Is it time to go nuclear?

Markcheese

cnocbui wrote: »

Renewables are not cheaper per kwh when you factor in the cost of the backup power plants needed when the renewables fail. Renewables increase the cost of electricity.

It's like arguing a €50,000 Tesla is a cheaper form of transport than a €25,000 ICE, because the fuels cheaper, when the ICE is never going to use €25,000 worth of fuel over it's lifetime. A diesel ICE would have to do almost 400 K km to use that much.

The cost of renewable energy = energy generated / (Cost of backup plant + cost of backup fuel + cost of renewable plant). Roughly speaking.

It's not just the energy produced divide by the cost of the renewable plant.

Since when did nuclear generation (or any other form) not need back up... And back up to that back up,
If you need spinning reserve to cover a very large generator, then you need a lot of spinning reserve...

cnocbui

Markcheese wrote: »

Since when did nuclear generation (or any other form) not need back up... And back up to that back up,
If you need spinning reserve to cover a very large generator, then you need a lot of spinning reserve...

Not this utter 5hite again! Nuclear is the most reliable power source.

Nuclear Power is the Most Reliable Energy Source and It's Not Even Close
February 27, 2018

Nuclear energy is America’s work horse.

It’s been rolling up its sleeves for 6 decades now to provide constant, reliable, carbon-free power to millions of Americans.

Just how reliable has nuclear energy been?

It has roughly supplied a fifth of America’s power each year since 1990.

To better understand what makes nuclear so reliable, take a look at the graph below.

Nuclear Has The Highest Capacity Factor

As you can see, nuclear energy has by far the highest capacity factor of any other energy source. This basically means nuclear power plants are producing maximum power more than 92% of the time during the year.

That’s about 1.5 to 2 times more as natural gas and coal units, and 2.5 to 3.5 times more reliable than wind and solar plants.

https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/nuclear-power-most-reliable-energy-source-and-its-not-even-close

4068ac1elhodqr

Solar.

'Grid parity” has already been reached in China, new solar plants are undercutting coal, and cities find solar sources cost lower than regular mixed grid electric.

magicbastarder

apols for coming late to the thread, so it's probably already been covered - about five years ago i read an article about an untested technology for nuclear based generation, which (in theory) could not melt down and generates a fraction of the waste. the gist of the article was that no-one was willing to pour the billions and billions into research to make this a reality.

does anyone know of this purported knight in shining armour that i read about? and if so, were the claims realistic?

user1842

magicbastarder wrote: »

apols for coming late to the thread, so it's probably already been covered - about five years ago i read an article about an untested technology for nuclear based generation, which (in theory) could not melt down and generates a fraction of the waste. the gist of the article was that no-one was willing to pour the billions and billions into research to make this a reality.

does anyone know of this purported knight in shining armour that i read about? and if so, were the claims realistic?

Molten salt reactors. They were not developed as pressurised water reactors could be designed to fit in nuclear submarines and could provide useful plutonium for nuclear weapons.

They only reason the world does not run on molten salt based reactors is the war industry.

Very good book on it:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/First-Nuclear-Era-Times-Technological/dp/1563963582/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=the+first+nuclear+era&qid=1569418399&s=gateway&sr=8-1

In fact the Oak Ridge National Laboratory ran a molten salt based reactor for 4 years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-Salt_Reactor_Experiment

If we went the molten salt way 60 years ago, there would be no questioning nuclear power. Sad really and you can blame pretty much one guy: Hyman G. Rickover

Fusion is a dream, fission based on molten salt can very much be a reality.

Reading back on the thread the topic of molten salt has already been covered - around post 40.

cnocbui

magicbastarder wrote: »

apols for coming late to the thread, so it's probably already been covered - about five years ago i read an article about an untested technology for nuclear based generation, which (in theory) could not melt down and generates a fraction of the waste. the gist of the article was that no-one was willing to pour the billions and billions into research to make this a reality.

does anyone know of this purported knight in shining armour that i read about? and if so, were the claims realistic?

That might have been related to the proposed Thorium based nuclear reactors, some designs of which are said to be intrinsically fail-safe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_fluoride_thorium_reactor#Safety

cnocbui

unkel wrote: »

You don't need backup power plants. What do you think happened to the biggest Irish electricity plant, Moneypoint? They just stopped using it earlier this year. Already a lot more renewables than in the past, we have the interconnector with the UK and some gas power plants can easily be fired up or down with demand

The only way we need nuclear is in a trade with France (interconnector)

The UK interconnector you talk about is getting it's power from where? On a freezing cold winters night with little to no wind across the British isles - the power from that interconnector is coming from UK based nuclear, gas and coal fired power plants.

That sort of sophistry is frankly outright dishonest. The location of the reliable backup power generating infrastructure - apart from national energy security issues - is irrelevant. The plant is still being paid for by Irish consumers through the price charged for the interconnector delivered power - or are you going to assert the UK are mugs and are selling it to us at below cost?

Solar power would far and away be my preferred power source - if we had massive scale power storage that was long lasting and cheap. We don't, so it's a case of if wishes were fishes...

4068ac1elhodqr

Isn't there a French-Chinese project/plant being built to get closer to the dream of cold fusion.
That would be the only real game changer, but would take many small steps to arrive.

user1842

Eliezer Gigantic Ruby wrote: »

Isn't there a French-Chinese project/plant being built to get closer to the dream of cold fusion.
That would be the only real game changer, but would take many small steps to arrive.

Cold fusion is not physically possible. You are probably thinking of ITER, which very much hot fusion. It's also an international consortium.

https://www.iter.org/

4068ac1elhodqr

There was something on the news last week about solar plants providing night-time energy via passive thermoelectrics
https://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Solar-Energy/This-Anti-Solar-Panel-Could-Generate-Power-From-Darkness.htm

Beta Ray Bill

cnocbui wrote: »

Renewables are not cheaper per kwh when you factor in the cost of the backup power plants needed when the renewables fail. Renewables increase the cost of electricity.

It's like arguing a €50,000 Tesla is a cheaper form of transport than a €25,000 ICE, because the fuels cheaper, when the ICE is never going to use €25,000 worth of fuel over it's lifetime. A diesel ICE would have to do almost 400 K km to use that much.

The cost of renewable energy = energy generated / (Cost of backup plant + cost of backup fuel + cost of renewable plant). Roughly speaking.

It's not just the energy produced divide by the cost of the renewable plant.

You don't need backup power plants, but you do need ways to store energy generated during "Off-Peak" hours.
A good example of this is Turlough Hill Power Station, basically it's a giant capacitor/battery.

It's low impact from an environmental perspective
It's very efficient (75% very good for something built in the 70's)
It's cheap to build in comparison to MW production to other Power plants:
Turlough Hill = 292 MW (4x73 MW pumps) - €148 Million in todays money
Poolbeg Incinerator = 60 MW - €600 Million

Also and MOST importantly it can go from standstill to full generation within 13 seconds, compared with 12 hours for some thermal plants.

There were plans to build many of these around Ireland, as all you need is a big mountain, with a lake at the bottom of it.
But as per F**king usual nothing ever happened. (we're great planners, poor do'ers).

Solar, Wind and Biomass make the energy, places like Turlough Hill store it.

I believe last year in the UK During July/September, there were points where the capacity of wind, solar, biomass and hydropower reached 41.9 gigawatts, exceeding the 41.2GW capacity of coal, gas and oil-fired power plants.
Given a hell of a lot of power is Nuclear in the UK, But it's a sign of the way things are going.

Nuclear power is very cheap, until something goes wrong.
"Some" people are estimating that Fukushima disaster costs are going to be close to $1 trillion when you account for Cost of building/dismantling the plant, Radiation cleanup, Liability costs, costs related to the fact that a once economically productive region is now in the 150 sq km exclusion zone and finally the cost of building new non nuclear power plants to plug the power generation deficit.

We can't afford the risk of that to happen here.
No one in Ireland would allow a Nuclear plant to be built near them.

Nuclear accidents are relatively common, 11 in the last 30 years.
Plus there is the cost of disposing of expended fuel. (Sellafield, we've all seen the documentary...)

cnocbui wrote: »

That might have been related to the proposed Thorium based nuclear reactors, some designs of which are said to be intrinsically fail-safe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_fluoride_thorium_reactor#Safety

Thorium will never be a runner, despite the fast it's 3 times more abundant in the earths crust AND exists as an Isotope we can use without refining.
If we could have used it efficiently, we would have done so by now.
Thorium reactors are years away, Uranium got all the Nuclear research because of the cold war.
Renewable research proceeds faster, has more money invested in it and is less complicated/risky.

SlowBlowin

cnocbui wrote: »

Cats are not responsible for bird population declines. Modern farming practices, however, are a significant cause. Farmers are a protected species, so we'll just have to live with it.

https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/advice/gardening-for-wildlife/animal-deterrents/cats-and-garden-birds/are-cats-causing-bird-declines/

Totally agree on that point, I said the amount killed by wind turbines is less than the 30 million odd killed by Cats. I agree pesticides are the culprit.

unkel

cnocbui wrote: »

The UK interconnector you talk about

We need not just the existing UK interconnector. That one is Mickey Mouse in our needs over the next few decades. We need to install 10-20 billion worth of off shore wind, and swap our excess to interconnectors in France for nuclear, Spain for solar, Norway for hydro, etc.

Look at the future, dude. Not at the past. We need some big solutions here.

SlowBlowin

cnocbui wrote: »

That tosh about the CO2 emmited from the nuclear power cycle is just that, tosh. Greenpeace.....again!

Tosh hey, what about the points I raised, will you not concede there is a co2 overhead with Nuclear ?

Have a look at a mine:

https://www.geologyforinvestors.com/wp-content/uploads/Olympic.jpg

I cannot take Nuclear supporter who say nuclear is zero CO2 seriously, its right up there with flat earth. It only takes a few hours research to see thats not the case.

Your other arguments are based on the loss of human lives, and yet you say the land around Chernobyl is fine as its teaming with, radioactive, wildlife ?

Anyway I have a way to reduce the deaths from wind power to zero !! As all the deaths are in the construction of the turbines, just get them built by nuclear power station construction workers, they are far more H & S aware and have no recorded deaths.

My opinions are based on experience, not hearsay, and personally I could never justify the loss of Wicklow due to nuclear contamination, even if there were lots of foxes and deer running free.

Don't assume us mad folk are against nuclear full stop, I am not. The wife has cancer and without nuclear medicine she would be dead by now. I am also a massive space fan, and where there is a technical argument for nuclear I would generally support it. There is no such argument for a nuclear power station in Ireland, for the many many reasons already ignored earlier in this thread.

SlowBlowin

mickuhaha wrote: »

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.sciencefocus.com/science/do-coal-fired-power-stations-produce-radioactive-waste/amp/

Coal emits radiation, an interesting situation when we are still burning coal around the world and no one wants nuclear because the collected radiation might leak in storage.

I saw that some time ago, and also read that peat ash is radioactive. As I have a Geiger counter I checked my own ash, nothing, however a bunch of bananas does register (over time). As I am not aware of any major banana related incident I am not calling for a banana ban.

user1842

SlowBlowin wrote: »

Tosh hey, what about the points I raised, will you not concede there is a co2 overhead with Nuclear ?

Have a look at a mine:

https://www.geologyforinvestors.com/wp-content/uploads/Olympic.jpg

I cannot take Nuclear supporter who say nuclear is zero CO2 seriously, its right up there with flat earth. It only takes a few hours research to see thats not the case.

Your other arguments are based on the loss of human lives, and yet you say the land around Chernobyl is fine as its teaming with, radioactive, wildlife ?

Anyway I have a way to reduce the deaths from wind power to zero !! As all the deaths are in the construction of the turbines, just get them built by nuclear power station construction workers, they are far more H & S aware and have no recorded deaths.

My opinions are based on experience, not hearsay, and personally I could never justify the loss of Wicklow due to nuclear contamination, even if there were lots of foxes and deer running free.

Don't assume us mad folk are against nuclear full stop, I am not. The wife has cancer and without nuclear medicine she would be dead by now. I am also a massive space fan, and where there is a technical argument for nuclear I would generally support it. There is no such argument for a nuclear power station in Ireland, for the many many reasons already ignored earlier in this thread.

I used to be totally against nuclear power.

However after a lot of research, I have changed my opinion and would support a molten salt pit type reactor that would:

1. be fail-safe
2. be impossible to melt down
3. produce no long lasting high-level radioactive waste
4. be able to burn long lasting high-level radioactive waste from past high-pressure water nuclear reactors and make it low level waste

However I continue to be totally against high-pressure water nuclear reactors, they:

1. are inherently unsafe
2. cannot be fully safe no matter the expertise of engineering
2. fail-hot with high pressure and produce explosive radioactive gas
3. in most fuel cycles produce high-level long lived radioactive waste
4. do not currently provided for a means to burn waste
5. are the stupidest thing we have ever designed purely as a result of war or the threat of war

Capt'n Midnight

user1842 wrote: »

Cold fusion is not physically possible. You are probably thinking of ITER, which is very much hot fusion. It's also an international consortium.

https://www.iter.org/

It's budget is about what Japan spent getting their breeder reactor program going.

It produced grid power.

For one hour. Only cost them $20 Billion dollars.


We could get fusion going sooner if we weren't chucking money into the money pit that is fission. But it's generations away. We need transition power sources.

Capt'n Midnight

Thorium ?

Thorium 232 to Uranium 233 nuclear physics is essentially the same as Uranium 238 to Plutonium 239 nuclear physics which we started doing in multiple reactors back in 1944.

Until we get economic breeders thorium is still the next great hope just like it's been since 1946 when the cycle was made public.


It's not new. There's been no breakthroughs.

user1842

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Thorium ?

Thorium 232 to Uranium 233 nuclear physics is essentially the same as Uranium 238 to Plutonium 239 nuclear physics which we started doing in multiple reactors back in 1944.

Until we get economic breeders thorium is still the next great hope just like it's been since 1946 when the cycle was made public.


It's not new. There's been no breakthroughs.

Sounds like the fusion saga.

Capt'n Midnight

user1842 wrote: »

Sounds like the fusion saga.

The amount of money being spent annually on the ITER by Europe, USSR, US and Korea is less than the ongoing cost overruns of Hinkley C.
£1.7Bn announced in 2017
£2.9Bn announced yesterday, and another 15 months delay likely.


Oh yeah there's been actual breakthroughs in fusion. Confinement and temperature improvements.

Capt'n Midnight

cnocbui wrote: »

Not this utter 5hite again! Nuclear is the most reliable power source.

SCRAM !

Seriously if you have to scram a nuke you'll need spinning reserve to supply 1.21 gigawatts NOW and have backup generators ramp up to 1.6GW within 15 SECONDS.

And then keep supplying it until the nuke comes back online. And if it doesn't come back on line quickly you have to keep the backup going for days because Xenon poisoning means the nuke stays off line.

Nuclear reactors are the largest single units on most grids. So they absolutely determine how spinning reserve has to be supplied on the grid. It's a capital expense. And it's an on going subsidy.

user1842

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

The amount of money being spent annually on the ITER by Europe, USSR, US and Korea is less than the ongoing cost overruns of Hinkley C.
£1.7Bn announced in 2017
£2.9Bn announced yesterday, and another 15 months delay likely.

Oh yeah there's been actual breakthroughs in fusion. Confinement and temperature improvements.

I fully agree we should pump a lot more money into fusion research but dont except any miracle. We are a long way away from a commercial reactor, if we ever get there. Even with the advances, the technical and material challenges are immense. In addition tritium and deuterium are needed as primary resources. Deuterium is easy but tritium is very limited on earth and would need to be bread in the lining of the reactor (tokamak). Nobody knows will this work.

Wanderer78

I'm hearing a lot about thorium reactors, being potentially one of the best kind of nuclear reactors, what are opinions here?

Beta Ray Bill

Wanderer78 wrote: »

I'm hearing a lot about thorium reactors, being potentially one of the best kind of nuclear reactors, what are opinions here?

3 times more abundant than Uranium, most of which exists in an Isotope we can use (No refining)

But we've never used it, all the cold war research money went into Uranium (For obvious reasons)

The fact that we now have cheap (Getting cheaper) solar panels and wind farms means there isn't much point in investing heavily in it at this stage.

Wanderer78

Beta Ray Bill wrote:

The fact that we now have cheap (Getting cheaper) solar panels and wind farms means there isn't much point in investing heavily in it at this stage.

I'm personally not convinced that renewables can fill the gap of fossil fuels, and it doesn't look like I'm the only one, thorium keeps popping up on my radar, but I've little or no knowledge of it, so thank you

CelticRambler

cnocbui wrote: »

Markcheese wrote: »

Since when did nuclear generation (or any other form) not need back up...

Not this utter 5hite again! Nuclear is the most reliable power source.

Of all the pro and con arguments bandied about every time this topic gets discussed, this one annoys me the most.

Most people accept that of all the countries in Europe, France is the most dependent on nuclear (responsible for providing about 80% of the country's consumption IIRC). Every year France has to import electricity during the winter, mostly hydro-electric from Switzerland and Italy, because their nuclear capacity is insufficient (by value, France has a trade deficit in respect of electricity imports/exports).

Furthermore, in recent years, those plants that aren't shut down for longer-than-planned maintenance are increasingly being forced off line during the summer because ... it's too hot. This year, there was real rationing of power in the regions most served by nuclear when they were taken out of service during the series of heat waves we experienced here. It's not just for "green" reasons that the French government is pushing the installation of renewable energy infrastructure: over the last fifteen years, nuclear has needed to call on a back-up supply more and more often.

Beta Ray Bill

Wanderer78 wrote: »

I'm personally not convinced that renewables can fill the gap of fossil fuels, and it doesn't look like I'm the only one, thorium keeps popping up on my radar, but I've little or no knowledge of it, so thank you

The problem is energy storage for times when it's dark/cloudy or no wind.

You're effectively getting the power for free, so it's worth investing it.

You can get Solar Systems with batteries now

Selling domestically produced electricity back to the grid is pointless, they give you nothing for it!

Wanderer78

Beta Ray Bill wrote:

You can get Solar Systems with batteries now

I'm aware of the development of battery technology, it's very interesting to follow, but I'm still not convinced renewables can do it, the gap is too great, hence why I think a multitude of types are required such as nuclear

Beta Ray Bill

Wanderer78 wrote: »

I'm aware of the development of battery technology, it's very interesting to follow, but I'm still not convinced renewables can do it, the gap is too great, hence why I think a multitude of types are required such as nuclear

Nuclear is cheap once you get the basics down.
Problem is we have no experience in it.

And if something goes wrong, it becomes very expensive very fast.

Some estimates for Fukushima disaster costs are approaching $1 Trillion.
I know you might say, it was a Earthquake that caused it, but that's irrelevant. (It doesn't matter what caused it)
The fact is it happened, and the systems designed to ensure the plant was safe failed.

Also, Ireland has legislation restricting any Nuclear activities. (we're not even allowed to mine for Nuclear ore)
Finally we can barely get a Metro link (something that people should/would want close to them) past the planning permission stages, how in the name of god would they ever get permission for a Nuke plant

Wanderer78

Beta Ray Bill wrote:

Nuclear is cheap once you get the basics down. Problem is we have no experience in it.

Oh there's no question, nuclear is extremely complicated and costly, and when it goes wrong, it really goes wrong. Many countries have successful nuclear programs online, we could of course ask them for help. I do suspect economist Steve keen could be right, we won't consider alternatives such as nuclear until it's too late, when we ll start experiencing regular power rationing, he's also not convinced renewables can fill the gap of fossil fuels alone