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Canadian provinces band together to develop nuclear reactor technology

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Re: Canadian provinces band together to develop nuclear reactor technology

#271

Post by natmaka »

hokkos wrote: post #264
natmaka wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, nuke is for base-load, it cannot be started/stopped in 10 minutes (in France, as in many countries, hydro dams are used as buffers).

French nuclear can make varies its plant at 3-5 %Pr/minute, when cumulating 53 reactors, it is a lot. Also nuclear is 20% of the marginal electricity (the one that varies). http://www.oecd-nea.org/nea-news/2011/29-2/aen-infos-suivi-c... https://www.tmrow.com/static/c90a14e6fe7e73b4c60963818f9041e... https://www.tmrow.com/blog/marginal-carbon-intensity-of-elec...

Nuclear plants doesn't have enough flexibility, therefore thermal (non nuclear) power stations are necessary. In France they produce about 7% of the gridpower.

"Not enough flexibility" isn't specific to renewables.

Re: Canadian provinces band together to develop nuclear reactor technology

#272

Post by natmaka »

hokkos wrote: post #265
natmaka wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, however all this neglects that solar produces during peak hours, and that multiple production sites are possible (benefiting from various meteorological conditions). The huge powergrid it implies isn't very different from the one nuke powerplants already need (given that many cannot sit nearby huge cities), that both wind and solar in such a wide area not producing enough is a rare occurrence. Transporting en…

Solar doesn't product for french peak hours (8h and 19h) it is uncorrelated (Pearson correlation) with load. And solar is also auto-correlated on France scale, same with wind. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EJuknaqXkAAwbWn?format=jpg&name=... https://twitter.com/hokkos/status/1196564989022220289

Are solar and wind correlated? Adding other minor 'sources' (biomass), progressing on efficiency and storage, and also saving energy isn't as foolish than hoping that nuke plant and their waste will no commit another major boo-boo, and waiting for those supa dupa absolutely sure nuke plants architectures promised since the 50's.

Re: Canadian provinces band together to develop nuclear reactor technology

#273

Post by natmaka »

hokkos wrote: post #266
natmaka wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Urenco only does uranium enrichment, waste management is vastly more than this > France and most of Europe use Urenco. I'm French, and can see the result: waste is piling up nearby the plants. Deep geological repositories are given as the ultimate solution since the 1970's at least, and there is _NO_ exploited site. Cigéo/Bure (in France) is only a project. Yucca Mountain never ran and is halted. On a similar vein se…

Superphenix is only a failure because of the socialist pact with the ecologist to gain a few votes asked them to close it. It would have solved all waste and supply issues.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superph%C3%A9nix#Operation

Re: Canadian provinces band together to develop nuclear reactor technology

#274

Post by natmaka »

acidburnNSA wrote: post #193
natmaka wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Urenco only does uranium enrichment, waste management is vastly more than this > France and most of Europe use Urenco. I'm French, and can see the result: waste is piling up nearby the plants. Deep geological repositories are given as the ultimate solution since the 1970's at least, and there is _NO_ exploited site. Cigéo/Bure (in France) is only a project. Yucca Mountain never ran and is halted. On a similar vein se…

Anti-nuclear messaging has traditionally said that nuclear waste problem is unsolvable and then stonewalled potential solutions. In this case, the Finns are operating test drills as we speak [1]. The number of people who have been injured or killed by stored commercial nuclear waste is very near zero, and we know how to store it safely in the long term. Again, meanwhile 84% of our energy generation kills 4.3 million…

A drill in a new not-yet-started local and small solution is not a running global solution.

When all waste will be inert we may evaluate the sanitary consequences. Meanwhile the dangerous hot waste may or may not harm.

Well-known scientists who worked in situ have a somewhat different opinion about the consequences: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl:_Consequences_of_the...

UN agencies aren't BS and lies-free.

Re: Canadian provinces band together to develop nuclear reactor technology

#275

Post by trasneoir »

pfdietz wrote: post #239
trasneoir wrote: post #166

Support for nuclear power has become my acid-test. If somebody is serious about making urgent and effective change, fission has to be on the table. Volume is the key to price - we need an internationally-vetted medium-sized design, with a supply chain that can crank out hundreds of complete "just add concrete" systems per year. As well as improving up-front costs, a ubiquitous design makes training and maintenance ea…

Support for CO2 taxes is my acid-test. If a nuclear advocate uses a climate argument, but doesn't support a CO2 tax, they're just hopping on a bandwagon hoping for a handout. BTW, CO2 taxes would have to exceed $300/ton for new nuclear construction in the US to be competitive with natural gas. Do you support that high a CO2 tax?

I'd quibble with the price point - economies of scale can reduce the cost of nuclear pretty dramatically.

That said, I've got no problem with it in principle. Pricing externalities properly seems the simplest way to solve the tragedy of the commons, but it's complicated in this case by the fact that climate is a _global_ commons.

A revenue-neutral carbon tax would make it a more manageable political lift. AFAIK the US is the only country to have "solved" the bigger political problem of long-term nuclear waste storage?

Re: Canadian provinces band together to develop nuclear reactor technology

#276

Post by nicoburns »

kortilla wrote: post #215
nicoburns wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> does not displace nuclear because they do not provide a stable base. If we put the money we put into building nuclear plants into energy storage, then that would likely change pretty quickly.

No it wouldn’t. It’s not a money problem, it’s a tech problem. You can pour 50 billion into storage and it won’t make a dent in the base load.

50 billion would fund a lot of R&D into energy storage (I'm guessing that's probably more than the total amount that's even been spent on such research to date). And it's not like it's a crazy unsolvable problem. There are lot's of promising avenues that just need to be developed, and not even that much. Our current tech isn't that far off being able to support what we need.

Re: Canadian provinces band together to develop nuclear reactor technology

#277

Post by acidburnNSA »

StreamBright wrote: post #260
acidburnNSA wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that Thorium reactors cannot make weapons is a persistent myth propagated by an overenthusastic group of non-expert internet thorium proponents. It is part of a wider (and in my opinion misguided) scheme led by Kirk Sorensen to rebrand advanced nuclear as "Thorium". Thorium reactors necessarily breed Uranium 233, which is a phenomenal weapons material. In fact, in 1994, the USA declassified a memo from the c…

Are you saying that in theory they could switch to uranium-233 based on a single study sponsored by the US government. On the other hand there is overenthusiastic (fixed spelling) group of non-expert internet thorium proponents. This includes Ede Teller, Richard Martin, Alvin Radkowsky and some more. Wikipedia: It is difficult to make a practical nuclear bomb from a thorium reactor's byproducts. According to Alvin Ra…

No, I'm not saying that we should not use Thorium at all. I'm saying that the internet claim that thorium reactors cannot be used to make bombs is patently false. It bothers me that there is misguided understanding of thorium that ends up trashing advanced nuclear in general in favor of thorium.

There are 2 true benefits to thorium over thorium: less long-lived transuranics (but more deeply-penetrating 2.6 MeV gammas from Tl-208) and the ability to have a breeder with slow neutrons (less specific fissile inventory, but more problematic graphite).

The major health threat from any nuclear reactor is large early release dose, which is proportional to power level and power level alone (Watts is proportional to number of atoms fissioning per second). In this, Thorium fuel is very similar to Uranium fuel. Long-term waste ends up in a deep geologic repository in any case. Uranium-Plutonium cycle can breed as well or better than the Thorium-Uranium cycle.

I like thorium a lot. I just don't want people relying on stuff that is factually incorrect to promote it. It's easy to promote without being wrong.

Re: Canadian provinces band together to develop nuclear reactor technology

#278

Post by acidburnNSA »

natmaka wrote: post #274
acidburnNSA wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anti-nuclear messaging has traditionally said that nuclear waste problem is unsolvable and then stonewalled potential solutions. In this case, the Finns are operating test drills as we speak [1]. The number of people who have been injured or killed by stored commercial nuclear waste is very near zero, and we know how to store it safely in the long term. Again, meanwhile 84% of our energy generation kills 4.3 million…

A drill in a new not-yet-started local and small solution is not a running global solution. When all waste will be inert we may evaluate the sanitary consequences. Meanwhile the dangerous hot waste may or may not harm. Well-known scientists who worked in situ have a somewhat different opinion about the consequences: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl:_Consequences_of_the... UN agencies aren't BS and lies-free.

It has started. They are doing actual tests of waste packages in actual final disposition tunnels. See the photo gallery.

> When all waste will be inert we may evaluate the sanitary consequences. Meanwhile the dangerous hot waste may or may not harm.

I don't understand how you can justify this statement. Again, commercial nuclear waste in dry casks has never hurt anyone and probably never will, yet nuclear power has produced ~5% of the world's energy over the past several decades, and it does so without emitting carbon dioxide, and it does so 24/7, and it does so with very little raw material and land impact. Meanwhile, fossil actually kills 4.3 million people every single year. How can you justify a nearly fantastical fear of nuclear waste future harm while 4.3 million people are dying every year from air pollution from the alternative? This is like Germany, who phased out nuclear plants while keeping brown coal plants on, thereby choosing literally to kill about 1000 extra people per year because of their fear of radiation. This feels wild to me, and borderline inhumane given the statistics.

Re: Canadian provinces band together to develop nuclear reactor technology

#279

Post by belorn »

strainer wrote: post #245
belorn wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the idea more likely comes from the kind of confused climate skeptic literature https://www.svtplay.se/video/23437510/agenda/agenda-18-nov-2... Political debate from 2 weeks ago. Green party spoke person vs moderate party leader. It beings at 35m. The moderate describe multiple times that Sweden buys dirty coal energy when the wind is now blowing, and the green party spoke person repeats the argument of being net e…

> the green party spoke person repeats the argument of being net exporter of green energy in response. I think its a valid argument or caveat to the undesirable coal burning. That's a spoken debate, open to interpretation and misunderstanding, not evidence of carbon trading actually being gamed. > where we plant tree and don't cut them down has a name: nature sanctuary. Sure, or let the trees seed themselves but I sa…

> I think its a valid argument or caveat to the undesirable coal burning.

If I was doing some tit-for-tat argument I would ask what kind of confused climate skeptic literature says that its a valid argument for importing coal energy in 2019.

The green party used to say that the coal belong in the ground. It was one of their slogans. Being a net exporter of green energy does not make it suddenly valid to dig up the coal and burn it. The coal belong in the ground and should stay there.

> So get planning - because it can work

Claiming something to be a carbon offset in the books and telling the public misleading information is not acceptable. If they want to put things that "can work" then they can put down "could be a carbon offset" in the book rather than "is a carbon offset". Then the "could be" calculations could be compared to the factual climate change data.

> That sounds like a "super green" policy, do many people believe in it?

And there we have it. Not burning fossil fuel for power is apparently a fantasy?

But that is not true. There are countries today which operate with no or close to zero fossil fueled energy grids. Places like France does it without even calling it "super green". They just did it because they didn't want to be dependent on other nations after the second world war. Iceland just use geothermal and hydro because it was cheapest and available. Norway and Sweden could do it but doesn't for political and economical reasons.

It also a bit silly to argue that it must be done tomorrow. They could set up a goal like they did for 2020, 2030 and 2040 and so on. A lot of green politics is about putting down goals and focusing the political discussion. Banning fossil fuels in energy production has yet to be part of any such discussion, and the green party just dodges the question when ever the issue of still winter nights comes up.

It is also a bit funny that we are defining nuclear as a super green policy. Its a label that sounds like a insult but really, is it? Personally I don't care much either way as my goal is that the coal and oil stay in the ground, the natural gas don't get fracked, and the biofuel production don't get double counted and presented as a carbon offset. I just wish that the green movement would be behind that.

Re: Canadian provinces band together to develop nuclear reactor technology

#280

Post by hokkos »

natmaka wrote: post #270
hokkos wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you wrote is so disingenuous it is unbelievable. So 228B€ for 50 years of 85% of the electricity consumption, and decarbonised. When with the push for renewable, it will cost 121B€ for currently 5,1% of wind and 1.9% for solar. Currently nuclear electricity is bought 42€/MWh by the useless competitor thanks to the ARENH, when wind cost us 89.4€/MWh and solar 294€/MWh and are not dispatchable, uncorrelated with c…

> So 228B€ for 50 years of 85% of the electricity consumption Nope. Nuke plant did not provide 85% during those 50 years. It even doesn't today (only about 71%). In 1971 approximatively approx 5% of the French gridpower was produced by nuke plants. Source: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrie_nucl%C3%A9aire_en_Fr... How exactly do you think it may have produced 85% of the gridpower for 50 years? This is inept and…

>Nope. Nuke plant did not provide 85% during those 50 years.

That's a fair point, but it doesn't change the argument, the cost is over a long period with a big part of the electricity mix.

>This 121B€ budget is not spent

But locked in with feed in tariff form the pre-2017 poorly functioning 5.1%/1.9% mix. You seems to think that more solar and wind will come with that, no new solar panel and wind turbine will be build with that.

https://www.lemonde.fr/blog/huet/2018/04/19/la-cour-des-comp...

>this is a very low-key counterbalancing measure

No this is a useless way to create an artificial competition, and a disgusting way to kill a company, when EDF OA is forced to buy solar and wind, uncorrelated with usage, at an expansive price.

>Germany chose this horrible wind/solar/biomass path. Poor Germans, they don't know that those challenges have no solution, that they are doomed to fail. You should inform them. An EPR or two may save them!

They have coal, lot of coal and only a plan to close them in 2038 and to replace it with russian fossil gas when France will have the latest closed in 2022 and since long barely used them.

>Source?

Look on your electrical bill the CSPE line, and Turpe because of decentralised renewable.

https://www.uarga.org/downloads/Documentation/2019_09_12_Sou...

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contribution_au_service_public...

http://www.leparisien.fr/economie/les-prix-de-l-electricite-...

> Lemme try to guess who will win...

France already won in decarbonising its electricity. Why would Germany win all industrial challenge, what are you a German supremacist ?

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