Good news: we will leave oil
Bad news: according to the discussions here on HN it appears that there is no consensus on what the good mix of renewable/nuclear is. Therefore us, citizens, will be manipulated by politics.
Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants
361–370 of 1001 posts
Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants
#362Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I'm not keen on new nuclear (time and cost as much as anything else), but it's a terrible idea to phase out operating nuclear plants which are still safe and within their planned lifetime. Funnily, I have almost the opposite view. I'm terrified of old nuclear because those first gen power plants are all missing a lot of safety lessons. Nuclear disasters happen at old plants. I want old nuclear plants to be either u…
What nuclear disasters? Exactly? Name one nuclear disaster at an old nuclear plant whose lessons weren’t applied to the whole fleet.
I think the issue comes with unknown unknowns. Before Fukushima someone might have said the same thing you just have, but a new disaster still came along and caused a lot of issues. I am still bullish on nuclear, but I think waving away concerns might do more harm than good.
Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants
#363Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's worth noting that the Fukoshima disaster 1. Lead to basically zero direct deaths 2. Was caused by the forth most powerful earthquake to have ever been recorded in the world (since ~1900), and the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in Japan 3. ~20,000 people died due to the Earthquake Requiring a nuclear plant in Belgium to be safe enough to survive what caused the Fukoshima disaster is probably not a good us…
> 1. Lead to basically zero direct deaths "Basically zero" is a funny way to spell "a few dozen". It also led to a $187 billion cleanup bill - which is expected to grow by a few more tens of billions over the next decades. > 2. Was caused by the forth most powerful earthquake to have ever been recorded in the world (since ~1900), and the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in Japan Sure, but Belgium has to be prep…
> Irrelevant.
How can that be irrelevant. The disaster was directly caused by a very specific external factor that was not properly accounted for when it was built i.e. it's not generalizable to all nuclear plants in different areas.
> If nuclear is so safe, how come nobody is willing to insure it?
Because it doesn't make sense from a risk management perspective, the risk is astronomically low and impossible to estimate, just like the potential damage which might be huge and again impossible to estimate. How do you even calculate the premiums or anything else for that matter?
Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants
#364For years, even leading up to starting the decommission of the power plants, Engie has been saying it's literally impossible to reverse the decision. And now that we're 2 years into the decommission, suddenly it is possible after all. How is that possible? And what are the consequences?
They said it was impossible for them to reverse the decision. Nothing has changed; they won’t be in charge of that. The state will.
A significant reason of the “impossibility” of reversing the decision is the regulations around nuclear. Take the problem of micro tears in the concrete. Engie could have maintained the concrete. Because the plant was scheduled for decommission, they did not. So there will be small tears in the concrete. The law does not allow those small tears. Repairing the concrete now is too expensive.
The plant will be owned by the state so now the state has two options: (1) invest a truckload of money to repair the concrete or (2) change the law to allow small tears which have virtually no security consequences anyway.
We all know that the state will choose option (2) but there would be far more opposition if they did so while the plant were owned by a private company that is making profit rather than owned by the state which is operating at a deficit.
Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants
#365I‘m very interested in the financials of this decision. Nuclear plants are designed for base loads but are way more expensive than solar and wind energy. The losses will increase the costs of energy.
Actually, nuclear is not way more expensive.
And already-built nuclear is pretty much the cheapest power you can get.
Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants
#366Earlier quoted context omitted.
While this is true, we don't have a good solution for long term energy storage. Even with plummeting costs and new technologies like sodium ion, batteries still only get you maybe ~12 hours of discharge. Pumped hydro give you longer storage, but there are limited places where you can build it. Unless geothermal becomes competitive, nuclear is still the best solution for carbon-free baseload.
I agree storage is a problem. But the concept of “base load” is outdated. As I mentioned in another comment - Because actually “base load” nuclear is terrible in a grid increasingly full of nearly-free variable sources (solar&wind). The nukes need to stay at 100% all the time selling their power at a high fixed price to have any remote chance of being economical. Cheap variables push nuke's expensive power off the gr…
Storage is not just 'a problem', it doesn't exist and won't for many many decades.
The planned solution is hydrogen power plants, but no one wants to build them because the infrastructure, including electrolysers, is way too economically unfeasible.
Therefore, Germany is and will continue to be dependent on coal and gas, as these are the main producers every night. That's your 'grid backup fee' for you.
Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants
#367Earlier quoted context omitted.
> want Belgium to go all-in on renewables I want everyone to go all in on anything that isn't a fossil fuel. The problem with gatekeeping new energy is upgrading the grid to accomodate wind and solar, and waiting for batteries to be delivered, creates a gap that gets filled with fossil fuels. The pragmatic solution to the energy problem is all of the above; joined with climate change, it's everything above but fossil…
IIRC those old Belgian reactors got in the way of more renewables for some time. They provided a very cheap base load that seemed hard to modulate, which meant that even cheap renewables couldn't really compete on price. If I understand correctly, newer nukes can more easily modulate their output, which would be useful at night or on days without wind etc. Gas peaker plants currently fill this gap.
> If I understand correctly, newer nukes can more easily modulate their output, which would be useful at night or on days without wind etc. Gas peaker plants currently fill this gap.
It's not new, it's that PWRs have to be built and operated with that capability (load following), which most nations didn't bother with until pretty recently because it does have a cost in complexity & efficiency. But France has done it that way pretty much the entire time.
> Gas peaker plants currently fill this gap.
Nukes with load following aren't peakers: PWRs can modulate output by 2~5%/minute (depending on their exact design and operating mode) between 30 and 100%. They're not reactive enough to compensate for wind, although they can work with the daily and seasonal patterns of solar pretty well.
The replacement for peakers are mostly batteries (hydro and pumped hydro where that's available but usually where available it's already done)
Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants
#368Strictly: France will no longer decommission Belgium's nuclear power plants, as Belgium will buy them. The current owner Engie are majority-owned by the French government. Apparently there also used to be a phaseout policy which is being rescinded: https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/other/belgium-and-czechia-ram... I'm not keen on new nuclear (time and cost as much as anything else), but it's a terrible idea to phase out…
The "old car" analogy seems right, with the extra complication that the car is supplying a non-trivial chunk of the country's electricity and replacing it is not quick
Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants
#369Yes. A nuclear power plant should be considered a national treasure, like a mine or hydro power plant, or any other large scale resource. To demolish a functional nuclear power facility is pure lunacy.
It is not lunacy. Polish professor Krzysztof Meissner (https://www.fuw.edu.pl/~meissner/home.html) in one of the interviews called the whole process of turning off nuclear power plants as result "of the pressure of the other forces".
It was well crafted plan developed by Germany and Russia. According to this plan Germany suppose to be the hub for gas imported from Russia over Baltic Pipe - man in the middle for all UE countries. War on the Ukraine and Baltic Pipe being destroyed by "unknown people" makes this plan obsolete.
Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants
#370Yes. A nuclear power plant should be considered a national treasure, like a mine or hydro power plant, or any other large scale resource. To demolish a functional nuclear power facility is pure lunacy.
If you think that's lunacy, let me add some extra info on top of it: It was the green party that lead the closure, and then replaced it with gas power plants.