Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Canada plans 'nuclear renaissance' with up to 10 reactors built by 2040

cbc.ca

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

421–430 of 500 posts

Re: Canada plans 'nuclear renaissance' with up to 10 reactors built by 2040

#421

Post by Moldoteck »

JensKnipper wrote: post #384
red75prime wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The massive solar overcapacity that is required to deal with seasonal variation and the massive energy storage make this endeavor much more costly than nuclear. For example, in Denmark[1] a solar-dominated grid would cost around 565 EUR/MWh. A nuclear-dominated grid would cost around 141 EUR/MWh. [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S036054422... Fig. 3

You can combine solar with wind. And the good thing: wind is complementary to solar. So no need for solar overcapacity and massive energy storage. https://freeingenergy.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Graph-s... Edit: this is exactly what your link is showing > Demonstrates that mixed wind–solar portfolios outperform single technologies.

no it's not fully complementary. And that's the main challenge. Countries without nuclear and hydro tackle this with gas/coal

Re: Canada plans 'nuclear renaissance' with up to 10 reactors built by 2040

#422

Post by padjo »

mixdup wrote: post #390
ta20240528 wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh, a lot on the 737 Max situation was due to standardisation. Boeing didn't want the time, expense, and hassle of certifying (= standardising) a new narrow-body aeroplane, so they continued to reuse the FAA type certificate (= standardised design) of the original 737 from 1966. This meant they had to keep, inter alia, the short landing gear, which in turn made the wings lower to the ground, which forced them to pos…

So the problem was that they diverged from the standard design in key important ways. The trick would be not to do that, to actually stick to the standard design. Or, to make sure that the impacts of deviations are fully accounted for and incorporated back into the overall design and project Again, the standardization didn't cause the problem. Boeing's piss poor engineering culture did. There's no reason that they co…

The point is that standardisation can act as an impediment to innovation. People then use creative engineering to remain technically compliant. This ultimately leads to hidden or hard to detect risks because everything is "to standard", except it's not.

Re: Canada plans 'nuclear renaissance' with up to 10 reactors built by 2040

#423

Post by [deleted] »

Moldoteck wrote: post #419
somenameforme wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it wasn't clear in my post, the entire point is not that we'd run out, but that it'd become economically unviable. As the supply starts to run out and/or we turn to more expensive sources, prices go up - sharply. We'll never really run out of anything - it will just become so expensive that it's no longer viable for widespread usage. Nuclear is quite sensitive to this issue because the primary, and arguably sole,…

Ore is currently about 2% of the capex of a reactor. And many mines globally have lowered production because it's too cheap. Even if you 10x the price of the ore, it'll still be cheap

[deleted]

Re: Canada plans 'nuclear renaissance' with up to 10 reactors built by 2040

#424

Post by leonidasrup »

lukan wrote: post #359
leonidasrup wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. We can comfortable say that the CO2 from burned wood stays in the atmosphere for at-least 100 years (time necessary for the next tree to grow), with all the associated effects. 2. I could not imagine scaling biomass to country like India or China to cover the same share in electricity production mix as in Dermark (Denmark currently produces 20% of electricity from Bioenergy). https://ourworldindata.org/profile/ene…

1. No, if you take wood out of the forest and let it regrow, it is roughly +-0 CO2 balance (It is not just the new trees binding CO2, taking advantage of the new sunlight, all the other plants and existing trees start to bind CO2 the moment they can) 2. No, it is not and I doubt anyone claimed that this is possible.

"Does wood bioenergy help or harm the climate?" by John Sterman.

John Sterman is the Jay W. Forrester professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management

"The EU, UK, US, and other nations consider wood to be a carbon neutral fuel, ignoring the carbon dioxide emitted from wood combustion in their greenhouse gas accounting. Many countries subsidize wood energy – often by burning wood pellets in place of coal for electric power – to meet their renewable energy targets. But can wood bioenergy help cut greenhouse emissions in time to limit the worst damage from climate change? The argument in favor seems obvious: wood, a renewable resource, must be better than burning fossil fuels. But wood emits more carbon dioxide per kilowatt-hour than coal – and far more than other fossil fuels. Therefore, the first impact of wood bioenergy is to increase the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, worsening climate change. Forest regrowth might eventually remove that extra carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, but regrowth is uncertain and takes time – decades to a century or more, depending on forest composition and climatic zone – time we do not have to cut emissions enough to avoid the worst harms from climate change. More effective ways to cut greenhouse gas emissions are already available and affordable now, allowing forests to continue to serve as carbon sinks and moderate climate change."

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00963402.2022.2...

Re: Canada plans 'nuclear renaissance' with up to 10 reactors built by 2040

#425

Post by loloquwowndueo »

senderista wrote: post #411
loloquwowndueo wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re missing the point which is to create jobs, it’s what the Canadian government is pushing really hard for now, with all the infrastructure projects it’s launching. Something that will need people working on building for 15 years sounds about right for what government is doing now.

Sounds like California high speed rail, where the state government is actually touting the number of jobs created as the measure of its success, even without a single mile of working track.

Sounds like Canadian high speed rail :)

Re: Canada plans 'nuclear renaissance' with up to 10 reactors built by 2040

#426

Post by fennecbutt »

tmellon2 wrote: post #348

Totally unnecessary : I did the Math to cross-verify - Elon Musk is 100 % right ! Just ONE square mile of batteries and a TOTAL of 100 x 100 square miles of Solar can power the entire USA 24/7. Area required will be much lesser for Canada. See : https://finance.yahoo.com/sectors/energy/articles/elon-musk-...

How convenient for Musk that technology connections did this exact topic and these exact calculations (and much more) as a topic months and months ago: https://youtu.be/KtQ9nt2ZeGM?is=wOjIwPKFuYj2Smrh

Why up Musk? Is he your primary source of news and ideas?

Re: Canada plans 'nuclear renaissance' with up to 10 reactors built by 2040

#427

Post by fennecbutt »

thfuran wrote: post #127
slicktux wrote: post #122

That’s great news ! Have they also solved the nuclear waste problem? Honest question; here in the USA we have not.

It's not really a problem. The alternative is to grind it up into fine dust, spray it into the air, and call it "clean coal".

Excuse me that's "beautiful clean coal" I still can't believe that you guys actually chose him as president.

Re: Canada plans 'nuclear renaissance' with up to 10 reactors built by 2040

#428

Post by onraglanroad »

leonidasrup wrote: post #424
lukan wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. No, if you take wood out of the forest and let it regrow, it is roughly +-0 CO2 balance (It is not just the new trees binding CO2, taking advantage of the new sunlight, all the other plants and existing trees start to bind CO2 the moment they can) 2. No, it is not and I doubt anyone claimed that this is possible.

"Does wood bioenergy help or harm the climate?" by John Sterman. John Sterman is the Jay W. Forrester professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management "The EU, UK, US, and other nations consider wood to be a carbon neutral fuel, ignoring the carbon dioxide emitted from wood combustion in their greenhouse gas accounting. Many countries subsidize wood energy – often by burning wood pellets in place of coal…

> But wood emits more carbon dioxide per kilowatt-hour than coal

Utterly irrelevant since that carbon came out of the air to grow the tree in the first place.

> Forest regrowth might eventually remove that extra carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, but regrowth is uncertain

Of course it's not! Trees are grown as a crop. These aren't ancient forests, they're fields of trees for harvesting. If it was uncertain no-one could make money from forestry.

Re: Canada plans 'nuclear renaissance' with up to 10 reactors built by 2040

#429

Post by mooncalf »

globular-toast wrote: post #271
Symbiote wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's still cheaper, and especially solar production correlates well with increased electricity usage.

In Canada? I would have thought winter had by far the highest energy usage.

The sun still comes out in winter!

It corresponds with solar generation in the sense that more electricity is used during the day, when the sun is out.

Re: Canada plans 'nuclear renaissance' with up to 10 reactors built by 2040

#430

Post by myrmidon »

rich_sasha wrote: post #410
myrmidon wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What doesnt add up? Almost all western industrialized nations are on a downward trajectory (or flat) regarding electricity use. So there is simply little economic incentive to "greenify" electricity quickly because demand is already met by existing infrastructure. Lots of people are completely unwilling to pay more for energy just to decrease emissions quickly (you might be surprised about peoples selfishness!). But…

These Western countries are also still exporting their manufacturing and energy use to China. Meanwhile, Chinese CO2 emmissions are still increasing, regardless of how much renewables they are building. This would mean that the marginal cost of burning coal is still lower for them than the "dirt cheap" renewables, when accounting for everything. Either that or China can't count, which I doubt. In any case - displacin…

Why would you expect people to go for fully renewable grids right now? You'd need no pre-existing dispatchable power for that to be appealing to start with, and this is the case approximately nowhere (excluding countries that get free hydro from their geography here).

Electric storage to get rid of the last percent of dispatchable fossils in the grid is invariably gonna be the last thing that happens because its just not appealing economically; future overprovisioning is gonna eat into your margins, capex for batteries is non-negligible and you are basically making a longer term investment into rapidly improving tech which is always rough.

But just consider a single household right now: You can just slap panels on the whole roof for peanuts and put 100kWh of batteries somewhere (that's basically a single chunky car-battery)-- that's pretty much autarky right there, and it is very feasible (but if you rely on a bit of dispatchable fossil grid power instead that's still cheaper and easier for now).

In my opinion all that we would need to accelerate this tremendously is like a $300/ton in carbon tax, then just re-emit the gains into mainly lower income tax brackets (poor-ish people might even come out ahead!) and tax literally every import comparably that can't demonstrate a clean chain of the same CO2 taxation for its inputs. But people would wine endlessly, because suddenly flying into vacation 3 times a year or similar BS becomes actually expensive, oh the horror...

Post reply on HN