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Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

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Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#571

Believing we're in a climate crisis and also being anti-nuclear are mutually exclusive positions in my mind, and opposition to nuclear from environmentalist orgs should be viewed as a massive historical mistake as it set us back decades in moving the needle on carbon emissions. The engineering side of running reactors safely is a solved problem, the US navy has > 7500 reactor-years with a perfect safety record.

There's two very different types of reactors: the already-paid-for long-run reactor that's still going, and then on-paper-not-yet-constructed reactor in a high cost of living nation.

Building lots of new nuclear instead of doing the cheaper option of tons of batteries and renewables, only makes sense in a few geographic locations. Not all, or even most!

Even keeping old reactors running gets super expensive as they get past their designed lifetimes, and very often doesn't make sense.

The engineering is indeed already done for electricity, and storage and renewables are cheap and getting cheaper. Nuclear is at best staying the same high cost, and getting more expensive is these large construction projects rise due to Baumol's cost disease.

Opposing more nuclear in the US in the 1980s wasn't fully irrational, the US managerial class have way overbuilt nuclear and we didn't need all the electricity. Then we didn't have much growth in

The far bigger fight for climate these days isn't electricity: it's car-centric living, it's the anti-EV and anti-battery advocates, and to some degree it's retrofitting the wide variety of highly-cost-sensitive industries, such as steel or fertilizer or concrete, to use carbon neutral methods. Or maybe sustainable aviation fuel.

Nuclear had it's chance to be a big contributor to climate action back in the mid 2000s and 2010s, it failed that challenge in Georgia at Vogtle, in South Carolnia at Summer, in the UK at Hinkley Point C, in France in Flamanville, and in Finland an Olkiluoto. Every one of those failures is a very good reason for a climate activist to oppose nuclear.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#572

Believing we're in a climate crisis and also being anti-nuclear are mutually exclusive positions in my mind, and opposition to nuclear from environmentalist orgs should be viewed as a massive historical mistake as it set us back decades in moving the needle on carbon emissions. The engineering side of running reactors safely is a solved problem, the US navy has > 7500 reactor-years with a perfect safety record.

Why do so many nuclear fans try to suggest climate change only exists if you like nuclear? It's very odd. Compare: If you believe COVID exists you need to use hydroxychloroquine. It makes you sound like you don't even believe in the problem you are proposing an (unpopular with experts) solution for.

> suggest climate change only exists if you like nuclear

That is a very uncharitable reading of what I'm saying.

What I am saying is that if you're serious about believing climate change is a large threat (I do), you should be all-in on known solutions for reliable grid-level power. The current fallback for when renewables can't meet grid demand is burning natural gas in modernized grids and coal in grids stuck in the 1800s.

> unpopular with experts

How much of this is based on how expensive it is to bring a powerplant online? How much of that expense is based on endless lawsuits from environmental groups and weaponized environmental laws? Why can the navy without those restrictions build safe reactors for ~$2million/megawatt?

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#573
post #486

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…

$5.6B actually sounds like a good deal. It outputs 2GW+ of power. While solar is definitely cheaper for 2GW of power, you still need batteries for when the sun is down. So you probably need approximately 30GWh of batteries to just replace this one power plant. The batteries alone would cost nearly $7B of grid-scale batteries that must be replaced every 20 years. Ignoring the fact that the nuclear plant already exists…

assuming 300 days/year, 1c/kwh and ignoring opex that's $150m worth of electricity per year.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#574
post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You don't need to run coal power plant close to 100% to be profitable. You want to run nuclear power plant close to 100% because fuel is cheap and you want pay back CAPEX as early as possible.

The article you send is perfect example why it's not economic to build new coal or nuclear power plants in US. The reasons are: very cheap natural gas and no CO2 tax. In US natural gas + solar is the cheapest way to generate electricity.

In Europe the situation is very different.

"Europe is in the opposite spot. The continent's main gas point, the TTF benchmark, nearly doubled to over €60/MWh by mid-March."

https://www.briefs.co/news/u-s-natural-gas-just-hit-a-record...

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#575
post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or solar / wind (which mostly anticorrelate) + biomass + storage + interconnectors + smart demand. The amount of baseload we technically need can be pretty slim. Take Denmark: fossil powers just 9% of their electricity generation, the majority of it is wind and solar. Wind is strong in evenings/nights, solar during the day. Then they have biomass (indirect solar) as a form of baseload, more sustainable than coal/gas.…

> "just programming cars to charge smartly, is a trivial social and technical problem in the coming 10-20 years." One problem I've heard about this idea in the past is that cars and their batteries are expensive, and people won't want to run down the lifetime of their car battery more quickly by also using it as a home battery rather than just for driving. Obviously this can be solved either by making it so cheap to…

I don’t think its a long term issue. The cost of battery storage is below 10c per kWh, whereas a peaker plant costs above 20c per kWh and runs 10% of the time.

So if you get paid double the value of your battery the incentives are there for an economic model to work. Today.

And batteries are only getting cheaper, gas is the opposite.

Plus batteries take surplus solar/wind, at these times they have a negative value. Add that and the economics are a no brainer. It’s a matter of time.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#576

Believing we're in a climate crisis and also being anti-nuclear are mutually exclusive positions in my mind, and opposition to nuclear from environmentalist orgs should be viewed as a massive historical mistake as it set us back decades in moving the needle on carbon emissions. The engineering side of running reactors safely is a solved problem, the US navy has > 7500 reactor-years with a perfect safety record.

Why do so many nuclear fans try to suggest climate change only exists if you like nuclear? It's very odd. Compare: If you believe COVID exists you need to use hydroxychloroquine. It makes you sound like you don't even believe in the problem you are proposing an (unpopular with experts) solution for.

> Why do so many nuclear fans try to suggest climate change only exists if you like nuclear? It's very odd.

You’re putting the answer you want to hear (“because they are nuclear fans”) in the question, making it extremely obvious but then stating it is “odd”, as if the answer wasn’t straight forward.

Disingenuous – is the word describing this, I believe.

Also you need to check your concepts. “Climate change” is what we want to prevent (more like catastrophe, really, by now).

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#577

Believing we're in a climate crisis and also being anti-nuclear are mutually exclusive positions in my mind, and opposition to nuclear from environmentalist orgs should be viewed as a massive historical mistake as it set us back decades in moving the needle on carbon emissions. The engineering side of running reactors safely is a solved problem, the US navy has > 7500 reactor-years with a perfect safety record.

[flagged]

Don't forget a large Russian campaign in Europe to discredit all energy sources that don't involve buying from Russia.

Financing green movements, working with governments, especially Germany (Gerhard Schröder now holds good positions in Russian energy companies, Angela Merkel had good relationship with Putin). Puting worked in Germany as KGB agent before his ascension.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#578

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or solar / wind (which mostly anticorrelate) + biomass + storage + interconnectors + smart demand. The amount of baseload we technically need can be pretty slim. Take Denmark: fossil powers just 9% of their electricity generation, the majority of it is wind and solar. Wind is strong in evenings/nights, solar during the day. Then they have biomass (indirect solar) as a form of baseload, more sustainable than coal/gas.…

Lot of the biomass used in Denmark to form baseload power generation is imported. "The utmost amount (46%) of wood pellets comes from the Baltic countries (Latvia and Estonia) and 30% from the USA, Canada and Russia.6 Estonia and Latvia have steadily been the primary exporters of biomass to Denmark, mainly in the form of wood pellets and wood chips." https://noah.dk/Biomass-consumption-in-Denmark https://www.eubioene…

No but every region has their own pros and cons. The idea Belgium has no other option than coal gas or nuclear is refuted, and biomass is just one of the reasons.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#579

Believing we're in a climate crisis and also being anti-nuclear are mutually exclusive positions in my mind, and opposition to nuclear from environmentalist orgs should be viewed as a massive historical mistake as it set us back decades in moving the needle on carbon emissions. The engineering side of running reactors safely is a solved problem, the US navy has > 7500 reactor-years with a perfect safety record.

Yep, I have been saying for decades that I agree on almost everything wirh the local Green Party, _except_ the anti-nuclear stuff. Very emotional, very relatable but very dumb.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#580

Believing we're in a climate crisis and also being anti-nuclear are mutually exclusive positions in my mind, and opposition to nuclear from environmentalist orgs should be viewed as a massive historical mistake as it set us back decades in moving the needle on carbon emissions. The engineering side of running reactors safely is a solved problem, the US navy has > 7500 reactor-years with a perfect safety record.

There's two very different types of reactors: the already-paid-for long-run reactor that's still going, and then on-paper-not-yet-constructed reactor in a high cost of living nation. Building lots of new nuclear instead of doing the cheaper option of tons of batteries and renewables, only makes sense in a few geographic locations. Not all, or even most! Even keeping old reactors running gets super expensive as they g…

Back in the 1980s if the US had followed France's lead, then we'd be in the position they're in now: 70% nuclear with much lower per-capita emissions.
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