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Danube's record low levels force shutdown of Hungary's only nuclear plant

bbc.com

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Re: Danube's record low levels force shutdown of Hungary's only nuclear plant

#51

Post by cucumber3732842 »

paganel wrote: post #10
cinntaile wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People arguing for one alternative over the other are usually politically motivated. I feel like you are doing the same. Sometimes nuclear is a good fit, sometimes renewables is a good fit, sometimes fossil fuels are a good fit. Most of the time a mix is the best fit. It depends on what you are optimizing for and what is geographically, (geo)politically and economically possible. All these systems are then built usin…

Everyone is politically motivated on this subject, and that's a good thing, because this is a political decision by default, where the "political" is comprised of is, the voting citizens. We can't let decisions like these be taken by unelected technocrats alone.

>and that's a good thing, because this is a political decision by default,

Why is it a good thing that everyone and their brother seeks to apply state violence to micromanage what should be a fairly arcane technical issue?

>We can't let decisions like these be taken by unelected technocrats alone.

Do you feel the same way about topics where your opinion differs substantially from the local majority?

Re: Danube's record low levels force shutdown of Hungary's only nuclear plant

#52

Post by Tade0 »

noduerme wrote: post #42
wongarsu wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fully closed loop is probably not viable. But I suspect that's not the extreme GP might have meant. If for the sake or discussion we simplify cooling to four options: 1: just passing river water through a heat exchanger for cooling 2: ingesting river water, using it for cooling, then passing it through a cooling tower before returning it to the river 3: pass the water output from the cooling tower directly back in th…

How do these things, whose sole purpose is to turn heat into electricity, end up with so much extra heat that it takes more energy than they produce to disperse it? Can't the excess heat in a closed loop system be captured and used to power the cooling? Sorry, maybe this is a stupid question.

The heat is spread out to a much larger volume.

Heat engines are most efficient when the temperature difference between the hot and cold side is high, so you need to keep it that way to extract energy.

A nuclear power plant achieves this by converting extreme heat from a small, but very angry rock to a huge lake of slightly warmer water.

There exist reactor designs which operate at higher temperatures, thus increasing efficiency, but they're complicated as everything needs to be more heat-resistant.

Re: Danube's record low levels force shutdown of Hungary's only nuclear plant

#53

Post by ben_w »

deepsummer wrote: post #17
comrade1234 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Iceland has no nuclear power plants.

Countries like UK, Ireland, Germany, Danmark, Netherland, Poland also have dark winters. Solar in winter is only about a fifth of production in summer months. Iceland has geothermal, which is amazing, but won't help central Europe.

Those places also have a huge wind resource in the form of the North Sea, for Ireland whatever the other bits of that submerged continental shelf are called, and for Poland the Baltic: https://globalwindatlas.info/en/

This is important because wind season anti-correlates with PV season.

Plus, it's not like north-south power lines are beyond the wit of mankind. The US western interconnection includes both Canada and Mexico: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NERC-map-en.svg

Re: Danube's record low levels force shutdown of Hungary's only nuclear plant

#54

Post by shakow »

number6 wrote: post #30
comrade1234 wrote: post #8

Here in Switzerland during some heatwaves they have to shut down nuclear plants too because the river water is too warm and adding warm water to it would kill the fish.

And it's not cold enough to cool the reactor

Absolutely wrong. A difference of a couple degrees is not going to hamper cooling a reactor that is running at many hundred degrees.

Just imagine what it would spell for your car otherwise.

Re: Danube's record low levels force shutdown of Hungary's only nuclear plant

#55

Post by exploderate »

Luc wrote: post #43

Of course a 1960's design isn't adapted to current weather conditions. That doesn't mean the whole technology is useless, like so many commenters imply. Any new build can and will include cooling adapted to hotter conditions.

It's not matter of "can", it's a matter of "how much does it cost?" and "who pays for that?".

Re: Danube's record low levels force shutdown of Hungary's only nuclear plant

#56

Post by danw1979 »

seszett wrote: post #46
cinntaile wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People arguing for one alternative over the other are usually politically motivated. I feel like you are doing the same. Sometimes nuclear is a good fit, sometimes renewables is a good fit, sometimes fossil fuels are a good fit. Most of the time a mix is the best fit. It depends on what you are optimizing for and what is geographically, (geo)politically and economically possible. All these systems are then built usin…

> sometimes fossil fuels are a good fit There is simply NO safe level of fossil fuel use.

There’s applications that we still have no alternative for though - e.g. aviation - so we’ll have to accept the burning of hydrocarbons there.

Not fossil hydrocarbons forever, of course, but synthetic kerosene might be a thing soon enough.

Re: Danube's record low levels force shutdown of Hungary's only nuclear plant

#57

Post by petre »

comrade1234 wrote: post #8

Here in Switzerland during some heatwaves they have to shut down nuclear plants too because the river water is too warm and adding warm water to it would kill the fish.

Would a cooling pond with controlled discharge into the river maybe mitigate this problem? One could also cycle the water from the cooling pond through the plant's cooling loop. The worse that could happen is evaporate the water from the cooling pond which is gets replaced with new water (sans fish) from the river.

Re: Danube's record low levels force shutdown of Hungary's only nuclear plant

#58

Post by deepsummer »

ben_w wrote: post #53
deepsummer wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Countries like UK, Ireland, Germany, Danmark, Netherland, Poland also have dark winters. Solar in winter is only about a fifth of production in summer months. Iceland has geothermal, which is amazing, but won't help central Europe.

Those places also have a huge wind resource in the form of the North Sea, for Ireland whatever the other bits of that submerged continental shelf are called, and for Poland the Baltic: https://globalwindatlas.info/en/ This is important because wind season anti-correlates with PV season. Plus, it's not like north-south power lines are beyond the wit of mankind. The US western interconnection includes both Canada and M…

Yet there are whole weeks practically without wind in winter. And most climate models estimate that global warming reduces wind further. Storage in the required dimensions is an unsolved problem.

Re: Danube's record low levels force shutdown of Hungary's only nuclear plant

#59

Post by deepsummer »

RandomLensman wrote: post #38
deepsummer wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Storage of energy in the dimensions required for weeks with almost no wind is an unsolved problem. Right now, we can't store enough to make it through a single night without using fossil fuels. Most countries don't even have the capacity to store the energy for a single hour.

As we can store fossil fuels for weeks of demand, we can store the required energy in chemical form, no? Germany has huge natural gas storage, for ezample.

If you mean hydrogen, this video explains the issues better than I can: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zklo4Z1SqkE

Re: Danube's record low levels force shutdown of Hungary's only nuclear plant

#60

Post by [deleted] »

Elfener wrote: post #26
pepperoni_pizza wrote: post #9

You can totally retrofit existing nuclear power plants for closed loop cooling. I'm not sure what the cost would be, though, but it might be worth doing.

I've read that in the case of Paks a retrofit doesn't make sense because the entire thing is so old and needs to be rebuilt anyway. However, hopefully, they change the plans for (stalled project) Paks 2, because that would've used the same cooling system as the first one.

[deleted]
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