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Nuclear energy is clean

collectifission.nl

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Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#421

Post by blitzar »

nl wrote: post #299
krupan wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there really a place where there is equivalent power from solar and/or wind alone?

Very many places. Germany: 41% of all power was from renewables in 2021 https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/en/topics/climate-energy/rene... UK: 43.1% of all power was from renewables in 2020 https://www.nationalgrid.com/stories/energy-explained/how-mu... Australia: 32.5% (2021): https://apo.org.au/node/317318 US: 22% expected in 2022: https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/steo/report/electricity.php

> UK: 43.1% of all power was from renewables in 2020

Yet my UK electricity cost is tracking the price of gas - up ~3x.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#422

Post by ZeroGravitas »

kitkat_new wrote: post #166
credit_guy wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and we have other options that we didn't have 20 years ago. We do, but those options are not enough. If they were, the Democrats in Washington would not have turned pro-nuclear. They saw the numbers. You can store electricity from day to night, but not from Summer to Winter. Months-long electricity storage will never make economic sense (or at least not in the next 30 years). Nuclear reactor construction is current…

> They saw the numbers. You can store electricity from day to night, but not from Summer to Winter. Months-long electricity storage will never make economic sense (or at least not in the next 30 years). where's your crystal ball?

They are correct about this bit, but not the wider conclusion.

Months long storage of electricity is uneconomic compared with alternatives.

Which is a shame for nuclear, as it would really benefit from it if you could just build enough for the average demand and run then 100% of the time.

Instead, flexible demand is much cheaper. So you overbuild the nuclear and modulate the demand for making green hydrogen and ammonia and store that. Much cheaper than long term storage. Note we don't use that to generate electricity, but for chemical feedstocks. Again, cheaper to overgenerate with nuclear.

However, now that you have overbuild and responsive demand in the equation there is no advantage of nuclear over renewables, which are much cheaper to build for the same capacity.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#423

Post by JetSetWilly »

Krasnol wrote: post #370
piokoch wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not about "cleanness", it is not about "costs in future". There are two core points why nuclear plants matter and only they matter so far. First they are practical - unlike all renewables nuclear energy plant provides stable influx of energy to the electric grid, regardless of the weather condition. As long as we don't have good and, again, practical energy storage, renewables usability will be always limited.…

> First they are practical - unlike all renewables nuclear energy plant provides stable influx of energy to the electric grid, regardless of the weather condition. That was "practical" in the 80s. Today it's a problem. You need to have a flexible grid to profit from the cheapest energy available. Having some expensive energy source clog up the grid so you have to turn off solar or wind is a bad thing. > As long as we…

> That baseload myth is dead these days. Batteries are merely one way to store energy but they’re not the only way.

How is it a myth? Weather systems are big. it is not unusual for eg. the entirety of North-western Europe to have a calm spell of little to no wind. You need something to keep the lights on when there's no wind, night time etc. That's your base load right there.

> And all of this is already working in parts of the world. For example in the EU where all that green and brown energy from Germany is saving Nuclear-Frances ass at the moment and has been every summer and winter for at least the last decade.

Pointing to a bunch of german coal plants keeping the lights on is not a great argument. Germany has a very polluting "base load" generation capability in comparison to other countries. imagine how much less carbon they would be emitting right now if they had just kept their nuclear plants going.

Renewables cannot get rid of a need for base load generation capability at 100% of demand. Batteries and storage just aren't going to scale up to do that (or even 1% of it) in this century. So the options are - handwave about batteries and pumped storage, ensuring that coal and gas is what actually used to meet base load, or invest in nuclear. If you actually want low carbon electricity generation, nuclear is the only option.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#424

Post by ben_w »

TedShiller wrote: post #381
jaredklewis wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with some of your criticism of the article, but I disagree that nuclear waste is a problem. Yes, we have to store it somewhere. But all US plants combined make ~5k cubic meters of nuclear waste a year. To put that in perspective, the strategic oil reserve is 100 million cubic meters. A single aircraft carrier is 2 million cubic meters. Political will aside, finding a place to store this stuff doesn’t seem lik…

> Political will aside, finding a place to store this stuff doesn’t seem like a massive problem. How about your backyard?

I'd love to have a backyard big enough for that.

The only problems I would have with it being in my hypothetical back yard would be other people thinking it was dangerous, leading to an urban decay cycle (this also applies to property with unlucky numbers, like 13 in the anglosphere), and/or lots of protesters and/or would-be terrorists not realising how deep the stuff is buried nor now hard it is to shift a multi-ton concrete-filled steel barrel.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#425

Post by pydry »

belorn wrote: post #411
pydry wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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, wit…

"Green hydrogen" is probably the least efficient form of energy storage talked about. The only reason it gets talked about at all is again, PR - because gas companies are keen on extending the life of their rather expensive capital investments. It's currently in the hypothetical stage and, being realistic, the gas companies promoting it probably just want to produce grey hydrogen for use with "green hydrogen" infrastructure and string us along with false hopes that theyll go 100% green soon. Not an unexpected development from the same people who covered up global warming for decades.

Pumped storage + (to a lesser extent) grid scale batteries (e.g. in hawaii) are actually real, being used and economic. The lobbying and PR muscle behind each is a bit less though - especially boring old pumped storage.

>Demand shaping + solar + wind + storage is not economical viable in Northen Europe

It very much is. It's already being done. In fact a lot of that storage in the alps has been used for excess nuclear power from France.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#426

Post by floppiplopp »

Not only is the waste a problem, we haven't found an adequate solution for in almost 70 years, but, again, the issue with nuclear is the amount of resources available. There simply isn't enough fissile material out there to make an impact on climate change.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#427

Post by ben_w »

JetSetWilly wrote: post #423
Krasnol wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> First they are practical - unlike all renewables nuclear energy plant provides stable influx of energy to the electric grid, regardless of the weather condition. That was "practical" in the 80s. Today it's a problem. You need to have a flexible grid to profit from the cheapest energy available. Having some expensive energy source clog up the grid so you have to turn off solar or wind is a bad thing. > As long as we…

> That baseload myth is dead these days. Batteries are merely one way to store energy but they’re not the only way. How is it a myth? Weather systems are big. it is not unusual for eg. the entirety of North-western Europe to have a calm spell of little to no wind. You need something to keep the lights on when there's no wind, night time etc. That's your base load right there. > And all of this is already working in p…

> it is not unusual for eg. the entirety of North-western Europe to have a calm spell of little to no wind

OK, but the EU grid is bigger than that, so the question should be "how common are weather patterns that combine low wind with low sun over the entire continent rather than just a quarter of it?"

> Batteries and storage just aren't going to scale up to do that (or even 1% of it) in this century.

If cars are electrified, their batteries have enough for grid storage even after losing to much capacity to remain in the vehicles.

This isn't a guarantee they will be built, but I think it's likely as people are building battery factories (and mineral mines to supply them) as fast as they're allowed to.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#428

Post by blackoil »

onethought wrote: post #358
jokoon wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Why aren’t they base load? If every country over provisioned renewables, then you have a transmission problem not a storage problem. The sun does always shine, the wind does always blow.

Not sure how much Europe would like to be dependent on Russia, Libya, Turkey ... for the energy requirements.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#429

Post by JetSetWilly »

ben_w wrote: post #427
JetSetWilly wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That baseload myth is dead these days. Batteries are merely one way to store energy but they’re not the only way. How is it a myth? Weather systems are big. it is not unusual for eg. the entirety of North-western Europe to have a calm spell of little to no wind. You need something to keep the lights on when there's no wind, night time etc. That's your base load right there. > And all of this is already working in p…

> it is not unusual for eg. the entirety of North-western Europe to have a calm spell of little to no wind OK, but the EU grid is bigger than that, so the question should be "how common are weather patterns that combine low wind with low sun over the entire continent rather than just a quarter of it?" > Batteries and storage just aren't going to scale up to do that (or even 1% of it) in this century. If cars are elec…

Well, pretty common, as weather systems are typically continental in scale.

Even if you built enough wind turbines to satisfy 10000% of EU demand within the EU (which is what you would need to have a shot at this kind of redundancy) the amount of huge HVDC interconnects you would need criss-crossing the continent make it completely impractical.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#430

Post by mbar84 »

joak wrote: post #165

There is this idea that nuclear is not being deployed because people have a wrong perception of risks. However, the main reason is the economy. The costs of solar, wind and batteries are dropping exponentially but the costs of nuclear are not improving. We can blame regulation and the hypothetically wrong public perception about safety, but the reality is that costs cannot go down easily because of the innovation dyn…

Let the market decide. You may be right and I wish you well if you're basing investment decisions on your projections. It does not seem plausible to me that nuclear would be uncompetitive on a free market. There are cost curves and economies of scale that may not be visible due to the regulatory burden and regulatory uncertainty.
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