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Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

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Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#461

Post by rayiner »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #409
Alexsky2 wrote: post #253

A bit unrelated to the Belgium story but I recently visited Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant near San Luis Obispo, CA and learned a ton about the technical details, safety systems, and policy decisions that go into operating a nuclear power plant. When operating at full capacity, it provides up to 10% of California power! While there is certainly always more such facilities can do for safety and efficiency, my impre…

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…

It’s not a choice between nuclear and PV. It’s a choice between nuclear and the other things that provide base load: gas and coal.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#462

Post by matkoniecz »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #409
Alexsky2 wrote: post #253

A bit unrelated to the Belgium story but I recently visited Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant near San Luis Obispo, CA and learned a ton about the technical details, safety systems, and policy decisions that go into operating a nuclear power plant. When operating at full capacity, it provides up to 10% of California power! While there is certainly always more such facilities can do for safety and efficiency, my impre…

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…

> PV solar plus batteries: ALL THE WAY.

how much this would cost for the same guaranteed power output?

would it be more or less than 21B?

how it would look like in areas that have winter with snow?

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#463

Post by testing22321 »

simondotau wrote: post #170
testing22321 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's worth noting that the Fukoshima disaster Lead to basically zero direct deaths Which was really just pure luck. It was melting down. Humans could not go in to stop it, robots could not go in to stop it. Pure luck it didn’t go a lot bigger. Also it resulted in severe contamination of ocean water, which will have impacts for a very long time

> Which was really just pure luck. It's the opposite of luck. They were very unlucky. The objectively extremely unlucky outcome occurred. Yes it could have been worse, and I suppose it could have been struck by a meteor too. > it resulted in severe contamination of ocean water Citation please. I suggest reading the relevant Wikipedia article in full. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discharge_of_radioactive_water...

> It's the opposite of luck. They were very unlucky. The objectively extremely unlucky outcome occurred.

The tsunami and tidal wave that took out the generators were unlucky.

The fantastically lucky part was that it didn’t create an explosion and spew much more radiation into the air. We couldn’t do anything to stop it, just stand back and hope for the best.

that was immensely lucky.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#464

Post by Mawr »

crote wrote: post #324
otikik wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ~20,000 people died due to the Earthquake > Irrelevant. Well, that needs more nuance. You have to understand that Japan is unusually well prepared for natural disasters. From earthquake resistant building codes, to alarm systems, education, to building, to earthquake refuges. I would venture to say that it is the most earhquake-prepared country in the world (although I have no proof of that point and I don't feel l…

Sure, but Chernobyl didn't require a massive tsunami, and neither did Three Mile Island. On top of that there have been dozens of near-misses. On the other hand: what would have been the result of the earthquake and subsequent tsunami hitting a wind farm, or a PV installation? Nuclear reactors are inherently a very risky business, with virtually unlimited damages if something goes seriously wrong. I'm sure all the re…

You're arguing based on pure hypotheticals.

> Nuclear reactors are inherently a very risky business,

Well, let me introduce you to airplanes — flying is inherently risky, and so many people have died on commercial flights. We should abolish it immediately!

> The fact that a Fukushima-scale nuclear disaster can happen at all is a major cause for concern.

Maybe. I'm more concerned about coal plants that are, as we speak, dumping metric tons of harmful materials, including radioactive ones, into the atmosphere we all breathe, which causes approximately 100_000 people to die each year.

These are real things happening right now, not some hypothetical problems that may happen, but haven't in the last 60 years of commercial nuclear reactor operations.

Seriously, all you can cling to are what, 2-3 major accidents in all this time? With negligible death tolls? Please. This is just concern trolling.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#465

Post by Moldoteck »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #409
Alexsky2 wrote: post #253

A bit unrelated to the Belgium story but I recently visited Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant near San Luis Obispo, CA and learned a ton about the technical details, safety systems, and policy decisions that go into operating a nuclear power plant. When operating at full capacity, it provides up to 10% of California power! While there is certainly always more such facilities can do for safety and efficiency, my impre…

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…

decomissioning is embedded in opex cost and fairly cheap www.kkg.ch/de/uns/geschaefts-nachhaltigkeitsberichte.html

The complexity now is doing it without delays. China shows that it can be built very cheap and fast with good supply chain

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#466

Post by peterfirefly »

thrownthatway wrote: post #308
testing22321 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's worth noting that the Fukoshima disaster Lead to basically zero direct deaths Which was really just pure luck. It was melting down. Humans could not go in to stop it, robots could not go in to stop it. Pure luck it didn’t go a lot bigger. Also it resulted in severe contamination of ocean water, which will have impacts for a very long time

> severe contamination of ocean water No it didn’t Like I said at the time, you could melt all of the cores down at the Fukushima Daiitchi site and dissolve them all in to the oceans and it would be undetectable in sea water. The oceans weigh around 10^21 kilograms, and the six reactor cores at Fukushima Daiichi would weigh, what, several hundred tons and contain, what, several tens of tonnes of radioactive products.…

Greenpeace lied a lot about it at the time, though. Maybe that's where it comes from.

I wonder how much money it made Greenpeace. A million? Two million?

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#467

Post by Moldoteck »

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 :)

Nuclear GHG are lowest per UNECE and NREL which do account a lot of factors. Nuclear requires least amount of mining vs any alternative so this argument makes little sense. Nuclear waste can be stored in facilities like onkalo or recycled like at la Hague(now) or Superphenix(in past)

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#468

Post by gib444 »

pjc50 wrote: post #154
monegator wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> time and cost as much as anything else you people have been saying that for at least twenty years. In the meantime the renewables have failed to produce a noticeable change in my part of europe, sentiment is increasingly pro-nuke but your adage keeps things still. Of course yf you never start, you never finish.

> In the meantime the renewables have failed to produce a noticeable change in my part of europe Skill issue in your part of Europe, then. In my part of Europe, https://grid.iamkate.com/ is currently reporting 95% non-carbon sources, 85% renewables, and a power price of −£12.03/MWh. > twenty years When it comes online, Hinkley Point C will have taken 20 years from first approval. Too slow.

And what is your median domestic electric unit price? (actually consumed)

It's certainly not £0.01203/kWh, or even in the same order of magnitude.

Later

(For context for non-Brits: there is a price cap of £0.2467 kWh currently, which many people are paying (or very close to that))

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#469

Post by pyrale »

cogman10 wrote: post #251
boringg wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A healthy social attitude to nuclear would be to require periodic upgrades or decommissions as the plant ages. Tell me you don't work in energy without telling me. Most heavily regulated industry on the planet - constant upgrades and safety reports.

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.

> Name a Gen II plant that was upgraded to a Gen III, III+ or Gen IV plant.

That's a bit of an impossible ask.

To give you a comparison with airplanes, F16 aren't "upgraded" to F35s. But there is an upgrade process, and F16s today are vastly different from F16s as they were in 1978.

Likewise for nuclear plants, reviews are done following incidents and new discoveries, and overhauls are done, both in terms of process and material changes. Gen2 plants aren't the same as they were when they were built.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#470

Post by Moldoteck »

pjc50 wrote: post #2

Strictly: France will no longer decommission Belgium's nuclear power plants, as Belgium will buy them. The current owner Engie are majority-owned by the French government. Apparently there also used to be a phaseout policy which is being rescinded: https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/other/belgium-and-czechia-ram... I'm not keen on new nuclear (time and cost as much as anything else), but it's a terrible idea to phase out…

It's not France but Engie, a french company with lots of gas business. New nuclear makes sense if it doesnt take 20y to build. Probably that's why US wants to partner with Korea/Japan
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