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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

#481

Post by ben_w »

polotics wrote: post #412
MezzoDelCammin wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, he's got that right. It's been a pretty major recurring story in the news in France through this autumn. I haven't really followed through the details, but the idea was that several reactors were down for a planned overhaul/maintenance for something like this (material defects) through the summer. As the delays ("nuclear projects are never on time") piled up story was "will they make it in time for winter". Pre…

The details: one tube on a safety backup system, so with a 0.1% chance of needing to be used, was shown to have the potential to corrode under strain ("corrosion sous contrainte") this led to all plants using that kind of tube being shut down for months because of extreme care. The irony being that this extreme care is keeping things extremely safe, but somehow in the news it comes out as "nuclear is unsafe". The rea…

While I personally share the opinion that the standard that nuclear is held to is higher than it needs to be — on the basis of the old "deaths per TWh" chart — this standard leads to them being both expensive to build and run, and also to it being shut down for months making it unreliable.

I've noticed by trying that one cannot simply win a political argument by waving the banner of utilitarian ethics. (I'm hoping fusion can circumvent this, if anyone can even commercialise it; we shall see). Likewise, best to compare with other power plants rather than other industrial accidents, and not just because what happened in Bohpal (and its less newsworthy cousins) should not have happened.

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

#482

Post by lispm »

jpgvm wrote: post #337
lispm wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Is it leadership or just lower requirements, no rule of law and suppression of any opposition (political or technological)?

It's easier to build reactors when there are no environmental/safety/security concerns voiced, because those voice end up in prisons. China also builds up its coal power plants with high speed, while knowing that its air is already extremely polluted. Environmental concerns generally don't seem to be a priority. Each reactor built inside the country will heat up or dry the rivers, due to cooling requirements. Such a number of thermal power plants (coal and nuclear) will kill life in these rivers, when they return warm water into the rivers.

Is safety of these reactors also on this level of environmental neglect?

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

#483

Post by ben_w »

epups wrote: post #460
Retric wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Batteries fed cheap solar power can provide relatively cheap peaking power whenever you want. That’s going to effectively be the maximum daily wholesale price per kWh long term. Wind/Hydro and possibly some Nuclear might survive in that kind of an environment, but most industry insiders think Nuclear is basically doomed outside the far north without truly massive subsidies.

Small problem, we don't have enough batteries to power even one large city for a day and we won't have those for at least a decade.

A decade is fine.

While it would be nice if all the required nuclear or storage was installed decades ago, (1) we don't need to do this transition overnight, (2) a decade is on the optimistic side for rolling out new nuclear on this scale so it's not much of an improvement in that regard, and (3) most of the existing power infrastructure can be kept running until the batteries are available, and we get to keep looking at storage supply in the supply is still growing appropriately for the targets.

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

#484

Post by Kon5ole »

cyberax wrote: post #347
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.

This is a straightforward lie. Decommissioning a nuclear power plant down to a "brown field" can cost about 10% of its construction cost. Even grossly mismanaged decommissioning projects are at about 25%. For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rancho_Seco_Nuclear_Generating...

It's not a lie, I am obviously not talking about the cost of decommissioning but the costs that keep ticking after the decommissioning has been done.

Rancho seco is an interesting example, it was closed in 1989 and is still costing millions today. "SMUD estimates that it spends roughly $5 million each year to essentially "babysit" the waste, which requires tight security and a small crew to oversee its proper storage”

https://www.sacbee.com/latest-news/article210858009.html"

Also worth noting is that the DoE has paid SMUD over 100 million dollars to date for contract violations (failing to present a storage site for the waste).

The funny thing is that operators book this money as _income_ related to the nuclear plant, when it is in fact costs to the taxpayers.

Also keep in mind of course that if and when SMUD finally gets rid of the waste, that only stops the costs ticking for SMUD, not for the taxpayers.

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

#485

Post by fsh »

godelski wrote: post #445
reso wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument that costs will come down if we build more nuclear worked in the 1950s, but we know now where that goes now. Build More nuclear and costs come down. With more plants there are inevitably more nuclear incidents, the public realizes these things can make entire nations uninhabitable if they fail, and then they demand a halt to nuclear, pushing prices back up. Nuclear prices have baked in the public sentime…

> With more plants there are inevitably more nuclear incidents Can we stop making this argument? It is an extremely bad faith argument. There have only been two accidents of commercial reactors in the history of nuclear power that led to the loss of lives. The likely value is well under 10k ( Yes, there's more nuance to this, but we also need to recognize the actual level of danger. These arguments pretend that scien…

It is quite misleading to only focus on deaths due to nuclear accidents. Fukushima may not have (directly) killed anyone, but the cleanup is hideously expensive (estimates say many hundred billion dollars). Containing Chernobyl costed a few percent of Ukraine's pre-war annual budget. So far, roughly one in a hundred power reactors have blown up. If this is priced in, the economics get even less favorable.

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

#486

Post by lispm »

option wrote: post #371
lispm wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't talk about winning. Russia lost almost all political influence in Europe. In exchange for small parts of the Ukraine which are now minefields. > their original goal Their original goal was to conquer the whole of the Ukraine in a few days. What happened was that the parts they have conquered are destroyed. They lost >100k soldiers (dead or wounded). They exposed their military capabilities to be way worse tha…

again, you think it is stupid and I think it is stupid. But from their perspective (and their perspective guides their actions) they are the only ones gaining territory in the world, restoring what they think is historically just for them. Again, projecting “common sense” values on putin’s government failed so many Western politicians.

> But from their perspective (and their perspective guides their actions) they are the only ones gaining territory in the world, restoring what they think is historically just for them.

The territory they got is tiny and far from what Putin wanted. Putin destroyed the territory he got, its full of mines, its infrastructure is destroyed and its people were traumatized / driven out.

Additionally they lost way much more than they got. Russia is now a political outcast in Europe and its direct influence zone is imploded to now only consisting of very few countries in Europe (Serbia, Hungary, ...).

> Again, projecting “common sense” values on putin’s government failed so many Western politicians.

This has nothing to do with "common sense". Politicians were bought or tricked into believing that Russia is a reliable partner, while Putin worked on his dictatorship and his imperialistic goals. For Putin a democratic Ukraine, integrated into European/international systems, like the EU or NATO, is a threat to his politics of increasing authoritarianism.

People who were not in this influence zone, could easily see the future trajectory of Putin's policy: from Crimea, Syria, using refuges and energy as weapons, silencing his opposition, up to the attack on the Ukraine.

Energy is a multi-billion business and a crucial resource for each country. This makes people blind.

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

#487

Post by jillesvangurp »

godelski wrote: post #441
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…

> 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. I think this is a rather inaccurate characterization and we need to be a bit more nuanced here. I'm going to address this out of order, and first with the power shortage. Power shorta…

That's a lot of text. It does not mention dollars, euros, etc. or cost. You are making my point for me.

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

#488

Post by Kon5ole »

evilos wrote: post #401
Reason077 wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

The UK is very much an outlier in the nuclear sector as they went with impossible to refurbish gas cooled reactors. Their experience is unlikely to resemble other countries. In the US at least, the cost for all decommissioning and fuel handling are built into the cost of electricity sold by law.

>In the US at least, the cost for all decommissioning and fuel handling are built into the cost of electricity sold by law.

That was the plan, but it has failed. The mechanism varies but the end result is the same - the operator doesn't pay the actual costs, so they don't charge the actual costs from the customers. The actual costs are paid by taxpayers from some anonymized bucket of money, like a government entity.

As an example, the DOE has so far paid over 100 million USD to SMUD for the decommissioned Rancho Seco plant and will continue to pay for decades more. The operator doesn't pay - the government does.

This has been proven to be true in best-case scenarios like the US, France, Germany and Sweden, and of course once anything deviates from best-case the costs become astronomical almost immediately (Japan).

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

#489

Post by jpgvm »

lispm wrote: post #482
jpgvm wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Is it leadership or just lower requirements, no rule of law and suppression of any opposition (political or technological)? It's easier to build reactors when there are no environmental/safety/security concerns voiced, because those voice end up in prisons. China also builds up its coal power plants with high speed, while knowing that its air is already extremely polluted. Environmental concerns generally don't seem…

First of all you seem to be confusing their designs with the more common LWR design which is commonly used in Europe/US. Instead most of their new fleet is planned based on HTG pebble bed designs. These have much different cooling requirements and are actually being built at smaller size and being deployed into remote desert areas like Xinjiang. This design was selected specifically because it's low water and cooling requirements - also it's proliferation resistance as Xinjiang has historical instability and proximity to Afghanistan. The rest will likely be based on the Hualong One design which is an EPR reactor that has 5x the output of the HTG SMR designs but does require more extensive cooling and isn't proliferation resistant so will likely only be built in stable area with ample cooling.

Nuclear reactors are just one area I highlighted they are dominating in. Are you saying the reason they are doing so well in solar, wind, batteries and coal is all just down to ignoring environmental concerns?

How then can you address their improvements in air quality in Shanghai and Beijing? See https://www.statista.com/statistics/690823/china-annual-pm25... and https://www.statista.com/statistics/1283503/china-annual-pm2.... Air quality is even good in industralia hubs like Shenzhen these days but I couldn't find the same long term statistics. You can see the current air quality here though: https://www.iqair.com/th-en/china/guangdong/shenzhen. Right it's somewhat worse because of all the burning happening in SEA.

I know it's fashionable to pretend the Chinese are cheating or something but the data simply doesn't support that assertion.

I spent quite a lot of time in China over the last 10 years and everything has changed drastically. There was a time where I used to think "Hey China is basically caught up to the West". That time has long since past, on my recent visits it feels like going to the future instead and the slow realisation they completely passed us by has set in.

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

#490

Post by eric-burel »

jcampbell1 wrote: post #317
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.

Solar + battery doesn’t bother anyone. Wind turbines have mild resistance from people who think they are an eyesore or people worried about migratory birds.

Solar on roof has no resistance, but solar plants takes a lot of space and it starts being a source of conflict in some places of France. It's important to take everyone opinion into account to avoid doing stupid things like putting wind turbines way too close to people houses or farms.
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