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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

#531

Post by uecker »

illiarian wrote: post #321
k8wk1 wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, the reason this is only possible at all is that Germany uses the rest of Europe as a giant battery to manage the non-dispatchability of renewables. The import-export balance often changes by as much as one third of Germany consumption in 12 hours [1]. The electricity prices are also becoming zero[2] in Germany during parts of the day, which is a great outcome only on the surface. As this progresses, the consequ…

> dispatchable electricity sources is fully tapped to balance renewables across Europe. We will see very high prices during mornings and evenings and whenever it's cold and dark It's already a problem in Sweden. It exports electricity to Germany when demand is high... which leaves nothing to Sweden, and the prices skyrocket. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-12/swedish-m...

The prices in summer were so high mainly because half of France nuclear plants were offline. Look, even the article you cite mentions this: "The largest Nordic nation became the region’s top exporter in the first half after France suffered problems at its aging reactors"

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

#532

Post by godelski »

fsh wrote: post #510
olejorgenb wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/reactors.html#tab=duratio... there has been 649 reactors operating giving 0.3% "blown up" (calling fukushima blown up is misleading IMO, but ok). Still quite high when looked at from this angle, but not 1/100. I'm quite sure, but not 100% that the above number does *not* include research reactors. If it makes sense to include those into the statistics is less clear.

Fukushima had three meltdowns (reactors 1-3), and a hydrogen gas explosion that damaged the spent fuel pool of reactor 4. Together with Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, this corresponds to roughly 1% of all commissioned reactors suffering catastrophic failure with significant radiation release.

You both are making statistical errors. You've aggregated the data improperly. As I mentioned in the original rant, this calculation throws out the temporal component and thus 80 years of development and research. Safety has greatly increased over the last 20 years, let alone 80.

Don't aggregate out time

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

#534

Post by locallost »

illiarian wrote: post #512
locallost wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Germany already began shutting down reactors in 2011 and coal use continued to go down. The proof is in the pudding -- data beats predictions. The rise in renewables will continue to decrease coal use. Deadline for coal is 2038, with possibly moving it to 2030.

> The proof is in the pudding -- data beats predictions. Tell me, using data, on a quiet night, where does Germany's electricity come from, and where it will come from this wondrous future of 2030?

Makes no difference. Your claim was that Germany replaced nuclear with coal. Here are the hard numbers:

https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/sites/default/files/medien/38...

The bottom three are:

black coal in magenta

nuclear in gray

brown coal in brown

Nuclear shutdowns started in Germany in 2011. Check the numbers.

BTW with what did France replace its failing reactors last year?

https://apnews.com/article/europe-business-france-climate-an...

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

#535

Post by ben_w »

_a_a_a_ wrote: post #526
ben_w wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Current $/MWh prices are high enough that, given current LiIon prices (and that LiIon is what we get even if we don't put in any effort to get cheaper alternatives given its widespread usage), I recommend people stop trying to make it happen and put their efforts elsewhere. But my claim is, if Chernobyl hadn't Chernobyled, the $/MWh price would probably be lower. I'm not making a specific claim that it would be cheap…

You seemed to be saying that the standards nuclear is held to is higher than is necessary. Compared to what? Was my question. I asked about the cost of Chernobyl, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_disasters_by_cost $790 billion at 2021 cost so my point was perhaps it is being held to a higher standard for a very good reason. (NB. I'm not automatically against nuclear power, but I seriously question their pot…

Sure, it's a perfectly reasonable question and I ought to have justified it better.

Ok, so, total energy produced to by all nuclear reactors in the world in 2021 was apparently 2,653,344 GWh[0]; if there was a Chernobyl-scale disaster every year, that would add just under $0.30/kWh to the cost of electricity[1]. As reactors didn't have such a poor MTBF even then, I think a decade is a less unreasonable guess for rate of exploding, which is 3¢/kWh.

This may seem too concerned with dollars and not enough with lives, but similar things can be said in favour of lives cost per unit of energy produced, and again that's in favour of a yearly Chrenobly over all the fossil fuels, though not the renewables: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-p... (I remember an older version that had much worse PV death rate, justified on the grounds installing stuff on rooftops is dangerous).

Like most arguments in favour of nuclear, it's more about the world we used to live in than the one we now live in; if you'd asked me 10-15 years ago, I'd have been all-in on nuclear to save the planet, but now, I think we have better options. But these were my reasons for being pro-nuclear at the time.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_by_country

[1] http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%24790%20billion%2F2%2C...

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

#536

Post by godelski »

Gwypaas wrote: post #454
godelski wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

France has been importing energy and driven the energy crisis in Europe because over half the fleet has been offline. You also talk a lot without addressing the central point: the energy market in Europe is based on marginal price. Please, frame nuclear as a profitable investment in a marginal price energy market. I dare you.

The central point is addressed, you just have to read the whole thing.

> Please, frame nuclear as a profitable investment in a marginal price energy market.

This is a whole different conversation and if you don't want to engage in good faith then there's no point to this.

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

#537

Post by TheLoafOfBread »

locallost wrote: post #525
TheLoafOfBread wrote: post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still goes up. Does not matter how much you are trying to gaslight me https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/energy-crisis-fu...

I don't want you to feel gaslighted, but you are objectively very lazy and have an opinion without checking any data. This Reuters article doesn't deal with it, but with a short term situation in the summer. You probably didn't even read past the headline. If you had, you probably would've noticed this quote: "Since Destatis started compiling statistics in 1990, 2022 will likely be the first that Germany will be a ne…

And then we will look into Germany's CO2 per kWh and it is one of the dirtiest in Europe. That's probably because they have so much renewables. Or so little.

I might be lazy, but you are outright dishonest.

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

#538

Post by cyberax »

btreecat wrote: post #462
cyberax wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And so what? Modern nuclear reactors are licensed for 60 years and are expected to last 80-100 years with maintenance (reactor vessel annealing, mainly). This is exactly a point in favor of nuclear.

So where's the "solar spills" or "wind contamination?" One of these solutions is encumbered by problems of safety, the other capacity. It's easier to scale up capacity than it is to scale safety. If I had to make long term bets, radioactive materials will continue to be radioactive, green capture, storage and transmission will get cheaper and more reliable. Speaking of transmission, that's another huge problem. You c…

> So where's the "solar spills" or "wind contamination?"

At the factories that produce silicon and composites for the windblades.

> One of these solutions is encumbered by problems of safety, the other capacity. It's easier to scale up capacity than it is to scale safety.

So far, no large country has managed to move to 100% carbon-free renewable generation. And I'm not seeing this changing.

> Distributed collection and storage helps reduce challenges around transmission infrastructure in low density or hard to travel areas.

If we're talking about Europe, they are facing the problem of Dunkelflaute - long periods of no wind, no sun, and low temperatures in the middle of the winter. A worst-case once-in-century scenario would require around a _month_ of storage.

So far no technology is even close to that.

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

#539

Post by cyberax »

pydry wrote: post #493
cyberax wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And so what? Modern nuclear reactors are licensed for 60 years and are expected to last 80-100 years with maintenance (reactor vessel annealing, mainly). This is exactly a point in favor of nuclear.

France's are struggling to last 60. Extending their lives to 100 will not only raise maintenance costs even further it will raise the risk of catastrophe quite significantly. This would be a catastrophe for which e.g. American plants are insured only up to the level of 0.05% of 1 Fukushima level event.

You know that material science has improved a lot since 1970-s when most of French nuclear reactors were designed, right?

In particular, annealing had been developed fairly recently: https://www.neimagazine.com/features/featurerenewal-by-annea...

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

#540

Post by runarberg »

TheLoafOfBread wrote: post #537
locallost wrote: post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want you to feel gaslighted, but you are objectively very lazy and have an opinion without checking any data. This Reuters article doesn't deal with it, but with a short term situation in the summer. You probably didn't even read past the headline. If you had, you probably would've noticed this quote: "Since Destatis started compiling statistics in 1990, 2022 will likely be the first that Germany will be a ne…

And then we will look into Germany's CO2 per kWh and it is one of the dirtiest in Europe. That's probably because they have so much renewables. Or so little. I might be lazy, but you are outright dishonest.

So carbon intensity per kWh of electricity:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/carbon-intensity-electric...

Germany went up last two years, but have otherwise been on a steady decline along with the rest of the continent. In 2011 Germany was at 473 g CO2 per kWh of electricity. In 2022 this was down to 386 g CO2/kWh but went down to 333 g CO2 / kWh in 2020.

I will leave it to you to figure out if there was any world event going on in 2020 which would have made it particularly low (i.e. allowed renewables to take up a greater portion of the electricity production), as well as in 2022 which could make it particularly high.

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