be cheaper than the nuclear costs of today. A comparison of the current state of nuclear to some future potential solar + sto…

>The usual argument I keep seeing is that with the exponential cost reduction in solar and green hydrogen we will have in the future a combination that will be cheaper than the nuclear costs of today. Thats what its like today. That's probably why the nuclear PR articles almost never try to compare costs or speed of construction with demand shaping + solar + wind + storage. It does not stack up well.

This is the problem with nuclear. It was the answer in the 1990s, but renewables have proven themselves.

Now sure, if you could snap your fingers and build a new nuclear plant tomorrow, that would be great. But you can't. By the time a plant breaking ground today starts generating power, it will be too late to make sense.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#415

Post by p_l »

pfdietz wrote: post #261
p_l wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A big problem with solar and wind is that they aren't dispatchable. A 100 MWe nuclear power plant fitting in the space of small local power plant isn't equivalent of a 100MW solar or wind plant - for my local area, the equivalent solar/wind plant is about a combination of few Gigawatts of nameplate capacity of solar and wind plants (allowing for very optimistic storage tech, it gets "down" to 1180 MW solar + 410 MW w…

Nuclear isn't dispatchable. If it's not always running the cost/kWh escalates dramatically. Solar and wind with storage are somewhat dispatchable, because you can decide when to discharge the storage systems.

It's much more dispatchable than renewables, it's just cheaper to run it always at full capacity. Solar/wind/storage combination requires overbuilding in range of 15-25 times the nameplate capacity.

Personally I'm of the opinion that we should have nuclear+renewables with less focus on storage and more on opportunistic production of, for example, green hydrogen - not for grid storage but for all other uses like steel production, off-grid power systems (including cars/trains that have needs beyond battery capability) etc.

Current approach with renewables always being graded on their lowest possible price point and silently ignoring the growing gas generation required to smooth them and larger and larger grid instability is not great.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#416

Post by tomp »

Gwypaas wrote: post #397
mirzap wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really can't understand how so many smart people fall for wind/solar promises. If you just think about it you have to realize it is not reliable solution for 21 century, it is not scalable for ever increasing (exponential) energy demand, population growth, land needed for expansion. It is simply stupid to rely on energy produced from sources that are by nature unpredictable (like wind, or sun). Solar/Wind can and s…

I don't know why statistics scares you? The interesting thing is the correlation factors and then choose an uptime requirement. > South Australia is at the vanguard of the global energy transition, having transformed its energy system from 1% to over 60% renewable energy in just over 15 years. > By 2025/2026, the Australian Energy Market Operator forecasts this could rise to approximately 85%. > South Australia’s asp…

Wow you literally picked the sunniest driest place on Earth.

Now do NYC or Germany. Long winters, rainy summers, lot’s of fun with solar!

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#417

Post by ben_w »

funklute wrote: post #348
smartmic wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You just considered one axis of the waste properties. It must also be in the equation that the waste will remain radioactive and toxic for thousands of years, far beyond the time horizon of what a normal human brain is capable of processing. Also, the effects (spatial, biological) if the waste is released for whatever reason (which we may not even know now). So the debt we transfer to future generations goes far, too…

> far beyond the time horizon of what a normal human brain is capable of processing This is just hyperbole though. All the other arguments aside, it's perfectly possible for humans to plan, and make risk estimates, beyond a human life span.

Some humans can plan well over such horizons, but the reason we even need to have this discussion now is that the people in charge 70 years ago didn't care to plan to mitigate against the carbon dioxide from fossil fuel plants, even though Svante Arrhenius calculated in 1896(!) that doubling atmospheric CO2 concentrations would increase Earth's temperature 4-6 °C (depending in part on which Wikipedia reference I follow).

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#418

Post by tomp »

Gwypaas wrote: post #398
mirzap wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not enough already. Its output is not reliable already. It takes huge space, land that could be used differently (like say expansion, so housing becomes cheaper, or farming, etc.), it has huge environmental impact (nothing lives anymore where solar farms are built). No thanks. I'll take nuclear any day.

If land use is the hill to die on a much better target is the beef industry. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/land-use-per-kg-poore

Why?

Cow pastures are nice to look at. Grass, trees, ponds.

Land paved with solar panels? Not a nice view.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#419

Post by p_l »

entropicgravity wrote: post #203
p_l wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A big problem with solar and wind is that they aren't dispatchable. A 100 MWe nuclear power plant fitting in the space of small local power plant isn't equivalent of a 100MW solar or wind plant - for my local area, the equivalent solar/wind plant is about a combination of few Gigawatts of nameplate capacity of solar and wind plants (allowing for very optimistic storage tech, it gets "down" to 1180 MW solar + 410 MW w…

The larger the geography of the grid (tied with HVDC) the more supply and demand average out. This minimizes the need for pumped storage (and its variations). To give just one example the UK is building an underwater HVDC directly between Morocco (solar) and the UK. So the known solutions are already available they just have to be implemented.

Except those solutions tend to ignore the cost of failures and that even with interconnects balancing the grid is not trivial - just inside european grid the problems are considerable, and there's still the issue of interconnects failing.

And even then, you now need to overbuild not just for replacement of local plants, but also for replacement of plants on the other end of the continent.

Great if you're selling gas or gas power plants, I guess, not so great if you want zero CO2 emissions especially with how powerhungry the replacement techs can be.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#420

Post by tomp »

cycomanic wrote: post #294
dron57 wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Renewable energy is great, but sun and wind are intermittent. Grids cannot base themselves on renewable energy without some sort of impractical battery storage scheme or major advancements in creating renewable Green Hydrogen for fuel cells.

This argument has been debunked many times. A large enough grid can be based on wind and solar alone, this has been shown for the US in several studies. Storage however is advantageous because it enables to reduce the amount of overcapacity. The good thing is that the way the electricity market works, is that it provides direct economic incentives to develop storage or basing high electricity demand production indust…

Can you share some of these studies? I just don’t understand how you can power a grid at night with just wind and solar (no batteries). Even the US isn’t large enough that sun would always be shining somewhere.
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