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> Where did you get these figures? The existing nuclear power production is 3,000 GW [1]. An increase by 50 GW would be less than 2% increase. On the note of ur

> Where did you get these figures? The existing nuclear power production is 3,000 GW [1]. An increase by 50 GW would be less than 2% increase. On the note of uranium, > 1. https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-fu https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-fu... 27,000 TWh per year production = 27,000 / (365 * 24) = 3,080 GW of production. First load. Not burn. You need ~100t of fuel or 750 to 1000 tonnes of natural Uranium per GW to start a reactor https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1034/ML103480530.pdf https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1034/ML103480530.pdf there are only around 8 million tonnes of reserves. > the energy density of uranium is such that fuel extraction is less than 1% of nuclear's total cost (fuel enrichment, is a different story, but that's not a mineral extraction problem). Available infrastructure not cost. Also total reserves can bring maybe 2TW online in short order if production is increased tenfold, but then you only have 20 years of fuel with maybe another decade if you reprocess all of it. Asserting that it's 1% of the cost is asserting that it will always be at least as expensive as Hinkley. Current fuel costs are $4 to $10 per MWh depending on reactor, and the last time demand spiked even a little bit, that doubled. Asserting that fuel costs will remain at 1% if you try to increase production 10-fold is asserting that your new reactor will have an LCOE of at least $1000/MWh. > ... 27,000 TWh per year production = 27,000 / (365 * 24) = 3,080 GW of production. FYI You dropped an order of magnitude there. It's 308GW (about 400GW nameplate). Easy to do. > I don't think you realize how pitifully small 50 GW is. the United States' electricity production is 500 GW on average. So the entire world's battery production would take 10 years to provision just the United States' demand. And the figure of 4 hours of storage is way more optimistic than realistic explanations. Similar here (probably my fault for mentioning a 10-20hr storage). 400GWh/yr (previous year's output) would take 5 years for 4hr, production that has just opened would take 2.5yr or 20yr for the world's current electricity. > Not only can nuclear match the scale that's required, it did match the scale required in France, Sweden, and other countries. And there's plenty of battery production capacity for a single country, so this is irrelevant. The largest number of nuclear reactors that has ever come online in a single year is around 35GW (or about 25-30GW net). If 50GW is insignificant, then the nuclear industry is not even worth mentioning. > By comparison wind and solar combined are still outproduced by nuclear power both in the US and in the world as a whole [2]. Your wiki article is a few years out of date. Wind and solar outproduce nuclear now, and most of that capacity has been installed in under a decade vs around 30 years for the nuclear industry to achieve most of its capacity. So I ask again. How do you propose adding even 100GW of low carbon capacity per year just to match renewables now? Your proposed solution is currently at roughly 5% of the current scale of the renewable industry, and the existing critical mineral supply chains would need to be expanded at least 300% to match it.

deleted 4y ago
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Manuel_D 4y ago
> First load. Not burn. You need ~100t of fuel or 750 to 1000 tonnes of natural Uranium per GW to start a reactor https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1034/ML103480530.pdf https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1034/ML103480530.pdf there are only around 8 million tonnes of reserves. Your link says nothing about a first load taking 100 tons of fuel. But hey, even with these exaggerated figures, 8 million tons is enough for 8,000 GW of nuclear power. Only 2,000 GW is necessary for the world to achieve a 100% decarbonized energy production (the remaining 500 GW is fulfilled by hydroelectricity). > Similar here (probably my fault for mentioning a 10-20hr storage). 400GWh/yr (previous year's output) would take 5 years for 4hr, production that has just opened would take 2.5yr or 20yr for the world's current electricity. Again, your figure of 4 hours is overly optimistic and you give nothing to back it up. And that's 20 years of dedicating 100% of global battery production to storage. That means a complete stopping of EV production and no batteries for electronics, etc. This is not feasible. > So I ask again. How do you propose adding even 100GW of low carbon capacity per year just to match renewables now? Your proposed solution is currently at roughly 5% of the current scale of the renewable industry, and the existing critical mineral supply chains would need to be expanded at least 300% to match it. Expanding a mineral supply chain by 300% is more than an order of magnitude easier than the 5,000 - 8,000% expansion that renewables require. Furthermore, the energy density of uranium is such that alternative extraction methods are viable: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2016/07/01/uranium-seawater-extraction-makes-nuclear-power-completely-renewable/?sh=6f67768159ae https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2016/07/01/uranium-s... They're more expensive than mining, but the cost of extraction is such a small part of nuclear's cost that it doesn't increase the cost significantly.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  > Your link says nothing about a first load taking 100 tons of fuel Page 8. Fuel Weight. > Only 2,000 GW is necessary for the world to achieve a 100% decarbonized energy production (the remaining 500 GW is fulfilled by hydroelectricity). That's current electricity demand. What about the other 14TW of primary energy? What about a kW or two each for the other 4 billion people that don't have that resource yet? Also once you build your 2TW you still need to run them. If they all get around 65MWd/kg you'll need 300,000t of Uranium a year (6x current production) so you have 16 years left. > Again, your figure of 4 hours is overly optimistic and you give nothing to back it up. 4 hours is a benchmark to roll out a grid with majority wind and solar without destabilization. Depending on existing hydro/etc it permits 50-80% wind and solar share. The actual solution for long term storage (hydrogen and ammonia) can be discussed once what is possible has been established. We can assume 12hr storage if you please. Last year's battery production would provide 12hrs for 33GW (historic peak of nuclear construction) and current manufacturing base would provide 80GW (quite close to the renewables that have been installed in the last year but not run for a whole year to get capacity figures). > And that's 20 years of dedicating 100% of global battery production to storage. That means a complete stopping of EV production and no batteries for electronics, etc. This is not feasible. That's just the rate from the factories that have been online for a year, there's almost a TW online now and several more TW being built. And that's only lithium battery (other technologies are not yet proven at scale but are building their first 100MWh~20GWh demo projects now which put together exceed the scale of new nuclear builds substantially). > Expanding a mineral supply chain by 300% is more than an order of magnitude easier than the 5,000 - 8,000% expansion that renewables require. That's 300% to match last year's production (which is 50GW of new net generation with 8hrs of battery produced per GW). To match your claimed need of an 80x multiple (so 32TWh/yr of battery for some reason you've never stated) you'd need 4TW of new nuclear per year which is 65x current production. You'd also need to triple sulfuric acid production, add 50% to silver production and double indium production. Luckily we only need a few hundred GW a year (of which the nuclear industry is capable of providing 10% or so). And even more luckily the gas infrastructure won't vanish overnight, so a few hours or even no storage can replace the majority with the rest to follow later. Even more luckily there's 500GW of hydro that can become pure dispatch or virtual storage for up to 2TW of pure renewables and 300-400GW of nuclear that can help. > Furthermore, the energy density of uranium is such that alternative extraction methods are viable: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2016/07/01/uranium-s https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2016/07/01/uranium-s... You can process 250 trillion litres of water and extract the rare minerals for under a quarter billion dollars to bring 1GW of nuclear power online and run it affordably? That's great, we can use the 50000t of lithium you'll find to make 700GWh of batteries. Shortage solved. We don't even need sodium ion. Thanks. Edit: I just read your source. The exotic polymer you mentioned can gather 10g/kg of Uranium before it wears out. So you're effectively saying just pour 1% of global plastic production directly into the ocean to match current renewable capacity growth, or 10% of global plastic production for 500GW/year (and then continue pouring 40,000,000 tonnes of plastic into the ocean every year).

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Manuel_D 4y ago

> First load. Not burn. You need ~100t of fuel or 750 to 1000 tonnes of natural Uranium per GW to start a reactor https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1034/ML103480530.pdf https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1034/ML103480530.pdf there are only around 8 million tonnes of reserves. Your link says nothing about a first load taking 100 tons of fuel. But hey, even with these exaggerated figures, 8 million tons is enough for 8,000 GW of nuclear power. Only 2,000 GW is necessary for the world to achieve a 100% decarbonized energy production (the remaining 500 GW is fulfilled by hydroelectricity). > Similar here (probably my fault for mentioning a 10-20hr storage). 400GWh/yr (previous year's output) would take 5 years for 4hr, production that has just opened would take 2.5yr or 20yr for the world's current electricity. Again, your figure of 4 hours is overly optimistic and you give nothing to back it up. And that's 20 years of dedicating 100% of global battery production to storage. That means a complete stopping of EV production and no batteries for electronics, etc. This is not feasible. > So I ask again. How do you propose adding even 100GW of low carbon capacity per year just to match renewables now? Your proposed solution is currently at roughly 5% of the current scale of the renewable industry, and the existing critical mineral supply chains would need to be expanded at least 300% to match it. Expanding a mineral supply chain by 300% is more than an order of magnitude easier than the 5,000 - 8,000% expansion that renewables require. Furthermore, the energy density of uranium is such that alternative extraction methods are viable: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2016/07/01/uranium-seawater-extraction-makes-nuclear-power-completely-renewable/?sh=6f67768159ae https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2016/07/01/uranium-s... They're more expensive than mining, but the cost of extraction is such a small part of nuclear's cost that it doesn't increase the cost significantly.

Schroedingersat 4y ago
> Your link says nothing about a first load taking 100 tons of fuel Page 8. Fuel Weight. > Only 2,000 GW is necessary for the world to achieve a 100% decarbonized energy production (the remaining 500 GW is fulfilled by hydroelectricity). That's current electricity demand. What about the other 14TW of primary energy? What about a kW or two each for the other 4 billion people that don't have that resource yet? Also once you build your 2TW you still need to run them. If they all get around 65MWd/kg you'll need 300,000t of Uranium a year (6x current production) so you have 16 years left. > Again, your figure of 4 hours is overly optimistic and you give nothing to back it up. 4 hours is a benchmark to roll out a grid with majority wind and solar without destabilization. Depending on existing hydro/etc it permits 50-80% wind and solar share. The actual solution for long term storage (hydrogen and ammonia) can be discussed once what is possible has been established. We can assume 12hr storage if you please. Last year's battery production would provide 12hrs for 33GW (historic peak of nuclear construction) and current manufacturing base would provide 80GW (quite close to the renewables that have been installed in the last year but not run for a whole year to get capacity figures). > And that's 20 years of dedicating 100% of global battery production to storage. That means a complete stopping of EV production and no batteries for electronics, etc. This is not feasible. That's just the rate from the factories that have been online for a year, there's almost a TW online now and several more TW being built. And that's only lithium battery (other technologies are not yet proven at scale but are building their first 100MWh~20GWh demo projects now which put together exceed the scale of new nuclear builds substantially). > Expanding a mineral supply chain by 300% is more than an order of magnitude easier than the 5,000 - 8,000% expansion that renewables require. That's 300% to match last year's production (which is 50GW of new net generation with 8hrs of battery produced per GW). To match your claimed need of an 80x multiple (so 32TWh/yr of battery for some reason you've never stated) you'd need 4TW of new nuclear per year which is 65x current production. You'd also need to triple sulfuric acid production, add 50% to silver production and double indium production. Luckily we only need a few hundred GW a year (of which the nuclear industry is capable of providing 10% or so). And even more luckily the gas infrastructure won't vanish overnight, so a few hours or even no storage can replace the majority with the rest to follow later. Even more luckily there's 500GW of hydro that can become pure dispatch or virtual storage for up to 2TW of pure renewables and 300-400GW of nuclear that can help. > Furthermore, the energy density of uranium is such that alternative extraction methods are viable: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2016/07/01/uranium-s https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2016/07/01/uranium-s... You can process 250 trillion litres of water and extract the rare minerals for under a quarter billion dollars to bring 1GW of nuclear power online and run it affordably? That's great, we can use the 50000t of lithium you'll find to make 700GWh of batteries. Shortage solved. We don't even need sodium ion. Thanks. Edit: I just read your source. The exotic polymer you mentioned can gather 10g/kg of Uranium before it wears out. So you're effectively saying just pour 1% of global plastic production directly into the ocean to match current renewable capacity growth, or 10% of global plastic production for 500GW/year (and then continue pouring 40,000,000 tonnes of plastic into the ocean every year).