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Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance

world-nuclear-news.org

331–340 of 396 posts

Re: Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance

#331
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And where does the nuclear fuel come from? Russia. Not true at all. Russia is producing 5% of the world Uranium, and they probably use quite a lot of that domestically given they produce 8% of all nuclear power in the world with their own plant. Kazakhstan + Uzbekistan is 50% of the word production. Canada is second and will be happy to start selling to the EU. Namibia and Australia both produce twice as much as Ru…

That’s raw uranium ore. Uranium undergoes several refinement steps. In each Russia has an enormous market share.

You know refinement can be done anywhere? We take bauxite and ship it to the other side of the world to make aluminium because electric power is cheaper there.

Re: Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance

#332
post #116
post #111

As an Italian abroad, this came out of the blue and I was not expecting this change of mind, at all. There have been two referendums on nuclear energy in Italy: one just after the disaster of Chernobyl. They tried again decades later, in 2011; just after the disaster of Fukushima. The result was of course overwhelmingly negative both times. This is great news, and will hopefully lower the cost of electricity that we…

The import of electricity is around 10-15%, a significant amount, but Italy does not MOSTLY rely on imports.

15% is bad, that is power for both Sicily and Sardinia combined, dependent on neighbour country

Re: Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance

#333
post #322
post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See how you decided to completely ignore my question. But I like that on top of that, batteries are not cheap either

See how I am still free to ignore any question you asked and answer just what I want? Which would be: there is not really a need for stationary batteries to be expensive.

> See how I am still free to ignore any question you asked and answer just what I want?

It's a very common tactic by renewables maximalists, and I'm very familiar with it

Re: Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance

#334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know how many people die because of coal plants every year? It's far, far more than nuclear per unit [0]. Nuclear power is nearly a thousand times less murderous. 0 - https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldw...

First of all, this is obviously a joke, but in all seriousness there's more to nuclear accident than just the immediate danger it poses to people (which is, as you point out, very low). My wife is a nuclear engineer (in France), and I'd have been the same hadn't Fukushima killed the job prospects in the field for almost a decade, so personally I would rather not have the “nuclear is too dangerous, let's kill this ind…

> this is obviously a joke

Sorry. Even here, Poe's law is very much a thing when it comes to this topic.

> Living 8 km away from an nuclear plant makes me quite sensitive to this aspect, obviously

Living near a coal plant has a much bigger impact on your health, all things considered. We're just bad at estimating risk with things like this, especially with how media covers things.

The odds of a nuclear accident are far lower than most people believe, and the risks from coal far greater.

Re: Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance

#335
post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people do not understand this and think that we can reall talk about nuclear vs solar when we really need to talk about an energy mix where you pick one point (for example you pick nuclear or solar) and the rest depends on this choice. Than you can calculate the price.

To add, it's worth reading the Levelized Full System Costs of Electricity paper: https://iaee2021online.org/download/contribution/fullpaper/1... Energy mix is key: the cost of 100% dependency on intermittent renewables is extremely high. Going for 95% dependency on intermittent renewables with the remainder being filled in by low-cost dispatchable generation halves system costs (see table 6, pg. 21).

Thanks a lot, this is a must read indeed.

Re: Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance

#336
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Italy neither has the engineers to build a nuclear power plant, they would have to ask another nation, like Russia, Canada or France, to build it for them. And where does the nuclear fuel come from? Russia.

>And where does the nuclear fuel come from? Canada, Khazakhstan, Namibi, and so on. Russia is pretty far down the list. Australia has the largest known reserves of uranium they just haven pushed to extensively extract it.

> Canada, Khazakhstan, Namibi, and so on. Russia is pretty far down the list.

Not wrong, but Russia controls about half of the world's enrichment capacity.

If you want to avoid possible lock-in, then you may want to look at reactors that do not need enriched uranium (like CANDU: it does have an extra up-front cost for 'heavy water' though).

Re: Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance

#337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what timeframe? Solar panels last 20-25 years. Nuclear power plants last for 50+ years and use fraction of the space that solar. It is hard to believe that the TCO is lower. Usually people just looking at the price in the short term and comparing that. Batteries are a whole different can of worms. Super toxic and you need a high volume of those because the energy density is much lower. https://energyeducation.ca/e…

In the timeframe of the duration of the installation. (Total cost for the whole project + total costs for fuels & maintainance) / (kW generated * lifetime of the project)

Again, comparing apples to oranges.

If 50 years we need to build a single nuclear plant while you have to build twice the solar capacity I doubt that solar come out cheaper.

Re: Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance

#338
post #91
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> no good for building but are great for solar, like mountainsides. And what's the cost of building on a mountainside, and how much is maintenance? > Besides, if the Netherlands can have solar then Italy can too How much solar are they building in comparison to other sources? > And nuclear lasts 50+ years with constant maintenance, which is really expensive. Unlike solar panels built on mountainsides which are not su…

Maintaining solar panels will be always way, way, waaay cheaper, than maintaining a nuclear reactor and disposing safely the waste. Batteries would need to be cheaper, that is all that is needed for italy. In the south, they have sun all year around.

> Maintaining solar panels will be always way, way, waaay cheaper,

Citization needed. Actually we do not know and we are figuring this out.

Few examples:

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpJKM65tsCo

- https://www.msn.com/en-us/video/weather/worlds-largest-float...

Batteries would need to be safer, less toxic and less prone to be mined by children in Africa, also orders of magnitude more energy dense.

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2023/02/01/1152893...

Re: Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance

#339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what timeframe? Solar panels last 20-25 years. Nuclear power plants last for 50+ years and use fraction of the space that solar. It is hard to believe that the TCO is lower. Usually people just looking at the price in the short term and comparing that. Batteries are a whole different can of worms. Super toxic and you need a high volume of those because the energy density is much lower. https://energyeducation.ca/e…

and in 0-10 years solar make infinitely more power than a nuclear plant.

Absolutely. And we can finally infent FTL and fly back in time to stop nuclear to begin with. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Re: Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance

#340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not really the case. Nuclear power is extremely cost effective, even with the current plants. The individual plants are currently expensive, because they are large and produce huge amounts of power. Since that means you only have a fairly small number of plants, that means the risk is higher than preferable. However, even with existing designs, building a common design multiple times and overlapping the build…

Nuclear is being vastly outcompeted globally for new installations of power capacity by renewables. It's not even close. The only inference that can be drawn from this is that renewables beat nuclear in the market, that nuclear is the loser technology economically. Even in China, two orders of magnitude more PV comes online each year compared to nuclear (nameplate power, adjust by a factor of maybe 4 for levelized po…

If that's the only inference you can draw from that, you're not paying attention.

First, you need to compare actual output, not installed capacity. Once you take into account capacity factors, it's not looking so good any longer.

Second, if it were true that nuclear is being "out-competed", then nobody in their right mind would expand their nuclear capacity. Yet almost everyone except a few crazies and countries that are too small are doing exactly that: expanding their nuclear capacity.

Let's see who has decided to get into nuclear / reverse exits / expand capacity:

1. Italy just decided to reverse their exit.

2. Japan had decided to exit, and actually shut down their plants. They are now restarting those plants.

3. South Korea had also decided to exit, but not shut down any plants yet. They have reversed that exit. And are expanding.

4. Poland has decided to start a nuclear program, first 3 reactors are ordered, budgeted and construction has started at the site. There are a lot more planned. The vote for financing the new projects was nearly unanimous in parliament.

5. The UK is so incredibly unhappy with Hinkley Point C that they have just started work on 2 more reactors at Sizewell C, have sited another 2 in Wales and have a policy of expanding nuclear capacity by a factor of 4.

6. The US effectively built no new new plants since the TMI accident. They are now reactivating everything possible, are even planning to finish the two AP-1000s at Virgil C. Summer and have a goal of tripling their nuclear capacity by adding another 200 GW.

7. Sweden has reversed their exit and wants to build 10 new plants

8. The new government in Belgium has reversed their exit, has extended at least one (or was it two?) plant by another 10 years, is trying to save a few more that are/were due to be decommissioned and is looking to build more.

9. France had a ban on expanding their nuclear generating capacity beyond the currently installed capacity. This was lifted in March of 2023 with > 2/3 majority in parliament.

10. The Netherlands originally wanted two new nuclear reactors. They have now decided on 4 large reactors, in addition to the single small one they currently operate. This will be a 10x expansion of their nuclear capacity.

11. India is on track to triple their capacity by 2031.

12. China is currently starting 10 new reactors a year, and the rate is still increasing. Why aren't they doing more? Well, one reason is that nuclear power plants last for a really long time, currently estimated at least 80-100 years for most of the well-maintained plants. If you build 10 per year and they last 100 years, that implies a fleet of 1000 reactors. That's a lot of reactors!

France made this mistake, they built around 50 reactors in only 15 years, due to vastly overestimating electricity demand. The result was that they the nuclear industry they built up had essentially no plants to build for a good number of decades, and so that know-how and capability was lost and had to be re-acquired at great cost (see Flamanville 3).

Countries have learned from this and are pacing themselves. No need to rush.

13. The Czech Republic is betting on both large reactors from South Korea (the APR-1400, IIRC) as well as SMRs from Rolls Royce. In fact, they took a 20% in Rolls Royce.

14. Switzerland has begun the process of undoing their exit decision

15. Even Norway and Denmark are considering nuclear

16. The UAE, with ideal conditions for solar (desert), has recently completed a 4 reactor power plant, and is considering adding more.

... and so on and so forth ...

Why are all these countries expanding nuclear? Is the entire rest of the world stupid? Crazy? Only Germany knows what they're doing?

No.

What they know is that a nuclear + renewable mix is significantly cheaper and more reliably than any attempt to do 100% intermittent renewables, even if that were feasible, which is more than uncertain.

It is only (mostly?) in Germany where this crazy notion that nuclear and renewables are mutually exclusive has taken hold. They are not. They complement each other.

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