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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

#391

Post by therealdrag0 »

k8wk1 wrote: post #326
jillesvangurp wrote: post #310

Except in the real world where wind + solar account for the vast majority of GW added. Nuclear just doesn't matter. It's 2023, there's an energy crisis on. Where are the new nuclear plants in Europe? Where are the GW of power saving us from rolling blackouts in Europe? Nuclear is a no show. It didn't happen. Not even a little bit. It didn't matter. Too little (well barely anything at all), too late. There's this pesk…

Wind and solar are only possible because they use the rest of the grid as effectively a giant battery. When the sun shines and/or the wind blows, someone else needs to reduce the electricity generation. The end result will be that during good weather the price of electricity is zero, and during any other time the price of electricity is high to pay for unused capacity and additional wear and tear on the equipment due…

Also because of the natural gas boom. Better than coal sure but worse than nuclear.

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

#392

Post by Manuel_D »

dale_glass wrote: post #378
Manuel_D wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The point is that nuclear is safe because we've been making it safer over time, and that rarely makes it cheaper. The specific ways in which that's done isn't the point. Er, no it is the point. We've always been using the safety mechanisms you specified, so it's not going to affect costs because those safety features have always been there. > Everything does, but nuclear benefits less. Precisely because of what you…

> Er, no it is the point. We've always been using the safety mechanisms you specified, so it's not going to affect costs because those safety features have always been there. Again, the point is a generic one. When we find a problem with nuclear, we add extra safety systems. Those cost money. This is something much rarer with say, solar or wind because there's less that can go wrong, less backups needed, and breakage…

> Again, the point is a generic one. When we find a problem with nuclear, we add extra safety systems. Those cost money.

And again, we already added that safety system. There is no "extra safety systems" because it's already there.

> But it does mean there's factories already pumping them out, plentiful production capacity, competition, and cheap prices.

Exactly: production is already at scale so making a large order for a bunch of alternators for wind turbines isn't going to lead to further saving because it's a drop in the total market for alternators. As a contrast to nuclear power components - where nuclear plants are the only market - so a tenfold increase in the production of nuclear plants leads to a tenfold increase in the production of pressure vessels.

> People will build intermittent sources because they're cheap to build, and because intermittency isn't the provider's problem. Then things break, and people will seek solutions. There will be a rush and various patchwork solutions being implemented in a panic.

Correct, and the solution to intermittency that we've found is to burn fossil fuels. The battery storage facilities being provisioned are nowhere near large enough to be significant. Hydroelectric storage requires specific geographic features, and isn't widely available. You're right: when we have shortages of electricity people will implement solutions. And the solution grid operators have found to the intermittency problem is to continue burning fossil fuels.

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

#393

Post by audunw »

brucethemoose2 wrote: post #87
cschwarm wrote: post #25

Question(s) to the nuclear supporters here: 1. Are you talking about global electricity? Or just the West? 2. How much nuclear power do you want? 20%, 50%, 70%, or 100%? Or something else? 3. What nuclear technology? Traditional, Molten Salt, SMRs, or something else? 4. What institutional setting do you image for your nuclear power plants? Private ownership, or nationalized plants like in France? Just curious...

1. Yes! 2. Just some more than we have now. 3. Yes! 4. Yes! Seriously though, I just want some reactor construction to spin up with non ancient reactor designs, to replace some fossil fuel plants. PBR[1] sounds good to me... but what do I know? There are experts who can decide this. 1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble-bed_reactor

These are the kinds of anwsers that makes me think you haven't thought through this much.

There are very clear plans for going 100% renewable. See Marc Z Jacobsens studies for instance. I wouldn't mind some nuclear power myself. But there just doesn't seem to be a clear plan about what approach to take. We don't have time to just dabble in various new reactor technologies.

To me it seems we could either build old simple reactors that we don't really trust anymore. I wouldn't mind, but it's not realistic. Or try to get Gen III+ and Gen IV reactors down in cost. But will it help? Will it be worth the investments? I guess we should at least keep existing nuclear engineers employed.

Seems to me that the only barrier now to just going all-in on renewables is energy storage. The next next few decades will be aaaaall about energy storage and transformation technologies anyway.. so there's an argument to be had that it's a good thing to just go all in on energy storage R&D. That kind of expertise will be critical to decarbonizing transportation, fertilizer and metal production anyway. Better energy storage makes it easier to decarbonize across all sectors. There's excellent network effects. Better nuclear only helps decarbonizing the grid, but that's just a part of our challenge.

Nuclear is not going to power every country anyway. That ship has basically already sailed with solar+energy storage. It's just the simplest way to get up and running with electricity if you don't have a grid, and as technologies improve, developing areas will just continue to scale that up.

The big X factor is advanced geothermal energy. I think once the fossil fuel industry sees the writing on the wall, a lot of engineers from that sector will go into geothermal. If just one of them manages to succeed getting the cost down, and drill deeper, what's the point of nuclear fission?

And then there's the fact that nuclear directly contributes to global warming by directly heating up the planet. Much less than greenhouse gases, but surprisingly much. That's extra heat we can't really afford in the coming decades. Rivers are going to end up being at the edge of ecologoical collapse due to global warming... and we're going to dump MORE heat into them?

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

#394

Post by pydry »

Reason077 wrote: post #329
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…

> ”Nuclear has a load factor of 95%” That’s very optimistic. Perhaps an ideal nuclear plant with a perfect operating record might approach 95%, but real-world load factors are lower as most plants end up requiring extended outages for repairs as some point in their lifetime. France’s lifetime load factors for its nuclear plants are around 77%, but that declined sharply in recent years to 72% in 2020-21 and even lower…

I didn't realize it went as low as that.

Some wind farms can hit 65%

https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/worlds-first-fl...

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

#395

Post by Manuel_D »

evilos wrote: post #372
dale_glass wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Western nuclear power plants always had containment buildings, so no, this isn't a factor. The point is that nuclear is safe because we've been making it safer over time, and that rarely makes it cheaper. The specific ways in which that's done isn't the point. Mass production in general is made cheaper by simplifying and cutting corners. Nuclear isn't terribly friendly towards this, you can't just go "How about we…

Everyone is assuming/hoping that a majority renewables national energy system is possible/economical. I don't think it is, but even if you do it's a gamble. No one is sure because it's not been done before. At a minimum you'll have to build several thousands of miles of new transmission and millions of panels/turbines. Those panels/turbines will last maybe 30 years. Batteries aren't going to cut it, you'll need under…

A bit pedantic here, but majority renewable national energy systems have been built but only with hydroelectricity. Norway and some other countries generate >95% of their electricity from dams.

But of course, dams can't be built everywhere, so it's not a scalable solution.

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

#396

Post by hindsightbias »

Whether astroturfers or free thinkers, I think the baseline requirement for any pro discussion should be prefaced with a redlined doc of the NRC reactor construction code citing all the oppressive regulations whose deletion will lead to our nuclear utopia.

Stop factifantisizing and show us all the ways to move fast and break all things nuclear.

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

#397

Post by evilos »

forgetfreeman wrote: post #344
evilos wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you basing these statements on?

Without doing a lick of research into the particulars of this plant the statement scans based on storage requirements for high level radioactive waste alone. Some of this shit has to be stored for several multiples of recorded civilization before it becomes anything like safe. We're talking borderline geologic time scales.

Fortunately that's not true. The fission products that are actually dangerous only stick around for 300 to 600 years [1]. After that, you'd have to ingest what is left to be harmed. We have existing facilities [2] in the US where we can bury waste in such a way that it essentially becomes crystalized in salt after 100 years. Water moves centimeters per billion years in this salt. This one facility could easily service the entire country in perpetuity, even with 100x increase in nuclear energy.

Despite what the antis will tell you, the waste aspect of nuclear energy is overwhelmingly positive. And the crazy thing is, spent nuclear fuel isn't even waste. 90% of the energy is still in there. So why on earth would you bury it?

[1]:https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fs4euEoWYAAx65C?format=jpg&name=... [2]:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6no0FmPk84

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

#398

Post by audunw »

matsemann wrote: post #139
cschwarm wrote: post #25

Question(s) to the nuclear supporters here: 1. Are you talking about global electricity? Or just the West? 2. How much nuclear power do you want? 20%, 50%, 70%, or 100%? Or something else? 3. What nuclear technology? Traditional, Molten Salt, SMRs, or something else? 4. What institutional setting do you image for your nuclear power plants? Private ownership, or nationalized plants like in France? Just curious...

Most of them don't really want nuclear, they just push it as an excuse to do nothing right now (at least here in Norway). Yes, more nuclear is probably good. But planning, permissions, building and getting a reactor up and running probably is 15+ years most places. We need power before then. So we can't stop building wind farms, solar etc. in the meantime. Which is really what they want to achieve where I live: avoid…

Yeah, while the fossil fuel lobby used to fight against nuclear, I'm pretty sure they're indirectly using nuclear to fight renewables right now.

For them, either renewables will cut into their business right now.. or they can argue we should build nuclear instead.. which could either lead to nothing getting built, or that nuclear gets built in 10-15 years. Either way, they delay the threat to their business. So it's a win for them either way. I don't think they have high hopes to fight off renewables or nuclear forever. So whichever is slower is better.

Pure speculation on my part, I'll admit. But I see so many arguing for nuclear who doesn't seem to care AT ALL about climate change or preserving nature when you press them on their arguments. So I can't help think that way.

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

#399

Post by pydry »

cyberax wrote: post #367
formerly_proven wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear is not really suitable for load-following, at least not the installed capacity. Some are technically capable but load-following seems to be quite taxing on the equipment due to pressure and temperature cycling. However it is very suitable for base load generation, there's a reason why oil and coal companies lost their marbles in the 50s and astroturfed anti-nuclear into existence. I'm not sure if that's their…

> Nuclear is not really suitable for load-following, at least not the installed capacity. That's not quite the case. You can load-follow with nuclear, but it requires reactors to be designed for that. France does this, for example. You also can simply keep reactors working at a constant level and just dump excess power into their cooling system. This is not as bad as it sounds, because fuel is just about ~5% of the t…

>This is not as bad as it sounds, because fuel is just about ~5% of the total cost of the produced nuclear energy.

Therein lies the problem. Capital costs dominate nuclear plant costs and they are high.

If you load followed such that you kept the reactor at an average of, say, 50% nameplate capacity that would lead to a levelized cost per MWh of about 2x$168 = $336.

(LCOE listed here is $168: https://www.reuters.com/breakingviews/green-surge-is-circuit...)

For reference, Bhadla solar park sells a MWh for roughly $30, so even if you charged $300 to store and retrieve it you could still provide cheaper electricity than a load following nuclear power plant running at 50% of nameplate.

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

#400

Post by Retric »

k8wk1 wrote: post #349
Retric wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Low electricity costs are a problem for all electricity plans, not only nuclear. Renewables are even more susceptible to this because the weather affects all renewable plants of the same type similarly across wide geographic areas, so there will be times when they all generate more than is needed and nothing can be done about it. What's worse, the output is unpredictable, so there's little opportunity for some busine…

Low is relative, in most areas a 3c/kWh wholesale price is wildly profitable for solar and a massive loss for nuclear.

Renewables very much provide surplus power at scale, but they don’t always provide that massive surplus. So, Solar could provide 3/4 of its power when wholesale prices are below 1c/kWh and the economics still end up working out over the year. Meanwhile every other source of power needs to deal with electricity being increasingly cheap for most of the day.

> At least the weekend demand drop is predictable, so businesses can use this predictable opportunity to reduce their costs and thus reduce the impact the weekends have on the profitability of nuclear and similar dispatchable plants.

There’s almost nothing nuclear can do to reduce its costs when demand is low for a few days. They still need to pay interest, still need security guards, the reinforced concrete is still aging etc. They do major maintenance when seasonal demand drops normally in the spring or fall, but they don’t have any way to make use of downtown over weekends because weekends are so frequent. In a world with cheap electricity for 1/3 the day and cheap electricity 2/7 days a week and cheap electricity for 3-6 months out of the year, they need very high prices the rest of the time to break even.

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