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Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)

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Re: Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)

#291

Post by rewmie »

opo wrote: post #243
rewmie wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (...) consumer roof-top solar is that it is the most expensive form of power ever created (...) Care to show the basis of your personal assertion? It's an extraordinary and unbelievable claim.

This is not my assertion and has been covered in discussions on this web site for a long time. >Rooftop solar photovoltaic installations on residential buildings have the highest unsubsidized levelized costs of energy generation in the United States. If not for federal and state subsidies, rooftop solar PV would come with a price tag between 147 and 221 U.S. dollars per megawatt hour. https://www.statista.com/statist…

> The latest report from Lazard on LCOE also gives similar numbers:

I'm not convinced you read the doc you cited.

In it, it clearly states that the levelized cost of energy for solar PV rooftop residential ranges from $115/MWH while gas peaking is $114/MWH and nuclear is $141.

Your source also states quite clearly that these costs depend on the circumstances (i.e., each case is a case) and it points to unsubsidized costs.

If I get a quote from a rooftop vendor that sells gold plated PV panels to install in a cave, that does not mean that residential PV panels have an expensive energy cost.

Re: Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)

#292

Post by unethical_ban »

pfdietz wrote: post #258
epaulson wrote: post #165

Yes, we could get a lot more energy out of our fission fuel. The reason the USA doesn't is because Jimmy Carter set a policy of not reprocessing fuel because he felt it encouraged nuclear weapons proliferation, coming just a few years after India exploded its first device. Carter's statement: https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1209/ML120960615.pdf

This is a common nuke bro story, but it's nonsense. The actual reason is that plutonium has negative value. It costs more to incorporate it in new fuel rods than it would cost to make fuel rods with freshly enriched uranium.

What about the costs of launching the first-cycle spent fuel into the sun or building caves that protect humanity for 10000 years?

It's probably worth it to reprocess if only to shorten half life.

Re: Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)

#293

Post by pfdietz »

unethical_ban wrote: post #292
pfdietz wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a common nuke bro story, but it's nonsense. The actual reason is that plutonium has negative value. It costs more to incorporate it in new fuel rods than it would cost to make fuel rods with freshly enriched uranium.

What about the costs of launching the first-cycle spent fuel into the sun or building caves that protect humanity for 10000 years? It's probably worth it to reprocess if only to shorten half life.

The thing is, thanks to the magic of nonzero interest rates, it's cheaper to wait and reprocess later. The more you wait, the cheaper it is, even including the cost of temporary storage in dry casks while you wait.

Re: Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)

#295

Post by cycomanic »

MostlyStable wrote: post #216
antonvs wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to https://www.ad.nl/economie/duur-en-gevaarlijk-elke-kerncentr... (translated with Google): > "The leading German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) in Berlin investigated whether new nuclear power plants can indeed contribute to a clean(er) economy. The answer is negative: all 674 nuclear power plants that were built worldwide between 1951 and 2017 were built with substantial government subsidies. With…

Do those cost estimates include the absolutely insane over-engineering for safety that has been forced on the nuclear power industry and _only_ the nuclear power industry? I'd be shocked if a single other power generation method didn't double in price if it was forced to meet the same standards as nuclear. I guarantee you that the coal plants in Germany are killing more people every year than every single one of thei…

The argument that the nuclear power industry suffers from "insane" over-engineering for safety and that this is the reason for the cost is brought up again and again, except there is no real evidence for this.

In fact it's easy to see that a large proportion of a the construction cost is the same as any other (e.g. gas, coal) thermal power plant, because they all need the same steam turbine. Now nuclear power plants have additional costs, also due to safety (and I would argue that we should expect that, a nuclear power plant has more challenges to a coal plant).

Moreover if you look at the cost increases for nuclear power plant projects, they are pretty much inline with the cost increases we have seen for most large infrastructure projects. They all have become significantly more expensive (recently build coal plant also went significantly over budget). Even the world nuclear forum says (https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-aspec...): > Nuclear power plant construction is typical of large infrastructure projects around the world, whose costs and delivery challenges tend to be under-estimated.

The reality is that nuclear power is just not cost-competitive (see also this analysis somebody else (in a counter solar argument) posted https://www.lazard.com/media/typdgxmm/lazards-lcoeplus-april...). Especially considering that renewables are on an exponential curve and nuclear is not (and doesn't show any indication of how to get onto one). Because so much of the cost (and energy) is in the construction of a nuclear power plant, it is actually counter-productive to invest into nuclear power plants, because we will increase CO2 compared to an investment into renewables.

Re: Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)

#296

Post by aydyn »

pfdietz wrote: post #293
unethical_ban wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about the costs of launching the first-cycle spent fuel into the sun or building caves that protect humanity for 10000 years? It's probably worth it to reprocess if only to shorten half life.

The thing is, thanks to the magic of nonzero interest rates, it's cheaper to wait and reprocess later. The more you wait, the cheaper it is, even including the cost of temporary storage in dry casks while you wait.

That's putting a lot on the assumption of exponential growth over the time span of 10,000 years.

Re: Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)

#297

Post by cycomanic »

pyrale wrote: post #163
Zigurd wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://energypost.eu/how-much-will-it-really-cost-to-decomm... Whereas Germany has set aside €38 billion to decommission 17 nuclear reactors, and the UK Nuclear Decommissioning Authority estimates that clean-up of UK’s 17 nuclear sites will cost between €109‒250 billion over the next 120 years, France has set aside only €23 billion to decommissioning its 58 reactors. That's about 6X less than Germany, per reactor. W…

The article is from 2017, yet reports number from 2013. In 2017, the total provisioning was 28~Bn€. Also French reactor are still working (and producing returns), as opposed to German reactors. If you focus on dismantling costs, the example of Maine Yankee [1]: is way less dramatic: "In January 2002 Maine Yankee put the total decommissioning cost at $635 million." The number provided for UK reactors is ludicrous comp…

> whereas France has a deep storage facility on the way.

That has been "on the way" for how many years exactly? The reality is that after almost > 50 years of nuclear power we have exactly one long-term storage facility world-wide which has been commissioned last year (Finland). And somehow that was hailed as a success.

Also what do you think the storage cost for deep storage facilities are?

Re: Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)

#298

Post by pfdietz »

aydyn wrote: post #296
pfdietz wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, thanks to the magic of nonzero interest rates, it's cheaper to wait and reprocess later. The more you wait, the cheaper it is, even including the cost of temporary storage in dry casks while you wait.

That's putting a lot on the assumption of exponential growth over the time span of 10,000 years.

If the assumption fails and interest rates go to zero and stay there, we can reprocess then. In the meantime, if we can invest the money elsewhere and delay reprocessing we come out ahead.

Re: Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)

#299

Post by cycomanic »

Detrytus wrote: post #148
effed3 wrote: post #51

All the analysis like this forget to count the cost of decommissioning the nuclear technology, reactors and fuels. Cost for end of life reactors are an order of magnitude those of contruction, and no safe definitive solution for fuel exist, both payed by -public-. The technology is not safe, a nuclear incident will span years and affect a wide area, people life, healt, and economic impact are to count in, not easy to…

Nuclear technology is safe enough, and the storage of the waste is non-issue: the amount of waste produced thorough last 80 years since we first split atom would fit in a single storage facility of the size of the football stadium. If we want to move away from fossil fuels then the nuclear is our best bet, solar and wind are just impractical toys.

This is such a rubbish argument I wondered where it came from and it's even the DOE who writes this (https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/5-fast-facts-about-spent-...). It is completely misleading, so yes the volume of the spend fuel if packed together would fit a football field to a height of 10 yards. However, you could (and hopefully never would) store your nuclear waste like that, you need containment vessels, cooling (air circulation) etc. and this number also completely ignores the amount of "non-fuel" nuclear waste that you have as well.

The whole statement is designed to mislead.

Re: Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)

#300

Post by lost_tourist »

pfdietz wrote: post #258
epaulson wrote: post #165

Yes, we could get a lot more energy out of our fission fuel. The reason the USA doesn't is because Jimmy Carter set a policy of not reprocessing fuel because he felt it encouraged nuclear weapons proliferation, coming just a few years after India exploded its first device. Carter's statement: https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1209/ML120960615.pdf

This is a common nuke bro story, but it's nonsense. The actual reason is that plutonium has negative value. It costs more to incorporate it in new fuel rods than it would cost to make fuel rods with freshly enriched uranium.

That seems to not account for societal and storage costs. I see too many people extrapolate stuff into "it's not the absolute cheapest we can diversify into pushing the cost off to future generations rather than being responsible for our own creations".
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