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Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

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Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#831

Post by graphenus »

boshomi wrote: post #777
graphenus wrote: post #768

I see that here a viewpoint is widely reflected that we can substitute nuclear with solar/wind. And maybe today it could be feasible in certain areas albeit not always economical. What this viewpoint misses, is the fact that we will need an increasingly more power, as we always did, and I am certain that if we would have a chance to go 100 years into the future, power demand will be so high that our current abilities…

Nuclear energy is pure economic madness in a context where wind and solar power are generating a surplus of electricity. Today, May 1, electricity prices in Europe are in some cases at the technical minimum of minus €500/MWh. Thermal power generation, which is difficult to control, is completely unnecessary in an environment where we have negative electricity prices practically every day from March to October. In Eur…

[dead]

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#832

Post by frm88 »

DeusExMachina wrote: post #828
maybewhenthesun wrote: post #795

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The engineering side might be a theoretically solved problem, anybody looking at belgium's crumbling nuclear powerplants can help but feeling slightly nervous! I agree we probably need nuclear to bridge the gap until solar or wind can take over fully, but there are a lot of problems with nuclear and the most pressing ones are connected to the unwillingness of people to spend money before a disaster happens. On top of…

> the storage of the nuclear waste is very far from a solved engineering problem. Nuclear waste is small and solid, not a leaky green ooze like you see in the Simpsons. You can just bury it deep in a mountain, which is where you extracted the uranium from in the first place. - https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/5-fast-facts-about-spent-... - https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-... - https://ww…

Nuclear waste is small and solid

That would depend on the category of the waste:

- High level waste - Transuranic waste - Low level waste

where high level waste comes in two classes: spent fuel and reprocessing waste, the latter being liquid (possibly not green).

https://ieer.org/resource/classroom/classifications-nuclear-...

You can just bury it deep in a mountain

Belgium is notably lacking in mountains, which is why they now start building a site for low level nuclear waste storage, adding to the cost. For high level nuclear waste they have to build deep underground, waterproof, bomb-proof facilities at high expense:

https://www.nirasondraf.be/

As for the article by Shellenberger you linked, please note that he is a right winger criticising wokeism etc, who claims eternal growth can continue like until now without ecoogical impact

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Shellenberger

Edit: I just found out that Shellenberger now works on finding the Aliens:

Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Exposing the Truth", Shellenberger claimed sources have told him that intelligence communities "are sitting on a huge amount of visual and other information" about Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP)

Same wiki.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#833

Post by throw-the-towel »

PearlRiver wrote: post #747
igorramazanov wrote: post #725

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard an opinion that having less people leads to a technological regression, because some things to create/research are so expensive that they become profitable and functioning only at the world's scale E.g. China is too small to have an isolated closed market for a competitive and efficient semiconductors manufactoring

No it is just that capitalism is a cancer. Nobody has actually cracked the code on how capitalism can work without perpetual growth. Leaders are looking at Japan and they are panicking. Fascists are demanding more white babies.

FYI, socialism also cannot work without infinite growth.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#834

Post by Dunedan »

asdefghyk wrote: post #802
boshomi wrote: post #781

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Powerprice in Germany today minus 500€/MWh. Nuclear power is economic madness in an environment where we see negative electricity prices practically every day.

What happens when there is wide bad weather for renewables? ( for a range of days from 1 - several) Where would the power needed come from? If, it was to be from some kind of storage, Extra capacity would be needed to allow recharging of the storage

Mind that nuclear power relies on favorable weather as well. It's not uncommon in Europe that nuclear power plants have to shut down, because the rivers they use for cooling become too hot.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#836

Post by maybewhenthesun »

DeusExMachina wrote: post #828
maybewhenthesun wrote: post #795

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The engineering side might be a theoretically solved problem, anybody looking at belgium's crumbling nuclear powerplants can help but feeling slightly nervous! I agree we probably need nuclear to bridge the gap until solar or wind can take over fully, but there are a lot of problems with nuclear and the most pressing ones are connected to the unwillingness of people to spend money before a disaster happens. On top of…

> the storage of the nuclear waste is very far from a solved engineering problem. Nuclear waste is small and solid, not a leaky green ooze like you see in the Simpsons. You can just bury it deep in a mountain, which is where you extracted the uranium from in the first place. - https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/5-fast-facts-about-spent-... - https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-... - https://ww…

I know it's not a green ooze. But thinking it is possible to store something safely for >10000 years is just wishful thinking. The waste is a lot more dangerous than the uranium we dug out and packaging it in a way where you are sure it won't surface for sure is really not a solved problem.

> Nuclear waste is small and solid

As long as all goes well. Fukushima has a slightly different experience.

> You can just bury it deep in a mountain, which is where you extracted the uranium from in the first place.

Imo it's stupid to put nuclear waste in a place where you can't get at it anymore. In the ideal case we invent better reactors where you recycle all radioactive parts as usable fuel and the output is truly 'spent'.

I don't disagree with you that the pros of nuclear (as opposed to fossil) outweigh the cons. But there are cons, and eventually we'd be better off harvesting our energy from the sun.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#837

Post by Dunedan »

boshomi wrote: post #781
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.

Powerprice in Germany today minus 500€/MWh. Nuclear power is economic madness in an environment where we see negative electricity prices practically every day.

While the spot market price for electricity in Germany gets negative from time to time, it's far away from doing so every day.

https://energy-charts.info/charts/price_spot_market/chart.ht...

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#838

Post by asdefghyk »

ishtanbul wrote: post #817
lostlogin wrote: post #809

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bad weather often comes with wind or rain. Obviously it’s possible for solar, hydro and wind farms to stop producing, but that’s what storage is for.

Not really. Storage is most used for short term stabilization and alleviating congestion in certain transmission nodes. In most markets its used to provide capacity under contract with utilities to meet resource adequacy requirements which don’t consider long term regional complete loss of renewables. Longer term storage that can provide power to, say, a whole region during a multi-day storm is basically an uneconomi…

Multiday renewable droughts ( solar and wind ) are a significant challenge. ( A further problem would be if a renewables drought occurred at a (multiday) peak demand period ) Appropriate (often new) wide area, power transmission networks can help to reduce this risk. Renewables also need to be over provisioned to reduce the risks, which could be blackouts or some kind of power rationing (via "smart meters" )

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#839

Post by maybewhenthesun »

ben_w wrote: post #798
maybewhenthesun wrote: post #795

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The engineering side might be a theoretically solved problem, anybody looking at belgium's crumbling nuclear powerplants can help but feeling slightly nervous! I agree we probably need nuclear to bridge the gap until solar or wind can take over fully, but there are a lot of problems with nuclear and the most pressing ones are connected to the unwillingness of people to spend money before a disaster happens. On top of…

> and the storage of the nuclear waste is very far from a solved engineering problem. Storing safely stuff for thousands of years is just not a realistic scenario whatsoever. More of a political problem, from what I hear. This is, if anything, worse: simply not knowing is a research problem, but knowing how to do it and yet having an influential group saying "no because reasons" could be genuinely insurmountable.

My experience is that politicians tend to hand-wave this problem away, while physicists and geologists acknowledge the problem and actually think about it.

So imo not really a political problem.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#840

Post by tcfhgj »

asdefghyk wrote: post #838
ishtanbul wrote: post #817

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. Storage is most used for short term stabilization and alleviating congestion in certain transmission nodes. In most markets its used to provide capacity under contract with utilities to meet resource adequacy requirements which don’t consider long term regional complete loss of renewables. Longer term storage that can provide power to, say, a whole region during a multi-day storm is basically an uneconomi…

Multiday renewable droughts ( solar and wind ) are a significant challenge. ( A further problem would be if a renewables drought occurred at a (multiday) peak demand period ) Appropriate (often new) wide area, power transmission networks can help to reduce this risk. Renewables also need to be over provisioned to reduce the risks, which could be blackouts or some kind of power rationing (via "smart meters" )

ideally power rationing is not needed thanks to the electricity market - and you could still perform an intentional brown out to avoid a black out
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