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Nuclear Power Is the Answer to Global and Environmental Energy Woes

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

#331

Post by evilos »

Kon5ole wrote: post #318
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…

>Still, amortized over more than half a century they've ended up being the second-cheapest source of power in the province Even after 50 years you have accumulated only a small percentage of the total costs related to the plant. They will most likely cost more money after they have been decommissioned than they did during operation.

What are you basing these statements on?

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

#332

Post by artemonster »

formerly_proven wrote: post #325
otherme123 wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By reliability he refers to french nuclear plants stopped for months due to mantainance and repairs (mainly leaks that couldn't be scheduled). Painting nuclear as a 100% free of problem energy makes people sound as car salesmans. As of today, nobody want to finance or insure them. As soon as you say "ok, build them reactors if they are so perfect", nuclear advocates want the state to jump in and asume the costs, the…

> the consumers to pay an extra price The (botched) green energy transformation has given the country I live in top 3 highest electricity prices in the world and it's not even particularly green at all. Literally cannot get worse. And it seems to me that one half doesn't understand how incredibly bad high energy prices are both for people and industry, while the other half cheers at the prices because it causes deind…

Germany?

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

#333

Post by evilos »

Retric wrote: post #211
throw0101b wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Based on the graphs from that site, demand never drops low enough to need to lower the output of the nuclear plants.

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

#334

Post by _ph_ »

locallost wrote: post #152
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...

I don't get this bogus argument. Germany is using the least coal in its history for electricity. The data is very easy to find, but it's a knee jerk reaction that they got rid of nuclear and so they must've replaced it with coal. Not true at all, and it's getting tiring reading this nonsense.

50% of the German electricity are now renewable, wind, solar, biomass, water. In 2022, Germany was creating and exporting a considerable chunk of electricity to help plugging the holes left by the switched off French reactors.

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

#335

Post by cyberax »

otherme123 wrote: post #239
Nodraak wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> one of the plant regularly leaks radioactive material Please share numbers demonstration health hazards. For ex, bananas are radioactive. Should we outlaw bananas? > rivers are getting too hot to cool down nuclear plants correctly That's wrong. In 2022, the power output had to be reduced by 0.18% (not a typo) ( https://twitter.com/energybants/status/1645696906327388160 ). In addition, Nuclear plants can work even i…

By reliability he refers to french nuclear plants stopped for months due to mantainance and repairs (mainly leaks that couldn't be scheduled). Painting nuclear as a 100% free of problem energy makes people sound as car salesmans. As of today, nobody want to finance or insure them. As soon as you say "ok, build them reactors if they are so perfect", nuclear advocates want the state to jump in and asume the costs, the…

> By reliability he refers to french nuclear plants stopped for months due to mantainance and repairs (mainly leaks that couldn't be scheduled).

That's not quite correct. France deferred maintenance during COVID and scheduled the downtime in advance. The inspections then found potential problems, so other reactors did additional maintenance and checks.

They could have been deferred further if needed, but politicians were not willing to make the call.

> Painting nuclear as a 100% free of problem energy makes people sound as car salesmans.

Nuclear energy is the one that is actually proven to work and be reliable enough to completely displace fossil generation. Nothing else is coming close to that, including solar and wind.

> As of today, nobody want to finance or insure them.

Russia is busy exporting nuclear power plants. A nuclear reactor can be built within 6 years, two reactors within ~9 years (they're built in parallel).

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

#336

Post by evilos »

AnonCoward42 wrote: post #276
tremon wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Coal power plants, wind turbines and mostly anything else. They can end up catastrophic in a sense, but not to the same degree nuclear fission plants can end up.

Coal has killed tens of millions from air pollution alone. Civilian nuclear power has probably killed on the order of a few thousand, at most. The studies that say millions have died as a result from Chernobyl is propaganda funded by Greenpeace and friends.

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

#337

Post by jpgvm »

lispm wrote: post #287
jpgvm wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where else are you going to go though? Germany threw in the towel, nuclear has been stagnant in France and USA for decades. Maybe Sweden/Finland? They do it but slowly, expensively and are a whole generation behind. That leaves you with China. Which from an objective/technical standpoint is actually excellent because their current designs are extremely good. However it's probably not tenable for the West to procure n…

China especially leads the deployment of coal power plants. Two new blocks of coal power plants are getting online every week.

Sure but -also- all the other things. The fact they are still building coal because they literally can't build everything else fast enough doesn't invalidate their leadership in all the more advanced technology.

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

#338

Post by q1w2 »

Kon5ole wrote: post #318
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…

>Still, amortized over more than half a century they've ended up being the second-cheapest source of power in the province Even after 50 years you have accumulated only a small percentage of the total costs related to the plant. They will most likely cost more money after they have been decommissioned than they did during operation.

This is only if you demolish them, which makes as much sense as demolishing the Hover Dam.

There is nothing intrinsic that requires the plant to be ripped apart. It can be run indefinitely like any large concrete structure.

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

#339

Post by Kon5ole »

Manuel_D wrote: post #189
KennyBlanken wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear proponents when trying to sell nuclear love to shout about how successful France is. Someone from France is telling you that actually, it's really not that great...and now France's nuclear program is terrible and the result of 20-30 years of neglect and politics? Also, which part of "nuclear plants are sensitive to environmental changes" didn't you get? If there's no cooling water, or the water is too hot, th…

> Nuclear is the most expensive form of electrical generation while wind and solar are the cheapest. Except if you add the cost of 12 hours of batteries to solar it's massively more expensive. You can't just compare an intermittent source and a non-intermittent source, without factoring in the cost of storage.

>Except if you add the cost of 12 hours of batteries to solar it's massively more expensive.

Nobody knows what nuclear costs, because nobody knows what it will cost to handle the waste 10 years from now, let alone 100 or 1000 years from now. The solution to this for most nuclear operators has been to pay a symbolic fee and let the taxpayers cover the rest "in blanco".

When accidents happen, costs also arrive very suddenly. Nuclear power in Japan is quite expensive already, for example.

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

#340

Post by Reason077 »

evilos wrote: post #331
Kon5ole wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Still, amortized over more than half a century they've ended up being the second-cheapest source of power in the province Even after 50 years you have accumulated only a small percentage of the total costs related to the plant. They will most likely cost more money after they have been decommissioned than they did during operation.

What are you basing these statements on?

Take the UK as an example. It’s estimated that to decommission our former nuclear sites (built between the 1950s and 1980s) will cost around £260 billion[1] and take 120 years to complete.

This includes the cost of decommissioning closed nuclear plants, disposing of waste, and cleaning up contaminated sites.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/23/uk-nucle...

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