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Why does nuclear not deliver closer to its ideal power output? Are nuclear plants really down 10% of the time?
by Evidlo 3y ago
Why does nuclear not deliver closer to its ideal power output? Are nuclear plants really down 10% of the time?
- jeffbee 3y agoOver their lifecycle they are down more like 20-25%.
- doikor 3y agoOnly if the operator is criminally incompetent. 90%+ capacity factor/uptime is pretty much standard and the better ones reach ~95% For example TVO in Finland has 93% to 97% depending on the reactor since the early 1990s. Fortum has very similar numbers for their reactors.
- jeffbee 3y agoThis is the definition of cherry-picking data points.
- doikor 3y agoI would say cherry-picking data points is better then providing 0 data points. edit: Basically competent operators hit ~90%. US is around 93%. Sweden 84% Switzerland 90% France would hit that if they could run their plants at 100% when they are on but they run theirs in load following mode due to having so many of them. So they run at around 80%. World average is 83%. https://world-nuclear.org/getmedia/891c0cd8-2beb-4acf-bb4b-552da1696695/world-nuclear-performance-report-2021.pdf.aspx https://world-nuclear.org/getmedia/891c0cd8-2beb-4acf-bb4b-5... And yes I know best the numbers about the market I live in because I live here and this stuff effects the price I have to pay for electricity.
- asadotzler 3y agoIf the world average is 83% and his claim included 80%, he wasn't as far off as you made him out to be with the criminal negligence business, was he?
- olau 3y agoNot an expert, but it's my impression that it's common to have reactors shut down about one month per year for refueling and maintenance. Of course, this can be planned so it's not a big deal. The plants do have a worse correlated failure mode which is when something bad is discovered in one plant, it can shut down multiple plants because the safety is based on making sure to an extremely high degree that nothing can go wrong - like grounded air planes. Something like Fukushima can shut down plants all over the world temporarily until plans have been revisited and extra precautions possibly put in place.
- sl-1 3y agoNuclear plants, like any facility or service, need downtime for maintenance
- doikor 3y agoRefueling and maintenance are the "normal" things and both are planned to the time of year with least consumption/lowest electricity prices. Then you have the rare non planned outages but once a new reactor has been running for a year or two and all the kinks have been worked out they should be very rare.
- samatman 3y agoScheduled maintenance. Refueling, replacing worn-out components, that sort of thing. One nine of uptime is pretty good in the "continuously running power plants" business. Emphasis on scheduled. Wind operators get no choice at all in when they're generating power, and this is true of solar as well, although the fluctuation is easier to predict, especially in very sunny climates. A fleet of nuclear reactors can be taken offline on a schedule, with advance notice, so they alternate being out of commission. This makes it easier to supply reliable baseline power.