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Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance

world-nuclear-news.org

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Re: Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance

#381

Post by scrlk »

ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #365
scrlk wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

So you've managed to cherry pick the one study showing nuclear power in any kind of possible light. Typical. You do know that the study is only applicable to running your off-grid cabin from a sole source and battery storage based on 2020 costs. The study also assumes 100% uptime for nuclear power. It does not deal with demand shifts, it does not deal with transmission, it does not deal with backup power. It also man…

I think you misinterpreted my comment. I'm advocating for an energy mix where the majority of energy is supplied by intermittent renewables with a small amount of low-cost (i.e. not nuclear) dispatchable generation. This avoids the extortionate "last mile" of costs when utilising 100% intermittent renewables.

The Clean Power 2030 report from NESO came to a similar conclusion. See Insights from our clean power sensitivities, pg 53: https://www.neso.energy/document/346651/download

Re: Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance

#382

Post by erezsh »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #357
erezsh wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The green energy lobby has everything to gain, and it's been working extra to make it a reality. For example, Greenpeace has been fighting nuclear power all over the world.

Greenpeace has the word "peace" in their name because they are anti-war. They claimed civilian nuclear power was part of a weapons program. There's people in this very thread enthusiastic about nuclear power because it will help Italy develop nuclear weapons. So hard to argue that they were wrong.

> They claimed civilian nuclear power was part of a weapons program

They are wrong, but who cares? As long as Russia and China have nuclear weapons, disarming Europe isn't going to help anyone. Not to mention now North Korea and pretty soon Iran will have them too.

Arguably, if Germany wasn't so reliant on Russian gas, the war in Ukraine wouldn't have started. The "peace" in Greenpeace is more Orwellian than anything.

Re: Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance

#383

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #372
disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not both?

When renewables deliver 5-10 ax much decarbonization and independence per dollar/euro spent compared to nuclear power why waste money?

Because nuclear doesn't emit carbon, and can be used for base load, particularly when it's not windy or sunny.

Honestly, we need to stop burning carbon and nuclear can help with this.

Re: Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance

#384

Post by adrianN »

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #383
ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When renewables deliver 5-10 ax much decarbonization and independence per dollar/euro spent compared to nuclear power why waste money?

Because nuclear doesn't emit carbon, and can be used for base load, particularly when it's not windy or sunny. Honestly, we need to stop burning carbon and nuclear can help with this.

If you build enough nuclear capacity to run the country when the renewables don't produce anything you might as well run the country the whole time on nuclear. Building a nuclear plant and then using it at 10% capacity is an egregious waste of money. Literally any storage technology is cheaper.

Re: Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance

#385

Post by troupo »

lukan wrote: post #353
troupo wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

It is a common trait of internet commentators, who are not paid for your education. "And what's the cost of building on a mountainside, and how much is maintenance?" Why should I feel it as my duty to answer that specific question to you? Seriously curious.

Because context matters, and the context of the comment you replied to was literally "oh, we should just build solar panels on mountainsides which are not good for other types of building": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43254135

So the conversation, in context, is literally this:

---

Someone: we should build panels on mountainsides

Me: how much more expensive will building and maintaining them will be?

You: Maintaining solar panels will be always way, way, waaay cheaper than maintaining nuclear. Also batteries will need to become cheaper

Me: Erm... That doesn't answer my question, and on top of that you're admitting batteries are not cheap either

---

But, again, this is on par with what I expect in such discussions

Re: Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance

#386

Post by adrianN »

bsza wrote: post #197
bmelton wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LiCoO2 / NMC aren't the popular chemistries any more. LiFePo4 is a remarkably stable chemistry, with extremely low risks of fire. In the unlikely event that they do catch fire, they are extinguishable with water. Nothing has zero risk, but there are much more stable chemistries available than those that formed this (rational) opinion.

That's reassuring to know, thank you for pointing that out. I didn't get the impression this was already solved since you still keep hearing about battery fires, but hopefully this means that will be a thing of the past soon. I would still skip this step and let it be the power company's problem though, simply because at ~400 USD / kWh they don't seem very cost efficient for off-peak storage (at least in my country).

I can order 2kWh of LiFePo on Amazon for 500€. Are batteries that much more expensive in the US?

Re: Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance

#387

Post by adrianN »

mik1998 wrote: post #28
jonplackett wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t this a pretty much solved problem though? Just add a battery to your house? Batteries are just going to get better - especially over a 10y time span

Batteries simply raise the price of power up by 10x if not more. Not a viable solution.

No they don't. The energy you get from your battery costs 10x as much as directly from the panels, but you only get a fraction of your energy from storage.

Re: Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance

#388

Post by adrianN »

himinlomax wrote: post #101
mg wrote: post #3

Isn't the price of a KW of solar panels similar to the price of a KW of nuclear power these days? I wonder what hinders us to replace the roofs of all houses with solar panels and put batteries in all cellars? It might still be useful to build out nuclear power plants. But the solar+battery approach seems like an easier first step to increase the available power, doesn't it?

What's the price of solar power at night?

Batteries cost something like $150/kWh and live for a few thousand cycles, so power from batteries costs a couple of cents more than the power used to charge the batteries.

Re: Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance

#389

Post by littlestymaar »

mandmandam wrote: post #334
littlestymaar wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 f…

Again, you simply missed the joke. Let me sort it all out for you:

- fact #1: nuclear plants are way less dangerous than coal plants, because as long as there's no accident, it doesn't harm you (unlike coal) and odds of an accident are very very low.

- fact #2: when you are very unlucky and a nuclear accident do happen, then it's a big problem. Again, statistically it's not a concern because such accident are very very very rare: just 2.5 occurrences in 70 years of exploiting the technology over hundreds of nuclear reactors (I'm counting TMI as .5 here because it was close)

- now the joke explained: “Nuclear accidents happen when Italy start considering nuclear, which implies such an accident will occur soon”. If that correlation was indeed causation, there would be legit reasons to be afraid, because nuclear accident are still pretty bad when they happen. Obviously Italy doesn't possess such a power of triggering nuclear accident, and there's no reason to be afraid, but that was the joke!

Re: Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance

#390

Post by ben_w »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #236
pjc50 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very, very expensive and (until last week) it was critical to keep the US on side, which would be jeopardized by breaking the nonproliferation treaty. The MAD argument still applies: Ukraine can't threaten to nuke Moscow without Russia obviously threatening to retaliate with nukes.

> MAD argument still applies Ukraine isn’t in and probably never will be in a position to credibly threaten a MAD second strike to Russia. From number of warheads to strategic depth, it’s not a realistic option. Instead it would seek to credibly threaten limited nuclear war using tactical nukes. This would only make sense with European support. And at that point, it almost makes more sense for Europe to directly ente…

> Ukraine isn’t in and probably never will be in a position to credibly threaten a MAD second strike to Russia.

If you mean a scenario where Russia uses its entire arsenal at once, I think I would agree — but that would leave them extremely vulnerable to everyone else. Even without that, between the shared border and the nuclear reactors, lots of fallout would end up in Russian soil, in their farms and food.

For the size of nuclear strike that would allow Russia to not hurt itself directly by the attack:

If Ukraine found a some still-functioning nukes lying around in a formerly-locked Soviet-era cupboard, what would stop them from being so already with current weapons?

Russia doesn't seem to be able to prevent conventional strikes by Ukrainian forces. Is that only due to US assistance with materiel and intel?

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