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Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

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Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#311

Post by croes »

venzaspa wrote: post #271
croes wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much of that waste is needed for a dirty bomb? Do hear the fears that russia could hit a Ukrainian wind turbine with a rocket? Me neither. BTW did you also hear that the French government hat to rise the nuclear subsidies because the nuclear energy is so expensive? The prices for consumers were still raised

The French government have been able to safely store actual nuclear weapons without incident, so I'm sure they can do just fine with a few barrels of nuclear waste.

So you want to guard nuclear waste by the military just like nuclear weapons or what is your point?

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#312

Post by mattmaroon »

declan_roberts wrote: post #302

Nuclear energy is one of the few technologies that have big tent support. How many things can we get both the Rs and Ds to support? Build build build!!

Unfortunately that support doesn’t seem to extend to making the process take less than decades and cost less than gazillions due to overregulation so there’s no incentive to build.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#313

Post by [deleted] »

inglor_cz wrote: post #118
Projectiboga wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With waste with half lifes in the tens of thousands of years sitting in metal casks which cant last 1,000 years.

There are natural concentrations of radionuclides on the planet as well, there was even one place where a spontaneous fission reaction took place (Oklo, Gabon) millions of years ago. If you dig a sufficiently deep hole in a massive slab of granite (like Scandinavia), you can store all the waste of mankind there for approximately eternity. German Greens absolutely love your argument, but compared to the pollution that…

[deleted]

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#314

Post by adev_ »

dalyons wrote: post #242
adev_ wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes they are building a bunch but Chinas grid share of nukes is actually declining y/y and is projected to continue to decline. Renewables are too cheap. No. Nuclear energy production in China continue to increase and will probably continue to increase for the next 60y. Its relative percentage in the global mix decreased. And this has nothing to do with Solar, but with the insane amount of Coal power plants that Ch…

A lot has changed since the 2023 data in your link. Chinas coal use declined in 2025, and is projected to continue to decline in 2026 and into the future [1]. Not share, absolute. Despite overall generation growing by 5%. And it’s all driven by guess what, renewables growth. 1 https://ember-energy.org/countries-and-regions/china/ https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-coal-power-drops-in-chi... Edit: love to see a sour…

> Edit: love to see a source for how cheap renewables _increase_ energy costs as you claimed

That is just economics.

The intermittent nature of renewable means that overcapacity is structurally required to arrive to match partially the demand.

As an example, Germany has > 100GW of Solar installed capacity for a country where the average power demand is around ~60GW *total*.

Overcapacity means that the price of electricity naturally goes to zero (or even to negative) as soon as the sun shine. And this is very visible on the EU electricity market currently [1].

It is (obviously) terrible for the profitability of the means of production and it is not sustainable: No investor sane of mind would put money on the table for a system that sell at negative price when it produces...

To compensate that, most EU countries created the CfDs (Contract for difference) system. A minimum price is guaranteed by contract to the investor and the State pay the difference when the price are too low. The UK did it (and it costs billions) [2], France did it (and it costs billions) [3] and Germany is doing it [4].

So we are subsidizing and using public money to create an artificial profitability on top of an industry that we know is not profitable due to overcapacity caused by bad public policies.

Considering that this overcapacity is also reducing the profitability of nuclear powerplants in the first place (because nuclear is CAPEX based).

The pain is triple: The final consumer pays (1) the cost of the Grid restructuring for renewable (2) the cost of the Cfds to maintain the system alive due to overcapacity (3) the additional €/MWh to the now reduced profitability of the historical production means.

So yes, at the end, the price increase.

And it is what we see currently everywhere in Europe: Electricity price are increasing continuously even if Solar/Wind LCOE is lower than ever.

[1]: https://ibb.co/6cf99PfZ

[2]: https://davidturver.substack.com/p/another-record-year-cfd-s...

[3]: https://www.enerdata.net/publications/daily-energy-news/euro...

[4]: https://www.aoshearman.com/en/insights/germany-to-reset-gove...

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#315

Post by trgn »

BirAdam wrote: post #299

Everyone focuses on the safety of power production, and I totally get that and think it's important, but the mining and enrichment of uranium should also be considered. Nuclear "disasters" aren't just 3 Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima. There are plenty of other disasters that aren't power plants. Growing up in the USA, my home town was contaminated with uranium, thorium, and radium due to a nearby uranium proce…

where was this?

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#316

Post by WalterBright »

mpweiher wrote: post #275
WalterBright wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Fukushima disaster could have been averted simply by putting the backup electric generators on a platform, and venting the hydrogen gases outside.

Yes. Or not having your plant destroyed by the biggest Tsunami in recorded Japanese history, much larger than the size they planned for when they built the plant. Or upgrading the seawall to the size mandated after scientists found out that Tsunamis of that size could actually happen, despite having no historical record of them. One of the reasons TEPCO was culpable. A sister plant of the Fukushima plant actually sur…

A larger seawall can still fail. Better to put the generators on a platform. Simple and cheap.

Another backup would have been a pipe leading away from the reactor, where one can, from a short distance, pump water into it and it would cool the reactor.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#317

Post by swiftcoder »

thrownthatway wrote: post #280
swiftcoder wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How much money does it really cost? The problem is as much time as it is money. We have reactors producing energy now, it will take a decade plus to replace them, and due to both climate policy and supply issues around the wars in Russia and the Middle East, we can't afford to do without the energy for that decade...

> climate policy Fuck climate policy . There could be an earthquake any moment now that ruptures a massive natural CO formation that would eclipse any anthropogenic generated emissions in matter of hours. What have we done to mitigate that risk? Nothing . There is a non-zero chance Earth will be relieved of the responsibility of harbouring complex life any moment now by a loose pile of gravel travelling at 60 kilomet…

Hey man, I live on a small farm ~50km from the city, where we get to battle more and more wildfires every year, and it no longer rains enough to keep the water supplies flowing all summer. Climate change is a bigger issue for a lot of of the world than your personal experience might suggest

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#319

Post by kalessin »

adolph wrote: post #304
Alexsky2 wrote: post #253

A bit unrelated to the Belgium story but I recently visited Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant near San Luis Obispo, CA and learned a ton about the technical details, safety systems, and policy decisions that go into operating a nuclear power plant. When operating at full capacity, it provides up to 10% of California power! While there is certainly always more such facilities can do for safety and efficiency, my impre…

Yeah, nuclear provides a steady base load, so the percentage goes up or down depending on overall grid utilization. Right now its doing 2.28 MW [0], which is more than what Wikipedia claims as its "Nameplace capacity" of 2.256 MW [1]. 0. https://www.gridstatus.io/live/caiso 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diablo_Canyon_Power_Plant

The correct unit is GW.
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