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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

#481

In order to inform the conversations in these comments here are some predictions on Nuclear vs Renewable usage in the UK grid from the National Grid's (UK energy grid transmission network owner + operator) Future Energy Scenarios report - https://www.nationalgrideso.com/document/263951/download Short Version is here - https://www.nationalgrideso.com/document/263861/download

Can we have a tl:dr?

Optimistic scenario: Mostly wind power by 2050.

Pessimistic scenario: A mix of mostly fossil fuels (natural gas) and wind power by 2050.

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

#482
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Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone forgets about Hydro. Not only can it be a great source of baseload power, but it can also be turned on and off very rapidly to provide peeking capacity. Pairs very nicely with Wind and Solar if your country has the right terrain for it (which Sweden does, hydro provides 45% of their current capacity).

Correction: Northern Sweden has the right terrain for it. And there's a limit to how much hydro that can be built there, and it's close to built out already.

Which actually makes Nuclear a great idea.

Take the hydro which is currently doing baseload, convert as much capacity as possible to peak loads. And replace the lost baseload with new Nuclear.

That way you can unlock even more capacity for more solar and wind (well... that far north, it will be mostly wind)

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

#483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they get better price for their electricity, more profit for the plant, more taxes and thus the people benefit. Yes, local electricity bill would go up but if the price is often extremely low, selling some for higher price is a net win. Ie this is why we have trade as concept in the first place.

Ironically, this is why the interconnects to mainland Europe that let (southern) Sweden sell its electricity at high prices when there is demand elsewhere are a good thing for everyone involved. Not a good sign when right-wing governments are complaining about market based price signals and trade.

No, not everyone involved, everyone that can’t afford the bill in Southern Sweden, it is not good for them.

Just because Germany destroyed their electrical system it should not mean that companies in Sweden should go bankrupt. Germany tampered with the EU market, they ought to pay fines.

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

#484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Electricity prices should include all the negative externalities such as pollution, carbon dioxide, destruction of habitats, geopolitical dependence on Russia etc.

Electricity, like an increasing bunch of other things, is part of the infrastructure. The amount and different levels of infrastructure pretty much define "civilization", do away with infrastructure and your civilization is done for. Which also means that the way a civilization treats its infrastructure tells you a lot about this civilization. If you look at Europe, they messed things up big time. Firstly, running in…

But I think it will, and we see this already happening. Currently, the electricity price is so high that it makes economic sense to build wind and solar that are better for the environment.

I'm not saying it should be an unregulated free market - we've seen those don't work (exactly because of the externalities). But this does not mean there cannot be regulated markets and partial markets. The grid is infrastructure that shouldn't be run as a company, but production and storage capacity can be bought from markets as long as the grid rules factor in the externalities.

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

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False. There is no shortage of any of the materials needed to go fully renewable.

It’s Time to Wake Up - The Currently Known Global Mineral Reserves Will Not Be Sufficient to Supply Enough Metals to Manufacture the Planned Non-fossil Fuel Industrial Systems https://www.gtk.fi/en/research/time-to-wake-up/ "No matter what minerals will be needed, we will need large quantities of them as the renewable power sources like wind and solar, require extensive mineral resources to manufacture the infrastruc…

Olympic Dam SA is the world's second biggest uranium mine.

For every 0.6 kg of Uranium it produces, it produces 20kg of copper and 4.5g of silver.

Monosilicon PV is made of sand, copper, silver and aluminum.

A kg of uranium going through a pwr produces about 500GJ (with 3-10% of that being required for milling and enrichment). The 7.5g of silver in the ore that produced that kg of Uranium will produce about 200GJ in its lifetime with technologies in the pipeling that will push this to 400GJ. This silver usage is going down faster than production is increasing. There will be a huge surplus of copper from this source.

The silver is recyclable.

The uranium will require special storage for millenia or reprocessing at a cost not even massively subsidized programs are willing to bear.

The solar energy can be stored in a battery made from sodium, carbon, iron and aluminum. This is basically the composition of dirt. These are being mass produced now and full industrialisation of the supply chain is expected by 2024.

The nuclear reactor requires large quantities of zirconium, molybdenum, chromium, silver, cadmium and many other rare metals. Much of this is radioactive waste at eol.

The nuclear reactor requires more steel than the solar panel requires silicon, and more concrete than the solar panel requires glass and concrete.

A uranium mine can provide nearly as much energy from PV as it does via fission, and will soon produce more. Let that sink in for a bit.

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

#486

Electricity should cost peanuts and that should the goal of every sane government.

Electricity prices should include all the negative externalities such as pollution, carbon dioxide, destruction of habitats, geopolitical dependence on Russia etc.

My assumption is that we would ensure that everything you raised is accounted for otherwise it does more harm than good.

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

#487
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Earlier quoted context omitted.

Geothermal doesn't really work for most places, since you'd have to drill down for tens of kilometres to get the required temperature. If you can use it then great, but it's a rarity. > Now why is it so great compared to, say, solar Works at night, works in winter, doesn't take up half the country in surface area, has a constant output throughout the day, costs slightly less per kWh (may vary), provides waste heat th…

> doesn't take up half the country in surface area Surprisingly, this argument is wrong. I have once verified the math for replacing all of vehicles in Germany with electric vehicles. Charged with 100% solar. The required surface area for solar farms would be about a tenth of what is currently used for the ethanol additive for unleaded (used typically in personal cars, AFAIK freight and public transport run on diesel…

> about a tenth of what is currently used for the ethanol additive for unleaded

To be fair, that is a metric fuckton of land to start with. In the end there's only so many watts per square meter available and a physical limit on conversion efficiency, so you eventually have to expand outwards to to compensate for ever growing demand + land used for battery capacity (which may or may not be negligible). Meanwhile population increases also keep continuously driving up the scarcity of land.

Sounds like an interesting calculation though, do you still have any notes on that?

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

#488
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Yes let's just go free for all and the market sort it out. When was that a good idea when it came to safety critical infrastructure?! The whole let the current generation reap the profits and the market will magically figure things out got us into the current mess in the first place. The nuclear industry is not being held to higher standards relatively than other means of energy production. Wind farms must jump throu…

To give an example of hurdles for wind power: there are some wind mills in the harbor region of Antwerp that aren’t allowed to generate power during the day because one time a single protected bird flew against the turning arm. They’re only allowed to use them when the birds are sleeping.

Are buildings in Antwerp allowed to have windows? This data from Canada in 2013 says for every bird killed by a wind mill about 1000 are killed by "Collisions with Houses".

https://birdwatchingbuzz.com/do-windmills-kill-birds/

Interestingly the article claims that the power lines that connect the wind mills kill more birds than the wind mills themselves.

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

#489
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I don't know anyone in germany who thinks gas is "clean". New buildings are built with heat pumps. They are considered clean if used with renewable energy. But it's difficult to use them in old buildings and gas is said to be to most cleanest heating technology based on fossil fuels.

Germany literally got the European Commission to label gas burning as "green energy" (!). https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy-environment/news/ger... https://www.dw.com/en/european-commission-declares-nuclear-a... (Does that count as gaslighting? Sorry.)

The cited article says "a bridge for a limited transition period" and not "green energy".

So no, they don't want to label it green energy, they only prefer it to other fossil fuels and nuclear but the goal is to phase out natural gas as well.

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

#490
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Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany literally got the European Commission to label gas burning as "green energy" (!). https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy-environment/news/ger... https://www.dw.com/en/european-commission-declares-nuclear-a... (Does that count as gaslighting? Sorry.)

The cited article says "a bridge for a limited transition period" and not "green energy". So no, they don't want to label it green energy, they only prefer it to other fossil fuels and nuclear but the goal is to phase out natural gas as well.

The DW headline is "European Commission declares nuclear and gas to be green".

Is the state-owned DW/ARD not a trustworthy news source?

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