21 ms·

By population that's one reactor of this scale per million people. To replace all other sources of electricity, 8 thousand such reactors would feed the current

by parksy 5y ago

By population that's one reactor of this scale per million people. To replace all other sources of electricity, 8 thousand such reactors would feed the current world's population. We'd need just shy of 500 more to keep up with population growth by 2030 - or at least 500 new reactors globally per decade. (edit - assuming everyone uses the same amount of power globally as the average person in Finland which - why shouldn't they be able to - and - obviously they don't)

YetAnotherNick 5y ago
- jddil 5y ago
  Next time start by not writing a comment that doesn't add value and is against HN rules. What in particular is wrong about their analysis?
  - Octoth0rpe 5y ago
    For one, it assumes the average human consumes as much electricity as the average Finn.
    - somebodythere 5y ago
      The average human consumes much less energy than the average Finn. (Though that number is likely to grow as the world becomes more industrialized.)
    - parksy 5y ago
      That's a good point, people in Finland use more per capita than 80% of the global population, so if everyone were to have the same energy standards as Finland we'd probably need more like 10k reactors and 600 per year give or take. Or we stick with the status quo, force everyone into their lane, and probably need like 3000 to 4000 reactors to serve current needs, and 150 to 200 per year. Give or take. I think that's still in the same ballpark orders of magnitude-wise.
    - xupybd 5y ago
      You really could have added a lot of value here. Clearly you know a bit about the situation. Please try and bring your knowledge to the table not your offense at someone else's error. I seriously think you could have a lot to offer.
      - parksy 5y ago
        I also would like to be corrected in what my error was, for what it's worth.
      - dTal 5y ago
        The person you are replying to is not the same person as the one who made the content-free reply. You might want to follow your own advice.
        xupybd 5y ago
        My apologies you're correct. I made an error.
T-A 5y ago
> assuming everyone uses the same amount of power globally as the average person in Finland which - why shouldn't they be able to Finland's climate is an outlier: One-third of energy consumption in housing was electricity in 2018. [...] 47% of electricity was used to heat indoor areas and 36% to household appliances. The remainder of electricity was used to heat domestic water and saunas. https://www.thenomadtoday.com/articulo/finland/energy-consumption-in-households-fell-further-in-2018/20191121151902003543.html https://www.thenomadtoday.com/articulo/finland/energy-consum...
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- parksy 5y ago
  Here in Perth a good third or more of my electricity is keeping the house cool so some of that is going to average out. We don't have saunas but we do have hot water. There's going to be an obvious error of margin either side of my napkin calculations but I think the order of magnitude is in the ballpark.
  - neoromantique 5y ago
    Cooling a house is more energy efficient than warming one
    - rhn_mk1 5y ago
      Isn't it the other way round?
      - krallja 5y ago
        It’s a question of temperature difference. Cooling a house from 40° to 20° uses approximately the same energy as heating it from 0° to 20°. But it gets much colder than 0° C in Finland, while it is very rare to have temperatures above 45° C anywhere in the world.
Archelaos 5y ago
How much more nuclear wast does that imply per decade? How many more meltdowns per decade?
- pishpash 5y ago
  And heat-polluted waste waters? People keep pretending there are no externalities.
  - lazide 5y ago
    If the biggest externality is heated water in a subarctic climate, or nuclear waste that gets stored on-site indefinitely in casks and produces no notable leaks or accidents (like has been done in the US for a long time now), the externalities are way less than literally any other form of energy production. That includes Dams, solar power, geothermal, wind, you name it.
  - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
    What prevents heated waste water from being used for…heat? Surely Finland uses central heating plants that pump hot water throughout the city (or maybe that’s just a Chinese/Russian thing?). What makes waste heat water less suited to heating, higher entropy?
    - Ekaros 5y ago
      I think it just not hot enough after electricity production. So temperature is not high enough after it passes through turbines. Specially due to distances involved.
    - ProblemFactory 5y ago
      Combined Heat and Power in Finland is very common, much more so than in rest of Europe. 80% of the fossil fuel power plants output both electricity and heated water. Compared to (quick googling) 8% in the US and 11% in EU.
    - RF_Savage 5y ago
      Fear of nuclear power. People don't want water heated by it in their homes. So it is not done. It's not a purely rational thing. The plants are also located away from cities, so utilizing the waste heat for district heating is uneconomical.
omgJustTest 5y ago
1.6GW is a pretty standard install in nuclear. For scale the largest nuclear install Kori is the current largest in operation at 7.4GWe installed capacity[2]. It achieved 74+% capacity last year which is an important point missed when looking at energy _delivered_ to the grid. By contrast US plants achieve much higher capacity factors, with Diablo Canyon in California producing 2.2 GWe at a _lifetime_ operation capacity factor of 90+%[1]. Scaling up nuclear, at high reliability is not such a stretch as some other energy scaling problems. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diablo_Canyon_Power_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diablo_Canyon_Power_Plant [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kori_Nuclear_Power_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kori_Nuclear_Power_Plant
- acidburnNSA 5y ago
  1.6 GWe is huge for a single nuclear reactor. EPRs are on the high end. Most nuclear reactors are closer to 1 GWe. Nuclear plants with multiple reactors on a site certainly do often go well above 1.6.
  - throwaway473825 5y ago
    > EPRs are on the high end. This is an understatement. The three largest nuclear power reactors in the world (Taishan 1, Taishan 2 and Olkiluoto 3) are all EPRs.
    - bigbugbag 5y ago
      Taishan 1 has been shut down last summer due to what seems to be a design fault and may not be restarted. It is feared that all other current EPR suffer the same design mistake, but there are currently no plan to stop them.
      - pfdietz 5y ago
        China is not going to build any more EPRs. They are going with their home grown LWR design.
Manuel_D 5y ago
Right. But remember, not all forms of green energy generation are equal. Wind and solar need some dispatchable source as a backup. Hydro works, if you have it. But it's geographically limited. Gas is the typical backup source, but that emits carbon. Nuclear, as it stands, is the only solution to decarbonizing the energy grid for much of the world. Until some breakthrough in energy storage transpires, or fusion becomes feasible, fission plants remain necessary for decarbonization.
- ncmncm 5y ago
  Storage is a solved problem, and only needs to be built out. No such "breakthrough" is needed. Storage cost is falling much faster, even, than solar and wind generation. The only question today is whether to put a euro into solar or wind now, or into storage that will be much cheaper next year. Thus far, in most places, the former is still favored. More carbon tax can help move the choice the other way. As solar and wind costs continue down, synthesizing methane and kerosene from captured CO2 and synthetic hydrogen will shortly be cheaper than mining, refining, and transporting them, even without the carbon taxes. Synthesis of those, and of ammonia and hydrogen itself will absorb unlimited "overbuilt" peak generating capacity, and stocks of all of those serve also as storage. That their round-trip efficiency is less than, say, hydro or batteries matters little where they rarely need to be used for that.
  - Manuel_D 5y ago
    And which solution is that? Lithium ion batteries? To put this in perspective, global lithium ion battery output [1] annually doesn't amount to 1 hour's worth of US electricity usage (500 GWh). Hydroelectric storage? You essentially need to repurpose an alpine lake as a dam. That's geographically dependent, and it's dubious it'd scale well as viable hydro sites become more and more remote. The remaining things like electricity-to-gas, or thermal storage only exist in prototypes, and might not even be feasible let alone viable. In response to your edit: > As solar and wind costs continue down, synthesizing methane and kerosene from captured CO2 and synthetic hydrogen will shortly be cheaper than mining, refining, and transporting them, even without the carbon taxes. Synthesis of those, and of ammonia and hydrogen itself will absorb unlimited "overbuilt" peak generating capacity, and stocks of all of those serve as storage. Nobody has successfully built a grid-scale energy-to-gas plant, ever. It remains the stuff of prototypes. This approach is very much in the "hypothetical" phase. There are serious unsolved problems in energy-to-gas: * It needs a source of carbon to convert H2 to methane. This could come from biofuels, but those aren't available in sufficient supply. * Producing large quantities of hydrogen without CO2 emissions remains difficult. Almost all methane comes from steam reformation (CH4 + 2O2 -> CO2 + 2H2), which emits carbon dioxide. Electrolysis can't be done effectively. Currently, power to gas storage is way more expensive than either lithium ion or hydroelectric storage and it's unclear whether it'll ever be cheaper than existing options. 1. https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights/blog/top-electric-vehicle-markets-dominate-lithium-ion-battery-capacity-growth https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights...

by parksy 5y ago

YetAnotherNick 5y ago

jddil 5y ago
Next time start by not writing a comment that doesn't add value and is against HN rules. What in particular is wrong about their analysis?
- Octoth0rpe 5y ago
  For one, it assumes the average human consumes as much electricity as the average Finn.
  - somebodythere 5y ago
    The average human consumes much less energy than the average Finn. (Though that number is likely to grow as the world becomes more industrialized.)
  - parksy 5y ago
    That's a good point, people in Finland use more per capita than 80% of the global population, so if everyone were to have the same energy standards as Finland we'd probably need more like 10k reactors and 600 per year give or take. Or we stick with the status quo, force everyone into their lane, and probably need like 3000 to 4000 reactors to serve current needs, and 150 to 200 per year. Give or take. I think that's still in the same ballpark orders of magnitude-wise.
  - xupybd 5y ago
    You really could have added a lot of value here. Clearly you know a bit about the situation. Please try and bring your knowledge to the table not your offense at someone else's error. I seriously think you could have a lot to offer.
    - parksy 5y ago
      I also would like to be corrected in what my error was, for what it's worth.
    - dTal 5y ago
      The person you are replying to is not the same person as the one who made the content-free reply. You might want to follow your own advice.
      - xupybd 5y ago
        My apologies you're correct. I made an error.

T-A 5y ago

> assuming everyone uses the same amount of power globally as the average person in Finland which - why shouldn't they be able to Finland's climate is an outlier: One-third of energy consumption in housing was electricity in 2018. [...] 47% of electricity was used to heat indoor areas and 36% to household appliances. The remainder of electricity was used to heat domestic water and saunas. https://www.thenomadtoday.com/articulo/finland/energy-consumption-in-households-fell-further-in-2018/20191121151902003543.html https://www.thenomadtoday.com/articulo/finland/energy-consum...

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
parksy 5y ago
Here in Perth a good third or more of my electricity is keeping the house cool so some of that is going to average out. We don't have saunas but we do have hot water. There's going to be an obvious error of margin either side of my napkin calculations but I think the order of magnitude is in the ballpark.
- neoromantique 5y ago
  Cooling a house is more energy efficient than warming one
  - rhn_mk1 5y ago
    Isn't it the other way round?
    - krallja 5y ago
      It’s a question of temperature difference. Cooling a house from 40° to 20° uses approximately the same energy as heating it from 0° to 20°. But it gets much colder than 0° C in Finland, while it is very rare to have temperatures above 45° C anywhere in the world.

Archelaos 5y ago

How much more nuclear wast does that imply per decade? How many more meltdowns per decade?

pishpash 5y ago
And heat-polluted waste waters? People keep pretending there are no externalities.
- lazide 5y ago
  If the biggest externality is heated water in a subarctic climate, or nuclear waste that gets stored on-site indefinitely in casks and produces no notable leaks or accidents (like has been done in the US for a long time now), the externalities are way less than literally any other form of energy production. That includes Dams, solar power, geothermal, wind, you name it.
- seanmcdirmid 5y ago
  What prevents heated waste water from being used for…heat? Surely Finland uses central heating plants that pump hot water throughout the city (or maybe that’s just a Chinese/Russian thing?). What makes waste heat water less suited to heating, higher entropy?
  - Ekaros 5y ago
    I think it just not hot enough after electricity production. So temperature is not high enough after it passes through turbines. Specially due to distances involved.
  - ProblemFactory 5y ago
    Combined Heat and Power in Finland is very common, much more so than in rest of Europe. 80% of the fossil fuel power plants output both electricity and heated water. Compared to (quick googling) 8% in the US and 11% in EU.
  - RF_Savage 5y ago
    Fear of nuclear power. People don't want water heated by it in their homes. So it is not done. It's not a purely rational thing. The plants are also located away from cities, so utilizing the waste heat for district heating is uneconomical.

omgJustTest 5y ago

1.6GW is a pretty standard install in nuclear. For scale the largest nuclear install Kori is the current largest in operation at 7.4GWe installed capacity[2]. It achieved 74+% capacity last year which is an important point missed when looking at energy _delivered_ to the grid. By contrast US plants achieve much higher capacity factors, with Diablo Canyon in California producing 2.2 GWe at a _lifetime_ operation capacity factor of 90+%[1]. Scaling up nuclear, at high reliability is not such a stretch as some other energy scaling problems. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diablo_Canyon_Power_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diablo_Canyon_Power_Plant [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kori_Nuclear_Power_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kori_Nuclear_Power_Plant

acidburnNSA 5y ago
1.6 GWe is huge for a single nuclear reactor. EPRs are on the high end. Most nuclear reactors are closer to 1 GWe. Nuclear plants with multiple reactors on a site certainly do often go well above 1.6.
- throwaway473825 5y ago
  > EPRs are on the high end. This is an understatement. The three largest nuclear power reactors in the world (Taishan 1, Taishan 2 and Olkiluoto 3) are all EPRs.
  - bigbugbag 5y ago
    Taishan 1 has been shut down last summer due to what seems to be a design fault and may not be restarted. It is feared that all other current EPR suffer the same design mistake, but there are currently no plan to stop them.
    - pfdietz 5y ago
      China is not going to build any more EPRs. They are going with their home grown LWR design.

Manuel_D 5y ago

Right. But remember, not all forms of green energy generation are equal. Wind and solar need some dispatchable source as a backup. Hydro works, if you have it. But it's geographically limited. Gas is the typical backup source, but that emits carbon. Nuclear, as it stands, is the only solution to decarbonizing the energy grid for much of the world. Until some breakthrough in energy storage transpires, or fusion becomes feasible, fission plants remain necessary for decarbonization.

ncmncm 5y ago
Storage is a solved problem, and only needs to be built out. No such "breakthrough" is needed. Storage cost is falling much faster, even, than solar and wind generation. The only question today is whether to put a euro into solar or wind now, or into storage that will be much cheaper next year. Thus far, in most places, the former is still favored. More carbon tax can help move the choice the other way. As solar and wind costs continue down, synthesizing methane and kerosene from captured CO2 and synthetic hydrogen will shortly be cheaper than mining, refining, and transporting them, even without the carbon taxes. Synthesis of those, and of ammonia and hydrogen itself will absorb unlimited "overbuilt" peak generating capacity, and stocks of all of those serve also as storage. That their round-trip efficiency is less than, say, hydro or batteries matters little where they rarely need to be used for that.
- Manuel_D 5y ago
  And which solution is that? Lithium ion batteries? To put this in perspective, global lithium ion battery output [1] annually doesn't amount to 1 hour's worth of US electricity usage (500 GWh). Hydroelectric storage? You essentially need to repurpose an alpine lake as a dam. That's geographically dependent, and it's dubious it'd scale well as viable hydro sites become more and more remote. The remaining things like electricity-to-gas, or thermal storage only exist in prototypes, and might not even be feasible let alone viable. In response to your edit: > As solar and wind costs continue down, synthesizing methane and kerosene from captured CO2 and synthetic hydrogen will shortly be cheaper than mining, refining, and transporting them, even without the carbon taxes. Synthesis of those, and of ammonia and hydrogen itself will absorb unlimited "overbuilt" peak generating capacity, and stocks of all of those serve as storage. Nobody has successfully built a grid-scale energy-to-gas plant, ever. It remains the stuff of prototypes. This approach is very much in the "hypothetical" phase. There are serious unsolved problems in energy-to-gas: * It needs a source of carbon to convert H2 to methane. This could come from biofuels, but those aren't available in sufficient supply. * Producing large quantities of hydrogen without CO2 emissions remains difficult. Almost all methane comes from steam reformation (CH4 + 2O2 -> CO2 + 2H2), which emits carbon dioxide. Electrolysis can't be done effectively. Currently, power to gas storage is way more expensive than either lithium ion or hydroelectric storage and it's unclear whether it'll ever be cheaper than existing options. 1. https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights/blog/top-electric-vehicle-markets-dominate-lithium-ion-battery-capacity-growth https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights...