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Europe is in danger of rolling electricity shortages

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Re: Europe is in danger of rolling electricity shortages

#271

Post by flaviut »

pmlnr wrote: post #170
NKosmatos wrote: post #75

We need more nuclear power plants and we need them yesterday, there is no other mid term solution for the ongoing/coming energy crisis. The problem is that replacing old nuclear power plants (or building new ones) takes many years, time we don’t have… Let’s see how this situation evolves.

Yeah... about that. I was completely pro-nuclear until very recently, when I learnt that: - the summer droughts caused nuclear reactors to stop due to the lack of water - russia provides ~40% of ALL nuclear fuel - even France is getting their from Kazahstan So in light of these: more solar and wind, combined with possibly metan generation to store it as per https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2022/07/22/were-going-to-…

According to [1], fully enriched and fabricated uranium fuel is approx $2770/kg, or about $0.0077/kWh.

The average heat rate for natural gas is something like 7732BTU/kWh, or 44% efficient[2]. The cost of natural gas around Sep 2019, before this whole mess, was $2.56/MMBtu[3]. That comes out to $0.02/kWh, 2.5x per kWh than nuclear.

At current price levels of $8.81/MMBtu, that comes to $0.068/kWh, or 8.8x per kWh than nuclear.

Not even considering how nuclear fuel can be stored and stockpiled much more effectively than gas, the benefit to Russia of using gas is much much higher than using nuclear.

[1]: http://www.energybc.ca/cache/nuclear/nuclear2/www.world-nucl... [2]: https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=667&t=3 [3]: https://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/hist/rngwhhdm.htm

Re: Europe is in danger of rolling electricity shortages

#272

Post by kennend3 »

toast0 wrote: post #209
Someone wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firstly, how would you keep consumers honest about what’s essential? Secondly, I think “essential” will depend on the duration of the blackout. For a blackout of a few hours, keeping WiFi running so that work from home can continue probably is more essential than heating a water boiler. If the blackout takes a few days, that may change.

Charge higher rates for essential. Offer rebates for certain users with life safety requirements for uninterrupted power.

> Charge higher rates for essential.

This makes ZERO sense..

I live in a cold climate.. Our furnace is "essential" to prevent my family and i from freezing to death. Under your plan we should pay more for this?

And those who cant afford it? Let me guess, government rebates, making a complex program even more complex?

Any time your solution requires "rebates".. it is flawed from the start.

Re: Europe is in danger of rolling electricity shortages

#273

Post by bitL »

rightbyte wrote: post #270
bitL wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a bit too steep just for a powerbank ;-)

If you have a gasoline car you can charge in that from the starter battery. A starter battery is about 1kWh. Or just keep a lead acid battery around charged up and connect a ciggarette lighter socket to it.

I was specifically curious about dedicated powerbanks. This discussion got sidetracked to cars.

Re: Europe is in danger of rolling electricity shortages

#274

Post by rightbyte »

_ph_ wrote: post #203
panick21_ wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you already have a system where everybody uses electricity in house warming its far, far, far (and lots more fars) easier to switch to heat pumps while in Germany lots of houses have gas/oil heating. Going from that to heat pumps is 100x more difficult and costly. France is in a much better situation. Better isolation, heat pumps are technology independent, you just need reliable electricity.

Actually it is the other way around. The houses designed for electric heating usually don't have any heating pipes but just resistive heaters as part of the floor. You cannot convert that to heat pumps, you have to build a new heating system into the house including laying pipes, new floors. On the other side, if you have a central heating system, you can replace the burner with a heat pump and leave the rest mostly…

You can have airair pumps, but ye airwater or waterwater (ground heat) is better. Especially if the house is not small.

Re: Europe is in danger of rolling electricity shortages

#275

Post by Someone »

toast0 wrote: post #209
Someone wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firstly, how would you keep consumers honest about what’s essential? Secondly, I think “essential” will depend on the duration of the blackout. For a blackout of a few hours, keeping WiFi running so that work from home can continue probably is more essential than heating a water boiler. If the blackout takes a few days, that may change.

Charge higher rates for essential. Offer rebates for certain users with life safety requirements for uninterrupted power.

Sounds like a good idea, but would, IMO, split less along the essential/non-essential line than along the richer-poorer line.

Richer people likely also would counter this with battery or diesel powered backup power (already happens a lot in countries that have irregular blackouts). If they use batteries, their power usage would even go up dues to losses in the charge/discharge cycle.

Re: Europe is in danger of rolling electricity shortages

#276

Post by locallost »

autokad wrote: post #253
locallost wrote: post #211

I read the whole thread. At one point he goes on and on how France is shaky because their nuclear plants are offline caused by corrosion issues etc. On the very next tweet he blasts Germany for prematurely shutting down "the most reliable energy source nuclear". Well if they're reliable, why is France in this world of hurt right now? I agree about one thing, and that it really is a perfect storm of issues, and that t…

you have to ask yourself what 'reliable' means. Its my understanding that nuclear is called 'reliable' due to the availability of the fuel source as well as the constant electricity output it produces (its very stable / constant ). That speaks nothing to the 'reliability of keeping plants online' that you are referring to. even if the reliability referred to by the author was claiming they are easy to keep online, th…

The decision to wind down nuclear was made almost 10 years before Fukushima and it was Merkel who initially postponed the decision. Once Fukushima happened they figured it wasn't such a hot idea to have decades old plants running. So it has nothing to do with hip.

Re: Europe is in danger of rolling electricity shortages

#277

Post by Gwypaas »

moonchrome wrote: post #262
Gwypaas wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simply cost. If the plants started in the early 2000s would have been delivered on time and budget they would be a huge part of the transition today. Now nuclear costs 3-5x more compared to renewables and is simply not relevant. > "WIND" or "Solar" is not going to replace 3,500 MW of nuclear power without damaging a LOT of land. If land use is what you measure impact based on a much better target is the beef industry…

>Now nuclear costs 3-5x more and is simply not relevant. Compared to what ? Energy prices have jumped 2-3x in some places so far, and it's not even winter yet. Comparing renewable prices as averages or whatever is fine if you like blackouts ?

Then it's even better to get 3-5x the effect per invested dollar.

Re: Europe is in danger of rolling electricity shortages

#278

Post by rightbyte »

jopsen wrote: post #260
maCDzP wrote: post #174

As a Swede that just went though an election with electricity prices being discussed this is very interesting. Prices in Sweden are at an all time high. I don’t remember this analysis being talked about. The problem was cast mostly as a domestic issue - that’s my take at least. In hindsight I think it was only the left that had a solution that maybe would address this for Sweden at least. They wanted to have domestic…

> They wanted to have domestic and EU-pricing. But would it be legal? That kind of protectionism would definitely run counter to the ideals if the EU common market. It's hard to know what EU countries might do, but during covid the EU avoided protectionism when it came to vaccines. Of course, it could be different this time.

> It's hard to know what EU countries might do, but during covid the EU avoided protectionism when it came to vaccines.

There was A LOT of backstabbing in the beginning regarding medical supplies. Landlocked countries got screwed in transit. Even Red Cross aid was confiscated.

Thankfully the panic only lasted about one two weeks or something.

Re: Europe is in danger of rolling electricity shortages

#279

Post by izacus »

locallost wrote: post #266
izacus wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Well if they're reliable, why is France in this world of hurt right now? This an exceedingly intellectually lazy argument which shows that you're either horribly biased (and never engaged with the reading material properly) or didn't even spend a minute thinking through what you're asking. It's somewhere on the level of "well, why is there snow in New York if global warming is happening HUUUUH?!". (Not to mention t…

They're in the process of being started for months now. It's even mentioned in the tweets that EdF has a poor track record of keeping their word. How much I would know if I would only read the material properly. Reliability is a word and it has a meaning. With that in mind nothing beats renewables because the tech just works and they're so decentralized that a glitch of huge proportions would be needed to make them n…

>They're in the process of being started for months now

Of course they are, that's how they work. 6 of them came online in last two weeks. But that's not what you were honestly implying there, is it?

> Reliability is a word and it has a meaning. With that in mind nothing beats renewables because the tech just works and they're so decentralized that a glitch of huge proportions would be needed to make them not work as designed. On the other hand a huge power plant can go out unexpectedly and take a massive part of the grid offline just as unexpectedly. That's unreliable and it's in fact what has happened this year.

Whatever meaning "reliability" has (especially in practical terms of you getting your power), it's really not what you wrote in the other sentences. Especially it's not a word that means "ignoring drawbacks of whichever option I like."

Re: Europe is in danger of rolling electricity shortages

#280

Post by brazzy »

chiph wrote: post #251
mijoharas wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's fair. If almost 40% of french nuclear is offline right now[0][1] then I think it's reasonable to ask questions about reliability. Could you explain how the position is lazy? (Note: I'm in favour of nuclear power) [0] https://twitter.com/BurggrabenH/status/1567971418255532035 [1] Our forecast is for 59% utilisation or 315TWh based on EDF's guidance.

The French reactors were taken offline for scheduled maintenance and repairs. Those hours don't count against reliability metrics because the plants weren't expected to be operating. The argument is lazy because it's false equivalence. A power plant failing suddenly is not the same thing as a power plant being taken offline to fix a known issue. edit: EDF has announced that they will be restarting their nuclear plant…

> The French reactors were taken offline for scheduled maintenance and repairs. Those hours don't count against reliability metrics because the plants weren't expected to be operating.

That is a lie. A total of 12 reactors are down for unscheduled repairs because of corrosion damage that was found during inspections in October 2021.

Some of the others are down unscheduled because they used river water for cooling, which due to the hot and dry summer threatened the rivers' ecosystem.

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