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Nuclear power: Are we too anxious about the risks of radiation?

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Re: Nuclear power: Are we too anxious about the risks of radiation?

#521

Post by jillesvangurp »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #467
extropy wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its Also building enough battery capacity to offset the night is doable. UK annual consumption is around 300TWH, let's round to 1TWH a day. The nighttime consumption is about half of the daytime's so only 33% needs to be saved. So we need 350GWH of batteries. It will take a while, cost 35 Billion assuming 100 usd for 1 kwh. Or 2 billion a year or 0.6 cents per KWH of energy consumed.

I don't think you can really quote prices when you are talking about battery capacities on the order of the current world wide lithium battery production. Also, it's interesting that Iceland, with their abundance of geothermal power, don't have an interconnection with Europe. That's only 1000km as the crow flies and yet hasn't been considered economically feasible yet.

There is no lithium shortage. E.g. Tesla is basically mining in Nevada in a place that has apparently more than enough for their quite ambitious roadmap. Also money quote from Elon Musk last week was that it's one of the most common elements in the world. Basically, we've only scratched the surface (quite literally) in terms of actively looking for the stuff as the demand for lithium at this scale is a fairly recent development.

As for geothermal, Iceland has geothermal; yes. So do other places. You're talking as if using that as an infinite source of energy is both cheap, feasible, and scalable. It's probably none of those things. Iceland has about 300K people, the UK has around 66M, so we're talking about 220x the energy demand. And running cables across the Atlantic. And doing a lot of infrastructure development in Iceland at the cost of many billions in a market that has energy prices trending down because of other clean energy options. Perhaps that's the reason that it was never really considered as an option.

Regarding the quoted prices, I think for the sake of argument this person was deliberately using numbers that are on the super conservative side. E.g. buying battery at 100$/kwh would probably be a spectacularly bad deal considering prices are already dipping below that (and that's for car batteries). Also, for the sake of argument assuming everything happens right now at today's prices is arguably not how this would play out at all. But as he's argueing, even if you make such assumptions it's still doable. So, it's likely to end up being a good deal cheaper than projected there as this plays out over the next decades as prices for batteries continue to drop and we figure out how to do this at scale.

Re: Nuclear power: Are we too anxious about the risks of radiation?

#522

Post by 08-15 »

matthewmacleod wrote: post #33
08-15 wrote: post #20

Good article, until they ask the usual suspects and get this answer: no2nuclearpower says, "there is no such thing as an absolutely safe level of radiation: all exposures no matter how small entail some risk - even background radiation." This is absolute nonsense. If an increase in exposure at these low doses mattered, we'd see a correlation between background exposure and cancer rates, but we don't. More importantly…

This is absolute nonsense No, it’s not. It might not be accurate, but to my knowledge the linear-no-threshold model is still subject to support and opposition from various bodies.

Yes, regulatory and activist bodies. And calling something that is basically religious dogma a "model", is an insult to models.

Re: Nuclear power: Are we too anxious about the risks of radiation?

#523

Post by Manfredo_1 »

pfdietz wrote: post #433
macspoofing wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Hydrogen makes sense for that use case, burned in turbines. And where's hydrogen going to come from? You need to overprovision renewables so that they not only provide power for now, but also store enough power (via batteries or hydrogen or whatever) to get around daily, seasonal and inter-seasonal variability. And by the way, hydrogen from renewables is massively inefficient.

It would come from electrolysis of water, using renewable energy when that's in oversupply. Overprovisioning renewables for immediate consumption works in tandem with hydrogen, since it means there will be times excess power is available to make the hydrogen. The round trip efficiency of power->hydrogen->power through turbines will be maybe 33%. But this is FINE, if the capital cost of storing hydrogen in underground…

If you're using caverns to reduce the capital cost of storing hydrogen, then you're ignoring a substantial amount of the real cost. Caverns are a geographically dependent feature, you might as well just say that we should use hydroelectricity as our main source of power.

Re: Nuclear power: Are we too anxious about the risks of radiation?

#524

Post by Manfredo_1 »

dv_dt wrote: post #510
manfredo wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because we need truly fantastic levels of storage to make renewables even remotely feasible. The US has 8 seconds of battery storage, and ~4 minutes of hydroelectric storage. We need 12 hours of storage to get to 80% renewable generation, and 3 weeks of storage to get to 100% renewable generation [1]. And even if we did go this route, we'd still need to cover 3-5% of the landmass of the Earth with solar panels to ach…

There have been many studies since 2018 that say areas where they previously thought it would be difficult to get to 80%, that would be perfectly feasible to get to 100% with near term technologies. See Austrailian grid analysis. The key difference is that the prices for both renewables and storage are far ahead of cost reduction estimates in previous forcasts.

Australia has vast tracts of cheap land and very good solar potential (close to equator, little cloud cover). They also have energy usage patterns that are amenable to solar, with ACs run during the day and little need for heating at night. Most countries do not share these characteristics.

And I'd still like to see what they have planned for energy storage. It likely still involves shifting demand (in other words, they can't actually fulfill demand and they have to tell people not to use electricity during certain times of day).

Re: Nuclear power: Are we too anxious about the risks of radiation?

#525

Post by Manfredo_1 »

jka wrote: post #375
Manfredo_1 wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This isn't going to be cheap. But it is feasible, and if you care about carbon I'm not sure how else you do it. How about we use the carbon free method of generating electricity that France has used to generate most of it's electricity for close to half a century? We don't have to wait for a miracle that makes batteries cheaper, we don't have to scale up battery production by several orders of magnitude. If we buil…

Your arguments are the most compelling I've seen so far for more nuclear as opposed to renewables. I'm still leaning towards renewables for various reasons, but could be swayed - could you share any more details about where the 12 hour capacity requirement and costs mentioned come from?

12 hours of capacity would still leave 20% of electricity to be fulfilled by fossil fuels. To get to 100% renewable we'd need 3 weeks of storage: https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2018/03/01/12-hours-energy-stora...

Re: Nuclear power: Are we too anxious about the risks of radiation?

#526

Post by Manfredo_1 »

adrianN wrote: post #518
Manfredo_1 wrote: post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For example they can turn heating in your home on or off as long as the temperature stays within a band defined by you. This is not science fiction, it exists today. I know people who use it already. That's how literally every thermostat has worked that I've encountered in my entire life, and I'm close to 30. Yes, this technology already exists. That's why there's no benefit to it: almost everyone already has a the…

No, almost nobody has a thermostat where the power company decides when the heating comes on.

Because that's a terrible idea. what do you expect people to do when there's a cloudy winter day and the power company can't fulfill electricity demand? Freeze? When people are cold they're going to turn on their thermostat. If their thermostat doesn't turn on because the power company shut it off, they're going to use a space heater. Humans' desire to not freeze is a very in-elastic type demand, unlike the time of day they run their dryer.

Re: Nuclear power: Are we too anxious about the risks of radiation?

#527

Post by Manfredo_1 »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #319
VBprogrammer wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The economic reality is that battery on the grid is out-competing gas peaker plants in a lot of places because even with the current scarcity and price levels in the battery market, it seems economical to buy them by the MWH. Do you have any citation for this because I've seen no evidence that this is true. The largest grid scale lithium battery is barely a drop in the ocean by comparison to the energy consumption…

I just read the news in the energy market. I think California just ordered a few MwH of battery from Tesla. They seem to be doing a brisk business of selling batteries to grid providers in a market that is entirely supply limited. There are loads of companies working on alternate storage technologies. You are right that there is very little right now. But I'd counter that that is growing rapidly and that that is insp…

In order to reach 80% renewables we'll need 12 hours of storage. In order to reach 100% renewables we'll need 3 weeks of storage: https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2018/03/01/12-hours-energy-stora...

Re: Nuclear power: Are we too anxious about the risks of radiation?

#528

Post by dimnsionofsound »

Matumio wrote: post #361
ncmncm wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Batteries are only the most of expensive of many candidates for energy storage. But, as was demonstrated in Australia, adequate.

One potential alternative to batteries might be to build a couple of towers lifting concrete blocks up and down: https://energyvault.com/#operating-parameters

I’m not sure this idea is all that they’re marketing it as.

Here’s a video discussing the drawbacks [0], the guy doing the video can be kind of abrasive at times but worth watching/skimming as a counterpoint.

[0]: https://youtu.be/NIhCuzxNvv0

Re: Nuclear power: Are we too anxious about the risks of radiation?

#529

Post by Manfredo_1 »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #282
manfredo wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Does that mean nuclear is just a totally great idea? No; the issue with nuclear is cost. Historically it has been quite expensive, but subsidised in opaque ways. In a zero carbon world, it might make sense for baseline generation even if it's expensive; in the world we live in it needs to compete on price. Can it? Compete against fossil fuels? No, but neither can solar and wind. Nuclear power also loses out against…

The economic reality is that battery on the grid is out-competing gas peaker plants in a lot of places because even with the current scarcity and price levels in the battery market, it seems economical to buy them by the MWH. Technically, peak prices dropping because of solar/wind is a problem of everything else being too expensive. Battery storage solves that problem by being cheaper. Of course we'll need many TWH a…

Sure, solar + natural gas is cheaper than nuclear. But that's not a solution to climate change. The amount of battery storage that some plants use is negligible compared to the 11.5 TWh that the US uses on average every day. The entire country has 8 seconds worth of battery storage.

The reality is that nobody has a plan to power a country with renewables. The storage requirements to do so are staggering. The US would need 12 hours of storage to get to 80% renewables - and we'd still be burning fossil fuels for the remainder. To get to 100% renewables we'd need 3 weeks of storage: https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2018/03/01/12-hours-energy-stora...

Intermittent sources are fundamentally not viable as a primary form of generation. Solar is currently being used to supplement fossil fuel generation during the day, but one you saturate daytime power generation the usable energy you get from solar drops substantially.

Re: Nuclear power: Are we too anxious about the risks of radiation?

#530

Post by jusssi »

Manfredo_1 wrote: post #337
reitzensteinm wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US oil consumption increased by almost 100x from 1900-1970. In 1850 it was just a few thousand barrels annually! That orders of magnitude more batteries are needed is not in itself an issue, as long as the solution itself is sound. NMC chemistry (as used in Hornsdale) is good for 3000-4000 cycles, although it's about 50% more expensive than LFP, at least if you buy them from CATL. This isn't going to be cheap. But it…

> This isn't going to be cheap. But it is feasible, and if you care about carbon I'm not sure how else you do it. How about we use the carbon free method of generating electricity that France has used to generate most of it's electricity for close to half a century? We don't have to wait for a miracle that makes batteries cheaper, we don't have to scale up battery production by several orders of magnitude. If we buil…

Sure. Just make sure you don't ask the French to build your plants. It's 2020 now and we're still waiting: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olkiluoto_Nuclear_Power_Plan...
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