4 ms·

Practically, a lot of nuclear power plants can be down at the same time for maintenance etc., so you need to overbuild quite a bit there as well then

dylan604 2y ago
Hopefully you have multiple reactor designs so that if an issue with one is found, you don't stop all reactors just reactors of the same design.
mpweiher 2y ago
No. Nuclear power plants are super reliable and available. German und US plants had/have capacity factors of well over 90%, and the downtimes are scheduled. The "overbuild" is minimal.
- RandomLensman 2y ago
  France in 2022 didn't have a lot of capacity down at the same time? Availability was at 40% of maximum capacity for about a month at it's lowest. How these things will be managed in the real world matters, too, not just how it could play out hypothetically.
  - mpweiher 2y ago
    Yep. That was a one-time occurrence, due to (a) inspections being deferred during COVID and (b) France's long time catastrophic underinvestment in their nuclear fleet. Until March 2023, there was a law in France that made it illegal to increase nuclear capacity in absolute terms and mandated reduction to under 50% in relative terms. https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=isgu-VrD0oM https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=isgu-VrD0oM But again, a one-time event, and it doesn't change the high capacity factors world-wide (over 80%) and the extremely high capacity factors in reasonably well run fleets ( > 90% in the US, and also inGermany when they still had nuclear ).
    - RandomLensman 2y ago
      One time or not, need to be able to deal with it, as need to be able deal with the possibility of underinvestment etc. - especially if fleets get much bigger.
      - mpweiher 2y ago
        1. They were able to deal with it. And had even more options to deal with it. 2. A one time event has little to no effect on overall capacity factors. 3. Underinvestment is very easy to deal with: invest adequately.
        RandomLensman 2y ago
        1) It caused/aggrevated serious issues on the European energy market at the time 2) Then you might have no electricity for some months every few decades from "one offs" 3) Appeals to humans needing to be different are rarely successful
        mpweiher 2y ago
        Electricity supply to consumers was affected how? And please separate this out from the general energy crisis of 2021-2023. Since we didn't have "no electricity for some months" in this one-off, and, as I explained elsewhere, had optionality, not quite sure how you extrapolate from an event not happening to an event happening every few decades. Gosh, so we're not ever going to invest sufficiently in battery tech for that to ever work. Glad you cleared that up for us. But to be clear, it wasn't some random "human nature" that caused the underinvestment. It was official government policy, and that government policy has now been changed. The renewables mafia that is still in control in Germany was also in control in France. That has been taken care of, mostly by being exposed to the harsh light of Reality™. The law that mandated reduction and forbade expansion of nuclear was repealed March 2023. They are now expanding capacity, build first 6 and then an additional 8 simplified EPR2 reactors. And there was one more reason for the lull in investment: France did the initial expansion under the Messmer Plan far too quickly. They nuclearized their grid in just 15 years. Which sounds great, and of course completely puts the lie to those who claim that nuclear is "too slow". But there is a problem: these nuclear plants are not just quick to build, they also last pretty much forever, at least 60 years, many if not most are being extended to 80 years and the experts say there's no reason not to go to 100. If you have built all the nuclear power plants you need in 15 years and they last 100 years, you have nothing to build for 85 years (or 65 / 45 years if you assume 80/60 year lifespans). That's a problem, because your nuclear industry will wither and die in that time. Which it pretty much did.
- jakewins 2y ago
  > and the downtimes are scheduled. Dayjob is in energy market algo trading and DER ancillary services in EU, and I can tell you with confidence this is far from true. And when the nukes trip for safety reasons - which happens multiple times per year - that’s a GW that just dropped off the grid from one second to the next. For me, I much prefer the reliability of wind and solar; never seen a correlated failure, and we know their production pattern days in advance.

dylan604 2y ago

Hopefully you have multiple reactor designs so that if an issue with one is found, you don't stop all reactors just reactors of the same design.

mpweiher 2y ago

No. Nuclear power plants are super reliable and available. German und US plants had/have capacity factors of well over 90%, and the downtimes are scheduled. The "overbuild" is minimal.

RandomLensman 2y ago
France in 2022 didn't have a lot of capacity down at the same time? Availability was at 40% of maximum capacity for about a month at it's lowest. How these things will be managed in the real world matters, too, not just how it could play out hypothetically.
- mpweiher 2y ago
  Yep. That was a one-time occurrence, due to (a) inspections being deferred during COVID and (b) France's long time catastrophic underinvestment in their nuclear fleet. Until March 2023, there was a law in France that made it illegal to increase nuclear capacity in absolute terms and mandated reduction to under 50% in relative terms. https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=isgu-VrD0oM https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=isgu-VrD0oM But again, a one-time event, and it doesn't change the high capacity factors world-wide (over 80%) and the extremely high capacity factors in reasonably well run fleets ( > 90% in the US, and also inGermany when they still had nuclear ).
  - RandomLensman 2y ago
    One time or not, need to be able to deal with it, as need to be able deal with the possibility of underinvestment etc. - especially if fleets get much bigger.
    - mpweiher 2y ago
      1. They were able to deal with it. And had even more options to deal with it. 2. A one time event has little to no effect on overall capacity factors. 3. Underinvestment is very easy to deal with: invest adequately.
      - RandomLensman 2y ago
        1) It caused/aggrevated serious issues on the European energy market at the time 2) Then you might have no electricity for some months every few decades from "one offs" 3) Appeals to humans needing to be different are rarely successful
        mpweiher 2y ago
        Electricity supply to consumers was affected how? And please separate this out from the general energy crisis of 2021-2023. Since we didn't have "no electricity for some months" in this one-off, and, as I explained elsewhere, had optionality, not quite sure how you extrapolate from an event not happening to an event happening every few decades. Gosh, so we're not ever going to invest sufficiently in battery tech for that to ever work. Glad you cleared that up for us. But to be clear, it wasn't some random "human nature" that caused the underinvestment. It was official government policy, and that government policy has now been changed. The renewables mafia that is still in control in Germany was also in control in France. That has been taken care of, mostly by being exposed to the harsh light of Reality™. The law that mandated reduction and forbade expansion of nuclear was repealed March 2023. They are now expanding capacity, build first 6 and then an additional 8 simplified EPR2 reactors. And there was one more reason for the lull in investment: France did the initial expansion under the Messmer Plan far too quickly. They nuclearized their grid in just 15 years. Which sounds great, and of course completely puts the lie to those who claim that nuclear is "too slow". But there is a problem: these nuclear plants are not just quick to build, they also last pretty much forever, at least 60 years, many if not most are being extended to 80 years and the experts say there's no reason not to go to 100. If you have built all the nuclear power plants you need in 15 years and they last 100 years, you have nothing to build for 85 years (or 65 / 45 years if you assume 80/60 year lifespans). That's a problem, because your nuclear industry will wither and die in that time. Which it pretty much did.
jakewins 2y ago
> and the downtimes are scheduled. Dayjob is in energy market algo trading and DER ancillary services in EU, and I can tell you with confidence this is far from true. And when the nukes trip for safety reasons - which happens multiple times per year - that’s a GW that just dropped off the grid from one second to the next. For me, I much prefer the reliability of wind and solar; never seen a correlated failure, and we know their production pattern days in advance.