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Critical hearing looms in battle over California’s last nuclear power plant

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Re: Critical hearing looms in battle over California’s last nuclear power plant

#71

Post by ars »

pgeorgi wrote: post #55
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany didn’t replace its nukes with gas, but with coal.

Germany replaced its nuclear power plants with all kinds of things, predominantly renewables. The first NPP going offline under the "Atomausstieg" went offline in 2003. https://www.energie.de/et/news-detailansicht/nsctrl/detail/N... has a chart showing the energy sources for electricity production in Germany (up to 2021). During the period in which nuclear (Kernenergie) went down from ~160bn kWh (2003) to ~60bn kWh (…

So what you are saying is that if Germany had kept it's reactors running it could have taken coal down to zero?

Re: Critical hearing looms in battle over California’s last nuclear power plant

#72

Post by nradov »

cesarb wrote: post #64
nradov wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why people keep claiming that solar and wind are "cheap". That is only true at limited times on the spot market. The cost goes way up once you include enough storage and long-range transmission to maintain grid stability. It's like claiming that owning a car is cheap, without counting the cost of auto insurance.

> I don't understand why people keep claiming that solar and wind are "cheap". It's simple: they're looking at the incremental cost of adding one more solar panel string or one more wind turbine, compared to generating that same amount of power with the already existing power plant mix. > The cost goes way up once you include enough storage and long-range transmission to maintain grid stability. That cost exists only…

I don't think you've actually done the math on that one. Keeping gas power plants online but unused except when renewables are unavailable is extremely expensive. We've been able to kind of ignore that up until now because of the limited scale of renewables generation but eventually the economics become untenable. Who is going to pay the large fixed costs to keep those gas plants on standby?

Re: Critical hearing looms in battle over California’s last nuclear power plant

#73

Post by nradov »

ianburrell wrote: post #70
nradov wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much battery capacity would that require to maintain grid stability? How many years will it take to manufacture those batteries? Where will the raw materials be mined?

Solar tends to be better for grid stability since it has stable frequency and can dispatch quickly. To deal with changes, like the evening peak, in the short-term we can keep using natural gas peaker plants. For longer term, we don't know if expensive batteries are solution. There are lots of groups working on storage, and it is possible that cheap batteries, pumped hydropower, something else, or all of the above wil…

We are already at the point where we need grid scale storage to significantly expand renewable power. A few little gas turbine speaker plants aren't going to be sufficient. We're going to need much larger thermal gas plants for the foreseeable future.

There are a variety of potential options for storage. None of them have proven to be economically viable at scale. Hopefully something will work well enough, but until we see solid evidence that's not a reasonable basis for planning.

Re: Critical hearing looms in battle over California’s last nuclear power plant

#74

Post by _aavaa_ »

bobthepanda wrote: post #25
soligern wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is solar and wind energy rapidly increasing “grim”?

I believe they mean grim if you are a nuclear cheerleader. But it is pretty damning that a country that is motivated and willing to put its money where its mouth is, is also having troubles making it happen quickly.

Exactly yes, should have phrased that differently.

Not just motivated, but one with a track record of getting red tape (and sometime people) out of the way in order to reach a goal.

If it isn’t competitive under those conditions, what chance does it have elsewhere?

Re: Critical hearing looms in battle over California’s last nuclear power plant

#75

Post by coding123 »

nradov wrote: post #50
theptip wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if we don’t think global warming ends civilization, keeping existing plants running requires a lot of mental gymnastics to oppose. I think it’s perfectly reasonable to oppose new nuclear on cost grounds; solar/wind are really cheap now. But lots of people seem to oversimplify to “nuclear bad”.

I don't understand why people keep claiming that solar and wind are "cheap". That is only true at limited times on the spot market. The cost goes way up once you include enough storage and long-range transmission to maintain grid stability. It's like claiming that owning a car is cheap, without counting the cost of auto insurance.

It's super cheap because no consortium is controlling it. It's just being created by... Everyone. Solar is probably the most beautiful thing to happen to humanity.

Re: Critical hearing looms in battle over California’s last nuclear power plant

#76

Post by CamperBob2 »

namdnay wrote: post #10
CamperBob2 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once there was a remote mountaintop monastery, nestled high in the clouds above a deep gorge. To reach the monastery, visitors were required to ride in a basket pulled up from the top. One day, halfway up the cliff, a tourist frowned at the condition of the rope. He asked his guide, "How often do they replace this rope, anyway?" The monk answered "Why, as soon as the old one breaks, of course."

Ah yes hence all those nuclear meltdowns in France

Point being, it's stupid to refrain from building new nuclear plants because they're "dangerous", because that forces the old plants to be operated far past their intended service life. Better to replace the rope before it breaks, so to speak.

In a rational world, those who believe atomic energy is inherently scary would be the first ones demanding that the old plants be replaced.

Re: Critical hearing looms in battle over California’s last nuclear power plant

#77

Post by pgeorgi »

ars wrote: post #71
pgeorgi wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany replaced its nuclear power plants with all kinds of things, predominantly renewables. The first NPP going offline under the "Atomausstieg" went offline in 2003. https://www.energie.de/et/news-detailansicht/nsctrl/detail/N... has a chart showing the energy sources for electricity production in Germany (up to 2021). During the period in which nuclear (Kernenergie) went down from ~160bn kWh (2003) to ~60bn kWh (…

So what you are saying is that if Germany had kept it's reactors running it could have taken coal down to zero?

At the price of continuing tensions in society and politics. NPP weren't taken down just for fun, that was a long time coming. An NPP based energy policy wouldn't have stopped building new nuclear power plants in 1989: nuclear power never provided more than 1/3 of the electricity consumption of the country and unlike France, there was never a push to go all in, e.g. by promoting electrically powered domestic heating.

The real issue is that, even though renewables saw a pretty good growth, the renewables side of the plan was to push it even harder (and expand the transmission network, and establish storage) and that fell through once a government took over which didn't care for that all.

Those plans are 25 years old now (the Social-Democrat/Green coalition was formed in 1998 and set out to implement the transition from the start) and the south is still not properly connected to the wind power resources in the north.

Germany would have had to go all-in with nuclear (and build it out by a factor of 6 or so, to also replace avoidable uses of fossils like domestic heating) or it would have had to go all-in with renewables. Instead it stumbled around indecisively.

Re: Critical hearing looms in battle over California’s last nuclear power plant

#78

Post by Gibbon1 »

nradov wrote: post #54
Gibbon1 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

California is side stepping the whole mess with nuclear by building out solar and batteries.

How many GWh of battery storage have California grid operators built recently?

Moss Landing can deliver 750MW with 3.0 GWh of total capacity. State has a total of 5GW. 90% of it rolled out in the last 3 years.

The problem with building a nuke plant starting today is it'll be a stranded asset before it goes online in 10-15 years.

Re: Critical hearing looms in battle over California’s last nuclear power plant

#79

Post by nradov »

Gibbon1 wrote: post #78
nradov wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many GWh of battery storage have California grid operators built recently?

Moss Landing can deliver 750MW with 3.0 GWh of total capacity. State has a total of 5GW. 90% of it rolled out in the last 3 years. The problem with building a nuke plant starting today is it'll be a stranded asset before it goes online in 10-15 years.

So 5GWh of storage capacity would be about 0.6% of average daily usage. We're going to need a lot more than that to make renewables viable for base load. How much will that cost, how long will it take to build, and where will we mine the raw materials?

Re: Critical hearing looms in battle over California’s last nuclear power plant

#80

Post by nradov »

coding123 wrote: post #75
nradov wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why people keep claiming that solar and wind are "cheap". That is only true at limited times on the spot market. The cost goes way up once you include enough storage and long-range transmission to maintain grid stability. It's like claiming that owning a car is cheap, without counting the cost of auto insurance.

It's super cheap because no consortium is controlling it. It's just being created by... Everyone. Solar is probably the most beautiful thing to happen to humanity.

You're not making any sense. Solar without sufficient grid-scale storage to provide for the base load has little value. Who is going to build that storage? It's certainly not going to be cheap. You guys need to look beyond ideology and actually do the math.
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