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Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

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Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#441

Post by UltraSane »

ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #295
UltraSane wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

At a cost which could generate ~10 billion watts of very low CO2 electricity for decades if invested in renewables. Also remember that large parts of a nuclear plant is replaced over its operational life. Control systems, steam generators, turbines, generators, tubing, valves etc. What stays is the outer shell and pressure vessel. A nuclear plant doesn't just "work" for 60 years. And there's no trouble designing rene…

Nuclear reactors work at night and when there is no wind. Reliable electricity is far more valuable than unreliable electricity.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#442

Post by marcosdumay »

spacebanana7 wrote: post #333
boringg wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't ask for better unintended outcomes from that Iran war than to fast track deployment of renewable and nuclear energy. Get europe off their anti-nuclear, pro gas stance. France gains a fair bit from this development. Russia loses influence as does the mid-east if the trajectory holds. Winners: heat pump manufacturers, nuclear re-processing, uranium enrichment, eVs, nuclear heavy manufacturers, solar panels (Ch…

Gas is an excellent compliment for renewables. It scales up and down quickly, and can cover all the weak spots around intermittency and dunkelflautes. The carbon emissions are relatively low too, because in renewables/battery heavy grid the actual quantity of gas needed is relatively small. The problem arises in importing gas from unstable places.

All of that is right... But we needed something to make batteries competitive with gas, because the renewables part is already solved, and we need to move to the next step.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#443

Post by wortelefant »

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…

Did you ever calculate the cost for a hypothetical battery that could keep solar power available whenever the sun does not shine? This is where nuclear, well, shines

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#446

Post by peterfirefly »

panja wrote: post #414
throwaway2037 wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did some research about that nuclear power plant. In 1985 dollars, the total construction cost was 5.6B USD. That is an astonishing amount of money. That is at least 16B USD in 2026 money. If you also include decomissioning costs of about 4-5B USD... how the fuck does nuclear power make any economic sense? PV solar plus batteries: ALL THE WAY. To be clear, I am not anti-nuclear power by any means. I think it is a t…

Maybe there is a discussion to be had about WHY it needs to make economic sense? Power is a natural monopoly, maybe it doesn't need to be a part of the economy?

It was not a good idea for Germany (and certain other parts of the EU) to be so dependent on Russian gas. It was also not a good idea to become dependent on LNG from Qatar or the US. Spain uses natural gas from Algeria (via Morocco), also not great. Italy also gets some from Algeria/Tunesia, still not great. Inside of Europe, we are far too dependent on Norway. Not because Norway is likely to turn on us (or we on them), but because the pipelines are relatively easy to disrupt.

The transition from coal to gas gave us cleaner air (and less CO2) but it definitely also had costs, some of them in the form of many thousands of dead Ukrainians, some of them in the form of concessions to the US.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#447

Post by dalyons »

ineedasername wrote: post #426
panja wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe there is a discussion to be had about WHY it needs to make economic sense? Power is a natural monopoly, maybe it doesn't need to be a part of the economy?

And $ cost is a poor metric to chase when what you really care about includes a lot more-- exposure to the whims of geopolitical forces you can't foresee or control, which have both $ cost and more.

I agree to an extent… but a state forcing a nuclear share and locking the populace into higher power prices for 30+ years is going to politically very unpopular. Short term economic concerns dominate today.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#448

Post by belorn »

bluGill wrote: post #288
Lonestar1440 wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This just seems like kneejerk anti-Nuclear stance in disguise. Maybe you did intend it as just a neutral observation but it's hard to take it that way. Like maybe you're right... why not also support Nuclear plants, which we in fact need for baseload energy? Surely there are better places to cut the budget than other carbon-free energy sources. I have no argument with building out solar and wind maximally. I will alw…

We don't need baseload energy! That is something the coal lobby likes to repeat but it is false. We need enough energy to supply demand. These days gas peaker plants amortize cheaper to run 24x7 than a new baseload plant and so a lot of new "baseload" is actually covered by a peaker plant. Baseload doesn't have a consistent definition, but the general concept is some power plants are cheap at 100% output, but don't t…

Gas peak plants are neither clean nor economical stable in Europe. The war in Ukraine and now the war in Iran has demonstrated how extreme the price of energy can become if we allow demand to exceed supply for any extended period, and multiple European governments in the last few years got elected explicitly to solve this. Having a single month cost as much as a full year, or even multiple years, is a costly lesson for voters and the economical effects are not slow to provide a second demonstration on how important stability is in the energy market.

Coal is not an option, nor is oil nor gas. Batteries for something like central/northern Europe is also not an option as a seasonal storage of weeks/months are prohibitively expensive. Hydro power has demonstrated to cause (near) extinctions of several species and ecosystems, modern research on soil has show some terrible numbers in terms of emissions, and the places where new hydro power could be built are basically zero. Biofuels from corn and oil is prohibitive expensive and also bad for the environment, and the amount of fraud currently being done in green washing corn ethanol as being "recycled" food waste is on a massive scale and not something Europe can build a seasonal storage on. Green hydrogen is not even economical yet for being used in manufacturing, not to mention being burned for electricity and heating. Carbon capture for synthetic fuel is even further away from being a realistic storage solution.

That leaves very few options, and if current world events continue as they have we will see more governments being elected on the promise of delivering a stable energy market. Wind+solar+Gas peaker plants are not that. It was already an bad idea when it got voted as "green" in EU, as it cemented a dependency on natural gas from Russia and middle east. In 2026 it should not be considered an option. Gas need to be phased out, as should the last few oil and coal plants.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#449

Post by namibj »

graemep wrote: post #9
andrepd wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not keen on new nuclear (time and cost as much as anything else), but it's a terrible idea to phase out operating nuclear plants which are still safe and within their planned lifetime. This is pretty much the summary of the whole discussion. Building new nuclear is a debate, seeing as renewables are dirt cheap it might or might not make sense to build new nuclear reactors that take a fuckton of money and many y…

Renewables (especially wind) are mostly more variable. I have lived in a country that was reliant on hydroelectricity and the consequences of a drought were severe (literally days of power cuts, water cuts because of the lack of power...). Part of the solution was to build coal and oil power. Surely nuclear is better than coal?

Solar is REALLY CHEAP. And provided you keep existing central European gas heating infrastructure around for a while, you can basically just wait out the really good energy storage by using existing caverns you pre-fill with methane to keep your people from freezing. If you're not curtailing a substantial fraction of PV yield (yearly) in central Europe that's a sign there way not enough capacity yet.

Built facades and roofs out of glass-glass PV laminate. We have the technology from glass roofs/facades; you just add glass-catching-mesh/insulation below because you can't use the insulated multi-pane window glass construction with safety lamination and solar cells all three together.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#450

Post by dalyons »

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 also, most importantly, don’t have to care if any of their reactors make economic sense. It is a single party state, and the incentive structure is very different.
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