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Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

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Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#851

Post by frm88 »

DeusExMachina wrote: post #846
frm88 wrote: post #832

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wh…

> please note that he is a right winger criticising wokeism Ad hominem. Criticize the argument. Your opinion about Shellenberger or even his other opinions are irrelevant. I don't particularly like him, but that does not mean all his points are invalid.

This is not my opinion, I just paraphrased the wiki. From wokeism to the quote about aliens, it's all in there.

As for the validity of his statements, please read his Congressional Testimonies in said wiki and see if that changes your mind.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#852

Post by tim333 »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #409
Alexsky2 wrote: post #253

A bit unrelated to the Belgium story but I recently visited Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant near San Luis Obispo, CA and learned a ton about the technical details, safety systems, and policy decisions that go into operating a nuclear power plant. When operating at full capacity, it provides up to 10% of California power! While there is certainly always more such facilities can do for safety and efficiency, my impre…

I did some research about that nuclear power plant. In 1985 dollars, the total construction cost was 5.6B USD. That is an astonishing amount of money. That is at least 16B USD in 2026 money. If you also include decomissioning costs of about 4-5B USD... how the fuck does nuclear power make any economic sense? PV solar plus batteries: ALL THE WAY. To be clear, I am not anti-nuclear power by any means. I think it is a t…

It no doubt made sense in 1985 - solar was rubbish then.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#853

Post by themaninthedark »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #686
simplyluke wrote: post #662

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if your model require a world where it is not the case to work, then your model is stupidly unrealistic And yet, our world contains multiple cases where it is the case that nuclear is being built today, at reasonable costs, and with great success. The two examples I've given in this thread are China and the US Navy. Some others include Japan and South Korea, both of which are notably not dictatorships. What's frust…

And yet... https://www.ajupress.com/view/20250819103850607

From the fine article:

>was originally slated for completion in 2020.

>But repeated delays pushed back full commercial operations until 2024, when the fourth and final unit came online. The setbacks drove up costs and eroded profitability.

What could have caused delays in 2019 ~ 2020 time frame?

It would be nice to see a postmortem.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#854

Post by tim333 »

boringg wrote: post #307
716dpl wrote: post #31

The EU also released a plan in the past week to accelerate the deployment of both nuclear and renewable energy. This oil shock is going to have lasting impacts. https://energy.ec.europa.eu/publications/accelerateeu-energy...

Couldn't ask for better unintended outcomes from that Iran war than to fast track deployment of renewable and nuclear energy. Get europe off their anti-nuclear, pro gas stance. France gains a fair bit from this development. Russia loses influence as does the mid-east if the trajectory holds. Winners: heat pump manufacturers, nuclear re-processing, uranium enrichment, eVs, nuclear heavy manufacturers, solar panels (Ch…

I've always argued for a carbon tax which never gets implemented but maybe blocking Hormuz and blowing up Russia's stuff is the way to do it?

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#855

Post by taegee »

Cwizard wrote: post #794
taegee wrote: post #778

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here we go again ... Did those plants suddenly became manageable? No. Did those plants suddenly became cheap? No. Do we suddenly have a solution for the waste? No. Have new uranium deposits suddenly been discovered? No.

Why are they unmanageable? They are only expensive because externalities of other solutions are not captures or are subsidised. Wind and solar are expensive if battery storage is included in most of the world. Waste is mostly a solved problem. Much more solved that waste management for coal plants in any case (whom also produce a lot of radioactive waste in addition to producing tons and tons of co2) We have more tha…

> Why are they unmanageable?

Just look at the statistics. E. g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_nuclear_disasters_and...

To say that they're _potentially_ safe by waving at the US Navy is a fallacy for several reasons.

1. It's p-hacking. E. g. with the same technology the Soviets destroyed five of their reactors.

2. The world of civilian operators is completely incomparable.

3. Civilian power plants use different technologies.

> Waste is mostly a solved problem.

Not as far as I know. In Germany, for example, the search for a final disposal site is still completely open-ended, and the first final disposal site will not open until 2074 at the earliest, while, at the same time, the already collapsed storage facilities consume an enormous amount of money. I personally think it is absurd to assume that an underground nuclear waste storage facility can be operated safely over geological time scales. Needless to say there isn't even a single one worldwide for highly radioactive waste.

And to compare them with coal plants is classical whataboutism. "They can't be bad, because I found something other that's bad as well."

You're right about the minable uranium. That has changed over the last years, so the current estimate is 2080 in a high demand scenario.

But your criticism about the externalized costs falls short as well. Regarding the externalized costs, that is really hard to quantify and I don't know of reliable estimations. How do you want to come up with a number if you don't even know if humans still exist on the planet at that time?

What is clear is that for nuclear energy the majority of the costs is externalized. The bulk of the costs stem from the decommissioning of power plants, final disposal, and accident-related expenses. All three are typically passed on entirely to taxpayers.

The former German vice chancellor even said, he would agree [to build a new nuclear power plant] if found a private operator willing to build a nuclear power plant entirely without government guarantees, subsidies, or liability coverage.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#856

Post by leonidasrup »

tim333 wrote: post #847
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.

If you believe in a climate crisis and are serious about it you probably want to run the numbers on different options and policies to see what works rather than saying yay this boo that. Running numbers on producing energy in say 15 years time which is roughly how long it takes to approve and build nuclear, and comparing it with projected solar+wind+battery costs for 15 years hence you tend to come with much better f…

For China, nuclear power plants are still not very important, they build a lot new coal power plants.

"2025 also saw China commission 78 GW of new coal power capacity, which is more than India’s net coal power additions over a ten-year period from 2015 to 2024"

https://energyandcleanair.org/publication/built-to-peak-coal...

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#857

Post by UltraSane »

tcfhgj wrote: post #827
UltraSane wrote: post #694

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The time to build nuclear reactors is a completely pointless argument because humanity is going to need low CO2 power forever. Without nuclear wind and solar will ALWAYS require gas turbines for backup.

> Without nuclear wind and solar will ALWAYS require gas turbines for backup. So this myth is what you need to tell yourself we need nuclear?

What else would we use for backup when wind and solar aren't producing enough power? Gas, coal, and nuclear are the only real options.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#858

Post by UltraSane »

ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #767
UltraSane wrote: post #715

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This paper is very heavily biased against nuclear power and is only valid for Denmark It uses 8% discount rate for nuclear vs 5% for VRE It uses the most expensive nuclear reactor costs instead of Korean and Chinese reactors delivered at 3,500–5,000 USD/kW 80% capacity factor for nuclear is very low and should be over 90% for new reactors. It's least cost mix intentionally excludes nuclear power which is absurd. Stan…

Hinkley Point C and EDF just got a 7% interest rate to finish the project. That is after nearly 20 years of project work and 10 years of construction, so about all risk should already have been found. Like I said. The costs are 40% lower than Flamanville 3 and 70% lower than Hinkley Point C. Imaginary cheap and fast to build nuclear power is amazing. It also does not exist. In South Korea those costs are from before…

"Imaginary cheap and fast to build nuclear power is amazing."

It isn't imaginary. Korea and China prove it is possible to build nuclear reactors for reasonable cost when you don't have endless irrational legal opposition that makes them take much longer to build. What IS imaginary is multi-day grid scale storage. All BES are designed with at most 4 hour capacity.

I didn't handwaved away the study I carefully pointed out how it is systematically biased against nuclear which isn't surprising considering how anti-nuclear the authors are.

Denmark isn't nearly as hard of a case as you think because it has some of the most reliable off shore wind power available.

And it's conclusion about Denmark, if correct, cannot be generalized to the rest of the world. You have to have dispatchable power in an electrical grid and that has to come from gas, coal, or nuclear.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#859

Post by lucb1e »

jacquesm wrote: post #714
lucb1e wrote: post #650

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Better a potential bad outcome than directly measurable and ongoing harm, though Compare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_pollution#/media/File:How-... with the different energy mixes at https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/ . I know which european country's energy mix I'd choose if I could just pick one at will (with the caveat that running flat countries on hydro is not going to work, so that's sadly not ubiquitous…

Almost everybody that trumpets how fantastic France is doing with their nuclear fleet has no clue how they are really doing. You can start here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France Oh, and good chance that in the summer months (when demand is pretty high, especially in the South of France) they may have to shut down again because of a lack of cooling capacity. France was ahead of the game in the 70'…

> has no clue how they are really doing. You can start here:

I actually did look into that and am familiar with the page, as well as the waste situation, thank you

You've successfully ignored the core point of people are literally dying as we speak from the things we are choosing to continue to do. And not just like five in a mine somewhere, as you would have for solar resources as well, but millions, everywhere, every year

It's so weird to read this moral framework where one puts engineering challenges and a risk of brown-outs over so many lives, especially when you include the 150M ~ 1B people that are expected to be uprooted and become climate migrants 25 years from now if we continue like this

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#860

Post by UltraSane »

Moldoteck wrote: post #782
ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t see the difference with nuclear power? Take California, a yearly baseload of 15 GW and peak load of 52 GW. What problem is even a ”baseload” of nuclear power solving? But we should of course keep our existing fleet around as long as it is safe, needed and economical. In that order. EDF is already crying about renewables cratering the earning potential and increasing maintenance costs for the existing french n…

France does not have a fully parallel nuclear power grid ready to step in when some other half isnt working. Germany has a fully parallel fossils firming grid on top of their ren deployments. EDF isnt crying. It's just treated poorly even by looking at ARENH tax which was replaced with another one this year, while ren business gets CFD's and curtailment payments. French nuclear fleet is extremely flexible, RTE data i…

Germany has a very dirty parallel coal electricity grid which is why it emits 5 to 6 times as much CO2 per joule as France.
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