5 ms·

> Batteries are about 1000x more useful on the grid than nuclear, Citation needed! Also: did you know that all existing commercial nuclear plants can ramp up a

> Batteries are about 1000x more useful on the grid than nuclear, Citation needed! Also: did you know that all existing commercial nuclear plants can ramp up and down in power at about 2-3% (~25 MWe) per minute? They often simply choose not to because the current market structure doesn't incentivize them to. Add a price to low-carbon load following and all the plants in the US will start doing it. Batteries have a big disadvantage in that they do not generate any electricity. They also have pretty miserable energy density, which correlates eventually to chemical waste. To store power in batteries for a night in the US, you'd need many thousands of skyscrapers full of batteries.

cycomanic 3y ago
> > Batteries are about 1000x more useful on the grid than nuclear, > Citation needed! Also: did you know that all existing commercial nuclear plants can ramp up and down in power at about 2-3% (~25 MWe) per minute? They often simply choose not to because the current market structure doesn't incentivize them to. That's a nice way of saying that nuclear power is much too expensive to not run plants at maximum capacity all the time. >Add a price to low-carbon load following and all the plants in the US will start doing it. Citation needed. Considering the price of wind or solar, investors are much mor elikley to over provision using those technologies. Nuscale just had to axe their SMR (supposedly the future of nuclear) project in Idaho, because they couldn't find subscribers and their cost of overrunning massively. > Batteries have a big disadvantage in that they do not generate any electricity. They also have pretty miserable energy density, which correlates eventually to chemical waste. To store power in batteries for a night in the US, you'd need many thousands of skyscrapers full of batteries. Except you don't need to store the power to run all of the US for a night, you're just making a strawman.
- mpweiher 3y ago
  > That's a nice way of saying that nuclear power is much too expensive to not run plants at maximum capacity all the time. Nope. It means that the variable costs are low. The fuel costs for a nuclear plant are so low that it’s essentially free. Which is also the primary reason we throw away 95% of the fuel unused: given the low cost of fuel, recycling just isn’t viable. And again, not because recycling is so expensive, but because new fuel is so cheap.
  - cycomanic 3y ago
    Yes the variable costs are low _compared to the fixed costs_. That's the point I made. If you bought a nuclear power plant for $10 billion and your calculation to get an ROI requires that you make $100 per MWh running at 80% load factor, you will not be willing to run your plant only at 50% of the time, because it does not make economic sense. Variable costs are irrelevant in this case.
    - mpweiher 3y ago
      No. The variable costs are not low because the fixed costs are too expensive, which was what you wrote before and what you imply here. The variable costs are low because fuel is incredibly cheap for the amount of power you get out of it. So you get the ratio correct, but miss on the cause for that ratio.
  - lupusreal 3y ago
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ViewTrick1002 3y ago
> Also: did you know that all existing commercial nuclear plants can ramp up and down in power at about 2-3% (~25 MWe) per minute? How often can they repeatedly ramp without getting into trouble with reactor poisoning? To load follow with nuclear France devised an entire scheme where their monopoly owner would let reactors take turns reducing their output. Then on top of that the fueling schedule is synced since the later a reactor is in the fuel lifecycle the less it can ramp. Try that on a free market.
- troupo 3y ago
  > How often can they repeatedly ramp without getting into trouble with reactor poisoning? Every day, several times a day. That is literally the requirement for modern reactors (where modern means any reactor in the past 30 years, or more, and most retrofitted reactors from previous years) Graph and text on page 8: https://www.oecd-nea.org/upload/docs/application/pdf/2021-12/technical_and_economic_aspects_of_load_following_with_nuclear_power_plants.pdf https://www.oecd-nea.org/upload/docs/application/pdf/2021-12...

cycomanic 3y ago

> > Batteries are about 1000x more useful on the grid than nuclear, > Citation needed! Also: did you know that all existing commercial nuclear plants can ramp up and down in power at about 2-3% (~25 MWe) per minute? They often simply choose not to because the current market structure doesn't incentivize them to. That's a nice way of saying that nuclear power is much too expensive to not run plants at maximum capacity all the time. >Add a price to low-carbon load following and all the plants in the US will start doing it. Citation needed. Considering the price of wind or solar, investors are much mor elikley to over provision using those technologies. Nuscale just had to axe their SMR (supposedly the future of nuclear) project in Idaho, because they couldn't find subscribers and their cost of overrunning massively. > Batteries have a big disadvantage in that they do not generate any electricity. They also have pretty miserable energy density, which correlates eventually to chemical waste. To store power in batteries for a night in the US, you'd need many thousands of skyscrapers full of batteries. Except you don't need to store the power to run all of the US for a night, you're just making a strawman.

mpweiher 3y ago
> That's a nice way of saying that nuclear power is much too expensive to not run plants at maximum capacity all the time. Nope. It means that the variable costs are low. The fuel costs for a nuclear plant are so low that it’s essentially free. Which is also the primary reason we throw away 95% of the fuel unused: given the low cost of fuel, recycling just isn’t viable. And again, not because recycling is so expensive, but because new fuel is so cheap.
- cycomanic 3y ago
  Yes the variable costs are low _compared to the fixed costs_. That's the point I made. If you bought a nuclear power plant for $10 billion and your calculation to get an ROI requires that you make $100 per MWh running at 80% load factor, you will not be willing to run your plant only at 50% of the time, because it does not make economic sense. Variable costs are irrelevant in this case.
  - mpweiher 3y ago
    No. The variable costs are not low because the fixed costs are too expensive, which was what you wrote before and what you imply here. The variable costs are low because fuel is incredibly cheap for the amount of power you get out of it. So you get the ratio correct, but miss on the cause for that ratio.
- lupusreal 3y ago
  [dead]

ViewTrick1002 3y ago

> Also: did you know that all existing commercial nuclear plants can ramp up and down in power at about 2-3% (~25 MWe) per minute? How often can they repeatedly ramp without getting into trouble with reactor poisoning? To load follow with nuclear France devised an entire scheme where their monopoly owner would let reactors take turns reducing their output. Then on top of that the fueling schedule is synced since the later a reactor is in the fuel lifecycle the less it can ramp. Try that on a free market.

troupo 3y ago
> How often can they repeatedly ramp without getting into trouble with reactor poisoning? Every day, several times a day. That is literally the requirement for modern reactors (where modern means any reactor in the past 30 years, or more, and most retrofitted reactors from previous years) Graph and text on page 8: https://www.oecd-nea.org/upload/docs/application/pdf/2021-12/technical_and_economic_aspects_of_load_following_with_nuclear_power_plants.pdf https://www.oecd-nea.org/upload/docs/application/pdf/2021-12...