Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 252 posts

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

#71

Post by Krasnol »

cinntaile wrote: post #4
vrganj wrote: post #2

This is happening all across Europe right now - Romania, France too. https://www.euronews.com/business/2026/07/13/france-shuts-do... https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/hungarys-paks-nuclea... We keep having folks here argue that nuclear, not renewables are the path to take to get rid of fossil fuels. I have strong doubts - it feels like that doesn't account for the sad realities of climate change.

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…

> People arguing for one alternative over the other are usually politically motivated.

If you can spend a Dollar only once, you might end up with renewables. People can be economically motivated too. No reason to draw politics in an already heated discussion.

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

#72

Post by frm88 »

deepsummer wrote: post #58
ben_w wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Storage in the required dimensions is an unsolved problem.

No, it's not. Decommissioned nuclear plant infrastructure used as massive battery storage.

https://gesi-deutschland.de/en/gesi-project-presented-in-gro...

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

#73

Post by ZeroGravitas »

shakow wrote: post #54
number6 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think both nuclear steam and car engines are affected by high ambient temp, gas and coal engines too.

That is after all why they bring in water or air to car radiators, to cool them.

Probably only a single percent or so for a few degrees change though.

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

#74

Post by ben_w »

deepsummer wrote: post #58
ben_w wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Yet there are whole weeks practically without wind in winter. And most climate models estimate that global warming reduces wind further.

Not for the combination of [continent-wide, offshore, the Atlantic coast].

The Atlantic continental shelf isn't correlated with the Baltic.

Offshore Dunkelflaute is much shorter than on-shore.

> Storage in the required dimensions is an unsolved problem.

Also false. The required quantities even of batteries is comparable to electrification of road transport.

Also, independently of batteries, hydro plants come in two flavours that people often mix up: generation, and storage. Of these, only generation requires an associated upstream supply and watershed; storage can be done with a hole in the ground, of which there are plenty, and just the currently and soon-to-be closed coal mines in the EU can be converted to around 13 TWh of pumped storage: https://gfzpublic.gfz.de/rest/items/item_5038282_1/component...

And it's not like we can't dig more holes if we wanted to, we dig holes to get out rocks even though rocks are one of the cheapest things you can buy.

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

#75

Post by cinntaile »

Krasnol wrote: post #71
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…

> People arguing for one alternative over the other are usually politically motivated. If you can spend a Dollar only once, you might end up with renewables. People can be economically motivated too. No reason to draw politics in an already heated discussion.

> It depends on what you are optimizing for and what is geographically, (geo)politically and economically possible.

I mentioned all of this in my message. What was unclear about it or did you perhaps not read past the first sentence?

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

#76

Post by deepsummer »

frm88 wrote: post #72
deepsummer wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Storage in the required dimensions is an unsolved problem. No, it's not. Decommissioned nuclear plant infrastructure used as massive battery storage. https://gesi-deutschland.de/en/gesi-project-presented-in-gro...

870 MWh? It would take about 500 of them to make it through a 1-2 week dunkelflaute.

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

#77

Post by ben_w »

deepsummer wrote: post #76
frm88 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Storage in the required dimensions is an unsolved problem. No, it's not. Decommissioned nuclear plant infrastructure used as massive battery storage. https://gesi-deutschland.de/en/gesi-project-presented-in-gro...

870 MWh? It would take about 500 of them to make it through a 1-2 week dunkelflaute .

Why do you think that's a criticism?

  The following table shows that in total 2264 installations have been identified in the EU ETS to be power plants, which have reported emissions in at least one year since 2005. The fuel of 1440 power plants have been identified. Of this there are 124 lignite power plants, 284 hard coal power plants and 2  power plants using blast furnace gas. There are 57 power plants using oil products. The majority of the plants uses natural gas (858 plants). About 824 plants have not been matched to a fuel yet.
- page 8, https://www.eionet.europa.eu/etcs/etc-cme/products/etc-cme-r...

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

#78

Post by masklinn »

seszett wrote: post #41
number6 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it's not cold enough to cool the reactor

No that's never the problem, even 40°C intake is cool enough to cool a reactor, it's all just a question of returned water temperature that can be harmful to a river if too high (generally the limit in Europe is set to 30°C).

It can vary by the river too (e.g. I remember Switzerland pulling back a reactor around 25 intake), and iirc there’s an absolute limit on the outflow (you don’t want to boil alive the stuff just off of the plant) and a relative one a bit downstream (you can’t heat the river to 20 when it’s freezing).

These heatwaves reduce the margin from both directions, a hotter intake means you have less margin on the outflow, and the lower flow rate means there’s less water to dilute that outflow. And apparently for that specific plant there’s also the water level not even reaching the intake.

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

#79

Post by ben_w »

deepsummer wrote: post #61
emsign wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Geothermal and storage is worth investing in, investing in nuclear is not. NPPs are simply too expensive and you won't find investors unless you heavily subsidize it with tax money. Only compnies willing to invest in NPPs are those with virtually free money: the handful of AI big tech giants.

How can you be sure of that before even having a practical and proven solution for the required scale of storage?

We have proven solutions.

We're building the factories to make them as fast as we can find investors with money to spend on them, because they're already cheaper than fossil fuels which are themselves cheaper than nuclear.

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

#80

Post by deepsummer »

ben_w wrote: post #74
deepsummer wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Yet there are whole weeks practically without wind in winter. And most climate models estimate that global warming reduces wind further. Not for the combination of [continent-wide, offshore, the Atlantic coast]. The Atlantic continental shelf isn't correlated with the Baltic. Offshore Dunkelflaute is much shorter than on-shore. > Storage in the required dimensions is an unsolved problem. Also false. The required qu…

> The Atlantic continental shelf isn't correlated with the Baltic.

How do you transmit the power? Do the countries on the Atlantic even want wind power, set up the transmission lines, and pay for it?

> Offshore Dunkelflaute is much shorter than on-shore.

That reduces the storage requirements a bit, but there is not nearly enough offshore. And offshore is expensive. That's why it's getting harder to find investors.

> The required quantities even of batteries is comparable to electrification of road transport.

That doesn't prove it's possible, but makes it even harder to get the required quantities.

> hydro plants come in two flavours that people often mix up: generation, and storage

Hydro requires the right geography. Is there any potential for hydro left in central Europe?

> EU can be converted to around 13 TWh of pumped storage

That would be a good amount of storage. But has this ever been tried? I would guess that's quite dangerous: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LseK5gp66u8

Post reply on HN