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Hinkley Point C: Building Britain's first nuclear reactor in 30 years

building.co.uk

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Re: Hinkley Point C: Building Britain's first nuclear reactor in 30 years

#191

Post by littlestymaar »

adrianN wrote: post #175
littlestymaar wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nuclear+Hydrogen makes no sense economically. If you have the extra capacity to run electrolysis, your nuclear fleet is too big. It's cheaper than running it on wind or solar, so no.

That’s a bold claim.

When you use an energy source with a 90% capacity factor instead of 40%, you can amortize the CAPEX twice as fast, and there's a lot of CAPEX involved in the business of making green hydrogen (that's most of the cost, actually since it assumes very little OPEX due to using excess (hence free) electricity).

Re: Hinkley Point C: Building Britain's first nuclear reactor in 30 years

#192

Post by Moldoteck »

the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #169
Moldoteck wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are these sufficient when Germany still bumps coal, gas and imports in off peak hours? The question isn't if you can build them, the question is how much storage do you need and the cost. Like how much storage does Germany need for dunkelflauten? Are there any estimations?

> How are these sufficient when Germany still bumps coal, gas and imports in off peak hours? Because they bump coal, gas and imports in peak hours. > The question isn't if you can build them, the question is how much storage do you need and the cost. Like how much storage does Germany need for dunkelflauten? Are there any estimations? I suppose you did not spend a lot of time researching this. That can be easily foun…

Um... No, Germany bumps them in offpeak hours https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DE?lang=en You can also check their imports.

Sorry, I'm quite bad at googling, may you show me what you found regarding this topic? I mean how much energy storage does Germany need to not use fossils and to not import from neighbor states with fossil generation?

Re: Hinkley Point C: Building Britain's first nuclear reactor in 30 years

#193

Post by mpweiher »

tmtvl wrote: post #158
imtringued wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear is doomed to fail, because people's lifespans are too short. You can build a nuclear power plant, then do nothing for 50 years and have no workforce left to build new ones. This leads to nuclear power being excessively expensive and slow to construct. If you decide to go the SMR route so that you continuously build nuclear reactors every year to sidestep this problem, then you run into the problem that the co…

Well, look at it this way: what happened at Fukushima was an ageing, poorly maintained reactor built on a fault line in the Pacific Ring of Fire got hit by a record-setting earthquake AND a tsunami... and despite all of that the damage is not that massive. I mean, yes, the situation is a big mess and I wouldn't want to be in charge of handling the clean up and everything, but let's be fair: considering all of the cir…

"Relocation was unjustified for the 160,000 people relocated after Fukushima."

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095758201...

So there were and will be no negative health effects from the radiation, whereas 100% of the deaths and other negative effects on people were due to Radiophobia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiophobia

Re: Hinkley Point C: Building Britain's first nuclear reactor in 30 years

#194

Post by littlestymaar »

lupusreal wrote: post #112
pfdietz wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the same sense this reactor doesn't exist?

Yes, anybody speaking as though this reactor already exists is wrong.

Well HPC exists, it's not operational yet (and won't be before several years) but it does exist.

And equivalent storage doesn't exist not as a WIP, not even as a project.

Re: Hinkley Point C: Building Britain's first nuclear reactor in 30 years

#195

Post by throw0101b »

crote wrote: post #163
throw0101b wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> decommissioning Bruce Power is responsible for decommissioning costs: > Bruce Power receives a fixed price for its electricity generation that is inclusive of all its current costs and funding of future decommissioning liabilities in the Bruce Facility. As previously noted, the average price over the life of the contract was estimated by the IESO to be $77/ MWh (in 2015$). * https://www.brucepower.com/who-we-are/de…

How many of their plants have already been fully decommissioned? What's going to happen when the reserved funds run out halfway through the decommissioning process? Who's going to pay for it when Bruce Power goes bankrupt? Are they going to claw back dividends decades after payout, or will the taxpayers end up with the bill?

You claimed "OEB has off-loaded all the costs for building and decommissioning". I gave references that contradict that and asked for references to support your statement.

You have not provided any, and have changed the subject. Do you retract your claim?

Or are you sticking with your claim and moving the goalposts as well?

Re: Hinkley Point C: Building Britain's first nuclear reactor in 30 years

#196

Post by adrianN »

littlestymaar wrote: post #191
adrianN wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a bold claim.

When you use an energy source with a 90% capacity factor instead of 40%, you can amortize the CAPEX twice as fast, and there's a lot of CAPEX involved in the business of making green hydrogen (that's most of the cost, actually since it assumes very little OPEX due to using excess (hence free) electricity).

You ignore the cost of overbuilding nuclear vs the cost of renewables. I doubt that you can make a convincing argument that fits in the HN comment box, since it's a rather complex topic.

Re: Hinkley Point C: Building Britain's first nuclear reactor in 30 years

#197

Post by adrianN »

littlestymaar wrote: post #190
adrianN wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Less than four doublings is not a lot. We’re at the beginning of the storage expansion. The interesting question is not when we‘ll be able to cover a night, but when we’ll be able to cover a month.

> The interesting question is not when we‘ll be able to cover a night, but when we’ll be able to cover a month. The answer to this one is a pretty straightforward never . You have to realize that such a storage will sit duck most of the time, making it impossible to get any return on investment on it.

There are power plants today that are being paid for standing by idle, so clearly you can make money by just providing emergency backup even when it's never used.

Re: Hinkley Point C: Building Britain's first nuclear reactor in 30 years

#198

Post by ViewTrick1002 »

7952 wrote: post #172
crote wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that you can't use nuclear to compensate for low wind/PV supply. The cost of nuclear energy is dominated by the need to pay back the massive construction loan. Nobody is willing to take that risk on an open electricity market, so they've signed a contract with the government to guarantee price and demand. If the price on the open market is less than the "strike price" the government will pay for the di…

In an open market nuclear (and wind/solar) would still operate 100% of the time. That is because the marginal cost of one extra unit of energy is trivial. They would sell energy even if it was not enough to cover the capital costs. Because that is more revenue than turning the piywer station off. We have strike prices so that generators can cover the capital costs. But it will also hold prices down when the wholesale…

Nuclear plants are already being forced to shut down across Europe because no one wants their expensive energy. That is old paid off plants, not insanely expensive new builds.

https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/commodities/energy-...

For every passing year renewable penetration deepens and we end up with situations like this:

> On 100 out of the 144 days since 8 March, California’s electricity demand was 100% supplied by renewable energy for at least part of the day. Solar, wind and hydroelectric energy technologies fully powered the state’s grid for at least a few minutes and for as long as ten hours for 100 days.

https://www.power-technology.com/news/california-achieves-10...

That is an incredibly hostile economical environment for a nuclear power plant, and the only thing the CFD accomplishes is higher power bills for the ratepayers.

Re: Hinkley Point C: Building Britain's first nuclear reactor in 30 years

#199

Post by ViewTrick1002 »

mpweiher wrote: post #193
tmtvl wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, look at it this way: what happened at Fukushima was an ageing, poorly maintained reactor built on a fault line in the Pacific Ring of Fire got hit by a record-setting earthquake AND a tsunami... and despite all of that the damage is not that massive. I mean, yes, the situation is a big mess and I wouldn't want to be in charge of handling the clean up and everything, but let's be fair: considering all of the cir…

"Relocation was unjustified for the 160,000 people relocated after Fukushima." https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095758201... So there were and will be no negative health effects from the radiation, whereas 100% of the deaths and other negative effects on people were due to Radiophobia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiophobia

Try to argue for no evacuation when the nuclear power plant is literally melting down and experiencing multiple large explosions.

This feels like post-fact reasoning attempting to in a blasé paper over reality.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haUawwm7l4k

Re: Hinkley Point C: Building Britain's first nuclear reactor in 30 years

#200

Post by ViewTrick1002 »

Moldoteck wrote: post #147
davedx wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.energy-storage.news/massive-growth-potential-con... > current operational capacity of 4.6GW/5.9GWh Perhaps do some research before you speak of things you have no idea about

Yeah, that's why California with >10GW of installed battery is not using gas/not importing at all in off peak hours... Oh wait

I know it is hard to grasp trends when you are dead set on seeing nuclear power as the only solution, but maybe look at the curves?

California has vastly reduced the fossil gas usage due to storage. It will only continue. Are they done? No, are we seeing massive change year by year? Yes.

https://blog.gridstatus.io/caiso-batteries-apr-2024/

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