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Nuclear is back on the table for a green future

nytimes.com

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Re: Nuclear is back on the table for a green future

#341

Post by notJim »

rib3ye wrote: post #55

Here is a 2016 map of Nuclear power plants operating and under construction. https://www.carbonbrief.org/mapped-the-worlds-nuclear-power-... Some things I found interesting: Under development: 11 in China, 3 in US Operating: Over 40 in the US and no major accidents since Three Mile Island (1979).

This appears to be out of date. Watts Bar 2 [1] is completed and operating. Summer 2-3 were cancelled [2]. Sounds like Vogtle is getting close to coming online [3]

1: https://www.tva.com/newsroom/watts-bar-2-project

2: https://www.chooseenergy.com/news/article/failed-v-c-summer-...

3: https://www.southerncompany.com/innovation/vogtle-3-and-4.ht...

Re: Nuclear is back on the table for a green future

#342

Post by zardo »

Manuel_D wrote: post #247
ncmncm wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is absolutely no need for batteries to provide for storage, so that is a misleading assertion.

And what, pray tell, would we be using for storage instead? Surely you're not going to suggest some untested and unproven storage mechanism like hydrogen storage, ammonia, thermal batteries, etc. Those technologies have never been built at anything remotely close to grid-scale, and thus we have no idea what they'd actually cost when we attempt to build them at grid scale. Batteries and hyrodelectric storage are the o…

Are thermal batteries unproven? I thought they were at the "available for purchase from Siemens and GE" stage of development.

Re: Nuclear is back on the table for a green future

#343

Post by orthecreedence »

Manuel_D wrote: post #289
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, no-one can predict the future, maybe we'll all be riding horses. But if, as basically everyone acklowledges, we'll all be driving EVs, then we will charge them from the grid. So they'll be better than grid storage, they'll be responsive demand (with grid storage you need to send the electricity back to the grid, which incurs another efficiency loss).

Sure, if we have all our electricity produced through non intermittent sources we don't need grid storage. EVs charge from the grid and drive around just fine. Nobody doubts that. But if we are going to predominantly use intermittent energy sources we'd need massive amounts of grid storage. Delivering this through batteries is not feasible. We need to conserve battery supply for things that cannot be directly powered…

For me, this is the biggest part of the debate. It's not whether solar is up to the task or not, it's whether supply chains can support solar. From what we've seen, no, they cannot. You can provision the solar plant and the storage array, but there likely just won't be enough panels or batteries being produced to build it. Pumped hydro storage is only viable in some places, and from what it seems to me all the other ideas for energy storage are theoretical at best.

I'm not opposed to investing heavily in solar...it's the best long-term energy source we can hope for until we crack the fusion nut. However, until we have the resources in place to make it happen, fission is our best bet. This shouldn't be an either-or: we should be building both, as fast as we can. And once we have enough solar to power our collective needs consistently, we can decommission our nuclear plants and put this behind us.

Re: Nuclear is back on the table for a green future

#345

Post by layer8 »

trashtester wrote: post #315
layer8 wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mushrooms in Germany are still contaminated today from the Chernobyl fallout: https://www.bfs.de/EN/topics/ion/environment/foodstuffs/mush...

EVERYTHING around us is contaminated in some way or another. We are constantly bombarded by cosmic radiation with doses far in excess of the expose you will get from eating those mushrooms. Below 100mSv, there is "no evidence" that exposure leads to any elevation of cancer risk. At levels covered by the article, ie 1000Bq/kg / 80000 Bq/mSv = 0.0125 mSv/kg. In other words, you can eat 8 tons of those mush before there…

The website is official information from the German federal agency for radiation protection. While the risk now is low, and the article is actually giving a useful comparison to radiation exposure in airplane travel, you probably still wouldn’t want to eat those mushrooms or game every day, and the contamination was much higher in the first months/years after Chernobyl. The overall point is that the impact was not restricted to a 50 mile radius as suggested by the GP.

Re: Nuclear is back on the table for a green future

#346

Post by boringg »

acidburnNSA wrote: post #288
boringg wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry should have been more clear. True cost of permanent waste disposal. They cant find anywhere to put it so while 50B sounds nice it doesn't have a home and the lifetime cost of operating a facility is probably significant higher (if they can find one). Read: problem not resolved.

It's being done in Finland and Sweden [1] just fine, and for reasonable cost. NIMBY is a big problem but once we figure out how to solve that in the USA like Finland did, then it is basically a solved problem. [1] https://www.posiva.fi/en/index.html

How much nuclear waste does Sweden and Finland produce? For scale purposes their population isn't larger than the metropolitan area of Los Angeles.

I think the scale of the issue is significantly larger in the US.

Yucca isn't viable politically and there isn't anyone who lives close by.

Re: Nuclear is back on the table for a green future

#347

Post by Manuel_D »

zardo wrote: post #342
Manuel_D wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what, pray tell, would we be using for storage instead? Surely you're not going to suggest some untested and unproven storage mechanism like hydrogen storage, ammonia, thermal batteries, etc. Those technologies have never been built at anything remotely close to grid-scale, and thus we have no idea what they'd actually cost when we attempt to build them at grid scale. Batteries and hyrodelectric storage are the o…

Are thermal batteries unproven? I thought they were at the "available for purchase from Siemens and GE" stage of development.

They exist in prototypes, I am not aware of any grid scale energy storage facilities using thermal batteries.

Are there any >1GWh thermal battery facilities? Remember the US uses 8GWh of electricity per minute.

Re: Nuclear is back on the table for a green future

#348

Post by jeffbee »

IMTDb wrote: post #192
jeffbee wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please explain said "basic physics". I'll wait. California is building battery storage at a rate of ~2500MW/year. There are ZERO physics problems standing in the way of this. And there is considerable innovation in fixed batteries like iron-air flow batteries, ones that exist and aren't just VC scams like most of the nuclear stuff. https://www.energy-storage.news/california-utility-pge-propo...

Basic physics 101. The US produced 4 10^9 MWh in 2017 [1] That's roughly 11 10^6 MWh / day or 11 10^12 Wh /day So to power 50% of the US for half a day, we need : 11 10^12 Wh /day * 0.5 day * 0.5 = 2.75 10^12 Wh = 275 10^10 Wh The energy storage of a Lithium Ion battery is roughly 270 Wh / kg [2], let's round this up to 275, I am feeling nice here. This means we need : 275 10^10 Wh / 275 Wh / kg = 1 * 10^10 kg of Lit…

Ah, so the basic physics problems are twofold:

1) You don't know how little lithium is contained in a li-ion battery cell; and

2) You don't know that li-ion is less than half the global battery market.

Re: Nuclear is back on the table for a green future

#349

Post by ncmncm »

simion314 wrote: post #149
AlanSE wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Small reactors are not expected to be any cheaper than traditional reactors. They are a better bet right now because the traditional reactors keep getting mothballed in developed nations, and they have some clever technical innovations, but these are not complete game changers. Each decade, nuclear builds also trend towards getting more expensive. Like it or not, it at least partially Fukushima Daiichi that killed th…

Countries will rational regulation will enjoy the nuclear progress, the others will buy from them or throw a lot of money on expensive batteries that will also cause problems with extraction, recycling, fires etc. My bet is US will use fosil fuel for a few decades still since is cheap.

Only a negligible fraction of storage will be batteries. They cost more. Only lithium, the most expensive, is fire-prone, among battery tech.

The alternatives are cheaper and cause no such problems.

Re: Nuclear is back on the table for a green future

#350

Post by legulere »

zosima wrote: post #325
legulere wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A big percentage of mushrooms and game is still not fit for consumption today in Germany because of Chernobyl. So it's not just local. And even if, Germany is more densely populated than the Ukraine. The Chernobyl exclusion zone in Ukraine is the same size as the state of Saarland.

What does not fit for consumption mean? Are there more ionizing radiation in a German mushroom or boar than in an average banana?

Yes, a banana has an effective radiation close to 0 because our bodies evolved to hold its level of potassium in homeostasis. Your body already has radioactive potassium in it. When you eat more potassium, the excess is excreted and the amount of radionuclides in your body stays the same. Caesium-137 on the other hand is drastically more radioactive and stays longer in the body.
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