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France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

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Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#391

Post by phicoh »

shawabawa3 wrote: post #376
phicoh wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's wrong. Germany was significantly reduced the amount of electricity from coal over the last decades. Renewables have picked up both the reduction in coal and the reduction in nuclear power.

Sorry I misremembered the statistic. They've been reducing coal usage slightly over the last 20 years, but burn 50% more natural gas. overall energy generation from fossil fuels is up over the last 20 years (since their first nuclear plant was shut down)

According to https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE...

total amount of fossil fuel use for electricity went down.

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#392

Post by MagnumOpus »

Archelaos wrote: post #387
shawabawa3 wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sorry you're correct i was inaccurate. Coal has only increased in 2021, but fossil fuels have increased since 2002 (from 69.9GW to 78.9GW), i misremembered that statistic as coal instead of fossil fuels

The consumption of natural gas itself has indeed increased. But the sum of natural gas + coal has still decreased a lot. From aprox. 350 TWh per year in the early 2000s to 251,6 TWh in 2021. The partial replacement of coal by natural gas is at least in part caused by the transition to renewable energies. Until the transition is complete, natural gas is the best fossil fuel option to even out fluctuations in the produ…

> gas power plants can be switched on and off very quickly at peak times (in strong contrast btw to nuclear power plants)

Not true - from the wiki: Modern nuclear plants with light water reactors are designed to have maneuvering capabilities in the 30-100% range with 5%/minute slope, up to 140 MW/minute. Nuclear power plants in France and in Germany operate in load-following mode and so participate in the primary and secondary frequency control.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Load-following_power_plant

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#393

Post by ZeroGravitas »

simion314 wrote: post #375
pydry wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We would need much much more of anything to make our power fully renewable. It's still cheaper and faster building pumped storage, wind and solar (all This is not even accounting for the nearly free insurance granted to nuclear plants putting taxpayers on the hook for costs like the $800 billion cost of dealing with fukushima (which involved burning a lot of coal and gas). The economics of nuclear power as green ener…

>It's still cheaper and faster building pumped storage, wind and solar (all Any numbers on that pumped storage? how much is needed to store 1 week of France energy needs ? How much it costs then?

France has never generated more than about 75% of its electricity (not power which is much lower because of diesel cars, fossil heating etc.) with nuclear.

It regularly imports electricity from its neighbours, as well as selling its surplus (which it has even at only 75% electrical because the supply doesn't match the demand peaks.)

The current best nuclear rollout on the planet falls far short of your test for being able to run France for a week, has never passed that test, and will never pass that test so why is this considered an argument against renewable plans?

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#394

Post by shawabawa3 »

phicoh wrote: post #391
shawabawa3 wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry I misremembered the statistic. They've been reducing coal usage slightly over the last 20 years, but burn 50% more natural gas. overall energy generation from fossil fuels is up over the last 20 years (since their first nuclear plant was shut down)

According to https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE... total amount of fossil fuel use for electricity went down.

I was looking at capacity not generation

So capacity of fossil fuels went up, but I suppose natural gas shuts down while renewable generation is high so it doesn't use its capacity all the time - my bad

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#395

Post by nix23 »

immmmmm wrote: post #357
nix23 wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>exception with the hydro and should stop rubbing it in all the discussions. True, and it's not a exception, but geographically "luck", without mountains and the glaciers that comes with them, Switzerland would be as dry as Turkmenistan. It's just a matter of commonsense to use those altitude differences and water....but when all our glaciers are molten away, we for sure have to go back to nuclear-power.

agreed. we are doing hydro because of mountains AND lack of coal. > but when all our glaciers are molten away, we for sure have to go back to nuclear-power. this is inaccurate. you might want to go read more literature related to ice melting and energy transition.

No snow = no glaciers grow = not water in our alps, it's not that hard to understand:

https://www.thelocal.ch/20170217/swiss-study-snow-to-largely...

https://ethz.ch/en/news-and-events/eth-news/news/2018/02/no-...

>In an initial phase, climate change will actually cause the runoff to increase, as water stored as ice is released. However, if the glacier becomes too small, it will reach a tipping point, which we call “peak water”.

>Our study highlights the “hot spots” where retreating glaciers will cause water shortages in future.

But hey maybe you know some other mysterious ways water is stored in in mountains.

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#396

Post by natmaka »

simion314 wrote: post #260
epistasis wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They will be serious if they actually build it, unlike Flamanville. While you call non-nuclear options "virtue signaling," the attempts at building it in France and the US have been virtue signaling. We don't have the industrial capacity to build nuclear. Meanwhile, we are deploying GW of solar, wind, and storage on time, on budget, ar ever decreasing costs. Locking in the high costs of nuclear, for the 60 year lifet…

>Meanwhile, we are deploying GW of solar, wind, and storage on time, on budget, ar ever decreasing costs. That is the easier part, show me the battery deployments please , the ones that can backup the country/state for a week.

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/180592/european-cooperation-...

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#397

Post by natmaka »

tjoff wrote: post #259
BurningPenguin wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say it's very unlikely that there will be no wind or sun all over Europe. There is constant exchange of excess energy between the countries anyway. Regardless of that, there are other options too. Like water or geothermal depending on the country. Sometimes there even will be too much energy. I can imagine this being used to make some hydrogen for later use.

... very slight difference between excess energy and let's import a contries worth of energy. The cost of transmission will be insane, the grid is not meant for those kinds of transfers.

Such long-distance backbones and interconnections between nations are quickly gaining speed in Europe since the 1980's, as they reduce the risk of blackout and enable savings (a temporarily useless production unit here is used to feed a another nation).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronous_grid_of_Continenta... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_super_grid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HVDC_projects

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#398

Post by orra »

kergonath wrote: post #150
sideshowb wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm wondering if that strike price looks quite so outrageously high now UK electricity costs have risen by 50% in the last year or so

The wholesale price is currently around £200/MWh, whilst the guaranteed price for electricity from Hinkley Point C is around £110/MWh. So no, it is not outrageously high.

No, was outrageously high, as highlighted at the time of approval by the National Audit Office.

As I said, renewables are cheaper and faster to build: offshore wind a few years ago was given guaranteed strike prices of only £40/MWh.

Current electricity spot prices are volatile because gas is expensive, not because nuclear is cheap. Besides, the government doesn't guarantee outrageous gas prices for thirty years.

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#399

Post by phicoh »

shawabawa3 wrote: post #394
phicoh wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE... total amount of fossil fuel use for electricity went down.

I was looking at capacity not generation So capacity of fossil fuels went up, but I suppose natural gas shuts down while renewable generation is high so it doesn't use its capacity all the time - my bad

Yes, the easiest way to get a stable grid with wind and solar is to have natural gas capacity equal to what you need from wind and solar. Gas is not used when there is wind or solar, and is very easy and quick to turn on when needed.

In the future when more green gasses become available, bio methane, hydrogen or syn methane, those gas plants can be filled with those as well.

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#400

Post by arcticbull »

Terry_Roll wrote: post #377
arcticbull wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's tons of uranium everywhere. You certainly don't have to put on the lead underpants and root around in Pripyat for it. Canada and Australia have massive amounts.

I know, I can pull uranium nodules out of the cliffs along the Jurassic Coast in Dorset UK. They are like blobs of clay, its the enrichment process which requires lots of it, so with all that enriched uranium in Chernobyl, why not flog it?

Do you really think there's any just lying around? The other reactors continued operating at Chernobyl after the accident - the last one didn't close until 2000. I seriously doubt there's piles of usable ready to go enriched uranium just lying there for the exclusion zone visitors to trip over.
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