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France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

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Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#421

Post by midasuni »

epistasis wrote: post #411
midasuni wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 pow…

If it can provide 100MW for 4 hours why can’t it provide 10MW for 40h?

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#422

Post by natmaka »

deepsun wrote: post #350
stewbrew wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking about independence: where does the uran come from? And how is this clever since the EDF cannot sell their nuclear power without making losses?

> where does the uran come from All over the place. Uranite is pretty common. E.g. Canada has 200+ locations: https://www.mindat.org/min-4102.html (scroll to the very bottom).

If a nuclear 'renaissance' arises, strategy will be at play: Russia and the US will obtain uranium from their 'partners', in Africa China will probably gain new partnerships, and other nations may encounter some difficulties.

Moreover (source: UNECE): "mining impacts are technically highly dependent on ore grade, as the efforts required to extract a fixed quantity of ore is proportional to the amount of rock to be extracted, therefore inversely proportional to the grade. This is true at the individual mine level, for which such a model could be derived; more importantly, this assumption is valid for open pit and underground mines. Warner and Heath test this relationship and its influence over the full life cycle of the technology, showing that a lowering ore grade may lead to tripling life-cycle GHG emissions by 2050 in case of a sustained growth of installed nuclear capacity"

Read: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1530-9290... "Depending on conditions, median life cycle GHG emissions could be 9 to 110 g CO2-eq/kWh by 2050."

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#423

Post by freeflight »

mrDmrTmrJ wrote: post #239
freeflight wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or Russian infiltrators. Isn't it funny how after deciding to get rid of nuclear reactors Germany suddenly realized that it needs to build a gas pipeline to Russia to cover it's energy needs. It's not funny, it's bluntly wrong. The German nuclear phase-out was precedented by the EEG, the first green electricity feed-in tariff scheme in the world [0]. It was part of the Energiekonsensgespräche that went on in the 90…

Your citation #2 shows Household, Power Supply, and District Heating to total 52% of natural gas usage. Nuclear power can take over both for electric power supply and for home and district heat via electric heat pumps - which can be 250-350% efficient[0]. So, over 50% of German natural gas usage can be replaced by nuclear electrical power, based on the citations you provided :) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coeff…

It's not as simple as that. The extra electricity load would require extra infrastructure on that end, you are very casually implying how a major chunk of German households should just completely retool themselves, as if that's something trivial to do.

Who is gonna pay for that? When are you gonna do that? During the 10+ years of building reactors? What if your new reactors don't finish on time?

That does not mean heating pumps are not a thing in Germany, they have been steadily gaining share particularly with newly constructed buildings [0] that have to abide by even harsher energy regulations.

But what you are suggesting would involve replacing tens of millions of "old stock" households, all to justify nuclear fission power generation while not fixing any issues as to why Germany is actually phasing nuclear fission out.

You still offer no solution to the waste, just like you don't seem to give a single thought about financing such a change or who would be willing to invest in new German nuclear reactors.

Because German nuclear companies most certainly won't, they are just as happy with this phase out as everybody else, particularly as it gave them several huge government pay outs, not just for the disposal of the waste [1], but also for the phase out [2], can't even tax the fuel rods to pay for their disposal [3].

Which makes German nuclear fission energy very likely some of the most profitable on the planet because, unlike EDF, these companies are not majority state owned.

[0] https://www.destatis.de/DE/Presse/Pressemitteilungen/2021/10...

[1] https://www.dw.com/en/german-government-does-nuclear-waste-d...

[2] https://www.dw.com/en/vattenfall-wins-case-against-german-nu...

[3] https://www.bbc.com/news/business-40186278

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#424

Post by natmaka »

skhr0680 wrote: post #216
Terry_Roll wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The largest uranium fuel depot in the world is Chernobyl, Ukraine. Russia nearly bankrupted itself when it contained the nuclear disaster and even Gorbachev thinks it was Chernobyl that ultimately destroyed the Soviet Union. Now with this in mind, I wouldnt be surprised considering the sanctions on Russia, if they perhaps make a grab for the uranium in Chernobyl and sell it, to claw back some of the costs they incurr…

> Strategically, it was useful for Russian politics to have something as risky as the Chernobyl nuke power station in the Ukraine during the soviet union era, ie different country if anything went wrong nothing to do with us sort of thing. The same type of reactor as Chernobyl is still in operation at the Leningrad NPP

"The very architecture of the Chernobyl reactor was faulty", often repeated in some media, is a lie, and therefore the more-or-less implicit "our architecture cannot lead to such a disaster" falls flat.

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#425

Post by buserror »

sofixa wrote: post #231
buserror wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ahah, it's always expensive time for the french taxpayer -- always have been! They even have recursive layer of taxes, where you pay taxes on amounts that have... already been removed from your revenue as... taxes.

That's not what recursion means. There are income taxes on your whole income (- a base provision for living expenses), and you can deduct certain things ( like donations to nonprofits) from the taxable income.

I know what recursion means thank you so much. If you get $100 income, get a 20% tax on that, and then get another 20% tax on... not $80 but on the /previous/ $100, you are paying recursive taxes. Thats what the old "CSG" was (replaced by something else but in the same 'spirit'), in france. You are being taxed on amount you already been taxed on.

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#426

Post by natmaka »

simion314 wrote: post #409
natmaka wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

"urope could make much better use of its wind resources if capacity was spread out instead of being concentrated around the North Sea." It does not claim that wind and solar can replace gas and coal 100% just the super obvious conclusion that we could do more if we invest more in wind turbines and also in the grid (the disadvantage is how you balance the surplus, like companies from country A and B and C have too muc…

Nothing can replace gas 100%. Hyper-nuclearized France always produced (and now produces) between 7% and 12% of their gridpower thanks to fossil fuel (gas/petrol/coal). This is not about 100% but about obtaining a baseload.

"we could do more if we invest more in wind turbines" is not obvious when it comes to continuity of production.

Selling anything (even only 25% of your production) can be a financially wonderful operation if done when many customers need it.

Turning off production is only necessary if you cannot store more of it.

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#427

Post by simion314 »

ksec wrote: post #415
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…

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.

This won't be possible in all homes, batteries are a security risk so for sure you need safe conditions and space to install similar on how you need to pass inspections for gas. The only way I could see it working is introducing an increasing electricity tarigf. First 50Kw are cheap, next are 25% more expensive, next 50% etc (this are random number I don't stand behind them)

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#428

Post by simion314 »

natmaka wrote: post #426
simion314 wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"urope could make much better use of its wind resources if capacity was spread out instead of being concentrated around the North Sea." It does not claim that wind and solar can replace gas and coal 100% just the super obvious conclusion that we could do more if we invest more in wind turbines and also in the grid (the disadvantage is how you balance the surplus, like companies from country A and B and C have too muc…

Nothing can replace gas 100%. Hyper-nuclearized France always produced (and now produces) between 7% and 12% of their gridpower thanks to fossil fuel (gas/petrol/coal). This is not about 100% but about obtaining a baseload. "we could do more if we invest more in wind turbines" is not obvious when it comes to continuity of production. Selling anything (even only 25% of your production) can be a financially wonderful o…

>Turning off production is only necessary if you cannot store more of it.

Storing is not cheap and batteries are also diry. not green. My idea is that we need to work on all in parallel, solar, wind, research better and cleaner batteries, nuclear, fusion, invest in the grid and try to connect over larger distances. There will not be 1 solution that fits every place in the world.

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#429

Post by stolsvik »

nix23 wrote: post #395
immmmmm wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 “…

Lakes?

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#430

Post by Terry_Roll »

natmaka wrote: post #424
skhr0680 wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Strategically, it was useful for Russian politics to have something as risky as the Chernobyl nuke power station in the Ukraine during the soviet union era, ie different country if anything went wrong nothing to do with us sort of thing. The same type of reactor as Chernobyl is still in operation at the Leningrad NPP

"The very architecture of the Chernobyl reactor was faulty", often repeated in some media, is a lie, and therefore the more-or-less implicit "our architecture cannot lead to such a disaster" falls flat.

On the wiki page, a weakness was powergrid failure and the minute or two it took for the diesel generators to come online. They looked at whether any of the energy from the reactor turbines could be used to keep the water pumps going in this 1-2minute window until the diesel generators were up to full speed.

It needed a massive amount of water to pumped around which explains why many nuke power stations are positioned on the coast.

Of course, wiki is wiki, but is no more or less valid or invalid, than other reports when being mindful of bias.

In terms of Chernobyl and radiation leaks, an airburst instead of ground burst would spread more radiation and could parts of the Ukraine become radioactive wasteland to prevent Nato pushing right upto Russia border?

Russia hasnt moved an inch, but NATO has so could NATO end up on the wrong side of history with this one? Wars are always good distractions for domestic failures.

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