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Smaller reactors bring nuclear power closer to fulfilling its promise

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Re: Smaller reactors bring nuclear power closer to fulfilling its promise

#171

Post by sensanaty »

asmodeuslucifer wrote: post #165
arjie wrote: post #107

It's really a pity that we missed the boat on large nuclear reactors. So much more power would enable so many use-cases and cheap electricity would have enabled us to have much less gas heating. Massive damage to the climate caused by misguided regulation. I tried to write to deregulation.gov on reducing the fund allocation required for fission reactor cleanup but c'est la vie. Death by a thousand cuts and then a few…

Nuclear power has never been cheap and never will be. Every country that has tried has failed, and that included the Russians, the Chinese, South Koreans, French and the Japanese. And you can't blame it on the environmentalists in Russia and China.

How has France failed with their nuclear fleet, exactly? Considering they produce so much power they're selling it to their neighbours at a profit.

Re: Smaller reactors bring nuclear power closer to fulfilling its promise

#172

Post by derriz »

bryan0 wrote: post #161
derriz wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Large scale civil engineering projects will always cost more than simply installing stuff that comes almost fully assembled from a factory (solar, wind, battery or small/medium gas turbines). Opex will always be much higher for a generation facility which requires 850 FTE specialist employees to operate (US average per plant) compared to the minimal requirements for on-site employees for utility scale solar or wind f…

I don't think I get your point. A project will not be approved and funded if the local population does not believe it is safe, so safety must be demonstrated through a variety of means, including some you mentioned. This is directly tied to the high costs involved. https://ifp.org/nuclear-power-plant-construction-costs : > To sum up, since the early 1970s, the cost of constructing nuclear power plants in the U.S. has…

Nuclear in this millennium is not competing with nuclear or other tech from the 1970s - it’s competing with newer technologies (solar, wind, batteries and gas turbines) which do not require 5 to 10 year huge civil engineering works. All these alternative technologies benefit from mass production in factories. While civil engineering does not get cheaper over time - not just for nuclear plant but all large infrastructure construction.

And that’s just capex - even if a nuclear plant could be built for free, the cost of operation (huge head count, fuel and waste handling), means it cannot compete with newer technologies. Indian Point shutdown years before end-of-life because it was too expensive to operate.

Nuclear plants are large and complex and expensive to build and run. I’m not sure why it should be surprising that electricity generation technology has advanced sine the development of the PWR - it’s been more than half a century. The world has moved on from electricity generation using a huge steam engine attached to an alternator with a fiddly and complex firebox.

It’s economics and newer technologies that have made nuclear power obsolete - not public opinion.

Re: Smaller reactors bring nuclear power closer to fulfilling its promise

#173

Post by Mawr »

ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #81
DanTheManPR wrote: post #18

A lot of people are betting serious money that they will cheaper, more flexible, faster to build, and safer. Including me - I'm working in the industry, and I think they might very well be future backbone of energy production. But there's a real possibility when all this shakes out that SMR's only advantage will be their flexibility. And that might be enough. A major issue with gigawatt scale nuclear is that it's fra…

The problem is that you can’t assume ”always on” anymore. Why should consumers choose expensive nuclear powered electricity when cheap renewables, or stored renewables are available? They don’t and now capacity factors crater. Leading to what was once seen as ”baseload” plants being forced to become peakers. And running a nuclear plant with those fixed costs as a peaker/firming becomes stupidly expensive per MWh prod…

> Why should consumers choose expensive nuclear powered electricity when cheap renewables, or stored renewables are available?

That's why truly free markets are a bad idea? We've been through this.

Repeat after me: the value of the electric grid is in its stability. It must not go down regardless of pesky events like the winter or cloud cover.

You don't get to sell below cost to push out your competitors, thanks to regulations.

But hell, whatever, I agree — let's only use solar & wind and see how it goes :)

Oh, now you want to burn coal/gas? Awww. Remind me, what was the cost of climate change again?

Re: Smaller reactors bring nuclear power closer to fulfilling its promise

#174

Post by sojournerc »

api wrote: post #166
sojournerc wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In addition to the sibling comment, I'll say that environmentalists have opposed nuclear energy for half a century, despite it being far better than coal or ng in terms of emissions. I'd say that the venn diagram intersection of burners and opposition to nuclear is significant.

Environmentalism comes in at least two forms. IMO they are entirely different things. One form is science-based and concerned with finding out how to engineer our civilization to be more sustainable and compatible with the Earth's ecosystem. That faction has been mostly either pro-nuclear or at least open to it when renewables aren't enough or aren't ready. The other form is a romantic back-to-the-land anti-industry…

Great reply!

The second type is also inherently misanthropic. Their ideal is some Eden without humans at all. _Any_ human impact is morally wrong to this type of environmentalist.

Contrast that with the conservationist hunters, sportsman, fisherman, etc. who wish to conserve natural environments with a keen eye towards sustainability and ecosystem health. Human intervention in culling herds can actually be a kindness to animals whose predators have been eliminated, yet some will oppose it regardless of what the Department of Fish and Game and other scientists suggest simply because it involves hunting and eating meat.

Cutting off the nose to spite the face... which rhymes with the nuclear debate here.

Re: Smaller reactors bring nuclear power closer to fulfilling its promise

#175

Post by Mawr »

marshray wrote: post #135
georgefrowny wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solar and nuclear are comparable: 0.02 vs 0.03 deaths/TWh ( https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-p... ) Depending on what kind of solar, it can have quite a high death/TWh ratio because people fall off roofs while installing them. As a ratio is far better now that so much new solar is ground level solar farms and not installed by amateurs or professionals who have a van, a ladder and watched a Y…

The scam here is presenting average occupational accident rates as a measure of "safety" when the obvious risk of nuclear power is the rare large-scale events which render large areas of land uninhabitable for generations while producing few directly-attributable deaths.

Are those large-scale events in the room with us? Or are you saying over the last, however many decades of all sorts of countries running nuclear plants, we've just been oh so lucky to have a negligible number of serious accidents? Luck is an interesting argument.

Also, you may want to fact-check your "large areas of land" because you're just making that up, if talking about accidents that have already happened, or going of by feels I guess if talking about hypothetical accidents that have by luck not happened all this time?

The real scam is bikeshedding about the safety of nuclear vs solar while happily burning coal. Take a deep breath, let your lungs taste the byproducts of burning coal. And now, I dare you, say something about the nuclear waste "problem". barf

Re: Smaller reactors bring nuclear power closer to fulfilling its promise

#176

Post by Mawr »

hn_submit wrote: post #5

Although generally safe these reactors aren't totally safe. I'm concerned lax physical security will allow miscreants to blow them up and spread nuclear materials over a wide area. The ensuing panic would totally destroy any goodwill nuclear power has gained over the last 20 years or so. I'm also concerned these things will mostly be used by Big Tech for their A.I. data-centers playing the Good Samaritan with their c…

> Although generally safe these reactors aren't totally safe.

I have some seriously bad news about the safety of your totally-safe house against meteorites. Or for that matter, thermonuclear explosives detonated directly above its roof.

Now tell me: Is Your Car Safe From Supermaneuverable Air-Defense Fighter Aircraft? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7YVxLLIuGM

As a bonus, here's a channel with hundreds of commercial aircraft accidents in which thousands of people have died: https://www.youtube.com/@MentourPilot. Now enjoy traveling using the objectively safest mode of transport — commercial aviation.

Re: Smaller reactors bring nuclear power closer to fulfilling its promise

#177

Post by bryan0 »

derriz wrote: post #172
bryan0 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think I get your point. A project will not be approved and funded if the local population does not believe it is safe, so safety must be demonstrated through a variety of means, including some you mentioned. This is directly tied to the high costs involved. https://ifp.org/nuclear-power-plant-construction-costs : > To sum up, since the early 1970s, the cost of constructing nuclear power plants in the U.S. has…

Nuclear in this millennium is not competing with nuclear or other tech from the 1970s - it’s competing with newer technologies (solar, wind, batteries and gas turbines) which do not require 5 to 10 year huge civil engineering works. All these alternative technologies benefit from mass production in factories. While civil engineering does not get cheaper over time - not just for nuclear plant but all large infrastruct…

Oh ok, yeah I think we agree. the original quote I was responding to was "the (false) idea that what was holding back nuclear was perception of safety, rather than cost." I was simply trying to say that safety and cost are not independent. Safety is a massive reason why nuclear costs so much.

Re: Smaller reactors bring nuclear power closer to fulfilling its promise

#178

Post by Mawr »

bb88 wrote: post #67
testing22321 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And nuclear still is the safest energy sort available. Surely solar is orders of magnitude safer.

The potential for widespread radiation leakage from nuclear doesn't exist with wind or solar. I would think a terrorist would hit a nuclear power plant over any wind or solar farms. The Chernobyl exclusion zone will remain uninhabitable for the next 20,000 years.

Now calculate what % of habitable land on Earth that exclusion zone takes up.

Yeah, that's a lot of zeroes.

Re: Smaller reactors bring nuclear power closer to fulfilling its promise

#179

Post by Mawr »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #45
fasterik wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with 100% solar+batteries is that you need to massively overbuild for the system to meet demand. It's far more cost-effective to have some portion of generation come from a firm, weather-independent source. The main options are fossil fuels, hydro, geothermal, and nuclear. Since fossil fuels emit carbon and hydro and geothermal are geographically limited, nuclear is the best option in a lot of places.

> firm That's the opposite of what you want. You want something that is cost-effective to operate at a 10%, 1% or 0.1% duty cycle. Like nat gas or hydro. Not nuclear. And overbuilding isn't the only lever you have to ensure coverage meets your target 99.99% level -- geographic diversity works really well (the wind is always blowing somewhere), and wind power production is usually negatively correlated with solar powe…

> Like nat gas or hydro

Since hydro is impossible to "just" build, that's gas only. No, there's no "nat" gas.

> geographic diversity works really well

"Give up your energy independence :)" I'm sure world leaders are eager to jump on that great idea.

"and wind power production is usually negatively correlated with solar power production"

Well, that should be fine, I only usually need electricity.

Re: Smaller reactors bring nuclear power closer to fulfilling its promise

#180

Post by DennisP »

boplicity wrote: post #93
DennisP wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But coal is still 49%. The whole point of nuclear in a carbon-free, mostly-renewable grid is to avoid needing enormous amounts of storage and overproduction. That's a need that doesn't come up when you're still half fossil. If you want to decarbonize as fast as possible, it makes sense to focus on rolling out wind/solar/battery as fast as possible for now, but keep developing nuclear technology to cover the last bit…

The coal argument about China doesn't hold water when you look at what they're actually building. Around 80% of their new power sources are renewable, and 10 to 15% is coal. They're aggressively focusing primarily on building renewable -- so to say that their coal is 49% is either misleading or entirely missing the point.

That's why I said in my comment that China is "rolling out wind/solar/battery as fast as possible."
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