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First planned small nuclear reactor plant in the US has been canceled

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Re: First planned small nuclear reactor plant in the US has been canceled

#71

Post by kragen »

atoav wrote: post #53
jcranmer wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this is the math you did: > A crude calculation (earthradius_equatorial^2 * pi * (1000 W/m^2) * 1 year in units(1) --- gosh, Unix is great!) suggests that the total solar energy falling on the earth is about 40000 * 10^20 joules per year. ... that's not a good approximation. There's someone who actually has done less crude math for maximum possible solar energy, at least for the UK: https://www.withouthotair.com/c…

I mean UK isn't quite known for its sunny weather, right? I would guess in Norway during the dark part of the year it is even going to be worse. The farther north you go the more relevant technologies like wind energy and geothermal will become.

and maybe nuclear or synfuel. also, the farther south; there used to be a nuclear reactor in mcmurdo

norway in particular gets almost all their electricity from hydroelectric plants https://www.statista.com/statistics/1025497/distribution-of-... but of course its transportation sector is still mostly fossil-powered

Re: First planned small nuclear reactor plant in the US has been canceled

#72

Post by monero-xmr »

cesarb wrote: post #37
bradbot wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it possible to transport wind / solar energy across the country via high powered transmission lines?

Yes, and it's already done today; for instance, in Brazil these high power transmission lines transport wind power from the northeast region (which has lots of wind due to favorable geography) to the southeast region (where most of the electricity consumption is). The total distance is on the order of 2000 km. (A fun fact: many of these high power transmission lines were originally to send power from the hydroelectri…

Genuinely curious - why is wind power being cancelled in the North East because it isn't cost competitive, if it's so easy to do?

https://apnews.com/article/offshore-wind-orsted-cancellation...

Re: First planned small nuclear reactor plant in the US has been canceled

#73

Post by jcranmer »

kragen wrote: post #59
jcranmer wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this is the math you did: > A crude calculation (earthradius_equatorial^2 * pi * (1000 W/m^2) * 1 year in units(1) --- gosh, Unix is great!) suggests that the total solar energy falling on the earth is about 40000 * 10^20 joules per year. ... that's not a good approximation. There's someone who actually has done less crude math for maximum possible solar energy, at least for the UK: https://www.withouthotair.com/c…

you would look much less foolish if you read more than just the introduction to my notes; i did a great deal more math than that while i appreciate mackay's calculations a great deal, his estimates for very polar countries such as the uk are not generally applicable, and even for the uk are probably conditioned on overly pessimistic assumptions; he would undoubtedly agree if he were alive today in particular, he assu…

> you would look much less foolish if you read more than just the introduction to my notes; i did a great deal more math than that

Perhaps, but I see nothing in your post that actually corrects for effective solar irradiation on Earth, or for the fact that half the Earth's surface is by definition not receiving any sunlight at any given time, or for the fact that most of the Earth is water and not land (although I suppose you dropping the 4 from the multiplier for the surface area is meant to account for that). In other words, at no point did I see anything that took into account the error I pointed out.

Re: First planned small nuclear reactor plant in the US has been canceled

#74

Post by jillesvangurp »

donny2018 wrote: post #41
kagakuninja wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it turns out that SMRs are not yet economically viable, just as us skeptics have been claiming. SMRs are continually hyped by the pro-nuclear crowd online. They aren't cost efficient vs renewables.

Nuclear tech hasn't had a luxury of having renewables-like subsidies though. Who knows what the prices could have been had nuclear got the same level of subsidies. Nuclear energy (especially fast neutron tech that can use the abundant U-238 and nuclear waste from existing NPPs) isn't getting attention it deserves. Only Russia, China and India are investing in it, but it's neglected in the West because there is no imm…

Nonsense; it's getting plenty of attention. And there's a lot of lobbying happening to ensure that.

The nuclear industry actually has been running on subsidies. Also in China and Russia. It would not survive long without them. And of course this whole industry was bootstrapped via massive defense spending. Trillions in today's money.

There's no such thing as an unsubsidized profitable nuclear plant. That's why investors are pulling the plug on this thing. Because even with the (massive) subsidies, it just does not add up to anything remotely financially feasible. Unsubsidized LCOE is off by about an order of magnitude where it should be now. Never mind in a few decades.

And of course the cost of securing them, dealing with the waste, or decommissioning them is typically also subsidized. To the point where that's commonly not even factored into the projected cost for nuclear because that is depressing enough without that. Somebody (i.e. tax payers) should take care of all that. Not their problem. Most current nuclear waste is stored in temporary locations while people figure out how to actually pay for all that. That was the plan seventy years ago and there still is no solution. Those sites need security. Which of course costs money. And eventually "somebody" might do something about it. At great cost.

All of it subsidized. By past, current, and future generations.

Re: First planned small nuclear reactor plant in the US has been canceled

#75

Post by kragen »

donny2018 wrote: post #63
kragen wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

nuclear tech had the biggeet subsidies program in human history in the 01940s and 50s, continuing to a significant extent into the 80s, which is how the humans got it in the first place some historians argue that subsidizing nuclear tech too heavily was a major factor in the collapse of the ussr

And after those subsidies stopped, the progress of nuclear power also stopped, naturally. If the subsidies continued, we could have had scalable, sustainable and affordable nuclear. I believe that Renewables should be subsidized, and current progress is great, but total decarbonization is easier to realistically achieve together with nuclear energy. If you support renewables, you don’t have to be anti-nuclear at all.

agreed about being anti-nuclear. probably it is not in the interest of life forms made of atoms to be anti-nuclear

it's plausible that further subsidies could have made nuclear power cheap. the long pole in the tent seems to be the cost of the steam turbine generator, though, which isn't cost-competitive with pv even if the heat to make the steam is free. this is after a century of improvements, and the steam turbine is the main electric power source of every rich economy in the world and most of the poor ones. so i'm not sure a few trillion dollars more in subsidies would change that

Re: First planned small nuclear reactor plant in the US has been canceled

#76

Post by kragen »

jcranmer wrote: post #73
kragen wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you would look much less foolish if you read more than just the introduction to my notes; i did a great deal more math than that while i appreciate mackay's calculations a great deal, his estimates for very polar countries such as the uk are not generally applicable, and even for the uk are probably conditioned on overly pessimistic assumptions; he would undoubtedly agree if he were alive today in particular, he assu…

> you would look much less foolish if you read more than just the introduction to my notes; i did a great deal more math than that Perhaps, but I see nothing in your post that actually corrects for effective solar irradiation on Earth, or for the fact that half the Earth's surface is by definition not receiving any sunlight at any given time, or for the fact that most of the Earth is water and not land (although I su…

you didn't point out any errors; maybe you noticed one and forgot to mention it. please let me know if so

if you're interested in taking the capacity factor into account, which accounts for things like night, clouds, and oblique illumination, a number of my other notes in https://dercuano.github.io/topics/solar.html (linked from the bottom of my above-linked note) do that; for example in https://dercuano.github.io/notes/japan-energy-autarky.html i calculated that energy autarky for japan, if purely solar, would require 5% of its land area and about 1.7 trillion euros of solar modules, taking into account all of those factors as well as panel efficiency. since then, the price has dropped by more than a factor of 2, but the land area required remains about the same, or slightly increased

(floating that 5% of their land area on solar barges off the coast, instead of occupying precious land area, is also clearly feasible; it just isn't economically competitive, much like nuclear power)

of course, the real-life solution also involves wind and grid-scale storage

perhaps it goes without saying that very few places are as densely populated or as heavily industrialized as japan, so much smaller fractions of their land area would suffice

Re: First planned small nuclear reactor plant in the US has been canceled

#77

Post by camel_gopher »

cesarb wrote: post #25
monero-xmr wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am still very confused how power will be generated cleanly on cloudy, no-wind days with solar and wind. I am hopeful that hydrogen can be generated in the desert and moved by hydrogen-truck. Or grid-scale batteries actually exist someday. But if we write off nuclear, a lot of coal and natural gas will be burned.

> I am still very confused how power will be generated cleanly on cloudy, no-wind days with solar and wind. You are making it harder by adding that "cleanly" requirement, because the simple answer is going to be "natural gas". Unlike coal or nuclear, natural gas power plants are fast to start and stop (hydroelectric is even faster, but depends on favorable geography), so they can be left powered down (using no fuel)…

The problem with this 90% solution is that the more renewables are added, the more natural gas capacity is required to cover the capacity. Good problem for the natural gas industry.

Going clean with nuclear isn’t cheap right now, and it shouldn’t be. It wasn’t at the start of renewables when solar was expensive.

Cheap, reliable, clean; pick two.

Re: First planned small nuclear reactor plant in the US has been canceled

#78

Post by donny2018 »

kragen wrote: post #75
donny2018 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And after those subsidies stopped, the progress of nuclear power also stopped, naturally. If the subsidies continued, we could have had scalable, sustainable and affordable nuclear. I believe that Renewables should be subsidized, and current progress is great, but total decarbonization is easier to realistically achieve together with nuclear energy. If you support renewables, you don’t have to be anti-nuclear at all.

agreed about being anti-nuclear. probably it is not in the interest of life forms made of atoms to be anti-nuclear it's plausible that further subsidies could have made nuclear power cheap. the long pole in the tent seems to be the cost of the steam turbine generator, though, which isn't cost-competitive with pv even if the heat to make the steam is free. this is after a century of improvements, and the steam turbine…

>the long pole in the tent seems to be the cost of the steam turbine generator

And yet some "renewables-only" people want to rely on gas turbines for the times of unfavorable weather conditions.

And, the turbines are still more efficient (46% efficiency with modern Siemens turbines), and the heat that isn't going into the turbine steam can still be used elsewhere, like for district heating or for industrial purposes, which makes the overall system very high yield.

In comparison, photovoltaics is currently at 20% efficiency. Wind is at 60% but it's quite intermittent and unpredictable.

Re: First planned small nuclear reactor plant in the US has been canceled

#79

Post by kragen »

donny2018 wrote: post #78
kragen wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

agreed about being anti-nuclear. probably it is not in the interest of life forms made of atoms to be anti-nuclear it's plausible that further subsidies could have made nuclear power cheap. the long pole in the tent seems to be the cost of the steam turbine generator, though, which isn't cost-competitive with pv even if the heat to make the steam is free. this is after a century of improvements, and the steam turbine…

>the long pole in the tent seems to be the cost of the steam turbine generator And yet some "renewables-only" people want to rely on gas turbines for the times of unfavorable weather conditions. And, the turbines are still more efficient (46% efficiency with modern Siemens turbines), and the heat that isn't going into the turbine steam can still be used elsewhere, like for district heating or for industrial purposes,…

agreed

a couple of quibbles, tho

the efficiency of photovoltaics and wind is only relevant here if you're powering them from stored energy, such as white-hot graphite blocks, rather than from the sun. or in the far future when human energy consumption has grown by two orders of magnitude

gas turbines are only 'renewables-only' if you make the gas from renewable energy

Re: First planned small nuclear reactor plant in the US has been canceled

#80

Post by donny2018 »

kragen wrote: post #79
donny2018 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>the long pole in the tent seems to be the cost of the steam turbine generator And yet some "renewables-only" people want to rely on gas turbines for the times of unfavorable weather conditions. And, the turbines are still more efficient (46% efficiency with modern Siemens turbines), and the heat that isn't going into the turbine steam can still be used elsewhere, like for district heating or for industrial purposes,…

agreed a couple of quibbles, tho the efficiency of photovoltaics and wind is only relevant here if you're powering them from stored energy, such as white-hot graphite blocks, rather than from the sun. or in the far future when human energy consumption has grown by two orders of magnitude gas turbines are only 'renewables-only' if you make the gas from renewable energy

>gas turbines are only 'renewables-only' if you make the gas from renewable energy

There are ways to make hydrocarbons from atmospheric carbon (using any energy, including renewable) but that is nightmarishly inefficient. Anti-nuclear people's plan though is to use good ol' fossil gas for the times when the weather is unsuitable for renewables.

>the efficiency of photovoltaics and wind is only relevant here if

Agreed, you can disregard its efficiency if the source energy is free.

Fission energy is so high yield that it's also basically free, just like the Sun or wind, with the difference of being able to increase/decrease production on demand. It's the infrastructure to extract that energy that costs money, and those costs could be improved with proper R&D, investments, subsidies and economies of scale, just like with renewables.

I do believe nuclear is the part of the Solution together with renewables. At least we will need nuclear before solar extraction and storage are so advanced that they can power the grid all the time by themselves. Yes, that future is certainly is not very far away, but we can't afford much time to start decarbonizing.

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