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All Applications for Nuclear Energy at COP26 Rejected

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Re: All Applications for Nuclear Energy at COP26 Rejected

#391

Post by vanattab »

HPsquared wrote: post #369
sva_ wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What you will then get is an unsustainable set of shortcuts that threaten your energy supplies at crucial times. I like the idea of solar energy, but I also wonder about how safe it is to use. I'm thinking of events such as the 1815 volcanic eruption of Mount Tambora[0] which reportedly caused a "year without summer[1]". Presumably, something like this would have a major impact on solar cell energy output, and if w…

You "just" need to maintain a redundant backup fossil-based energy supply system that is not used 99% of the time, simple!

Simple to say. Not simple to implement in practice and in a competitive environment. It is very hard for CEO to justify massive spending on something that has oy a 1:2000 chance or something in any given year.

Re: All Applications for Nuclear Energy at COP26 Rejected

#392

Post by varajelle »

Goety wrote: post #288
DisjointedHunt wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don’t fall for the villianization that the media adopt to push an agenda. Energy is a fundamental need for society to flourish. Fossil fuels have one of the highest energy densities and hence have been used for ages. We have much to be thankful for thanks to fossil fuels being around. We are in a position today to bring change and I’m all for that. Losing sight of the benefits of energy simply because some sou…

>Energy is a fundamental need for society to flourish. Energy is needed for basic modern services. Humans have survived a long time without electricity. It could be simpler to 'go without' or 'find a workaround' for a lot of conveniences if we were serious at combating climate change.

In what condition? Without the energy of the fossil fuel, lots of the energy came from human labor. Without it, we wouldn't have gotten rid of slavery. Most people were doing a manual labor, which is also more discriminatory to the weaker ones (e.g. woman)

So your just suggesting we go back to the middle ages? No, thank you.

Re: All Applications for Nuclear Energy at COP26 Rejected

#393

Post by driest »

it_citizen wrote: post #330
adev_ wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One can be a fan of something without trying to blindly apply it to areas where it doesn't make sense. Starting a discussion with a "I'm a huge fan" before spending the next 10 min to debunk the thing is not "being a fan of" but just a sign of being hypocritical, or manuipulative or both. > That's a strawman's argument, I'm not arguing for coal, I'm arguing for storage of renewables. Renewable alone (Without Coal o…

If everybody in the room agrees on the benefits, why not spend most of the discussion debating the drawbacks and the contentious points? That’s a very common situation in my professional life.

Usually the reason for this behaviour is that at least one of the parties is not interested in resolving any contentious points, but merely in "winning" the debate by focusing on arguments where they can exploit a weakness in the reasoning of their counterpart.

Usually it's best to not waste time on these people and simply ignore them, up until now I wasn't sure this was really the case, though.

Re: All Applications for Nuclear Energy at COP26 Rejected

#394

Post by orlovs »

svara wrote: post #346
DisjointedHunt wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you will then get is an unsustainable set of shortcuts that threaten your energy supplies at crucial times. ie, what's happening in Europe now[1] Germany went on a spree, dismantling their nuclear plants after being scared by Fukushima. Fossil fuel plants tool their place. Subsidies to unsustainable alternatives and penalties on polluters made it so it was not profitable to increase energy supply on sources such…

> Germany went on a spree, dismantling their nuclear plants after being scared by Fukushima. Fossil fuel plants tool their place. Not true. Renewables took their place. Nuclear wasn't a huge part of the mix before Fukushima either. The change immediately following 2011 wasn't very large, and much smaller than the power added by renewables. Lots of plots available to see for yourself at [0]. For some reason this story…

I live in Europe. Most notable substitution for Nuclear is Green Russian gas. I see this decission each month in my heating bill. Renewables is cool, but u know there is winters in Europe. As gas storages are not full here and our comrades from East wants to get nordstream2 certified, they are pressing with not delivering additional capabilities. As there are no serious alternatives still. I would be really happy if there would be enough capacity of decentralized green energy, but there are not. Nuclear is one of patches what we have got in our hands to live thru Fussion and/or enough capacity trully green energy. All other is lyrics

Re: All Applications for Nuclear Energy at COP26 Rejected

#395

Post by beerandt »

brandmeyer wrote: post #313
GCU-Empiricist wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the power supply used to change the speed of nuclear warships from bare steerageway to 30+kts rather quickly is not responsive to changes in demand? Friend you seem to have some conceptual errors. There is a lot of things you need to do if you take a plant out of operation, and there is a significant amount of decay heat from fission products that does require external power (basically what caused fukashima's fire…

Its not directly a technological problem, its an economic problem. Even the optimistic side of the cost analysis for nuclear power must assume that the reactors are operating at full power as much as possible. The operating cost is essentially independent of power output.

Which is why the optimistic side of renewables needs to include the capital costs of whatever is providing the supply when solar and wind aren't.

Re: All Applications for Nuclear Energy at COP26 Rejected

#396

Post by pdonis »

cycomanic wrote: post #150
pdonis wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> baseline is not at all needed with renewables. Why not? Unless you're ok with not having reliable baseline power at all.

For that we should look at what baseline is. Ideally all our power sources would adjust instantaneously to demand. In reality that is not possible. Traditionally, power plants which can be run constantly at fixed output (i.e. coal plants, nuclear power plants), have been cheaper to operate, so we used those for "baseline" power and more expensive adjustable plants (e.g. gas turbines) to follow the load. However, the…

> the new reality is that wind/solar are cheaper than the old baseline plants

Not if you take into account land use. A single nuclear plant can supply about a GW of electrical power. The equivalent capacity in wind and solar--even without taking into account the overprovisioning that, as you note, is required because of the lack of reliability of those sources--takes up far more land than that nuclear plant. That has a huge environmental impact that nobody takes into account when figuring the actual cost of wind and solar--though of course the same people are quite happy to hunt down every last little environmental impact of nuclear and point out how it increases the actual cost.

(The requirement for massive amounts of storage, which others have pointed out, is another environmental impact of wind and solar that nobody takes into account when figuring the actual cost.)

Re: All Applications for Nuclear Energy at COP26 Rejected

#397

Post by sva_ »

vanattab wrote: post #391
HPsquared wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You "just" need to maintain a redundant backup fossil-based energy supply system that is not used 99% of the time, simple!

Simple to say. Not simple to implement in practice and in a competitive environment. It is very hard for CEO to justify massive spending on something that has oy a 1:2000 chance or something in any given year.

I believe the person you replied to was being sarcastic

Re: All Applications for Nuclear Energy at COP26 Rejected

#398

Post by Goety »

varajelle wrote: post #392
Goety wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Energy is a fundamental need for society to flourish. Energy is needed for basic modern services. Humans have survived a long time without electricity. It could be simpler to 'go without' or 'find a workaround' for a lot of conveniences if we were serious at combating climate change.

In what condition? Without the energy of the fossil fuel, lots of the energy came from human labor. Without it, we wouldn't have gotten rid of slavery. Most people were doing a manual labor, which is also more discriminatory to the weaker ones (e.g. woman) So your just suggesting we go back to the middle ages? No, thank you.

>In what condition?

Well that's the question right? Without nuclear there may not be a middle ground as an option for a lot of people.

>So your just suggesting we go back to the middle ages? No, thank you.

I'm not suggesting anything, simply declaring it an option.

Re: All Applications for Nuclear Energy at COP26 Rejected

#399

Post by JamisonM »

cinntaile wrote: post #342
DisjointedHunt wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you will then get is an unsustainable set of shortcuts that threaten your energy supplies at crucial times. ie, what's happening in Europe now[1] Germany went on a spree, dismantling their nuclear plants after being scared by Fukushima. Fossil fuel plants tool their place. Subsidies to unsustainable alternatives and penalties on polluters made it so it was not profitable to increase energy supply on sources such…

This is a very common myth but fossil fuel plants did not take their place. Wind and solar did though. Both nuclear and fossil fuel plants are a smaller piece of the pie compared to when Fukushima happened and the Energiwende happened. [0] [0] https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-c... Looks like the guy above me said the same thing, but at the time of writing it wasn't there yet.

Do I misunderstand this issue when if say: "The loss of 8GW of nuclear electricity generation created new renewables projects immediately that would not have been constructed if that generation capacity was not lost."

To me, regardless of the change in energy mix in the meantime, every extra GW of other renewables would have decommissioned coal generation by some significant factor (maybe not the full 8GW less coal, but quite a bit). Instead those renewables were replacing missing nuclear capacity. The only way I see that decommissioning nuclear didn't result in more coal burning to meet the country's needs would be if it was immediately followed by a huge investment that would have otherwise not occurred.

ETA: Looking again at the link hard coal + lignite 45.5GW in 2011, 43.5GW today - not great! Relative decline is good but climate change demands absolute declines more substantial than this.

Re: All Applications for Nuclear Energy at COP26 Rejected

#400

Post by Kon5ole »

nitrogen wrote: post #326
Kon5ole wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Earth gets hit by 170 000 TW of sunshine every hour. That's more than the yearly global consumption of energy. If we could capture only 1% of that, we'd have 80 times more than we need, from just the sunshine reaching earth. This makes the photovoltaic cell and related technologies more interesting than nuclear to me. A way more abundant energy source with none of the downsides of nuclear is clearly within our reach.…

Listing large numbers and then saying "if only we could get this small percentage" doesn't make for a solid business plan, and it doesn't make a solid energy plan either. We're talking about insane amounts of land, for one thing, and ignoring distribution for another. Plus "80x more than we need" assumes a fixed level of need forever, humanity capped off, the book of progress written and closed.

It sure isn't a business plan, you're right! :D

But knowing the potential is a first step, wouldn't you agree? You don't build the mine before the geologists have determined that there is indeed gold to be found, so to speak.

Distribution is not as big a problem I think, since you can have small installations everywhere, combined with larger installations where possible. Storage is a problem, but we know of several solutions that could be developed.

As for land, the land already wasted to man-made lakes for hydroelectricity more than covers it 100-fold if my roughly estimated math is correct (assuming ~30MW per km2 from newer solar installations and based on a list of man-made lakes on wikipedia). Floating solar is already a thing, it works.

How about a hydroelectric dam-duo where solar panels on the artificial lakes pump the water back to the upper reservoir when there's lots of sun? Energy and storage combined! Elon Musk - are you listening? ;-)

Solar can also easily be installed on buildings or in deserts, so I don't think large amounts of any valuable land would be needed.

As a whole it seems totally feasible to me, at least as a big part of the puzzle, much bigger than it is today.

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