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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

#181

Post by jules »

ncmncm wrote: post #178
jules wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this argument gets repeated again and again and again, and when you ask about storage you never get a decent answer. And yet, the argument keeps getting repeated even by people who matter and make the decisions. When I started watching debates in the Dutch house of representatives I pretty much lost all hope. Of the 150 members, I'd say 145 are either unable or unwilling to think quantitatively and do simple nap…

The decent answer is, simply, that storage will be built when there is enough renewable capacity to charge it from. Storage is technically trivial. Building it all will be a big civil engineering job, but we have plenty of civil engineers.

That's magical thinking. Let's start with the obvious question: what kind of storage would that be? Remember, your argument against nuclear was price. Have you run the napkin math on your preferred choice of storage?

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

#182

Post by ncmncm »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #137
nathanaldensr wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pure FUD. The wind doesn't blow all the time and battery technology at scale isn't there.

Yes, why not both?

Money is fungible. Each dollar spent on nuke generating capacity is that dollar not spent on several times as much renewable generating capacity.

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

#183

Post by capitainenemo »

ncmncm wrote: post #152
capitainenemo wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The storage should be built in conjunction with the renewable generation to avoid those excess grid damaging events which is just wasteful. Similar issue to US where constructing generation is being subsidised but not constructing storage along with it.

There are no "grid damaging events".

Correct, because they price it negatively to avoid that happening. It's still indicative of a problem.

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

#184

Post by est31 »

ncmncm wrote: post #61
est31 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah the plan was to buy methane gas from Russia instead. Still a non renewable source, but the gas would have caused less CO2 emissions and less pollution (gas causes less CO2 per kilowatt hour). Of course, the war and the bombings of NordStream have put an end to that.

The gas would have been used to fill in while renewables were being built out. Now coal is filling in while renewables are being built out even faster. Without the investment to date in wind, coal dependency would have been massively greater.

Yeah, note that a lot of those renewables won't be built in Germany but outside of it, as there is simply no capacity for this in Germany.

While Germany is a net exporter for electricity, it does import a large chunk of its total energy usage (electricity plus stuff like fuel for cars, heating, et). Stuff like coal or gas or oil. In 2017, it was from 70% of imports and 30% from energy harvested locally [0]. It's quite impossible that this can all be converted to renewable power sources originating in Germany.

So what will likely/hopefully happen is that the closer partner countries will supply electricity to Germany via cables, while countries from further away will send Hydrogen generated from renewable sources, that will then be burned in the already existing gas plants.

[0]: https://www.weltenergierat.de/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/810...

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

#185

Post by rags2riches »

ncmncm wrote: post #124
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another factor affecting the price is that, while there's a lot of hydropower generated in northern Sweden, there's not enough capacity for transferring energy to the south where most consumption is. The investors building industry in the north that can use cheap renewable energy don't seem to mind though. :)

That is, surely, fixable by constructing transmission lines massively cheaper than nukes.

Transmission capacity from the northern hydro to the southern nuclear regions has decreased due to the closing of reactors in the south. Power transmission is more complex than just building a fatter pipe to pour more water through. Having stable power in the south is a prerequisite to transfer hydro power from the north.

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

#186

Post by MichaelCollins »

ncmncm wrote: post #134
MichaelCollins wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Civilization will be likely to have collapsed, Some in the short term, more in the long term. But I challenge you to find any sane climate model that says Sweden won't be around in 20 years to use any infrastructure built today.

Sweden is not less dependent on global civilization than other countries. Is Sweden a net food importer?

I didn't say climate change won't stress Swedish society. I'm saying the claim that climate change will make Sweden not exist to utilize a power plant in 20 years is completely out of touch. Review mainstream sources about climate change projections and scenarios and find me something that says Sweden is likely to not exist in 20 years, so they shouldn't build any new long-term infrastructure. Even if things go the worst way projected as possible, it doesn't end Sweden within 20 years.

Using climate change as an argument against building any long-term infrastructure is insane, and is probably anti-nuclear motivated thinking. What are the odds I find such doom-saying in the discussion about a bridge being designed to last 50 years? Oh gee, no point building a bridge that lasts 20 years since we'll all be dead by then, right? Tell all the architects and construction firms to stop building apartment buildings to last more than 20 years, right? Yeah right. This extreme sort of doom-saying is reserved for discussions about infrastructure planning that is opposed by the doom-sayer for some other unstated reason.

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

#187

Post by ncmncm »

Georgelemental wrote: post #100
ncmncm wrote: 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.

The peacetime policy was to build renewable capacity. Now there is radically more renewable capacity than before, much more than if another direction had been chosen.

If 30% coal today is bad, >>30% coal, the alternative, would have been correspondingly worse.

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

#188

Post by [deleted] »

alkonaut wrote: post #54
cjblomqvist wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I understand it's also (mainly?) because the southern areas pricing is very connected to Danish and German markets.

Maybe someone should sabotage some energy infrastructure on the Baltic seabed to ensure better prices in Sweden…

[deleted]

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

#189

Post by ncmncm »

MichaelCollins wrote: post #148
ncmncm wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem very certain of your facts. I can only say that you are probably right. But we don't know if the ocean ecosystem will collapse in that time, bringing down civilization. The thing about collapse is that it happens terrifyingly fast, and is only sometimes predicted accurately.

Even if the oceans were utterly sterilized today , with all the atmospheric implications that go with that, it would take longer than 20 years for Sweden to no longer exist. I'm not saying that climate change won't cause huge environmental disasters and social unrest, because it will . I'm saying that "there won't be a planet left after 20 years" is extreme pessimism and unsupported by any model backed by science, ev…

Many people mistakenly or vaguely conflate global civilization with "the planet". The distinction doesn't really matter much, from a policy perspective.

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

#190

Post by barry-cotter »

quelsolaar wrote: post #174
Roark66 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You realise we are talking about Sweden here, not a subsaharan country by any stretch. In general in Europe (especially in Northern Europe) all solar and wind capacity has to backed up by at least the same amount of quickly available online dependable capacity. In practice this means natural gas and diesel plants that are off, or coal/nuclear that is being diverted elsewhere when the sun shines/wind blows. The EU gri…

Who said we need to put the solar cells in Sweden? We could put them anywhere. Sweden is already producing enough low cost energy to meet its needs, only prices are high because we are exporting it to other countries willing to pay. If Sweden wants to invest in power for export, we could make that investment anywhere.

> Who said we need to put the solar cells in Sweden?

Having the natural gas in Russia hasn’t really worked out for Sweden. People care about security of supply because national markets are more robust than international ones.

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