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Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

dpa-international.com

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Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#431

Post by [deleted] »

foolfoolz wrote: post #339
bryanlarsen wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ivanpah is solar thermal. Nobody is advocating for solar thermal, photovoltaic has decisively won.

mount signal, the largest PV plant in california makes 1,200GW/hrs per year. it would still take ~15 copies of mount signal for a single diablo canyon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Signal_Solar my whole point is solar is great, but the insane scale it requires to get reasonable output is really underestimated. you would need solar fields 100sqmi big. probably many of them. solar alone won’t be the future of hum…

[deleted]

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#432

Post by nicoburns »

thrownthatway wrote: post #421
nicoburns wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it occasionally irradiates a swath of land and renders it uninhabitable The big fear for me would be that this happens to a nuclear power plant that is located in a densely populated area (of which there are many). Chernobyl was bad, but imagine the impact if the exclusion zone contained a major city.

Two new AP1000 reactors are being built in Ukraine. During a hot war. That’s how safe and important these things are.

> That’s how safe and important these things are.

I don't think something being done in war time is evidence of it's safety! If anything, way tends to encourage more risk taking.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#433

Post by badc0ffee »

db48x wrote: post #406
CalRobert wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does 2.2 MW/hour mean?

It doesn't. Watts were a mistake by whatever committee it was that standardized unit names. Power should not have been given a unit; it should have been left as ∆energy/time just as velocity is distance/time.

It's shorthand for a Joule (unit of energy) per second (unit of time). Watt is the problem with that?

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#434

Post by UltraSane »

Projectiboga wrote: post #94
UltraSane wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A nuclear reactor can generate 1 billion watts of very low CO2 electricity for 60 years.

With waste with half lifes in the tens of thousands of years sitting in metal casks which cant last 1,000 years.

Considering how dangerous CO2 induced climate change could be this is like worrying about drowning when using water to extinguish fires.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#436

Post by marcosdumay »

j16sdiz wrote: post #306
dmix wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then why is China building 30 new reactors on top of the 60 they already have, if it's not competitive? https://www.zmescience.com/science/news-science/china-says-i... The answer is usually more about how China can actually build things, not that nuclear isn't economically feasible.

The way China building new reactor is not typical. Most of the countries builds _one_ type of reactor, or a group of similar type of reactor. This help reduce the cost of training and certification. China, otoh, tries to _diversify_ their reactor type. If you look closely on how China treat techs, they have been doing the same for all tech for past 15+ years. They are strategically growing their tech profile.

They have a huge number of people that can specialize in many different things.

But their government has actually explained it. They purposely diversify any tech that doesn't have a clear winner, so in the long term a winner appears and they can focus on it.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#437

Post by cogman10 »

boringg wrote: post #278
cogman10 wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Name a Gen II plant that was upgraded to a Gen III, III+ or Gen IV plant. There's a reason new Gen II plants cannot be built, and all the regulations and safety reports in the world will not fix the fundamental design flaw of these plants. We can mitigate and make meltdown less likely, we can't eliminate it without replacing the plants all together.

The difference between different generations is wildly different and regulations aren't structured to allow for upgrading. It becomes a cost and regulatory burden thing - might as well rebuild then upgrade, very little to do with safety.

And I agree. I think this is a place where the regulations are broken. They should be changed to encourage new gen nuclear be built. Ideally, they could be tweaked so that the sites of old nuclear plants can be reused to produce new nuclear plants.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#438

Post by UltraSane »

modo_mario wrote: post #129
Projectiboga wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With waste with half lifes in the tens of thousands of years sitting in metal casks which cant last 1,000 years.

If I remember well most radioactive waste by volume is not from nuclear energy production and the share that is very small would be drastically lower if places like the US didn't ban it's recycling. It's half life can also be drastically reduced. I also wonder. Is it the implied danger over those tens of thousands of years or would it end up being something more similar to Ramsar in Iran long before that?

You simply put waste deep underground in geologically stable rock. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repo...

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#439

Post by peterfirefly »

zekrioca wrote: post #428
graeme wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't generate power by burning carbon and is a grid replacement for carbon sources. Grid cost rise sharply on 100% solar. Taking china as an example they currently build solar, coal and nuclear. No country is building only solar/batteries. Further if we build more nuclear we'd be better at it and it would be cheaper.

You are talking only about the operations of the nuclear, and ignoring all the high energy process required to mine and process uranium before it can be used as a fuel, and after as waste. But let’s pass this problem to the next generation, they will know what to do :)

That's still essentially zero relative to the amount of energy we can get out of the uranium.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#440

Post by wortelefant »

zekrioca wrote: post #428
graeme wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't generate power by burning carbon and is a grid replacement for carbon sources. Grid cost rise sharply on 100% solar. Taking china as an example they currently build solar, coal and nuclear. No country is building only solar/batteries. Further if we build more nuclear we'd be better at it and it would be cheaper.

You are talking only about the operations of the nuclear, and ignoring all the high energy process required to mine and process uranium before it can be used as a fuel, and after as waste. But let’s pass this problem to the next generation, they will know what to do :)

You underetimate the energy density of nuclear power. Yes. Uranium needs to be mined - slightly more 3xpensive if you extract it from sea water or recycle the fuel - but you need just one bathtub of fuel pellets to power a plant for 2 years. Solar and wind require more mining. https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy
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