New nuclear plant at Sizewell set for green light • Hacker News Board

Re: New nuclear plant at Sizewell set for green light

#281

Post by manfredo » Wed, Nov 04, 2020, 2:24 AM UTC

pfdietz wrote: post #280

manfredo wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

Yes, caused by an earthquake 500 times more powerful than the magnitude 4.5 you had previously stated:

> An offshore earthquake of magnitude 4.5 or above could cause submarine avalanches and create dangerous tsunamis with waves higher than 26 feet

Turbidity currents occur on the regular without earthquakes and rarely result in substantial waves. They have been observed to happen due to earthquakes, but this is a rare event. The Grand Banks quake is the only known earthquake to have done this, and as you pointed out it was an earthquake with a much larger magnitude.

In the grand scheme of things, turbidity events don't significantly impact the overall risk of tsunamis. The tsunami risk overwhelmingly comes from the earthquakes themselves, not the turbidity events they may trigger.

Re: New nuclear plant at Sizewell set for green light

#282

Post by wahern » Wed, Nov 04, 2020, 8:25 PM UTC

socialdemocrat wrote: post #176

wahern wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Western industry has progressively lost their ability to efficiently manage many types of heavy industry and large construction projects. This is particularly true for nuclear, which requires the application of disparate and highly specialized techniques and skillsets that are quickly lost. Though not to the same extent as the U.S., Japan, France, and South Korea have lost many of the same skills even though only a c…

Interesting stuff you are mentioning here which I don’t normally see brought up. Do you have any links summarizing this information?

My comments are a synthesis of stuff I've read over the years. This might have been one of the many articles I've read: https://www.vox.com/2016/2/29/11132930/nuclear-power-costs-u...

I only began recording in 2018 particularly noteworthy reporting and research pieces (regarding any topic) I stumble upon. I just added the above to my personal bibliography for good measure.

Re: New nuclear plant at Sizewell set for green light

#283

Post by wahern » Wed, Nov 04, 2020, 9:10 PM UTC

makomk wrote: post #118

wahern wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Western industry has progressively lost their ability to efficiently manage many types of heavy industry and large construction projects. This is particularly true for nuclear, which requires the application of disparate and highly specialized techniques and skillsets that are quickly lost. Though not to the same extent as the U.S., Japan, France, and South Korea have lost many of the same skills even though only a c…

To some extent, it turns out that the problem is France never actually had those specialized nuclear techniques and skillsets. For example, they had huge problems with defective welding and large forgings that weren't up to spec and had faked QA testing documentation which caused big delays. Then the regulators went back and looked at the old plants from the original wave of nuclear building, and they had the same pr…

I suspect this is true of many industries, including aircraft and car manufacturing. And I suspect the quality issues in the French nuclear industry were, very broadly speaking (trying not to equivocate), similar to issues in nuclear industries elsewhere.[1] As quality control and analysis become better, you're often going to belatedly realize that earlier claims fell short. As a rule of thumb I always add a fudge factor to any sales pitch. For example, whatever the 2020 nuclear industry claims today, let's just assume what they can deliver is what they were selling in 2000. And I'm comfortable with what they were selling circa 2000 in terms of safety, as I suspect many others were, too. Nuclear wasn't "unsafe" in 2000, neither in reality nor on paper. With the benefit of hindsight it's clear it was less safe than claimed, an effect hindsight has on most things. But the evidence regarding nuclear has been clear for quite awhile: safety is very good, with large and ever growing margins for error.

[1] Fukushima being an obvious example. I'm neither an engineer nor nuclear cynic, but I was always skeptical of the claims nuclear engineers were making on the news in their self-defensive and, ultimately, self-defeating attempts to mitigate panic. They were far too credulous of engineering tolerances and quality control despite the evidence piling up in front of them regarding the probability of the supposedly improbable. Anyone remotely familiar with any kind of construction project knows things always fall short in the field.

Re: New nuclear plant at Sizewell set for green light

#284

Post by skitout » Thu, Nov 05, 2020, 9:46 PM UTC

evgen wrote: post #270

skitout wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Battery prices (for different battery technologies) are currently in free fall, and the market is booming, so we are 100% sure to see important economy of scale there. This in currently not the case at all of SMR... When it comes to technology at pilot scale, price and capacity improvement may turn out to never be realized... But there are dozens of promising tech, so it seems unlikely that all tech will "fail"... an…

SMR is based upon well-known technology that we have spent decades working on and improving. Other than pumped hydro and batteries there is no potential grid-scale energy storage mechanism that exists beyond desktop models and toy pilots. Battery prices are dropping but the easy low-hanging fruit has been plucked so now the rate of price decline is dropping -- 83% last decade but only 33% predicted over next five yea…

SMR are not even at the toy pilots stage. We know the tech and we know it can work, but we don't when, what investment is required and if it will be competitive. A lot of uncertainty, but one tech only (with few different variations). There are dozens of storage tech with the same or lower uncertainty level... So dozens more chances a tech will work...

About storage tech working now, you forgot possibly the most used right know and the cheapest one: thermal storage (giving up to 9,000MW to the French grid for example!). With a huge and cheap potential and mature cheap tech.

Re: New nuclear plant at Sizewell set for green light

#285

Post by opo » Sat, Nov 07, 2020, 11:09 PM UTC

pfdietz wrote: post #271

opo wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>...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…

Thanks for finding that.

I don't think we really know what a fair CO2 tax should be since it is hard to say what are the long term societal costs of an extra ton of CO2 in the atmosphere. (Though we will likely find out in the next 50 years.)

I am not sure the amount of subsidies that are given to wind, but the rationale for the CO2 tax idea seems to come from that:

>...Crane blamed the regulators of wholesale power markets for failing to give credit to nuclear generators for the social benefits of their carbon-free output. He and other executives say that it’s unfair to not provide nuclear generators a subsidy comparable to the tax credit that wind turbine operators receive for every kilowatt-hour of electricity they produce.