6 ms·

If nuclear used fewer raw materials nuke plants wouldn't be huge - huge - capital projects, wouldn't take years to come online, and wouldn't have huge cleanup c

If nuclear used fewer raw materials nuke plants wouldn't be huge - huge - capital projects, wouldn't take years to come online, and wouldn't have huge cleanup costs. If the money spent on nukes had been spent on renewables and on developing storage we wouldn't have these problems. This was predictable decades ago. The reality is that nukes are a political solution to a political problem. It's nice that they sometimes generate energy for a while, but there is no sense in which they've ever been a rational economic choice.

mathiasgredal 4y ago
Nuclear uses roughly an order of magnitude fewer ressources than wind, without factoring in storage: https://imgur.com/a/Kc2h21O https://imgur.com/a/Kc2h21O. Source: https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2017/03/f34/quadrennial-technology-review-2015_1.pdf https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2017/03/f34/quadrenn... (page 390)
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  You can't use a report from 2015 citing data from 2010 as indicative of a technology that has dropped in cost 10-fold and nearly doubled capacity factor since then. Additionally the overwhelming majority of that material is foundation and tower. Both of which can be reused by replacing the nacelle.
  - mathiasgredal 4y ago
    The Vestas V112-3MW from 2009 has a 42% capacity factor. I don’t know any modern wind turbines that has a capacity factor of 80%. https://www.thewindpower.net/turbine_en_413_vestas_v112-3000.php https://www.thewindpower.net/turbine_en_413_vestas_v112-3000... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humber_Gateway_Wind_Farm https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humber_Gateway_Wind_Farm
    - Schroedingersat 4y ago
      And this makes the point. A 2009 model turbine is a huge improvement on a retrospective on past history of plants that had been running for some time in 2010 https://www.vestas.com/content/dam/vestas-com/global/en/sustainability/reports-and-ratings/lcas/V1123%2045MW_Mk3a_ISO_LCA_Final_31072017.pdf.coredownload.inline.pdf https://www.vestas.com/content/dam/vestas-com/global/en/sust... A V112 has 40% lower materials per TWh (or ~30% for the lower wind configuration) than your report without considering modular foundations which would drop it by another factor of 3 or being able to reuse the foundation and tower at least once which would drop it by another 2. On the other end you're not considering Uranium mining or enrichment facilities or waste storage or that the metals are all recyclable immediately rather than half of them being LLW or SLIW.
      - mathiasgredal 4y ago
        Average capacity factor is basically an irrelevant metric. What is more important is the lowest seasonal capacity factor, since seasonal power storage doesn’t make sense. For the UK this is 25% for offshore wind: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/cms/asset/bd2bb73a-ef25-4c4b-9d32-36c672a1695f/we2685-fig-0004-m.jpg https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/cms/asset/bd2bb73a-ef25-4c4b... This means that we need to overbuild wind by >200%, to have the necessary power year round. Solar doesn’t work, since it is basically useless in the northern hemisphere during winter, and it needs a lot of battery storage during the night. There is also a week in February where there is no wind, which will require green methane production and gas peakers(edit: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunkelflaute https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunkelflaute) Nuclear can work year round with load following using a design like the Natrium reactor. This design also uses a lot less concrete than traditional NPP’s.
        Schroedingersat 4y ago
        Nice train you've got the goalposts on there. The wind and solar capacity factors are anti-correlated. There are areas in france where the december average is >2.6kWh/d. At 54kg/kWp a modern panel on a lightweight racking system gets this works out to 1800t/TWh and it's almost all glass you can build the same net wattage now for half the price and then use the money you save to replace in 30 years (or 50 if you take real world degradation rather than predicted). Having to recycle some glass once to decarbonize now ranther than in 20 years is a reasonable tradeoff for halving the costs. The gas plants are dirt cheap and that much solar would easily power enough electrolysis to fill your february gap during the 11 months of the year when it produces far more. The electrolysers will be needed in either case for ammonia, shipping, and SAF. If we're invoking technology that doesn't exist and costs several times more, just use something that does exist and costs several times more like a CSP plant and an HVDC cable. Additionally for the vast majority of the world which is in transmission range of somewhere arid, CSP is strictly cheaper than the easy part of a Natrium reactor.
Manuel_D 4y ago
Nuclear plants use very little raw materials relative to the amount of power the produce. When built at scale, nuclear plants have been delivered at prices around $1-2 billion dollars per GW of capacity. The cheapest form of carbon-free energy really depends on what the objective is: small reductions in a mostly fossil-fuel grid? Or total replacement of fossil fuels? Renewables are great for the former: you can throw up some solar panels or wind turbines and reduce a chunk of fossil fuels use. But once you try to start delivering significant portions of the energy grid through intermittent sources the surplus energy starts to get wasted, and the effectiveness drops.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  Nuclear is roughly equal to wind on a modular foundation if you account for the fact that the tower and foundation outlast the nacelle. The "$2/GW" nuclear reactors were all built by state run agencies with opaque budgets and in France's, Japan's, and South Korea's cases have all proved wildly unreliable in addition to having opaque public subsidy on top of the very large visible subsidies in the supply chain and finance. If you think it's possible to match the prices China reports that megaprojects cost, I'd like to see any examples of projects in the global north with auditable accounting matching their figures in hydro, or highways, or rail, or ports or... basically anything. In mediocre to good areas with something like the PEG racking system solar uses about the same raw material than nuclear already and it's almost all sand. By the time a new nuke came online this will be far less. Both are recyclable. 12 hour storage adds negligible mass and can easily cover daily variation. Intermittent power without storage can easily feed dispatchable loads like EV charging, chemical feedstock and heat production. These vastly exceed non-dispatchable electricity and can be used for virtual seasonal storage. There are only a small handful of areas best served by nuclear, and most of them have hydro or nuclear already. There's a narrow niche where nuclear is optimal: Grid electricity between 50% and 80% penetration in the 50% of areas where hybrid CSP + e-fuel backup isn't better. This niche is rapidly shrinking and could easily be gone by the time one is built. More carbon can be removed faster and with fewer resources by throwing renewables at the other 10 or so TW of fossil fuels currently being burnt. Until those resources are committed, new nuclear just delays things.

mathiasgredal 4y ago

Nuclear uses roughly an order of magnitude fewer ressources than wind, without factoring in storage: https://imgur.com/a/Kc2h21O https://imgur.com/a/Kc2h21O. Source: https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2017/03/f34/quadrennial-technology-review-2015_1.pdf https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2017/03/f34/quadrenn... (page 390)

Schroedingersat 4y ago
You can't use a report from 2015 citing data from 2010 as indicative of a technology that has dropped in cost 10-fold and nearly doubled capacity factor since then. Additionally the overwhelming majority of that material is foundation and tower. Both of which can be reused by replacing the nacelle.
- mathiasgredal 4y ago
  The Vestas V112-3MW from 2009 has a 42% capacity factor. I don’t know any modern wind turbines that has a capacity factor of 80%. https://www.thewindpower.net/turbine_en_413_vestas_v112-3000.php https://www.thewindpower.net/turbine_en_413_vestas_v112-3000... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humber_Gateway_Wind_Farm https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humber_Gateway_Wind_Farm
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    And this makes the point. A 2009 model turbine is a huge improvement on a retrospective on past history of plants that had been running for some time in 2010 https://www.vestas.com/content/dam/vestas-com/global/en/sustainability/reports-and-ratings/lcas/V1123%2045MW_Mk3a_ISO_LCA_Final_31072017.pdf.coredownload.inline.pdf https://www.vestas.com/content/dam/vestas-com/global/en/sust... A V112 has 40% lower materials per TWh (or ~30% for the lower wind configuration) than your report without considering modular foundations which would drop it by another factor of 3 or being able to reuse the foundation and tower at least once which would drop it by another 2. On the other end you're not considering Uranium mining or enrichment facilities or waste storage or that the metals are all recyclable immediately rather than half of them being LLW or SLIW.
    - mathiasgredal 4y ago
      Average capacity factor is basically an irrelevant metric. What is more important is the lowest seasonal capacity factor, since seasonal power storage doesn’t make sense. For the UK this is 25% for offshore wind: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/cms/asset/bd2bb73a-ef25-4c4b-9d32-36c672a1695f/we2685-fig-0004-m.jpg https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/cms/asset/bd2bb73a-ef25-4c4b... This means that we need to overbuild wind by >200%, to have the necessary power year round. Solar doesn’t work, since it is basically useless in the northern hemisphere during winter, and it needs a lot of battery storage during the night. There is also a week in February where there is no wind, which will require green methane production and gas peakers(edit: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunkelflaute https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunkelflaute) Nuclear can work year round with load following using a design like the Natrium reactor. This design also uses a lot less concrete than traditional NPP’s.
      - Schroedingersat 4y ago
        Nice train you've got the goalposts on there. The wind and solar capacity factors are anti-correlated. There are areas in france where the december average is >2.6kWh/d. At 54kg/kWp a modern panel on a lightweight racking system gets this works out to 1800t/TWh and it's almost all glass you can build the same net wattage now for half the price and then use the money you save to replace in 30 years (or 50 if you take real world degradation rather than predicted). Having to recycle some glass once to decarbonize now ranther than in 20 years is a reasonable tradeoff for halving the costs. The gas plants are dirt cheap and that much solar would easily power enough electrolysis to fill your february gap during the 11 months of the year when it produces far more. The electrolysers will be needed in either case for ammonia, shipping, and SAF. If we're invoking technology that doesn't exist and costs several times more, just use something that does exist and costs several times more like a CSP plant and an HVDC cable. Additionally for the vast majority of the world which is in transmission range of somewhere arid, CSP is strictly cheaper than the easy part of a Natrium reactor.

Manuel_D 4y ago

Nuclear plants use very little raw materials relative to the amount of power the produce. When built at scale, nuclear plants have been delivered at prices around $1-2 billion dollars per GW of capacity. The cheapest form of carbon-free energy really depends on what the objective is: small reductions in a mostly fossil-fuel grid? Or total replacement of fossil fuels? Renewables are great for the former: you can throw up some solar panels or wind turbines and reduce a chunk of fossil fuels use. But once you try to start delivering significant portions of the energy grid through intermittent sources the surplus energy starts to get wasted, and the effectiveness drops.

Schroedingersat 4y ago
Nuclear is roughly equal to wind on a modular foundation if you account for the fact that the tower and foundation outlast the nacelle. The "$2/GW" nuclear reactors were all built by state run agencies with opaque budgets and in France's, Japan's, and South Korea's cases have all proved wildly unreliable in addition to having opaque public subsidy on top of the very large visible subsidies in the supply chain and finance. If you think it's possible to match the prices China reports that megaprojects cost, I'd like to see any examples of projects in the global north with auditable accounting matching their figures in hydro, or highways, or rail, or ports or... basically anything. In mediocre to good areas with something like the PEG racking system solar uses about the same raw material than nuclear already and it's almost all sand. By the time a new nuke came online this will be far less. Both are recyclable. 12 hour storage adds negligible mass and can easily cover daily variation. Intermittent power without storage can easily feed dispatchable loads like EV charging, chemical feedstock and heat production. These vastly exceed non-dispatchable electricity and can be used for virtual seasonal storage. There are only a small handful of areas best served by nuclear, and most of them have hydro or nuclear already. There's a narrow niche where nuclear is optimal: Grid electricity between 50% and 80% penetration in the 50% of areas where hybrid CSP + e-fuel backup isn't better. This niche is rapidly shrinking and could easily be gone by the time one is built. More carbon can be removed faster and with fewer resources by throwing renewables at the other 10 or so TW of fossil fuels currently being burnt. Until those resources are committed, new nuclear just delays things.