France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors • Hacker News Board

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#411

Post by epistasis » Fri, Feb 11, 2022, 5:32 PM UTC

midasuni wrote: post #372

epistasis wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are just as of 2020 reaching cost effectiveness for batteries, and planning by utilities is often on five year time lines and uses outdated data, so they are slow to pick up new technology. Nonetheless, storage is ready, and even in profit driven grids like Texas' ERCOT: > Citing lower costs and increased renewables, momentum continued in the growth of battery energy storage systems in 2021, roughly doubling with…

> growth of battery energy storage systems in 2021, roughly doubling with 1,262 MW online That makes no sense. How much do they store?

Grid assets are usually measured by the size of their grid connection. These are lithium ion batteries, and in the 100+MW power capacity, you will usually have 2-4 hours of duration, as the economic use case for something that big usually requires replacing gas peakers to some degree.

Prior generations of lithium ion on the grid were more used for frequency regulation, and would be far smaller and have far higher power/energy rations, like 15-30 minutes. Though this was an extremely profitable market for a while, once people figured out how easy it was to get batteries to do it the market was flooded and frequency regulation does not take a massive amount of battery to accomplish.

Though lithium ion is generally viewed to cap out at 4 hours of duration, I'm thinking that it may get cheap enough per kWh of capacity to install undersized inverters and go to 8-12 hours of capacity. This could compete with other emerging battery technologies targeting that length of duration. An early test of this will be the "long duration storage" component of the replacement package of Diablo Canyon; I dont think that a particlular vendor has been chosen, but most people seem to think that it will be non-lithium-ion that will win the bid. There are other early stage battery startups with ~100 hour duration chemistries. All of these vary based on round-trip efficiency, cost per kWh of energy capacity, and lifetime over cycling.

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#412

Post by fulafel » Fri, Feb 11, 2022, 5:34 PM UTC

DisjointedHunt wrote: post #236

The economic benefits from having a "fuck you" amount of energy ready to go at any point cannot be overstated. Fresh water shortage due to drought? Desalinate ocean water. Heat/cold wave? Announce that all electricity bills will be waived for the month. See popularity skyrocket. Provide near unlimited compute budgets to universities etc on older hardware for their research and other work. When shackles are taken off,…

A huge amount of additional energy seems like an overoptimistic take on the impact of this.

See eg this article telling how 14 (smaller, admittedly) reactors are due to decommission in the same timeframe. https://apnews.com/article/9db52eeef7ea47a76f64653c2a854b17

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#413

Post by robertlagrant » Fri, Feb 11, 2022, 5:39 PM UTC

Krasnol wrote: post #268

Krssst wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they failed to come up with a diversified energy plan for the future Why diversify? If you have enough power when you need it without emitting CO2 I would think that would be enough. However, no new nuclear construction for that many years does look like a mistake as France looks like it is slightly increasing use of coal this winter: https://www.rfi.fr/en/france/20220112-france-fires-up-coal-p... If France had mor…

> Why diversify? If you have enough power when you need it without emitting CO2 I would think that would be enough. Ask that question next summer when the rivers get too hot again and they have too shut down.

I wonder if that could be partially mitigated by solar. That could be a good combo.

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#414

Post by DisjointedHunt » Fri, Feb 11, 2022, 5:54 PM UTC

fulafel wrote: post #412

DisjointedHunt wrote: post #236

The economic benefits from having a "fuck you" amount of energy ready to go at any point cannot be overstated. Fresh water shortage due to drought? Desalinate ocean water. Heat/cold wave? Announce that all electricity bills will be waived for the month. See popularity skyrocket. Provide near unlimited compute budgets to universities etc on older hardware for their research and other work. When shackles are taken off,…

A huge amount of additional energy seems like an overoptimistic take on the impact of this. See eg this article telling how 14 (smaller, admittedly) reactors are due to decommission in the same timeframe. https://apnews.com/article/9db52eeef7ea47a76f64653c2a854b17

I'd say it's the reversal of the trend that excites me more than the single instance of the announcement itself.

For decades, Europe (and admittedly the US) has sat back and moaned against using the single most powerful energy source known to man (measured in energy density). Germany actually proclaimed in 2011 that they would be turning away completely from nuclear energy.

This is a start, executed well . . it lays the foundation for a generational shift.

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#415

Post by ksec » Fri, Feb 11, 2022, 6:15 PM UTC

epistasis wrote: post #336

simion314 wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

We are just as of 2020 reaching cost effectiveness for batteries, and planning by utilities is often on five year time lines and uses outdated data, so they are slow to pick up new technology. Nonetheless, storage is ready, and even in profit driven grids like Texas' ERCOT: > Citing lower costs and increased renewables, momentum continued in the growth of battery energy storage systems in 2021, roughly doubling with…

I wonder if a country will just mandate every household to have a Tesla like PowerWall installed within x years. Or some sort of incentives to have it installed. You can then have additional Grid Battery as backup. It is quite hard to store a week long electricity needs without some redundancy.

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#416

Post by renaudg » Fri, Feb 11, 2022, 6:24 PM UTC

immmmmm wrote: post #303

gobip wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

France is not serious about climate? If you're in a neighbor country of France: congrats, your electricity is much more polluted than France's is. Énergie Nucléaire was a thing of De Gaulle, but not for these reasons. France needed independence and needed to provide electricity, and the only way was nuclear (at the time). Given the current situation, I think France didn't do too bad. Only one candidate in France on p…

I live in Switzerland, 60% of my electricity comes from hydro. Ok ok, De Gaulle was maybe more concerned about energy independence. France doesn't do too bad? Any link? As far a i remember only a few African countries do "not too bad", but perhaps you were referring to former colonies as well. > I live in France, never heard of this "Net Zero" you're talking about. I then suggest some good climate information channel…

> If you're in a neighbor country of France: congrats, your electricity is much more polluted than France's is.

Sorry but that statement is absolutely true, even of Switzerland.

As I write, France's consumption-based carbon intensity is 92g, Switzerland is 130 (importing 2.36GW of dirty electricity from Germany, 1.44GW from France)

https://app.electricitymap.org/map

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#417

Post by mam4 » Fri, Feb 11, 2022, 7:08 PM UTC

immmmmm wrote: post #271

ike0790 wrote: post #235

Looks like a G20 country is serious about the impending "climate emergency". Regardless of the motives and timing behind this, I think its great to see a country is actually being serious and practical. Anyone going on about the climate and refuses to put nuclear energy at the forefront of the conversation is unserious and is only interested in virtual signaling in my opinion.

For living in a neighboring country, speaking their language and following their policy quite a bit, i can tell you that, no, they are nowhere near serious. Just as an example, the best performing company this year is Total with 15B and which is happily feeding the government with petrodollars and the other people with lies about "Net Zero " etc. "Énergie Nucléaire" as they call it is a thing there because De Gaulle…

No post body was provided.

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#418

Post by tialaramex » Fri, Feb 11, 2022, 7:17 PM UTC

sideshowb wrote: post #410

tialaramex wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, it's "temporary" in the sense that if suddenly gas was cheap the price goes down because it is in fact set by the fuel for gas turbines. I don't expect that to happen for a long time, even though in theory it could happen this afternoon. Traders are already assuming Summer 2022 gas prices will be very high. Without that it is only possible for prices to fall after we build a lot more wind turbines (projects out…

Well, except that domestic gas use is greater than power stations; over 80% of that will be for space heating, which will be switched off come the summer https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

Significantly greater in the period covered by that document (2020 under Pandemic lockdown) but probably much closer to equal now with people back at work. But sure, there will certainly be less usage in summer than now.

Prices though remain high and are likely to remain high for the foreseeable. Just as natural gas prices effectively set the electricity price even when a minority of electricity comes from gas global LNG prices effectively set the price of natural gas even in a country like the UK that has considerable local resources.

Today the wind picked back up and prices stayed slightly under £200 per MWh, but remember that's not actually low, it just seems low compared to recent extraordinary heights. In February 2012 £49.10 was the average price of day ahead baseload electricity by February 2015 it is £42.86, and by February 2021 it was £32.04. Despite the windy weather this month it may be north of £200 for February 2022.

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#419

Post by natmaka » Fri, Feb 11, 2022, 7:24 PM UTC

MagnumOpus wrote: post #392

Archelaos wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

A nuclear reactor can only do this (depending upon combustible bars state) at most twice per day. This is a severe limitation. France is a leader in this field. Source (French language ahead!): https://new.sfen.org/rgn/expertise-nucleaire-francaise-suivi...

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#420

Post by natmaka » Fri, Feb 11, 2022, 7:30 PM UTC

epistasis wrote: post #408

tim333 wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interest rates are very low still though. Governments can borrow at nearer to 1% than 10%.

But that money could also be applied in other areas of the economy, that might have far better payback. And with France's current track record of nuclear construction, throwing more money at nuclear without fixing the fundamental problems first is serious misallocation of capital. Just the latest news that is the same as the last decade of bad news: > EDF now estimates the total cost of the project at 12.7 billion eu…

The total cost (to date, as it isn't yet delivered) of the EPR was mid-2020 established by the "Cour des comptes" (Court of Audit) at 19,1 billions euros. A recent official announcement added 300 millions euros.

French: https://www.lemonde.fr/les-decodeurs/article/2019/06/24/epr-...