Conversation

Notices

1. Embed this notice
   feld (feld@friedcheese.us)'s status on Friday, 08-Nov-2024 02:10:45 JST feld

   • Emil Jacobs - Collectifission
   @collectifission has anything changed or is every traditional nuclear deployment still a massive burden on the taxpayers?
   
   The famous study on France, which was basically the best case scenario, shows that it never gets cheaper, only more expensive.
   
   I think the SMRs could become viable but we have to actually start deploying them. Though the economics of the SMRs is pretty awful too.
   
   This is basically why solar/wind + battery is winning around the world. At least the economics of those are in line with reality.
   
   https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0301421510003526
   • Embed this notice
     feld (feld@friedcheese.us)'s status on Friday, 08-Nov-2024 05:54:36 JST feld

     in reply to

     • Emil Jacobs - Collectifission
     @collectifission
     
     > renewables vs nuclear
     
     yeah this is dumb they are complements and both clean
     
     > Pretending that, to borrow a phrase, renewable energy will be "too cheap to meter" really grinds my gears.
     
     People don't understand the economics of energy markets. If it's "too cheap to meter" because of negative prices the company generating is losing money. They're paying you for the energy you're receiving. So who is gonna pay their bills? Who is going to shoulder the costs to maintain the infrastructure? *crickets*
     
     > Nuclear energy is proven to be extremely cheap in the long run,
     
     But that's the problem. The modern world does not entertain long term investments. Everyone demands short term returns. Energy companies *today* struggle with long term funding for their projects, and they're a mere fraction of a new nuclear plant. (note: the American model is likely quite different than EU which has more state intervention. In the USA because they're a natural monopoly the regulations mean they're only allowed to charge enough to recoup their infrastructure investment costs and they have to carefully figure out how to do this over a long period of time and weather the economic cycles)
     
     If someone can show that you can deploy new nuclear plants without any government-backed loans or subsidies to cover its build out and long term maintenance I'm all for it. But that doesn't seem to be the reality which is why I'm hoping we get an SMR breakthrough and we can quickly deploy cheaper, smaller generation plants where they are needed most. We've gotta turn off the money printer and force the markets to solve this. Let Meta, Apple, Oracle, Amazon, etc throw their trillions of dollars at the problem privately. At least it's better they burn their money on this problem than other nefarious things.
     
     > We will not, I repeat NOT, be able to power many countries in Europe with solar and wind alone.
     
     oh yeah, Europe is in a bad situation. No doubt.
     
     Meanwhile:
     
     China:
     
     >> New figures show the pace of its clean energy transition is roughly the equivalent of installing five large-scale nuclear power plants worth of renewables every week.
     
     and USA, slowly but surely:
     
     >> The US power grid has recently undergone a significant transformation, adding battery storage equivalent to 20 nuclear reactors in just the past four years.
     
     We just can't build reactors that fast.
     
     Australia desperately wants nuclear too but they can't as they have almost zero trained engineers in the country to operate it.
     
     so I just don't see it happening, but we absolutely need the stable base load that nuclear can provide.
     
     I worked for a power company for a while FWIW.
   • Embed this notice
     Emil Jacobs - Collectifission (collectifission@greennuclear.online)'s status on Friday, 08-Nov-2024 05:54:37 JST Emil Jacobs - Collectifission

     in reply to

     @feld I should read this study more closely, but glansing at it, I come across this: "Table 2, the costs of the French PWR program translate into 230 billion Euros(2008) or 330 billion US$2008." and "These costs of the program of 1.5–1.6 trillion FF98 refer to a total installed PWR capacity of 65.9 GWgross or 63.1 GWnet."

     Corrected for inflation, today that would be €320 billion.

     This Messmer fleet still largely intact, this provided 320 TWh in 2023, or 65% of electricity production in France (source: IAEA PRIS). The carbon footprint for France was around 50 grams / kWh for 2023 (source: Electricity Maps).

     Meanwhile, Germany's Energiewende has cost around €700 billion (see below link), provided 52% of the produced electricity for 2023 (source: Our World in Data), and Germany's carbon footprint remained at 370 grams / kWh. So, 7x France on average.

     So, even using your source, it follows that nuclear energy built at scale is an excellent idea.

     Some caveats:
     1. It's not my position that we should only build nuclear. I've repeated ad nauseam that we need to build all the clean energy sources. I don't think in the false dichotomy of "renewables vs nuclear".

     2. Pretending that, to borrow a phrase, renewable energy will be "too cheap to meter" really grinds my gears. The energy transition away from fossil fuels will inevitably be a costly one. How we deal with that will be a social and political question. What does not help, even turns people towards climate scepticism and rightwing politics, is to say it's cheap, whereas it's actually raising energy bills for many households significantly.

     3. Therefore, I'm really tired of this distraction of the cost argument. Nuclear energy is proven to be extremely cheap in the long run, with reactors built in the 1970s currently being uprated to run for 80 years. The main financial hurdles are with building them, and mostly even then have to do with interest. In the case of Hinkley Point C, 65% of the costs are financial costs alone. This is what needs fixing. Not gloating and pushing another agenda.

     4. We will not, I repeat NOT, be able to power many countries in Europe with solar and wind alone. In the case of the Netherlands we're talking about 50% of the energy needs being met by solar and wind, by 2050, with the 70 GW of wind turbines in the North Sea being the primary source of that. That still leaves the other 50% that can only be resolved by (a combination of) importing clean energy from outside Europe, deindustrialising and/or nuclear energy. Again, we need to build ALL the things. If you are anti-nuclear, you are, whether you like it or not, contributing to the problem of climate change as we'll not hit the target of zero emissions.

     https://www.foronuclear.org/en/updates/news/nuclear-energy-could-have-saved-germany-e332-billion-according-to-research/

   • Embed this notice
     feld (feld@friedcheese.us)'s status on Friday, 08-Nov-2024 06:34:04 JST feld

     in reply to

     • Emil Jacobs - Collectifission
     @collectifission
     
     > That *is* the crux, isn't it? We need to think long term again.
     
     I desperately want us to think long term again but I don't think it will happen until there's a big enough economic crash. It's gotta be REALLY bad. Something we can't print our way out of and leave as a mess for citizens 20 years from now.
     
     > Trump
     
     Yep which is why I think he'll green light private deployments of SMRs. Someone's gonna whisper in his ear that this is like the space race and he'll jump on it. After all, our entire economic trajectory collapses if we don't meet future energy demands (regardless of anyone's feelings about what the energy may be used for)
     
     > [Australia] I don't think that's a big issue?
     
     Australia seems to think so anyway. Here's a link to a more recent discussion on the topic: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/jun/21/peter-dutton-coalition-nuclear-policy-engineer-small-modular-reactors-no-commercially-viable
     
     I didn't think that needing expertise for things like containment vessels was such a big deal, but perhaps it is??? Oh boy I can't wait until they just throw AI at the problem. Oil & gas is already doing this so why not let the amateur nuclear engineers give it a go? :laugh:
     
     > What's your view on a TVA
     
     I haven't looked too deeply into it. I will have to study this more. I'm aware of what it is but not the specifics of how it operates.
     
     I was working within the jurisdiction of MISO. What's interesting to me looking at this map now is how the entire southeast USA is not under control by an oversight entity. In MISO, for example, if there was a shortage of generation capacity the MISO authorities could remotely control our generation plants and turn them on to ensure that there would not be any voltage drops / brownout/blackout events due to a sudden peak in demand or a plant failure elsewhere in the region. This is all post-Enron stuff AFAIK.
     
     Anyway it's been nice picking your brain on this stuff, I'll keep an eye out for your posts.
   • Embed this notice
     Emil Jacobs - Collectifission (collectifission@greennuclear.online)'s status on Friday, 08-Nov-2024 06:34:06 JST Emil Jacobs - Collectifission

     in reply to

     @feld Thoughtful reply, I appreciate it.

     > Who is going to shoulder the costs to maintain the infrastructure? *crickets*

     Exactly. These costs are largely socialised. So, 'tax payers' is the answer. This is going to be only socially acceptable up to a point.

     And the worst thing is, that it *still* raises kWh prices. Going back to the France/Germany comparison: Germany has much higher electricity prices compared to France, causing very real deindustrialisation for the past decade or so, which is currently accelerating.

     > But that's the problem. The modern world does not entertain long term investments.

     That *is* the crux, isn't it? We need to think long term again. In my view this requires less shareholder economics and more state intervention. Ideally of course, being a commie, I'd just want to trash capitalism altogether, but I'll settle for a return to state intervention as was the norm in the second half of the 20th century in Western Europe.

     For the US, I guess there's little hope of that, especially now with Trump being re-elected. So, maybe Big Tech gives the push that's needed?

     > [silly numbers about x amount of reactors in wind and solar]

     Classic frame, but really a misdirection. A 1 GW wind farm and a 1 GWe nuclear reactor have very different energy results as their capacity factor differs so wildly. So, maybe you could say China is installing 1 nuclear reactor a week in renewables, if you count a more useful TWh metric? Even so, that still needs firming. As far as I know China still does that with coal.

     But there is a reason China is currently on track with building 150 GWe in new nuclear until 2035. A small amount of what is needed still. I hope they scale that up until 2060.

     > Australia desperately wants nuclear too but they can't as they have almost zero trained engineers in the country to operate it.

     I don't think that's a big issue? The UAE is also new to nuclear but is currently operating their first four reactors with their own people. I guess the upside of long building times, is that you have plenty of time to train the people needed to operate them.

     > I worked for a power company for a while FWIW.

     I appreciate your insights. I suspect you're from the states? What's your view on a TVA model of business, given that it is federally owned?