Also, additional nuclear capacity can be used to do things like desalinate ocean water and help alleviate droughts in the future.
Nuclear is "firm" in that its always running. This is a good characteristic. I'm more optimistic about advanced geothermal that has been developed in recent years, using the advances in drilling developed for fracking.
If we can use the waste heat from nuclear for something productive, like desalination, then I think it has a much better chance. But coastal communities will also have access to offshore wind, which has really high capacity factors and will be far far cheaper than nuclear could be.
The unique features of a NuScale plant allow its modules to respond to meet the power generation demand in the evenings by increasing from 20% to 100% power in 96 minutes
Nuclear power plants are generally used for base load for economic reasons: they are really expensive to build and have close to fixed hourly costs to operate, compared to say natural gas plants which are cheap to build and have operating costs proportional to the amount of gas they burn. Consequently we only build nuclear where we expect it can be utilized pretty much all the time, and we don't optimize nuclear plants for quick scaling up and down.
I'm clearly in left field when it comes to concerns about nuclear, in that I mostly am worried about wasted effort and capital on a tech that I do not foresee being able to keep up, rather than concerns about "safety" or belief that it is in anyway necessary for decarbonization. So I appreciate seeing some new information that make me more hopeful that SMRs will succeed.
If you can build one of those economically and deal with the caustic molten salt then you can build a concentrated solar thermal plant with molten salt for storage even more economically with no worries about a nuclear disaster.
I really hope the US can adopt a more aggressive approach to using more fuel, even if that means it may be closer to weapons grade at some point in its cycle. This would eliminate a significant amount of waste leaving catastrophic failure as the only real downside.
I would be very happy with a nuclear+solar future (which is currently my present as well).
Wind and Solar don't have failure modes like that so you don't even have to think about it.
This is why Nuclear tends to get more expensive over time because nobody can accurately calculate the risk of any design decision, so engineers and managers tend to make them more complex over time.
Thermally, generally not. But one can design a system so that the steam is not sent to the turbines and so electrical power is not generated.
What makes an array more dispatchable than a single SMR? I don't follow how that could be possible.
As I said in my original post, cost is the key driver here and nuclear has a lot to prove.
Spreading production at continental scale has a major beneficial impact, and such a huge grid is highly beneficial to any type of source (even nuclear).
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/180592/european-cooperation-...
Another advantage of wind and battery is that they aren’t national security targets in the way nuclear is.
I would hate to weather another large and close wildfire where in addition to the normal grid instability and power issues it's exacerbated by lack of expected car feedback resources because people have evacuated or are standing by to.
Thankfully the cooling issue won't hopefully exist during winter, and given how much political outcry will occur if the grid do collapse, France might actually step up and fix their reactors given enough political pressure.
The comment I responded to argued nuclear is superior in a situation of crisis, and selects as an example a natural disaster. Wanted to point out that this seems to depend rather sensitively on the kind of crisis.
British wind often generates less power than it can, but it very rarely drops to zero.
Solar is corellated around time of day on a large scale and cloud cover on a more localized scale. Lack of wind sometimes happens to fairly large regions; interconnections to farther away wind farms helps though.
Weather extremes outside the design can result in outages for all kinds of plants though, so a relatively geographically small and isolated grid like Texas, that has many plants unprepared for cold will likely have outages at plants of all types during a bad cold snap; a particularly bad heat wave might cause issues as well.
So while grid operators have to be constantly adjusting for solar & wind output variations, they can do so without panic and without customers noticing.
Reactor shutdowns, while rare, are sometimes very unexpected and drop a lot of capacity from the grid very quickly.
Japan has seen a decade-long shutdown of most plants following a single incident.
Unless you start mass manufacturing them and the identical reactors start failing in identical ways...
Outages at multiple nuclear plants can be correlated. Right now: https://www.theenergymix.com/2022/06/29/corrosion-problem-sh...
> British wind often generates less power than it can, but it very rarely drops to zero.
Sorry, I didn't realize French nuclear reactors weren't generating any energy at the moment.
Water temperature is also a problem, but, again, is something that is going to resolve itself "at some point".
Finally, others are closed for potentially recurring corrosion issues, and _that_ is the really problematic stuff since most of our reactors were built around the same time.
I don't exactly understand why everyone is tiptoing around the fact that we're going to have electricity shutdowns this winter in Europe, when the gas that's supposed to full peaked plants is going to be missing.
Sadly there is not much we can do to prevent it, at the moment, and at least a good old blackout and a few shortages at gas stations might make some people take energy issues seriously.
The people could demand a resolution to the politician's issues which are holding five turbines in Montreal that could be installed in a pipeline which supplies gas to parts of Europe. It is almost like some political segments don't want a resolution before winter.
Edit: I had read one was returned, five being repaired, and Germany restarting ten coal plants. https://globalnews.ca/news/9002839/canada-turbines-return-ru...
It is almost like the news is more interested in reporting on ongoing problems than solved ones.
I think the Kremlin is expecting the German electorate to push pressure on their government to ask for a return to the "normal" flow of gas, Ukraine be damned.
That seems like a reasonable bet, but I'm not going to rule surprises out any more.
The only green technology we know about that could replace coal and gas as slack for wind and solar today is nuclear.
Does nuclear cost more than wind and solar? Irrelevant, since wind and solar can't power the whole grid. Does it cost more than coal and gas? Irrelevant, since those need to be stopped or the effects of global warming will destroy our industrial life in 50 years.
Does nuclear cost more than large-scale long-term storage? This is an interesting question, and we don't yet have a good answer, as no one has really tried creating storage for hundreds of megawatts for something like half a year. There is one such storage location in Switzerland, and in fa t it took 14 years to build compared to South Korea's newest nuclear reactor taking 10 years (while also producing 1350MW compared to Switzerland storing 950MW). Is that representative of such costs? Probably not, but who knows.
Well, I should mention hydro as well, though that is very geographically dependent, so it's often not an option at all.
Today, "coal and gas" means using fossil fuels, not renewable coal and gas produced out of CO2 in air, and I expect this to remain true for quite a while longer - the temptation will be too large, given the price difference.
Can you not make the same argument for wind/solar? If any power generator isn't capable of dumping it's full output onto the grid when possible, it's not going to be profitable. This pdf seems to indicate that wind is allowed to just dump all of their output onto the grid and everyone else has to ramp up or down. Which doesn't give realistic comparisons of cost between the two. https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy14osti/61721.pdf
Nuclear still needs some fuel that costs money to obtain and handle.
To handle daily/seasonal energy demands though, you'll want to run any of those all the time and thus dump surplus energy into some type of storage to reduce capex costs and dynamically handle demand with some type of peaker.
So your options are nuclear surplus + storage or wind/solar surplus + storage but why light your money on fire with nuclear creating said storage when wind/solar are 1/3 the cost.
(Until battery technology improves, and please, let me know if that ever happens.)
And this can't be said for nuclear power. It's so expensive to build and run, so it has to run most of the time to make a profit. And this will of course be problem when it sells it output on the same market as wind, where many days the cost of electricity is almost zero.
Fair enough.
> And windy days with a lot of extra capacity, we make hydrogen (or pump mass to higher elevation where practical), even though the efficiency isn't particularly good.
From what I understand, those are not worth the cost. Is is even remotely feasible to even produce, let alone build, enough solar and/or wind electricity production plants which give enough hydrogen to be able to handle the world’s energy needs? Even in places with extended periods without sun and wind? Until that is true, nuclear seems to be the only alternative left which is not oil, coal, or natural gas.
(Left out is hydro, which, from what I understand, is already built everywhere it can be built.)
Did I understand correctly: Wind and solar are better than nuclear because nuclear isn't cost effective at having enough slack for a polar vortex?
But if that's the case, don't wind and solar fail in a polar vortex? Ah, you're saying that nuclear, wind, and solar all require storage. Got it.
Then the question would be how much storage do they require. Which I guess is what you're saying.
Until 2022, a lot of Europeans counted on cheap Russian gas.
If any kind of cold war breaks out with China, will solar panels be as available as they are today?
Ceteris paribus, I would always keep at least some energy generating capability "at home", without the need to rely on potentially hostile powers or unstable regions. Even if it looked uneconomical at the very moment.
Already installed solar obviously has zero dependency on China. In the steady state you need to replace around 3% per year to keep up with panel degradation, but a dependable solar grid has significant excess production so you have wiggle room to build up domestic manufacturing. And you can ramp up alternatives like wind.
Nuclear has more significant systemic risks, which are less obvious. Over half of Frances’s Nuclear powerplants are currently offline for deferred maintenance. If they where nearly as dependent on Nuclear as often reported they would be having real trouble right now.
> Over half of Frances’s Nuclear powerplants are currently offline for deferred maintenance
There is more. Nuclear power requires continual availability of skilled technicians and engineers, replacement parts that need advanced manufacturing, water and other material, access to road and infrastructure.
And a stable socioeconomical and political and legal system. And military defense.
For some developed countries it can already difficult to provide all these things with 100% reliability. Today, before the bigger impact of climate change.
And what about the remaining 50% of human population? Do you see South American, African and middle-eastern countries being able to run nuclear plants?
And they do, what about plutonium and nuclear proliferation?
This is hard to read charitably. It seems like a racist remark, not least because there are nuclear power plants in South America, Africa, and the Middle East. Maybe you aren't racist yourself, but you presume nuclear power proponents to be racist? The ends justify the means, so you can play into the racial biases of those you oppose?
I don't like this.
It is the very opposite. I'm stating that the global south is being exploited and denied access to technology (and more).
If anything, it is racist to NOT acknowledge the problems that the global south is facing.
Besides, I clearly wrote "countries" obviously referring to the political entities, not the population.
> Maybe you aren't racist yourself, but you presume nuclear power proponents to be racist?
Now you flipped 180?
> The ends justify the means, so you can play into the racial biases of those you oppose?
What does this even mean?
There is nothing racist about suggesting South Africa which is the only Africa country with nuclear power might have better odds than Sudan. Similarly Brazil has safely operated nuclear power plants for decades, but nuclear has faced real logistical issues in South America.
South American here. We do have a couple of nuclear plants, and they run fine.
They recently had one suffer a large scale military attack and are of course managing the aftermath of Chernobyl.
Attacking hydroelectric dams during war is a major war crime for a big and deadly reason.
Operation Chastise cost 53 RAF killed, 3 captured, and the loss of 8 aircraft. Net result 2 hydroelectric dams destroyed, several damaged, and ~1,600 civilian casualties. And it was only that successful do to high water levels at the dams in question.
Those technical issues of bomber planes are long gone, but the vulnerability of damns are just as they were 80 years ago. A bunker buster would go through the concrete as a knife through butter, and the targeting would be done with laser precision. The navigation and execution would today be done by computers.
A cruise missile and a lancaster has very little in shared technology, and depending on definition isn't even in the same category. The construction of a 1940 hydroelectric damn and a hydroelectric damn in 2022 is basically indistinguishable. Concrete holding up water is concrete holding up water.
If look at the actual dams from WWII you notice they all got damaged about half way up and only blew out a section of the dam. This is because thickness increases dramatically with depth and bombs only have so much energy. They needed the pressure of a dam at near maximum capacity to work, which is why several other dams services just fine.
But even if we went with the same 80 year old designs of bombs as in world war 2, the biggest challenges with Operation Chastise has been solved today by the user of precision-guided munition, drones and cruise missiles. The pilots of Operation Chastise had a major challenge flying so low, with such a heavy payload, with a very narrow target window, using technology that was neither precise nor easy to use. They could also not avoid flak from anti-air, and the explosion from the bomb was a major threat to the plane forcing the pilot to balance their own and crewmen life with that of the mission. Misty weather also prevented one plane from even find their target. It was a very risky mission.
There are three basic angles of attack, from the front, top, and water. Anything that comes in from the front or top and then detonates has a large hole to let energy back out without damaging the structure. The same issue also applies to a water entry with current perpetrators as these things are designed for high speed impacts which creates a large void behind the bomb.
Ideally you want something that lands in exactly the right spot and then slowly sinks to the right depth. And of course no netting to be around the dam to make the mission that much more difficult. Which gets back to my previous point, it’s clearly possible, just technically difficult.
And the actual point here was about Latin America. Ukraine was just an example. Is it really so implausible to think that, for example, Brazil and Argentina could not safely operate nuclear plants?
If the history of nuclear incidents should tell us anything it’s the importantance of understanding failure modes. To use a Brazil example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goiânia_accident
Massive complex infrastructure projects in poor countries often fail to finish or suffer from substandard construction etc.
The fact that an aggressor chose Ukrainian nuclear plant as a target and impromptu military dump isn't Ukrainian fault either. This could have happened to Finland or Sweden, too, in case of a Soviet/Russian attack. (Neither country was under NATO's protective umbrella.)
Kazakhstan is the main uranium provider of France.
You can also stockpile rods easier than, say, gas. They don't take up as much space, given how energy dense they are.
Having a three year strategic reserve is thinkable, not so much with other means of electricity production.
The casing on the other hand can be made from an extremely wide range of materials. And of course long term you can recycle PV panels because they arn’t consuming the material.
Well, one cubic meter of uranium is ~19000 kg, so not sure what your point was.
If ~99.5% of the 1 cubic meter is silicon then, the rare bits assuming uranium density are ~95kg which is less than 240kg of uranium.
Known reserves or uranium may provide for the current reactor fleet at best for the upcoming 200 years.
Therefore a sustained growth of installed nuclear capacity will lead us to exploit mines at always lowering ore grades => more emissions.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2051332
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/222817608_Life_cycl...
Have you accounted for the recycling of uranium? Only a minuscule amount of the energy in fission material goes to generate power and what is left can be recycled over and over again until it is fully "spent".
In term of mining, look at all the material needed to construct and maintain a nuclear powerplant. A significant portion of why nuclear is so expensive is all the stuff needed to build and maintain one.
When price is comparison is done, does it account for lifespan difference, a nuclear reactor last 60 year vs 20 for wind and solar. That can already triple price of the renewable.
Does it account, that you should build extra capacity of many time what you need because not all the same regions have the same wind and sun exposition at the same time? You can look how oversize is the installed capacity of Germany [1] compared to France.
Also, I'm not sure for the US but the EU got its solar panel production wiped out by the heavily subsided Chinese industry. So the rather lower apparent cost of solar by might be partially driven by the Chinese attempt to pump money in to gain market share.
So you're left with 2 theses:
1: solar panels will stop improving, so you should amortize over 50 years. 2: solar panels will keep improving, so cost / kWh will be less than a 50 year amortization.
A lot of these calculations are based on straight line production cost against average power output. They often omit one of the most valuable aspects of nuclear: grid stability. Redundancy is expensive but EXTREMELY important. I see few papers accurately imputing this cost when they conclude that we should all switch to renewables immediately. Here in Europe we can have swings in wind power production in excess of 50% in the span of a day. This is ENORMOUS volatility, and requires some kind of stable power production to offset the slow wind days.
Grids need to be diversified. Solar, wind, tide, geothermal, hydro, and definitely nuclear. If not nuclear, we are stuck with coal and LNG for the foreseeable future.
If the costs are so settled, why are countries like China still installing more thermal plants than solar or wind?
You think they would favor the cheaper proven options?
Ideally there would be competition for end user low costs as well as investment costs. Electricity should be cheaper than tap water.
Low carbon energy generation is basically happening with or without nuclear. At this point, we're past the point where people need to study the cost of wind or solar. They have proven much cheaper than anything else and they are being mass deployed all over the world as a result of that.
Nuclear, not so much. A few deployments here and there. Usually at prices that are way over budget and years late as well. Maybe smaller nuclear plants will change that. They have a lot to prove. I wouldn't bet the future on that. It's a wild card at best.
Meanwhile, the future is now. Lots of countries are going carbon neutral in the next decade or so and mostly without the help of nuclear power. No need to wait for small reactors to work or not. If they do somehow work at a price point that isn't prohibitively expensive, great! But not a problem if this is just the next chapter in nuclear power's long history of being too costly and complicated to be practical.