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France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

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Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#251

Post by BurningPenguin »

visarga wrote: post #246
epistasis wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They will be serious if they actually build it, unlike Flamanville. While you call non-nuclear options "virtue signaling," the attempts at building it in France and the US have been virtue signaling. We don't have the industrial capacity to build nuclear. Meanwhile, we are deploying GW of solar, wind, and storage on time, on budget, ar ever decreasing costs. Locking in the high costs of nuclear, for the 60 year lifet…

Once a few years, we get a few weeks without much wind and solar. What do we do then? Solar and wind can't store enough energy to last for weeks.

I'd say it's very unlikely that there will be no wind or sun all over Europe. There is constant exchange of excess energy between the countries anyway. Regardless of that, there are other options too. Like water or geothermal depending on the country. Sometimes there even will be too much energy. I can imagine this being used to make some hydrogen for later use.

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#252

Post by epistasis »

visarga wrote: post #246
epistasis wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They will be serious if they actually build it, unlike Flamanville. While you call non-nuclear options "virtue signaling," the attempts at building it in France and the US have been virtue signaling. We don't have the industrial capacity to build nuclear. Meanwhile, we are deploying GW of solar, wind, and storage on time, on budget, ar ever decreasing costs. Locking in the high costs of nuclear, for the 60 year lifet…

Once a few years, we get a few weeks without much wind and solar. What do we do then? Solar and wind can't store enough energy to last for weeks.

However we do it, it looks like nuclear won't be it, because we can't build nuclear. Some of the more likely routes, with clearer cheaper cost curves than advanced nuclear or SMRs:

1) advanced geothermal (using drilling tech developed within the last decade, not the older ones)

2) flow batteries

3) chemical storage of electricity, whether as ammonia, hydrogen, methanol, or whatever tech path becomes cheapest.

4) for cold climates: district/neighborhood heating with massive seasonal storage

All of these are being developed, and experiencing falling prices on the tech. In contrast, building the same nuclear reactor design gets more expensive successive time it is built. This is true even of France's builds in 70s.

If we are betting on future tech, nuclear is not in the cards. It would have been great it nuclear had put coal out of business in the 1980s, rather than having a ton of build delays in the 1970s that jacked up nuclear's price. But it's ship has sailed, until nuclear can build.

If France completes a single reactor by their planned 2035 date, I will be seriously impressed. However, 1GW in 13 years is not a climate solution.

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#253

Post by laserbeam »

Nbox9 wrote: post #115
d--b wrote: post #71

Keep in mind that the presidential election is in 3 months. Macron wants to show he is being pragmatic. Nuclear energy allows to reduce carbon emissions without sacrificing the economy. It's particularly smart in this moment of tension with Russia, as Europe depends a lot on Russian energy. But whether this happens or not remains to be seen.

> It's particularly smart in this moment It may be particularly smart for this moment in internal French politics, but energy independence is a smart move for any sovereign.

One does not exclude the other :p

In general, whatever a politician's motivation is for any particular bill may or may not be aligned to yours, even though you may both agree on the outcome of that bill. And that's ok.

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#254

Post by epistasis »

azinman2 wrote: post #250
innermate wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Batteries can store enough energy to last for a few weeks.

Industrial-scale batteries are far from a solved problem, and require a lot of excess energy production to fill them that doesn't already get depleted at night. A far more realistic solution is to be able to flex with things like gas plants that don't need to be always running and can function on demand.

We are going to have massive amounts of excess energy production as renewables gain higher penetration on grids. The rea problem will be transmission capacity, or alternatively phrased, making sure storage is close enough to the generation.

California usually curtails large amounts of renewable energy in the spring, but even their smallish installs of 1-2GWh of storage recently has massively reduced that wasted energy. And they aren't even at super high penetration yet for renewables.

We will probably keep lots of backup gas turbines for a decade or two, but by the time significant nuclear could come online, other tech will probably have solved it.

And unfortunately in the US, our nuclear fleet is really close to retirement, and we are going to be losing a ton of nuclear generation capacity soon, with no way to rebuild it. We need other solutions fast.

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#255

Post by KennyBlanken »

rad_gruchalski wrote: post #163
KennyBlanken wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nuclear energy allows to reduce carbon emissions without sacrificing the economy. Only over the course of many decades do they net reduce carbon emissions, at the cost of much higher carbon emissions during the construction phase. Right now we need to be implementing the fastest carbon reductions possible and this does the exact opposite; for the next fifteen years, these plants will be a massive carbon emissions i…

> Guess what has none of these problems? Solar. Wind. Hydro. Energy storage. Right. Because all of those grow naturally in the wild and do not require fiberglass, concrete, various metals, digging for ore, diesel for transport, and on and on and on...

Look at almost any chart online comparing estimates of carbon footprint and you'll see wind and PV are well below nuclear, and they pay back within months.

Nuclear takes a decade to even start operating and by some estimates is worse than natural gas in carbon footprint. Uranium refinement and waste fuel processing take up a massive amount of resources.

https://theecologist.org/2015/feb/05/false-solution-nuclear-...

Solar pays back its carbon footprint within months, whereas nuclear may very well have a footprint much larger than natural gas.

Look around. Do you see any utilities or investors building nuclear plants? No? Meanwhile wind and solar deployments are skyrocketing, both grid and small scale.

Do you think maybe the people running power grids and investing in power plants know a little bit more about this than HNers like yourself do?

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#256

Post by laserbeam »

grammers wrote: post #95
d--b wrote: post #71

Keep in mind that the presidential election is in 3 months. Macron wants to show he is being pragmatic. Nuclear energy allows to reduce carbon emissions without sacrificing the economy. It's particularly smart in this moment of tension with Russia, as Europe depends a lot on Russian energy. But whether this happens or not remains to be seen.

Exactly. Such reactors cannot be built in a day so right now this is just a political move for the upcoming election.

Unfortunately, there's no way of telling if it's JUST a political move. However, a political move is required before actual implementation. I can't imagine France building nuclear power without someone taking credit for it.

There's was no future where power got built without the stunt, so... It's still a move closer to extra energy production. Even though it's a political one.

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#257

Post by KennyBlanken »

joshgachnang wrote: post #136
KennyBlanken wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nuclear energy allows to reduce carbon emissions without sacrificing the economy. Only over the course of many decades do they net reduce carbon emissions, at the cost of much higher carbon emissions during the construction phase. Right now we need to be implementing the fastest carbon reductions possible and this does the exact opposite; for the next fifteen years, these plants will be a massive carbon emissions i…

I'd love some sources comparing the carbon emissions from building them, because otherwise I'm a big supporter of nuclear energy. I'd rather go solar/wind/hydro but I think they have some (not all) of the issues you've noted as well.

Google image search on "energy source carbon footprint" and see that even the charts with very low carbon impact estimates for nuclear still place it at roughly twice wind, and more than solar.

Look at what power companies, investors, grid operators, and most countries are putting money into. Not nuclear. If you think it's just because the public finds it unpalatable, well, the public finds a lot of things unpalatable and that doesn't stop industry and investors from doing whatever they want.

Solar and wind deployment in the US is growing massively as the price of solar panels and wind turbines plunge, especially solar. Battery storage is also plunging in price and rapidly maturing into grid-scale solutions like flow batteries.

Nuclear hasn't gotten cheaper over many, many decades and it provides a kind of power we don't need - base load. In many countries there's an excess of renewable power on many days.

Solar is highly distributed which helps decentralize the grid and localize power generation, lowering losses. It's a lot more efficient for your EV to get power from your neighbor's rooftop panels than from a power plant hundreds of miles away.

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#258

Post by polskibus »

BurningPenguin wrote: post #251
visarga wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once a few years, we get a few weeks without much wind and solar. What do we do then? Solar and wind can't store enough energy to last for weeks.

I'd say it's very unlikely that there will be no wind or sun all over Europe. There is constant exchange of excess energy between the countries anyway. Regardless of that, there are other options too. Like water or geothermal depending on the country. Sometimes there even will be too much energy. I can imagine this being used to make some hydrogen for later use.

Lack of enough wind and sun is basically what happened in EU end of last year and caused energy and gas prices to sky rocket. It is not as rare as you think, moreover it happens over large areas at the same time which exacerbates stress on the grid.

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#259

Post by tjoff »

BurningPenguin wrote: post #251
visarga wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once a few years, we get a few weeks without much wind and solar. What do we do then? Solar and wind can't store enough energy to last for weeks.

I'd say it's very unlikely that there will be no wind or sun all over Europe. There is constant exchange of excess energy between the countries anyway. Regardless of that, there are other options too. Like water or geothermal depending on the country. Sometimes there even will be too much energy. I can imagine this being used to make some hydrogen for later use.

... very slight difference between excess energy and let's import a contries worth of energy. The cost of transmission will be insane, the grid is not meant for those kinds of transfers.

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#260

Post by simion314 »

epistasis wrote: post #242
ike0790 wrote: post #235

Looks like a G20 country is serious about the impending "climate emergency". Regardless of the motives and timing behind this, I think its great to see a country is actually being serious and practical. Anyone going on about the climate and refuses to put nuclear energy at the forefront of the conversation is unserious and is only interested in virtual signaling in my opinion.

They will be serious if they actually build it, unlike Flamanville. While you call non-nuclear options "virtue signaling," the attempts at building it in France and the US have been virtue signaling. We don't have the industrial capacity to build nuclear. Meanwhile, we are deploying GW of solar, wind, and storage on time, on budget, ar ever decreasing costs. Locking in the high costs of nuclear, for the 60 year lifet…

>Meanwhile, we are deploying GW of solar, wind, and storage on time, on budget, ar ever decreasing costs.

That is the easier part, show me the battery deployments please , the ones that can backup the country/state for a week.

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