12 ms·

Of course if they had a nuclear base they wouldn't even need the natural gas plants.

helloooooooo 3y ago
How would they regulate fluctuations in demand? Nuclear can’t do that. You need storage, or a reasonably scalable generation medium. Nuclear as a base load is moot
- flextheruler 3y ago
  Didn’t Germany just put its nuclear power plants on standby instead of shutting them down last year
- kuchenbecker 3y ago
  Control rods modulate the output.
  - malfist 3y ago
    Not quickly
    - flashback2199 3y ago
      Not great, not terrible
  - fomine3 3y ago
    Fuel cost is a somewhat minor cost for nuclear plants, so it's not much worth to do it
- robocat 3y ago
  > Nuclear can’t do that You are repeating a myth. Load following is used in France: https://www.oecd-nea.org/nea-news/2011/29-2/nea-news-29-2-load-following-e.pdf https://www.oecd-nea.org/nea-news/2011/29-2/nea-news-29-2-lo... It mostly isn't used in the US due to regulations. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36254716 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36254716 The reason load following is not generally used is because because the economics of nuclear (large fixed costs) favour base load.
  - bobthepanda 3y ago
    It’s mentioned that it runs the equipment harder, and France did have to shut down a large number of plants for maintenance recently: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-11/french-nuclear-revival-hits-trouble-as-new-reactor-defects-found?embedded-checkout=true https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-11/french-nu...
    - natmaka 3y ago
      Load-following runs the equipment harder, indeed. There are safety-related limits (power modulation proportion, duration of a pause needed after each modulation, modulations frequency...) to nuclear load-following capacity, and the very combustible status is a major parameter. Pertinent document (French ahead!): https://www.sfen.org/rgn/expertise-nucleaire-francaise-suivi-charge-seduit-europe/ https://www.sfen.org/rgn/expertise-nucleaire-francaise-suivi... Quote: « un réacteur peut varier de 100 % à 20 % de puissance en une demi-heure, et remonter aussi vite après un palier d’au moins deux heures, et ce deux fois par jour » Proposed translation: "a reactor power output can vary from 100% to 20% in 30 minutes, then after 2 hours can go back to 100% at the same speed, and can cycle this way 2 times per day". This is quite a good performance when it comes to load-following (French engineers are very good at this), however it is insufficient in the real world (save any ridiculously expensive over-provision of nuclear reactor, most idling) and very weak compared to gas turbines performances. Even in nuclear-packed France (which exports electricity) fossil fuels are also burnt in order to produce electricity since nuclear's inception, for most of the load-following and peak (about 9% in 2021), and it would be much worse without hydro. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-elec-by-source?country=~FRA https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-elec-by-source?coun... On the other hand green hydrogen (produced by intermittent renewables at over-electric-generation time) can be stored then used at insufficient-generation time.
  - pydry 3y ago
    You can technically use nuclear power plants as load followers in much thr same way that you can technically keep warm by setting $50 bills on fire. Load following with a nuclear plant basically means provisioning a 2GW plant and then using, say, 0.5GW of that - throwing away the rest. (since the vast majority of the cost is capex not fuel) Every kilowatt hour produced by that 2GW power plant is already 5x the cost of a kilowatt hour produced by a wind farm. If you assume it is used for load following that goes from 5x-20x depending on capacity utilization. Pumping water uphill (snowy 2, coire glas, etc) is way way WAY cheaper and the geography to do that is ridiculously common. Electrolyzing water and storing hydrogen underground is way cheaper too, and can be stored for months cheaply.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
ajross 3y ago
Nuclear is emphatically not an instant-on hot backup. Plants take time to spool up, and very importantly time to cool down. Fukushima happened because you can't just turn a reactor off, it produces energy that has to go somewhere while the intermediate fission products decay over hours-to-days.
- avar 3y ago
  In this scenario you could just run the nuclear plant all the time, but just direct its electric production to heating a giant pool of water or whatever. Then when the grid needs more power you do less of that, and instead send electricity to the grid.
  - tuatoru 3y ago
    Electrolyzing water to make hydrogen for ammonia (fertilizer) and industrial chemical feed stocks, please.
  - acchow 3y ago
    Or powering GPU compute centers. When the grid needs more power, these dynamically power down (raise LLM generation prices)
  - ajross 3y ago
    Yes, but the point is that the problem is isomorphic to wind or solar: you get power when you don't want it. So nuclear isn't backstopping any particular need, it has the same drawbacks. The reason gas plants are used as peaker plants is that they can be turned on and off more or less instantly.
    - avar 3y ago
      You're just assigning magical value to "turn it off". That's only a big deal with fossil fuels due to the fuel cost, the fuel cost of nuclear is marginal. Yes, I agree that it's stupid to build a (big) nuclear power plant only to use it to boil an Olympic sized swimming pool most of the time. But that's stupid because we're over-relying on "green" energy that can't provide baseload power. It's even more stupid with fossil fuels, now you also need an entirely different backup infrastructure, but the fossil one pollutes much more than nuclear.
adrianN 3y ago
No? Either you have enough nuclear to cover 100% of peak demand, in which case you just run them exclusively (at a terrible capacity factor) because nuclear is almost exclusively capex, or you don't, in which case you need gas peakers.
notTooFarGone 3y ago
This guy doesn't understand nuclear

How would they regulate fluctuations in demand? Nuclear can’t do that. You need storage, or a reasonably scalable generation medium. Nuclear as a base load is moot

flextheruler 3y ago
Didn’t Germany just put its nuclear power plants on standby instead of shutting them down last year
kuchenbecker 3y ago
Control rods modulate the output.
- malfist 3y ago
  Not quickly
  - flashback2199 3y ago
    Not great, not terrible
- fomine3 3y ago
  Fuel cost is a somewhat minor cost for nuclear plants, so it's not much worth to do it
robocat 3y ago
> Nuclear can’t do that You are repeating a myth. Load following is used in France: https://www.oecd-nea.org/nea-news/2011/29-2/nea-news-29-2-load-following-e.pdf https://www.oecd-nea.org/nea-news/2011/29-2/nea-news-29-2-lo... It mostly isn't used in the US due to regulations. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36254716 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36254716 The reason load following is not generally used is because because the economics of nuclear (large fixed costs) favour base load.
- bobthepanda 3y ago
  It’s mentioned that it runs the equipment harder, and France did have to shut down a large number of plants for maintenance recently: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-11/french-nuclear-revival-hits-trouble-as-new-reactor-defects-found?embedded-checkout=true https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-11/french-nu...
  - natmaka 3y ago
    Load-following runs the equipment harder, indeed. There are safety-related limits (power modulation proportion, duration of a pause needed after each modulation, modulations frequency...) to nuclear load-following capacity, and the very combustible status is a major parameter. Pertinent document (French ahead!): https://www.sfen.org/rgn/expertise-nucleaire-francaise-suivi-charge-seduit-europe/ https://www.sfen.org/rgn/expertise-nucleaire-francaise-suivi... Quote: « un réacteur peut varier de 100 % à 20 % de puissance en une demi-heure, et remonter aussi vite après un palier d’au moins deux heures, et ce deux fois par jour » Proposed translation: "a reactor power output can vary from 100% to 20% in 30 minutes, then after 2 hours can go back to 100% at the same speed, and can cycle this way 2 times per day". This is quite a good performance when it comes to load-following (French engineers are very good at this), however it is insufficient in the real world (save any ridiculously expensive over-provision of nuclear reactor, most idling) and very weak compared to gas turbines performances. Even in nuclear-packed France (which exports electricity) fossil fuels are also burnt in order to produce electricity since nuclear's inception, for most of the load-following and peak (about 9% in 2021), and it would be much worse without hydro. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-elec-by-source?country=~FRA https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-elec-by-source?coun... On the other hand green hydrogen (produced by intermittent renewables at over-electric-generation time) can be stored then used at insufficient-generation time.
- pydry 3y ago
  You can technically use nuclear power plants as load followers in much thr same way that you can technically keep warm by setting $50 bills on fire. Load following with a nuclear plant basically means provisioning a 2GW plant and then using, say, 0.5GW of that - throwing away the rest. (since the vast majority of the cost is capex not fuel) Every kilowatt hour produced by that 2GW power plant is already 5x the cost of a kilowatt hour produced by a wind farm. If you assume it is used for load following that goes from 5x-20x depending on capacity utilization. Pumping water uphill (snowy 2, coire glas, etc) is way way WAY cheaper and the geography to do that is ridiculously common. Electrolyzing water and storing hydrogen underground is way cheaper too, and can be stored for months cheaply.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

ajross 3y ago

Nuclear is emphatically not an instant-on hot backup. Plants take time to spool up, and very importantly time to cool down. Fukushima happened because you can't just turn a reactor off, it produces energy that has to go somewhere while the intermediate fission products decay over hours-to-days.

avar 3y ago
In this scenario you could just run the nuclear plant all the time, but just direct its electric production to heating a giant pool of water or whatever. Then when the grid needs more power you do less of that, and instead send electricity to the grid.
- tuatoru 3y ago
  Electrolyzing water to make hydrogen for ammonia (fertilizer) and industrial chemical feed stocks, please.
- acchow 3y ago
  Or powering GPU compute centers. When the grid needs more power, these dynamically power down (raise LLM generation prices)
- ajross 3y ago
  Yes, but the point is that the problem is isomorphic to wind or solar: you get power when you don't want it. So nuclear isn't backstopping any particular need, it has the same drawbacks. The reason gas plants are used as peaker plants is that they can be turned on and off more or less instantly.
  - avar 3y ago
    You're just assigning magical value to "turn it off". That's only a big deal with fossil fuels due to the fuel cost, the fuel cost of nuclear is marginal. Yes, I agree that it's stupid to build a (big) nuclear power plant only to use it to boil an Olympic sized swimming pool most of the time. But that's stupid because we're over-relying on "green" energy that can't provide baseload power. It's even more stupid with fossil fuels, now you also need an entirely different backup infrastructure, but the fossil one pollutes much more than nuclear.

adrianN 3y ago

No? Either you have enough nuclear to cover 100% of peak demand, in which case you just run them exclusively (at a terrible capacity factor) because nuclear is almost exclusively capex, or you don't, in which case you need gas peakers.

notTooFarGone 3y ago

This guy doesn't understand nuclear