3 ms·

US nuclear averages below 0.9, individual plants can break 0.93 for a single year, but long term maintenance and refueling cycles lower the average. Ex: 95.73%

• foota 3y ago
  Is a 15% difference that much of a different story?
  • hef19898 3y ago
    Look at your paycheck, and imagine the number is 15% lower. Should answer the question.
    • deleted 3y ago
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    • blackoil 3y ago
      If alternate pay is 90% lower, not big of a difference. i.e. If I lose job, I would prefer new one to pay 85% than 10%.
    • foota 3y ago
      It does. And no, it's not that significant. I'm not a nuclear fanboy (well, I wish I made sense since I like the idea of free energy, but renewables are just as good), but I think it's important to make accurate arguments.
      • hef19898 3y ago
        An accurate argument would include the financial aspects of +/- 15% in generated output and the impact that has on grid capacity....
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        • foota 3y ago
          With such a small difference, the burden of proof in this case is probably on the person arguing that it is a big difference, since you'd generally expect a roughly linear relationship between these. In fact, I think I'd suspect that downtime is less relevant for nuclear, since I believe most of it will be schedulable, as opposed to renewables where downtime is random and based on conditions. Since it's schedulable, it could be done in the off season, or different plants could be planned to be out at difference periods.
          • hef19898 3y ago
            You actually have no idea about electricity transmission. For long term problems, look no further than France. Short term, look up how electricity generation, transmission, markets and grid stability are linked. Wikipedia is a good start. Followed by studies about 100% renewable grids, those explain why baseload is much less of an issue than people think. And too much inflexible capacity, aka baseload, can actually be a problem itself.
            • foota 3y ago
              While I'm not a practicing economist, I have a bachelor's degree in economics and took multiple classes on the economics of electricity markets. While all of those are certainly relevant if you're comparing nuclear and other sources of power, I fail to see how that's relevant to the question of whether there's a significant difference between 80 and 95% capacity factor over a year.
• throwaway87651 3y ago
  Nuclear had much lower capacity factors in the past, which brings the lifetime capacity factor down. But the relevant point is that the capacity factor of nuclear plants running today is >90%
  • Retric 3y ago
    US Nuclear had a capacity factor of 86.1% as recently as 2012, it just varies through time and over a 40+ year lifetime you don’t have outstanding results every single year. So sure you can argue 71.1% in 1997 no longer applies, but it was almost exactly the same fleet of reactors in use back then. Yet the person I was replying to said “about 93%” when averaging over 93% has been achieved exactly once in 2019. That kind of nonsense is actively harmful when people hear something and then later realize it’s simply incorrect. Effective advocacy requires accuracy including technology specific issues and how to mitigate them.
    • looofooo0 3y ago
      Planned or unplanned is the question.
      • Retric 3y ago
        The larger question is what capacity factors would look like if you tried to double the amount of nuclear as many advocates wish. And what that would do to profitability / the need for subsidies. Or as the industry has been concerned with for a decade, what happens when renewable energy is regularly sending wholesale prices near zero for hours a day.