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In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

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Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#791

Post by natmaka »

Moldoteck wrote: post #749
natmaka wrote: post #682

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> even Barakah built as new by Korea is competitive You bet it does: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Korean_nuclear_scandal

I know about it, affected components were replaced. They still built it relatively on time and on budget "On 7 February 2014, the Nuclear Safety and Security Commission declared that its investigation since mid-2013, they found eight cases out of 2,075 samples of foreign manufactured reactor components that were supplied with fake documents."

Hopefully all little tricks are now known...

> relatively on time and on budget

Nope. 7 years late (plan: 2017, last reactor diverged in 2024).

Total cost not known, at least 24.5 billion USD and maybe up to 32 according to Bloomberg (plan: 20). Koreans are even fighting: KHNP (a subsidiary of KEPCO, the company building the plant) officially seeks for about 1.2 billion USD in compensation ( https://www.businesskorea.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=... ) and it may worsen up.

Such a resounding success... as usual: https://www.fastcompany.com/90844859/why-massive-wind-and-so...

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#792

Post by natmaka »

Moldoteck wrote: post #744
natmaka wrote: post #680

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An accident spreading hazardous substances over a large geographical area that are difficult to contain (or waste of this type) is unique to nuclear power; no renewable energy source poses such a threat. Another problem is the urgency (due to the impacts) combined with the difficulty of modifying power plants as required by "lessons learned," in other words, bug fixes. Modifying or repairing solar panels or wind turb…

renewables are still made from different substances, one of which is copper. One byproduct of copper is extremely toxic- arsenic, and it's spills are not that different in terms of dangers. That's the point. For nuclear at least, over time decay happens, esp for most dangerous isotopes, but for chemical waste - it's forever. Nuclear still has higher capacity factor than any VRE. Evacuation numbers for Fukushima are a…

Arsenic: this only plays during mining (recycling is OK), and efficient measures are already in place (where and when was it a problem, and at which extent?)

> capacity factor

So what? Capacity factor (or another similar quantity such as physical efficiency, operating life, etc.) is a salient criterion in the case of equipment consuming materials or fuel without recycling them, or producing waste in quantity or in the long term that is dangerous... therefore does not concern nuclear power but hardly concerns renewables.

A low yield makes deployment more expensive but, considered alone, is not prohibitive: a mix of renewables producing adequately (quantity, permanence, impacts, total cost including recycling, etc.) is a good solution whatever its yield.

> most of the deaths are caused by extreme evacuation measures that werent needed

This is disputed and the real amplitude of the threat was not known during the nuclear accident. The tiny evacuation ordered was minimally cautious as experts predicted, during the accident, that the worst cast would imply evacuating up to 50 millions persons: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naoto_Kan#In_media

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#793

Post by natmaka »

coryrc wrote: post #784
natmaka wrote: post #703

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, sorry. Decentralizing solar power reduces electricity transmission costs and improves reliability. This doesn't offset the additional cost, but it's not negligible.

If the grid gets heavily overloaded, the frequency and voltage drop. And home-based grid-tie solar will shut itself off when it's most needed. This is fragile and DEcreases reliability.

Storage, such as batteries coupled with V2G and also green-hydrogen fed turbo-alternators, can alleviate this.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#794

Post by 8fingerlouie »

pfdietz wrote: post #679
8fingerlouie wrote: post #602

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My Vaillant air to water heat pump is "effective" down to -28C, and has a resistive heater element as a backup in case the COP value flatlines (as in if COP is 1, it doesn't matter). My cheap air to air heat pump in the summerhouse (Panasonic HZ25ZKE) is effective down to -25C and has a COP of 2.22 there. Even at -25C it still delivers twice as much heat energy as the electricity consumed. https://www.aircon.panasoni…

The bigger issue may be the heat rate of the heat pump at low temperature, not the efficiency.

While we very rarely have temperatures below -20C in Denmark, i have yet to experience a "drop" in performance from it. Granted, it becomes a lot noisier in very low temperatures, but it "does the job".

I'll add that this being an older house (1970s) we have "other issues" that causes heat loss, so we usually run the log burner for supplementary heat during those few days of -20C. The heat pump can keep the house warm, but you can feel the cold "pushing in" from walls and windows (dual pane).

Sadly the heat pump has also kinda voided all attempts to renovate for saving energy. Our yearly heat cost (heating and warm water) is around €750, and adding insulation would cost around €3500, for a potential saving of around 10-20%, so a total of 20-30 years to earn itself back again.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#795

Post by pfdietz »

8fingerlouie wrote: post #794
pfdietz wrote: post #679

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bigger issue may be the heat rate of the heat pump at low temperature, not the efficiency.

While we very rarely have temperatures below -20C in Denmark, i have yet to experience a "drop" in performance from it. Granted, it becomes a lot noisier in very low temperatures, but it "does the job". I'll add that this being an older house (1970s) we have "other issues" that causes heat loss, so we usually run the log burner for supplementary heat during those few days of -20C. The heat pump can keep the house war…

> While we very rarely have temperatures below -20C in Denmark, i have yet to experience a "drop" in performance from it.

This is also my experience in upstate New York at such temperatures.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#796

Post by pfdietz »

thinkcontext wrote: post #762
pfdietz wrote: post #550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Judged historically, it will be a massive fiasco.

Nuscale certainly hasn't covered themselves in glory.

The US is in a bit better position on more nuclear than Europe, because the EPR was an overdesigned mess, while the AP1000 was just badly executed. The AP1000 is actually quite a nice design (it actually has a completed design now). The Chinese are offering a version of it for sale abroad; they tried the EPR too and have done nothing more with it.

If the US is for some reason to do nuclear going forward, just building AP1000s would probably be the least insane way to do it. These SMRs? Maybe investigatory builds but don't count on anything.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#797

Post by triceratops »

suddenlybananas wrote: post #771
triceratops wrote: post #688

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since you clearly didn't read past the second sentence in my post I'm going to repeat myself. Why doesn't China repeal "excessive" and "neurotic" regulations and build more nuclear instead of solar? Rather than the other way around?

because they sell the solar panels abroad and can't sell nuclear power plants abroad.

That's why they're installing 100x as much solar as nuclear domestically too?

Why can't they sell nuclear plants abroad? Sure Western countries won't buy them but the rest of the world probably would if the price were right.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#798

Post by thinkcontext »

pfdietz wrote: post #796
thinkcontext wrote: post #762

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuscale certainly hasn't covered themselves in glory.

The US is in a bit better position on more nuclear than Europe, because the EPR was an overdesigned mess, while the AP1000 was just badly executed. The AP1000 is actually quite a nice design (it actually has a completed design now). The Chinese are offering a version of it for sale abroad; they tried the EPR too and have done nothing more with it. If the US is for some reason to do nuclear going forward, just buildin…

I admit I thought the fiascos that the 2 AP1000 projects were would forever kill the design in the US. But it now looks like the AI craze will give it another shot.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#799

Post by jopsen »

lambdaone wrote: post #605
tsimionescu wrote: post #571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Net zero is barely enough to help with climate goals, given how late we are. It's not a huge goal, it is the absolute bare minimum to avoid >2 degrees of warming.

Achievable near-future net-nearly-zero in the near future is a lot better than waiting longer until we can achieve full net zero. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. The real issue is the cost of keeping gas peaker stations around that are mostly idle and fire up only a few days a year, but that's an economic issue, not an engineering one. In the longer term, you could even run them off net-zero renewable…

Also once we're nearly-net zero, we should focus on airlines, shipping, industry, etc. not the last 5% of electricity.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#800

Post by Moldoteck »

pfdietz wrote: post #755
Moldoteck wrote: post #752

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only small part of the problem is dealt with tariffs. And these were introduced only recently. Market is always distorted one way or another depending on the goals. Co2 tax too is a market distortion since the tax value is chosen arbitrarily

Very weak arguments there. Adding distortions is ok because other distortions exist? Non sequitur. Tariffs don't currently do everything therefore they cannot ever solve the problem? Also a non sequitur.

Yeah. Very weak. Just like German economy.
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