5 ms·

>Fission power is much more expensive than wind and solar and takes way longer to get online It is also far more reliable, consistent, scaleable, and does not

>Fission power is much more expensive than wind and solar and takes way longer to get online It is also far more reliable, consistent, scaleable, and does not require grid scale energy storage. Wind and solar will always be just one piece of the puzzle until these issues are resolved.

pfdietz 4y ago
On the very large scale is not as scalable with current technology compared to renewables, since the uranium runs out before access to sunlight runs out. Breeders are needed, and we have exactly two working commercial scale fast reactors in the world. For Japan alone that's not a problem though.
- panick21_ 4y ago
  Not really the case. With reprocessing of current waste more fuel could be made easily. And we could find more U-235 if demand really went up.
  - pfdietz 4y ago
    Reprocessing of thermal burner reactor fuel causes only a marginal extension of the uranium resource. What would be needed are breeder reactors operating with a breeding ratio > 1. Otherwise, the vast majority of the 238U cannot be used.
cauch 4y ago
I think it's incorrect to say that nuclear does not require energy storage. The energy demand is not flat, it has peaks. If you don't flatten these peaks with storage, you need to build a production system that should be able to generate enough energy during the peak, but then, some of the generators will have to be turned off the rest of the time. To illustrate the idea, let me invent some numbers: with storage, you have, let's say, 10 power plants to build that are running relatively all the time, producing an integrated total of electricity of, let's say, 100. So, if you paid X$ for building the 10 power plants, you will have X/100 per unit of electricity. Without storage, you may end up with, let's say, 15 power plants, but some are turned off 90% of the time. At the end, you also produce an integrated total of electricity of 100 (the integral is the same, the time of consumption is just shifted to create peaks). The cost of build is now 1.5X, and you will have to 1.5X/100 per unit of electricity. On top of that, turning on and off a nuclear plant is less efficient than producing continuously, so the price of electricity increase even more. So, even with nuclear, storage needs to be built. Once the storage is built, it means that the problem of intermittence of renewable is way less problematic.
- neilwilson 4y ago
  You export the electricity. Either directly, or by bottling it. Excess power always has a use.
  - cauch 4y ago
    Well, you cannot really export it if no one around needs it because they also are not in a peak. If they rely on importing electricity when in non-peak time, what do they do in peak time? By construction, the non-peak time is the worse time to export. Unless you export to a different part of the world, but then, the same argument works with renewable (said simply: if you can export at midnight to a country where it is 4pm, then you can use solar and import at midnight from a country where it is 4pm). What do you mean by "bottling it"? Do you mean storage? Because that's exactly what I'm saying.
    - ramesh31 4y ago
      >What do you mean by "bottling it"? Aluminum production, for one example. Bauxite is so cheap and abundant that the cost of aluminum is almost entirely in the electricity required for smelting. And because aluminum is such a critical material for industry, it is effectively equivalent to energy exportation. This is why tiny Iceland is a top 10 global exporter of it: abundant free geothermal energy with nowhere else to go.
      - cauch 4y ago
        Yes. It's basically demand response based on turning on and off factories.
      - nradov 4y ago
        No one is going to invest in an aluminum plant unless they have some assurance of cheap electric power for many years. The capital expense and fixed operating costs for those plants are tremendous. It's not economical to start and stop production on a daily basis as power prices fluctuate. How would you even schedule the production workers? And you still have to pay things like property taxes and insurance whether the plant is producing or not.
deleted 4y ago
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pfdietz 4y ago

On the very large scale is not as scalable with current technology compared to renewables, since the uranium runs out before access to sunlight runs out. Breeders are needed, and we have exactly two working commercial scale fast reactors in the world. For Japan alone that's not a problem though.

panick21_ 4y ago
Not really the case. With reprocessing of current waste more fuel could be made easily. And we could find more U-235 if demand really went up.
- pfdietz 4y ago
  Reprocessing of thermal burner reactor fuel causes only a marginal extension of the uranium resource. What would be needed are breeder reactors operating with a breeding ratio > 1. Otherwise, the vast majority of the 238U cannot be used.

cauch 4y ago

I think it's incorrect to say that nuclear does not require energy storage. The energy demand is not flat, it has peaks. If you don't flatten these peaks with storage, you need to build a production system that should be able to generate enough energy during the peak, but then, some of the generators will have to be turned off the rest of the time. To illustrate the idea, let me invent some numbers: with storage, you have, let's say, 10 power plants to build that are running relatively all the time, producing an integrated total of electricity of, let's say, 100. So, if you paid X$ for building the 10 power plants, you will have X/100 per unit of electricity. Without storage, you may end up with, let's say, 15 power plants, but some are turned off 90% of the time. At the end, you also produce an integrated total of electricity of 100 (the integral is the same, the time of consumption is just shifted to create peaks). The cost of build is now 1.5X, and you will have to 1.5X/100 per unit of electricity. On top of that, turning on and off a nuclear plant is less efficient than producing continuously, so the price of electricity increase even more. So, even with nuclear, storage needs to be built. Once the storage is built, it means that the problem of intermittence of renewable is way less problematic.

neilwilson 4y ago
You export the electricity. Either directly, or by bottling it. Excess power always has a use.
- cauch 4y ago
  Well, you cannot really export it if no one around needs it because they also are not in a peak. If they rely on importing electricity when in non-peak time, what do they do in peak time? By construction, the non-peak time is the worse time to export. Unless you export to a different part of the world, but then, the same argument works with renewable (said simply: if you can export at midnight to a country where it is 4pm, then you can use solar and import at midnight from a country where it is 4pm). What do you mean by "bottling it"? Do you mean storage? Because that's exactly what I'm saying.
  - ramesh31 4y ago
    >What do you mean by "bottling it"? Aluminum production, for one example. Bauxite is so cheap and abundant that the cost of aluminum is almost entirely in the electricity required for smelting. And because aluminum is such a critical material for industry, it is effectively equivalent to energy exportation. This is why tiny Iceland is a top 10 global exporter of it: abundant free geothermal energy with nowhere else to go.
    - cauch 4y ago
      Yes. It's basically demand response based on turning on and off factories.
    - nradov 4y ago
      No one is going to invest in an aluminum plant unless they have some assurance of cheap electric power for many years. The capital expense and fixed operating costs for those plants are tremendous. It's not economical to start and stop production on a daily basis as power prices fluctuate. How would you even schedule the production workers? And you still have to pay things like property taxes and insurance whether the plant is producing or not.

deleted 4y ago

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