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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

#201

Post by pfdietz »

littlestymaar wrote: post #194
lupusreal wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Storage can go from planned to installed in a very short time, much shorter than a nuclear power plant, so that doesn't mean much. Storage prices are declining and installs are expanding with short time constants as well.

The whole skeptical approach here smells strongly of ignoring rapid exponential change, which is pretty remarkable for a SV associated forum like HN.

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

#202

Post by littlestymaar »

adrianN wrote: post #196
littlestymaar wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I agree that this is a complex topic, and you definitely don't understand it as well as you think you do.

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

#203

Post by Moldoteck »

ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #200
Moldoteck wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

I do certainly see how batteries are extending the renewables supply. I also see that there's still a lot of work to do: https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/US-CAL-CISO

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

#204

Post by 7952 »

ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #198
7952 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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% s…

Surely the objective is reduction of CO2 emissions rather than low bills.

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

#205

Post by littlestymaar »

pfdietz wrote: post #201
littlestymaar wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Storage can go from planned to installed in a very short time, much shorter than a nuclear power plant, so that doesn't mean much. Storage prices are declining and installs are expanding with short time constants as well. The whole skeptical approach here smells strongly of ignoring rapid exponential change, which is pretty remarkable for a SV associated forum like HN.

> Storage can go from planned to installed in a very short time,

No it cannot, when you start building large hazardous (because of fire risk) facilities, then you face the same kind of red tape that you face with any big projects. Storage also requires adapting the electric grid to allow the energy to flow from and to the storage facilities.

Believing storage is easy is just magical thinking.

Nuclear isn't different, it's just big by default. And the French example in the 80s shows that building mass nuclear from scratch is in fact tractable in under two decades.

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

#206

Post by Moldoteck »

ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #199
mpweiher wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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

one of their problems was they didn't know what rad levels are to decide how to perform evacuation, because most sensors were shut down bc of tsunami. They were acting blind with no data and were assuming the worst
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