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Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

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Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#531

Post by dalyons »

rayiner wrote: post #461
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…

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.

it actually is a choice between nuclear and PV, because base load supply is an obsolete concept. Because actually nuclear is terrible in a grid increasingly full of nearly-free variable sources (solar&wind). The nukes need to stay at 100% all the time selling their power at a high fixed price to have any remote chance of being economical. Cheap variables push nuke's expensive power off the grid during the day, and increasingly into the evenings with batteries. This is unavoidable in an open energy market, and is fatal to the economics of nuclear. You cannot make them work without massive state subsidies.

Gas is far better suited economically to backstop a variable grid. I wish it werent true, because i dont hate nukes, but it is just economics.

I will also point out that california is down to 25% fossil sourced power in 2025, from 45% in 2022. Due to renewables and batteries, and there's far more coming. The amount left to backstop on gas in a few years could plausibly be 10%! which is amazing.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#532

Post by gpm »

projct wrote: post #505
dv_dt wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A requirement for base load is a fallacy promulgated by fossil fuel preservation lobbying

This is a confusing thing to say, can you explain?

What you need - the only thing you need - is dispatchable power. That is power supply that can rise and fall to meet demand. That is not what baseload is. It's also not what wind/solar provide.

What baseload is is electricity supply which is only economical if you use it all the time. Nuclear falls into this category because of its very high capital cost and low op-ex. If it's cheaper than dispatchable power (nuclear isn't) it's nice to have as much of it as the minimum demand that you see on the grid, to lower costs. If it's as expensive, or more expensive, than dispatchable power, that's fine, you just don't need it at all and can replace it entirely with dispatchable power.

It's similar to wind and solar in this, which also aren't dispatchable (though there supply curve looks different than the constant supply curve which "base load" is used to mean). Except wind and solar actually are cheaper than dispatchable power so they make economic sense.

The term is half marketing term and half a theory that constant supply non-dispatchable power would be significantly cheaper than dispatchable power so we should organize the grid around it. That theory didn't really pan out (apart from some places with non-storable hydro, and a few with geothermal).

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#533

Post by olau »

setopt wrote: post #522
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…

It makes economic sense because they require a large initial investment (CAPEX), but low cost per year to keep functioning for many decades (OPEX). In contrast to say wind or solar, which are smaller CAPEX but higher OPEX. So when you compare average cost per year over the complete expected lifetime of the plants, nuclear is good, but when you compare the up-front cost to build it, yeah it looks bad. Another thing is…

Source please? The numbers I have seen of real opex paint a different picture. In general, nuclear plants close because of cost.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#534

Post by ViewTrick1002 »

Moldoteck wrote: post #494
ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

but for ren you need parallel gas firming. For nuclear you need some backup, but not fully parallel grid. Paid off npp can generate very cheaply, at 4-7ct/kwh

I don’t see the difference with nuclear power? Take California, a yearly baseload of 15 GW and peak load of 52 GW. What problem is even a ”baseload” of nuclear power solving?

But we should of course keep our existing fleet around as long as it is safe, needed and economical. In that order.

EDF is already crying about renewables cratering the earning potential and increasing maintenance costs for the existing french nuclear fleet. Let alone the horrifyingly expensive new builds.

And that is France which has been actively shielding its inflexible aging nuclear fleet from renewable competition, and it still leaks in on pure economics.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#535

Post by olau »

munk-a wrote: post #511
dv_dt wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A requirement for base load is a fallacy promulgated by fossil fuel preservation lobbying

When it comes to residential/consumer use base load is irrelevant - but when it comes to business (especially industrial) use base load is a strict necessity. The proportional requirements of base load are fading but it is still something that needs to be considered carefully. Do fossil fuel companies overstate the importance and scale of base load to justify additional fuel subsidies? Indubitably - but don't let the…

No, you need to match the demand curve at all times.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#536

Post by ViewTrick1002 »

pqtyw wrote: post #343
cogman10 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, and ultimately Japan has decided the safest and I assume cheapest route with these reactors wasn't to rebuild but rather to decommission. These reactors can be made safer, but they all still have a foundational design flaw which means the ultimate goal should be replacing rather than continually spending money reinforcing.

All nuclear reactors are massively safer than coal power plants though. If you excluded climate change and Co2 emissions entirely and measured harm/deaths adjusted by the amount of power generated the difference would be astronomical.

Or you know, just build renewables and storage. Displace vastly more coal faster with a death per kWh where the only injuries comes from traditional construction and mechanical industry work.

No need for any special casing.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#537

Post by dalyons »

projct wrote: post #505
dv_dt wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A requirement for base load is a fallacy promulgated by fossil fuel preservation lobbying

This is a confusing thing to say, can you explain?

have a read through this: https://cleanenergyreview.io/p/baseload-is-a-myth

basically, base load means the lowest point of demand on the grid. And you matched that with slow-to-respond thermal power plants (coal mainly, also nukes). Because those are slow to respond and are most profitable running at 100%, so you tried to keep them there. So called base load generation.

But note there is no rule of the universe that says you have to meet the base load demand with some static constant power source, you can get it from anywhere. And now, since renewables and batteries are cheaper than this base load generation, it knocks them off the grid rendering it unprofitable. So the whole concept of base load supply is obsolete. Anyway, the linked blog explains it better.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#538

Post by laurencerowe »

setopt wrote: post #522
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…

It makes economic sense because they require a large initial investment (CAPEX), but low cost per year to keep functioning for many decades (OPEX). In contrast to say wind or solar, which are smaller CAPEX but higher OPEX. So when you compare average cost per year over the complete expected lifetime of the plants, nuclear is good, but when you compare the up-front cost to build it, yeah it looks bad. Another thing is…

Unfortunately France can no longer build nuclear plants cheaply either. All of the recent nuclear plants built by the French state owned company EDF in France, Finland, and the UK have seen enormous cost and time overruns.

Cumulative emissions matter. We simply don’t have the time to wait the 20 years it takes to build new nuclear plants.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#539

Post by Neikius »

adrian_b wrote: post #335
716dpl wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While this is true, we don't have a good solution for long term energy storage. Even with plummeting costs and new technologies like sodium ion, batteries still only get you maybe ~12 hours of discharge. Pumped hydro give you longer storage, but there are limited places where you can build it. Unless geothermal becomes competitive, nuclear is still the best solution for carbon-free baseload.

There is a good solution for long term energy storage: use solar energy to make synthetic hydrocarbons. This is a solution that has been proven for billions of years. We can already capture solar energy at a much better energy efficiency than living beings. Making hydrocarbons with hydrogen extracted from water by electrolysis and concentrated carbon dioxide has acceptable efficiency and already almost one century ag…

This.

And alternatively just making hydrogen but storage is a problem with that.

So simple with negative peak energy prices...

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#540

Post by peterfirefly »

Insanity wrote: post #266
NeutralForest wrote: post #38

I just want Belgium to go all-in on renewables, we [already have a pretty good electricity production make-up]( https://statbel.fgov.be/en/themes/energy/electricity-product... ) but we're still [too dependent on oil]( https://www.iea.org/countries/belgium/energy-mix ). Hopefully the current energy crisis is a wake up call.

Compared to other countries I've lived in, Belgium doesn't do too bad of a job in promoting 'green energy'. Although I've not lived there for some years, they used to subsidize things like solar panels on roofs (at least when my parents installed them 20-ish years ago). And there are 'green energy' companies as far as I'm aware, so you don't have to stick with the larger energy providers. That said, my information is…

Belgian greens are remarkably less crazy than German "greens".

Even someone like De Sutter didn't come across as crazy in the European Parliament -- but the German ones, meine Götter!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petra_De_Sutter

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