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Nuclear Power Is the Answer to Global and Environmental Energy Woes

nationalinterest.org

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Re: Nuclear Power Is the Answer to Global and Environmental Energy Woes

#211

Post by Retric »

throw0101b wrote: post #183
retrac wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear power supplies about 50 - 60% of electric energy in Ontario, with 18 reactors currently operating, built 1970s - 1990s. Activated water with tritium in it has been released accidentally a number of times, and small amounts of tritium and other gasses are released by any reactor, but no unapproved leaking besides that has ever been made public. There are of course ecological problems with the heat, but all the…

> Nuclear power supplies about 50 - 60% of electric energy in Ontario, with 18 reactors currently operating, built 1970s - 1990s. Cf, "Supply" tab: * https://www.ieso.ca/en/Power-Data

Yep, and that looks great wind, hydro, and nuclear providing 100% of power at 3pm on a Friday at 2.5c/kWh. But what happens on the weekend when demand for power drops even more?

Unfortunately the nuclear power plant operator losses money even faster than they are right now.

Re: Nuclear Power Is the Answer to Global and Environmental Energy Woes

#212

Post by illiarian »

uecker wrote: post #150
MikeCapone wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

France has been mismanaging its fleet and signally for years that they want to move away from it, under-investing in it, etc. It's not the technology's fault. Germany had some of the best managed plants in the world -- until they decided to shut them down, leading to more coal being burned and more dependence on other countries like Russia...

Germany is exiting both nuclear and coal. In the time from 2010 to 2022 where 14/17 of nuclear plants were shut down generation from coal was reduced from 263 TWh per year to 181 TWh. Renewables increased from 105 TWh to 254 TWh. I also would have preferred to leave the nuclear plants running longer and exit coal faster, but in the overall scheme of things it does not matter too much. Nuclear is basically irrelevant.…

Too bad numbers don't work when it's a quiet night, and you have to burn gas, caol, and biomass to make up for those nuclear reactors you've shut down: https://twitter.com/energybants/status/1647799729734971396

Re: Nuclear Power Is the Answer to Global and Environmental Energy Woes

#213

Post by tremon »

7952 wrote: post #124
illiarian wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> nuclear plants are very unreliable You mean, they are the most reliable base load and load-following power sources we know. > References are easy to find if you want confirmation It's just as easy to find confirmation that all the problems you listed are the result of neglect and politics of the past 20-30 years. > it has to be done properly and safely, which is certainly not the case around here. As in: France has…

Blaming things on neglect or politics just isn't useful. We need power sources that have some resilience to those things.

Can you give an example of a power source that is resilient to politics? I struggle to imagine what that would even look like.

Re: Nuclear Power Is the Answer to Global and Environmental Energy Woes

#214

Post by lispm »

illiarian wrote: post #156
lispm wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is rare and currently we have a diverse mix of electricity production. When wind gets more dominant, it will be offshore and connected to a larger North Sea grid. Then storage will be more important and also more viable. I'd guess that in ten years the max capacity for wind electrical energy in my region (Northern Germany) is around 2 to 3 times larger than the max demand. Thus large scale storage will be build…

> This is rare This literally happened just 6 days ago. > we have a diverse mix of electricity production. Yes, yes we do: coal and biofuel (so more burning), and corn for biofuel is taking up 6% of Germany's land area. > When wind gets more dominant, it will be offshore and connected to a larger North Sea grid So, some magical future > I'd guess that in ten years the max capacity for wind electrical energy in my reg…

> This literally happened just 6 days ago.

On what day it happened is independent of how often this happens, for how long, with what demand and the amount of other electricity supplies..

> So, some magical future

A nice slogan you have here. It sounds cute, but essentially it is pessimistic and anti-technology.

We heard this twenty years ago. This year the share of renewable energy for electricity production is 50%. In a decade it will be much higher. The prices for deployment are going down. The cost for nuclear is going up, nuclear projects often have huge cost overruns and are slow to deploy. Example: The 'new' Finnish EPR reactor is 8 billion Euros more expensive than planned (up from 3 billion to 11 billion Euros) and 13 years late. Without government invention the building company from France (Areva) would have been killed - it had to take a 5 billion Euro loss from building the power plant with a fixed-price contract.

> Max capacity means nothing when production is low.

A high max capacity means that it makes sense to invest in storage and backup technology.

> More magical thinking (there are currently no grid-scale storage solutions that would've survived just one night from the link I provided)

We also currently have not the wind dependence. In the future this will change with more offshore wind farms.

That has nothing to do with 'magical thinking', it has to do with investments into technology and the created market conditions. Grid scale in the future means that there will be a large amount of storage options, backup supplies and diverse forms of demand steering.

Re: Nuclear Power Is the Answer to Global and Environmental Energy Woes

#215

Post by llsf »

chronicsonic wrote: post #105
eric-burel wrote: post #12

As a French not expert in the matter but living near nuclear plants: - one of the plant regularly leaks radioactive material - rivers are getting too hot to cool down nuclear plants correctly - nuclear plants are very unreliable, we almost got out of power this winter and next winter will be equally tough (only an abnormally hot winter avoid cuts...) - the government wants to simplify control organism and laws around…

Aren’t the reactors there too old and being operated above the original build age? Not sure so was wondering

France had to stop some reactors after detecting defected pipes. This was not due to age, but manufacturing issue. Plants are constantly being monitored and pieces are replaced. After 50 years, very few pieces are original. That is why US and France keep pushing the retirement age of their plants as they function fine.

Re: Nuclear Power Is the Answer to Global and Environmental Energy Woes

#216

Post by jltsiren »

UncleEntity wrote: post #172
jltsiren wrote: post #147

Nuclear power can be an answer, but it's not flexible enough to be the answer. The demand for power is variable, and the difference between base demand and peak demand can be 2x or even 2.5x. While nuclear power can be viable for satisfying the base demand, it's viability for the variable part is another question. Then there are cheap renewables. If you don't constrain the market artificially, it tends to build solar…

There are many, many industries that could benefit from electricity being “too cheap to meter” that could suck up the excess production. Maybe they train GPT-25 only when the demand is low enough the power producers basically give it away?

That is already happening. One particularly promising scheme is using electricity to make hydrogen and then using that hydrogen in steel production.

But those industries also have other expenses. Even if you assume that energy is free, the investment may not be viable.

Re: Nuclear Power Is the Answer to Global and Environmental Energy Woes

#217

Post by runarberg »

NineStarPoint wrote: post #106
Lacerda69 wrote: post #28

Cue the atomic fanatics vs the renewable cult discussion. Has been discussed a thousand times on HN recently and it always seems both are just shouting how the other side can not see the obvious superiority of their fav energy source. why cant we have a bit of both? renewable seems very good long term and nuclear is also nice for transition. but I wouldnt want to live next to one of those crappy leaky french reactors…

I feel like most people I know who push Nuclear are already arguing for the use of both, and it’s the renewable side that argues that Nuclear is too dangerous to use or not necessary. Or have you come across a lot of Nuclear proponents arguing that we shouldn’t be using solar energy at all?

The author of this article for one is someone who does not believe renewables should coexist with anything. Preferring continued use of coal over expanding renewables:

> Possibly, wind, solar, and utility-scale batteries can play some role in consistent electricity. Until that takes place coal, natural gas, and nuclear are the only sources of energy to electricity that provide this benefit for grid stabilization and human longevity.

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/coal-versus-wind-rene...

Re: Nuclear Power Is the Answer to Global and Environmental Energy Woes

#218

Post by epistasis »

Lacerda69 wrote: post #28

Cue the atomic fanatics vs the renewable cult discussion. Has been discussed a thousand times on HN recently and it always seems both are just shouting how the other side can not see the obvious superiority of their fav energy source. why cant we have a bit of both? renewable seems very good long term and nuclear is also nice for transition. but I wouldnt want to live next to one of those crappy leaky french reactors…

No, we can't have a bit of both, because despite heroic efforts with tens of billions of dollars being dumped into nuclear since 2008, it hasn't produced.

We tried four reactors back then, using a new regulatory process that was supposed to speed construction and reduce costs. Instead, costs and timelines ballooned 3x. Two of the four reactors were abandoned half-way through construction, resulting in rate payers holding the bag for billions of dollars and no Wh delivered to the grid. Executives are being criminally prosecuted for fraud.

The other two reactors are supposed to complete late this year, but I don't think any honest person should rely on such timelines when they inevitably slip every single time.

Nuclear is not something we can realiably build. We are bad at big construction jobs to begin with. But when you add in training up massive new workforces for extremely specialized welding or concrete pour skills, it's hugely inefficient because we don't know how to utilize this labor effectively. People sit idle for months, waiting for their chance to work. Just a gigantic clusterfuck of logistical (mis)management.

And construction productivity has stagnated since the 70s, while manufacturing productivity has gone through the roof. We should use our limited construction capacity to build factories to manufacture things, not spend it on nuclear reactors. $15B spent on solar or battery production facilities will churn out many many GW year after year of additional capacity, whereas it only buys a single GW of nuclear. And that's in the best case scenario where we actually finish the damn reactor...

Re: Nuclear Power Is the Answer to Global and Environmental Energy Woes

#219

Post by lispm »

illiarian wrote: post #157
lispm wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If nuclear is so great in Sweden, why were so many plants closed there?

Politics. Then politics. Then FUD and more politics. As a result last year energy prices shot up and there was nothing to counterbalance energy shortages.

Energy is always politics.

Nuclear has been expensive in Sweden.

Re: Nuclear Power Is the Answer to Global and Environmental Energy Woes

#220

Post by epistasis »

NineStarPoint wrote: post #106
Lacerda69 wrote: post #28

Cue the atomic fanatics vs the renewable cult discussion. Has been discussed a thousand times on HN recently and it always seems both are just shouting how the other side can not see the obvious superiority of their fav energy source. why cant we have a bit of both? renewable seems very good long term and nuclear is also nice for transition. but I wouldnt want to live next to one of those crappy leaky french reactors…

I feel like most people I know who push Nuclear are already arguing for the use of both, and it’s the renewable side that argues that Nuclear is too dangerous to use or not necessary. Or have you come across a lot of Nuclear proponents arguing that we shouldn’t be using solar energy at all?

The only people I meet who argue in favor of nuclear also spend a ton of time arguing against solar, wind, and storage. They also actively promote outdated incorrect knowledge of these technologies.

YMMV, of course!

For an example in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35658964

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