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Why Nuclear Must Be Part Of The Energy Solution (2018)

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Re: Why Nuclear Must Be Part Of The Energy Solution (2018)

#131

Post by orwin »

neuronic wrote: post #91

I am in no way or shape against nuclear power per se. I know its technology, I have studied the engineering behind it etc. Still, any argument against nuclear is immediately categorized as "fearmongering" no matter how much it isn't based on the technology itself. Facts and an interest in truly bringing your country forward don't matter. Money and lobbyism is what rules the discussions. No matter how many subversive…

Yeah, let's compare the market cap of nuclear companies and the market cap of Total and other "renewable + gaz!!!!11".

> Facts and an interest in truly bringing your country forward don't matter. Money and lobbyism is what rules the discussions.

Well said! But i'm pretty sure not all greenpeace workers are shills for Total, some are genuine, accusing them of being shills is uncalled for and wrong.

Some questions though: electricity is 25% of our energy usage right now, we need to elimitate 80% carbon emission before 2050, so we need to use Co2-free electricity for 80% of our usages, right?

here is the cost to replace only our current electricity generation by only renewable: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030626191... The price does not account for land destruction and material rarefication btw, but let's consider those negligeable, and do some order of magnitude calculations. energy generationcapacity: 1.9TW needed, * 3.5 let's say 6TW. 200 GW of power transmission: 700 GW of power transmission. Biomass 8.5 EJ => ???? well, this is harder since biomass in those scenarii would be used as heating mostly, so not really helping a 80% electricity energy mix. Let's say 28 EJ but with the energy loss in carnot machines, i think it would rather be close to 40 EJ. Do we even have enough land to get to 16 EJ every year? I'm not sure, especially if we have to clear the land with electric tools.

It seems reasonable to say that this won't happen. Ever.

Re: Why Nuclear Must Be Part Of The Energy Solution (2018)

#132

Post by i_am_proteus »

isoprophlex wrote: post #68
bjourne wrote: post #50

The article does not explain why nuclear must be part of the energy solution. In fact, the argument seem to be that nuclear has been the target of fear mongering from environmentalists and therefore nuclear must be a part of the energy solution which is a fallacy. Germany has decommissioned numerous nuclear plants (Energiewende) and yet its GDP is up and its coal consumption down. https://www.cleanenergywire.org/fact…

Are those costs calculated in the current energy markets? Once intermittent renewables (solar, wind) reach their saturation point, nuclear revenue changes. This is also highly dependent on how much storage (and flex) capacity is installed alongside these renewables...

This is a very important point. With load-following natural gas (and some coal) plants available, the returns on renewable energy are excellent, and the cost per kW "average" output is quite low. These values cannot be linearly extrapolated out to 100% capacity without energy storage which, even if a viable solution is invented, will not be free.

Bear in mind also that current wind and solar installs are being built in the most economical locations to build wind and solar: places that get good amounts of average wind and average light, and which are close enough to populated areas to avoid lots of transmission loss.

Future wind and solar installations (albeit with some benefit from hypothetical improvements in PV efficiency) will not be as efficient on a per-unit basis, and utilities will increasingly have to build not to the average power output (made possible only because of load-following natural gas, as well as coal) but rather to some low percentile.

An example: if a 100% renewable grid must service an area with a flat average demand of 500 GW, then if renewable output is greater than 500 GW 95% of the time, the other 5% of the time will require firing up a fossil source or turning off customers' power. And this assumes demand is constant, which it isn't-- demand peaking is just as much of a problem as supply dipping.

Re: Why Nuclear Must Be Part Of The Energy Solution (2018)

#133

Post by ohgodplsno »

lorenzhs wrote: post #117
ohgodplsno wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This transition can _never_ be finished. There is no reality in which, in 2025, or 2030, or 2040, Germany is running 100% on renewables. Let's have a quick look at the german energy mix: https://www.electricitymap.org/zone/DE As I write this: * Germany has 68GW of wind capacity. Only 3GW are currently producing, because there's no wind. * Solar is doing just as bad, with 9.11GW active out of 53GW * Even worse, in the…

Your use of "green energy ayatollahs" tells me you're more interested in ranting than debate. Yet even in the current low-wind, low-sun scenario, 37% of German electricity is from renewable sources according to your link. Your conclusions don't match your own data.

>Yet even in the current low-wind, low-sun scenario, 37% of German electricity is from renewable sources according to your link. Your conclusions don't match your own data.

France, which doesn't really invest heavily in renewables is at 30% right now. Spain is at 60%, and most of Europe is around 40%. It's not exactly hard. Sure, Germany doesn't have some sources (hydro is an amazing source of power), but let's not pretend that Germany is doing something amazing here. Additionally, looking only at renewable does not tell the whole story. Would you like to have 100% renewable through solar panels ? The rare earths required to build them, and the mining methods are absolutely horrendous for the environment. Not to mention changing them regularly, the sheer amount of space required for them, and potentially the batteries :since Germany doesn't exactly have lakes it can pump full of water to store energy, its options are good old chemical batteries, or Power to gas to power with its absolutely HORRENDOUS 15% efficiency.

Our primary focus should not be renewable. We legitimately have enough resources to burn uranium for thousands of years. The sun will not stop shining on us, nor will the wind stop blowing, nor the water stop moving. We have time to develop these technologies further and make them truly a solution. As it stands, they are not. The current priority should be low carbon.

Your attack, pretending I'm just looking for a rant is unjustified, but once again, I'm not surprised. Ideology does this. I'm looking for a better planet, for us to be able to electrify as much as possible so that we can be rid of fossil fuels. Germany isn't exactly helping with this.

Re: Why Nuclear Must Be Part Of The Energy Solution (2018)

#134

Post by BelenusMordred »

partingshots wrote: post #62
hntrader wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"four times as expensive as wind" This isn't a valid comparison, since wind isn't capable of base load supply. You would need to factor in storage costs to make the comparison valid.

Batteries are also getting cheaper and improving in capacity at immense rates too no? It seems like a double whammy against nuclear, unless there’s something I’m missing?

Average lifetime of those batteries are about 7 years before a full replacement.

Everyone also seems to clearly ignore how detrimental they are to the environment. There's huge swathes of toxic wastelands created from mining the materials needed.

So cost, lifecycle and externalised environmental damage is what I would say is missing here.

https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/07/27/141282/the-25-tr...

Late edit: Batteries certainly have their place in smoothing out the grid inputs, I don't want to come across as saying they are not useful when they certainly are. In South Australia the newly installed grid scale batteries have paid themselves off within a few years.

The article linked makes clear the engineering tradeoffs involved, and as a society we should always base these decisions on the numbers over emotion. Think there is a bright future for small modular reactors in remote and rural areas if communities are willing to accept them.

Re: Why Nuclear Must Be Part Of The Energy Solution (2018)

#135

Post by lorenzhs »

hntrader wrote: post #59
bjourne wrote: post #50

The article does not explain why nuclear must be part of the energy solution. In fact, the argument seem to be that nuclear has been the target of fear mongering from environmentalists and therefore nuclear must be a part of the energy solution which is a fallacy. Germany has decommissioned numerous nuclear plants (Energiewende) and yet its GDP is up and its coal consumption down. https://www.cleanenergywire.org/fact…

"four times as expensive as wind" This isn't a valid comparison, since wind isn't capable of base load supply. You would need to factor in storage costs to make the comparison valid.

"Base load" doesn't really exist any more. Yes, there's a minimum below which demand almost never dips, but the implication of base load is that this should be produced by the type of power plants that provide a continuous supply, like nuclear or coal. But these are extremely inflexible and can't react quickly to changes in demand or supply by other means. As the share of renewables grows, the position nuclear is in becomes worse, not better. More flexible solutions are needed that don't need demand scheduling days or weeks ahead.

Re: Why Nuclear Must Be Part Of The Energy Solution (2018)

#136

Post by marcosdumay »

isoprophlex wrote: post #68
bjourne wrote: post #50

The article does not explain why nuclear must be part of the energy solution. In fact, the argument seem to be that nuclear has been the target of fear mongering from environmentalists and therefore nuclear must be a part of the energy solution which is a fallacy. Germany has decommissioned numerous nuclear plants (Energiewende) and yet its GDP is up and its coal consumption down. https://www.cleanenergywire.org/fact…

Are those costs calculated in the current energy markets? Once intermittent renewables (solar, wind) reach their saturation point, nuclear revenue changes. This is also highly dependent on how much storage (and flex) capacity is installed alongside these renewables...

> Once intermittent renewables (solar, wind) reach their saturation point, nuclear revenue changes.

Yes, once that happens, nuclear revenue gets worse, while flexible power sources (natural gas) get the lion share of the profits.

Re: Why Nuclear Must Be Part Of The Energy Solution (2018)

#137

Post by demosito666 »

lawrenceyan wrote: post #20
johncolanduoni wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We could do just as badly and still have nowhere near as many deaths (including evacuation related deaths) as a single coal plant causes due to pollution.

I'm not a fan of having cancer rates rise either. I've stated this before, and I'll repeat it here: Solar, wind, geothermal, and hydro are more than enough to power the world. They're cheaper too.

> Solar, wind, geothermal, and hydro are more than enough to power the world

Cool story. My city of 7M people has ~50 days of sunny days per yer, is located on a plane (as the most part of large cities), doesn't have active underground volcano nearby (as 99% of Earth's cities) and requires indoor heating at least 7 months/year. The city consumes an equivalent of two nuclear power plants output in electricity alone (half of that is from an actual nuclear plant). Heating probably consumes even more energy, but it's direct heat from CHPs so I can't google direct MW numbers straight away. I'd like to see calculations on powering that from solar, wind, geothermal, and hydro.

Re: Why Nuclear Must Be Part Of The Energy Solution (2018)

#138

Post by revax »

bjourne wrote: post #100
xenonite wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding the decommission of the nuclear plants in Germany: I don't understand why they are shutdown early, because the major CO2 investment happens during construction. So wouldn't it make sense to leave the active nuclear plants running until their original retirement date, and rather shutdown the coal plants early?

That's more or less what they are doing. Most of the reactors that have been shut down were built in the 1970s when safety standards weren't as strict as they are today. https://cnpp.iaea.org/countryprofiles/Germany/Germany.htm That is, the reactors were over 40 years old and were reaching their end-of-life dates anyway. Upgrading them to conform to modern safety standards isn't cost-effective. Essentially, this is w…

>Upgrading them to conform to modern safety standards isn't cost-effective.

Why that? In France nuclear power plants are kept to the newest safety standards. Everything in a nuclear power plant can be replaced apart from the reactor vessel and the containment building.

Re: Why Nuclear Must Be Part Of The Energy Solution (2018)

#139

Post by Hammershaft »

corty wrote: post #111
lorenzhs wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "But instead of getting the other 50% from a relatively clean source (nuclear), they choose instead to use fossil fuels." Unless you're saying that Germany is choosing to build new fossil fuel plants instead of building more renewables (which it largely isn't), what you're describing is a transition that isn't finished yet, not a choice.

Well, Germany until very recently, comissioned new lignite plants and is still actively mining lignite in areas that are still being expanded. There is some political turmoil about that, but at best, fossil fuels have plateaued. Also, for coal plants there are periods of "readiness" where the plants are nominally shut down already, but kept in readiness when power demand is high and renewables are nil, such as the co…

The idea that in a few years germany could be opening multiple lignite coal mines to replace falling renewable output makes me incredibly anxious about our chances of transitioning away from fossil fuels at all.

I've argued it in other places in this thread, but I really think the only solution we have right now for clean baseline power is nuclear energy.

Re: Why Nuclear Must Be Part Of The Energy Solution (2018)

#140

Post by corty »

ketzu wrote: post #73
Rokid wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chernobyl and Fukushima are not the best arguments against nuclear imo. Chernobyl was underbudgetted in terms of safety. For instance no protective dome was places around the reactor housing as done in other countries. Add that to a suboptimal design to start with and sheer bad luck... Fukushima on the other hand is a better comparison. But on larger scales, such as Europe or the US, surely it must be possible to pla…

> hernobyl was underbudgetted in terms of safety. I think that is something we should expect to be the default and is a problem in maintenance as well. Leaky pipes and more are common problems for nuclear power plants. e.g. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/radioactive-leaks-found-at-75-o... > Fukushima on the other hand is a better comparison. But on larger scales, such as Europe or the US, surely it must be possible to…

You still have to remember that the Fukushima reactors were also old and crappy designs. That TMI was as harmless as it was came from the things we learned, Fukushima predates that. Tepco also refused to upgrade or improve several safety measures.

And the Czernobyl design not only ignored a lot of safety knowledge the Sowjets had at that time, but took intentional shortcuts to be cheaper and make the fuel more accessible (supposedly for bomb production).

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