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Ultra Safe Nuclear

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Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#331

Post by pfdietz »

macspoofing wrote: post #323
ajross wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And unlike a natural gas plant, it costs 3-10x what the equivalent generating capacity in renewables would cost. I come to post this Same Thing every time this discussion comes up. It's not about safety. Everyone serious understand nuclear, even current technologies, is "safe enough" to be useful to build out. Nuclear is outrageously expensive , though. And new reactor designs don't seem to be making much progress on…

>it costs 3-10x what the equivalent generating capacity in renewables would cost Except renewables can't actually replace fossil fuels. They need baseload provided by fossil fuels to be viable. They are also defuse energy sources, and so require huge surface area and lots of materials for collectors - not great for a growing world, both in population and per capita energy needs. Oh, they are variable across days, sea…

> Except renewables can't actually replace fossil fuels. They need baseload provided by fossil fuels to be viable.

False. Renewables could get to 100% of the grid. A key is using hydrogen for the last 10% or so. This is not currently competitive with fossil fuel, but then neither is nuclear.

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#332

Post by pfdietz »

jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #280
littlestymaar wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone is building heavily subsidized windmill. And nobody is building reactors[1] mostly because it's really unpopular (which it pretty much deserves IMHO after decades of shady practices) but it's not a matter of technical merit (and it's never the case). [1] except those who do, China leading the pack.

I'd suggest looking through Lazard's levelized cost of energy slide decks. The unsubsidized price of renewables is indeed substantially less than nuclear. Next look at the time scales for building new nuclear. Then look at the trend lines in the cost of storage, particularly utility scale lithium batteries. You don't have to be a genius to realize this makes new nuclear a bad bet purely on the finances. Even if you w…

And NuScale appears to be failing on that, with the UAMPS buuld being delayed one year per year for the last four years, and still only 30% subscribed. In the meantime, costs have escalated 70%.

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#333

Post by pfdietz »

nwah1 wrote: post #327
ajross wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And unlike a natural gas plant, it costs 3-10x what the equivalent generating capacity in renewables would cost. I come to post this Same Thing every time this discussion comes up. It's not about safety. Everyone serious understand nuclear, even current technologies, is "safe enough" to be useful to build out. Nuclear is outrageously expensive , though. And new reactor designs don't seem to be making much progress on…

If it can be combined with desalination, and profitably create medical isotopes, that could help balance the books. But yea, you are right. And solar keeps getting cheaper.

The cheapest technology for desalination is reverse osmosis, which uses mechanical power, not heat, to drive things.

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#334

Post by pfdietz »

ajross wrote: post #321
dirtyaura wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This argument doesn’t hold. There are several countries such as Finland that have operated nuclear power plants for decades and do not have ambitions for nuclear bombs.

If you want to go with that argument: cite Japan, not Finland. But it doesn't have to be 100% true to be largely true. The overwhelming majority of nuclear capacity has been built out by nuclear powers or aspiring nuclear powers. And with few exceptions the end of their warhead buildout happens to correlate with the end of their megawatt buildout.

Japan has a stockpile of separated reactor grade plutonium sufficient to make thousands of bombs. This is a deniable kind of proliferation. If push came to shove they could weaponize that material without having to make new plutonium.

(And, yes, reactor grade Pu CAN be used in weapons, with proper design.)

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#335

Post by remote_phone »

ajross wrote: post #237
hairytrog wrote: post #156

Two interesting things to see here, of many. They are really planning the sites to be temporary compared to the solar/wind/ and other industrial power plants that have little or no plan for returning their sites to the original virgin soil. And two, they seem to use a molten salt loop like in concentrated solar to meet variable demand without changing the power level of the reactor, which you can't really do because…

And unlike a natural gas plant, it costs 3-10x what the equivalent generating capacity in renewables would cost. I come to post this Same Thing every time this discussion comes up. It's not about safety. Everyone serious understand nuclear, even current technologies, is "safe enough" to be useful to build out. Nuclear is outrageously expensive , though. And new reactor designs don't seem to be making much progress on…

I’m okay with costs being 3-10x for something with zero emissions. And the more we build the cheaper it gets. We have to invest in the future technology. Solar is a good 20th century technology but it is poisonous and degrades over time. Wind is useless.

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#336

Post by cmehdy »

epistasis wrote: post #159
cmehdy wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't help you if you don't even understand the scale of renewability of resources such as oil and gas, the ratio of energy extracted to energy put into the various kinds of machines that produce what we need to keep our energy consumption up, the limits to energy extraction for solar power, the lack of predictability and controllability of energy sources other than gas-oil-coal-nuclear, and the CO2-related effects…

You can't "help" me understand your claim because it is baldly false! There's an entire field that models different grids and transitioning to carbon free energy. Using fine-grained weather patterns, they optimize for various factors such as cost, by timing out deployments of renewable resources, nuclear, transmission, storage, etc. using projected costs over the next few decades. There are huge fights in the field,…

As a reply to your "edit":

You don't know how to bloody read. Claiming renewables emit CO2 in their construction and maintenance is not saying that they don't decrease emissions in comparison to gas-oil-coal, only that they do produce emissions. Unless you want to state that for a fact renewables are leading to no emissions for their construction or maintenance, you can't possibly be denying that. And by the way nuclear involves CO2 emissions too in its construction, surprise surprise! But you build it once and run it for a very long time, and the emissions in relationship to the energy output for nuclear completely dwarf anything related to renewables. So stop trying to argue an empty point.

Now, there's no such thing as "dispatchable" without a carbon cost that is non-negligible: the things you build, if you move them you're using trucks that use energy. If you take the windmills down from off the coast where the wind is stronger, you're using boats that use energy. If you need to use tools and to build any kind of structure for things to be installed anywhere new, including extensions to power grids, you're using materials for which the construction requires yet again energy and materials. Oh and now because we don't know on what scenario we are, weather patterns have changed significantly enough over the course of a few decades so you need to start moving your infrastructure to the "right" place, which includes building the damn road there and potentially moving people away too. You can "dispatch" all you want by emitting a ton of unnecessary CO2, or you can go and develop the source that is most reliable, actually controllable, and that only needs those emissions to be made ONCE to become a source of energy.

Stop daydreaming about things that are only marginally doing something, and put your energy into addressing problems at the order of magnitude where you have the real impact. For energy production it's nuclear by a huge margin, and yes that's what the damn physics says. Then move on to the other actual problems that lead to CO2 emissions, and work on those too. Stop trying to fix a problem that already has a solution - especially if your fixes involve a whole lot more repetitive CO2 emissions along the way.

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#337

Post by pfdietz »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #165
jka wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know, and I have been wondering whether much of the evident pro-nuclear lobbying recently (it seems apparent on many threads here related to energy generation) might be due to the nuclear industry being in serious threat of becoming obsolete. I've harped on about this many times before, but the levelized cost of energy[1] for renewables like solar and wind power is substantially cheaper than nuclear power now…

> the levelized cost of energy[1] for renewables like solar and wind power is substantially cheaper than nuclear power nowadays. The reason for this is that they're backstopped by fossil fuels. You install solar, it generates power when the sun shines and you burn coal or natural gas when it's cloudy or nighttime. The energy they produce is thereby cheaper, but can only satisfy so much of the total demand before requ…

They are backstopped by fossil fuels because that's currently cheapest. But fossil fuels are not NECESSARY to backstop renewables. A combination of short and long term storage technologies could do it, and likely could do it more cheaply (on the time scale of any reactor that we could start building today) than with a system including nuclear. A key is to use hydrogen for long term storage/backup.

https://model.energy/

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#338

Post by pfdietz »

shireboy wrote: post #68
grawprog wrote: post #8

So why has nuclear waste become a thing that's not mentioned anymore? It was a pretty big thing in the 90's, now it seems to get brushed under the rug for all this 'safe' nuclear power marketing. It's mot just meltdowns and containment breaches that are a problem with nuclear power. None of the renewable alternatives produce radioactive waste that needs to be stored and dealt with. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rad…

Counterpoint: why is environmental impact of solar+batteries often not mentioned? Lithium, silicon tetrachloride, hydrochloric and hydrofluoric acid isn't exactly nice to produce or put into rivers. My 2c: have an "all of the above" approach towards research, dispassionately understand pros and cons and big-picture complexity, instead of retreating to tribes that ignore the complexity.

None of those are persistent environmental poisons, or need be released into the environment.

BTW, I believe hydrofluoric acid is not used to make silicon PV cells.

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#339

Post by pfdietz »

cbmuser wrote: post #205
grawprog wrote: post #8

So why has nuclear waste become a thing that's not mentioned anymore? It was a pretty big thing in the 90's, now it seems to get brushed under the rug for all this 'safe' nuclear power marketing. It's mot just meltdowns and containment breaches that are a problem with nuclear power. None of the renewable alternatives produce radioactive waste that needs to be stored and dealt with. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rad…

Because it’s not a problem: > https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/5-fast-facts-about-spent-... It’s the best waste we have due to being solid and extremely compact and it can be recycled by 95%: > https://www.anl.gov/article/nuclear-fuel-recycling-could-off...

Nuclear waste is not a problem, but not because it can be recycled. Reprocessing is an economic loser compared to just mining fresh uranium. The separated plutonium has negative value, and in thermal reactors much of it can't be destroyed before going into final disposal.

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#340

Post by croutonwagon »

scoopertrooper wrote: post #282
croutonwagon wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldnt necessarily agree. It needs to be stored for a time that is longer than any single civilization has survived. Its pretty arrogant to assume we will still be around for that amount of time. This source pretty heavily influenced my change of opinion on nuclears efficacy https://www.pbs.org/video/independent-lens-containment/

It's pretty crazy to assume that we wouldn't be around in a millennia, two, or three. No other civilisation has been truly global, no other civilization has achieved so much in terms of mastery of nature and technological advancement. So unless the carrying capacity of earth suddenly collapses to the point that it's impossible to maintain organised society for several hundred years, then I think we'll be alright. If…

Well.

We also have the capacity to destroy all life on earth many times over.

When the carrying capacity of earth does collapse it will likely be sudden.

Food insecurity will do it quick. We are only like 6 meals away from total chaos at the best of times.

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