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Hungary nuclear plant cuts output because of warm Danube waters

reuters.com

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Re: Hungary nuclear plant cuts output because of warm Danube waters

#31

Post by unglaublich »

spywaregorilla wrote: post #28
unglaublich wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's perfectly able to do so, but not at full power without heating up the river so much it would hurt organisms in there. Even then, it _could_ have been designed to do so - through more flow - but it's just a design parameter that was optimized in a cost/performance trade-off.

Cost performance tradeoffs aren't some minor thing. If you cannot produce energy at a cost effective level, you might as well not produce it at all. The theoretical capabilities of the thing are not relevant if the economics of them don't work.

It's cost-efficient to operate in profitable scenarios and halt in costly scenarios.

Optimizing profitability concerns the full operating range, not same anecdotal outliers.

All energy-intensive industry operates only when circumstances are favorable. Sometimes it's more profitable to reduce output temporarily, e.g. during high gas-prices, or during weekends when workers are more expensive.

Re: Hungary nuclear plant cuts output because of warm Danube waters

#32

Post by croes »

domenkozar wrote: post #17

Note that warm waters is a typical strawman argument against nuclear power. These are rare anomalies and there's dry-cooling of nuclear power plants (although it's less efficient and costs more).

To what extent is it a strawman when it comes to nuclear power generation?

These rare anomalies could happen more often because of climate change and the existence of dry-cooling power plants doesn't help if yout already existing isn't

Re: Hungary nuclear plant cuts output because of warm Danube waters

#33

Post by titzer »

senectus1 wrote: post #22

nuclear power plants are not environmentally friendly. sure they're carbon friendly and "green" in other ways, but the mining of uranium is horrendously dirty, the long term storage of the waste is dirty as hell and this waterways heating issue is just another problem. green renewable should be our goals, we're bathed in power every day it just needs to be bottled. nuclear plants have their place, but its few and far…

A typical large scale nuclear plant produces 3 cubic meters of waste fuel which is (in the US at least) stored onsite in cooling pools. It is not "dirty as hell".

> green renewable should be our goals, we're bathed in power every day it just needs to be bottled.

There is a lot to unpack in this vague statement, but generally speaking, utility-scale power generation from nuclear has the lowest ecological footprint, not just in land area, but all-told. A solar farm is a big, complex, thing with a huge footprint.

Re: Hungary nuclear plant cuts output because of warm Danube waters

#34

Post by cowl »

senectus1 wrote: post #22

nuclear power plants are not environmentally friendly. sure they're carbon friendly and "green" in other ways, but the mining of uranium is horrendously dirty, the long term storage of the waste is dirty as hell and this waterways heating issue is just another problem. green renewable should be our goals, we're bathed in power every day it just needs to be bottled. nuclear plants have their place, but its few and far…

> but the mining of uranium is horrendously dirty,

if you go down enough the chain of anything you find something that is not so friendly. And anyway that is a call to review Uranium mining practices not a condamnation of nuclear tech. In sum nuclear power plants are friendlier that everything we have right now.

Re: Hungary nuclear plant cuts output because of warm Danube waters

#35

Post by akamaka »

domenkozar wrote: post #17

Note that warm waters is a typical strawman argument against nuclear power. These are rare anomalies and there's dry-cooling of nuclear power plants (although it's less efficient and costs more).

Creating heat to turn into electricity is an outdated 19th century idea at this point.

Now that we’ve mastered the technology to turn ambient energy directly into electricity, traditional nuclear reactors are an overly complex technological dead end.

Re: Hungary nuclear plant cuts output because of warm Danube waters

#36

Post by hutzlibu »

DarkNova6 wrote: post #19
domenkozar wrote: post #17

Note that warm waters is a typical strawman argument against nuclear power. These are rare anomalies and there's dry-cooling of nuclear power plants (although it's less efficient and costs more).

Plus, most reactors were built in the 70s/80s when waterflow of rivers was more plentiful and less warm on average. Ironically, nuclear contributed to none of that.

"Ironically, nuclear contributed to none of that."

Only when you think building them, maintaining them, mining Uran, shipping Uran and shipping and storing the radioactive waste has no CO2 footprint.

Now sure, we still might have been better off, if we would have replaced all the coal plants with nuclear by now. But we did not and now we have to work with what we have.

Re: Hungary nuclear plant cuts output because of warm Danube waters

#37

Post by Moldoteck »

senectus1 wrote: post #22

nuclear power plants are not environmentally friendly. sure they're carbon friendly and "green" in other ways, but the mining of uranium is horrendously dirty, the long term storage of the waste is dirty as hell and this waterways heating issue is just another problem. green renewable should be our goals, we're bathed in power every day it just needs to be bottled. nuclear plants have their place, but its few and far…

the long term storage of the waste is dirty as hell - It's not! France manages to recycle a lot of it's fuel(not sure if all), 90% gets back to reactor, 10% is transformed in solid state via vitrification for long term storage, where only first ~300 yrs are really dangerous bc of the decay speed of these 10% Why others don't do this? Fk knows, fossils lobby I guess+ some other 'reasons' that are not that important. There are similar reprocessing plants in Japan and (maybe) China and one more county

Re: Hungary nuclear plant cuts output because of warm Danube waters

#38

Post by croes »

pif wrote: post #29
senectus1 wrote: post #22

nuclear power plants are not environmentally friendly. sure they're carbon friendly and "green" in other ways, but the mining of uranium is horrendously dirty, the long term storage of the waste is dirty as hell and this waterways heating issue is just another problem. green renewable should be our goals, we're bathed in power every day it just needs to be bottled. nuclear plants have their place, but its few and far…

> green renewable should be our goals Comfortable life for everyone is my goal. > we're bathed in power every day it just needs to be bottled That word "just" proves that you don't know what you are talking about.

It's the same "just" as in we need just more nuclear power plants.

But he is right about the botteling. Storing energy is the most important issue, because we have plenty of energy sources but still depend on production on demand.

Re: Hungary nuclear plant cuts output because of warm Danube waters

#40

Post by kshahkshah »

spywaregorilla wrote: post #27
domenkozar wrote: post #17

Note that warm waters is a typical strawman argument against nuclear power. These are rare anomalies and there's dry-cooling of nuclear power plants (although it's less efficient and costs more).

Rare anomalies currently. Will they continue to be rare anomalies going forward? Also, high heat moments are the times when you likely need more power than ever...

Is it not a chicken and egg? If we don’t build waters get warmer faster from the existing primary sources of power, albeit indirectly
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