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Nuclear energy is clean

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Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#491

Post by jefftk »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #305
jefftk wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This Kakhovka dam is a legitimate military target Not under the Geneva Convention "Works and installations containing dangerous forces, namely dams, dykes and nuclear electrical generating stations, shall not be made the object of attack, even where these objects are military objectives, if such attack may cause the release of dangerous forces and consequent severe losses among the civilian population." https://ihl…

And what would be the consequences should, say, Russia attack, say, the Kakhovka dam? Consequences, that is, for the attacker? More sanctions? Direct military action against a major (or any) nuclear power? Condemnation and isolation for decades or longer?

My parent was saying that it was a legitimate target. I agree that if Russia decides to give up on the Geneva convention our options aren't great.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#492

Post by belorn »

raxxorraxor wrote: post #473
belorn wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There isn't a single existing pump storage plant in the world that charge with renewables energy and resells it when demand is high. There exist a few proof of concepts, but the only commercial one that I know off do so by charging it from fossil fuel power plants. It act as a large subsidized grid stabilizer for when different fossil fuel power power down. When there are articles about pumped storage plants the usua…

There are a lot of pump storage plants with various forms of storage mechanisms. Renewables are part of the general energy mix so of course these storage plants also store energy from renewables. In Switzerland and Austria it has become a business because of the overproduction of Germany. Given, they have the matching topography that make them easier to build, but you won't necessarily need that. Hydroelectric power…

k, I will bite. Give me a source for a pumped storage facility that buy wind or solar when overproduction causes the prices to be low, and then sells it when the price is high. How much do they pay on average, how much at the point of sale, and how is the ROI per kw/h.

All the existing pumped storage facilities that I know of do not generate their profit from buying low and selling high. They generate profits by providing a service of balancing the grid for short duration so that when a power plant is ramping down, there is a equal force being provided as a service so that the grid doesn't break down. The period of ramping down/up need to be covered somehow, a cost that either the grid operator or the individual power plants need to pay for. The end customer who pays by the kw/h do not see this cost, and it is a very insignificant cost of the whole since it only occur at start and stop.

But I am happy to be proven wrong. Please give me that link of one that buy low and sell high. A commercial operated pumped storage that buy renewable energy when its low and sell when it is high can be scaled up to be used whenever the price difference between low and high is great enough. The cost of operation and investment just need to be low enough that the margin between low and high price points can support it.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#493

Post by mpweiher »

bionsystem wrote: post #410
jillesvangurp wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The solar panel argument is very weak, at best. There are some minor challenges with solar. And they are really very minor. Quite different to "don't touch the nuclear waste for the next few million or so years". Nuclear has several problems. The main one of which is simply its cost. It is complex technology that involves dangerous materials that need protective measures against both technical failures and security m…

Wait, there is more. Nuclear needs water to cool, hot water then goes into rivers. This, until the river becomes too hot for the life in the water, then you cannot use your plant anymore (or you can, at the risk of killing all life in the area). Also water evaporates when it's hot and vapor is a greenhouse gas even worse than carbon dioxyde. This might sound like a minor problem in the short term but it might be a hu…

All thermal power plants need cooling.

Some plants were built without cooling towers. Those are now a problem.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#494

Post by ncmncm »

criley2 wrote: post #53
bad_alloc wrote: post #9

We saw another downside of nuclear power in Ukraine: When Russian troops attacked towards Enerhodar and there was shelling in the area the safety of the reactor could not be guaranteed. In the end, containment can be guaranteed w.r.t to internal accidents but no facility can ever be safe from outside issues like war, natural disaster or politics. Solar has less single points of failure and if it fails not much happen…

It's a weird argument to say "Nuclear does this, solar does not" as if the two are against one another and you are comparing them. Here, I'll do the same thing: "Nuclear produces power 24/7, while solar can only usefully produce power for ~8 hours a day, or 1/3 of the day". Sure, for that 1/3 of the day, solar does not have political problems like being shut down for danger. However, for 2/3 of the day, nuclear does…

Solar + storage produces 24/7, overwhelmingly cheaper and without risk of regional poisoning.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#495

Post by ncmncm »

belorn wrote: post #492
raxxorraxor wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a lot of pump storage plants with various forms of storage mechanisms. Renewables are part of the general energy mix so of course these storage plants also store energy from renewables. In Switzerland and Austria it has become a business because of the overproduction of Germany. Given, they have the matching topography that make them easier to build, but you won't necessarily need that. Hydroelectric power…

k, I will bite. Give me a source for a pumped storage facility that buy wind or solar when overproduction causes the prices to be low, and then sells it when the price is high. How much do they pay on average, how much at the point of sale, and how is the ROI per kw/h. All the existing pumped storage facilities that I know of do not generate their profit from buying low and selling high. They generate profits by prov…

Obviously, until you have enough renewable generating capacity to charge your storage, you are not selling stored energy: you sold what you generated.

It is extremely disingenuous, not to say dishonest, to make up scenarios based on status quo when there is still very little renewable generation capacity.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#496

Post by ncmncm »

ben_w wrote: post #488
ncmncm wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aluminum is abundant. If we need more, we refine more; it mainly takes electrical power, which is getting cheaper all the time.

Sure, I don't mean to imply it's not possible or anything even close to that, merely that it's something that will take a while rather than be ready this decade. I'm kinda leaning towards expecting batteries (specifically batteries and not storage in general) to be the first way a continental power grid gets to 100% renewable, even though I prefer the aesthetic of a global grid. But I don't have any skin in the game,…

Batteries will always be the expensive choice of storage. There will be a certain amount of it anyway. But utilities, for bulk storage, will favor cheaper alternatives.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#497

Post by belorn »

pydry wrote: post #470
belorn wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please provide a link to a pumped storage that buy green wind power when the price is low and sell it when the price is high. I would be nice to have a working example of how much wind they buy and at what price point they sell, and how they managed to finance it (ie, how much subsidies was involved). The cost per kw/h is of particular interest. Grid scale batteries work great when you got 365 charge cycles. Each day…

>Please provide a link to a pumped storage that buy green wind power when the price is low and sell it when the price is high. Not sure what you mean here. Like, a link to fengning? Kaprun? Snowy 2? Also you dont buy "green power" on the grid. You just buy power. We dont have much pumped storage right now coz (at least until feb) basically nothing could compete with gas as a peaker. Some is under construction though…

> Not sure what you mean here. Like, a link to fengning? Kaprun? Snowy 2?

Provide a source that shows a company which business model is to buy renewable energy when the price is low and then sells it when the price is high, recovering the cost of investment and operations by the margin between the low and high price point.

Shouldn't be hard. I can provide a link of a company which business model is to buy groceries at a cheap price and then sell them to customers at a higher price. Buy low sell high is one of the most simplistic business model that exist.

What does not count is a pumped storage that operate as a grid balancer, where the profits is not from the margins between price points but rather to provide a service of keeping the grid balanced when other power plants are ramping down or ramping up. They don't get paid per kw/h, and they don't sell just when the price is high.

> Also the idea that whole months go by with little to no wind is a myth

There is statistics about this if one do a few searches. The risk that you get a whole month with little to no wind is a statistical probability higher than 0. More commonly there are periods of low wind lasting weeks to months, with individual day that have slightly more or slightly less. Just as there can be unusual stormy weather a few months, there can be months with unusual calm weather.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#498

Post by pfdietz »

p_l wrote: post #455
pfdietz wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, so solar/wind is not dispatchable because it's more costly you claim, not because one can't actually do it? You don't need 15-25x overbuilding. That is nonsense. Perhaps you're assuming no storage whatsoever, and are oversizing the renewables to deliver sufficient power instantaneously? What terrible and foolish engineering. The round trip efficiency of power -> hydrogen -> power is maybe 40%, so if you sent the…

You use Texas (or whole of USA). Which is considerably more southern than most of Europe, and definitely more southern than Poland. IIRC Texas is also much more flat, which benefits availability of wind power. The 15-25x numbers I get from model.energy, in fact - lowest I get is 15x assuming way too optimistic ideas about availability of salt caverns in Poland, 25x is with mainly battery power, the numbers for no sto…

Poland has huge salt formations, so I spit on your "optimism" slur.

OF COURSE it's much higher if you turn off hydrogen and try to use batteries and curtailment to deal with high seasonality environments. This is Dumb Engineering. Don't do that. You multiply the cost in Poland by more than a factor of 2 when you turn off hydrogen.

Poland, as I've said elsewhere in these comments, is also close to the worst place in the world for renewables. That's hardly a condemnation of renewables in the entire world. Maybe industry will just leave Poland to somewhere it makes more sense to operate.

I bet your 15-25x also is looking at the nameplate capacity on the renewables, before adjusting for the expected capacity factor. But LCOE already takes that into account. Just looking at raw peak output, wind and solar are massively cheaper than nuclear.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#499

Post by ncmncm »

robertlagrant wrote: post #393
Gwypaas wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a solved problem today. China has a 12 GW 3,300 km (2,100 mi) HVDC line in use for a couple of years now. The loss is 2-3% per 1,000 km depending on the voltage of the system. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current

If you add in "rebuild all the transmission lines" to the cost then that would be good. Comparing some costs of renewables to total cost of nuclear is a fun pastime, but doesn't help the debate.

Nukes also involve big transmission line projects, so it is a wash,.
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