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Activists who embrace nuclear power

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Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#571

Post by jasonwatkinspdx »

EricE wrote: post #505
epistasis wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear power plants are absolutely massive , and don't have big wins when it comes to the amount of material needed versus, say, solar. Here's a presentation touting the AP1000, which needs ~5x less concrete than Sizewell B's design (slide 11): https://web.archive.org/web/20110722031413/http://www.nuclea... At 2500kg/m^3 of concrete, and excluding the rebar, that's roughly 4.5W/kg of material. For Sizewell B, than's…

Nuclear power plants built in the past were massive. That doesn't mean we have to still build them. Technology marches on - we have improved designs. Micro-reactors solve a lot of issues - including transmission loss/electrical grid fragility/diversification of generation.

I was hopeful about this, but sadly, it's just not true. NuScale is a great example. They're failing because they can't hit the cost numbers on their pilot project, and note that this project is cited on DoE land that did not require any form of political negotiation with voters or anti nuclear activists.

I'd be ecstatic if someone figures out how to change the ROI on nuclear, but I'm no longer optimistic about it. Just saying the words "small modular reactors" isn't a solution.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#572

Post by jasonwatkinspdx »

sir_bearington wrote: post #362
jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear loses to alternatives on a pure ROI basis. Even in places where political opposition or legislation is a total non issue (eg China) you see exactly the same bad math when it comes to the $. I feel like a broken record posting this in every thread about nuclear. There's too many people on this forum that have some sort of smug attitude about not being "scared" of nuclear power and don't bother to learn what's…

Nobody was under any impression that decarbonizing the energy sector would cost more than continuing to emit carbon. The reality is that renewables have no plan to eliminate carbon emissions that isn't contingent on a massive breakthrough in energy storage. The US currently had under 10 minutes of energy storage. Renewables offer better carbon emissions reductions on a dollar by dollar basis until they saturate the m…

Go through Lazard's levelized cost of energy storage slides. We're currently hitting the tipping point where renewables + storage wins based on pure $ without subsidy.

It's completely disingenuous to claim that nuclear is the only solution that aims to eliminate CO2 emissions.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#573

Post by jasonwatkinspdx »

YarickR2 wrote: post #245
vbezhenar wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pay money to Rosatom, they'll build nuclear plants for you. If US lost its nuclear competency, it does not mean that everyone else lost.

Correct answer. Floating nuclear power plant recently went operational , supplying arctic city with electricity ; it was built in two years, top to bottom. I wonder if couple of those in the Gulf of Mexico could've secured oil refineries' energy supply, allowing grid operators to divert more conventionally generated power to residential areas, diminishing blackouts

The floating power plants from Rosatom are like 70 megawatt, a pittance vs the blackouts Texas saw. The root problem in Texas was insufficient winterization of the grid, caused by the incentives of their energy market approach. This would have still been the case even if Russia had 100 reactors floating off the Texas coast ready to hook up.

There's significant latency in oil supply chains. Weeks if not months. Keeping a refinery online does not somehow keep a power plant online or the lights on in the cities in the proximate sense. Oil refineries are irrelevant to what happened.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#574

Post by jasonwatkinspdx »

ortusdux wrote: post #286
epistasis wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is solving the wrong problem, and therefore will not advance nuclear. Cost is the impediment to nuclear, not any sort of safety concerns. That molten salt reactor will need to have a negative cost in order to compete with the cost of stored renewable energy. The future of nuclear energy must either abandon the thermal steam cycle for electricity generation, or generate massive value from the nuclear reaction par…

> Cost is the impediment to nuclear, not any sort of safety concerns. Safety systems and regulations greatly inflate costs. Any reasonable, safe measures that can be taken to reduce them will make nuclear more profitable. A good example of this is small modular reactors. Current nuclear plants need to be approved by regulators on a case by case basis. Nuscale, a SMR company, is the first to get their module design si…

Sadly NuScale's pilot project is failing to hit the required numbers. Note that political opposition was not an issue, as it's on DoE land.

I'd love to see someone crack the code, but based on everything I've read, SMR is not going to be the silver bullet in changing nuclear's garbage ROI, unlike I hoped some years ago.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#575

Post by sir_bearington »

jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #572
sir_bearington wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody was under any impression that decarbonizing the energy sector would cost more than continuing to emit carbon. The reality is that renewables have no plan to eliminate carbon emissions that isn't contingent on a massive breakthrough in energy storage. The US currently had under 10 minutes of energy storage. Renewables offer better carbon emissions reductions on a dollar by dollar basis until they saturate the m…

Go through Lazard's levelized cost of energy storage slides. We're currently hitting the tipping point where renewables + storage wins based on pure $ without subsidy. It's completely disingenuous to claim that nuclear is the only solution that aims to eliminate CO2 emissions.

And what form of storage are you using? There's only 20 minutes of storage available via lithium ion batteries with current mining methods. Others like hydroelectric are geographically dependent, and are large concrete and earth moving projects much like nuclear plants.

Lazard uses current commercial cost figures. If people actually tri d to deploy grid storage on a wide scale, prices would skyrocket as supply fails to match demand.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#576

Post by afterburner »

reedjosh wrote: post #563
afterburner wrote: post #556

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And they failed. You proved my point.

My point is the Texas energy market is a centralized Texas Legislature governed market. AKA not government-less.

Texas' goal is as little government as possible. It is going about as well as I'd expect, but obviously you think the solution is even less??

This all started with Texas deliberately ignoring Federal warnings to winterize their energy infrastructure. They went so far as to keep their own grid in order to make the Federal government unable to force them to do something good for the people of Texas.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#577

Post by ncmncm »

arrosenberg wrote: post #549
ncmncm wrote: post #545

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If absorbing radiation were the problem to be solved, there would not be billions of dollars changing hands over the problem. But you knew that, and wrote what you did anyway. Ordinary aluminum contains hydrogen without incident. And, as noted on Wikipedia, "coal gas, 50% hydrogen, was carried in cast iron pipes for a half century without any embrittlement problems".

The long-term problem is about politics and education, not engineering or technology. But you knew that, and wrote what you did anyways (the multiple accusations of bad faith are noted, and completely unwarranted by the way). Carried and stored are different things, tho I'm not an expert on either. I'm getting my info from the US Department of Energy, who reports "Durability of hydrogen storage systems is inadequate.…

You reveal yourself a little more starkly than you probably intend.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#578

Post by jasonwatkinspdx »

sir_bearington wrote: post #575
jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #572

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go through Lazard's levelized cost of energy storage slides. We're currently hitting the tipping point where renewables + storage wins based on pure $ without subsidy. It's completely disingenuous to claim that nuclear is the only solution that aims to eliminate CO2 emissions.

And what form of storage are you using? There's only 20 minutes of storage available via lithium ion batteries with current mining methods. Others like hydroelectric are geographically dependent, and are large concrete and earth moving projects much like nuclear plants. Lazard uses current commercial cost figures. If people actually tri d to deploy grid storage on a wide scale, prices would skyrocket as supply fails…

The sweet spot in most models is a mix of hydro, batteries, and H2.

While scaling up the industry isn't trivial, it's absurd to claim it's impossible or that demand outpacing supply will somehow reduce investment in greater supply.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#579

Post by sir_bearington »

jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #578
sir_bearington wrote: post #575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what form of storage are you using? There's only 20 minutes of storage available via lithium ion batteries with current mining methods. Others like hydroelectric are geographically dependent, and are large concrete and earth moving projects much like nuclear plants. Lazard uses current commercial cost figures. If people actually tri d to deploy grid storage on a wide scale, prices would skyrocket as supply fails…

The sweet spot in most models is a mix of hydro, batteries, and H2. While scaling up the industry isn't trivial, it's absurd to claim it's impossible or that demand outpacing supply will somehow reduce investment in greater supply.

Well let's hear it then. What is the mix? How many GWh of each storage type are we going to use? Typically plans for renewables + storage assumes some magical silver bullet like hydrogen or thermal storage that will make storage nearly free. Except neither of those have actually seen commercial deployment so they're no telling if they'll actually pan out.

You haven't actually given a plan to provision this much storage - or even specified how much storage we'll need for that matter - so yeah I'm still very comfortable in claiming it is not possible. At least not without some massive breakthrough in storage technology, which doesn't yet exist.

Re: Activists who embrace nuclear power

#580

Post by stopping »

EricE wrote: post #502
stopping wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>How about reduce that to 0 for night-time? No, GP is averaging out across the whole day. If you get 100W during daylight and 0W during night, you can average to 50W for an entire 24-hour period. GP took 30W as a conservative estimate, which is entirely reasonable.

Where are you getting sufficient batteries in sufficient quantities to store that theoretical 50% overnight? And on top of that were are you getting the additional batteries to provide extra capacities for when the sun is shining at less than 100% of optimal? And then where are you getting all the materials for those batteries? And what are you doing with all the waste from those batteries once they end their service…

Did you accidentally reply to my comment? I didn't state any position on the issue, just offered a 3-sentence correction to someone else's comment.
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