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Sweden’s incoming cabinet says new nuclear reactors will be built

bloomberg.com

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Re: Sweden’s incoming cabinet says new nuclear reactors will be built

#161
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The overwhelming majority of utility scale storage will not be in batteries, so battery technology does not matter. The sun does, in fact, shine far, far more than enough.

Ok, I'll bite. What type of utility scale storage isn't a battery ? The answer is, of course: any energy storage setup is a battery[1]. A more generous interpretation of your comment is that you meant won't be chemical batteries . In which case, I'll bite: what then? 1. Energy storage is the capture of energy produced at one time for use at a later time[1] to reduce imbalances between energy demand and energy product…

Sweden generates 40% of the current power generation from hydro. Adapt that to be more flexible than baseload and Sweden has amazing capabilities to run an entire renewable grid mainly based on wind with a minimal amount of chemical short-term storage.

There are few countries with better opportunities for renewables than Sweden.

Re: Sweden’s incoming cabinet says new nuclear reactors will be built

#162
post #104
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Renewables don't give you baseload power. So renewables + nuclear is a good balance.

Renewables + storage will provide massively cheaper baseload power.

Enjoy paying for storage. At least in the US, even if we get storage down from $438/kWh (Jan 2022 grid-scale storage costs) to $200/kWh, consumer electricity prices are expected to rise somewhere between 1400% and 2200% per kWh, and total cost estimates to switch the entire US's power generation + distribution to pure renewables + storage, while maintaining current production and availability levels, are over $430tn, which is >20x the US GDP, according to: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/01/12/the-cost-of-net-zero-...

Re: Sweden’s incoming cabinet says new nuclear reactors will be built

#163
post #150
post #142

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Nuclear has always had massive scaling issues because leaving base load power generation means ever lower capacity factors. Running a nuclear power plant with a 40% capacity factor more than doubles the cost per kWh. You can look at Frances ~70% average Capacity factor in 2 ways either it’s a ~30% cost premium over most of the rest of the world on every power plant. Or more realistically ~40% of generation was at the…

Hello. "Nuclear has always had massive scaling issues because leaving base load power generation means ever lower capacity factors." So Swedish electricity generation used to be about 50% hydro and 50% nuclear. It worked really well for decades and made/kept us rich, despite our high salary costs due to the welfare state. Our industries had the benefits of very cheap and clean energy. The envy of the world! Then our…

I largely agree. Sweden is close to a best case for nuclear as hydroelectric power can easily solve the dispatchable generation and solar isn’t viable. It’s still going to need significant subsides to hit 50%, but nowhere near what counties with less Hydro would need.

They even have cold temperatures to boost power plant efficiency and make district heating very useful.

Re: Sweden’s incoming cabinet says new nuclear reactors will be built

#164
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

The comment you are replying to was not "trolling"; it raised a legitimate, technical objection to a policy in a manner that invites constructive responses (for example, "with storage technology" is a common response I see).

No post body was provided.

Re: Sweden’s incoming cabinet says new nuclear reactors will be built

#165
post #140
post #135

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Congratulations, I hope you guys are able to build them quickly. > I think massive expansion of nuclear power is the only realistic way to fix climate change. While I agree on the overall direction of this sentiment I think nuclear cannot be "the" only way but "one amongst many" ways.

While wind and solar will help, nuclear is really the dominant part of the solution, because of it's ability to work independent of local weather.

Sounds like the ideal backup to me.

Re: Sweden’s incoming cabinet says new nuclear reactors will be built

#166
post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "consensus science" doesn't say anything about the "end of the world" or societal collapse in 20 years.

Social science is far from exact enough to predict either eventuality with any confidence. If waves of tens or hundreds of millions of refugees leaving places they cannot live in any longer begin sweeping across borders, how long will it be before fascist governments, already threatening, and already winning in Turkey, Poland, Russia, Belarus, the Philippines, Brazil, Hungary, Italy, and India take over generally and…

People have had terrible governments before, for most of human history in fact. I do expect global social conditions to deteriorate as climate change strains countries, but that's a far cry from the end of the planet.

As for global thermonuclear war, we could wargame likely scenarios and potential outcomes endlessly until the day it might actually happen. But anybody who tells you with certainty that one will happen in the next 20 years so there's no sense planning for the future (e.g. no sense building a power plant that will be used 20 years from now) is trying to indoctrinate you into a doomsday cult.

Re: Sweden’s incoming cabinet says new nuclear reactors will be built

#167
post #112

One question for nuclear advocates, as I know it's full on-trend at the moment: What's to stop adversaries holding countries to ransom using their nucealer facilities? Just like Russia is playing "games" around the Ukranian nuclear plant? What's to stop that being used as the new threat? We won't turn your gas off, we'll threaten your nuclear plants? Genuine question.

I'd imagine it would receive the same response as if Russia launched a nuclear missile directly. In other words, WWIII.

Re: Sweden’s incoming cabinet says new nuclear reactors will be built

#168
post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The comment you are replying to was not "trolling"; it raised a legitimate, technical objection to a policy in a manner that invites constructive responses (for example, "with storage technology" is a common response I see).

Quoted post unavailable.

Then it'd be good to mention what this storage mechanism is, and examples of existing commercial deployments said storage mechanism and their cost history. It's odd to see someone insist that the solution is so obvious that anyone who doesn't recognize it is trolling, yet they neglect to mention what that solution is.

Re: Sweden’s incoming cabinet says new nuclear reactors will be built

#170
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is dishonest to conflate emergency war measures as policy.

The emergency measures are needed because the peacetime policy was not designed to be resilient. A better peacetime policy would have obviated the need for destructive emergency measures.

If only they'd listened to someone who warned them four years ago while possessed by a rare display of competence:

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

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