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Smaller reactors bring nuclear power closer to fulfilling its promise

nature.com

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

#181

Post by UltraSane »

rcxdude wrote: post #170
UltraSane wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Baseload is simply the lowest wattage your grid demands in a time period. Solar and wind have not made it irrelevant at all. All of the demand from data centers very much assumes constant reliable power which is in fact a perfect match for nuclear.

What solar and wind have made irrelevant is the assumption that constant supply of the baseload is an addressable market for a power plant. That only works if the supply is the cheapest on the market (something nuclear has even historically struggled to achieve without big subsidies), and solar and wind will supply the baseload much cheaper than any other source when they're running, causing a lot of problems for any…

There needs to be a market mechanism to ensure there is enough dispatchable spare capacity to meet demand when solar and wind can't supply it. More reliable sources of power are inherently more valuable.

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

#182

Post by dalyons »

UltraSane wrote: post #157
dalyons wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solar produces incredibly cheap power for the daytime hours, pushing any nuclear off the grid (why would a data center buy expensive nuke power in the hours when cheap renewables are available?). Nuclear needs to be running and selling power at its high price 24/7 for it to be even close to economically viable. Only supplying power that people want(due to its high price) during the night is fatal to nuclear. base loa…

This is fundamentally a pricing problem that hourly-matched carbon-free energy accounting tries to solve. https://www.eurelectric.org/in-detail/247-2/ Natrium has an interesting design for a 345MW reactor that has thermal storage that can boost output to 500MW for 5.5 hours. This lets it increase output during peak prices.

I mean, sounds kinda cool. But that 2023 idea is very clearly not going to happen in the current US political environment.

We’re in an era of brutal capitalism, and nothing else matters but price. Not even emissions sadly. Green compacts like this have no chance, and neither do nukes. Unless they pay the right bribes for some subsidies.

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

#184

Post by dalyons »

coryrc wrote: post #153
dalyons wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

boy am i tired of hearing that Dunkelflaute word as if its some kind of gotcha. Even ignoring the fact that you can continue to source power from other geographies during a localized phenomenon..... Just burn gas in peaker plants for the few days a year that this happens. That small amount of emissions wont matter for the next 50 years of decarbonization, after which we'll likely have plenty of other options. The abs…

That's fine, but you need to include the cost of having barely-used gas peaker plants when calculating the cost of "renewables+storage". Laymen keep using arbitrary "marginal cost of solar with sun shining" to say "solar is cheaper than everything!". If it's true that capex of 80% gas peaker (and LNG storage and employees on standby and so on) + solar + wind + batteries is cheaper, then people should make that argume…

The latest figures from ember etc are not only “sun shining”, they’re talking about 24hr firmed solar-storage costs, and they’re still mostly cheaper than fossil in most geos. It is true that we will have to pay for having gas fill the gaps - how much exactly is a very complicated function of market economics and real time power auctions. Depends on so many variables, how big is the shortfall, how long, what competition does the gas have locally and extra-geographically, many other things. For connected countries in Europe you are never going to get to a situation where you need an 80% sized backup to your production, there will always be varied other sources. And perhaps you just choose to load shed in truly black swan scenarios, rather than paying for enough backup for every possible rare scenario. Life does go on.

Though I confess predicting it is beyond me and I’m not sure how you would model it to achieve conclusions generally applicable to every country / market .

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

#185

Post by fpoling »

chickenbig wrote: post #115
fpoling wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If solar becomes 2 times cheaper, it will be economical to capture nitrogen from atmosphere and produce ammonia and use that for long-term energy storage and fuel. And with that one does not need massive solar overbuild. This does not require any magic technology, just scaling up what is available today is enough and will definitely happen within the next 20 years, before small nuclear will have any effect.

> If solar becomes 2 times cheaper It would be good to see a techno-economic analysis of this. For instance, taken to the limit, if solar were free what would be the CAPEX and OPEX to produce the ammonia? In addition, the plant to consume the ammonia to produce electricity would not be free.

Ammonia does not require a plant to generate electricity. While fuel cells running on it require temperatures over 600 Celsius to get to 70% percent of efficiency and not exactly small, with cheap way to produce ammonia they would provide energy dense batteries that could run for months if necessary.

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

#186

Post by UltraSane »

dalyons wrote: post #182
UltraSane wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is fundamentally a pricing problem that hourly-matched carbon-free energy accounting tries to solve. https://www.eurelectric.org/in-detail/247-2/ Natrium has an interesting design for a 345MW reactor that has thermal storage that can boost output to 500MW for 5.5 hours. This lets it increase output during peak prices.

I mean, sounds kinda cool. But that 2023 idea is very clearly not going to happen in the current US political environment. We’re in an era of brutal capitalism, and nothing else matters but price. Not even emissions sadly. Green compacts like this have no chance, and neither do nukes. Unless they pay the right bribes for some subsidies.

The Trump admin is actually very pro-nuclear power. They are ending the "As Low As Reasonably Achievable" (ALARA) standard in favor of fixed limits which is actually a good idea, possibly the only one the Trump admin has ever had.

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

#187

Post by bryanlarsen »

Mawr wrote: post #179
bryanlarsen wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

You don't need to cross oceans to get good geographic diversity.

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

#188

Post by idiotsecant »

ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #125
idiotsecant wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solar battery is not by any stretch of any possible definition the cheapest generation to deploy. Not even close. We do a disservice to the entire conversation saying easily falsifiable things like that. At 90% penetration solar + battery has a LFSCOE somewhere around $800/mwh depending on the study. Natural gas is something like 30-60. Solar panels are cheap. Building the required transmission and storage to service…

Please, don’t cite the LFSCOE paper again. Citing it shows you have a beef against renewables. That paper uses one renewable source, like only solar, and 2018-19 cost data for storage. A real grid is made up of a mix of sources, which is why the research lately has focused on system costs. All those analyses find that renewable grids are far cheaper than if involving new built nuclear power. Here are two modern paper…

A) I am an electrical engineer who makes a living designing control systems for renewable generation. I know more about most of this than just about anyone in this conversation.

B) the post I am replying to is specifically calling for a 98% solar grid.

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

#189

Post by dalyons »

UltraSane wrote: post #186
dalyons wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, sounds kinda cool. But that 2023 idea is very clearly not going to happen in the current US political environment. We’re in an era of brutal capitalism, and nothing else matters but price. Not even emissions sadly. Green compacts like this have no chance, and neither do nukes. Unless they pay the right bribes for some subsidies.

The Trump admin is actually very pro-nuclear power. They are ending the "As Low As Reasonably Achievable" (ALARA) standard in favor of fixed limits which is actually a good idea, possibly the only one the Trump admin has ever had.

i know they are (or claim to be). Im extremely unconvinced that meaningfully changes the flawed economics of nuclear power. I would love to be proven wrong and a wave of innovative economically competitive nuclear technology emerges... possible, but seems vanishingly unlikely.

I think we'll see a few companies and projects connected to the administration get grants and tax breaks and favors, pull a few headlines, seem like there's movement. Maybe even build something! but ultimately be a meaningless footnote in the energy transition. Just another grift for the most corrupt admin in US history.

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

#190

Post by SECProto »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #139
testing22321 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have 36-38 reactors under construction today [1]. I think that’s a bit more than just keeping the wheels turning [1] https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=67746

Which works out to about 4 per year. And most of them are under 1GW.

> And most of them are under 1GW

No, almost every one is above 1GW - divide the net capacity by the number under construction to see the power [1]. They appear to be almost all CAP1400 (1.4GW), Hualong One (1.0GW), or CAP1000 (1.0GW). I see a single Linglong 1 (100MW) under construction. Proposed are all above 1GW.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_China#Future_...

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