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Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

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Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#891

Post by ZeroGravitas »

opo wrote: post #884
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #804

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's almost certainly just an artifact of old data, and I typed that before realizing your URL has the year 2011 in it. A lot more utility solar has been installed since then. And continual improvements in efficiency spread the mining related deaths over a great many more TWh. Our World in Data covers this and every time they update the stats, solar gains on nuclear. It's currently in the lead but they haven't upda…

>A lot more utility solar has been installed since then. Yes, utility solar is very safe. Unfortunately rooftop solar is much more dangerous and also much, much more costly. So one has to wonder why anyone supports the massive subsidies that are still given to rooftop solar.

Note that it's massively more expensive in the US than other nations due to paperwork and regulations. But even there it costs about the same as the low end of nuclear costs per KWh.

Adding it when building the home in the first place eliminates much of the cost and danger since you don't double up on a lot of things.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#892

Post by cassepipe »

Neikius wrote: post #539
adrian_b wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a good solution for long term energy storage: use solar energy to make synthetic hydrocarbons. This is a solution that has been proven for billions of years. We can already capture solar energy at a much better energy efficiency than living beings. Making hydrocarbons with hydrogen extracted from water by electrolysis and concentrated carbon dioxide has acceptable efficiency and already almost one century ag…

This. And alternatively just making hydrogen but storage is a problem with that. So simple with negative peak energy prices...

Apart from the fact the round-trip efficiency is abysmal, hydrogen is so small and lightweight, it leaks through everywhere unless you have some specialized (read, expensive) equipment. I'd say why not if we could just repurpose gas infrastructure for it but turns out, no. I know people like to accuse each other's favorite energy sources of being fossil industry shills but hydrogen truly look like an attempt at stalling by big fossil. Hydrogen sounds good to politicians who don't understand energy, only understand fuel and just want a new clean fuel.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#893

Post by UltraSane »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #877
UltraSane wrote: post #857

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Are you pretending batteries don't exist? And long distance interconnects? And not even talking about hydro, geothermal, wave, and who knows what else.

grid scale batteries longer than 4 hours don't exist. You can't design a reliable electrical grid based on vibes. You have to design it on what cost effective technologies actually exist where you need them.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#894

Post by margalabargala »

throw-the-towel wrote: post #833
PearlRiver wrote: post #747

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Socialism works fine without infinite growth.

The problem isn't that it requires infinite growth, the problem is that as the scale increases the drag effect of those who consume more resources than they contribute grows faster than resource availability grows. There's a maximum size limit that's based on things like cultural sense of responsibility.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#895

Post by dalyons »

simplyluke wrote: post #664
dalyons wrote: post #610

Earlier quoted context omitted.

china is a single party state. they can order whatever plants they want and they'll get built - regardless of how much they cost, regardless of if the power is economically competitive, with no need for insurance (the state will clean anything up if it comes to that), and with no need to factor in disposal or decommissioning costs. They can do all this and need not worry if the math pencils out long term, or if the b…

South Korea produces power plants at almost exactly the same cost and is not a single party command economy as far as I know.

not single party, but the nukes are all majority owned by the state. Which tends to obscure real costs, as there are no insurance, cleanup, and capex loan interest costs. All covered by the state. Which are some of the biggest costs that make private nukes untenable in the west.

State owned NPPs could work like this elsewhere, i just dont see it happening politically. Outside of maybe france or some other euro countries that still believe in state owned industries. The rest of the west is too deep in the "free market and private industry will solve everything" rabbithole.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#896

Post by ben_w »

roenxi wrote: post #875
ben_w wrote: post #866

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's mostly about the number of humans competing to live in an area vs. how easy it is to get land in that area so that a new house can be built What attracts people to a place is often all the other people there. The actual land area is not close to being a limiting factor, we only build on about 1% of it. > why everyone doesn't just get a house (if someone can't afford a house, why not just upskill and learn how…

I don't buy the idea that Europe might have abandoned the concept of childhood education all of a sudden. Most people I spend quite a lot more than 5 years learning skills; I know someone who spent 15 years in the education system to end up working at a petrol station. This long list is not relevant. These skills are clearly easy enough to learn. > Clearly you've also never gotten a line by line price estimate for a…

> I don't buy the idea that Europe might have abandoned the concept of childhood education all of a sudden.

My school education didn't include pouring concrete, plastering, laying tiles, architecture. Just about covered some basic woodworking, but not the structural kind.

> These skills are clearly easy enough to learn.

UK minimum wage times fifteen years is enough to buy a house. After tax. As a 100% mortgage. And then the house would have a guarantee. And you'd have contributed to your own state pension, which you wouldn't have done if you'd simply learned the skills on your own, so hopefully this hypothetical education was a paid internship. And if you'd specialised in literally any one of those skills instead of generalising, you'd be able to earn more.

> So how do you explain poverty? Why don't these people spend 12 months learning how to plaster and start making bank?

Holy non-sequiter Batman!

https://www.glassdoor.co.uk/Salaries/builders-salary-SRCH_KO...

Watch a house getting built some time. There's a lot of people there. Even with UK's poorly thought-out greenbelts and planning permission driving up land prices, a house built in 6 months only takes 10 full time builders to have them be responsible for 50% of the average UK property price.

> Could there be some important limitation based on physics that you're failing to account for?

Physics? No. It's Baumol's cost disease: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect

If it was physics, rich nations would just be outbidding poor nations for the resources to build houses. Poor nations do, in fact, have houses; they can afford them because their human labour is correspondingly cheap.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#897

Post by tremon »

natmaka wrote: post #412
shawabawa3 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worth noting that the Fukoshima disaster 1. Lead to basically zero direct deaths 2. Was caused by the forth most powerful earthquake to have ever been recorded in the world (since ~1900), and the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in Japan 3. ~20,000 people died due to the Earthquake Requiring a nuclear plant in Belgium to be safe enough to survive what caused the Fukoshima disaster is probably not a good us…

> 1. Lead to basically zero direct deaths "Fukushima Daiichi Accident: Official figures show that there have been 2313 disaster-related deaths among evacuees from Fukushima prefecture. Disaster-related deaths are in addition to the about 19,500 that were killed by the earthquake or tsunami." According to the "World Nuclear Association" (mission: to facilitate the growth of the nuclear sector by connecting players acr…

It would be a good idea to actually read the source you're quoting to see if it supports your case.

> 2313 disaster-related deaths among evacuees from Fukushima prefecture*, that were not due to radiation-induced damage or to the earthquake or to the tsunami, had been identified by the Japanese authorities. About 90% of deaths were for persons above 66 years of age. Of these, about 30% occurred within the first three months of the evacuations, and about 80% within two years.

> The premature disaster-related deaths were mainly related to (i) physical and mental illness brought about by having to reside in shelters and the trauma of being forced to move from care settings and homes; and (ii) delays in obtaining needed medical support because of the enormous destruction caused by the earthquake and tsunami.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#899

Post by triceratops »

Jensson wrote: post #759
triceratops wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> People said that 40 years ago and see where we are today

That it's true today because people worked on it for 40 years? It would've been amazing if more nuclear had been built 40 years ago. But it wasn't and there's nothing you or I can do about it.

> We might have that good and cheap batteries in 20 years

They're already good and cheap. And more like 5 years than 20.

> Would you really wanna bet our planets climate on your gut feeling that batteries will get that good?

It isn't a gut feeling. They'll get better faster than you can build new nuclear because that's what we've seen in the past 20 years. No one's holding nuclear back on pure vibes. Solar + batteries is already beating nuclear and will continue to increase the lead. That's just math. Its true boss fight is fossil fuels and achieving mass electrification.

If anything, when new nuclear does get built eventually, it will benefit from all the progress made on electrification and new transmission and storage capacity.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#900

Post by amanaplanacanal »

UltraSane wrote: post #893
amanaplanacanal wrote: post #877

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you pretending batteries don't exist? And long distance interconnects? And not even talking about hydro, geothermal, wave, and who knows what else.

grid scale batteries longer than 4 hours don't exist. You can't design a reliable electrical grid based on vibes. You have to design it on what cost effective technologies actually exist where you need them.

Of course! Are you a grid designer? What does your model of solar and wind look like for your location?
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