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Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

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Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#751

Post by mpweiher »

epistasis wrote: post #590
DennisP wrote: post #580

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's great, but we live in the 2020s, not the 1970s. Technology has changed over 50 years. France talks about building more nuclear, but what's actually getting put on the grid is renewables, not nuclear. It wasn't the weird enviors that stopped nuclear in the US, they don't have much power. What really stopped it was that the industry ordered too many reactors at once in the 1970s, they didn't standardize on a des…

> France talks about building more nuclear, but what's actually getting put on the grid is renewables, not nuclear.

As always this is a political problem, not a technical or economic one.

The Hollande government put a law on the books that made it illegal to increase nuclear generating capacity beyond the then-installed 63.2 GW

The only way they were even allowed to build/operate the single EPR in Flamanville was to shut down two old reactors in Fessenheim. Even that was questionable, but shutting down more perfectly fine reactors would be economically suicidal.

That law was only rescinded in 2023 (by 2/3 majority), and so after that they began plans for the 14 EPR2s, six now, eight later.

Now that that is in place (and France currently has more electricity than they need), the newest energy strategy calls for massive reductions in solar and wind build outs.

https://www.consultations-publiques.developpement-durable.go...

https://ratedpower.com/blog/france-energy-shift-solar/

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#752

Post by mpweiher »

anonymars wrote: post #270
thrownthatway wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RMBKs are irrelevant to nuclear reactor safety. You had a good argument up until you went there.

Even if we don't treat Chernobyl as sui generis, the safety situation with nuclear power is akin to that of airplanes. We don't bat an eye at the quotidian death toll of cars or coal I've yet to see a nuclear safety argument that doesn't reduce to 'nuclear energy provokes emotional fear' Oh, it occasionally irradiates a swath of land and renders it uninhabitable? How about coal ash ponds or indefinite mine fires or i…

> I've yet to see a nuclear safety argument that doesn't reduce to 'nuclear energy provokes emotional fear'

Yep. It's called radiophobia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiophobia

And it is far, far deadlier than nuclear energy itself.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#753

Post by mpweiher »

Moldoteck wrote: post #482
crote wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear isn't an economically viable option for base load. Nuclear is the most expensive form of power generation. If there is excess supply, forcefully turning off renewables to buy electricity from nuclear would make the electricity needlessly expensive and kill the free market. In other words: it can only be a base load if we massively subsidize it and throw away free renewable electricity. On the other hand, nucl…

renewables are already curtailed and market is still not killed. Nuclear is very expensive if you build it in 20y. H2 per lazard even at 25%mix is as bas as vogtle in terms of lcoe. And thats with cheap us gas for the rest 75%

1. LCOE is not the appropriate metric, especially when you have intermittent renewables in the mix.

2. Lazard themselves say that their LCOE numbers for nuclear are not indicative.

https://x.com/mpweiher/status/1811656245700358478?s=20

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16HVh_Fx6LQ

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#754

Post by idiotsecant »

fireant wrote: post #746
simplyluke wrote: post #556

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.

> Believing we're in a climate crisis and also being anti-nuclear are mutually exclusive positions I also used to believe that but now I'm not so sure. Nuclear carries massive and unpredictable risks on failure. We can fairly well predict what will happen on catastrophic wind turbine failure, but with nuclear it is much more difficult. And what is arguably worse is that nuclear catastrophic failures are very infreque…

Renewable generation is not the hard part. Renewable transmission and storage is the hard part. Its so hard, in fact, that building very expensive nuke is still much cheaper and more attainable.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#755

Post by idiotsecant »

ak217 wrote: post #731
echelon wrote: post #660

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many people have died on account of nuclear accidents? Vs. coal? Vs. not having enough energy? (eg. blackouts killing hospital ventilators, etc.) ----- Edit: because of HN rate limits, I can't respond to a sibling comment. I'll do that here: > Their safety record is good, but can they generate power at a cost that's commercially competitive? If it's too expensive then the plan doesn't work. Is a purely wind/solar…

> Is a purely wind/solar + battery grid viable? Yes. (I don't disagree that a diverse mix is good, and I'm all for nuclear, I'm just saying the old "it's intermittent and can't grid form" boogeyman is no longer true. It would also really behoove Western countries to start manufacturing batteries at scale if we don't want to get a bloody nose in the future, because they're good for more than just the grid)

If it was viable it would have happened already. We have a massive oversupply of solar and wind, particularly on the west coast. Generation is the easy part.

We have terrible storage and transmission, the parts that are actually expensive.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#756

Post by leonidasrup »

fireant wrote: post #746
simplyluke wrote: post #556

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.

> Believing we're in a climate crisis and also being anti-nuclear are mutually exclusive positions I also used to believe that but now I'm not so sure. Nuclear carries massive and unpredictable risks on failure. We can fairly well predict what will happen on catastrophic wind turbine failure, but with nuclear it is much more difficult. And what is arguably worse is that nuclear catastrophic failures are very infreque…

Burning coal in coal power plants causes more deaths each year in Europe than the total deaths caused by Chernobyl accident (4000-8000).

"The health burden of European CPP emission-induced PM2.5, estimated with the Global Exposure Mortality Model, amounts to at least 16 800 (CI95 14 800–18 700) excess deaths per year over the European domain"

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/349938542_Disease_b...

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016726812...

But only nuclear accidents get the media attention, because they are big and infreqeunt. Similar to deaths caused by aircraft crashes vs deaths caused by car crashes.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#757

Post by Jensson »

pjc50 wrote: post #154
monegator wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> time and cost as much as anything else you people have been saying that for at least twenty years. In the meantime the renewables have failed to produce a noticeable change in my part of europe, sentiment is increasingly pro-nuke but your adage keeps things still. Of course yf you never start, you never finish.

> In the meantime the renewables have failed to produce a noticeable change in my part of europe Skill issue in your part of Europe, then. In my part of Europe, https://grid.iamkate.com/ is currently reporting 95% non-carbon sources, 85% renewables, and a power price of −£12.03/MWh. > twenty years When it comes online, Hinkley Point C will have taken 20 years from first approval. Too slow.

That relies on imports of nuclear from France and isn't winter, its easy to say you don't need nuclear when you import a massive amount of others nuclear when the sun doesn't shine as much.

UK is not energy independent so its not a good example.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#759

Post by Jensson »

triceratops wrote: post #95
derektank wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Renewables are cheap. Renewables plus battery storage still are not and nuclear is a reasonable alternative for base load power.

Renewables + battery are already the cheapest solution in some places. By the time a new nuclear power plant is built they will be cheaper everywhere.

People said that 40 years ago and see where we are today, if people hadn't said that we would have a much cleaner world today. We might have that good and cheap batteries in 20 years, but also possible we wont have that. Would you really wanna bet our planets climate on your gut feeling that batteries will get that good?

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#760

Post by Manuel_D »

epistasis wrote: post #735
noosphr wrote: post #607

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That's great, but we live in the 2020s, not the 1970s. I'm old enough to have heard that in every decade since the 90s. >But this time it's different! Yes, we're much closer to climate change making the industrial supply chains for building a nuclear power plant impossible. If we don't do it in the next 20 years our only choice is going to be what seasoning to use on human flesh.

> I'm old enough to have heard that in every decade since the 90s What you haven't heard every decade since the 90s is that storage, solar, and wind are cheaper than nuclear. Technology has changed. We're no longer running 486dx or pentiums, we have something better. >> But this time it's different! I didn't say that, and I'm not sure what you're referring to. Do you think energy technology is not going through a mas…

Seawater is the most common form of cooling used by nuclear plants.
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