5 ms·

Honestly it provides a huge amount of the base load in Ontario (~60%) and for most intents and purposes is clean. Debatable if we'd be able to get new reactors

Honestly it provides a huge amount of the base load in Ontario (~60%) and for most intents and purposes is clean. Debatable if we'd be able to get new reactors built today but I'm glad it exists

akamaka 6y ago
New reactors were considered for Ontario, but the plans were withdrawn because it didn’t make economic sense. It would have been great if we had built enough nuclear plants in the 20th century, but at this point it’s pretty clear that most countries would better off going straight to cheaper renewables. http://nuclearstreet.com/nuclear_power_industry_news/b/nuclear_power_news/archive/2009/07/24/bruce-power-will-focus-on-additional-refurbishments-at-bruce-a-and-bruce-b-1014#.X0f5XCRq2Ed http://nuclearstreet.com/nuclear_power_industry_news/b/nucle...
- marcusverus 6y ago
  > These are business decisions unique to Ontario and reflect the current realities of the market. This doesn't seem to support your general argument. Do you have any evidence that renewables are generally cheaper than nuclear when accounting for storage?
  - VBprogrammer 6y ago
    I've said this before but there is no evidence that battery storage can scale to anything like the required storage. Tesla's battery in Australia stores roughly what the UK receives from French nuclear over production in a few minutes.
    - ClumsyPilot 6y ago
      "no evidence that battery storage can scale" Obviously laws of physics do not bar it from scaling, the question is around cost.
    - im3w1l 6y ago
      Are we short some raw material or why do you mean it couldn't work?
      - booboolayla 6y ago
        Yes we would be short on quality lithium sources. Mining lithium is extremely damaging to environment, too, but you'll rarely hear about that in "climate change" discussions. https://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/availability_of_lithium https://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/availability_of_...
      - VBprogrammer 6y ago
        "As of 2016, global lithium-ion battery production capacity was 28 gigawatt-hours, with 16.4 GWh in China." UK current electricity demand is 30GW. So the demand for one hour is similar to the entire lithium battery production for a whole year. How many hours worth of storage would we need to balance the energy grid using only battery storage? Off grid homes usually aim for around 3-7 days worth. Obviously that's excessive for a whole country where weather conditions vary across the country but I'd think several house would be required to account for peak in demand at times of low production. Realistically distributed storage and load side control I think are more likely to be a bigger part of making it work.
        UseStrict 6y ago
        That's a fairly old statistic to pick, not sure if it was intentional or not, but the reality is lithium battery production has grown significantly since 2016 and shows no signs of stopping. The largest manufacturer in China, CATL is estimated to grow its capacity beyond 307GWh by 2028 [2]. "In 2019, LG Chem had the most lithium battery production capacity at over 50 GWh. LG Chem [is] increasing EV battery production capacity to as much as 110GWh by the end of 2020." The design of a modern grid with battery storage would change as well - no reason to have singular giant storage plants. A mixture of solar, wind, and hydroelectric with distributed storage doesn't need to self-sustain 30GWh of storage, it needs to be able to smooth distribution and handle peaks. It'd be far more honest to look at seasonal average loads versus peaks, plus a buffer. [1] https://energycentral.com/c/ec/world-battery-production https://energycentral.com/c/ec/world-battery-production [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1103401/predicted-lithium-ion-battery-capacity-by-company/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1103401/predicted-lithiu...
  - toomuchtodo 6y ago
    > Solar and wind became cheaper than competing new-build power plants years ago. What the latest report shows is that they have actually gotten so cheap that they are now competing with existing coal and nuclear power plants. In other words, new wind and solar farms can be cheaper than continuing to get power from existing coal and nuclear power plants. [1] [2] > The storage report also shows a rapid drop in the costs of batteries, which leads to wind + storage or solar + storage getting increasingly competitive (and putting natural gas peaker plants out of business). [1] [2] 8 minute energy's blended solar and storage costs are roughly $40/MWh, just above existing nuclear generation per MWh costs (that doesn't fully internalize waste disposal costs and other ancillary costs of that power). “The vast majority of our development pipeline are solar-plus-storage projects, with more than 24GWh of energy storage under development,” 8minute Solar Energy’s Sean Kiernan said. [3] Portugal just signed a deal for a 700MW project at 1.3 cents/kwh, a historic low (mentioned to demonstrate the cost decline continues, and can be expected to continue into the future). [4] If you're looking for storage that discharges for days, that is not necessary with robust transmission infrastructure (which needs to be built anyway due to aging infra in the US) and overbuilding of cheap (and rapidly cheaper) renewables [5]. [1] https://www.utilitydive.com/news/renewables-continue-to-get-cheaper-just-not-as-fast-as-before-lazard-anal/566929/ https://www.utilitydive.com/news/renewables-continue-to-get-... [2] https://cleantechnica.com/2019/11/22/solar-costs-wind-costs-now-so-low-theyre-competitive-with-existing-coal-nuclear-lazard-lcoe-report/ https://cleantechnica.com/2019/11/22/solar-costs-wind-costs-... [3] https://www.energy-storage.news/news/developer-8minute-says-more-than-24gwh-of-batteries-included-in-its-us-sola https://www.energy-storage.news/news/developer-8minute-says-... [4] https://www.pv-tech.org/news/52925 https://www.pv-tech.org/news/52925 [5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23580707 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23580707 (Hacker News: The US can reach 90% clean electricity by 2035 without increasing consumer bills)
  - akamaka 6y ago
    No, I’m not an analyst who crunches those numbers. But it’s worth highlighting that Ontario didn’t find it worth building more reactors, even with all of the necessary infrastructure in place and plenty of public support for the nuclear industry. And in the 10 years since then, renewables have only gotten cheaper. How about asking what conditions would be needed in a different country to make new reactors much more feasible than in Ontario?
manquer 6y ago
Nuclear is carbon clean yes, However it is by far dirtier than any other generation method, if we stop the coal plants today, in few hundred years CO2 levels will revert back and temperatures will normalize. The half life of the radioactive waste is in ten of thousands of years. We are still struggling store industrial chemicals for mere half dozen years without it causing tragic accidents, while Canada might not be Lebanon today, there is no way to know how well off our future generations will be and whether they can safeguard the waste, both safely and securely from hostile actors without it being an big burden on them . It will be costly problem at best or a major disaster at worst for all live forms. all this to have some power for 30-40 years.
- 3pt14159 6y ago
  It kills the fewest number of people pre joule and the negative externalities are centralized, i.e., the people that made the mess need to pay to keep it stored safely. I fail to see how an underground bunker of radiation is dirtier than people literally breathing in toxic fumes. Coal even releases a ton of radiation per joule, so even the framing of radioactive vs non-radioactive is a subject of discussion. Also, I highly doubt that if humanity makes it even a thousand more years that we'll have trouble finding a productive use for depleted uranium or other spent fissile fuels. They have many interesting properties.
  - manquer 6y ago
    The people and the governments who took those decisions will be long gone in few hundred years, the waste will still be here , leaking into the soil and water table. I was not arguing for coal in any way I am merely pointing saying Nuclear is not as clean as pro nuclear people argue. Yes the NORM released by Coal and other human activities is substantial, However it is not remotely comparable to Fukishma, Chernobyl and bikini atoll . I don't trust any of the world governments to build a safe reactor and I don't share your optimism on that we will find ways to handle the waste. Instead of trusting luck that we will find clean ways to handle, we can start building plants when we do find them, . It is recency bias to think we will be able to keep technologically innovating at the same pace we have in the last few decades or even few hundred years, most of our history innovation has happened rapidly only under certain conditions, it may be that those conditions will continue to favour, or maybe physical limits such as moore's law slowing down, resource limits stuck on single planet economically or socio political structural problems can slow down innovation substantially, Any of them could be a great filter in the Fermi Paradox sense.
hh3k0 6y ago
> [...] and for most intents and purposes is clean. It is not: https://www.sortirdunucleaire.org/Nuclear-power-a-false-solution-to-climate-change-44206 https://www.sortirdunucleaire.org/Nuclear-power-a-false-solu...

Honestly it provides a huge amount of the base load in Ontario (~60%) and for most intents and purposes is clean. Debatable if we'd be able to get new reactors built today but I'm glad it exists

akamaka 6y ago

New reactors were considered for Ontario, but the plans were withdrawn because it didn’t make economic sense. It would have been great if we had built enough nuclear plants in the 20th century, but at this point it’s pretty clear that most countries would better off going straight to cheaper renewables. http://nuclearstreet.com/nuclear_power_industry_news/b/nuclear_power_news/archive/2009/07/24/bruce-power-will-focus-on-additional-refurbishments-at-bruce-a-and-bruce-b-1014#.X0f5XCRq2Ed http://nuclearstreet.com/nuclear_power_industry_news/b/nucle...

marcusverus 6y ago
> These are business decisions unique to Ontario and reflect the current realities of the market. This doesn't seem to support your general argument. Do you have any evidence that renewables are generally cheaper than nuclear when accounting for storage?
- VBprogrammer 6y ago
  I've said this before but there is no evidence that battery storage can scale to anything like the required storage. Tesla's battery in Australia stores roughly what the UK receives from French nuclear over production in a few minutes.
  - ClumsyPilot 6y ago
    "no evidence that battery storage can scale" Obviously laws of physics do not bar it from scaling, the question is around cost.
  - im3w1l 6y ago
    Are we short some raw material or why do you mean it couldn't work?
    - booboolayla 6y ago
      Yes we would be short on quality lithium sources. Mining lithium is extremely damaging to environment, too, but you'll rarely hear about that in "climate change" discussions. https://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/availability_of_lithium https://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/availability_of_...
    - VBprogrammer 6y ago
      "As of 2016, global lithium-ion battery production capacity was 28 gigawatt-hours, with 16.4 GWh in China." UK current electricity demand is 30GW. So the demand for one hour is similar to the entire lithium battery production for a whole year. How many hours worth of storage would we need to balance the energy grid using only battery storage? Off grid homes usually aim for around 3-7 days worth. Obviously that's excessive for a whole country where weather conditions vary across the country but I'd think several house would be required to account for peak in demand at times of low production. Realistically distributed storage and load side control I think are more likely to be a bigger part of making it work.
      - UseStrict 6y ago
        That's a fairly old statistic to pick, not sure if it was intentional or not, but the reality is lithium battery production has grown significantly since 2016 and shows no signs of stopping. The largest manufacturer in China, CATL is estimated to grow its capacity beyond 307GWh by 2028 [2]. "In 2019, LG Chem had the most lithium battery production capacity at over 50 GWh. LG Chem [is] increasing EV battery production capacity to as much as 110GWh by the end of 2020." The design of a modern grid with battery storage would change as well - no reason to have singular giant storage plants. A mixture of solar, wind, and hydroelectric with distributed storage doesn't need to self-sustain 30GWh of storage, it needs to be able to smooth distribution and handle peaks. It'd be far more honest to look at seasonal average loads versus peaks, plus a buffer. [1] https://energycentral.com/c/ec/world-battery-production https://energycentral.com/c/ec/world-battery-production [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1103401/predicted-lithium-ion-battery-capacity-by-company/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1103401/predicted-lithiu...
- toomuchtodo 6y ago
  > Solar and wind became cheaper than competing new-build power plants years ago. What the latest report shows is that they have actually gotten so cheap that they are now competing with existing coal and nuclear power plants. In other words, new wind and solar farms can be cheaper than continuing to get power from existing coal and nuclear power plants. [1] [2] > The storage report also shows a rapid drop in the costs of batteries, which leads to wind + storage or solar + storage getting increasingly competitive (and putting natural gas peaker plants out of business). [1] [2] 8 minute energy's blended solar and storage costs are roughly $40/MWh, just above existing nuclear generation per MWh costs (that doesn't fully internalize waste disposal costs and other ancillary costs of that power). “The vast majority of our development pipeline are solar-plus-storage projects, with more than 24GWh of energy storage under development,” 8minute Solar Energy’s Sean Kiernan said. [3] Portugal just signed a deal for a 700MW project at 1.3 cents/kwh, a historic low (mentioned to demonstrate the cost decline continues, and can be expected to continue into the future). [4] If you're looking for storage that discharges for days, that is not necessary with robust transmission infrastructure (which needs to be built anyway due to aging infra in the US) and overbuilding of cheap (and rapidly cheaper) renewables [5]. [1] https://www.utilitydive.com/news/renewables-continue-to-get-cheaper-just-not-as-fast-as-before-lazard-anal/566929/ https://www.utilitydive.com/news/renewables-continue-to-get-... [2] https://cleantechnica.com/2019/11/22/solar-costs-wind-costs-now-so-low-theyre-competitive-with-existing-coal-nuclear-lazard-lcoe-report/ https://cleantechnica.com/2019/11/22/solar-costs-wind-costs-... [3] https://www.energy-storage.news/news/developer-8minute-says-more-than-24gwh-of-batteries-included-in-its-us-sola https://www.energy-storage.news/news/developer-8minute-says-... [4] https://www.pv-tech.org/news/52925 https://www.pv-tech.org/news/52925 [5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23580707 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23580707 (Hacker News: The US can reach 90% clean electricity by 2035 without increasing consumer bills)
- akamaka 6y ago
  No, I’m not an analyst who crunches those numbers. But it’s worth highlighting that Ontario didn’t find it worth building more reactors, even with all of the necessary infrastructure in place and plenty of public support for the nuclear industry. And in the 10 years since then, renewables have only gotten cheaper. How about asking what conditions would be needed in a different country to make new reactors much more feasible than in Ontario?

manquer 6y ago

Nuclear is carbon clean yes, However it is by far dirtier than any other generation method, if we stop the coal plants today, in few hundred years CO2 levels will revert back and temperatures will normalize. The half life of the radioactive waste is in ten of thousands of years. We are still struggling store industrial chemicals for mere half dozen years without it causing tragic accidents, while Canada might not be Lebanon today, there is no way to know how well off our future generations will be and whether they can safeguard the waste, both safely and securely from hostile actors without it being an big burden on them . It will be costly problem at best or a major disaster at worst for all live forms. all this to have some power for 30-40 years.

3pt14159 6y ago
It kills the fewest number of people pre joule and the negative externalities are centralized, i.e., the people that made the mess need to pay to keep it stored safely. I fail to see how an underground bunker of radiation is dirtier than people literally breathing in toxic fumes. Coal even releases a ton of radiation per joule, so even the framing of radioactive vs non-radioactive is a subject of discussion. Also, I highly doubt that if humanity makes it even a thousand more years that we'll have trouble finding a productive use for depleted uranium or other spent fissile fuels. They have many interesting properties.
- manquer 6y ago
  The people and the governments who took those decisions will be long gone in few hundred years, the waste will still be here , leaking into the soil and water table. I was not arguing for coal in any way I am merely pointing saying Nuclear is not as clean as pro nuclear people argue. Yes the NORM released by Coal and other human activities is substantial, However it is not remotely comparable to Fukishma, Chernobyl and bikini atoll . I don't trust any of the world governments to build a safe reactor and I don't share your optimism on that we will find ways to handle the waste. Instead of trusting luck that we will find clean ways to handle, we can start building plants when we do find them, . It is recency bias to think we will be able to keep technologically innovating at the same pace we have in the last few decades or even few hundred years, most of our history innovation has happened rapidly only under certain conditions, it may be that those conditions will continue to favour, or maybe physical limits such as moore's law slowing down, resource limits stuck on single planet economically or socio political structural problems can slow down innovation substantially, Any of them could be a great filter in the Fermi Paradox sense.

hh3k0 6y ago

> [...] and for most intents and purposes is clean. It is not: https://www.sortirdunucleaire.org/Nuclear-power-a-false-solution-to-climate-change-44206 https://www.sortirdunucleaire.org/Nuclear-power-a-false-solu...