6 ms·

You're comparing scheduled maintenance in a 90+% uptime system with intermittent, unpredictable, correlated, continuous fluctuations in power, with capacity fac

You're comparing scheduled maintenance in a 90+% uptime system with intermittent, unpredictable, correlated, continuous fluctuations in power, with capacity factors in the 10-30$ range of nameplate capacity. I have a great solution for nuke plant downtime, this is going to blow your mind, wait for it: for every 14 plants worth of power, built, drumroll please.... 15 plants! Then maintain them on a schedule.

pfdietz 4y ago
Solar/wind/batteries/hydrogen > nuclear The way you back up your $10/W nuclear plant is with $0.50/W simple cycle turbines, which can burn hydrogen. Or maybe $1/W combined cycle, if you want to do seasonal storage.
- flockonus 4y ago
  Not true, for new nuclear (LFTR / TMSR) at least it isn't. They are safe and reliable, also their output don't allow for building weapons.. it's about as good as it gets.
  - pfdietz 4y ago
    Lol. Yes, bring up concepts where we don't even have the demonstrated materials, never mind operating demonstration units, and claim they will be cheap. This is totally credible! /s
- __pache__ 4y ago
  hydrogen power plants ?
  - pfdietz 4y ago
    Yes. Of course the hydrogen needs to be made and stored, but storage of hydrogen underground is very cheap, about $1/kWh of storage capacity, two orders of magnitude lower than batteries.
    - __pache__ 4y ago
      that seems stupid compared to breeder reactors ??
      - pfdietz 4y ago
        The reverse is the case. In what way do you think this is stupid? It enables very cheap renewable energy to exploit its huge levelized cost advantage over nuclear yet still be able to cover the rare dark/calm periods the nuclear stans like to angst about. The key observation is that a simple cycle turbine power plant is about $0.50/W, some 20 times cheaper than a nuclear power plant. The fuel is of course much more expensive, but for backup supply that hardly matters.
        __pache__ 4y ago
        What is a breeder reactor?
        pfdietz 4y ago
        It's something that's even more expensive than today's burner reactors (which is why people built burner reactors, not breeders). It's a way to limit the increase in cost of power from nuclear as uranium gets scarce. It's not a way to make nuclear energy cheaper than it is today. Why did you think that breeders are better than using hydrogen for long period smoothing of renewable/demand mismatch?
        __pache__ 4y ago
        wow nuclear fuel is so plentiful it's cheaper to just burn it up? amazing
        pfdietz 4y ago
        The reason there's so little reprocessing these days is that separated plutonium has negative value. You have to pay more to fabricate fuel elements from it (MOX fuel) than you save in the cost of enriched uranium.
- trashtester 4y ago
  The current price of nuclear power in the US and Europe is almost entirely due to overregulation combined with decades of dwindling expertise, with a sprinkle of corruption on top. If we remove this regulatory sabotage, nuclear energy can be produced at about ~$30-40/MWh [1] (At 3% discount rate, and in the case of the US/Europe with the assumption that excessive regulation is scaled back a notch.). If we build enough, we could bring that below $30/MWh from the efficiency of scale. Green hydrogen tends to cost ~$100/MWh, just for the fuel. Building and operating the plants themselves comes on top of that. Even if the fuel comes down to $40/MWh by 2050, as predicted in this article[2], it will still be competitive with properly organized nuclear. [1] https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-aspects/economics-of-nuclear-power.aspx https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-aspec... [2] https://www.energytech.com/renewables/article/21238510/riding-currents-to-net-zero-economics-of-floating-wind-to-create-green-hydrogen https://www.energytech.com/renewables/article/21238510/ridin...
  - pfdietz 4y ago
    > The current price of nuclear power in the US and Europe is almost entirely due to overregulation And here I thought it was actually due to the manufacturers living in Fuckupstan, not being able to build their products at costs they had promised. The recent French experience with the EPR is astoundingly bad. Of course that cost could be lower if any screwup could be excused by greasing the appropriate regulatory palms. The regulation would be "over" in the sense that it adds to cost, but is it "over" in the sense of not being necessary? You do not have the contrafactual evidence of what nuclear safety would be like without that regulation. The first link you gave there presented assertions that French reactors were cheap back when they were building lots of them. But those cost figures are opaque and unauditable and cannot be used as evidence that the reactors actually cost what they claimed. Those making those claims had every motivation to lowball them. It's also improper to assume nuclear and renewables are assigned the same discount rate. Nuclear presents larger risks to investors (from technological obsolescence and from failure to complete the power plants at all), which should properly be accounted for by imposing higher interest rates. Assuming renewables and nuclear get the same interest rate is an implicit subsidy. Ultimately, the pronuclear antiregulatory position boils down to "why don't you just suck it up and let us subject you to more radiation, which really isn't bad? You're being so unfair!" One sees this in the whining about the LNT hypothesis for radiation effects.
Schroedingersat 4y ago
> You're comparing scheduled maintenance in a 90+% uptime system with intermittent, unpredictable, correlated, continuous fluctuations in power, with capacity factors in the 10-30$ range of nameplate capacity. https://pris.iaea.org/PRIS/WorldStatistics/ThreeYrsEnergyAvailabilityFactor.aspx https://pris.iaea.org/PRIS/WorldStatistics/ThreeYrsEnergyAva... And what happens when the same issue is found in all 15 plants that requires an immediate shutdown? What happens when you try to run more than 3TW of reactors for more than 4 fuel cycles? > I have a great solution for nuke plant downtime, this is going to blow your mind, wait for it: for every 14 plants worth of power, built, drumroll please.... 15 plants! Then maintain them on a schedule. So what's this about long distance transmission to join uncorrelated wind being completely unfeasible that nuclear stans keep harping on about?

pfdietz 4y ago

Solar/wind/batteries/hydrogen > nuclear The way you back up your $10/W nuclear plant is with $0.50/W simple cycle turbines, which can burn hydrogen. Or maybe $1/W combined cycle, if you want to do seasonal storage.

flockonus 4y ago
Not true, for new nuclear (LFTR / TMSR) at least it isn't. They are safe and reliable, also their output don't allow for building weapons.. it's about as good as it gets.
- pfdietz 4y ago
  Lol. Yes, bring up concepts where we don't even have the demonstrated materials, never mind operating demonstration units, and claim they will be cheap. This is totally credible! /s
__pache__ 4y ago
hydrogen power plants ?
- pfdietz 4y ago
  Yes. Of course the hydrogen needs to be made and stored, but storage of hydrogen underground is very cheap, about $1/kWh of storage capacity, two orders of magnitude lower than batteries.
  - __pache__ 4y ago
    that seems stupid compared to breeder reactors ??
    - pfdietz 4y ago
      The reverse is the case. In what way do you think this is stupid? It enables very cheap renewable energy to exploit its huge levelized cost advantage over nuclear yet still be able to cover the rare dark/calm periods the nuclear stans like to angst about. The key observation is that a simple cycle turbine power plant is about $0.50/W, some 20 times cheaper than a nuclear power plant. The fuel is of course much more expensive, but for backup supply that hardly matters.
      - __pache__ 4y ago
        What is a breeder reactor?
        pfdietz 4y ago
        It's something that's even more expensive than today's burner reactors (which is why people built burner reactors, not breeders). It's a way to limit the increase in cost of power from nuclear as uranium gets scarce. It's not a way to make nuclear energy cheaper than it is today. Why did you think that breeders are better than using hydrogen for long period smoothing of renewable/demand mismatch?
        __pache__ 4y ago
        wow nuclear fuel is so plentiful it's cheaper to just burn it up? amazing
        pfdietz 4y ago
        The reason there's so little reprocessing these days is that separated plutonium has negative value. You have to pay more to fabricate fuel elements from it (MOX fuel) than you save in the cost of enriched uranium.
trashtester 4y ago
The current price of nuclear power in the US and Europe is almost entirely due to overregulation combined with decades of dwindling expertise, with a sprinkle of corruption on top. If we remove this regulatory sabotage, nuclear energy can be produced at about ~$30-40/MWh [1] (At 3% discount rate, and in the case of the US/Europe with the assumption that excessive regulation is scaled back a notch.). If we build enough, we could bring that below $30/MWh from the efficiency of scale. Green hydrogen tends to cost ~$100/MWh, just for the fuel. Building and operating the plants themselves comes on top of that. Even if the fuel comes down to $40/MWh by 2050, as predicted in this article[2], it will still be competitive with properly organized nuclear. [1] https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-aspects/economics-of-nuclear-power.aspx https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-aspec... [2] https://www.energytech.com/renewables/article/21238510/riding-currents-to-net-zero-economics-of-floating-wind-to-create-green-hydrogen https://www.energytech.com/renewables/article/21238510/ridin...
- pfdietz 4y ago
  > The current price of nuclear power in the US and Europe is almost entirely due to overregulation And here I thought it was actually due to the manufacturers living in Fuckupstan, not being able to build their products at costs they had promised. The recent French experience with the EPR is astoundingly bad. Of course that cost could be lower if any screwup could be excused by greasing the appropriate regulatory palms. The regulation would be "over" in the sense that it adds to cost, but is it "over" in the sense of not being necessary? You do not have the contrafactual evidence of what nuclear safety would be like without that regulation. The first link you gave there presented assertions that French reactors were cheap back when they were building lots of them. But those cost figures are opaque and unauditable and cannot be used as evidence that the reactors actually cost what they claimed. Those making those claims had every motivation to lowball them. It's also improper to assume nuclear and renewables are assigned the same discount rate. Nuclear presents larger risks to investors (from technological obsolescence and from failure to complete the power plants at all), which should properly be accounted for by imposing higher interest rates. Assuming renewables and nuclear get the same interest rate is an implicit subsidy. Ultimately, the pronuclear antiregulatory position boils down to "why don't you just suck it up and let us subject you to more radiation, which really isn't bad? You're being so unfair!" One sees this in the whining about the LNT hypothesis for radiation effects.

Schroedingersat 4y ago

> You're comparing scheduled maintenance in a 90+% uptime system with intermittent, unpredictable, correlated, continuous fluctuations in power, with capacity factors in the 10-30$ range of nameplate capacity. https://pris.iaea.org/PRIS/WorldStatistics/ThreeYrsEnergyAvailabilityFactor.aspx https://pris.iaea.org/PRIS/WorldStatistics/ThreeYrsEnergyAva... And what happens when the same issue is found in all 15 plants that requires an immediate shutdown? What happens when you try to run more than 3TW of reactors for more than 4 fuel cycles? > I have a great solution for nuke plant downtime, this is going to blow your mind, wait for it: for every 14 plants worth of power, built, drumroll please.... 15 plants! Then maintain them on a schedule. So what's this about long distance transmission to join uncorrelated wind being completely unfeasible that nuclear stans keep harping on about?