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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

#201

Post by elihu »

Manuel_D wrote: post #139
elihu wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pumped hydro storage, batteries, and/or long-distance grid interconnection. It's not often overcast in the Sahara, as far as I know, and solar power imported from far to the east and west can mitigate the day/night cycle problem. It's reasonable to keep ICE power plants around as an emergency backup; if you have to use them for a week in January or when infrastructure breaks for whatever reason it's not the end of th…

Transmitting energy over long distances is way more difficult than you make it out to be: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OpM_zKGE4o

It'd be expensive, but it's technically feasible. I'd also expect there's economies of scale involved; building a cable with twice the capacity doesn't cost twice as much; you might even just use the same cable and run it at a higher voltage.

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

#202

Post by Gravityloss »

Roark66 wrote: post #126
quelsolaar wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its all built on very old thinking. Nuclear may have been a good idea in the past, but with the rapid reduction of cost of renewable, especially solar, its no longer worth considering. Building a plant takes a decade, and a decade from now the difference in cost will be even greater. Nuclear will look like huge waste of money then.

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…

Sweden does have great mountains and hydropower, which makes integrating wind power easier. (Or even some solar too. It's bad in the winter but otherwise tends to anticorrelate with wind, which is good.) And nukes as well.

Also, the international spot power market actually started with Nordpool in the nordics, where it expanded to Europe. The countries in Europe buy and sell electricity all the time and it is a tremendous benefit. https://www.nordpoolgroup.com/en/maps/#/nordic

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

#203

Post by belorn »

Gwypaas wrote: post #132
dekken_ wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You appear to be contradicting yourself, but I imagine you don't think you are, so you might want to elaborate.

He is not contradicting himself. You have to remember the awful efficiency of thermal engines. Primary energy demand will decrease because you do not lose 70% of the energy by simply cooling it like in steam turbine used by nuclear power plants or car engines. On the other hand, electricity usage will increase because you have now replaced your 30-40% efficient engines with 90+% efficient engines, but from a differen…

Since we should keep the oil in the ground that current thermal engines uses, the energy input will be from a different source when we change from burning oil to electrical engines. The primary energy input should be from the wind, sun, elevated water, nuclear bonds and geothermal.

The change from 30-40% efficient engines to 90+% efficient engines is if we burn the oil in a power plant. It is an improvement, but not a sufficient big one compared to actually keeping the oil in the ground.

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

#204

Post by ncmncm »

belorn wrote: post #151
ncmncm wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No civil nuke plant has ever been operated, anywhere in the world, without massive government subsidies, or by coercing ratepayers to pay well above market rates. Looks like the Swedish public will be on the hook for subsidies for decades more while the rest of Europe (France and Romania perhaps excepted) coasts on renewables at ever plunging prices.

EU has a yearly public report on energy subsidies that demonstrate factually where subsidies goes, how much, and for what purpose. Nuclear subsidies are a proportional small part of the subsidies, and the public get more energy per $subsidies in nuclear than from other energy sources. Some key findings from 2021 report: "Subsidies to nuclear had varied between €3.2bn and € 4bn between 2008 and 2019 but surged to (€6.…

These accounting of subsidies almost always omit the bulk as not accounted in euros. The disaster liability subsidy, and the decommissioning subsidy are rarely so much as mentioned.

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

#205

Post by themitigating »

Gwypaas wrote: post #77
queuep wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For anyone interested in this national referendum, it’s peak bull crap. No option available to continue with nuclear power https://sv.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kärnkraftsfrågan_i_Sverige

You have to bear in mind that the public was hugely against it. No political party dared to push for it, although negotiations were held. > The Moderates, the People's Party and the Social Democrats held separate negotiations to formulate a joint yes option with the implication that the reactors would be allowed to be used during their technical lifespan, which was estimated at 25 years. These negotiations finally br…

So the referendum didn't have an option because of opinion polls?

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

#206

Post by Manuel_D »

elihu wrote: post #201
Manuel_D wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Transmitting energy over long distances is way more difficult than you make it out to be: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OpM_zKGE4o

It'd be expensive, but it's technically feasible. I'd also expect there's economies of scale involved; building a cable with twice the capacity doesn't cost twice as much; you might even just use the same cable and run it at a higher voltage.

Expensive but technically feasible, plus making Europe at the mercy of unstable regimes across the Mediterranean. That worked just fine with natural gas imports from Russia right?

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

#207

Post by ncmncm »

anonym29 wrote: post #162
ncmncm wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

Storage cost is falling even faster than solar PV or wind ever did.

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

#208

Post by BurningFrog »

LightG wrote: 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.

Your question seems to boil down to "what's to stop a foreign power to invade and defeat us in war?".

For most of Europe, the main answer is membership in NATO.

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

#210

Post by sac_ »

f_allwein wrote: post #72
NKosmatos wrote: post #55

The only green solution to our current energy problem is more nuclear power plants. We have to stop relying on coal, wood, oil, gas and the rest of the “dirty” materials.

Except nuclear is expensive and takes decades to build, runs on non renewable materials (a good percentage of which come from Russia), leaves waste that is deadly for 100.000s of years, and promising new technologies will need decades to reach maturity. Now why is it so great compared to, say, solar or geothermal?

The main advantage of nuclear power plants is constant power output at basically zero emissions combined with a super small footprint. Having a constant power output is worth a lot, that's why it makes sense funding them.

If you think that, let's say Germany, could generate all its electricity demand from renewables, then I'd recommend you to take a look at the following book (free): www.withouthotair.com/

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