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New nuclear plant at Sizewell set for green light

bbc.com

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Re: New nuclear plant at Sizewell set for green light

#271

Post by pfdietz »

opo wrote: post #263
pfdietz wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't say they were.

>...Exelon has stated that for new nuclear plants in the US to compete with NG CC, CO2 taxes would have to be $300-400/ton. Where did they say that?

https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/PT.3.4088

“The cost of new nuclear is prohibitive for us to be investing in,” says Crane. Exelon considered building two new reactors in Texas in 2005, he says, when gas prices were $8/MMBtu and were projected to rise to $13/MMBtu. At that price, the project would have been viable with a CO2 tax of $25 per ton. “We’re sitting here trading 2019 gas at $2.90 per MMBtu,” he says; for new nuclear power to be competitive at that price, a CO2 tax “would be $300–$400.” Exelon currently is placing its bets instead on advances in energy storage and carbon sequestration technologies.

Re: New nuclear plant at Sizewell set for green light

#272

Post by sofixa »

belorn wrote: post #198
grey-area wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a solved problem, particularly in the UK. Battery prices are constantly dropping and pumped storage is a proven solution. It requires investment, but far less than fission plants.

This is where a market solution should be used. Set up the conditions for minimum delivery of carbon-free power for a given period and let private companies bet on it. If people can deliver a battery solution that exclusively use renewable to charge them, and do this cheaper than nuclear, then they win the bid. They don't get to use natural gas as a backup. They also need to be held liable to maintain the minimum cap…

The costs and risks involved in large scale power generation facilities isn't really fit for private companies and market competition. And when you add a market element to it, companies might cut corners to increase profits ( or minimise losses), and you certainly don't want that.

Re: New nuclear plant at Sizewell set for green light

#273

Post by grey-area »

evgen wrote: post #194
grey-area wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Battery prices are several orders of magnitude above where they would need to be to provide true grid-scale storage and production capacity is a fraction of what would be required for same. Thankfully prices are falling, efficiency improving, and massive battery factories are planned. The growth of EV means that will continue. Peaker plants are already being replaced with batteries. > Pumped storage is a dead-end s…

Scotland can provide, at most, less than 5% of required capacity if you turned every available loch into pumped storage. Claiming that pumped storage is in any way a viable grid-storage system that can handle baseload in the UK is inaccurate. Even if every battery production facility on the planet was dedicated entirely to producing storage batteries for the UK it would take almost half a decade to meet the requireme…

It doesn’t have to handle baseload, it has to handle peaks.

Re: New nuclear plant at Sizewell set for green light

#274

Post by pfdietz »

wazoox wrote: post #235
jnxx wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can also exchange energy using high-voltage DC lines across the whole continent. Also, wave energy converters like Pelamis are an exciting technology, precisely because they harvest wind energy decoupled in space and time. It is a great opportunity for Scotland, the coast of France and Spain, Japan, Scandinavia and so on. Not totally technologically mature but shown to be viable using 400kW plants. https://www.yo…

Fantastic stuff that doesn't exist and won't exist for a long time at the humougous scale we need. We need to get out of fossil fuels now . Be realistic for chrissake! We need dense, powerful power sources.

Pro-nukes like to point to China for support, but China is building large numbers of UHV DC transmission lines, in large part to transmit renewable power. They have 30,000 km of UHV DC lines now, and will be building more.

Re: New nuclear plant at Sizewell set for green light

#275

Post by AnthonyMouse »

sir_bearington wrote: post #265
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another option is to not waste the heat, and use thermal storage. A well-insulated vat of salt is cheap, can be made arbitrarily large, and will hold heat over a 24 hour period with reasonable efficiency. So you store the heat during below-average demand and use it to generate extra electricity during above-average demand. But the same solution also makes solar interesting again when it's used in combination, because…

Sure, but thermal storage remains in the prototyping stage. Besides solar thermal generation I'm not aware of any grid scale thermal storage facilities. It's a potential future option, but it's not a presently extant option.

Thermal storage is based on basic physical principles. There is no question that it can be done. It hasn't been commercialized because the market for energy storage has heretofore been served by fossil fuels.

If you remove fossil fuels, you have to replace them with something. You're building new power plants. New nuclear power plants could straightforwardly be built with thermal storage.

Re: New nuclear plant at Sizewell set for green light

#276

Post by sir_bearington »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #275
sir_bearington wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but thermal storage remains in the prototyping stage. Besides solar thermal generation I'm not aware of any grid scale thermal storage facilities. It's a potential future option, but it's not a presently extant option.

Thermal storage is based on basic physical principles. There is no question that it can be done. It hasn't been commercialized because the market for energy storage has heretofore been served by fossil fuels. If you remove fossil fuels, you have to replace them with something. You're building new power plants. New nuclear power plants could straightforwardly be built with thermal storage.

Fusion is also based on basic physical principles. Do you think a plant to cut all funding for renewables or fission and putting it into fusion research amounts to a sound energy policy? Sound approaches to decarbonization are based on technologies that are currently available, not ones that might become available depending on the outcomes of research and development.

Nuclear plants definitely could use thermal storage, but the main advantage is of nuclear over renewables is that they have consistent energy production and thus don't need storage in the first place. It doesn't suffer from the duck curve like solar, or weather-dependent intermittency like wind. Nuclear doesn't need storage to become viable, as France has demonstrated for decades.

Re: New nuclear plant at Sizewell set for green light

#277

Post by AlchemistCamp »

vkou wrote: post #268
AlchemistCamp wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to look at who is polluting the most. If country A represents 2x the emissions of country B, then it's twice as important to curb their pollution. Country borders mean nothing to the planet in ecological terms. How about looking at emissions per square kilometer as a target, but focusing treaty efforts on the largest CO2 emitting countries (or coalitions of countries that can be dealt with as a block)?

> If country A represents 2x the emissions of country B, then it's twice as important to curb their pollution. Capping emissions per capita accomplishes just that. Why are you so opposed to it? > How about looking at emissions per square kilometer as a target So, Canada (Population 38 million) should get to pollute three times more, in absolute values than India (Population 1.35 billion), because it has three times t…

You're confusing is with ought.

It's not that Canada "should get to" pollute more than India. Canada can pollute more than India and still have the effects absorbed by its environment. Canada has vast forests absorbing CO2 on a scale sufficient to mostly counteract the harmful effects caused by its relatively sparse population. India doesn't have those vast forests, and its population is enormous.

I'm making no claim that it should be this way. It is this way.

Despite emitting more CO2 per capita, Canada is putting a negligible strain on the planet compared to India, the US, or especially China.

Re: New nuclear plant at Sizewell set for green light

#278

Post by manfredo »

godelski wrote: post #249
opo wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Ok, tell me how do you plan on restoring the dying nuclear industry? That is a different discussion. France built France built over 50 reactors in about 15 years, so obviously a rapid buildup could be done if that ends up being the best option, but that is worthy of its own discussion. My point was that there are advocates who only talk about the cost of nuclear power compared to say the low cost of solar electricit…

That's because Bill Gates listened to the scientists, and you can see him write about this. He knows to not put all his eggs in one basket. So he invests in small nuclear, because it is a technology we have and can fix deployment issues. He invests in solar because it is a far cheaper option in sunny areas. He invests in carbon capture and sequestration to reverse the effects of climate change to this point and how w…

Nuclear really does force us into an "either or" scenario. Nuclear is just as cheap as it is to run at a fraction of its capacity as it does to run it at full capacity. Peak energy load also happens when the sun is not in line of sight. So if you use nuclear to fulfill peak load, then you can just use these plants for the rest of the day and skip building intermittent sources.

This is why most plans for renewables are contingent on orders-of-magnitude improvements in energy storage. Or continued use of fossil fuels. Because if you use nuclear to fill in the duck curve, then there's no reason to build out other sources of energy.

Re: New nuclear plant at Sizewell set for green light

#279

Post by manfredo »

pfdietz wrote: post #256
manfredo wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US east coast does not suffer from earthquakes. A tsunami is a geological event, not a weather event.

While earthquakes on the east coast are uncommon, they do occur. For example, Virginia experienced a magnitude 5.8 quake in 2011. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Virginia_earthquake The US east coast faces a tsunami risk from undersea avalanches on the edge of the continental shelf: https://www.livescience.com/24813-east-coast-tsunamis.html "An offshore earthquake of magnitude 4.5 or above could cause submarine av…

A submarine avalanche causes waves by a sudden displacement of earth under water. These occur regardless of earthquakes, and rarely result in significant waves: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbidity_current

Re: New nuclear plant at Sizewell set for green light

#280

Post by pfdietz »

manfredo wrote: post #279
pfdietz wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While earthquakes on the east coast are uncommon, they do occur. For example, Virginia experienced a magnitude 5.8 quake in 2011. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Virginia_earthquake The US east coast faces a tsunami risk from undersea avalanches on the edge of the continental shelf: https://www.livescience.com/24813-east-coast-tsunamis.html "An offshore earthquake of magnitude 4.5 or above could cause submarine av…

A submarine avalanche causes waves by a sudden displacement of earth under water. These occur regardless of earthquakes, and rarely result in significant waves: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbidity_current

From the link I gave:

"A 7.2-magnitude earthquake off the southern coast of Newfoundland in 1929 caused a large underwater landslide, creating a large wave that rushed ashore and killed 28 people on the island, ten Brink said. The waves were up to 26 feet high until some reached narrow inlets, where they grew to 43 feet (13 m), he said."

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