5 ms·

> Nuclear isn’t load following either. That's simply not true. [1]: https://www.oecd-nea.org/ndd/reports/2011/load-following-npp.pdf https://www.oecd-nea.org/

by pyrale 5y ago

> Nuclear isn’t load following either. That's simply not true. [1]: https://www.oecd-nea.org/ndd/reports/2011/load-following-npp.pdf https://www.oecd-nea.org/ndd/reports/2011/load-following-npp... > To get close to 100% you need to have vastly more power plants constructed which then mostly sit idle There's a difference between being forced to build enough capacity to provide 100% of your power, and have some idle when usage is at the cycle's low point, and not being able to load-follow i.e. not being able to adjust within that cycle... > to have that many idle nuclear power plants [which] makes it directly comparable to wind and solar. ...And that's where that difference is important: a renewables production system has to install way more capacity than what's used on average, because they can't control the load factor, not just because they have to adapt to consumption cycles.

Retric 5y ago
You can build a more expensive a nuclear reactor to quickly adjust power output across a wide range just look at nuclear subs. You can’t however do that and meet close to 100% of annual demand by keeping average power output below 50% and sell electricity at under 25c/kWh without truly monumental subsides. That’s why nuclear isn’t load following in practice. Sure you can build reactors that occasionally dip few a few hours each night without breaking the bank, but something else needs to be covering your daily peak demand let alone extreme demand. PS: The more expensive bit relates to both design changes to deal with reactor poisoning (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_poison https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_poison) etc and thus construction cost increased alongside increased maintenance costs due to increased thermal cycling etc.
- littlestymaar 5y ago
  France produces 70% of its total electricity from nuclear, and has one of the cheapest electricity in Europe, AND uses nuclear to adjust production to demand (no we don't do that with fossil, because modern fossil plants have a yield that is widely affected by the stability of the production, with a big warm-up time: just look at french production in winter, gas is mostly constant during the day and nuclear is taking half of the variation with hydro doing the rest). Varying the power output of a nuclear plant (regular 2G plant) between 40 and 100% is straightforward and needs no specific design changes, and you can even go as low as 10% if need be. Xenon poisoning is a real thing, but it is relatively easy to deal with (simply by tweaking the Boron concentration the position of the control rods) even though it requires a bit of practice to master the skill. It is done routinely every day in all French nuclear plants! You are simply living in a parallel universe which seams to share very few similarities with the real world…
  - Retric 5y ago
    France has low retail electricity rates because the government massively subsidized nuclear power. That doesn’t mean cheap electricity, that means hiding the costs for electricity. Also, it doesn’t use 70% nuclear power, it currently exports ~20% of the nuclear power it generates and imports almost exclusively non nuclear energy. Net result it’s customers actually use about 55-60% nuclear power meanwhile average nationwide nuclear capacity factors actually fell below 60% and only recently reached 70% when they started to phase it out.
    - littlestymaar 5y ago
      So you're not responding on the Xenon poisoning and power variation, I guess you stand corrected. > France has low retail electricity rates because the government massively subsidized nuclear power. That doesn’t mean cheap electricity, that means hiding the costs for electricity. No. The impact of nuclear electricity on public finances is a clear net positive over the lifetime of the park. And for the past 10 years, nuclear has actually been anti-subsidized by the political will to boost RE and competition in the french electricity sector (see ARENH if you're interested). > Also, it doesn’t use 70% nuclear power, it currently exports ~20% of the nuclear power it generates and imports almost exclusively non nuclear energy. Net result it’s customers actually use about 55-60% nuclear power This makes no sense. You can't just discount export from nuclear and count import as non-nuclear… First of all, most of our biggest neighbours also have nuclear electricity (UK, Belgium, Germany) so we are definitely also importing nuclear (well, when it makes sense to actually export nuclear, see the next point). Second, most of the time when we export we're actually producing electricity from other means than nuclear (gas, wind, hydro) why would you count only nuclear as being exported? If you want to draw an accurate line, you'd need to count the electricity at the marginal price as the one being exported and most of the time it's not nuclear. Third, what about the past few days? We've artificially reduced nuclear production to import wind, because the weather leads to a massive overproduction of wind power in Europe. It's not that nuclear couldn't have produced this energy right, just that we had to turn it down to protect the grid from a collapse. Yet in your calculations you are somehow counting it as a liability for nuclear.

by pyrale 5y ago

Retric 5y ago

You can build a more expensive a nuclear reactor to quickly adjust power output across a wide range just look at nuclear subs. You can’t however do that and meet close to 100% of annual demand by keeping average power output below 50% and sell electricity at under 25c/kWh without truly monumental subsides. That’s why nuclear isn’t load following in practice. Sure you can build reactors that occasionally dip few a few hours each night without breaking the bank, but something else needs to be covering your daily peak demand let alone extreme demand. PS: The more expensive bit relates to both design changes to deal with reactor poisoning (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_poison https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_poison) etc and thus construction cost increased alongside increased maintenance costs due to increased thermal cycling etc.

littlestymaar 5y ago
France produces 70% of its total electricity from nuclear, and has one of the cheapest electricity in Europe, AND uses nuclear to adjust production to demand (no we don't do that with fossil, because modern fossil plants have a yield that is widely affected by the stability of the production, with a big warm-up time: just look at french production in winter, gas is mostly constant during the day and nuclear is taking half of the variation with hydro doing the rest). Varying the power output of a nuclear plant (regular 2G plant) between 40 and 100% is straightforward and needs no specific design changes, and you can even go as low as 10% if need be. Xenon poisoning is a real thing, but it is relatively easy to deal with (simply by tweaking the Boron concentration the position of the control rods) even though it requires a bit of practice to master the skill. It is done routinely every day in all French nuclear plants! You are simply living in a parallel universe which seams to share very few similarities with the real world…
- Retric 5y ago
  France has low retail electricity rates because the government massively subsidized nuclear power. That doesn’t mean cheap electricity, that means hiding the costs for electricity. Also, it doesn’t use 70% nuclear power, it currently exports ~20% of the nuclear power it generates and imports almost exclusively non nuclear energy. Net result it’s customers actually use about 55-60% nuclear power meanwhile average nationwide nuclear capacity factors actually fell below 60% and only recently reached 70% when they started to phase it out.
  - littlestymaar 5y ago
    So you're not responding on the Xenon poisoning and power variation, I guess you stand corrected. > France has low retail electricity rates because the government massively subsidized nuclear power. That doesn’t mean cheap electricity, that means hiding the costs for electricity. No. The impact of nuclear electricity on public finances is a clear net positive over the lifetime of the park. And for the past 10 years, nuclear has actually been anti-subsidized by the political will to boost RE and competition in the french electricity sector (see ARENH if you're interested). > Also, it doesn’t use 70% nuclear power, it currently exports ~20% of the nuclear power it generates and imports almost exclusively non nuclear energy. Net result it’s customers actually use about 55-60% nuclear power This makes no sense. You can't just discount export from nuclear and count import as non-nuclear… First of all, most of our biggest neighbours also have nuclear electricity (UK, Belgium, Germany) so we are definitely also importing nuclear (well, when it makes sense to actually export nuclear, see the next point). Second, most of the time when we export we're actually producing electricity from other means than nuclear (gas, wind, hydro) why would you count only nuclear as being exported? If you want to draw an accurate line, you'd need to count the electricity at the marginal price as the one being exported and most of the time it's not nuclear. Third, what about the past few days? We've artificially reduced nuclear production to import wind, because the weather leads to a massive overproduction of wind power in Europe. It's not that nuclear couldn't have produced this energy right, just that we had to turn it down to protect the grid from a collapse. Yet in your calculations you are somehow counting it as a liability for nuclear.