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The four-horse race to decarbonise steel

energymonitor.ai

71–75 of 75 posts

Re: The four-horse race to decarbonise steel

#71
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The world doesn’t have to decide to go "all in" on anything. It can simply lift all the unnecessary burdens it placed on the nuclear industry and let the free market sort out the best solution, like always. If nuclear works for the world's subs, it works on land too. It will probably be a mix of energy sources anyway, each with its own strengths and weaknesses and it’s own place in ecosystem.

In that case nuclear is completely dead. There probably hasn't been a nuclear power plant built without government subsidies in history. French nuclear for instance is essentially bankrupt because they can't even run them let alone build new ones, so the government nationalized it last year. But sure, get rid of all subsidies on everything and let the market sort it out. We can agree on that.

Talking about the market in energy policy is just silly. It has been driven by government, all over the world for decades.

And if you have things like a public health care system then, it matters a whole lot if coal and gas plants blow smoke into the air or not.

Historical data from the US shows this well. If coal plants would have had to pay even a fraction of the health cost the caused, nuclear would have been universally adopted 1990. And that is before we even talk about coal sluge and other issues. Its before we talk about all the stuff the US did in the middle east to keep the oil flowing. Nuclear in the US even paid a fee for nuclear waste, while coal paid no fee for its waste.

If you look at societies total energy cost over the last 50 years, France looks incredibly good. They had very low energy prices for many decades now and had not no health cost from bad air from electricity production. Nuclear plants are also stable high quality healthy employment for many.

Re: The four-horse race to decarbonise steel

#72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nonsense. Had Germany adopted nuclear in 2020 for the Grünewende they would be done by now, and they would have cost them less then they actually spend in that time and what they will have to spend. Even with pessimistic assumption of paying 5 billion $ per plant. If Germany had done what France did in the 70/80s they would be much better off now and for the next 100 years. And the cost per plant would be far lower o…

Complete denial of reality. I've posted actual numbers on real costs, but of course there are always people like you dealing with imaginary money, throwing around numbers they can't back up. Pessimistic 5 billion per plant -- what a joke. Flamanville 20 years under construction, 20 billion. Olkiluoto 15 years under construction, 15 billion. Hinkley C, deadline for 2027 already clear will not be held, price tag alread…

Go look at the UAE, its less then 5 billion for a 1.5GWe plant.

And that is when you produce 4 in a row, when you produce 50, it would actually be much cheaper.

But I know how anti nuclear people always have to look at 1 off builds to justify their position, and ignore evidence from mass builds such as France.

> If Germany had done what France had done in the 70s and 80s it would be in the same situation as France is today

Germany actually did proper maintenance on the plants it had and they had excellent uptime.

France is in this position because the anti nuclear government tried to phase out nuclear and they had so much nuclear that they failed to keep their plants up to date.

Anybody that denies that Germany would be vastly better off if they had followed France in the 70/80 is so blinded by hate that it's actually fucking sad.

Re: The four-horse race to decarbonise steel

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nonsense. Had Germany adopted nuclear in 2020 for the Grünewende they would be done by now, and they would have cost them less then they actually spend in that time and what they will have to spend. Even with pessimistic assumption of paying 5 billion $ per plant. If Germany had done what France did in the 70/80s they would be much better off now and for the next 100 years. And the cost per plant would be far lower o…

Had they done what you say, by now they still would not have decided on a location. Just look at the delays and cost overruns with Finland's reactor - and that's with popular support.

Finland where now green nuclear will be a very large part of their energy mix for the next 100 years? How sad ...

Again, anybody who looks at nuclear other then threw trying to prove its bad, will figure out that 1 off builds are expensive. Had Europe with German/French leadership agree on a single plant design and started building it all over Europe we could be building these plants in 5 years or less of build time.

France in the 70/80s managed to find locations. I turns out that local populations actually love their local nuclear power plants. People living close to nuclear are far more pro nuclear then anywhere else.

The promise of jobs, improvement in rail infrastructure and cheap electricity convinces more villages that it is a good idea then people would think.

France faced a lot of opposition to their plan in the 70/80s and yet they found lots of locations and the population there are the most pro nuclear people now.

Its funny how people always call for European cooperation but EU universally building the same nuclear plant 100+ times was not considered. There is no question that this could have been done at a very low unit cost price. If you build that many with the same work force, and supply chain the price drops massively.

Re: The four-horse race to decarbonise steel

#74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Complete denial of reality. I've posted actual numbers on real costs, but of course there are always people like you dealing with imaginary money, throwing around numbers they can't back up. Pessimistic 5 billion per plant -- what a joke. Flamanville 20 years under construction, 20 billion. Olkiluoto 15 years under construction, 15 billion. Hinkley C, deadline for 2027 already clear will not be held, price tag alread…

Go look at the UAE, its less then 5 billion for a 1.5GWe plant. And that is when you produce 4 in a row, when you produce 50, it would actually be much cheaper. But I know how anti nuclear people always have to look at 1 off builds to justify their position, and ignore evidence from mass builds such as France. > If Germany had done what France had done in the 70s and 80s it would be in the same situation as France is…

France didn't fail to maintain, those plants were never meant to run longer than 30 years. Here is the EDF president from 1979, translated [1]:

> In the extract that we offer to you at the head of the article, Marcel Boiteux described what could be the probable origin of the appearance of cracks in the conduits leading to the tanks, in particular the differences in temperatures. A risk clearly identified from this time as shown by his words: « these tanks are subjected to thermal cycles. When the factory is in full power, it is hot, when it is in low power, it is cold ». The temperature of the water heated by the fission of the uranium atoms reaching according to him at 350 ° C ( it is in fact 320 ° C ). He continued: « The result is that the steel is diluted by heat and contracted when it is less hot. And it is this thermal respiration that is involved. »

> EDF president wanted to be reassuring, stressing that these risks were minimal, insofar as the power stations have a shorter lifespan than that where corrosion of the steel and the appearance of cracks would appear. The longevity of the steel had been calculated « per 12,000 cycles. According to him, there was no risk that this deadline would be exceeded. It was « totally excluded », he said.

> Jean-Louis Servan-Schreiber, who was conducting the interview, asked him to specify the effective duration planned for a power plant: « 12,000 days a power plant ? That is to say 40 years ? ». Marcel Boiteux confirmed this estimate, even minimizing it: « Yes, just over 30 years old. »

I don't want to look at UAE, I live in Western Europe. All of the countries comparable to the country I live in are facing exploding costs and incredible time delays. That nuclear builds don't get cheaper as you build more of them is a well documented phenomenon, we have 70 years of proof.

[1] https://www.ina.fr/ina-eclaire-actu/president-edf-risque-fis...

Re: The four-horse race to decarbonise steel

#75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many would argue that Germany saved human civilization by investing early in renewables. Various other countries/places/people/organisations contributed too, but still, it's weird that something can be considered as so dramatically successful on such a scale and also such a complete failure by different groups.

I started this talking about nuclear policy only, but I wrote more on all the issues I have with German environmental policy. I'm gone lay out a case on why German is a negative player in the global movement against climate change. Their removal of perfectly well functioning nuclear plants that could have run for another 50 years is nothing less then criminal, Ill talk more of that later. Their strong anti-nuclear po…

Remember that Greens parties all around the world got their start by protesting against nuclear. Even though it's a completely idiotic position to hold today it's a legacy of a time where it was thought to be more dangerous than coal.

Unfortunately they can't let that legacy go in the face of new evidence so they still campaign as hard as ever against nuclear which has was less vested interests protecting it than coal and thus it falls first.

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