5 ms·

While wind and solar will help, nuclear is really the dominant part of the solution, because of it's ability to work independent of local weather.

by tpmx 4y ago

Retric 4y ago
Nuclear has always had massive scaling issues because leaving base load power generation means ever lower capacity factors. Running a nuclear power plant with a 40% capacity factor more than doubles the cost per kWh. You can look at Frances ~70% average Capacity factor in 2 ways either it’s a ~30% cost premium over most of the rest of the world on every power plant. Or more realistically ~40% of generation was at the normal ~92% CF, and every plant after that was at lower capacity factors until the final power plant was costing ~3X as much per kWh. And that’s with them having largely non nuclear countries to export power to on nights and weekends. The economics look even worse if every country try’s to scale nuclear power. PS: I respect Frances investment in subsidizing nuclear power, but it’s important to understand the underlying economics if you want to scale nuclear power. The best option for a cheap nuclear grid is massive amounts of cheap storage.
- tpmx 4y ago
  Hello. "Nuclear has always had massive scaling issues because leaving base load power generation means ever lower capacity factors." So Swedish electricity generation used to be about 50% hydro and 50% nuclear. It worked really well for decades and made/kept us rich, despite our high salary costs due to the welfare state. Our industries had the benefits of very cheap and clean energy. The envy of the world! Then our stupid politicans shut down half of the nuclear capacity and tried to replace with wind. I honestly think that the root cause is that the individuals responsible for this did not understand the difference between power and energy. It obviously didn't work.
  - Retric 4y ago
    I largely agree. Sweden is close to a best case for nuclear as hydroelectric power can easily solve the dispatchable generation and solar isn’t viable. It’s still going to need significant subsides to hit 50%, but nowhere near what counties with less Hydro would need. They even have cold temperatures to boost power plant efficiency and make district heating very useful.
- TheSpiceIsLife 4y ago
  > You can look at Frances ~70% average Capacity factor in 2 ways either it’s a ~30% cost premium over most of the rest of the world on every power plant. Insufficient detail. You'd need to compare levelised costs, and work out whether government subsidies for this-or-that technology resulted in gains and loses that were better or worse than whatever else governments might have spent money on. There's a good argument to be made that cheap-to-the-end-user electricity is a net good for society, because they can then spend that money elsewhere rather than on boring old electricity. Besides all that, nuclear needs a lot of cooling capacity, and that's typically come from rivers / oceans, which, if I recall correctly, some rivers in France where recently too warm / insufficient flow to meet nuclear cooling demands. So nuclear isn't always a good fit for many reasons, but may be a good fit for many other reasons.
  - Retric 4y ago
    A county can’t subsidize it’s own power, it’s got to pay what it costs. Producers, distributors, and consumers of electricity within a county can receive subsides, but that runs into all the usual issues with planned economies. Arguing about how efficient subsides are vs other spending ignores the option to not spend the money and have consumers directly pay the bill. This normally results in greater efficiency because consumers can chose to say lower the thermostat and spend money on something else etc. People will argue for subsidies to deal with externalities, but markets can equally respond to simply taxing those externalities.
    - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
      > runs into all the usual issues with planned economies. Oh, and the war in Ukraine does not show the glaring weakness of 'Unplanned economy' and just choosing the cheapest supplier? Subsidies and incentives do not a planned economy make. Folks in the west seem to have taken the failure of hofhly corrupt planning system of USSR as an indication that they dont need to do any thinking or planning at all.
      - Retric 4y ago
- Melatonic 4y ago
  Honestly what we really need is something that we can pump that power into (not a battery - something productive I mean) so we can keep those reactors at higher efficiency levels. I do not know what that is but surely vast amounts of extra power could be used for something useful no? Research? Cleaning the air? Hot tubs for Walruses?
  - ncmncm 4y ago
    Excess power is most usefully applied capturing CO2 and desalinating water. But nukes' operating cost is too high for that. Spending a single year's operating cost on solar, and then using solar to do that work,leaves you with all subsequent years' opex available to use building out more solar.
  - andbberger 4y ago
    fuel synthesis
  - kevinak 4y ago
    Something that can turn on or off at a moments notice? Bitcoin mining is perfect and even subsidises the production costs :)
sangnoir 4y ago
Sounds like the ideal backup to me.
- ncmncm 4y ago
  Only if "ideal" means "massively expensive". Generally you want backup to not cost overmuch.
  - tpmx 4y ago
    Congrats on your 46th comment in this thread!
nikcub 4y ago
> because of it's ability to work independent of local weather. Just this summer the French had to shut down half of their nuclear reactors because of the heat https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/aug/03/edf-to-reduce-nuclear-power-output-as-french-river-temperatures-rise https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/aug/03/edf-to-redu...
- tpmx 4y ago
  Swedish nuclear reactors are all located at the North Sea or Baltic sea that's cold enough all year round, we don't have that issue. This is mostly an issue for ("partially") landlocked countries. Those french reactors use rivers for cooling. Also the summer period neatly coincides with the yearly maintenance period, so...
- ETH_start 4y ago
  This was to prevent the water in the rivers from heating up past the point where it's safe for wildlife. Nuclear plants that use ocean water for cooling don't have this problem.
otikik 4y ago
On the long term I was thinking more along the lines of aligning externalities and economy. On the short term we might need something before those nuclear plants are up and running.
mnw21cam 4y ago
So, I got interested, and did some calculations. In my neck of the woods (50 deg North, not as North as Sweden), I get a reasonable amount of sunlight. Let's just imagine that 1/3 of the days during winter I get 5 hours of sunlight. I'm going to ignore electricity and just concentrate on heating, because heat is way easier to store. From my meter readings, in the depths of winter I seem to use an average of 2.2kW-worth of gas, most of which goes to the boiler for hot water and heating. Some of it would go to cooking, but I'm guessing not much. So, if I wanted to collect that much heat from solar, assuming I get 5 hours every 3 days, I would need to collect 2.2×72/5 = 32kW while the sun is shining and then store it for use later. Sunlight is just over 1kW per square metre, so I'd have to have about 32 square metres of parabolic mirrors concentrating light onto a black water pipe. The South-facing side of my house is easily that big. Then storing it. Water is extremely good at storing heat. Water stores 4194J for each kilogram for each degree centigrade in temperature. If I were to get five 2.4m×1.2m×10cm polyurethane foam insulation boards, I could build an insulated box capable of taking a 2000l hot water tank, which could be put in a shed or something. If that were heated to 90 degrees centigrade, it would be able to return 80kWh of heat before dropping to 55 degrees (which is the lowest acceptable temperature to run a heating system at, before you get Legionnaire's disease). The insulation would lose about 250W, which is small compared to the heat demand from the house. Yes, there would be times when the stored heat runs out. A sensibly-designed system should hopefully be able to fall back onto the existing gas-fired heating when that happens. So, these numbers are all very feasible. It'd cost a fair bit to achieve, but it would probably pay itself back within a couple of years, which is way quicker than PV. One of the key factors in that is efficiency and cost. Collecting solar heat is very efficient and uses cheap materials. PV is expensive and still not very efficient. There are three main requirements for such a project: Enough sunlight when it is cold (and you can adjust the collecting surface area to compensate, so this basically means anywhere outside the polar circles). Enough space to put all the stuff (and as a corollary enough patience from family members to put up with it). And finally a suitable control system that pipes the heat around in an intelligent way, prevents the water tank being over-heated, falls back on gas when necessary, and satisfies the various building standards laws.

While wind and solar will help, nuclear is really the dominant part of the solution, because of it's ability to work independent of local weather.

by tpmx 4y ago

While wind and solar will help, nuclear is really the dominant part of the solution, because of it's ability to work independent of local weather.

Retric 4y ago

Nuclear has always had massive scaling issues because leaving base load power generation means ever lower capacity factors. Running a nuclear power plant with a 40% capacity factor more than doubles the cost per kWh. You can look at Frances ~70% average Capacity factor in 2 ways either it’s a ~30% cost premium over most of the rest of the world on every power plant. Or more realistically ~40% of generation was at the normal ~92% CF, and every plant after that was at lower capacity factors until the final power plant was costing ~3X as much per kWh. And that’s with them having largely non nuclear countries to export power to on nights and weekends. The economics look even worse if every country try’s to scale nuclear power. PS: I respect Frances investment in subsidizing nuclear power, but it’s important to understand the underlying economics if you want to scale nuclear power. The best option for a cheap nuclear grid is massive amounts of cheap storage.

tpmx 4y ago
Hello. "Nuclear has always had massive scaling issues because leaving base load power generation means ever lower capacity factors." So Swedish electricity generation used to be about 50% hydro and 50% nuclear. It worked really well for decades and made/kept us rich, despite our high salary costs due to the welfare state. Our industries had the benefits of very cheap and clean energy. The envy of the world! Then our stupid politicans shut down half of the nuclear capacity and tried to replace with wind. I honestly think that the root cause is that the individuals responsible for this did not understand the difference between power and energy. It obviously didn't work.
- Retric 4y ago
  I largely agree. Sweden is close to a best case for nuclear as hydroelectric power can easily solve the dispatchable generation and solar isn’t viable. It’s still going to need significant subsides to hit 50%, but nowhere near what counties with less Hydro would need. They even have cold temperatures to boost power plant efficiency and make district heating very useful.
TheSpiceIsLife 4y ago
> You can look at Frances ~70% average Capacity factor in 2 ways either it’s a ~30% cost premium over most of the rest of the world on every power plant. Insufficient detail. You'd need to compare levelised costs, and work out whether government subsidies for this-or-that technology resulted in gains and loses that were better or worse than whatever else governments might have spent money on. There's a good argument to be made that cheap-to-the-end-user electricity is a net good for society, because they can then spend that money elsewhere rather than on boring old electricity. Besides all that, nuclear needs a lot of cooling capacity, and that's typically come from rivers / oceans, which, if I recall correctly, some rivers in France where recently too warm / insufficient flow to meet nuclear cooling demands. So nuclear isn't always a good fit for many reasons, but may be a good fit for many other reasons.
- Retric 4y ago
  A county can’t subsidize it’s own power, it’s got to pay what it costs. Producers, distributors, and consumers of electricity within a county can receive subsides, but that runs into all the usual issues with planned economies. Arguing about how efficient subsides are vs other spending ignores the option to not spend the money and have consumers directly pay the bill. This normally results in greater efficiency because consumers can chose to say lower the thermostat and spend money on something else etc. People will argue for subsidies to deal with externalities, but markets can equally respond to simply taxing those externalities.
  - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
    > runs into all the usual issues with planned economies. Oh, and the war in Ukraine does not show the glaring weakness of 'Unplanned economy' and just choosing the cheapest supplier? Subsidies and incentives do not a planned economy make. Folks in the west seem to have taken the failure of hofhly corrupt planning system of USSR as an indication that they dont need to do any thinking or planning at all.
    - Retric 4y ago
Melatonic 4y ago
Honestly what we really need is something that we can pump that power into (not a battery - something productive I mean) so we can keep those reactors at higher efficiency levels. I do not know what that is but surely vast amounts of extra power could be used for something useful no? Research? Cleaning the air? Hot tubs for Walruses?
- ncmncm 4y ago
  Excess power is most usefully applied capturing CO2 and desalinating water. But nukes' operating cost is too high for that. Spending a single year's operating cost on solar, and then using solar to do that work,leaves you with all subsequent years' opex available to use building out more solar.
- andbberger 4y ago
  fuel synthesis
- kevinak 4y ago
  Something that can turn on or off at a moments notice? Bitcoin mining is perfect and even subsidises the production costs :)

sangnoir 4y ago

Sounds like the ideal backup to me.

ncmncm 4y ago
Only if "ideal" means "massively expensive". Generally you want backup to not cost overmuch.
- tpmx 4y ago
  Congrats on your 46th comment in this thread!

nikcub 4y ago

> because of it's ability to work independent of local weather. Just this summer the French had to shut down half of their nuclear reactors because of the heat https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/aug/03/edf-to-reduce-nuclear-power-output-as-french-river-temperatures-rise https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/aug/03/edf-to-redu...

tpmx 4y ago
Swedish nuclear reactors are all located at the North Sea or Baltic sea that's cold enough all year round, we don't have that issue. This is mostly an issue for ("partially") landlocked countries. Those french reactors use rivers for cooling. Also the summer period neatly coincides with the yearly maintenance period, so...
ETH_start 4y ago
This was to prevent the water in the rivers from heating up past the point where it's safe for wildlife. Nuclear plants that use ocean water for cooling don't have this problem.

otikik 4y ago

On the long term I was thinking more along the lines of aligning externalities and economy. On the short term we might need something before those nuclear plants are up and running.

mnw21cam 4y ago

So, I got interested, and did some calculations. In my neck of the woods (50 deg North, not as North as Sweden), I get a reasonable amount of sunlight. Let's just imagine that 1/3 of the days during winter I get 5 hours of sunlight. I'm going to ignore electricity and just concentrate on heating, because heat is way easier to store. From my meter readings, in the depths of winter I seem to use an average of 2.2kW-worth of gas, most of which goes to the boiler for hot water and heating. Some of it would go to cooking, but I'm guessing not much. So, if I wanted to collect that much heat from solar, assuming I get 5 hours every 3 days, I would need to collect 2.2×72/5 = 32kW while the sun is shining and then store it for use later. Sunlight is just over 1kW per square metre, so I'd have to have about 32 square metres of parabolic mirrors concentrating light onto a black water pipe. The South-facing side of my house is easily that big. Then storing it. Water is extremely good at storing heat. Water stores 4194J for each kilogram for each degree centigrade in temperature. If I were to get five 2.4m×1.2m×10cm polyurethane foam insulation boards, I could build an insulated box capable of taking a 2000l hot water tank, which could be put in a shed or something. If that were heated to 90 degrees centigrade, it would be able to return 80kWh of heat before dropping to 55 degrees (which is the lowest acceptable temperature to run a heating system at, before you get Legionnaire's disease). The insulation would lose about 250W, which is small compared to the heat demand from the house. Yes, there would be times when the stored heat runs out. A sensibly-designed system should hopefully be able to fall back onto the existing gas-fired heating when that happens. So, these numbers are all very feasible. It'd cost a fair bit to achieve, but it would probably pay itself back within a couple of years, which is way quicker than PV. One of the key factors in that is efficiency and cost. Collecting solar heat is very efficient and uses cheap materials. PV is expensive and still not very efficient. There are three main requirements for such a project: Enough sunlight when it is cold (and you can adjust the collecting surface area to compensate, so this basically means anywhere outside the polar circles). Enough space to put all the stuff (and as a corollary enough patience from family members to put up with it). And finally a suitable control system that pipes the heat around in an intelligent way, prevents the water tank being over-heated, falls back on gas when necessary, and satisfies the various building standards laws.